Paul Krugman in Partying Like It’s 1998 New York Times 08/11/2018 talks about the similarities he sees between Turkey's present situation and Asian crises of the 1990s, which he has studied closely. He sees an admittedly "tricky"
How it works: stop the explosion of the debt ratio with some combination of temporary capital controls, to place a curfew on panicked capital flight, and possibly the repudiation of some foreign-currency debt. Meanwhile, get things in place for a fiscally sustainable regime once the crisis is over. If all goes well, confidence will gradually return, and you’ll eventually be able to remove the capital controls.
Malaysia did this in 1998; South Korea, with U.S. aid, effectively did something like it at the same time, by pressuring banks into maintaining their short-term credit lines. A decade later, Iceland did very well with a combination of capital controls and debt repudiation (strictly speaking, refusing to take public responsibility for the debts run up by private bankers).
He also notes, "Argentina also did quite well with heterodox policies in 2002 and for a few years after, effectively repudiating 2/3 of its debt." Which is certainly right.
Then he adds this, "But the Kirchner regime didn’t know when to stop and turn orthodox again, setting the stage for the country’s return to crisis."
I'm surprised that Krugman would blame Cristina Fernández' government for the economic disaster the current President Mauricio Macri created with his straight-up IMF/Washington Consensus/neoliberal policy recipe.
Mark Weisbrot consistently does a good job of providing an informed, left-leaning perspective on Latin American politics and economics in terms that are accessible to American audiences. US news coverage of Latin America tends to be very spotty, driven by US establishment conventional wisdom, and often just plain bad.
This interview also includes some comments on the outrageous US court decision on Argentine payments on defaulted debt.
The Argentine daily Página/12 picked a memorable image for a weekend story on the brewing financial crisis there that generated panicky reactions in the business press at the end of last week (Luis Bruschtein, La batalla mauricultural 05.05.2018):
A Forbes column by Kenneth Rapoza warns, "It is time to get out of Argentina and sali corriendo [get out quickly]." (It Might Be Time To Get Out Of Argentina 05/03/2018)
In another surprise move, the central bank on Friday raised the key interest rate by an additional 675 basis points to 40 percent - the highest among major economies -- as the Treasury Ministry committed to reducing spending on infrastructure, and to target the country’s primary fiscal deficit at 2.7 percent of GDP, down from 3.2 percent this year.
The peso rebounded following the announcement to close 5.5 percent higher at 21.8 per dollar. It posted its biggest one-day decline since December 2015 on Thursday even after two surprise rate hikes. The currency is still down 15 percent this year against the U.S. dollar and dropped more than 6 percent this week, the worst decline since June 2016.
Behind the peso weakness is growing concern that President Mauricio Macri is dragging his feet on taking the possibly painful steps needed to revamp the economy -- and that both inflation and government spending are spiraling dangerously high.
Argentine President Mauricio Macri took office in late 2015. He did all the things that the IMF and the Washington Consensus and conservative respectable economics said he should do: paid off the vulture fund profiteers, cutting public services, dropping capital controls, etc., etc. Now Forbes is warning investors that it might be time to pull the [bleep] out of Argentina.
But that's the nice thing about Very Serious Respectable Economics. When it reduces the living standards of millions and takes things to the (possible) brink of a financial crisis, it can't be the that the policies were wrong. No, it's the wisdom of The Market and the best of all possible worlds. In early 2016 when the economy was limping, Macri promised that things would get better in the second half (segundo semestre) of the year. It's now 2018, and the Secundo Semestre seems to be further away than ever.
And, as we see in Forbes and Businessweek pieces cited above, if there's a financial crisis, Very Serious Economics has the perfect solution: cut government expenditures more, slam real wages and salaries down further, sell off public properties, drop even more of any remaining limits on foreign speculative capital, yadda, yaddda. Because the real problem according to them is that hasn't been enough austerity and privatization and so on. El Secundo Semetre is bound to arrive someday!
Luis Bruschtein writes:
La ideología del sálvese quien pueda o del “no me importa mientras a mí no me toque” se filtró por la grieta moral que ha producido este gobierno de empresarios que han hecho negocios muy productivos para sus empresas con el Estado, mientras llevaron a la economía del país al borde del precipicio.
[The ideology of everyone for themselves or of "I don't care if it doesn't affect me" has been spread by the moral crevice generated by this government of impresarios who have done very productive business for their companies with the state, while they have brought the country's economy to the brink of the precipice.]
This is an interview in English with the Argentine political scientist Atilio Boron. Boron is a distinctly left analyst and activist, though he is very much sympathetic to left-center parties in Latin America when they are confronting conservative or rightwing parties. That's not self-evident in Argentine politics; the Socialist Party since the 1940s has generally supported the conservative Radical Civic Union over the left/center-left Peronist Justicialista Party. Argentina's President Macri Withdraws Neoliberal Reforms Due to Massive ResistanceThe Real News 02/04/2018:
Since taking office in December 2015, President Mauricio Macri has applied a standard IMF/Washington Consensus/neoliberal economic policy of reducing government and social services, cutting real wages and living standards for workers, tax reductions and deregulation for the wealthiest, privatization projects, a drastic boost of public debt, etc.
Eduardo Dvorkin (La agenda del 19Cash/Página 12 04.feb.2018) describes the result this way:
Desde el 2015 se ha escrito muchísimo para caracterizar y denunciar al gobierno de los CEOs: la desindustrialización, la desocupación, el crecimiento de la desigualdad en el reparto del ingreso, la exclusión, el ajuste en ciencia, la cancelación de los proyectos de desarrollo autónomo de tecnología.
[Since 2015, very much has been written to characterize and denounce the government of the CEOs: deindustrialization, unemployment, the growth of inequality in the distribution of income, exclusion, the cutbacks in science, concellation of the porjects for autonomoous development of technology.]
Axel Kiciloff, the left-Peronist former Argentine Economics Minister and current National Deputy, wrote on his Facebook page (@kicillofok) 02/01/2018 commenting on the following statement by Macri:
#Ahora |
Macri: "Después de más de 100 años hemos logrado que baje el gasto, que baje el déficit, que baje la inflación, que bajen los impuestos y que el país crezca dos años consecutivamente"https://t.co/HCqu9kzytrpic.twitter.com/fpxObPcCeT
My translation: "After more than 100 years, we have managed to lower spending, which reduced the deficit, which lowered inflation, that lowered taxes, and allowed the country to grow for two consecutive years."
En una sola frase Macri batió un nuevo récord olímpico de mentiras.
1. El déficit fiscal fue mayor en los dos años de Macri que en 2015.
2. La inflación de los dos años de Macri es la mayor de los últimos 15 años (IPC CABA).
3. Después de 2 años de gobierno, el PBI recién recupera valores de 2015. Y en su repaso Macri parece olvidar que entre 2004-2015 el crecimiento promedio anual del PBI fue de +3,7%
4. La industria todavía está 2,9% puntos por debajo de los niveles de 2015.
El gobierno de Macri tiene otros “récords” que omite: el endeudamiento más rápido de la historia (usd 80 mil millones en 2 años); el déficit comercial más alto de la historia; y medalla de bronce en bicicleta financiera (3º país en el mundo).
Macri viene de mentir en Davos y en Francia, pero en Argentina la realidad es que cae el salario, recortan jubilaciones y cae el empleo de calidad. #AumentaTodo y hay un sinfín de despidos.
Eso es #ElGranAjuste
[In one single phrase, Macri broke a new Olympic record of lies.
1. The fiscal deficit was larger in the two years of Macri than in 2015.
2. The inflation of the two years of Macri is the high of the last 15 years.
3. After two years of governing, the GDP recently recovered its value of 2015. And in his review, Macris seems to have forgotten that between 2004-2015, the annual average GDP growth was +3.7%.
4. Industry still is 2.9% below the levels of 2015.
Macri's government has other "records" that he omits: the most rapid increase in indebtedness in history ($80 billion in two years); the largest trade deficit in history; and a bronze medal in the financial bicycle (third-place country in the world).
Macri went to Davos and France to lie, but in Argentina the realities is the fall in salaries, reduction of pensions, and a fall in the quality of employment. #AumentaTodo {inflation on everything} and there are layoffs without end.
This is #ElGranAjuste {the big cutback}. ]
The bicicleta financiera ("financial bicycle") is a phrase often used in economics and politics in Argentina. It refers to financial profiteering in the carry trade, which is basically exploiting exchange rates to extract economic "rent". Bert Dohmen (Carry Trade: The Multi-Trillion Dollar Hidden MarketForbes 09/04/2014) defined the carry trade briefly this way, "What is the carry trade? It’s the borrowing of a currency in a low interest rate country, converting it to a currency in a higher interest rate country and investing it in the highest rated bonds of that country. The big trading outfits do this with leverage of 100 or 300 to one."
The Presidential administrations of Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández had imposed capital controls - heresy to the neoliberal gospel - and carefully regulated the dollar reserves to support their policy of promoting domestic industrial development and as part of blocking "imported inflation." Macri reversed that policy. And the predictable consequences have followed.
Obama has been on a Latin American trip, stops including Brazil and Argentina. In both places, he was echoing his conservative policies during his administration. The emphasis was particularly clear in Argentina, where he dropped by for a highly visible golf game with Argentine President Mauricio Macri, a corrupt oligarch on the Trump model, whose conservative party is facing midterm Congressional elections in two weeks. Página/12 reports (Con el "amigo" Barack 07.10.20174)
En la jerga de los golfistas podría decirse que lo de Mauricio Macri fue un hoyo en uno. A dos semanas de las elecciones consiguió una foto en la Casa Rosada piensan utilizar para instalar la idea de su liderazgo internacional y se la sacó jugando el partido de golf que no pudo jugarle cuando el entonces presidente de Estados Unidos visitó el año pasado la Argentina. ...
A la foto de esta mañana le antecedieron los elogios de Obama le dedicó ayer a Macri. “Inició esfuerzos para reconectar al país con la comunidad mundial. Me impresiona mucho el trabajo que se ha hecho en la Argentina”, dijo el ex presidente de Estados Unidos en Córdoba, adonde fue a disertar a cambio de una suma cercana a los 450 mil dólares.
[In golf jargon, one could say that what Mauricio Macri had was a hole-in-one. Two weeks before the elections, he managed to get a photo in the Casa Rosada [Presidential building] thinking to use it to create the idea of international leadership, and he got to play the round of golf that he couldn't play when the then-President of the United States visited Argentina last year. ...
This afternoon's photo was proceeded by Obama's praises that he dedicated to Macri yesterday. "He initiated measures to reconnect the country with the international community. I'm very impressed at the work that he's done in Argentina" {my translation from the Spanish}, said the ex-President of the United States in Córdoba, where he went to deliver a speech for an amount around $450,000 dollars.]
En el último mes, Obama ha tenido conversaciones con el Banco Northern Trust, con el banco Cantor Fitzgerald y con el grupo de compra en la privatizacion de empresas, Carlyle Group. Su Fundacion está financiada especialmente por donaciones de Microsoft y del gigante del sector eléctrico, Exelon, ambas con contribuciones de más de un millón de dólares. Obama ya ha hecho reiteradas presentaciones en Wall Street, por las que cobra alrededor de 400 mil dólares por cada una.
En San Pablo [São Paulo, Brazil], Obama partipará del evento organizado en el periódico económico Valor, del grupo O Globo, patrocinado por el banco español Santander. Cínicamente dice que viene a “oír a los líderes jóvenes”. No va a encontrar a ningun líder joven ahí. Para ello, tendría que llegar sin el patrocinio de bancos y tendría que ir a la periferia de San Pablo y de Buenos Aires. Pero con los patrocinios de las empresas que financian su Fundación, viene más bien a buscar nuevas oportunidades de negocios para esas empresas, en especial en los procesos de privatización que los gobiernos de Macri y de Temer ponen en práctica.
En Argentina, Obama tendrá reuniones con empresarios y se anuncia un encuentro con Mauricio Macri. En Brasil, al parecer, no se atreverá a un encuentro con Temer, que tiene el 3 por ciento de apoyo entre los brasileños. Tiene programado un encuentro en Córdoba sobre “economía verde”, organizado por la Fundación Advanced Leadership, organización que tiene su sede en Washington, con el apoyo del BID, de la OEA, de la Fundacion Mediterránea y la Boston Seguros.
In the last month, Obama has had conversations with Northern Trust Bank, with the Cantor Fitzgerald bank, the group that buys into the privatization of business [i.e., merchant bank] Carlyle Group. His Foundation is financed especially by donations from Microsoft and the giant of the energy sector, Exelon, both with contributions of more than a million dollars. Obama has made repeated presentations on Wall Street, for which he earns about $400,000 for each one.
In San Pablo, Obama will participate in an event organized by the economic newspaper Valor of the O Globo group, sponsored by the Spanish bank Santander. He cynically says he's coming to "listen to young leaders." He won't encounter any young leader there. For that, he would have to come without the sponsorship of banks and would have to go to the peripheries of San Pablo and of Buenos Aires.
In Argentina, Obama will have meetings with businesspeople and has an announced meeting with [President] Mauricio Macri. In Brazil, it seems, he didn't dare meeting with [President] Temer, who has 3% support among Brazilians. He has schedule a meetings in Córdoba [Argentina] on the "green economy," organized by the Fundación Advanced Leadership, an organization who has its headquarter in Washington, with the support of the BID, of the OAS, of the Fundacion Mediterránea and of Boston Seguros.]
The Brazialian leg of Obama's trip, presented as being on behlf of the Obama Foundation, is reported in:
The Portuguese text of the San Pablo (São Paulo) is available at Leia a íntegra da palestra de Barack Obama no Fórum Cidadão GlobalValor 05.10.2017. Obama offered some platitudes about the Internet and globalization. And some pious and presumably sincere warnings against racism and xenophobia. He even made a passing reference to the concentration of wealth to the One Percent. And praise of free trade, of course.
The Obama Foundation is supposedly training young leaders for the future.
The New York Times reports (Shasta Darlington and Ernesto Lodoño, Obama, in Brazil, Offers Familiar Slogan to Corporate Audience 10/05/2017) that Obama told his audience, "My biggest regret is not being able to bridge the differences that were emerging in our politics as much as I wanted."
Not failing to overturn Citizens United. Not being unable to stop small arms proliferation. Not screwing up the future prospects for nuclear arms control by invading Libya and turning it into a playground for Sunni jihadists. Not neglcting to build the party organization so that the Dems didn't have historic losses in November. He most regrets not having tried harder during his Presidency to make nice with Republicans. Wow!
Such is the case with news that Argentina plans to sell a 100-year bond, a story tailor-made to illustrate exactly how extreme financial market risk-taking has become. It also shows that global investors either a) have the attention span of a gnat or b) are not paid for making good long-term decisions. I’ll vote for the latter, but am willing to listen to arguments for the former. ...
Sober, sensible bond fund managers, the ones who don’t invest as if central bank liquidity will be endless, have had a tough few years. Their peers more willing to take risks have been right, and may well continue to be right, at least as the game they are playing judges rightness.
Capital markets do not discipline borrowers when they are dominated, as they are, by agents acting for principals. For the International Monetary Fund or any other person or body to speak as if they do or will is absurd. All that counts is how the credit looks in the time frame against which the performance of the fund manager is judged.
So, the markets are on a momentum high and risk-taking, at its far reaches, is extreme.
Remember, this is the same market that brought you 800-some crypto-currencies with a value of more than $100 billion. By comparison, 100-year Argentina bonds are stolid, sensible investments appropriate to widows and very young orphans.
Obviously, the Argentine press has been covering this quite a bit:
Argentina has legislative elections this coming October. The last Presidential election was in 2015, when the current President Mauricio Macri was elected. Macri's party is called the PRO (Propuesta Republicana), originally set up as a vehicle for Macri himself to be elected as the head of government for the City of Buenos Aires (Jefe de Gobierno de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), an office he held 2007-2015.
Former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is now positioning herself for a possible 2020 Presidential run. The step in that that direction she took this week was to announce her candidacy for the Argentine national Senate from Buenos Aires province. [Update: Actually she didn't announce her candidacy directly; a close political ally announced that she would be, but she didn't publicly confirm it.] Her electoral coalition just formally constituted itself as the Unidad Ciudadana, which the Télam agency in this report translates into English as Citizen Unity, Cristina Kirchner announces "citizen unity" will be the name of the front with which Kirchnerism will compete in primaries, outside PJTélam/Yahoo! Noticias 06/14/2017. For Americans, that sounds awfully close to Citizens United, a name that has a bad odor in the United States because of the 2010 Supreme Court decision of that name. Cristina's politics are definitely not like those of the Citizen's United group in the US that brought that case!
Argentine politics is not a two-party affair like we have in the US. But it is a presidential system. The head of government is elected directly and is not a prime minister in the sense of parliamentary systems. And the political alignments at the national level do tend to align on a two-camp basis. One major camp is that of the Peronists, of which Cristina Fernández is very much a part. Peronism is both a party and a movement. The party is the Partido Justicialista (PJ).
The other major alignment since 1946 has been the Radical Civic Union (UCR), which is typically referred to "the radicals" or radicalism (radicalismo), even though they have long since become conservative. The UCR is being absorbed to some extent by the PRO. There is a small Socialist Party, which essentially lines up with the conservatives in the PRO and UCR.
The various parties and splinter groups on both sides ran in 2015 on umbrella tickets. The Peronist ticket headed by Daniel Scioli was called Frente Para la Victoria (FpV). Macri's group was Cambiemos. Macri was also backed by a significant Peronist splinter group called Frente Renovadora, headed by Sergio Massa.
Cristina has now signed a common platform with other left-Peronist (kirchnerista) leaders to create the Unidad Ciudadana electoral front in Buenos Aires province for 2018. And more conservative faction in the PJ headed by Florencio Randazzo will complete in the provincial election as part of the Frente Justicialista, though he will likely have to win an internal primary for the right to head the ticket.
The Argentine economy has been in decline pretty much since taking office in December 2015. And that's a feature, not a bug for the Macri government. They have applied Herbert Hoover "Washington Consensus" economic policies from the start, including big budget cuts, deregulation of business, raising utility and public transit prices, all accompanied by major inflation and rising unemployment.
The inflation is very much related to economic policies of Macri's government. The prior government had used a system of capital controls and price regulations to maintain economic stability, promote the growth of domestic industry and maintain necessary dollar reserves. Macri's government pretty much dumped that whole menu of policies very quickly. High inflation and growing unemployment followed.
Debt for developing countries is different for that of the more developed countries. Because it becomes a tool that foreign governments and corporations can use to keep the debtor country in a state of dependency. The Kirchner governments of 2003-2008 had drastically reduced the debt, which had previously led to the severe financial crisis of 2001. Now Macri has put that course into full reverse: Argentina becomes largest debtor among emerging marketsBuenos Aires Herald 06/14/2017.
There are plenty of political issues to fight about over the next 2 1/2 years.
The present-day stream of Peronism in Argentina that is known as "kirchnerism" takes it's name from the Presidencies of Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) and his wife Cristina Fernández (2007-2015).
I'm not familiar with the seemingly left-leaning American Herald Tribune. But I came across this article from it which gives a good concise description of kircherismo, Macri and the Argentinian “la grieta” by Frederico Acosta Rainis 02/03/2016.
During that period of development, a Keynesian model was unleashed, promoting “inclusive growth” based on consumer impulses, the increase in purchasing power, full employment, and the extension of the state apparatus coupled with its security. Other fundamental pillars included the strategic reorientations of its international alliances, especially with an emphasis of the Latin American south-south relations; an overarching human rights political doctrine, having helped usher in a minority rights program and the employment of memory-truth-and-justice commissions for crimes against humanity in the era of dictatorship (1976-1983).
Along with these policies, and though the discoursive and symbolic gestures, the Kirchners were able to create a universal sense of culture - nationalist, anti-colonial, and anti-oligarchy - casting itself on a large portion of the youth, and interpolating itself throughout various sectors including those which were unfamiliar to the concepts of Peronismo - its political antecedent. This narrative, attempting to make a unity without fissures, allowed for the emergence of a popular support necessary to make progressive steps addressing a few historical, and fundamental, reparations; external debt reduction, re-nationalization of the oil firm, YPF, and more sustenance for pensions and retirement, among others.
Cristina Fernández, that is, the President of Argentina 2007-2015.
Not that's she really been absent from the political scene since leaving office in 2015. Her successor Maricio Macri campaigned on a moderate program, or at least a moderate-sounding one. Since assuming office in December 2015, he has instead instituted a standard neoliberal/IMF/Washington Consensus economic menu. And the results are what should have been expected: falling real wages, higher unemployment, cutbacks of essential government services, a cave-in to the blackmail from vulture funds that had bought up defaulted Argentine debt, and taking on new debt, some of which reportedly uses Argentine state property as security. Dropping capital controls has contributed to a high inflation rate, even by Argentine standards. (It's not the kind of triple-digit hyperinflation that Argentina experienced in the late 1980s, at least.)
Cristina has been a regular, public critic of Macri's government. And she still has strong support within the Peronist Partido Justicialista (PJ) and the broader electoral coalition of the Frente para la Victoria, (FpV). This photo and slogan has been popping up in hard copies and online.
The slogan says, "The sun of the 25th is appearing." Or, "Sunrise of the 25th is coming" probably works, too. That's a reference to the 25th of May, a national holiday celebrating the official proclamation of a new national government on that date in 1810, displacing the Spanish Viceroy Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros (1756–1829). It's known as May Revolution Day, a key event in the establishment of Argentina as an independent nation. Argentine Independence Day is celebrated on July 9, commemorating the formal declaration of independence of 1816.
May 25 took on a particular political and patriotic significance for the kichneristas. Cristina's late husband Néstor Kirchner became President on May 25, 2003, the beginning of a dramatically new reformist direction for Argentina in which neoliberal political prescriptions were largely rejected in favor of a more activist government aggressively promoting Keynesian policies and recovering the language and spirit of left Peronist populism. (Martín Granovsky, “Llegamos sin rencores y con memoria” Página/12 06.05.2003) The 25th of May was treated as a major day of celebration of what they called the "national and popular" tradition of Argentina, i.e., left-nationalist, democratic and militant social-democratic ones.
Cristina took part in a meeting with other political leaders this week working to form an effective political coalition in Buenos Aires Province for the 2017 legislative elections. (Sin definiciones, pero con afichesPágina/12 24.05.2017)
Former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (CFK in shorthand) hardly took a breath between leaving office and actively leading the opposition campaign against the conservative/oligarchic government of Mauricio Macri, who took office in December 2015. She has been in Europea speaking out on various issues. Speaking to the left parliamentary group of the European Parliament, she discussed current human rights issues in Argentina and criticized Macri for not keeping his campaign commitment to maintain human rights policies, especially against criminals who were part of the dictatorship of 1976-83, Cristina Kirchner con eurodiputados del Bloque GUE/NGL en el Parlamento Europeo (Spanish) 10.05.2017:
She and the Peronist opposition she leads are protesting and seeking to rectify a recent decision by the Argentine Supreme Court that could give convicted criminal from the dictatorship early release from prison. 2x1: Activists outraged by Supreme Court rulingBuenos Aires Herald 05/05/2017 explains:
Human rights activists expressed their outrage and shock yesterday, 24 hours after the Supreme Court controversially ruled over the so-called “2x1” law, setting a precedent that paves the way for the reduction of prison sentences and the early release of repressors convicted of crimes against humanity during Argentina’s last military dictatorship (1976-1983).
The justices’ majority ruling, by three of the court’s five members to two, reduces the sentence of 61-year-old Luis Muiña — who was handed a 13-year prison for kidnapping and torture — and creates a precedent that others convicted of crimes against humanity will seek to take advantage of. The court found that Muiña’s time served in prison before his conviction should count double.
As Cristina explained in her European Parliament appearances, two of the three justices voting for the early release were Macri appointees.
The Trump Wall seems to have already come to symbolize the internal anti-immigrant measures against Latinos in the US, Trumpist white nationalism/racism against Latinos, and the often obnoxious way the US behaves in Latin America generally.
It's not surprising that Latin American nations would look to make more common cause with each other with Trump as US President and taking such an openly hostile position towards Mexico, to the point of threatening to send in troops! Making common cause makes plain good "realist" sense.
What is surprising to me to see that Argentine President Mauricio Macri's government is taking a particularly visible role in this effort. Peña Nieto publicly thanked Macri for his country's "solidaridad frente a la nueva posición adoptada por el Gobierno de Estados Unidos" ("solidarity in facing the new position adopted by the government of the United States"). Macri's Foreign Minister Susana Malcorra said that Argentina was ready to make a statement of support a week earlier, but postponed it at Peña Nieto's request. (Malcorra: “Latinoamérica no es más dura con Trump porque México no lo pide, busca un acercamiento”El País 07.02.2017)
Argentina and Mexico were already making bilateral agreements last year, Macri's first full year in office. (Daniel Venegas, Peña Nieto firmará acuerdos de cooperación con ArgentinaMelenio 28.07.2016) In his public expression of gratitude to Macri this week, the Mexican President also stated that Mexico would be giving a higher priority to bilateral commercial agreements with Argentina.
But the context for such cooperation is rapidly shifting with the new administration in Washington. Despite the pragmatic adjustment of relations with Cuba under Obama, he and his Secretaries of State Clinton and Kerry adopted a basically conservative policy toward Latin America. And I mean conservative in the ideological sense, not in the sense of caution. At the end of his term, Latin American politics had shifted in a way that was amenable to that approach. The left-leaning governments of Argentina and Brazil had been displaced by conservative ones dedicated to neoliberal "Washington Consensus" and to close cooperation with the Obama and the once-presumed Hillary Clinton Administrations. In Argentina, the change took place by legitimate elections in 2015, in Brazil in 2016 by a "soft coup" that the Obama Administration clearly found to be not unwelcome.
With Mexico in the conservative hands of Peña Nieto's government, Washington had friendly conservative governments committed to neoliberal economic policies in the north in Mexico and Argentina and Brazil in the south, able to press for conservative regime change in Venezuela, neoliberal economics and the weakening of regional organizations like UNASUR that the Obama Administration saw as challenging US hegemony in Latina America.
Macri now is at least giving public signals that he wants to position Argentina with other countries in both Latin America and Europe that are alarmed by Trump's generally reckless and hostile approach to foreign policy. Macri plans to visit Spain later this month. said that Argentina was ready to make a statement of support a week earlier, but postponed it at Peña Nieto's request. Malcorro also commented, "Trump ha descolocado al mundo, no solo a la Argentina" ("Trump has disturbed the world, not just Argentina").
And Mexico now has new incentives to make regional alliances to provide diplomatic and business options to the changed situation with the United States. Peña Nieto also has the incentive that he's been an unpopular President, which is not unusual for governments following a dogmatic austerity program. "Donald Trump’s obsession with constructing a wall on the frontier with Mexico has achieved something inconceivable — the start of a campaign to unite the country which could favour President Enrique Peña Nieto," writes Cecilia González (The Mexican side of the wallBuenos Aires Herald 02/03/2017) She explains the Mexican President's problems this way:
The mirage constructed by Peña Nieto started to collapse as from September 26, 2014, when 43 students from the Escuela Normal Rural Isidro Burgos in Ayotzinapa went missing after a hail of gunfire in Iguala, Guerrero, one of the poorest and most violent states in the country. The fatigue with the long silenced violence, the profile of the missing (poor youths studying to be primary school teachers in impoverished areas) and the presence of journalists during the gunfight triggered massive protests in Mexico and other countries. The world learned of disappearances and murders in Mexico under a supposedly democratic government. Peña Nieto’s international image never recovered, above all because the government wanted to manipulate the evidence and close down the case, which was prevented by the families of the victims supported by human rights organisations.
In late 2014, when the government was still facing the impact of the disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa students, a team of investigative journalists headed by Carmen Aristegui revealed that first lady Angélica Rivera had purchased a US$ 7 million mansion from Grupo Higa, a company which Peña Nieto had favoured with multi-million public works contracts when he was governor of the state of México. In mid-2015, his friend Virgilio Andrade, the official heading the civil service, concluded (to nobody’s surprise) that there was no conflict of interest but the stain of corruption left by the “white house” proved indelible for the government.
As if Peña Nieto was short of problems, on July 12, 2015, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, fled from a maximum-security prison via a tunnel a kilometre and a half long which his accomplices had patiently built in more than a year. The Mexican government became a laughing-stock and never recovered, not even when the drug czar was recaptured six months later.
And then there is the issue of the structural poverty which Mexico suffers and which no government has reduced, for which all ex-presidents are responsible and which is the main cause of Mexican emigration to the US. According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), during the first two years of Peña Nieto’s government poverty in Mexico rose from 51.6 to 53.2 percent. Over 60 million Mexicans are poor and do not expect to improve their lives in their own country. How are they not going to try their luck on “the other side”? [my emphasis]
After the election of Peña Nieto in 2012, the international press explicitly hailed him as the man who would be able to stop the advance of South American “populism” and bring back the “Washington Consensus” as the dominant ideology in Latin America. Indeed, Peña Nieto’s central, though unstated, objective since taking power on December 1, 2012, has been to dismantle the progressive legacy of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. He has drastically rolled back protections for labor, imposed neoliberal education reforms, and moved to hand over the enormous oil and gas industry to transnational petroleum companies. He has also turned Mexico into a servile client of U.S. foreign policy and its northern neighbor’s “national security” concerns.
Macri's solidarity with Mexico against Trump doesn't mean that the previous goals of the Mexico-Brazil-Argentina conservatism has completely changed. But the foreign policy context has shifted dramatically.
Macrismo is, of course, generated protest and resistance, not least because of the grim results of over a year of neoliberal, Herbert Hoover/Angela Merkel austerity economics, El pueblo argentino marcha contra políticas del gobierno macristateleSUR 02/05/2017:
Trump's Holocaust Memorial Day statement that didn't even mention Jews - on the same day he announced his ban-the-Muslims immigration rule - has highlighted one of the variations of Holocaust denial. Jonathan Freedland explains (Calling the Holocaust ‘sad’ is the first step towards denying it ever happenedGuardian ):/
As anyone who has seen Denial, the new film about the 2000 libel trial brought by David Irving against the historian Deborah Lipstadt, will know, Holocaust denial can take many forms. In the face of all the evidence, there are those who say that six million Jews were not murdered by the Nazis; or that the gas chambers never existed; or that Adolf Hitler had nothing to do with it. There is another strand, too; one denying that Jews were specifically targeted for extermination. Even though the Nazis infamously referred to their mass killings of Jews as “the final solution to the Jewish problem”, this form of Holocaust denial seeks to negate that core fact – to suggest that the second world war saw lots of people get killed, and that Jews suffered just like everyone else; no more and no less.
Página/12 provides a current example of a similar approach to denying the murders and mass repression of the Argentine dictatorship of 1976-83 in Werner Pertot, Una nueva muestra del negacionismo PROPágina/12 31.01.2017.
The story concerns Juan José Gómez Centurión, a retired military officer who is currently head of the Argentina customs office (Aduana). He has somewhat of a checkered pass: "Gómez Centurión’s choice for public office has been questioned due to the fact that he took part in the 1987 and 1988 military uprisings against Raúl Alfonsín’s democratically-elected government." (Gómez Centurión reinstated to postBuenos Aires Herald 10/14/2016)
Pertot reports that he "negó que existiera un plan sistemático de desaparición de personas durante la última dictadura y calificó de '22 mil mentiras' la cifra de 30 mil desaparecidos" ("denied that a systematic plan existed to make people disapper during the last dictatorship and described the figure of 30,000 people disappeared as '22,000 lies'").
The number of people "disappeared" by the regime of El Proceso, the dicatorship's name for itself, is a well-researched, conservative and widely accepted figure. This is called a negacionista (denier) position in Argentina.
In the grand scheme of things, it's hard not to think that removing elected governments by a "soft coup" like those in Paraguay in 2013 and in Brazil 2016 is preferable to the military brand of coup, of which Brazil 1964, Chile 1973 and Argentina 1976 are some of the more dramatic recent examples.
Honduras 2009 is sometimes cited as an example of the "soft coup." But it took the form of a military coup, though civilian government was quickly restored. And even obvious military coups also have a significant civilian political component. The Argentine coup of 1976 is also referred to commonly as a civilian-military coup. Just as the 1955 Argentine coup that styled itself the Revolución Libertadora involved substantial involvement at all stages from the Unión Cívica Radical (UCR) and the Socialist and Communist Parties.
And even the famous nonviolent "regime change" operation promoted by the CIA in Iran and 1953 and Guatemala in 1954 had long-range effects that call into serious question the judgment of the Eisenhower Administration promoting those coups against what in retrospect were, at worst, mildly annoying regimes for Washington. The quick-and-easy coup in Honduras has left an ugly legacy of social violence that continues over five years later. (Thelma Mejía, Journalism in Honduras Trapped in ViolenceInter Press Service 11/28/2016)Latin America in 2016: The Resurgence of the Right ContinuesThe Real News 12/31/2016:
Emire Sader describes in Macri, Temer y Peña Nieto, huérfanos de ClintonPágina/12 25.11.2016 the Obama-Clinton policy in effect in Latin America. Despite the pragmatic opening to Cuba, the Obama Administration's policy toward Latin America has been fundamentally conservative. Conservative in the sense of supporting conservative government's with less than enthusiastic commitments to democracy over democratic governments committed to progressive economic policies instead of the neoliberalism demanded by the Washington Consensus.
The Obama Administration supported the military coup that ousted Honduras' elected government in 2011 and the "soft coup" of 2013 in Paraguay, which was down by means of a cynically politicized impeachment of President Fernando Lugo, a supporter of liberation theology who was the candidate of the center-right Liberal Party. The hard right Colorado Party had not lost a national election since 1947, a period that included the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner during 1954–89.
Argentina elected Mauricio Macri President in 2015. He ran at the head of an electoral alliance called Cambiemos, which primarily consisted of Macri's own PRO party and the UCR, the latter party commonly referred to as "the radicals," although they have been a conservative oligarchic party for decades, arguably since 1945 and certainly since 1955.
In 2016, Dilma Rousseff was ousted from the Presidency by an utterly cynical impeachment with no basis that could be considered legitimate for a democracy. The new President, Michel Temer, isn't actually eligible to run for elected office in Brazil as part of his penalty on a corruption conviction. The "soft coup" impeachment against Dilma makes the frivolous impeachment of Bill Clinton by a rabidly partisan Republican House in the US in the 1990s look like a model of legal and democratic conduct.
Sader writes that Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State was responsible for:
la destrucción del gobierno de Manuel Zelaya en Honduras, después de que el último intento de golpe militar clásico en Venezuela, en 2002, hubiera fracasado. Ella y su gobierno apoyaron el golpe en contra de Fernando Lugo, que siguió el mismo guión, así como Hillary y Obama se callaron, de forma cómplice, frente al golpe en Brasil.
[the destruction of Manuel Zelaya's government in Honduras, after the previous attempt at a classic military coup in Venezuela in 2002 had failed. {The 2002 coup attempt was crassly supported by the Cheney-Bush Administrtion.} She and her go0vernment supported the {soft} coup against Fernando Lugo that followed the same guide, just as Hillary and Obama were silent in a complicit form in face of the {soft} coup in Brazil.]
Obama also made his first Presidential trip to Argentina in 2016 to show his support for the rightwing government of Mauricio Macri and "y anunciar una nueva época en las relaciones entre los dos gobiernos, felicitando al presidente argentino por los primeros pasos dados en dirección del viejo modelo neoliberal." ("to announce a new era in the relations between the two governments, congratualting the Argentine President for the first steps taken in the direction of the old neoliberal model.")
Sader sees the Obama-Clinton strategy in Latin America as being based around using the committed neoliberal government of Enrique Peña Nieto in Mexico with the heavyweight Brazil-Argentina combination to impose the neoliberal model onto recalcitrant governments and electorates like those in Bolivia, Ecuador and (of course!) Venezuela. But he notes that the Trump Family Business Administration's likely hostility to Mexico in particular could complicate this plan. "México entró en pánico con la elección de Trump y sus amenazas. De nada sirvió la grotesta invitación que hizo Peña Nieto a que lo visitara, con efectos negativos para la imagen del ya desgastado presidente mexicano." ("Mexico went into a panic over the election of Trump and his threats. The grotesque invitation that Peña Nieto made for him to visit was useless, with negative effective for the already eroded image of the Mexican President.") He also notes that if Trump carries through on his campaign skepticism about corporate-deregulation trade treaties, it could complicate the plans of the current Argentine and Brazilian government to forge a relationship to the United States as subordinate as that of Mexico, in Sader's formulation.
Part of the plan presumably favored by the Obama Administration and being implemented by the Macri and Temer governments was a weakening of the South American trade alliance Mercosur. (Alberto Müller, Erosionar la integraciónPágina/12 24.12.2016) Mercosur has functioned under the leadership of the so-called "Pink Tide" left-leaning governments of the last decade or so as an institution representing continental cooperation among South American government to establish independent regional power and influence against the neoliberal agenda. It has functioned in some of the spirit of the Patria Grande thinkers who encourage such regional cooperation against imperialist influences.
His government is the kind that left nationalists in Argentina refer to as capayo (sepoy), referring to politicians and governments that are subservient to foreign interests, particularly economic interest. (It's not meant as a compliment!)
Even during the left-Peronist governments of Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández (2003-2009), the conservative opposition kept up a steady stream of accusations of massive corruption and authoritarian tendencies, most of them with little or no real content.
The Macri regime is trying to use such accusation now against Cristina and her Partido Justicialista (PJ) and well as the social movements and groups that are a critical part of the kirchnerista base. The case of activist Milagro Sala has received attention from international human rights groups. "The U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention ruled in October [2016] that her detention was arbitrary and ordered Argentina's government to free her immediately. However, the Macri administration considered the decision non-binding." (Argentina Human Rights Hero Milagro Sala Sentenced to 3 YearsTeleSur 12/28/2016; Sala receives first sentence Buenos Aires Herald 12/30/2016)
Macri's government is also going after former President Cristina Fernández on a corruption charge that looks contrived. And on another charge, with which I'm far more familiar and which is about as bogus as they come.
The other charge is a revival of a case that former prosecutor Alberto Nisman tried to bring against her over her handling of the still-ongoing investigation into the 1994 AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires. I blogged about this back in 2015 as the original case was unfolding. The case is ludicrous. Very short version: Nisman was accusing her of doing something that wasn't illegal and for which there is no good evidence she did and very substantial material in the public record to show she did not do it. Nisman himself died of a gunshot wound that by all publicly known indications was a suicide, although the official investigation is still open. But at the time of the likely suicide, his case against the then-President was rapidly coming apart publicly, which could have been a contributing cause of the suicide. (Nisman AMIA complaint against CFK re-openedBuenos Aires Herald 12/30/2016; A history of the judicial back and forth, almost two years in the makingBuenos Aires Herald 12/30/2016)
Other articles on the Nisman charge include the following, some of which show signs of the many uses to which the AMIA case has been put, not least because it's a key part of the American claim that Iran has an advanced ability to project substantial terrorist action in the Western Hemisphere, although lots has changed in 24 years. The case itself has never been solved, though Argentina's official theory of the case is that Iran was behind it. And Cristina herself pursued that theory as President. She was aggressive as a Senator in pursuing the investigation into the attack. For background, see The Unsolved Terror Attack At The Center Of Argentina’s Political CrisisWorld Post 01/30/2015.
Aljazeera also features a sloppy report on Cristina's situation, taking the conservative government's highly politicized accusations of Macri's conservative government, Former Argentine president Cristina Kirchner faces court 01/01/2017. One of the people this report quotes is Marioano Obarrio, identified only as a "journalist." That's true. He's a journalist for La Nación, the rightwing government which has repeatedly over the decades supported military governments and has been the journalistic voice for the Argentine oligarchy since it was founded by former President Bartolomé Mitre in 1870. (Except for a period during Juan Perón's first government when the paper was seized by the government.
It's concerning to see Aljazeera presenting a report made with such credulity to rightwing charges that one would have to be very generous to describe as highly questionable. So far, they look downright frivolous.
Marcia García Sebastiani in her book Los antiperonistas en la Argentina peronista (2005) looks at the formation of the opposition to Juan Perón and Peronism in the years 1943-1951. A consolidation of the opposition to Peronism congealed behind the Unión Cívica Radical (UCR). And that two-party alignment largely prevails in Argentine politics today. Of course, with many changes along the way.
The landmarks of the the period in which this oppositional alignment emerged include the following:
1943: the military coup which made Gen. Pedro Ramírez head of government. From 1941, Col. Juan Perón had led the secret GOU group (Grupo de Oficiales Unidos) of military officers who were responsible for the 1943 coup.
1945: October 17 and Perón's dramatic release from detention as the result of dramatic and massive popular demand
February 1946: a few days before the national elections, the US releases its Blue Book against Perón as part of a scarcely concealed US regime-change effort spearheaded by Spruille Braden, US Ambassador to Argentina and later a member of the National Council of the early John Birch Society, the longtime mother ship of far-right conspiracy theories. (Braden Discloses He Quit Birch PostNew York Times 03/19/2016)
The US interference in Argentine politics had been so blatant that Perón made his central campaign theme "Perón o Braden" ("Perón or Braden"). After his election victory, Perón told a Brazilian paper, "I'm grateful to Braden for the votes he has given me... If I win two thirds of the electorate, a third would be due to the propaganda Braden made against me."
The national elections of February 1946 were marred by violence and some dubious actions by the military government that interfered with the campaign activities of the opposition. But it was a free and competitive election and far cleaner than any since before the coup of September 1930, which had removed the elected President Hipólito Yrigoyen (UCR) and installed José Félix Uriburu as head of a provisional government.
1947: Women's suffrage approved by Congress. The UCR had long advocated it but opposed the law that actually enacted it when it was up for a vote in Congress.
1948: The police claim in September they have uncovered a plot to assassinate Perón
1949 - Constitution of 1949 approved, replacing that of 1853. The new Constitution allows Perón to run for re-election and reduces some of the features of Congress that the UCR had used to impede Peronist legislation
1951-As the parties prepare for a new Presidential election for 1952, Gen. Benjamin Menéndez leads a new coup attempt, which fails. Filipe Pigna writes that the intent of Menéndez in the coup was that he "wanted to disarm the Peronist state completely and take away from the worker all their social conquests, returning them to the regime of semi-slavery that rules before 1943." (Los mitos de la historia argentina 4. La Argentina peronista (1943-1955); translations from Pigna here are mine)
1951 ends the period on which Sebastiani's book concentrates.
In 1955, Gen. Eduardo Lonardi mounted a successful coup attempt in September that styled itself the Revolución Libertadora. Perón fled the country to asylum in Paraguay. In March 1956, the military government banned the Peronist Party and all explicitly Peronist political activity. The coup and the new military government and the ban on Peronism was supported by the UCR and the Socialists. Perón himself was unable to return to Argentina and stand for election again until 1973, when he was elected by a 62% majority.
Sebastiani provides a table (p. 90) showing the vote percentages of the various parties in the elections of 1946, 1948 (non-Presidential) and 1952. For the UCR and the Peronists, it shows the following.
The broad opposition front formed by the opposition leading up to the 1946 elections, bringing together the Radicals (UCR), the Socialists, the Communists, conservatives (Partido Demócrata Nacional/PDN) and center-right (Partido Demócrata Progresista/PDP), was called the Unión Democrática. They constructed their political identity are the rhetoric of democracy and political liberalism. They opposition under the military regime characterized the government as "fascist" and "Nazi." That characterization was encouraged by the United Nations powers in the Second World War because Argentina remained neutral in the Second World War until 1945, when the outcome of the war was all but certain. And when Perón had become Vice President and Minister of War.
There is an ongoing discussion on whether Perón's government should be classified as "fascist." I won't try to recapitulate it here. But I find that case unsustainable. Whatever authoritarian aspects his governments may have had, his goal from 1945 to his death in 1974 as President for a second time, his goal was to democratize the Argentine government. I would argue that the question of authoritarianism is more relevant to his brief 1973-4 government than to that of 1945-55. It was under his government that Argentine women won the vote. His policies strengthened the labor unions, mobilized a large number of people into an active involvement in politics and pursued economic policies that greatly increased the well-being of millions.
During the 1946-51 period, Peronist government and political movement took measures that restricted the opposition's freedom in various ways. It restricted the publication of opposition newspapers by limiting the amount of paper deliver to them for the publications and shutting some of the down or taking over publication. A few opposition leaders wer expelled from Congress. Ricardo Balbín, a key UCR leader, was jailed in 1950 for a five-year term. But the Perón government pardoned and released him in 1951 and he became the UCR's Presidential candidate that year. Pigna notes dryly of the expulsions and Balbín's imprisonment, "The governmental response to the Radicals' chicanery wasn't exactly democratic." (Los mitos de la historia argentina 4. La Argentina peronista (1943-1955))
Still, this was neither a dictatorship nor were the elections shams. Comparing the votes above in the Presidential and congressional elections of 1946, 1948 and 1952 don't give any obvious indication that the opposition was being suppressed. And, in fact, despite the restrictions mentioned, those elections were competitive and both sides were able to make their positions to the public. For better or worse, Perón understood his movement as revolutionary. And always would. But it was a revolutionary movement that was more committed to democratic processes than the governments of 1930-1943 had been.
The opposition was also willing to support the self-described Revolución Libertadora in 1955,aka, Lonardi's military coup. During Perón's elected governments, there was nothing approaching the complete ban of the Peronist party and even the use of Peronist slogans like the Revolución Libertadora initiated in 1956. Even tango dancing was discouraged because the new rulers identified it with the common people who supported Perón. As the election results above show, Peronism was a kind of politics with which a majority identified. So from 1955-1973, Argentina suffered a chronic crisis of governance because the party and movement speaking for the majority was suppressed. And no government in Argentine history was so brutal a dictatorship as the military government that was in power 1973-83.
Pigna mentions the following senior oppsotion politicians who had not only guilty knowledge and at least passively collaborated in the coup attempt of 1951 led by Menéndez: Arturo Frondizi (UCR), Américo Ghioldi (Socialists), Reynaldo Pastor (conservatives) and Horacio Thedy (center-right). Basically the entire opposition spectrum, in other words, except the Communist Party, which would join in with the opposition in supporting the 1955 coup.
Perón had very legitimate reason to fear violent, anti-democracy conspiracies against him. That is not a justification for bad acts. It's a description of a central political fact of that period. Sebastiani provides a useful account of the development of the anti-Peronist opposition and the ideological narratives they shaped for themselves. But that process and those ideologies are difficult to evaluate meaningfully if not understood in the context of the interests at work and the actors supporting them.
The narrative of Perón as a Nazi obscured much more than it clarified. Framing your opponent as Hitler can result in drastic threat.inflation. Or, rather, it almost always is threat inflation. (Which is why it's such a bad thing in US foreign policy that we try to make every adversary from Ho Chi Minh to Muammar Qaddafi the New Hitler.) Ironically, the cover features of photograph of a rally for the Unión Demócratica umbrella opposition group. I say it's ironic because it's from August 12, 1946 in the Plaza del Congreso in Buenos Aires. It features a sign saying "Contra el nazismo" (Against the Nazis).
That was three days after the bombing of Nagasaki. so the Second World War was still officially going on and Argentina was formally a belligerent on the United Nations' side. Germany had surrendered in May, so if the reference was meant to be a patriotic wartime one, the reference was already a bit anachronistic. It was actually directed at the military government, in which Perón as Vice President was the most popular leader at that point. But it was before the President, Gen. Edelmiro Farrell, ousted Perón and imprisoned him in early October. Popular pressure forced Perón's release and he returned in triumph to address the throng on October 17 in the famous Plaza de Mayo from the balcony of the Presidential palace, the Casa Rosada. October 17 is still celebrated today by the Peronist Partido Justicialista (PJ) as a major historical turning point they observe every year.
So under the military dictatorship, with no democratic elections scheduled, the umbrella opposition group Unión Demócratica was holding a rally in the federal capital in front of a major governmental building. In the actual Nazi regime of the Hitler government, such demonstrations in front of the Reichstag in Berlin were, it's safe to say, extremely rare. As in, non-existent after the imposition the Enabling Law in 1933 that established the dictatorship.
But the central opposition narrative was that they were standing for democracy against Perón's "Nazi-fascist" rule, even during his democratically elected governments. That same narrative continued to be used, including to justify the military coup of 1955. The UCR continued to describe their victory via military coup as having overthrown "Nazis."
Luis Bruschtein Mauricio TrumpPágina/12 12.11.2016 looks at the similarities between incoming US President Donald Trump and Argentine President Mauricio Macri, who took office last December. The article is accompanied by this illustration:
I've described Macri as a kind of Argentine Mitt Romney, i.e., a plutocratic foof. Except Macri looks more like Dracula.
Bruschtein's commentary highlights for American readers how complex the use of "right" and "left" are in Argentine politics. The previous two Presidents, Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007-2015), were Peronists from the Partido Justicialista (PJ) who practiced populist politics. Their governing policies were Keynesian stimulative economics, rejection of the neoliberal Washington Consensus, promoting workers' rights and women's rights and prosecuting human rights criminals from the dictatorship of 1976-83. They expanded government services and pursued an independent foreign policy focusing on Latin American unity, and successfully resisted pressure from international capital to go back to the neoliberal policies whose plain and disastrous failure culminated in the financial crisis of 2001. Their governments were considered part of the "Pink Tide" of left-leaning Latin American governments, a tide which is now triumphantly proclaimed by the corporate press and the US foreign policy establishment as being in retreat. Their politics became known as kircherismo. Néstor and Cristina were left social-democrats, in other words, and understood themselves in left-populist terms.
The main opposition party to Peronism since the national election of 1946 has been the Unión Cívica Radical (UCR). Macri was elected with that party's backing and is the current leader of the "radicals," as they are commonly called. Although his party is a separate group now called Cambiemos, essentially created by him originally as a personal vehicle he used to get elected governor of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires. His Cambiemos party has gone through several names in its various iterations since 2003. The UCR, and the small Socialist Party which generally acts in concert with it, are committed to hardcore neoliberalism and aligns with other Latin American conservative parties. They are supported by the Argentina oligarchy, whose interests they are generally proud to serve. The oligarchy has found little to complain about in Macri's policies since last December.
But the UCR identifies itself as a left party. In fact, both the UCR and the Socialist Party are official affiliates of the Socialist International, the association of social-democratic parties, including the German SPD and the ruling Socialist Party in France. The UCR backed the coup of 1955 that ousted Juan Perón during his second term as elected President and outlawed the Peronist Party, which had gained 62% of the vote in the 1951 elections. And it generally shares perspectives with other conservative parties in Latin America, including fealty to IMF dictates and deference to the United States. But it maintains the rhetoric of being the "left" party against the Peronist "right."
It's worth noting that in European politics it is common, though by no means universal, to refer to populism as though it is by definition rightwing. It's also the case right now that the center-left social-democratic parties are generally facing a political crisis because their core neoliberal economic and social policies have become hard to distinguish from those of conservatives. And by "neoliberal," I'm talking Herbert Hoover/Heinrich Brüning/austerity dogma.
Bruschtein writes in the first paragraph:
“Todos tenemos un amigo que votó a Macri y ahora se lamenta porque ganó Trump” dice una frase que circula por las redes. Ironías aparte, tiene algo de razón, Macri es más parecido a Trump aunque quisiera parecerse a Hillary. Los dos son de derecha, pero Hillary es más presentable. Para los macristas, el triunfo de Trump en Estados Unidos fue como si los hubiera sorprendido un espejo caminando por Florida y los enfrentara a la imagen del empresario rústico, ignorante y oportunista para los negocios, que se desayunó al sistema político y alcanzó la presidencia. Trump y Macri fueron socios en un emprendimiento inmobiliario en Manhattan. Forman parte del mismo universo cultural. El aparato mediático del macrismo, Canal 13, TN, Lanata y demás, se apresuraron a disimular esas semejanzas, lo hicieron como si les dieran vergüenza. “Trump es de derecha, como el kirchnerismo pero sin doble discurso”, dijeron.
"All of us have a friend who voted for Macri and is now lamenting the fact that Trump won," goes a phrase that is circulated on the Internet. Ironies apart, there is something to it. Macri looks more like Trump even though he would prefer to look like Hillary. Both of them [Trump and Hillary] are on the right, but Hillary is more presentable. For the macristas, Trump's triumph in the United States was like walking down Florida [a famous shopping street in Buenos Aires] and being surprised by a mirror that presented them with the image of a businessman who was rude, ignorant and opportunistic in business, who had just eaten the political system for breakfast and achieved the Presidency. Trump and Macri were business associates in a real estate venture in Manhatten. They form part of the same cultural universe. The media apparatus of macrismo - Channel 13, TN, Lanata and the rest - are rushing to deny these similarities. They are doing it as though they are embarrassed. "Trump is on the right, like kirchnerismo but with a two-faced discourse," they say.
He goes on to observe, "Macri y Trump son parte de la propagación en todo el mundo de una hegemonía conservadora y regresiva" ("Macri and Trump are parts a part of the propagation around the world of a conservative and regressive hegemony"). Though he does caution against making easy generalizations about the diverse factors involved in the success of various rightwing movements.
Macri hasn't indulged in the sort of overt xenophobic and racist rhetoric on which Trump based so much of his campaign. He says that Trump's language is "ramplón y berreta," i.e., "course and trashy." Although I suppose "deplorable" would also be an appropriate translation. Bruschtein does quote a notorious statement by Macri that sound Trump-like, "All women like to be catcalled. Those that say it offends them, don't believe them. There couldn't be anything prettier than a catcall, even more if it's accompanied by a rude comment, like telling her what a pretty butt she has, that's just fine." (“A todas las mujeres les gusta que les digan un piropo, aquellas que se ofenden, no les creo. No puede haber nada más lindo que un piropo, por más que esté acompañado de una grosería, que te digan qué lindo culo tenés, está todo bien.”)
But Macri is also more straightforward than Trump about his neoliberal policies of deregulation and freedom for international capital movements that carry a high risk of Argentina becoming once again the target of financial speculation. Macri's law-and-order rhetoric would sound familiar to Trump supporters. If they spoke Spanish, that is, which most of them proudly do not. Macri is the heir to the Macri Group, a media empire built by his father. He was embarrassed by the exposure in the Panama Papers revelations of undeclared funds he had stashed abroad. And he sees the business ethics of the two as similar, describing Macri as having operated in a business environment "plagado de tramposos y coimeros" ("plagued by swindlers and bribe-takers").
Bruschtein argues that either Hillary or Trump represented bad news in foreign policy for Argentina. Although President Obama's policies on Iran and Syria have been dovish in many ways compared to that of his critics, his Latin American policy has generally been very conservative. His pragmatic adjustment of a Cuba policy that had been an obvious failure for decades was accompanied by increased hostility to the controversial elected government of Venezuela, even declaring Venezuela a threat to the national security of the United States. Hillary was Secretary of State during the coup in Honduras in 2011, which she and Obama welcomed in actual policy. She has the reputation of being more hawkish than Obama, and one of the foreign policy accomplishments she bragged about was the intervention in Libya with the generally disastrous consequences. Latin American publics are not especially inclined to look on US military interventions abroad as benign.
But he leaves it an open question whether Trump's actual policies would be better or worse than a now-hypothetical Hillary Clinton Administration's would have been. He notes that no one would be surprised to see a future photo of Macri, Trump and Italy's Silvio Berlusconi together.
Bruschtein also notes that the corporate press in Argentina favored Clinton in the American Presidential race. And, "En el sistema de medios norteamericano no existen medios importantes que expresen una mirada progresista y popular" ("In the [US-]American media system, no important media exist that express a progressive and popular view"). He's basically right on that.
The politicians Trump and Macri, he says:
... son una consecuencia del esquema de valores que puso en juego el neoliberalismo en su confrontación crispada con las experiencias democráticas y populares: la antipolítica, la exaltación de la riqueza como máxima virtud, la naturalización de la pobreza, la leyenda del empresario sin cultura ni escrúpulos que triunfó. Trump abona al mismo clima de época que Macri, que Uribe y el No a la paz en Colombia y que el Brexit en Gran Bretaña.
[... are a consequence of the value scheme that neoliberalism brought into play in its tense confrontation with democratic and popular experiences: the depoliticization {literally: the anti-political}, the exaltation of wealth as the highest virtue, the naturalizing of poverty, the legend of the entrepreneur without culture or scruples who triumphs. Trump nourishes the same climate as Macri, as {former Colombian President Álvaro} Uribe and No to peace in Colombia, and as Brexit in Great Britain.]
In discussing US politics, she praises Franklin Roosevelt for his anti-corporate stances. And she professes to be indifferent to Clinton vs. Trump. Understandable, given the support by the Obama Administration and Hillay Clinton for regime change efforts in Honduras, Paraguay, Venzuela and (presumably) in Brazil.
Carlos Camacho revives an old chestnut of an aging pseudoscandal against former Argentine President Cristina Fernández in Venezuela Opposition Sets Sights on Stolen $400 Billion Buenos Aires Herald 07/10/2016.
This is a reminder that incidents like this, once they get incorporated into a propaganda narrative against an "unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States" can keep popping up for years, even decades, as an ostensible reason for taking controversial actions. In this instance, there is a possibly-true but unproven claim about a 1994 terrorist attack (AMIA) in Argentina newly married to a nearly eight-year-old chestnut about Venezuelan meddling in Argentine politics used as a propaganda club against Argentina's current President.
Observers have frequently divided the region’s left-wing governments into “social democrats” (especially Brazil, Chile, Uruguay) and “democratic socialists” (Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and sometimes Argentina), though some of them have been more democratic than others. While the left retains formal power across much of the region, the high-water mark of the “pink tide” certainly seemed to have been reached by 2015—when the left lost presidential elections in Argentina and parliamentary ones in Venezuela. Weak economic performance across the region makes the expansion of social programs all but impossible. In drawing up a balance sheet of the pink tide’s achievements, however, there is a particular puzzle with respect to the “socialists.” Most of the world’s democratic socialist intellectuals have been skeptical of Latin America’s examples, citing their authoritarian qualities and occasional cults of personality. To critics, the appropriate label for these governments is not socialism but populism.
Iber's article is a useful perspective on the so-called Pink Tide governments. And he cites the important work of Ernesto Laclau on populism.
But his article has a definite tone of grinding some old ideological axe. Not that grinding old ideological axes is never pleasant or even informative. But it is often just distracting.
Dissent has always positioned itself in the social-democratic tradition since it began publishing in 1954. Which means that it's often critical of both liberal and conservative programs and positions from a left outlook. It also means, in practice, that it struck a distinctly anti-Communist tone. Since very few Americans have considered themselves adherents of some form of Communism between 1954 and now, technically just about anyone with a political outlook was "anti-Communist" in that sense. But of course anti-Communism was at the core of US Cold War foreign policy ideology, not always with constructive results. To put it mildly.
And I've been really struck in this year's Democratic Presidential primary contest how shocked many Democrats who regard themselves as "progressives" made themselves out to be at hearing the words "socialism" and "revolution" from Bernie Sanders. Patrick Iber doesn't blanch at the word "socialism." But he still seems to want to distance himself from ideas and movements and parties that could be considered revolutionary, even democratically-elected ones.
And despite citing Laclau, who did not regard populism as inherently threatening, Iber in this piece seems more worried about the potentially threatening side of even left-democratic populism than acknowledging its real achievements. He does at least partially acknowledge the value of Laclau's perspective in seeing populism as constructing the "people" as an opposition to a commonly defined enemy, like "the elite" or "the oligarchy." He was this to say about the Kirchner governments in Argentina:
[P]opulist leaders and movements run a higher risk of constructing and inhabiting alternative realities in which the problems created by their own actions are seen only as the responsibilities of others. These forms of popular mobilization can also endanger liberties essential to a democratic state, since those who do not belong to the people may be deemed unworthy of receiving the same rights as others. Short of disaster, populist polarization can simply become exhausting, and exhausted. This was a factor cited by many voters in Argentina when they elected a center-right president in 2015, replacing the husband-and-wife mini-dynasty of Néstor and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who in three successive terms from 2003 to 2015 oversaw the expansion of social programs and deprivatization of certain industries in good times, but also faced protest, accusations of corruption, and a black market in dollars during bad ones.
I'm not sure how any of those accomplishments are opposition criticisms are supposed to be specific to "populist" governments. Lots of governments not usually described as populist are confronted with "protest, accusations of corruption, and a black market in dollars."
The current Argentine government of Mauricio Macri, a distinctly conservative and non-populist one that took office in December, has hardly been immune to serious questions of corruption. Macri himself had secret offshore accounts revealed through the Panama Papers. He memorably said that he didn't report 18 million pesos (about $1.2 million) in offshore holdings because, "The truth is, I didn’t even realize, honestly." (Macri: I didn’t realize I had millions in BahamasBuenos Aires Herald 06/19/2016) The main party in Macri's government is the Unión Cívica Radical (UCR), a member party of the Socialist International; an official social-democratic party, in other words. If "social-democratic" is taken to mean center-left, it's a bad joke to call the UCR social-democratic. Because it's currently stone conservative. (Macri's own party is a separate one, the PRO.)
Iber acknowledges that progressive social change will require some form of populist movements. But he's still suspicious of it:
But even if it is agreed that limited markets may remain under democratic socialism, a market society in which nearly every aspect of life is subject to commodification is almost certainly incompatible with a meaningful democracy. Significant change to our political economy will require significant change to our structure of government. It is hard to see how to get there without some kind of “populist” moment, fraught with danger to other values we believe to be essential. Much can and should be done in the United States to level hierarchies of class, race, and gender, thus deepening the meaning of democracy. That alone is work enough. But it would seem that even achieving social democracy, much less democratic socialism, will require fundamental institutional changes.
I won't even try to parse what he may mean by his distinction between "social democracy" and "democratic socialism."
But he does give Bernie credit for create a populist movement of a kind that Iber regards as a good variety:
Bernie Sanders recognizes this, calling his campaign the foundation of a “political revolution.” Perhaps sensing that Sanders has more successfully called forth a “people,” in the manner of Laclau, Hillary Clinton has adopted a technocratic and often explicitly anti-populist discourse, saying things like “I’ve never believed in dividing America between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ We are all in this together.”
Javier Buenrostro notes that Venezuala's current eonomic problems are not unique to populist governments like the current one (Chavismo’s Crumbling Economic Foundations 06/13/2016):
The current economic crisis is not without precedent, however. In the years before Hugo Chávez came to power, when Venezuela was ruled by neoliberal governments, the country experienced very high inflation (exceeding 100 percent in 1996), while oil wealth was squandered and more than half of the population lived in poverty. It is true that Chávez’s government, too, failed to completely control inflation; nevertheless, inflation levels dropped considerably from the previous decade. In the fourteen years before Chávez took office (1985–1998), inflation averaged 44 percent annually, with peaks in 1989 and 1996 when it hit three digits, while under his government (1999–2012), it averaged 22 percent. Similarly, since the “Black Friday” of 1983, currency devaluations have been frequent in Venezuelan history; they are not an invention of the Bolivarian revolution. From 1983 to 1998 the average annual devaluation was 65 percent, while under Chávez it was “controlled” to a level of 32 percent annually.
Populism has proved highly effective for pink tide leaders in appealing to disenfranchised and excluded marginal majorities to bolster their hold on electoral power: it was widespread popular pressure that defeated the opposition coup of 2002 in Venezuela and brought Chávez back into office. But this kind of populism focused on electoral politics is ultimately limiting for disenfranchised sectors, because they become beholden to charismatic leaders who are themselves constrained by global capital and the need to seek their own continual reelection in order to extend their social programs and policies.
Over the last four years, this social-democratic consensus has dissolved, unable to withstand plummeting global commodity prices, a series of haphazard, unsuccessful economic interventions, and the revelation of a massive kickback scheme in government contracting. It was this dissolution of consensus that enabled the April 2016 impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff on dubious legal grounds and the return of conservative sectors to political preeminence. Rousseff’s former vice-president, Michel Temer, temporarily occupies the presidency. With the left in crisis, Temer, from the centrist PMDB (Democratic Movement Party), has swung hard to the right. Recession has already eroded some of the economic gains of the growth period and the conservative resurgence threatens to wipe out many of the social gains, as Temer’s unelected government seeks to reverse twenty years of redistributionist policies.
If there is any positive aspect to the current crisis, it is the reemergence of non-partisan, civil-society mobilization in response to impeachment and its fallout. A wave of protests rocked Brazil in 2013, signaling the end of the social peace of the growth period. But the 2013 protests were notably inchoate, with no clear goal. The current mobilization, in contrast, aims clearly to remove Temer’s illegitimate administration and to restore pluralistic democracy. That mobilization comes, for example, from high-school students who have occupied schools in cities across the country, resisting school closures and spending cuts. And it has come from a broad coalition of citizens outraged by Temer’s announced elimination of the Ministry of Culture. Protests across the country, including occupations of Ministry of Culture buildings, led to a rapid about-face, preserving the ministry, at least temporarily.
Thea Riofrancos in Populism and the People 06/13/2016 argues that Iber doesn't give sufficient weight to base-democratic movements:
Absent from his account of the rise and rule of the left in Latin America are the central protagonists of this profound shift away from the neoliberal policies that dominated the region in the 1980s and ‘90s: social movements. These movements, based in the “popular sectors” of labor, peasant, indigenous, and urban neighborhood groups, emerged as forceful collective actors. They resisted the onslaught of privatization, deregulation, and austerity imposed by a coalition of domestic elites, often under pressure from international financial institutions and the United States. The rise of an electorally successful left can only be understood as the product of this longer process of struggle.
Riofrancos is essentially dismissive of Laclau's view of populism, including the way Iber uses it. "But this analysis rests on two questionable assumptions: first, that 'the people' is constructed from the top down and through powerful 'rhetoric' alone, and second, that once forged, 'the people' exist as a monolithic force defending the regime." Actually, Laclau doesn't argue that the populist "people" is "constructed from the top down and through powerful 'rhetoric' alone."
Javier Buenrostro’s essay makes a different argument: that the problem of Venezuela (in the extreme case) and of other left governments lies in having failed to change the mode of production based on the extraction of natural resources. This is also an important point: Venezuela has witnessed a succession of economic crises both under “socialism” and under “neoliberalism.” If today’s crisis discredits “socialism,” as some say, then the riots and state repression known as the Caracazo of 1989 discredit “neoliberalism.” In reality, Buenrostro argues, the problem is deeper. Lack of diversification remains a major economic problem for most Latin American economies, exacerbating both instability and inequality. And this is also a source of conflict between even left-wing governments (looking for mineral or oil resources, for example) and people in rural areas (frequently poor, indigenous, or both) whose lives and environments are most affected.
