The volcanic climate that has prevailed in Argentina for several months now deepens the paralysis that afflicts the country every day. Would the next elections be the determining factor to explain this dramaturgy, where a democracy plagued by its own demons is seen? The episodes of August 22, 2022 (CFK’s conviction request), September 1, 2022 (attack), and December 6, 2022 (conviction) made the vice president the focal point of political life. There is little chance that an adversarial debate of a programmatic nature could develop in the near future. What unfolds is a passionate escalation that widens the rift between “Us” and “the others”. The two camps are anathemised under the traits of the axis of evil. Argentina has become ungovernable.
In this escalation, how to disentangle the true from the false? Pandora’s box was opened. And causes and consequences are confused. The observer, especially if he is a foreigner, wonders candidly: who was the first to open Pandora’s box? The causes seem distant and endemic. But we are not going to go back to the times of Sarmiento and Alberdi to find a common thread. If we look at the last seven years, perhaps we can sketch an answer. The facts show that, under his presidency, Mauricio Macri has been extremely active, even underground, to designate Kirchnerism, and its figurehead, as the enemy to be destroyed. And that, since 2020, Christianity has designated macrismo as the instigator of the low works aimed at eliminating the national and popular option in Argentina. In this deadly dialectic, President Alberto Fernández, who had begun his term with good auspices, finds himself locked in a web of contradictions.
Why a conflict between what is legal and what is necessary? When he installed himself in the Rivadavia chair, Alberto Fernández had established the first foundation of his policy: to work towards the pacification of the two societies that make up Argentina. All of his inaugural speech revolves around pacification, through the metaphor of the Wall (“We have to overcome the wall of resentment and hatred among Argentines”). The new president called for “coexistence in respect for disagreements”, this in pursuit of the “overcoming truth”. And he cited Esteban Righi, former Interior Minister of the Peronist left under the government of Héctor J. Cámpora, as his mentor for compliance with the values of the rule of law. He felt, therefore, invested with a mission that his predecessors had not been able to achieve. Perón, who described himself in 1973 as an “old herbivorous lion” who wanted to “unite”, but who gave in to his environment after his reconciliation with Ricardo Balbín, leader of the UCR. Alfonsín, with his 1985 Parque Norte speech, his idea of the “third historical movement”, his Full Stop and Due Obedience laws, but which failed due to the economic crisis. Menem in 1989-90, with his government alliance with UCeDé, his presidential pardon (former heads of the Process, carapintadas and montoneros), and his symbolic photo of the kiss to Admiral Isaac F. Rojas.
There is a second reason, urgently incorporated by Alberto Fernández through the ruling (December 21, 2022) of the Supreme Court regarding the restitution of additional co-participation funds to the CABA: the need to renew the federalism pact in order to establish the equal rights of citizens. This ruling revived the old conflict between the provinces against centralism in Buenos Aires. As in Menem’s time, federalism is still lived today as the claim of the old criollo country against the economic and cultural yoke of Buenos Aires and, by extension, as the rebellion of a neglected society against the society that lives on its heritage. . What does this resurgence reveal, if not the need to translate into action a “new social citizen contract” that, precisely, provoked Alberto Fernández at the end of 2019? This one has seemed until today, in internal affairs, captive of his vice president. Now, this new fact gives him the opportunity, in the little time that remains, to raise his head.
The tragic thing is that the foundation of what is necessary has come into conflict with what is legal. Not abiding by the ruling, finding a way to get around it with the bonuses, initiating an impeachment trial against the judges of the Court (although this provision is constitutional), all of this places the President on the razor’s edge regarding the rule of law. There is indeed a high risk that what is legal becomes illegitimacy.
What future, is there in such conditions, for Peronism? Perhaps what historians of this period will remember will be that it was CFK’s judicial vicissitudes that diverted the trajectory begun in 2020. The period of managing the pandemic crisis had become a relative understanding between the Casa Rosada and the City, an approach hated by La Cámpora. Today, what comes out of Pandora’s box is the conspiracy theory. On the one hand, CFK has established its defense in the denunciation of a totally corrupted Justice. The Lago Escondido episode, which illustrates endogamous relations between the judiciary and certain PRO leaders, has allowed him to reverse the terms of his case. His thesis, shared by the Frente de Todos, calls into question a global system that, the owner of the rule of law, would be aligned against the national and popular option that Peronism represents. In doing so, CFK instrumentalizes Peronism, as if it had forgotten that its political line, in the 1970s, was not that of the “Peronist homeland”, but that of the “socialist homeland”, and that, from 2003 to 2015, the era The Kirchnerist wanted to become a sui generis “revolution”. On the other hand, the PRO opposition denounces, at this juncture, a coup conspiracy that has remnants of the Process. His hawks sometimes resort, in words, to similar violence.
Caught in a maëlstorm, Alberto Fernández continues to be the target of the war of attrition waged against him by CFK and his disciples. He is accused of pusillanimity with respect to a supposed initial contract: to guarantee the protection of CFK in the causes of which he considers himself a victim. He is blamed for not having created, ultimately, an ad hoc judicial institution. The agreement with the IMF due to the pretext of the break in February 2022, which actually had another purpose.
Peronism, which was described in 1947 as a “zoological flood”, had in other times, and despite all its defects, the merit of including in the life of the Nation, through the archetype of the “shirtless” and the ” little black heads”, the marginalized popular classes. It seems legitimate to carry out, today, the federalist fight to the extent that this fight could give a new opportunity to the Nation. This will not be enough. To convince, you will have to reinvent yourself. The “myopic invertebrate giant” of which JW Cooke spoke, has dismembered into disparate identities. To the verticalism of yesteryear, from now on, the ability to unite in the plurality of ideas and respect for institutions is imposed. It is time for Alberto Fernández to assume a greater commitment in his own fight. It is also time that Sergio Massa, who will be judged for the reactivation of the economy and for his objective of drastically reducing inflation, frees himself from his collusion with the holders of ideology, because it has become anachronistic. The Peronist galaxy has no doctrine, which is rather an advantage. He still communes in the mystique of origins, which constitutes his originality. Its credibility is that, not of a State that would claim to direct the economy, but of a regulatory and effective State to assume social justice and equal citizen rights. In 2023, the rival positions of governors or ex-governors with a view to the next electoral appointment are natural. But whichever figure will emerge from the race, he will have to make a courageous choice for long-term governance. Peronism will not be able to avoid its own aggiornamento.
* Doctor of Science (Institut des Hautes Etudes d’Amérique Latine) IHEAL). and teacher.
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