Comparing two Argentine presidencies, Carlos Menem and Mauricio Macri's

Atilio Boron has a longish article on Argentine President Mauricio Macri's politics, which includes five points of comparison he makes between the government of Carlos Menem (1989-1999) and Macri's (2015-present)
El macrismo y sus límites Página/12 26.08.2017

Carlos Menem

(1) Menem came to power as the head of the Peronist Partido Justicialista (PJ), an established party with a previous history of being a left party, and Menem came to power campaigning in that vein. His embrace of neoliberal/Washington Consensus economic policies took years to generate significant opposition within the Peronist movement, while the main opposition party, the Radical Civic Union (UCR), was fine with that approach.

Macri came to power with a motley political coalition called Cambiemos, which doesn't provide him anything like the solid, well-established institutional support that Menem had with the PJ.

Mauricio Macri

(2) The major media are far more concentrated than during Menem's Presidency, and are very partisan in favor of Macri and his government. Boron sees this as a major compensating factor for the weaknesses of his coalition's structure. But he also notes that this makes him vulnerable to possible turns in the media's approach in a way that Menem was not.

(3) Menem acted within the outlines of a neoliberal consensus that was not only dominant at the time in Latin America but was also more widely regarded as desirable. Boron mentions in particular Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Peru. While neoliberalism is still a dominant pardigm, Boron notes that "ese paradigma de política económica hoy ha caído en desgracia con el ascenso de Donald Trump a la Casa Blanca y el neoliberalismo que permea todo el 'equipo' de Macri da la sensación de ser anacrónico en más de un sentido" (this paradigm of political economy has fallen into disgrace today with the ascension of Donald Trump and the neoliberalism that permeates Macri's whole "team" gives the feeling of being anachronistic in more that one sense).

(4) The flip side of Macri's weakness on party organization compared to Menem is that didn't face anything like the popular resistance that Macri has since the beginning of his Presidency to his economic and political policies. Menem's neoliberalism, which eventually resulted in the crisis of 2001 after Menem had left office, also benefitted from the fact that he took office at a time of serious economic problems including an actual hyperinflation and major economic setbacks to small businesses and large portions of the population. So people were willing to cut him more slack for a longer time. While Macri took over at a time when the economy was stagnating in some ways and significant inflation (but not hyperinflation).

(5) Menem became President in 1989 in the period where the Communist government in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union were falling, which resulted in the much-discussed unipolar moment of US predominance in the world. This gave the US the clout to more effectively act as a political and economic protector of friendly Latin American governments. But as Boron observes:

Macri se enfrenta a un mundo mucho más complejo y amenazante que el de los noventas y en donde la redistribución del poder mundial y la emergencia de nuevos centros de poder (Rusia, China, India) y el debilitamiento de Europa hace que aún con el ferviente apoyo de Washington la viabilidad de sus políticas esté marcada por la incertidumbre.

[Macri encountered a world that is much more complex and threatening than that of the nineties and in which the distribution of global power and the emergence of new centers of power (Russia, China, India) and the debility of Europe makes the viability of his policies is marked by uncertainty despite the fervent support of Washington.]

Boron expresses considerable doubt that Macri will be able to define the Argentine right over a longer period because his economic policies as well as his broader ideological position are garbled. Boron also thinks that Macri is conveying a strong image of governing for the benefit of large corporations.

Argentine opposition keeps going after the President over prosecutor Nisman's death

Argentine President Cristina Fernández' opposition isn't giving up on trying to hang the apparent death-by-suicide of prosecutor Alberto Nisman around her neck. Along with the frivolous charge he made against her to portray her as a friend of Iranian terrorists.

TV Pública argentina reports on recent developments in Visión 7-Causa Nisman: Fein citó a peritos de la querella 06.03.2015:

One of the leading faces of this continuing push is Sandra Arroyo, a judge who is also the ex-wife of Nisman and the mother of his two children. The latest version of the accusation is that somehow the death scene was altered in order to conceal the fact that Islamic fundamentalists murdered him. (Horacio Verbitsky, El cupo femenino Página/12 08.03.2015)

I don't know why in reading Verbitsky's story I was thinking that it would be hard for Americans to believe that the opposition could be using such cockamamie claims against the President with the full backing of major opposition figures. I guess it was just an American Exceptionalism moment. Because it's commonly claimed in FOXWorld that our President is a Kenyan Muslim Marxist atheist who hates America and loves Islamic fundamentalist terrorists and helps them kill American diplomats in Benghazi while Hillary Clinton hides her e-mails to her lesbian lovers.

The more I learn about the history of Argentina since the Second World War, though, the more I take it for granted that the American government and major economic interests routinely meddle in Argentine politics. The fact that there are depressing similarities in the way rightwingers in both countries sling sleaze isn't that surprising.

A former security official, Antonio Horacio Stiuso, is one of the key players in this political drama. It's already provided enough plot material for a variety of novels, police procedural TV episodes and movies. But it doesn't need the Hollywood treatment to be dramatic and convoluted on its own. As the Buenos Aires Herald reports, "Nisman used to work hand-in-hand with former Intelligence Secretariat (SI, formerly known as SIDE) Operations chief Antonio 'Jaime' Stiuso." (Lagomarsino back in Nisman spotlight 03/07/2015)

And the connection to the 1994 terrorist attack on the AMIA Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires adds more complications. Gareth Porter recounts how Israel in the 1990s adopted Iran as a bogeyman that has served various functions in Israeli foreign policy. (The long history of Israel gaming the 'Iranian threat' Middle East Eye 03/05/2015):

Other Israeli prime ministers [besides Nethanyahu] have played the Holocaust card for domestic purposes too. Yitzhak Rabin actually started it during his tenure as Prime Minister from 1992 to 1995, pointing to the alleged “existential threat” from Iran in order to justify his policy of negotiating with the PLO. It was also Rabin who established the propaganda theme of Iran as a terrorist threat to Jews across five continents that Netanyahu continues to cite today.

Later, however, Netanyahu would use the alleged Iranian threat to do exactly the opposite – refuse to reach an agreement with the Palestinians. Many former senior military and intelligence officials have never forgiven Netanyahu for what they consider a reckless policy toward Iran that they link to his failure to deal with the Palestinian problem. [my emphasis]

The AMIA attack is used as a major example of Iran's ability to project terrorist attacks far away from home, not only by Israeli politicians but by American neocons. After two decades of important players in American and Israeli foreign policy relying on the AMIA attack as a key propaganda point against Iran, there are enough people with more of an interest in keeping that story accepted as fact than in determining the actual perpetrators to have muddled the waters on this case for two decades now.

I've posted several times on the AMIA case, including years before the Nisman suicide. The case has never been solved. The Argentine government's theory of the case on which Nisman operated in investigating the case for years, is that Iranian-backed terrorists were involved. Cristina's government reached an agreement in 2013 with Iran to facilitate investigation of some Iranians who are suspected of involvement in the AMIA bombing. Former President Carlos Menem and two other officials are under indictment in Argentina over obstruction of justice in the early investigation of the case. There are indications that the Argentine intelligence service was involved in the bombing in itself in some way. But that has also never been proved.

It is important to recognize, however, that the assumption that has been routinely used for two decades in American commentary on this topic that Iran was obviously behind the AMIA attack has never been proven in court and is by no means circumstantially clear form the information in the public record.

Former Argentine President Carlos Menem and the investigation of the AMIA Jewish community center attack of 1994

There are new developments in the case of the terrorist bombing in 1994 on a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. In The AMIA Jewish Community Center attack in Buenos Aires, 1994, I discussed some of the shady politics around the investigation of that crime. The attack itself was one of the worst terrorist attacks of the time and one of the deadliest anti-Semitic terrorist incidents ever, and it has been generally blamed on Iran. The AMIA attack is often cited as evidence of Iran's ability to carry out major terrorist attacks worldwide.

Now, an Argentine federal judge has decided that charges against former officials accused of blocking an important line of investigation in the case will go to trial, as reporting by Página 12 in Menem, a juicio oral por encubrimiento del atentado a la AMIA 30.03.2012. In additional to senior judicial and police officials, former President Carlos Saúl Menem will be one of the defendants. No, they aren't applying a Look Forward, Not Back policy toward former officials in the Argentina as the Obama Administration decided to pursue with crimes committed during the Cheney-Bush Administration. The Buenos Aires Herald has a brief English-language report: AMIA inquiry: Judge announces Menem, Galeano to go on trial 03/20/2012.

This is a Spanish-language news report from TV Public Argentina on the progress of the charges against Menem and others in the case, Causa Amia: Menem irá a juicio oral por frenar la "pista siria" en la investigación 03/31/2012.

In the earlier post, I mentioned a Wikileaks revelation published by El País (Juan Jesús Aznárez, EE UU sospechaba que la reapertura del caso Amia respondía al oportunismo del Gobierno argentino 22.02.2011) that the Cheney-Bush Administration pressured Argentina in 2008 to drop the charges that had been brought against former President Menem and others over irregularities in the investigation ofthe AMIA attack. The Cheney-Bush Administration was worried that the trials could cast doubt on Iran's role in the 1994 bombing, which is still used as a key propaganda accusation against Iran.

The leaked cable of 05/27/2008 is available here from El País. Here is its summary section:

Summary: AMIA Special Prosecutor Alberto Nisman called the Ambassador on May 23 to apologize for not giving the Embassy advance notice of his (ref A) request for the arrest of former President Menem and other GOA officials for their alleged roles in the cover up of the "local connection" in the 1994 terrorist bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center. He also assured the Ambassador that the coincidence of the arrest request with the visit of FBI Deputy Director Pistole was completely unintentional. He confirmed that the GOA had been aware ahead of time that he was going to make the announcement and said that he had been able to advance the case using newly declassified documents from Argentina's national intelligence agency (SIDE). Contacts at the Foreign Ministry and at the Argentine Jewish political organization (DAIA) suspect, however, that the specific timing of Nisman's announcement was driven more by domestic politics than by significant new developments in the case.

It is still the case, so far as I'm aware, that nothing in the public record to my knowledge definitively exonerates Iran from any role in the 1994 AMIA terrorist attack. But neither has the case been settled. This Wikileaks story shows that the Cheney-Bush Administration wasn't eager to have Argentine authorities digging into information that might cast further doubt on Iran's alleged role in the attack.

But the evidence linking Iran to the attacks is by no means so terribly clear. Argentine journalist Gabriel Levinas called attention to some of the problems with the position taken by the Administration of then-President Carlos Menim blaming Iran in his book La ley bajo los escombros. AMIA: lo quo no se hizo (1998).

In 2006, Argentine prosecutors sought charges against seven former officials for misconduct in the investigation of the AMIA attack. As Gareth Porter explains in Argentine Report Casts Doubt on Iran Role in '94 Bomb Inter Press Service 11/13/2006, the official investigation of the attack had dubious credibility in Argentina, due to "a bribe by the lead judge to a key witness and a pattern of deceptive accounts based on false testimony." As he explains at some length in that article, Argentina's government at the time had a uranium-sharing agreement with Iran, part of a cooperation between the two countries on civilian nuclear power that the Clinton Administration was pressing Menem's government to end. That cooperation raises questions itself about what Iran's motivation would have been to stage the AMIA attack.

The latest news is that an Argentine federal judge, Ariel Lijo, has decided that charges against former officials in the case will go to trial. Lijo is focusing on an alleged communication from then-President Menem's brother Munir Menem to a judge pressuring him to drop investigation of possible links of businessman Kanoore Edul to the attack. The now-deceased Kanoore Edul was a friend of Menem family, according to the Página 12 story.

It's not directly related. But Página 12 also reports on a former provincial judge who Argentina is trying to extradite from Chile to answer for charges of official misconduct in violations of human rights during the military dictatorship of 1976-83: Romano empezó a ser indagado en Chile 30.03.2012.

See also:

Gareth Porter, Bush's Iran/Argentina Terror Frame-Up The Nation 02/04/2008 issue (apparently published 01/18/2008)

Gareth Porter, US Officials Rejected Key Source on '94 Argentina Bombing Antiwar.com 01/24/2008

Gareth also did an interview on the subject with Antiwar Radio's Scott Horton on 01/22/2009.

Tags: amia, argentina, gareth porter