Ever since José de San Martin’s liberators won Argentina’s independence on July 9 1816, political life has ebbed and flowed from tragedy to farce. However, the military coup in March 1976 established a dark new discourse navigated by the politics of terror leaving 30,000 slaughtered and economic crimes on such a scale that, by 2001, the country was declared bankrupt leaving millions destitute.
During Argentina’s “Dirty War” (1976–1983), the military government abducted, tortured and killed not only left-wing activists, but anyone else they deemed to be “subversives”. The extent of the barbarity used against civilians was exposed in the testimony of Adolfo Scilingo, convicted by a Spanish court of crimes against humanity under the doctrine of universal jurisdiction in 2005. He claimed there were 200 vuelos de la muerte (death flights} in 1977 and 1978. As a sick twist, victims were sometimes made to dance for joy in celebration of the freedom that they were told awaited them. Scilingo explained: “They were played lively music and made to dance for joy, because they were going to be transferred to the south. After that, they were told they had to be vaccinated due to the transfer, and they were injected with Pentothal. And, shortly after, they became really drowsy, and from there we loaded them onto trucks and headed off for the airfield”.
General Jorge Videla and his officers who masterminded the coup were trained at the infamous School of the Americas. French journalist Marie-Monique Robin discovered a hidden history in the archives of the Quai d’ Orsay (French Ministry of Foreign Affairs). A 1959 agreement between Paris and Buenos Aires initiated a “permanent French military mission”, formed of veterans who had fought and used torture techniques including death flights during the Algerian War, was located in the offices of the chief of staff of the Argentine armed forces.
After the dictatorship fell in 1983, the elected government accelerated the free-market experiment of privatisation, deregulation, public spending cuts and the abolition of capital controls. These measures made Argentina a financial paradise for a small global cabal of investors, but launched millions into poverty and misery. To compound this “voodoo politics”, under the administration of Domingo Cavallo in the 1990s, Argentina surrendered its economic sovereignty and followed a 1,400 page-austerity programme written in secret by JP Morgan and Citibank. This demanded the reform of trade union law, the privatisation of pensions, the end of state welfare and the pegging of the peso to the dollar. Talk by the elite of an “economic miracle” was a fiction. Local factories could not compete with the flood of cheap imports and thousands lost their jobs. Pensions became worthless. Without welfare services, more than 60 per cent of the country’s population dropped below the poverty line.
In 2001 Argentina’s leaders responded to the crisis with an International Monetary Fund package: $9 billion more in austerity measures. This was a step too far. Argentinians have a saying: “Mas vale estar solo que mal acompanado.” (“Better to be alone than in bad company.”) After the IMF-induced economic meltdown that led to the flight of capital, millions of Argentinians poured onto the streets to protest against the financial and moral bankruptcy of their political and economic rulers. Their slogan “Que se vayan todos” (“All of them out”) soon became reality. Trade unions called a nationwide strike against the austerity plans and five governments fell in less than three weeks.
In this political vacuum, powerful struggles developed at the bottom of society and spread to the top. Social democrat Nestor Kirchner was elected president in 2003 with a mandate to change the structures of Argentine politics. Immediately, he served notice that he was not going to accept the dictates of the IMF, which were designed to favour foreign creditors. He developed a clear human rights policy which backed efforts to prosecute those responsible for the crimes committed during the years of state terrorism (1976-83). He built alliances with the unions and social movements, encouraged Latin American unity over the hegemony of the United States. And he made the central bank target a stable and competitive real exchange rate.
This was central to his strategy for economic growth. Taking a hard line against the defaulted creditors was not popular in Washington or among the business elite. But it worked. It showed the world that a country could defy the IMF and still build a vibrant economy.
By rejecting neo-liberal dogma, Kirchner was able to expand the Argentine economy and lift millions of people out of poverty. He renationalised key public utilities, developed a welfare policy and regulated the economy. He understood that privatisation, deregulation and labour flexibility were tools used by the financial elite to facilitate the massive transfer of public wealth to private hands.
After his term in office, his influence continued as his wife, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, succeeded him as president. She was widely expected to stand aside to let her husband stand again for the presidency in the 2011 elections. Sadly, though, he died suddenly of heart failure in 2010.
Most political analysts think President Cristina Fernandez will run again, but she has yet to make a formal announcement to this effect. She is way ahead in most opinion polls and almost certain to win. Even her fiercest political opponent, former president Carlos Menem, has conceded: “there’s no way to beat Cristina in October”.
Argentina’s fragmented political opposition has struggled to offer voters a viable alternative to Fernandez and the Frente Para la Victoria (FPV). She has a formidable lead over her closest rival, Radical party congressman Ricardo Alfonsin, suggesting she would easily win a first round vote, thus avoiding a run-off. Under Argentine law, candidates win outright in the first round if they get at least 40 per cent of the vote with a 10-point lead over the runner-up.
Mauricio Macri, the millionaire mayor of Buenos Aires, has long been seen as the great hope of the government’s right-wing opponents and he could still be a contender in a centre-right pact to challenge Fernandez. However, a power struggle within his PRO party threatens to damage his chances of maintaining control over the Buenos Aires city government in next month’s election, increasing the likelihood that he will back out of the presidential race to concentrate on keeping his present job.
Macri did forge a successful alliance with dissident Peronists during the June 2009 mid-term elections, suggesting a similar pact is not entirely out of the question now The United States will want to prevent the re-election of an ally of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. Washington knows that Cristina will not easily forgive the insulting statements the US diplomats made about her, which were revealed by WikiLeaks. “Double consciousness, inadequacy, unbalance” – characteristics described in US State Department letters and cipher messages of the CIA. Cristina is also implacably opposed to those White House officials who are trying to destroy the memory of her late husband. Along with other Latin American presidents, Nestor Kirchner buried the imperialist integration project ALCA, during the summit of Americas in Mar del Plata in 2005.
Despite promising a new start with Latin America, Barack Obama has continued with the interference in its sovereign affairs. US and business elites have learned nothing from the dire effects of economic imperialism. Their only concern is enriching themselves and so the fund campaigns to cripple democratically-elected governments which dare to take an independent road.
Poverty, unemployment, food prices, housing, health care and education are the topics that dominate conversations in Argentina today. Cristina’s right-wing opponents seem oblivious to these concerns and have sown the seeds of their own destruction.
