The childhood home of the late Argentine football icon has been converted into a makeshift soup kitchen to help neighbours struggling under President Javier Milei’s austerity measures.
At 523 Amazor Street in Fiorito, the working-class Buenos Aires suburb where Maradona grew up, volunteers prepare meals and distribute clothing to people in need. Fiorito, home to roughly 50,000 residents and marked by modest brick houses, is decorated with murals honoring the player who died in 2020. His former house has become a focal point for local solidarity.
Locals bring containers to be filled as volunteers ladle out chicken stew and other dishes from large cauldrons set over open fires in the yard. Cumbia, a favourite of Maradona’s, often plays as people wait at the gate to receive bagged meals—there is no formal dining room. Organisers say the choice to use his childhood home carries symbolic weight in a place where he once endured severe poverty and a lack of basic services.
One regular, Diego Gavilan, who collects cardboard and scrap metal for a living, began coming after Milei’s radical free-market reforms following the December 2023 election. He says many families now struggle to make ends meet. Official data shows some reduction in poverty tied largely to lower inflation, but Central Bank reports warn household finances remain strained. A surge in imports and a collapse in consumption have coincided with more than 20,000 business closures.
For neighbours, the effort is both practical and meaningful. Volunteers cook outdoors and hand out food at the gate, and residents say it feels right that a place associated with Maradona’s own hardship is now feeding the community. Cooks and neighbours believe he would have approved of the house being used to help those who are going hungry.
