Kirchner's Argentina
Surfing Latin America's Pink Tide
by Fernando Roueax
www.zmag.org/, 11/25/06
It is said that when president Néstor
Kirchner met George W. Bush for the first time in Washington in
2003, soon after Kirchner had been elected, the White House was
trying to figure out if the Argentinian was a new Hugo Chávez,
or an Argentinian version of Chilean president Ricardo Lagos.
Kirchner, in turn, was there to assure Mr. Bush he was definitely
not a new Chávez; time would make clear that he was not
a new Lagos either.(1) Kirchner came to power in May 2003 with
a meagre 22 per cent of the popular vote, thanks to former president
Carlos Menem's refusal to run in the presidential runoff (Kirchner
was sure to win with a near 70 per cent of the votes). At that
moment, Argentina was a country in default with an un-payable
foreign debt, official levels of poverty of more than 50 per cent,
billions of pesos in different provincial bonds replacing the
national currency, and a highly mobilized population that had
recently overthrown five presidents and would not tolerate any
further disappointment or betrayal. How did Argentina, the most
industrialized country in Latin America at the beginning of the
20th century, enter the 21st century in such a state?
From Spanish colony to British colony
to neoliberal model Like other countries in the region and elsewhere,
the conquest of the land from the indigenous people, in which
military officials took for themselves what they had stolen in
the name of the Argentinian state and Christian values, created
a strong elite of landowners indistinguishable from the military
elite. After achieving its formal independence from the Spanish
Empire in 1810, Argentina entered a period of internal armed conflicts
that ended with the triumph of a liberal oligarchy,(2) which accommodated
itself very well within the British empire, providing it-as well
as other countries in Europe-with agricultural products and raw
materials to be used in industry. The high demand of agricultural
products from the British empire structured Argentina's economy
unevenly, with Buenos Aires in a privileged position as the gate
to these European markets. The agro-exporting elite ruled the
country from the second half of the 19th century up to the first
decade and a half of the 20th century. It was a period of strong
capital accumulation: per capita income tripled (1870-1913) in
a repressive and corrupt system in which 2 per cent of the population
received 20 per cent of the income. The emergence of a new urban
elite, which took power in 1916 with the Radical party, began
to challenge this agro-exporting model and redirect wealth to
the city. With the arrival of the first World War, Argentina started
a process of industrialization that was accelerated in the 1960s
and 1970s.(3)
Redistribution of wealth during the presidencies
of Peron (who, as a minister of a dictatorship took all the measures
that had been proposed by the Socialist Party in order to accumulate
personal political capital)(4) made Argentina a country with 4.2
per cent unemployment in 1974,(5) a 9 per cent poverty rate (lower
than France and the US), with a better distribution of wealth
than any other Latin American country and even many industrialized
countries.(6) Yet the traditional agro-exporting elite, with deep
roots in the military and the powerful Roman Catholic Church,
would not give up easily, and used their power to overthrow democratic
governments six times in five decades. Between 1930 and 1974,
while Argentina was struggling to move away from the model of
agro-export towards one of industrialization, capitalism was being
transfigured from an emphasis on productive capital to one on
financial capital.
After the First and Second World Wars,
the US reshaped the world's economy, penetrating the financial
markets of Europe and, increasingly, the Third World, forcing
the inclusion of virtually all countries into the US financial
system, especially after the creation of the dollar standard.(7)
During the 1960s, the financial dominance of US capital did not
lead to ideological dominance in Latin America, where universities
were still very much influenced by the structuralist ideas of
Raul Prebisch.(8) But the US was determined to change this. When
in Argentina a military dictatorship (1976-1983) was once again
trying to reorient Argentina's economy towards an agro-export
model, the US already had a set of Argentinian economists trained
in the new economic theories of the school of Chicago, headed
by Milton Friedman and Arnold Harberger. The task of these US-trained
economists (known as the Chicago Boys) was to reshape the country's
economy, convert it into a free-market zone, and destroy its industry,
making it the favorite paradise for US and European banks, multinationals,
and speculative capital. These new economists had their first
chance to enter the political sphere during the military dictatorship,
with the debt crisis of the 1980s. Backed by the IMF and the US
government, these newly trained, middle class technocrats were
allowed to design the country's economy, with devastating effects.
These seven and a half years of dictatorship were the turning
point in which Argentinian industry was reduced to 22 per cent
of the GDP while employment was reduced by 20 per cent, per capita
income was reduced by 15 per cent, and private debts were nationalized,
increasing the foreign debt by 600 per cent and putting the country
into deficit.
To be able to do this, the dictatorship
kidnapped, tortured and killed 30,000 civilians, in what they
called the "Proceso de Reorganización Nacional."
With this double treatment of genocide and economic devastation,
the dirty work had been done and Argentina was integrated into
the global financial market-as were most countries in Latin America-and
the way was paved for the coming neoliberal reforms. Argentina
was now ready to have a democracy, as was the rest of the region.
The country, however, did not vote in favour of neoliberalism.
Raúl Alfonsín assumed the presidency in December
1983, and "[h]orrified with the new policies, which attempted
a radical and awkward change from the program of the 'Proceso,'
the neoliberal economists went back to the private sector. The
time spent by many of them in the military government had permitted
them to consolidate their contacts with local economic forces
and financially strengthen their bases of operation. Comfortably
installed, they dedicated themselves to earning money and forecasting
the catastrophe."(9) Though he survived several military
uprisings by granting impunity to most of those who participated
in the genocide, newly elected president Alfonsín paid
a very high price for not following neoliberal policies: he did
not succeed in containing what has been described as a financial
coup d'etat, in 1989.
The Chicago Boys celebrated this coup
from the front pages of their right-wing newspapers. One of them,
"Ambito Financiero" ran an article titled "Market
coup," in which it cheerily pointed out that "[t]his
democratic Argentina does not want military coups but has adopted
a strategy to defend itself from the demagogy of politicians"(10).
It became clear that financial capitalists, rather than the military,
were now the ones who could overthrow governments on their own.
Alfonsín handed over the presidency three months before
finishing his term, in the midst of complete economic chaos. Menem,
his successor, came to power using the slogan "Follow me,
I will not betray you," promising a "productive revolution"
which would deliver employment and welfare to the poor, like in
the good times of Peron.
Yet he made some promises to financial
capital as well: during his government all the key offices in
the Ministry of Economy and the Central Bank were occupied by
the same Chicago Boys who had started their careers as young technocrats
in the dictatorship. He betrayed every single promise he made
during his campaign. A few years later, he admitted that, had
he said publicly what he meant to do in the government, he never
would have won the elections. In 1999, and only after 10 years
of "fiesta menemista,"(11) Argentina (and particularly
the decimated middle class) voted against neoliberalism. Yet the
elected president, Fernando De la Rúa, did not understand
the new political context in which he had been voted for and believed
he could also get away with betrayal of the popular will, if only
he made international financial capital happy by obeying the IMF.
He was mistaken. Within a year he lost virtually all of his political
base, including his vice-president, who resigned when De la Rúa's
friend Fernando De Santibañes, Chicago boy and head of
the intelligence agency (the SIDE), distributed bribes to opposition
legislators to pass a law further worsening labour conditions.
One year later, still insisting on applying
even more neoliberal measures in order to win the approval of
the IMF, De la Rúa found himself in the midst of a national
rebellion after he trapped the savings of the middle class in
the banks, while the rich and the banks themselves were moving
all their dollars abroad. Soon, he had to escape from the fury
of the people from the roof of the Pink House in a helicopter,
after ordering a bloody, futile repression to put down the popular
uprising. His neoliberal Minister of Finance, Domingo Cavallo,
was forced to resign before him, and went straight to Harvard
to teach courses on Latin American Studies, where he continues
today. The surreal succession of three more presidents within
days was the result of the combination of attempts of different
fractions of the Peronist party to take power and the resistance
of a highly mobilized population. Eduardo Duhalde, a man with
very low levels of popular support and a very consolidated illegal
power system that sustained him (see below), was the ultimate
winner of the precious treasure of the presidency. If, after ten
years of what was known as the "fiesta menemista," Argentinians
were tired of neoliberal policies and the corruption of politicians
and corporations, after having experienced seven years of a criminal
dictatorship, they were also tired of police repression and violence.
Eduardo Duhalde's attempt to control the
"piquetero" movement (12) by killing some of their activists
was the death sentence for his mandate. He could no longer maintain
himself in power and called for anticipated elections in which
his own candidate, Néstor Kirchner, would eventually win
in a second round. The other candidate was the once invincible
ex-president, Carlos Menem, who, unable to lie about his intentions,
dropped out of the second round in which he was expected to lose
by more than 40 per cent of the votes. When Kirchner was elected
in April 2003, his enemies were many: the IMF was determined not
to give any relief to Argentina's economy before Kirchner complied
with the very measures that had provoked the fall of five presidents
in the first place; the population was highly mobilized and would
no longer tolerate any of those measures; the local right was
threatening him in the national newspapers, predicting his fall
within a year; the state was virtually dismantled as energy, oil,
services, transportation and virtually all the media were in the
hands of multinational corporations very much associated with
the local right and foreign creditors; the Central Bank was populated
with "Chicago Boys" who responded more to Washington
than to the local government; and, lastly, the military, which,
though lacking legitimacy and support from civil society, noted
with great discomfort that they were now under the mandate of
a member of the same political opposition they had meant to make
'disappear,' and started to put pressure in advance to prevent
any advance on trials over human rights violations and the genocide
during the dictatorship.
Moreover, there was one enemy that presented
a very peculiar challenge: the country's political and social
stability very much depended on Kirchner's alliance with Eduardo
Duhalde, who was in control of the mafia-like apparatus that has
funded politics in Argentina for at least the last two decades.
That same apparatus that was able to collect millions in funds
through illegal activities carried out by the Buenos Aires provincial
police-mainly drugs and prostitution-was able to sum votes through
the "punteros" and "manzaneras" (a network
of neighborhood representatives), and also by generating lootings,
kidnappings, robberies and killings that created social unrest
and fear, especially in the middle and upper classes. This was
the apparatus that had been the ultimate trigger of the 2001 revolts
that ended with Duhalde as interim president after the resignation
of De la Rúa. Paradoxically, then, to get real control
of the country, Kirchner had to destroy (or wrest control of)
the very apparatus that brought him to the presidency and one
he needed the most if he wanted to escape the fate of his predecessors.
Given this situation, Kirchner had only
one option, which became his obsession: to be able to govern he
had to gain popular support on his own. And so he did. After one
year of presidency, he could boast of unprecedented levels of
support for any Argentinian president, and after three years of
presidency he remains unchallenged in the polls by any of the
opposition leaders from the centre, right, or left. It is a given
that he will win the 2007 presidential elections should he decide
to run, as his wife would should she run instead. How has he achieved
this? By doing exactly what the overthrown president De la Rúa
had been voted in for and never attempted to do: combat corruption
in some unpopular, corrupt and key institutions such as the Supreme
Court, the police and the military; stand up (at least in his
discourse) to the multinational corporations that controlled all
the once government-owned services, to the IMF and other creditors;
and keep a low exchange rate for the peso, which would give the
decimated national industry some room to breathe. He built his
image of a strong man who defends his people by winning some battles
against two types of enemies: the relatively weak ones, and the
relatively strong ones who might put his own government at some
risk.
The former includes the head of the military,
whom he replaced immediately after assuming the presidency; the
highly questioned and clearly corrupt Menemist Supreme Court judges,
whom he replaced with a process of unprecedented transparency;
and individual Argentinian bond holders. In the latter group,
of strong and potentially dangerous enemies, are the infamous
Buenos Aires provincial police, with their connections to Duhalde,
the dictatorship, kidnappings, and to most politicians. The first
two years of Kirchner's presidency were unexpectedly satisfactory,
especially for the middle class, who welcomed what seemed like
a breeze of democratic fresh air. This demobilized the middle
class, who had played a key role in the 2001 rebellion. The much
more organized workers movement was taken care of by co-opting,
manipulating, and dividing it by using State funds, but with a
very cautious approach to avoid Duhalde's mistake of generating
bloody scenes that would make powerful television images. After
three years of presidency, Kirchner has not substantially changed
Argentina's economic and social profile, which has been shaped
by years of neoliberalism.
While Kirchner's Argentina grew at "Chinese
rates" as some economists like to say, unemployment and poverty
decrease at a much slower pace. A regressive tax structure makes
the richest pay the same taxes when they buy their BMWs as the
poorest when they buy rice. Multinational corporations still perceive
a very good "business environment," which means the
terms of operation have not radically changed from Menem's times.
Moreover, some of the progressive measures that Kirchner announced
have not been fully implemented, such as the stalled renewal of
the Supreme Court when the new-still incomplete, but independent-Supreme
Court did not make very favourable rulings for the Kirchner administration.
Fortunately, Kirchner seems to have recently come up against limits
to how far he can go with "old politics": a candidate
he supported in the province of Misiones recently lost a referendum
on whether he could modify the provincial constitution to allow
indefinite re-elections. Kirchner was supporting other governors
in similar bids, but he was confronted with the long-lasting effects
of the rebellion that landed him in the presidency. Only hours
later, all those governors lost Kirchner's support and gave up
their aspirations of remaining in power indefinitely. A few days
later, to recover lost political ground, the Kirchner administration
decided to take a popular measure and complete the once-abandoned
renewal of the Supreme Court.
The "pink tide" effect The current
Latin American political landscape is not, as the mainstream media
insist, a red tide of left-wing governments. Rather, Aijaz Ahmad
describes it more accurately as a "pink tide."(13) Governments
such as those of Kirchner in Argentina, Lula in Brazil, Bachelet
in Chile, and Tabaré Vázquez in Uruguay can only
be considered of the same political ilk as Fidel Castro, Chávez,
or Morales if one is utterly blind to important nuances or-more
cynically-intentionally overlooks them in an effort to be misleading.
Suggesting that there is not much difference between Chávez
and Kirchner is as inaccurate as suggesting that Chávez
might go tomorrow to visit the New York Stock Exchange and ring
the opening bell, as Kirchner did last September. This "pink
tide" is part of Kirchner's political capital, and he has
managed to surf it to his benefit. The presence of president Hugo
Chávez in the region is one of many factors that favours
Kirchner in the current international conjuncture. On the one
hand, Chávez has been replacing the international financial
institutions in a way, functioning as a source of capital without
the conditionalities that the Bretton Woods institutions usually
impose on borrowing countries. The availability of foreign cash
without the imposition of onerous conditions is a political luxury
for any Argentinian president; one that provides a degree of stability
and space to manoeuvre that no one would have imagined even five
years ago. On the other hand, the presence of Chávez makes
Kirchner, from the White House perspective, particularly useful
as a force of "containment" of Chávez; as someone
who can dialogue with him and convince him to moderate his actions.
With Chávez on the political scene,
Kirchner is seen as the "responsible left," while the
same policies that Kirchner is carrying out now would have probably
been considered extremely left and openly hostile to Washington
just five or ten years ago, when the political landscape in Latin
America showed Washington-friendly regimes all over the map. The
same can be said (at least so far) of the Bolivian president,
Evo Morales. The election of Evo Morales in Bolivia increases
the strategic importance of both Kirchner and Lula in the region,
figuring them as moderate regimes with which Washington can have
a direct dialogue (though of course another Menem or Cardoso would
be more to their liking). The support of the Bush administration
for both Lula and Kirchner is, then, guaranteed, as long as there
are other "threats" in the region. Washington's support
is not the only benefit Kirchner enjoys from the presence of Chávez
and Morales in the region: they lend him the "implicit threat"
of radicalization and realignment with the Cuba-Venezuela-Bolivia
axis. European governments with significant investments in Argentina
are therefore in a weaker position to push their own agenda too
far. The inflexibility of the French government in the negotiations
over the Suez water company, for example, ended with its re-nationalization
in Argentina in 2006. After the nationalization of oil and gas
by Morales in Bolivia, the last thing that the prime minister
of Spain, Rodríguez Zapatero, needs is the same thing happening
in Argentina. Spain has a total of 42 billion euros of investment
in Argentina,(14) a large part of which is in the oil company
Repsol-YPF. Kirchner can exploit the policies of Morales and Chávez
implicitly: if his conditions are not met or taken into account,
he has the option of following the steps of his Latin American
colleagues and nationalizing privatized companies.
Moreover, the less understanding and comprehension
Kirchner finds in the US and Europe, the more he would have to
strengthen his alignment with his friends in the region, and this,
in turn, would make it more difficult to isolate the "radicals"
in the pink tide. The strong words that Kirchner has for multinational
corporations, financial institutions, and so on should be read
in this context. They are a reminder that he is a friendly face
in the region, but that there are other options; a rhetorical
tool that in the present context can be much more effective than
in a situation of isolation. Kirchner's discourse would be different
perhaps if, looking around the neighborhood, he found only neoliberal
governments. This was not the political scenario that Washington
and its European allies were envisioning only a few years ago.
In 2003, given the high chances of Ignacio Lula Da Silva taking
power in Brazil, and the fears of him becoming a new Chávez
in the region, the US would have very much liked to isolate Brazil,
the most powerful country in the region, as a pre-emptive measure.
This would prevent regional alliances, declare the MERCOSUR dead,
and give a green light to go ahead with the Free Trade Agreement
of the Americas (FTAA), a Pan-American agreement of the free flow
of goods and capital (especially US) and a strict control on the
movement of labour. A strong Venezuela-Brazil alliance-a powerful
combination-was something the US would neither welcome nor tolerate.
The Argentinian crisis of 2001 was in
part triggered by the sudden change in IMF policies in tune with
US interests in the region. The decision to not give credit to
the country and to increase conditionalities was supposed to leave
this country on its knees and fully incorporated into the Wall
Street-dollar financial system, especially if the goal of abandoning
the local currency and replacing it with the dollar had been achieved.
That this was a clear objective of the US strategy can be deduced
by reading the editorials written by the "dollarization-team"
of the US financial capital representatives in Argentina: the
Chicago boys of the University of CEMA. In the prestigious Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, Rudiger Dornbusch and Ricardo Caballero
went so far as to claim that it was time for Argentina to give
up its economic sovereignty and leave the Finance Ministry and
the Central Bank to a foreign "team of experts" for
at least four or five years.(15) With Argentina's economy dismantled
and fully incorporated into the dollar economy, and with Colombia's
president Álvaro Uribe as a close ally of the US (along
with the presidents of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia), Venezuela would
have been the only place where Brazil could look to find some
resistance to Washington. The coup d'etat of April 2002 in Venezuela
has to be seen as an attempt to fully isolate (and surround) a
potentially rebellious Brazil. The coup failed to overthrow Chávez,
but perhaps it succeeded in convincing both Lula and Kirchner
of what Washington was ready to do in case of a radicalization
of their policies. The US certainly did not need the troops that
were busy in Iraq to destabilize weak governments such as theirs,
which do not enjoy the same type of army that Chávez has,
willing to stand behind a popular government.(16)
Given this precedent, Kirchner had good
reasons, then, to assure Bush that he had a pragmatic friend in
the region; one that would not have 'carnal relations' with Washington
(as neoliberal president Menem would refer to Argentina's relations
with the US during his mandate), but rather one who would talk
only about 'a serious capitalism' rather than socialism, one who
could guarantee predictability and stability for US and European
investments, one who would not take unpopular measures like going
to Iraq or offering diplomatic immunity to US soldiers in his
country, but could nonetheless collaborate with the US on other
adventures where popular opinion was less strong, such as the
Franco-American coup in Haiti. In exchange, Kirchner would ask
for Bush's support in the negotiations of the private foreign
debt and for support within the IMF. The great benefits that Kirchner's
presence in the region offers the US are therefore priceless for
Washington.
Conclusion
It is said that in the Kirchner-Bush meeting
that was mentioned at the beginning of this paper, the US president
asked: "Are you a leftist?" "No, I'm a Peronist,"
was Kirchner's evasive, yet accurate answer. "Oh, you are
centre, then," Mr. Bush insisted. "That's right,"
responded Kirchner. Bush, of course, could not understand what
being a Peronist means, partly because it means too many things.
Perhaps Kirchner was trying to say, by Peronist, "pragmatic,"
or maybe he was referring to the ideals of a capitalist dream
that remain in the imaginary of Argentina's urban middle and working
classes; a capitalism that creates jobs and distributes wealth.
It is difficult to know, because if Peronism means anything, it
is contradiction. In a continent of contradictions like Latin
America, then, Argentina is a country of contradictions, governed
by a party of contradictions. As the prominent Argentinian intellectual,
Jose Pablo Feinman, puts it: In fact [Peronism] has meant: nationalistic-populist
and protectionist between 1946-1952; pro-open markets between
1952-1955; combative, unionist and violent with the "Peronist
Resistance"; conciliatory-dialoguistic with [president] Onganía;
clearly left or Guevaristic and even a movement of urban guerilla
in the 70s; productivist with Peron-Gelbard and the 'Social Deal'
of 1973, fascist with López Rega, Isabelita and Ottalagano,
social-democrat with Cafiero and the Renovation in 1984/85, and
wildly neoliberal with Menem in the 90s.(17)
Following this tradition of contradictions,
Kirchner has controlled the mass movements with a 'stick and carrot'
policy, co-opting or absorbing part of the piquetero movement,
the combative Madres de Plaza de Mayo, the corrupt leaders of
the major unions, and the most important media, and imprisoning
about 5,000 social activists; all of this while at the same time
ending impunity for human rights violators during the dictatorship,
cleaning up the Supreme Court, the police and so on.(18) It is
true, as James Petras has asserted, that Kirchner "has demobilized
the movements and taken the country out of the 'danger zone' of
a popular upheaval against the neo-liberal system constructed
during the 1990's."(19) But Kirchner did not do so, as Petras
suggests, to accomplish what he calls "one of the primary
conditions for US domination," but rather as an obsession
with strengthening his own position on the one hand, given the
context in which he assumed the presidency (i.e. one of political
weakness), and on the other hand because he belongs to a long
tradition of vertical personalism in Argentina in general, and
in the Peronist party in particular, inherited from the culture
of the caudillos and reinforced by Peron, Eva Duarte and many,
many others. ¬ The same Peronist pragmatism that Kirchner
has applied on the internal front, he has applied in his international
policies, but here his position has been a much more comfortable
one because of-as we have seen-the presence of Chávez (and
Morales). Permanently (even when implicitly) threatening with
radical measures that would damage global capital interests in
Argentina, Kirchner has found his political niche as the wielder
of a very much needed 'rationality' in the region. If there were
presidential elections in Argentina today, as we have mentioned,
Kirchner would win without difficulties, as would the Senator
Cristina Fernandez, his wife.
One of them will likely run and win the
presidency in 2007, and then there will be the possibility of
re-election. Unless the opposition reorganizes itself into a broad
alliance, either from the left or from the right, it is likely
that for the next 5 to 16 years Argentina will be governed by
this (type of) Peronist administration. What, then, will the Latin
American scenario look like over the next few years? The political
landscape would have changed dramatically this year if Lula had
not won the national elections in Brazil. The future of the political,
economic, and energetic integration of the region was at stake.
With a conservative government in Brazil it would be difficult
to build the 8,000-kilometre oil pipeline linking Venezuela, Brazil
and Argentina to redirect Venezuela's oil in order to use it for
the development of the region.(20) Washington would use a conservative
government in Brazil to sign bilateral free trade agreements of
the kind it has been signing with other countries in the region,
as an alternative (or preamble) to the FTAA. These scenarios would
be demolishing for the MERCOSUR and the integration project. When
the World Bank and the IMF push for "structural reforms"
they know that what they are doing is forcing changes that are,
if not totally irreversible, at the very least extremely difficult,
lengthy, and politically complicated to go back on. This is clear
in the following statement made in a book published by the IMF
Institute in the context of the post-USSR Russia, Eastern Europe
and Algeria: [P]articipants asked why the working groups had devoted
most of their time to privatization rather than to enterprise
reform in general. [B]ecause privatization tends to be nonreversible,
it is extremely important politically.(21)
Or in the following, published in the
IMF survey magazine, analyzing how structural reforms could be
implemented in Switzerland: In the Swiss political system of direct
democracy, reforms are more likely to be adopted under economic
pressure, when the political climate favors compromise. Under
these conditions, reforms can be significant and quick, and once
in place, they cannot be reversed easily in the consensus-based
system.(22)
In Latin America, the 1990s were years
of implementing such reforms, led by the Bretton Woods institutions,
and were meant to achieve the progressive but permanent inclusion
of these countries' economies in the US-led global economy. With
the beginning of the 21st century, this tendency started to change
direction, mainly in Venezuela, and to some extent with the governments
of Lula and Kirchner. Yet the real question is if any deviations
from neoliberal policies will outlive the current administrations.
For that to happen, there has to be a process of "structural
un-reform" whose aim would be to undo the neoliberal structural
reforms of the 1990s. While it is unfair and strategically erroneous
to expect the undoing of those reforms within the first days of
a new administration (as some in Latin America are demanding,
for example, from Evo Morales, who has been in power for less
than one year), it is also important to remember that without
such changes in the countries' economic and political structure,
no changes will survive a four- to six-year period of a right-wing
government. Changes such as reforms of the Constitution, land
and fiscal reforms, and so on, will vary from country to country,
but they need to be meant to survive the political leaders themselves.
It is in this crucial aspect that-in spite of, as it has been
noted above, the insistence of the international media on not
making much distinction between presidents as different as Chávez
and Kirchner, Lula or Bachelet, Morales or Fidel Castro-each administration
has its own, very different record.
This pink tide could, perhaps, become
redder, and introduce a real (structural) redistribution of the
wealth and the political power that the neoliberal 1990s concentrated
for the very few; or it could become a small delay in the ever-expanding
process of mass exclusion from the economy, the media and politics.
Of all the Latin American presidents, Chávez and Morales
are the ones who have attempted to make changes that may survive
their administrations, with the introduction of participatory
democracy, State control of resources, changes to their constitutions,
and so on. Kirchner has been, instead, very ambiguous and timid,
and he seems to always be very careful not to enter battles that
he will not win, not touching any interests that are too powerful.
Where he has been involved in real battles with powerful interests,
it has been for the sake of his own survival. The years to come
will tell if any of these much needed changes will take place,
converting Latin America into a fairer region, with the political
and economic capacity to make its own decisions. With all its
limitations, the present context is, nevertheless, a historic
opportunity to begin a process of de-colonization and un-reform
that could put an end to 500 years of European and American colonialism
in the region.
Notes
(1) Feinman, 2003. "El senor K y
el peronismo." Pagina12. Accessed at http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/contratapa/13-25671-2003-09-20.html.
Viewed on June 28, 2006. (2) Fonseca, Jorge. 2002. "Argentina
y la piedra filosofal." In 'El Pais.' Accessed at http://culturitalia.uibk.ac.at/hispanoteca/landeskunde-la/Argentina%20y%20la%20piedra%20filosofal.htm.
Viewed on July 4, 2006. (3) Ibid. (4) Gonzalez, O. P. and Fernández
H. 2005. Reached at http://www.webhistoria.com.ar/zmagazine+article.articleid+21.htm
(5) Verbitzky, H. 2005. "Economia y Politica." In Pagina12.
Accessed at http://www.lainsignia.org/2005/agosto/ibe_026.htm
(6) Fonseca, Jorge. Op. Cit. (7) Hudson, 1968. Super Imperialism.
The Economic Strategy of American Empire. New York, Chicago and
San Francisco: Holt, Rinehart and Wiston. (8) Glen Biglaiser.
2002. "The Internationalization of Chicago's Economists in
Latin America." In Economic Development and Cultural Change.
The University of Chicago. (pp. 269-286) (9) José Natanson,
2004. Buenos Muchachos. Vida y obra de los economistas del establishment.
Buenos Aires, Libros del Zorzal. (p. 69). My translation. (10)
Diario Ambito Financiero, Dec 15, 1989. From Wikipedia, accessed
at http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ra%C3%BAl_Alfons%C3%ADn#_note-47.
Viewed on July 6, 2006. In the original: "Esta Argentina
democrática no quiere más golpes de estado militares
pero ha adoptado una estrategia para defenderse de la demagogia
de los políticos" My translation. (11) The "fiesta
menemista," or "Menemist party" is the way Argentinians
call the 10 years of Menemist government. The idea of party does
not mean enjoyment for all Argentinans. On the contrary, it gives
the idea of a great but very exclusive party of rich people in
the Menem administration and their friends in the big businesses
and stock market, who would have a life of abundance and wastefulness
within close doors, when most people were left out, condemned
to watch from outside. (12) A movement of unemployed people who,
unable to use strikes as a way of protest, they organize piquets,
shutting down streets and highways for several hours. (13) Ahmad,
Aijaz, 2006. "Latin America's Pink Tide." In Frontline,
Volume 23, Issues 04, Feb 25-Mar10. Accessed at http://www.frontline.in/fl2304/stories/20060310003703000.htm.
Viewed on June 30, 2006. (14) Feldman, Pablo. "La unica diferencia
es el fútbol". Accessed at http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-68893-2006-06-23.html.
Viewed on June 30, 2006. (15) Nudler, Julio. 2002. "Invádeme
ya, condenado Rudi." Accessed at http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/economia/2-2451-2002-03-02.html.
Viewed on June 30, 2006. (16) Walden Bello "An army of the
people." In Frontline, Vol. 23, Issue 7. April 8-21, 2006.
Accessed at http://www.frontline.in/fl2307/stories/20060421007405800.htm.
Viewed on June 20, 2006. (17) Op. Cit. In the original: "De
hecho, lo ha significado: nacional-popular y proteccionista entre
1946-1952, aperturista entre 1952-1955, sindicalista combativo
y ponebombas, o "caños", con la "Resistencia
Peronista", negociador-dialoguista-conciliador con Onganía,
claramente izquierdista o guevarista y hasta movimiento de guerrilla
urbana en los '70, productivista con Perón-Gelbard y el
Pacto Social del '73, fascista con López Rega, Isabelita
y Ottalagano, socialdemócrata con Cafiero y la Renovación
en 1984/85 y neoliberal salvaje con Menem en la década
del '90." My transation. (18) These last measures of great
popularity with the progressive, urban middle class. (19) Petras,
James. 2004 "The Empire Changes Gears." In Counterpunch.
Accessed at http://www.counterpunch.org/petras12072004.html. Viewed
on June 30, 2006. (20) Perez Valenzuela, Mariela. 2005. "MERCOSUR:
Venezuela's entry, significant integrationalist move." In
Granma International. Accessed at http://granmai.co.cu/ingles/2005/diciembre/lun12/51venmerc.html.
Viewed on June 30, 2006 (21) Michalopoulos, Constantine, Donal
Donovan and Karim Nashashibi. 2004. "Summary of Discussion"
on "State Enterprise Reform and the Effectiveness of Macroeconomic
Policies." In Coordinating Stabilization and Structural Reform:
Proceedings of the seminar 'Coordination of Structural Reform
and Macroeconomic Stabilization', edited by Richard D. Barth,
Alan R. Roe and Chorng-Huey Wong. Washington, D.C.: IMF Institute.
(22) Braumann, Benedikt. 2005. "Switzerland: Economic reform
in a direct democracy." IMF Survey, July 4, 2005, Vol. 34,
No. 12, pp. 190-191.
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