On the State, Democratization, & some Conceptual Problems ...



Argentina: Moving to Democracy?

Or going in circles?

By Peter Beeching,

Toronto, Canada.

May 13, 2006

Summary

Argentina has “enjoyed” political democracy since 1983, when the defeat of the military junta in the Malvinas War led resulted in its’ rout from office by an enraged populace who had also endured seven years of a ‘dirty war” with thousands of people brutalized, murdered, and “disappeared.”

But the country’s security services continue as through the dictatorship were still in office. Illegal detainment, Tortures, Murders. They are all routinely carried out in a democratic way – without regard to sex, age, race, socioeconomic background, or geographic location within Argentina’s borders.

The reason for this is a historic impunity enjoyed by the security services – an impunity embedded in a corrupt political culture which pays lip service only to accountability.

Argentines are used to the brutality in which they live. The political side of the democracy functions reasonably well in tandem with security services brutality and impunity.

This paper is but a thumbnail sketch to illustrate why and how this pathological social

dichotomy functions.

To understand Argentina is to appreciate and accept it as an unstable society.

Here is why:

The theme of Argentina as a functioning democracy (regular elections, parliamentary representation with competing political parties, free press, the reining in of the military, post 1982/3) coming into bloom are like the flowers of May itself – spring is sprung.

Parallel with this image are ongoing reports and analyses of police and security forces brutality, corruption, and impunity by varied human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch abroad; CELS, CORREPI, and SERPAJ within Argentina.

So where does the picture come into focus?

To analyze Argentine society in any but that of “going in a circle” would be to go in circles. And remain out of focus.

It is the only way to understand the simultanaeity of Argentina as a functioning democracy and the seemingly perpetual, incurable nature of its’ corrupt institutions.

It is the only way to appreciate that 1976 junta victim and hater Jacobo Timerman was a supporter of General Onganía’s 1966 coup which replaced the elected President Arturo Illia (1963 -1966).

And it is the only way to appreciate the contemporary irony that President Nestor Kirchner is accused of using the piquetero movement as a lever for populistic support while accusing them (the piqueteros) of being funded by “right wing” opponents [like Eduardo Duhalde] to destabilize his administration – as to justify right wing repression. Said Kirchner: 'Nobody knows who is financing them but we do know that they are absolutely functional to the sectors of the Argentine right who say that they must be repressed.' (1.)…The progressive Kirchner, from Santa Cruz province as was Juan Peron, is learning the demagogic tricks of the trade well. What is his next logical step: setting the Argentine Reichstag on fire?

The ever present duality of Argentina’s androgenous culture is what underpins the seeming contradictions of its’ dysfunctional operation. But this is not the place to go into its’ history and evolution. Rather, to appreciate that the Argentine cultural dichotomy is also symbiotic. Argentina’s authoritarian and democratic strains were legitimized as two branches of a tree under Juan Peron’s Partido Justicialista…

The revulsion of civil society against the excesses of the military junta 1976 – 1983 was itself an inverse reflection of the military taking over the government: to eliminate the terrorism then rampant in the country (by Montoneros, Tupac Amarus, the death squads of José López Rega’s AAA) no less than to eliminate the leadership, political, and economic (700% inflation) incompetency of Isabel Peron.

The legacy of this tragic period has not merely perpetuated, but fuelled, the continuing nature of Argentina’s dichotomous political culture.

Perhaps Argentina is somewhere between the American experience of the genteel East and the “wild west” of the nineteenth century. Argentine scholar Guillermo O’Donnell (of Notre Dame

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University) finds parallels between Argentina and the emerging democracies of the former Communist bloc. – Mentioned as relevant to the immediate issue at hand: my son’s possible relocation to Argentina. For he will be flying straight into a world characterized by the cyclical nature of stability, where democracy and human rights have not transcended the pre 1983 legacy of brutality. In short, a world going, perhaps accelerating, in circles!

Decoding the rhetoric amongst politicians and combining it with events of the day together with reportage from organizations like Amnesty International reveals the acute institutional fragility of Argentina today under President Nestor Kirchner. Imminent signs of economic turbulence and increasing poverty (information compiled by the Argentine government itself) which ignite political regression [and repression] have reappeared. The embedded duality of its’ culture reflected in human rights’ criticisms even as Argentina has become the largest Latin American contributor to international peacekeeping missions. (2.)

It is very probable, and certainly hoped for, that Argentina will eventually succeed in creating a stable democratic society with minimal political corruption and the ultimate elimination of brutality and impunity within the police and security forces empowered to “serve and protect” that country.

On 030105, 5,000 demonstrators took to the streets of Buenos Aires to protest the 183 deaths in a fire at the over capacity discotheque República Cromagnon because its’ doors were locked. But this tragedy was not enough to force President Kirchner from his Christmas holiday for at least a symbolic solidarity with the victims and their families. (3.)

So if the President does not care, obviously it will take time for the law enforcement community to care. -

* * *

Put another way, the Soviet Constitution of 1936 was a model of “best practices” of the day. But there was an apparent gap between what was on paper and the operation of Stalin’s regime.

So what are the “apparent gaps” in the Argentine situation?

There are many:

As the military admitted its’ sins on the 30th anniversary of the 240376 Junta coup ("Día de la Memoria, Verdad y Justicia), it did so against the breaking story of spying activities by intelligence agents in the naval air base of Almirante Zar de Chubut in Patagonia. Twenty six folders compiled by navy intelligence agents contained information on journalists, unionists, human rights groups, students, and public officials - including President Néstor Kirchner. The navy is forbidden by law from conducting internal espionage activities. (4.) The governor of Chubut, Mariano Das Neves, said the provincial government would be a plaintiff in the spying case. Das Neves told the Argentine daily Página 12 that this was not an isolated incident and must be happening at a national level. (5.)

Just a month before, six “high ranking” Argentine military officers were implicated in selling arms (including rocket launchers) to drug dealers in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro through a Paraguayan-Uruguayan network. It was not the first time that the Argentine military has been accused of involvement in illegal arms trafficking to Brazilian drug gangs. Past reports of illegal arms trafficking by the Argentine military to Brazilian drug gangs included the discovery of military guns and grenades in the possession of Rio de Janeiro gangs. (6.)

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On the civil side of security, Human Rights Watch (HRW) described police brutality as a ‘chronic problem’ in Argentina, ranking it alongside Brazil and Mexico at the top of HWR’s concerns for Latin America, the organization’s executive director, José Miguel Vivanco, told the ‘Pagina 12’ newspaper. Vivanco said that the problem with the police was a structural one, and he called for major investment in security.

The criticism has not just come from outside, however. The minister for human development in the province of Buenos Aires, Juan Pablo Cafiero, announced that many judges in the area fail to respect the rights of minors. Cafiero said that children arrested in Buenos Aires are not entitled to ‘the constitutional guarantees enjoyed by other citizens’ and are frequently charged with offences despite being too young.

The province’s police force has the worst reputation for corruption and brutality in Argentina, and these two criticisms will lend further weight to calls for a complete overhaul of the Buenos Aires authorities. (7.)

In 2004 24,000 of its 45,000 agents were under investigation for offences such as sexual assault, torture and murder.(8.) As of this writing, no information was located regarding the outcome of that mass investigation.

For a better recent historical perspective, in Novembe/03, B’Aires chief prosecutor Eduardo de la Cruz announced that a then recently computerized telephony analysis system had tracked about 4,000 phone calls associated with the investigation of 200 criminal cases (including murders and kidnappings). These calls had been traced to the Ministry of Defense, the Casa Rosada, and the Ministry of the Interior – which is in charge of internal security. (9.).

Caught short by de la Cruz’ announcement, Kirchner launched an “investigation” – with his Prime Minister Anibal Fernandez preempting its’ outcome, saying “the results will be nil.” (10.).

How is it that in the anti-corruption Kirchner administration, so many police officers in former President Duhalde’s power base were tainted, but the B’Aires’ provincial prosecutor’s allegations of high level crime originating in the offices of the state are dismissed? Murders and kidnappings, allegedly committed by federal authorities, were trivialized by the Kirchner administration.

This, notwithstanding that de la Cruz accusations were based on deployment of the VAIC system, the most advanced computer telephony system in Latin America. Said de la Cruz of his VAIC system, which had already provided breakthroughs for several other high profile cases, “the government cannot say that VAIC works for some cases and not for others.” (11.).

De la Cruz’ political links have not been traced, but his position seems to separate him from competing Peronist camps, as well as de la Rua’s Radical Party. Is he the honest man found by the night wanderer with the storm lamp?! If so, why did the anti-corruption Kirchner administration seek to marginalize him?

Regarding de la Cruz’ reflections, he (de la Cruz) suggested that the federal government’s “embedded” links with organized corruption date back to the repressive years of military rule. During President Raul Alfonsin’s 1980’s administration, a member of the presidential security team had been directing a kidnap team from within the Casa Rosada. (12.).

As if to corroborate de la Cruz, B’Aires’ newspaper Clarin noted most kidnap investigations had been foiled by mistaken arrests traceable to “police intelligence.” Clarin’s conclusion: the investigations were being deliberately diverted into dead ends. (13.).

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How then to define Argentina’s progress to democracy and cleaning up on corruption and impunity. Is it still going in circles?

In July 2005, Carlos Menem wrote in Clarín in that President Kirchner had signed "the death certificate of Peronism" with his “transversal politics” of seeking support on every side possible for any given issue. (14.)

No less opportunistic himself, differences between Menem and Kirchner illustrate perfectly the rot within Argentina’s body politic that the pathology political scientist can only hope will lead to new growth from the ultimate demise of the fallen tree.

To have the country continue forever centreweighted in Buenos Aires at the expense of its’ outer provinces contributes to Argentina’s political instability and the “transverse politics” that so characterizes it.

Let’s go from generalities to cases in point:

In March, 2005, Argentina’s statistics Institute INDEC reported that poverty fell by 7.6 percentage points to 40.2% in 2004. In October 2001, 38.3% of Argentines lived in poverty; 13.6% in extreme poverty [- higher than during the currency crisis of the time.] The Indec report shows that poverty is more acute in the northeastern and northwestern provinces, where the average rates of poverty are 59.5% and 53.4% respectively. (15)…In March, 2006, President Kirchner wanted to double the number of [welfare] beneficiaries and increase the allowance to between Arg$150 [US$50] and Arg$275 [US$91.67] per month. (16.)

On a related note, unemployment was 13 % in the first quarter of 2005 [most recent available] - 0.9 % higher than for the same period of 2004. In absolute numbers, 2M people from a workforce of 15.5M were looking for a job. Given the strength of the recent recovery, and the likelihood that the rate of growth will slow down, their chances of finding a job now must be diminishing. The official INDEC figures noted that if the number of people receiving the government's head of household subsidy was added to the pure unemployment figure, the unemployment rate hit 16.6%. (17.)

Regarding overall wealth distribution, in 2004 it hit a 30-year low. The gap between the rich and the poor in Argentina is bigger now than at any time over the last 30 years, according to figures released on 28 June. At the end of 2003, the richest 10% of the population owned 38.6% of the nation’s wealth and earned 31 times more than the poorest 10% of the population.

The report, published by state statistics department Indec, showed Argentina was becoming more like Brazil. The figures for the province of Buenos Aires and the capital itself are the most worrying; there, the richest 10% controls 44.5% of the wealth and earns 50 times more than those at the opposite end of the scale. When records began in 1974 the wealthiest 10% earned only 12 times more than the poorest 10% in the capital and the surrounding province.

It is not just the poorest sector of society that is losing out to the wealthy. Argentina’s middle class was also getting poorer. Between 1974 and 2001, the middle classes have

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seen their slice of the nation’s wealth fall by 36.8%. The richest 10% now controlled 35% more wealth than when records began, while the poorest have lost 37% of their wealth. (18.)

Recently, it was reported that both the government and opposing political candidates were handing out electrical appliances to poor families in the Greater Buenos Aires area. That this was actually happening has been confirmed by the mayor of Berazategui, Juan José Mussi. Rosendo Fraga, director of Centro de Estudios Nueva Mayoría, a prominent Argentine think tank, noted that with 38.5% of the population under the poverty line and 13.6% indigent, 'political clientelism is considerably enhanced'. (19.)

For those in trouble with the law, the situation is accordingly all the worse. A detailed report on 13 April, 2005, by the Comisión Provincial por la Memoria, a human rights body led by Argentina’s former Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, compared the prisons in Buenos Aires province to concentration camps. The report released by the commission, which was created in 2001 with the support of the provincial legislature, said that “the number of deaths in prisons in Buenos Aires is alarming and could be considered the result of a policy of extermination”. It said that overcrowding in the country’s more than 50 prisons exceeded 700% in some instances. (20.)

Such comments and observations made have come under the watch of Nestor Kirchner, the radical reformer. Should he be defeated in 2007, a centre-right alliance between Mauricio Macri and Jorge Sobisch waits in the wings to replace him. Macri, a famous businessman who became a deputy in Buenos Aires [in 2005], and Sobisch (the governor of Neuquén) are both potential candidates to compete against Néstor Kirchner. As of February, 2006, the two were working together to construct an opposition alliance which can pose a threat to Kirchner…(21.)

In 2002, Sobisch was caught on a hidden camera apparently offering bribes to a provincial legislator to ensure the appointment of the provincial government's chosen judges to the Tribunal Superior de Justicia (TSJ). (22.).

What does this suggest about the government he would create? What kind of government would emerge in 2007 if the centre right alliance of Macri and Sobisch were to oust Kirchner? Would it have room for Eduardo de la Cruz? -

Argentina was a signatory party to the just ended (130104) Monterrey Summit of the Americas’ Declaration of Neuvo Leon, in which the western hemisphere’s nations pledged to “promote transparency in political processes, in public financial management, government transactions, etc.” In 1995, Argentina ranked as 24th in Transparency International’s corruption index.

Did Argentina’s signature on the March 1996 OAS Caracas Convention against corruption change things?

For 1997, Argentina’s TI ranking fell to 42nd.As of 2000, Argentina fell again to 52nd. For 2003, Argentina was in 92nd place (behind Madasgar).

In 2005, Argentina fell to 97th – this time ranking WITH Madagascar. (23.)

* * *

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About Argentina, the 2005 edition of U.S. State’s Yearbook (24.) states, about Human Rights Practices, that “The government generally respected the human rights of its citizens.”

In the very next sentence, however, it mentions “The following human rights problems were reported:

• instances of killings and brutality by police and prison officials

• overcrowded, substandard, and life-threatening prison and jail conditions

• arbitrary arrest and detention

• prolonged pretrial detention

• domestic violence and sexual harassment against women

• trafficking in persons for sexual exploitation and labor

• child labor…

The Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS) reported that security forces were responsible for 53 deaths in the greater Buenos Aires area in the first half of the year, a number that included individuals killed in confrontations with security forces during the presumed commission of a crime.

In February in Villa Lugano, the Federal Police (PFA) arrested three police officers, Agent Adrian Bustos, Agent Miguel Angel Cisneros and Corporal Mariano Almiron for killing 14-year-old Camila Arjona…

…the October 2004 deaths of three juvenile detainees in a fire in a Buenos Aires police station…

…[The trial] Seven suspects in the 2003 killings of Patricia Villalba and Leyla Bashier Nazar begin. The seven inductees included the former information chief of the province and three provincial police officers; the trial was ongoing at year's end. An investigation of other police officers and former provincial officials in connection with the killings continued…

Human rights organizations reported police brutality and occasional torture of suspects. While the government investigated reports of police brutality in prisons, there were few convictions in comparison to the number of complaints.

In another case documented by the independent Buenos Aires Provincial Memory Commission, Cristian Lopez Toledo and Claudio Marquez Laineker, prisoners at the Buenos Aires provincial prison in La Plata, were tortured with electric shocks after they requested to meet with the Memory Commission during its visit to the prison in August…

Prison conditions often were poor and life threatening. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights stated that "overcrowding, deficient health care, dilapidated and insufficient infrastructure, inadequate nutrition, and ongoing inhumane treatment of detainees…triggered violations of human rights" in detention centers. The commission added that violence in various prisons led to death and "serious bodily and psychological harm to inmates." The CELS 2005 publication Collapse of the Prison System cited a Federal Penitentiary Service report indicating that 28.5 percent of the federal penitentiaries were overcrowded and 40 to 45 percent were at capacity…

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…In juvenile facilities[,] often resulted in minors being held in police station facilities, although separate from adult detainees. Reliable reports indicated that pretrial prisoners often were held with convicted prisoners. In May, [2005] the Supreme Court upheld a motion brought by CELS on behalf of all prison and jail detainees in the province of Buenos Aires and ordered an end to the detention of minors and sick persons in Buenos Aires police stations…

…Police occasionally arrested and detained citizens arbitrarily. In the past human rights groups reported difficulties in documenting such incidents because victims were reluctant to file complaints for fear of police retaliation or because of skepticism that police would act…

Corruption was endemic in some forces, and impunity for police abuses was common. The most common abuses included extortion of and protection for those involved in illegal gambling, prostitution, and auto theft rings, as well as detention and extortion of citizens under the threat of planting evidence to charge them for crimes. Some police also were involved in drug trafficking. ..

Police may detain suspects for up to 10 hours without an arrest warrant if the authorities have a well-founded belief that the suspects have committed, or are about to commit, a crime or if they are unable to determine the suspected person's identity. Human rights groups argued that this provision of law was often disregarded. ..

Although the law provides for an independent judiciary, some judges and judicial personnel were inefficient and at times subject to political manipulation. There were credible reports of efforts by members of security forces and others to intimidate the judiciary and witnesses…

Poder Ciudadano, the local chapter of Transparency International, alleged that there was discriminatory allocation of advertising in national newspapers, noting, for instance, that, although La Nacion newspaper had the second largest circulation in the country, it received less government advertising than the daily Pagina/12, which had much lower circulation but was widely perceived as supporting government policies…. Transparency International's annual index indicated perceptions of a "severe corruption problem" in the country. ..

Demonstrators were detained in several instances, leading to charges that the government was criminalizing protests.

Acts of discrimination and vandalism against religious minorities, particularly the Jewish community, continued…

The law criminalizes rape, including spousal rape, but the need for proof, either in the form of clear physical injury or the testimony of a witness, often presented problems. The penalties for rape ranged up to 20 years' imprisonment. Although reliable statistics were not available, advocates believed that rape was not uncommon. Women's rights advocates claimed that police, hospital, and court attitudes toward sexual violence victims often re-victimized the individual…

Trafficking in persons primarily involved citizens trafficked within the country, mostly from the northern provinces to the central provinces and Buenos Aires, and from Buenos Aires to several southern provinces. To a lesser degree, the country was a destination for

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victims, principally women and minors from Paraguay and Brazil. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimated that 52 percent of the Paraguayan victims of trafficking rings were trafficked into the country, 34 percent of them women under age

The groups most at risk were young women and children from impoverished families and broken homes, who were subject to physical and sexual abuse in the home and often abandoned.

Trafficking into forced labor occurred (see section 6.c.):

While there were no official reports on the activities of traffickers, the media reported that traffickers often presented themselves as employment agencies or even as individual recruiters. Traffickers confiscated travel documents to prevent victims from appealing to authorities for protection. Victims, particularly women and girls in prostitution, may be denied contact with the outside world. Victims often were threatened or beaten…

As of 2003, CORREPI, an independent NGO campaigning against police abuses, maintained that the high number of police killings (for 2003, 130 to November) resulted from the government using the police for “social cleansing.” (25.) No updated statistics on CORREPI were located as of this writing.

Information above excerpted from the U.S. State Department’s Annual Country Report for Argentina 2005 reflects information accumulated from . The 2005 US State Report on Argentina also reflects, in a more general way, Amnesty International information tendered to the court in 2004.

Professor Paul Chevigny, author of Police Violence in Argentina, Torture and Police Killings in Buenos Aires, December 1991 (published by Americas Watch/Human Rights Watch), confirmed (personal correspondence) in 2004 that nothing had changed since he had completed this report, with respect to Police violence and impunity in Buenos Aires and Argentina. The 2005 US State Report on Argentina reflects this – although the degree of congruence is open to debate.

Professor Guillermo O’Donnell’s 1993 paper, On State, Democratization…Problems (A Latin American view…) no less shows its’ contemporary validity. His commentary about power concentration in Buenos Aires at the expense of the outer provinces – his reliance upon the geographer’s tool of colour coded maps indicates, for example, that Salta is a “brown” area of the Argentina; that is to say, a region in which democratic practices and distribution of economic resources are at their worst.

Perhaps most compelling of all are the reports of Argentina’s statistical service INDEC, as summarized in the 010506 round up of ’s reports over 2005 – 2006. INDEC absolutely confirms Professor O’Donnell’s 1993 commentary.

In short, four independent sources (five if INDEC is included) overlap and reflect each other. Some reports are close in time to one another. Another – Professor Chevigny’s report – is older (1991) – yet his information remains current.

Argentina’s history has been demonstrated to be cyclical in terms of political and economic stability. The disparity of resources and status between and amongst its’ social classes, taken together with the historic brutality and impunity from accountability of its’ police and security forces, make predicting that country’s future prospects as likely as knowing the next turn the first time one drives on an alpine mountain road.

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Further, Argentina shares the Hispanic traditions of the community that is Latin America. Europe’s many ethnic, linguistic, and religious differences serving to keep its’ various countries apart for ethnocentric reasons – even into the post WWII era; questions arise in some quarters if the European Union (1992) will survive on this account. But that is a special topic in itself. -

Latin America’s cultural (Hispanic) and experiential (independence wars) roots are, however, more “shared” - likely creating more easily accepted values from one

country to the next.

Included amongst these is a shared caudillo tradition. Columbia Encyclopedia defines caudillos as a “type of South American political leader that arose with the 19th-century wars of independence. The first caudillos were often generals who, leading private armies, used their military might to achieve power in the newly independent states. Many were large landowners ( hacendados ) who sought to advance their private interests. They had in common military skill and a personal magnetism capable of commanding the allegiance of the masses. Caudillos were not associated with particular ideologies or political philosophies. Although they often began their career by opposing the oligarchy, they almost invariably became oligarchs and rarely upset the existing social order. In power, their authority was largely unchecked. Caudillos, or caudilhos in Portuguese-speaking Brazil, left their mark on the histories of all South American nations.” (26.).

The Britannica’s version of caudillosim differs only slightly: In the wake of the Latin American independence movement in the early 19th century, politically unstable conditions and the long experience of armed conflict led to the emergence in many of the new countries of strongmen who were often charismatic and whose hold on power depended on control over armed followers, patronage, and vigilance. (27.)

Whether caudilloism is to the “left” or the “right, neither has anything to do with “the good of the people,” and everything to do with the good of the leadership.

Paul Lewis (28.) gives good insight into caudilloism on the right. Jorge Castañeda (29.) speaks for caudilloism on the left. And right or left, the tradition continues today, with the caudillo elevated to the national leadership. (Lewis and Castañeda).

Common to both strains of caudillosim is the need to achieve and retain power. Says Castañeda:

The leftist leaders who have arisen from a populist, nationalist past with few ideological underpinnings – Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez with his military background, Kirchner with his Peronist roots, Bolivia’s Morales with his coca-leaf growers' militancy and agitprop, Mexico’s López Obrador with his origins in the PRI -- have proved much less responsive to modernizing influences. For them, rhetoric is more important than substance, and the fact of power is more important than its responsible exercise. The despair of poor constituencies is a tool rather than a challenge, and taunting the United States trumps promoting their countries' real interests in the world. The difference is obvious: Chávez is not Castro; he is Perón with oil. Morales is not an indigenous Che; he is a skillful and irresponsible populist. López Obrador is neither Lula nor Chávez; he comes straight from the PRI of Luis Echeverrìa, Mexico's president from 1970 to 1976, from which he learned how to be a cash-dispensing, authoritarian-inclined populist. Kirchner is a true-blue Peronist, and proud of it.

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For all of these leaders, economic performance, democratic values, programmatic achievements, and good relations with the United States are not imperatives but bothersome constraints that miss the real point. They are more intent on maintaining popularity at any cost, picking as many fights as possible with Washington, and getting as much control as they can over sources of revenue, including oil, gas, and suspended foreign-debt payments.

Of Argentina’s current President Nestor Kirchner, Castañeda says:

Argentina's Kirchner is a classic (although somewhat ambiguous) case. Formerly the governor of a small province at the end of the world, he was elected in the midst of a monumental economic crisis and has managed to bring his country out of it quite effectively. Inflation has been relatively controlled, growth is back, and interest rates have fallen. Kirchner also renegotiated Argentina's huge foreign debt skillfully, if perhaps a bit too boldly. He has gone further than his predecessors in settling past grievances, particularly regarding the "dirty war" that the military and his Peronist colleagues waged in the 1970s. He has become a darling of the left and seems to be on a roll, with approval ratings of over 70 percent.

But despite the left-wing company he keeps, Kirchner is at his core a die-hard Peronist, much more interested in bashing his creditors and the IMF than in devising social policy, in combating the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) than in strengthening Mercosur, in cuddling up to Morales, Castro, and Chávez than in lowering the cost of importing gas from Bolivia. No one knows exactly what will happen when Argentina's commodity boom busts or when the country is forced to return to capital markets for fresh funds. Nor does anyone really know what Kirchner intends to do when his economic recovery runs out of steam. But it seems certain that the Peronist chromosomes in the country's DNA will remain dominant: Kirchner will hand out money, expropriate whatever is needed and available, and lash out at the United States and the IMF on every possible occasion. At the same time, he will worry little about the number of Argentines living under the poverty line and be as chummy with Chávez as he can. [emphasis added]

Is the lack of conviction for the needs of the people electing leaders reflected in the attitudes of the population at large? Is the unexpressed subtext “every man for himself?” A dangerous generalization, to be sure.

Confining this question to Argentina, it begs the question of what, and when, authoritarianism’s unstable dynamic will reassert itself. Argentines are no doubt constantly asking this themselves. For in 2003 – under the “reformist” Kirchner - Argentines were thought to be hoarding $35B under the mattress, with another $100B held abroad. (30.) Kirchner himself transferred from American to Swiss and other European banks $530M of provincial funds between leaving office as Santa Cruz’ governor and assuming office as national President. This was not reported as not having been reported to anyone locally – rather, the country learned of it through the foreign press. (31.) No updated figures for [other?] hidden or exported liquid assets were located as of this writing. But the allure of going abroad in troubled times is always there.

For example, President Kirchner’s current Interior (and former Prime) Minister Anibal Fernandez was conveniently “not in the country” during (and following) the repression associated with the 260602 piquetero massacre of Avellaneda (32.)

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Given Castañeda’s analysis of leadership from the left, no effort has been made to put one together from the right.

As for those given to celebrating Argentina’s “return” to democracy by its’ participation the regionwide leftward shift might do well to think on the late Chaim Herzog’s comments: “…[There is] an alarming tendency on the part of intelligence organizations, foreign ministries, and editorial boards to follow the line of least resistance, to adopt preconceived concepts, and to adhere to them even in the face of evidence to the contrary.” (33.)

Transposing his country’s situation to Argentina, it begs the question as to whether Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez “got it right” One Hundred Years of Solitude; in the course of wars, more wars, suffering and death in the novel, character, Úrsula Buendía, remarks that "it was as if time was going in a circle." (34.)

And whenever authoritarianism’s unstable dynamic reasserts itself, Argentines who can, have already looked after their needs. Those sensitive to subtle tectonic shifts will not be caught there, in Argentina, the Cromagnon republic.

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Annotations:

1. , 23 August 2005

2. , Security & Strategic Review - September 2005

. 3. , 4 January 2005

. 4. , Brazil & Southern Cone - March 2006 (ISSN 1741-4431)

5. , 21 March 2006

6. , 1 February 2006

7. , 3 November 2004

8. , 4 June 2004

9. , Latin American Security and Strategic Review, December 2003

10. , Latin American Security and Strategic Review, December 2003

11. , Latin American Security and Strategic Review, December 2003

12. , Latin American Security and Strategic Review, December 2003

13. , Latin American Security and Strategic Review, December 2003

14. , Brazil & Southern Cone - August 2005 (ISSN 1741-4431)

15. , 16 March 2005

16. , 14 February 2006

17. , Economy & Business - June 2005

18. , 29 June 2004

19. , 11 October 2005

20. , 5 May 2005

21. , 7 February 2006

22. , People Profile - 25 October 2005

23. Transparency International, cpi/2003/2005;

.juridico

24. Argentina: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices  

Annotations, i/ii

25. , Latin American Security and Strategic Review, December

2003.

26.

27.

28. Paul Lewis,Authoritarian Regimes in Latin America,Rowman&Littlefield,Lanham,MD, 2006

29Jorge Castañeda, ”Latin America's Left Turn,” Foreign Affairs Magazine, Council on foreign Relations, NYC., June 2006

30. : Latin American Intelligence Service, 010703

31. , Country Report: 311203; Bloomberg News, Buenos Aires,

May 13, 2003

32. Pagina 12, El país, 210905

33. Chaim Herzog, ”The failure to monitor danger properly,” The globe and Mail, Toronto, 040180, Pg. 7

34. Source: Wikipedia

Annotations, ii/ii

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