What was "kirchnerism" in Argentina in 2003-2015?

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.

Republicans endorsing Hillary

Bob McElvaine makes a plea for undecided and even Republican voters to support Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump on the basis of patriotic sentiment in Patriotism over partisanship Clarion-Ledger 10/01/2016. He lays great stress on the economic issues: "The truth is that what Trump proposes is a return to the policies — massive tax cuts for the richest and deregulation of the financial industry — that produced not only the 2008 collapse (which Trump cheered because he could make money off it) but also the Great Depression. The slogan for Trump’s trickle-down economics should be: 'Make America a Great Depression Again!'"

He cites endorsements of Hillary from traditional Republican newspapers like the Arizona Republic, the Dallas Morning News, and the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Bob doesn't mention this San Diego Tribune endorsement in the Clarion-Ledger column but he linked it on his Facebook page: Endorsement: Why Hillary Clinton is the safe choice for president 09/30/2016.

It's nice to see Hillary getting so many newspaper endorsements. But I can't say I'm thrilled by the reasons the San Diego Tribune gives for supporting her. Like: "As a U.S. senator, the Democrat showed she can collaborate with Republicans, using what Roll Call labeled an 'incremental approach' that 'could help restore a working relationship between the White House and Capitol Hill that has been in tatters' for years."

The only way that's going to happen is if Hillary wins the Presidency and mounts an unprecedented level of Democratic Party effort to beat the Republicans in House and Senate races in 2018. Until the elections take place and Republicans know they're electorally on the run at all levels, the Trumpified Republicans Party will keep up their obstructionism on domestic issues that we've seen the last eight years. Or should I say the Ross-Barnettified Republican Party?

Also: "Argentina is finally coming out of the chaos created by Cristina Kirchner and several of her predecessors. Trump could be our Chávez, our Kirchner." (!!!)

O.M.G.

I wish we could have a 12-year run of solid Keynesian economics like Néstor and Christina Fernández de Kirchner brought to Argentina in 2003-2015. After decades of neoliberal/Angela Merkel/Washington Consensus economics, during the first 10 years of the Kirchner era Argentina had one of the healthiest growth rates in the world, higher even than China's. And the healthiest in Argentina's entire history.

he usual Bipartisan Wall Street drone, I will seriously injure myself doing backflips of joy. As for Trump being "our Kirchner," it's hard to imagine anything less possible. Cristina's successor, the "safe" oligarch Mauricio Macri who took over in December, has returned to the disastrous Merkelist policies of the 1990s, and the Argentine economy has been in a nose-dive ever since. With no prospect of returning to Kirchnerist levels of health under these policies.

Now, Trump could certainly be our Macri. Only he would probably be worse. And he would be in command of a nuclear arsenal. This graphic of Macri is more likely what a President Trump would be.

Cristina Fernández, the Kirchner brand of Peronism and "la década ganada"

This past weekend, May 25, Argentina celebrated the 203rd anniversary of the Revolución de Mayo (May Revolution). President Cristina Fernández gave a long speech at the Plaza de Mayo in front of the Presidential residence in Buenos Aires, the Casa Rosada. The occasion coincided with the beginning of kirchnerismo government, when Cristina late husband Néstor Kirchner became President on May 25, 2003.

Cristina's speech in notable for the way in which she positions her and Néstor's political project in the tradition of Argentine independence and of the Peronist movement. She looks with approval to the social achievements of the first Perón government, its defense of labor rights and income and the extension of the vote to women.

This is her speech (in Spanish), Cristina: "Es necesario empoderar a la sociedad de estas reformas y conquistas" TV Pública argentina 05/25/2013:

At around 50:00, she compares Argentina's economic progress since the crisis of 2001 to the current state of European countries like Italy, Spain and even Switzerland. in a play on the well-known phrase "the lost decade," which was famously applied to Japan and now looks more and more like an appropriate description of the post-2007 decade in the US and Europe, she described the kirchnerismo decade as "la década ganada," the decade won.

Página/12 reports on her speech here: Nicolás Lantos, "Quiero la unidad con memoria, verdad y justicia" 26.05.2013. He leads with this quote from her speech, "Yo quiero la unidad de todos los argentinos. Pero quiero la unidad con memoria, con verdad y con justicia, porque sin eso no hay unidad posible y la necesitamos." ("I want the unity of all Argentines. But I want unity with memory, with truth and with justice, because without that, unity isn't possible, and we need it".) Lantos explains that this was a response to a proposal by the governor of Córdoba province, José Manuel de la Sota (from Cristina's own Partido Justicialista), who recently suggested that the government stop prosecutions of criminals acting in service of the military dictatorship of 1976-83, in exchange for getting information about the fate of people kidnapped and disappeared, many of whose fates have not been definitively determined, though those still unaccounted for were essentially all murdered. Accountability, including legal accountability, for those crimes has been a signature cause of both Kirchers in their presidencies.

She says of the kirchnerismo project, "Que quede claro, éste no es un modelo económico. Este es un proyecto político con objetivos económicos, sociales y culturales." ("Let's be clear, this is not an economic model. It is a political project with economic, social and cultural objectives.")

And in a statement that Americans can pretty much only fantasize our politicians right now would even think of saying out loud, she said, "Dicen que la suba de salarios genera inflación, pero los precios no los ponen los trabajadores ni el Gobierno, sino los empresarios y los grandes monopolios." ("People say that the increase of salaries generates inflation, but the prices aren't set by the workers nor the government, but by the businesspeople and the big monopolies.") If Obama were to ever say anything like that, poor David Brooks would have a stroke.

Aljazeera English reports, Kirchners' 10-year rule stirs mixed feelings Aljazeera English 05/24/2013:

Other reports on the weekend anniversaries:

La militancia kirchnerista exhibió una capacidad de movilización sin precedentes Tiempo Argentino 26.05.2013

Década ganada: "Néstor Kirchner reafirmó la soberanía del país" Cronica 26.05.2013

La presidenta llamó a "empoderar" al pueblo para defender las conquistas Tiempo Argentino 26.05.2013

Guido Braslavsky, Cristina: "A la década ganada queremos que siga otra más" Clarín 26.05.2013. Clarín generally gave good treatment to Néstor Kirchner but has been hostile to Cristina, who has put up obstacles to the large Clarín media group's expansion plans.

Santiago Fioriti, La Cámpora, protagonista del plan K para recuperar la calle Clarín 26.05.2013

Cristina Kirchner habló de "otra década más" para el modelo y negó un "fin de ciclo" La Nación 26.05.2013. La Nación, part of another Argentine media conglomerate, is the traditional newspaper of "the oligarchy" and therefore hostile to the Peronist party and to Néstor and Cristina.

Luego del acto masivo, el FPV ratificó el camino transitado en la "década ganada" Tiempo Argentino 27.05.2013

Tags: argentina, cristina fernández, kirchnerismo, peronismo

Anniversary of the 1976 military coup in Argentina

Today is the 37th anniversary of the military coup of 1976 that installed a brutal and murderous military dictatorship that remained in power until 1983. Prosecutions of officials who committed crimes during that dictatorship, known as El Proceso from its preferred name for its project of purging democracy and democratic freedoms from Argentina forever. Forever last only seven years.

Here is a report from TV Pública argentina on the anniversary, featuring a brief presentation by President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, A 37 años del golpe cívico militar 22.03.2013:

Here is a longer report of a the speech of Cristina's excerpted in the report above, Cristina inauguró nuevos Espacios de la Memoria (2 de 2) TV Pública argentina 22.03.2012:

She posted the following to her Facebook wall:

24 de marzo, un aniversario que no quisiéramos tener los argentinos, pero que tenemos la obligación de recordar. Un recuerdo que no es patrimonio de ningún sector político de la Argentina. Cuando se atenta contra la democracia, se atenta contra la forma de vida en que queremos vivir todos los argentinos. Entendamos que esta es una fecha de la democracia, que tanto costó recuperar y debemos asegurar: Lo que pasó no fue por casualidad. Si uno mira los índices que tenía el país de ocupación, calidad de vida, industrialización, desarrollo social al momento de producirse el golpe, y cómo terminamos en 1983 cuando llega la democracia, y luego lo que pasó en la segunda parte, cómo terminamos en el 2001... vemos que el mejor homenaje que se puede hacer a todos los que hoy no están, o los que están y sufrieron, es seguir logrando esta Argentina, una Argentina con mayor inclusión social, con mayor trabajo, de fábricas abiertas, de ciencia y tecnología.

El objetivo del golpe no sólo era un país sin industrias, un país donde manejara solamente el capital financiero, era además instalar en cada uno de los argentinos que no valía la pena ocuparse del otro, porque si te ocupabas del otro te podía pasar algo. El miedo. Y al miedo le siguió el egoísmo. El egoísmo es el hijo del miedo. Los que no tienen miedo son solidarios. Seguir luchando por más igualdad, por los que menos tienen, para estar siempre junto a ellos, ese es el mandato de los 30.000 desaparecidos.

Recuerdo palabras de él [Néstor Kirchner], 24/3/2004: “Hablemos claro: no es rencor ni odio lo que nos guía y me guía, es justicia y lucha contra la impunidad. Dejaremos todo para lograr un país más equitativo, con inclusión social, luchando contra la desocupación, la injusticia, y todo lo que nos dejó en su última etapa esta lamentable década del ’90 como epílogo de las cosas que nos tocaron vivir. Hermanas y hermanos, compañeros que están presentes por más que no estén aquí, Madres, Abuelas, chicos: gracias por el ejemplo de lucha. Defendamos con fe, con capacidad de amar, que no nos llenen el espíritu de odio porque no lo tenemos, pero tampoco queremos la impunidad. Queremos que haya justicia, queremos que realmente haya una recuperación fortísima de la memoria. Que en esta Argentina se vuelvan a recordar y tomar como ejemplo a aquellos que son capaces de dar todo por los valores que tienen. Una generación en la Argentina que fue capaz de hacer eso, ha dejado un sendero, su vida, sus madres, sus abuelas y sus hijos."

Página/12 reports on this message in CFK: "Esta es una fecha de la democracia que tanto costó recuperar y debemos asegurar" 24.03.2013. In it, she makes a moving statement about how the dictatorship's state terror functioned (quoted above in Spanish in a slightly different form; just after 18:30 in the last video; my translation from the video version):

... the objective of the coup was not only a country without industries, a country where only finance capital ran things; it was also to install in every one of the Argentines that it was not worth it to be concerned with others, because if you concerned yourself with other something could happen to you. Better to be concerned with yourself, and if your were concerned with yourself, nothing would happen to you. Fear. And after fear follows egoism. Egoism is the child of fear. Don't ever forget it. Only those who are afraid can be egoists. Those who are not afraid are those who practice solidarity.

She also says, "... we are going to fight for more equality, for more equality for those who have the leaset, for the poorest, to always be there together with them, this is the mandate of the 30,000 desaparecidos" i.e, the "disappeared", those kidnapped and murdered by the dictatorship.

She speaks from experience. She was a human rights attorney during the dictatorship who worked actively to help its victims. It surely one of the sources of tension between her and Jorge Bergoglio/Pope Francis I, who was anything but a profile in courage during the dictatorship, and probably actively collaborated in dishonorable ways.

I just read Emilio Mignone's 1986 book, Iglesia y dictadura: El papel de la iglesia a la luz de sus relaciones con el régimen militar (2006), which has figured in the news reports on Bergoglio's conduct in relationship to the dictatorship. Mignone's daughter Mónica was kidnapped by the dictatorship in 1976, taken from their home. Mignone and his wife Chela were never able to contact her. He died in 1998 without ever knowing for sure what happened to Mónica, or where her remains lay. Although he assumes that she was likely tortured and murdered, the usual fate of the desaparecidos.

This is how state terror works. Not only was she arrested but was held incommunicado, never given any kind of a public trial, her parents and other relatives and friends were never able to see her in prison, and never knew for sure what happened to her.

It's very common for Americans to hear something like this about another country and think how this shows the superiority of the United States and our political system to the benighted "Third World." But Americans are generally unaware of the nature of the United States long interaction with Latin America. St. Reagan approved of the Argentine junta, as Robert Perry reports in Did Reagan Know about Baby Thefts? Consortium News 07/06/2012:

Despite U.S. government awareness of the grisly actions of the Argentine junta, which had drawn public condemnation from the Carter administration in the 1970s, these Argentine neo-Nazis were warmly supported by Ronald Reagan, both as a political commentator in the late 1970s and as President once he took office in 1981.

When President Jimmy Carter’s human rights coordinator, Patricia Derian, berated the Argentine junta for its brutality, Reagan used his newspaper column to chide her, suggesting that Derian should "walk a mile in the moccasins" of the Argentine generals before criticizing them. [For details, see Martin Edwin Andersen's Dossier Secreto. {Perry's note}]

Reagan understood that the Argentine generals played a central role in the anti-communist crusade that was turning Latin America into a nightmare of unspeakable repression. The leaders of the Argentine junta saw themselves as something of pioneers in the techniques of torture and psychological operations, sharing their lessons with other regional dictatorships. ...

After becoming President in January 1981, Reagan entered into a covert alliance with the Argentine junta. He ordered the CIA to collaborate with Dirty War experts in training the [Nicaraguan] Contras, who were soon rampaging through towns in northern Nicaragua, raping women and dragging local officials into public squares for executions.

Perry's article contains other details about the domestic conduct of the Argentine junta.

The Reagan Presidential Library's website has the gall to implicitly credit St. Reagan with somehow restoring democracy in Argentina, a gag-inducing idea: "While President Reagan was in the White House, Free, democratic elections were held for the first time in many years in the Republic of Korea, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and the Philippines. By the time President Reagan left office, the number of people in Latin America living under freely elected governments tripled from what it had been ten years earlier." (my emphasis) (President Reagan's Foreign Policy: Making the World Over Again; n/d, accessed 03/24/2013)

Robert Perry also writes about St. Reagan and the Argentine junta in Ronald Reagan, Enabler of Atrocities Consortium News 02/06/2011. Ironically - or, more accurately, highly cynically - the "neoconservatives" who understand themselves as continuing the kind of policies Reagan practiced in Central America will treat even negotiating with countries with which they want to go to war (Iran, right now) as immoral connivance in whatever bad thing the regime may be doing at home.

Cristina's reference to the goal of the junta as "not only a country without industries, a country where only finance capital ran things" isn't just a rhetorical flourish. The junta, like its predecessor and contemporary in the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, set out to implement the "free market" policies that would favor American capital in particular, the policies most of the world knows as neoliberalism. But it didn't look much like a "free" free market to industrialists who were targeted by the junta for economic reasons. Investigations over the last year of the conduct of the junta office known as the Comisión Nacional de Valores (CNV, the National Commission of Values) has brought to public light information on junta kidnappings of businesspeople in 1978-9 especially, not for political reasons as such but in order to implement the neoliberal economic policies of Economics Minister José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz (1925-2013), who died just this month. Though some of the kidnapped businesspeople were accused of providing funds to guerrillas. Part of the motivation, though, may have been that they were running out of what they considered the most plausible political targets and the CNV still wanted to find subversives to fight. Something all countries should consider when building up massive internal security apparatuses, including the United States. They all need to justify their existence by showing some kind of results. And sometimes they just like exercising their power. (See Alejandra Dandan, La trama financiera de la última dictadura Página/12 24.03.2013)

Tags: argentina, cristina fernández, el proceso, evita, francis i, jorge mario bergoglio, kirchnerismo

Cristina Fernández has an audience with papa Francisco I

Argentine President Cristina Fernández had an audience with the Pope today. She raised the issue of Britain's continuing occupation of the Malvinas/Falkland Islands. (CFK: "Le pedimos a Francisco que interceda en el diálogo entre Argentina y Gran Bretaña" Página/12 18.03.2013) It will be interesting to see if Bergoglio/Pope Francis I gets actively involved in promoting serious diplomatic negotiations between Britain and Argentina over the Malvinas. In his previous positions, he has indicated his support for Argentina regaining its rightful control over the islands. But that was a very safe position in Argentine politics, since it's supported across the political spectrum.

Cristina recalled that Pope John Paul II had helped mediate negotiations between Argentina and Chile over a long-running border dispute when both were ruled by dictatorships. Since Argentina and Britain are both democratic countries now, conditions for similar negotiations over the Malvinas are more favorable, she said.

She also said they expressed their mutual agreement on the need to oppose human trafficking and slave labor. And she invited him to visit Argentina in his new role.

It's nice to know the Pope is opposed to slavery.

Cristina praised Bergoglio/Francis for referring to Latin America as "la Patria Grande," a term associated with San Martín y Bolívar, heroes of the Latin American independence movement and which emphasizes the unity of Latin American nations.

Here is the video released by the President's office, la Casa Rosada, of Cristina's press conference talking about her meeting with the Pope, 18 de MAR. Conferencia de prensa de Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Asunción Francisco I (Spanish with Italian translations):

Osvaldo Pepe editorializes in the anti-Cristina Clarín in a piece called Una oportunidad para Cristina 18.03.13. The opportunity of which the title speaks? He basically says it's an opportunity for Cristina and her supporters to shut the hell up about Bergoglio's actions or lack thereof during the 1976-83 dictatorship.

Liberation theologian Jon Sobrino discusses the new Pope in an interview published in Noticias de Gipuzkoa, "Bergoglio no fue un Romero, se alejó de los pobres durante el genocidio argentino" by Concha Lago 16.03.02013; Commonweal, which has been reporting on the questions around Bergoglio's dealings with the Argentine junta, includes a partial translation in Sobrino on Bergoglio by Eduardo Peñalver 03/18/2013.

Sobrino emphasizes his hope that Bergoglio/Francis will take seriously the need to make the Church genuinely a Church exercising a preferential option for the poor and not a Church that sides with the wealthy against the poor. He also stresses the need to improve the status of women within the Church, to give greater attention to environmental issues, and to reform the Vatican Curia. His comment on abortion in this interview is ambiguous and could be read as approval of Bergoglio's outspoken anti-abortion stand in Argentina.

On the question of Bergoglio's dealings with the dictatorship, Sobrino is careful not to accuse him of "culpability" in the dictatorship's crimes. But he effectively judges him guilty of irresponsibility and possibly even cowardice - though he doesn't use either word - by noting that he distanced himself from the "popular Church" that was actively engaged with poor communities and paying attention to their material as well as spiritual needs. Which, of course, fit in with the program of the junta for the Church.It's hard not to see a touch of bitter sarcasm in what he says of Bergoglio here:

En todo ello se aprecia una forma suya específica de hacer la opción por los pobres. No así en salir activa y arriesgadamente en su defensa en las épocas de represión de las criminales dictaduras militares. La complicidad de la jerarquía eclesiástica con las dictaduras es conocida. Bergoglio fue superior de los jesuitas de Argentina desde 1973 hasta 1979, en los años de mayor represión del genocidio cívico militar.

{In all that, one can assess his specific way of making the option for the poor. Not in actively going out and risking oneself in their defense in the periods of repression of the criminal military dictatorships. The complicity of the Church hierarchy with the dictatorships is known. Bergoglio was superior of the Jesuits in Argentina from 1973 to 1979, in the years of the worst repression of civil-military genocide.} [from the translation used by Peñalver with my corrections]

He also pointedly refers to the examples of Latin American Church leaders who literally became martyrs or who suffered or were seriously persecuted during that period because of their defense of human rights, including Óscar Arnulfo Romero of El Salvador, Juan José Gerardi Conedera of Guatemala, Leónidas Proaño of Ecuador, Helder Camara, Aloysius Lorscheider of Brazil, and Samuel Ruiz of Mexico. He says that "los mártires por la justicia, es lo mejor que tenemos en la Iglesia. Es lo que la hacen parecida a Jesús de Nazaret" ("the martyrs for justice, that is the best that we have in the Church. It is what makes it resemble Jesus of Nazareth.")

This is not, as the dissembling Jesuit Bergoglio partisan Thomas Reese might like us to believe, demanding that "every Christian" be a martyr. It's holding up the highest examples as a way of judging where Bergoglio falls on the continuum between principled resistance and crass collaboration.

Peñalver in his blog posts has been focusing on the issues raised by Bergoglio's relationship to the dictatorship. In Popes and Dirty Wars 03/13/2013, he writes:

The Church has a lot of ugly secrets in Latin America. Liberation Theology, whatever its flaws, represented — as a cultural matter — an historic break with shameful tradition in which church, army and oligarchy stood together to defend an unjust status quo, by any means necessary. Keeping silent or perhaps even working quietly behind the scenes in a few cases while thousands were tortured, raped and killed for the crime of demanding political freedom and economic dignity was — for those in a position to do more — often a form of complicity. Even that limited intercession raises questions, since it would not have been possible without ties to the murderous regime. To their credit, some in the Argentine hierarchy refused to stay quiet. Our new Pope was not among them.

In More on Bergoglio and the Dirty War 03/17/2013, he provides an article by political scientist Charles Kenney, which is the best summary I've seen in English so far on the issues relating to Bergoglio and the dictatorship, though it doesn't include anything specific about his connection to the Iron Guard group.

Tags: argentina, cristina fernández, el proceso, falklands, francis i, jon sobrino, jorge mario bergoglio, kirchnerismo, malvinas

Bergoglio/Francis' election as Pope brings new focus on some important aspects of Argentine history

I mentioned yesterday that Robert Perry of Consortium News has been using the event of Jorge Bergoglio's election as Pope Francis I to highlight some of the broader issues of the "dirty war" period in the 1970s and 1980s in Latin America that, among other things, produced the Iran-Contra scandal.

On 03/15/2013 he republished an article from 08/19/1998 by Marta Gurvich, Argentina’s Dapper State Terrorist, on Jorge Rafael Videla, who she describes as "the dapper dictator who launched the so-called Dirty War in 1976." Videla was the first head of the junta that overthrew the constitutional government of Argentina in 1976. Argentina had seen military dictatorships before, all of which brought their share of arbitrariness and cruelty. But the junta, who called their project El Proceso, took things to the next level, as we say these days.

Her article focuses on the kidnappings of babies from political prisoners, a heart-rending issue that persists today as a major concern in Argentina:

Videla, known for his English-tailored suits and his ruthless counterinsurgency theories, stands accused of permitting — and concealing — a scheme to harvest infants from pregnant women who were kept alive in military prisons only long enough to give birth.

According to the charges, the babies were taken from the new mothers, sometimes by late-night Caesarean sections, and then distributed to military families or shipped to orphanages. After the babies were pulled away, the mothers were removed to another site for their executions.

Last year I posted links to a mini-series run by TV Publica argentina, Volver a nacer, that deals with this issue in a moving way. (YouTube playlist for the entire miniseries here.)

The 2005 film Cautiva also deals with this issue and is available with English subtitles. At this writing, the film is also available on YouTube without subtitles. Here is Part 1, posted 09/27/2009. This is the video of the first part, which is unfortunately a poor quality reproduction:

Consortium News also on 03/16/2013 reprints an article of 01/07/1999 by Georg Hodel, Evita, the Swiss and the Nazis, that reminds us that the Catholic Church and the first Peronist regime cooperated to some significant degree in facilitating the immigration of former Nazis, some of them serious war criminals. Peronism was widely regarded in the United States in real time as a more-or-less fascist government. The view persists, and is reflected in Hodel's article: "During World War II, Gen. Peron — a populist military leader — made no secret of his sympathies for Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany. Even as the Third Reich crumbled in the spring of 1945, Peron remained a pro-fascist stalwart, making available more than 1,000 blank passports for Nazi collaborators fleeing Europe."

Peronism is a devilishly complex political phenomenon. Not least among its complications is that Peron did admire aspects of Mussolini's and Hitler's regimes. Hodel engages in some legitimate speculation based on circumstantial suggestions about what role Evita Perón may have played in the immigration of former Nazis.

But he makes polemical claims about Evita that are false: "Born in 1919 as an illegitimate child, she became a prostitute to survive and to get acting roles. As she climbed the social ladder lover by lover, she built up deep resentments toward the traditional elites. As a mistress to other army officers, she caught the eye of handsome military strongman Juan Peron. After a public love affair, they married in 1945." There is no evidence that Evita ever was a prostitute, that she slept her way up the "social ladder" - she always had contempt for the traditional "social ladder" of oligarchical Argentina - or that she was the girlfriend or "mistress" of any army officer other than Juan Perón. This kind of careless reproduction of gossip doesn't boost confidence in Hodel's speculations in the rest of the article.

This excerpt from the excellent 1996 Spanish-language film Eva Perón gives a sample of the contradictory nature of Evita and her politics, Eva Perón hablándole a los trabajadores ferroviarios:

The current President Cristina Fernández is head of the Peronist Partido Justicialista (PJ) and proudly uses both Juan and Eva Perón as positive symbols of her democratic and prolabor policies. What a political figure represents in popular memory and historical symbolism may be very different from what they really were. That's part of why we have historians.

These two videos from TV Publica argentina show Cristina speaking about Evita.

Cristina inauguró un mural sobre Evita 26.07.2011:

Cristina: "Evita cumplió su propia profecía de volver a una Argentina diferente" (35:55 minutes) 26.07.2012 on the 60th anniversary of Evita's death:

Tags: argentina, cristina fernández, el proceso, evita, eva perón, francis i, jorge mario bergoglio, kirchnerismo

Alibis, ahoy! Bergoglio/Francis and the 1976-83 Argentine dictatorship

The National Catholic Reporter's work around the selection of the new Pope has been mixed. On the one hand, John Allen, Jr.'s sketches of the candidates and his descriptions of the various decision factors have been very helpful.

Then there's this St. Patrick's Day column by Jesuit Thomas Reese, whose author's biography from NCR describes him as "author of Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church and was editor of America magazine from 1998 to 2005": Francis, the Jesuits and the Dirty War 03/17/2013. It's a blanket alibi for the actions and inactions of Jorge Bergoglio/Francis I during the 1976-32 dictatorship.

It ends up with boilerplate that pretty much any scoundrel could use with only slight modifications in such a situation:

More recently, Cardinal Bergoglio was involved in getting the Argentine bishops to ask forgiveness for not having done enough during the dirty war, as it was called in Argentina.

In the face of tyranny, there are those who take a prophetic stance and die martyrs. There are those who collaborate with the regime. And there are others who do what they can while keeping their heads low. When admirers tried to claim that John Paul worked in the underground against Nazism, he set them straight and said he was no hero.

Those who have not lived under a dictatorship should not be quick to judge those who have, whether the dictatorship was in ancient Rome, Latin America, Africa, Nazi Germany, Communist Eastern Europe, or today’s China. We should revere martyrs, but not demand every Christian be one.

Earlier in the article, Reese gave a clear sign that his article was hackwork:

Father Bergoglio, like Pope John Paul II, had serious reservations about liberation theology, which was embraced by many other Latin American Jesuits. As a North American I have trouble understanding these disputes since John Paul and Bergoglio obviously wanted justice for the poor while the liberation theologians were not in favor of violent revolution as their detractors claimed. But clearly this was an issue that divided the church in Latin America.

The five seven-year editor of the US Jesuits flagship journal America don't really know much a' nothin' about this here liberation theology stuff? It would be funny if it weren't such painfully bad hokum.

The issues around Begoglio's relationship to El Proceso, the dictatorship of 1976-83 in Argentina, is of course not over whether he should have been a martyr. He's very obviously not that!

The issues have to do with what role he played not only in his general conduct toward the state terror then practiced, but also in particular cases like the arrest and torture of Jesuit priests Franz (Francisco) Jalics and Orlando Yorio in 1976. His later testimony about some aspects of his dealings with the dictatorship were not fully in line with documentation of those incidents in the Argentine Church files.

It's important to keep in mind that this doesn't just have to do with 30-year-old history, though that is significant enough in itself. His new office's initial response, and those of his shameless partisans like Thomas Reese comes off to be in the article cited, to real and substantial questions about Bergoglio's role in the dictatorship and its aftermath has been to take a touchy defensive stance, accuse the critics of "anticlerical" malice, and, as with Reese, use boilerplate defenses that would embarrass a PR hack trying to gussy up the image of some nasty regime and its officials.

Horacio Verbitsky, who has researched the role of the Argentine Church during the dictatorship and was one of the unnamed targets of the Vatican's defense statement on Friday, describes some of the substantive issues in Cambio de piel Página 12 17.03.2013. Reese's polemical article mentions Verbitsky in passing, making him sound like someone who exonerates Bergoglio's conduct during El Proceso. Quite the opposite is the case.

Verbitsky notes that Bergoglio dealt in person and on apparent terms of familiarity with Admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera during the dictatorship, and that the two of them had ties to a rightwing Peronist group called the Iron Guard (Guardia de Hierro). Ricardo Ragendorfer writes about the Iron Guard and Bergoglio's history with it in Guardia de Hierro: la organización peronista en la que militó Francisco Tiempo argentino 17.03.2013. He confirms again that Friday's defensive statement from the Vatican was directed in particular at the research of Horacio Verbitsky, and lists some of the major concerns: the Jalics-Yorio case; Bergoglio's attitude toward the theft of babies from political prisoners; and, his specific relationship to Massera during the dictatorship. Ragendorfer describes the rightwing paramilitary Guardia de Hierro, of which the new Pope was a member in 1972-4, the last two years of its existence. Massera later claimed that the Guardia de Hierro, albeit formally disbanded, supported the 1976 coup.

It's not only the sex abuse scandal and the Vatican Bank about which the new Pope has some explaining to do.

Tags: argentina, el proceso, francis i, jorge mario bergoglio, kirchnerismo

Bergoglio/Francis, Argentina, the Malvinas and the shadow of dictatorship

Robert Perry of Consortium News is using the occasion of the newly public controversy over Jorge Bergoglio/Pope Francis I's relationship to the dictatorship of 1976-83 in Argentina to highlight some broader issues with the Catholic Church and the war against real and imagined subversives in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s.

In Pope Francis, CIA and 'Death Squads' 03/16/2013, he refers to Friday's very defensive and to my mind obnoxious response of the Vatican to questions raised about the kidnapping and torture of two Jesuit priests in 1976, Franz (Francisco) Jalics and Orlando Yorio. (See Vatican Rejects 'Dirty War' Accusations Against Pontiff Bloomberg News 03/15/2013) Perry observes:

The Vatican's fiercely defensive reaction to the reemergence of these questions as they relate to the new Pope also is reminiscent of the pattern of deceptive denials that became another hallmark of that era when propaganda was viewed as an integral part of the "anticommunist" struggles, which were often supported financially and militarily by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

It appears that Bergoglio, who was head of the Jesuit order in Buenos Aires during Argentina's grim "dirty war," mostly tended to his bureaucratic rise within the Church as Argentine security forces "disappeared" some 30,000 people for torture and murder from 1976 to 1983, including 150 Catholic priests suspected of believing in "liberation theology."

Much as Pope Pius XII didn't directly challenge the Nazis during the Holocaust, Father Bergoglio avoided any direct confrontation with the neo-Nazis who were terrorizing Argentina. Pope Francis's defenders today, like apologists for Pope Pius, claim he did intervene quietly to save some individuals.

But no one asserts that Bergoglio stood up publicly against the "anticommunist" terror, as some other Church leaders did in Latin America, most notably El Salvador's Archbishop Oscar Romero who then became a victim of right-wing assassins in 1980.

In regard to that last point, no one criticizes people living in a dictatorship for not seeking out martyrdom. Archbishop Romero himself was not seeking martyrdom.

But it's also a fact that some people come out of dictatorships with a record they can be more proud of than others. I suspect one reason for tension between the current Argentine President Cristina Fernández and the new Pope comes from the fact that, although she also didn't seek out martyrdom, she was a human-rights attorney during the dictatorship and actively pursued the legal defense of people targeted by the regime for political reasons. She doesn't have to claim in retrospect that she engaged in whispered private interventions on behalf of the victims.

Cristina has an audience with the Pope in Rome on Monday, the first head to state to be so honored by the newly installed Francis I. The audience will take place prior to the formal installation ceremony. Nicolás Lantos reports in La primera audiencia con Francisco Página 12 17.03.2013 that the President's office characterizes the upcoming meeting as "a gesture of good will" offering the opportunity for "facilitate an acercamiento [rapprochement]" between the two leaders, a diplomatic acknowledgement that the two have significant differences over policy. Lantos writes that their "relación cuando Jorge Bergoglio ocupaba la Arquidiócesis de Buenos Aires y encabezaba la Conferencia Episcopal Argentina no era buena" ("relationship when Jorge Bergoglio occupied the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires and headed the Episcopal Conference of Argentine were not good." Lantos reports that the meeting has an "open agenda."

The after-effects of the neoliberal policies which Bergoglio backed and which brought about the debt crisis of 2001 are evident in her trip plans. The Argentine Presidential plane, Tango One, will take her to Morocco, where she will switch to a charter plane for the trip to Rome. The reason is to avoid any attempt by US vulture funds that bought up the remainder of the bad debt held by Argentine creditors to seize Tango One, repeating an incident with an Argentine ship in Ghana last year. (See Seized Argentina navy ship Libertad leaves Ghana BBC News 12/19/2012)

Will the supposedly anti-poverty Pope provide any assistance in getting the vulture funds off Argentina's back? It would be nice to think so. But he's more likely to intervene to promote diplomatic movement on Argentine-British negotiations over the illegal British colonization of the Malvinas Islands. "In the past, the Argentine Pope Francis has insisted the Falkland Islands, which are a UK overseas territory, belong to Argentina. He has referred to them using the Argentine name for the islands, Las Malvinas." (UK welcomes election of new Pope Francis BBC News 03/14/2013) But it's worth noting that previously, that was a relatively safe position for an Argentine Church leader to take, since support for Argentine sovereignty over the Malvinas is noncontroversial in Argentine politics; even the dictatorship went to war with Britain to take the islands. Reclaiming the Malvinas by peaceful means has been a major issue for Cristina Fernández. (On Bergoglio and the Malvinas, see also Senior Falklands Islands Catholic hopes Pope 'outside politics' BBC News 03/14/2013; Ian Traynor, Pope Francis is wrong on Falklands, says David Cameron Guardian 03/15/2013)

This is a Spanish-language report from TV Pública Argentina on Cameron's criticism of the new Pope, Cameron no está de acuerdo con Francisco 15.03.2013

Perry also notes of the American press treatment of Bergoglio/Pope Francis:

It is noteworthy that the orchestrated praise for Pope Francis in the U.S. news media has been to hail Bergoglio’s supposedly "humble" personality and his "commitment to the poor." However, Bergoglio’s approach fits with the Church’s attitude for centuries, to give "charity" to the poor while doing little to change their cruel circumstances – as Church grandees hobnob with the rich and powerful.

Pope John Paul II, another favorite of the U.S. news media, shared this classic outlook. He emphasized conservative social issues, telling the faithful to forgo contraceptives, treating women as second-class Catholics and condemning homosexuality. He promoted charity for the poor and sometimes criticized excesses of capitalism, but he disdained leftist governments that sought serious economic reforms.

So far, Bergoglio's record in Argentina gives us reason to suspect that he will follow the same pattern that Perry describes here.

Tags: argentina, cristina fernández, el proceso, falklands, francis i, jorge mario bergoglio, kirchnerismo, malvinas,

Cristina Fernández and the reindustrialization of Argentina

In this speech, Argentine President Cristina Fernández discusses a new national program to construct or renovate around 17 thousan residential units, of which 13 thousand are to be new. It is expected to benefit 160 cities and generate 25 thousand jobs. She emphasized that this was part of the larger program that began with Néstor Kirchner's Presidency in 2003 of reindustrializing Argentina. 25 de ENE. Anuncio Plan "Más Cerca: Más municipio, Mejor país, Más patria". Casa Rosada 25.01.2012:

Página 12 reports on the speech in CFK: "Es básico seguir con el proceso de reindustrialización" 25.01.2013.

She calls the new residential construction plan, "Más Cerca: Más municipio, Mejor país, Más patria" ("Closer together: more city, more country, more homeland.")

The "kirchnerismo" policy pursued since 2003 involves promoting diverse economic development. This comes after a nearly 30-year period of neoliberal economic policies, first imposed by the military dictatorship of 1976-83 and continued through the Presidency of Eduardo Duhalde (Jan 2002-May 2003). Allowing the "free market" to operate according to the principles favored by the IMF that eventually came to be known as the "Washington Consensus," Argentina's export industries (agricultural exports, natural gas) and financial speculation prospered, at the cost of vastly increased financial instability, falling real wages, vastly increased public debt and a major loss of sovereignty to foreign capital and international agencies like the IMF following austerity policies like those currently doing such enormous damage in Europe.

Part of the challenge in maintaining the policy of balanced, diversified development has to do with the currency effects of exports at times when exports are doing particularly well. If the Great God Free Market is allowed to manage this process unguided by government, export items like energy-related resources will increase in price domestically because they are more in demand in the world market. This can create "imported inflation."

Rising prices for major exports is a good thing, up to a point. They can also become too much of a good thing, especially in a developing economy like Argentina's. Because as they become more profitable, they begin to attract more foreign capital, again something that can be a good thing in itself. This creates pressure for the currency to appreciate. But that first hits the newer, developing industrial exporters that the country is actually trying to develop for the good of long-run national performance and for the immediate employment opportunities they create.

So the Argentine government is attempting to optimize benefits from prosperous exporting industries while not sabotaging their own policy of balanced, diverse development and reindustrialization. That and their on-going disputes over Argentine debt held by vulture-capital funds also requires the national treasury maintaining a certain supply of dollars and placing limits of the amount of currency exchange into dollars, as well as other kinds of export controls.

One immediate result of that balancing act has been a significant amount of inflation the last few years. Inflation can be very damaging, and not just to the wealthy, as Argentina itself experienced under Duhalde when he drastically devalued the peso under conditions that maximized the inflationary impact. But where, say, 10% inflation sounds like the end of the world to many affluent Americans, it doesn't necessarily sound like such a catastrophe to people in a developing country like Argentina that has seen tangible benefits from steady, sustained economic development since 2003.

One tangible result that Cristina mentions in the video above that would also sound good to most Americans is a 233% increase in supermarket sales since 2003. Ordinary people being able to buy a lot more groceries sounds like a palpable increase in well-being for the country. Even though the Argentine oligarchs might have preferred greater opportunities for financial speculation for themselves over that benefit for the majority of the country.

Diego Rubinzal, citing earlier periods of sustained, relatively rapid development in Argentina, Brazil and South Korea, notes that significant inflation can be concurrent with strong growth of GDP. (Puja distributiva Página 12/Cash 13.02.2011) He notes that the conventional solution that orthodox economists would recommend to control inflation would be to put a damper on economic growth. But that solution also has very real downsides, although it should be noted that the inflation problem in Argentina is generally recognizing as being real, though there are ongoing disputes about its actual severity, which is likely worse than the official statistics indicate. It's not the situation we currently have in the US, where not only is inflation low but long-term indicators of future inflation like US Treasury bond rates show no immediate inflation danger, but conservatives have been issuing hug-inflation-is-just-around-the-corner jeremiads every since 2009.

But Cristina's government isn't adopting the austerity route, though Argentina's limits on access to credit markets does mean they have to pay particular attention to budget balancing. Though contrary to the austerians in Europe and America, that does not have to be done by measures that directly damage workers and the poor.

The text accompanying the video at the official Casa Rosada Presidential website is as follows:

Viernes 25 de Enero de 2013, Buenos Aires: La Presidenta Cristina Fer[n]ández de Kirchne[r], encabezó un acto en Casa Rosada, para anunciar la construcción de viviendas. Allí, llamó a "seguir avanzando en el proceso de reindustrialización del país". Además, vía teleconferencia, inauguró obras en Campana, Rosario y Mar del Plata.

Durante el acto, la jefa de Estado anunció el inicio de obras para la construcción de casi 17 mil soluciones habitacionales financiadas con fondos nacionales. Además, se firmó el convenio para la Comisión de Seguimiento del Plan Integral para la Promoción del Empleo.

Las obras de vivienda que anunció la mandataria se desarrollan en el marco del Plan "Más Cerca: Más municipio, Mejor país, Más patria" y abarca 160 municipios de 14 provincias, que implicarán más de 25.000 empleos. La mayoría serán casas nuevas, además de mejorar algunas ya existentes.

Al respecto, se firmó un convenio entre los actores sociales de la construcción (Uocra, Cámara de la Construcción, Estadística y Registro de la Construcción) el ministerio de Planificación Federal, ministerio de Trabajo y los distintos gobernadores de las provincias en donde se realizarán las obras de vivienda.

Tags: argentina, cristina fernández, kirchnerismo, neoliberalism, peronism, peronismo

Peronism: Los tres peronismos

The Argentine political current of Peronism is difficult to define, much less understand. Embodied in the current ruling Partido Justicialista (PJ) of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, in the last two decades it has been the party that led Argentina to radical privatization and deregulation and then back to a period of Keynesian stimulus and assertive government direction of the economy.

Ricardo Sidicaro in his book Los tres peronismos: Estado y poder económico 1946-55/1973-76/1989-99 (2002) breaks the history of Peronism up until that point into the three periods in the subtitle. More precisely, he discusses the three periods of Peronist government during those periods.

The first Peronist government in Sidicaro's scheme was the civilian government of 1946-55 headed by Juan Perón as President. It succeeded a military government that had taken power in 1942 and in which Perón had achieved a leading role. Perón's government of 1946-55 had definite authoritarian tendencies but was a democratically legitimated civilian government.

Argentina had been ruled by military governments from 1930 to 1938, then again in 1942-46. Perón's first government came to power in an election permitted by the military. But soon thereafter he suppressed activity by other parties than his own the PJ, to a significant extent. He was considered a "populist" because he made special appeals to workers in class-based terms, with effective public assistance from "Evita", who was especially popular among workers and unionists.

But he also ran his government on a corporatist basis, using large economic organizations both to direct the economy but they also functioned to give direction to the state. This first Peronist period was heavily influenced by Mussolini's corporate-state ideas and was regarded by the US at the time as a fascist regime. Which is probably largely correct, though Sidicaro doesn't go into the vexed questions of defining fascism and situating Perón's first government in relation to it.

Juan and Eva Perón.

In that first Peronist government, the main industrial representative group was the Unión Industrial Argentina (UIA), which was superceded by the Conferación Económica (CGE) in 1952. The Bolsa de Comercio de Buenos Aires was also a key group. The institution which the government used to regulate agricultural prices was the Instituto Argentino de Promoción del Intercambion (IAPI), whose formation preceded Perón's government.

The rural capitalists, i.e., the large landowners and the meat-processing industry, were the chief opponents of Peronism. Perón called them "the oligarchy". The opposition of the rural "oligarchy" is one of the strongest continuities in Peronism from 1946 until today. The landowners' brand of conservatism was expressed from the 1930s through the fiasco of El Proceso of 1976-83 in support for military governments.

During this period, the Confederación General de Trabajo (CGT) was the umbrella labor organization, which was indirectly run by the Peronist state along corporatist lines..

The second Peronist period was 1973-76, under Presidents Héctor José Cámpora (1973), Perón himself (1973-74) and Perón's widow, María Estela Martínez de Perón aka, Isabelita. It also replaced a military government, and was overthrow by the brutal military junta which ruled from 1976-83, the members of which are still being prosecuted for the crimes they committed while in office.

The third Peronist period which Sidicaro discusses is that of the Presidency of Carlos Menem. With a brief interlude, the Peronist party, the Partido Justicialista (PJ), returned to power in early 2002. Fortunately, none of those changes of government since 1983 have involved military rule either before or after a new administration takes power.

President Cristina Fernández stands before a photo of Eva Perón with children

The post-2001 period of Peronism is qualitatively different enough from Menem's administration that it could probably be considered a "fourth Peronism" in Sidicaro's terms. Cristina Fernández' late husband Néstor Kirchner Presidency together with Cristina's have created a new variety of Peronism, which is commonly referred to as "kirchnerismo". The nature of kirchnerismo is the topic of some interesting analyses by Argentine political thinkers. Qué es el kirchnerismo: Escritos desde un época de cambio (2011) by Nicolás Freiburn et al is one of several examples of this, which I plan to discuss in later posts.

Tags: argentina, juan perón, kirchnerismo, peronism, ricardo sidicaro