2002-2012: Kirchnerismo and the Rebuilding of the State

Eduardo Duhalde as President in 2002 (from Wikipedia)

Eduardo Duhalde was Argentina’s fifth president in the space of a fortnight when he was appointed by the Legislative Assembly on 2nd January 2002 to see through the remainder of Fernando De la Rúa’s term.

During the uprising of the 19th and 20th December, people had died while delivering a message to the country’s political leaders: “que se vayan todos” (“get out, all of you”). Yet Duhalde was no newcomer. He had played a leading role in the political scene in the 1990′s first as Carlos Menem’s vicepresident and then as the powerful governor of Buenos Aires province, the country’s most important and one of the worst affected by the policies of that decade.

It was not a promising start to the new era that was demanded by a public that had lost all faith in politics and politicians, after decades of helplessly seeing their living standards deteriorate under the yoke of the “new world order” that was imposed on them. Protests were frequent in the first few months of Duhalde’s term, as the social costs of the recession and devaluation reached their peak, but with strong party support, he survived the early transition.

However, Duhalde’s presidency -and his aspirations to run for a full term in elections scheduled for October 2003- was cut short as the worst example of the old politics soon resurfaced. On the 26th June 2002, a piquetero protest was violently suppressed and two protesters, Maximiliano Kosteki and Darío Santillán, died at the hands of the Buenos Aires police (also known as the ‘maldita policía‘), one of the most conspicuous symbols of corruption and decadence of the previous decade.

The elections were moved forward to April 2003. The five main candidates were again made up of familiar faces, including former peronist presidents Carlos Menem and Adolfo Rodríguez Saa (in office for one week in December 2001), and two dissidents from the devastated UCR party, Elisa Carrió and Ricardo López Murphy.

The fifth candidate—Duhalde’s choice—was Néstor Kirchner, a little known peronist governor from the southern province of Santa Cruz, who came second with 22% of the vote. Although he faced a run-off with Menem, the ex president, anticipating a heavy defeat, withdrew from the race leaving Kirchner to take office on the 25th May 2003. The age of kirchnerismo began, a model initially developed under Kirchner and still evolving eight years on as his wife Cristina Fernández de Kirchner begins her second term.

Kirchner takes charge in Congress in 2007. (from Wikipedia)

A New Era of Politics?

Few people would question the fact that the arrival of Kirchner marked a turning point in the country’s political history. But how much of the spirit of 2001 lived on in this new political scene? Is kirchnerism a direct consequence of 2001? Did they all “go away”, as demanded?

As president, Kirchner was quick to differentiate himself from his predecessors by attacking some of the more evident symbols of the “old politics”. Despite some initial doubts regarding his capacity to take the reins of the country (La Nación published an editorial comment before he took office stating: “Argentina has decided to give itself a government for a year”), the president showed his strong leadership style by confronting powerful corporations and corrupt institutions. One of his first measures was to reform the Supreme Court and to replace some of its judges -who were accused of corruption- with prestigious jurists. He also took on the military, and in 2003 Congress annulled the so-called “impunity laws” that had pardoned officers from the last dictatorship for its crimes against humanity.

At the same time, in terms of the party political system, changes were minimal. In the midst of the crisis, the demands of the mobilised masses were transmitted in the formation of the so-called “popular assemblies”, groups of residents, overwhelmingly in Buenos Aires and its surrounding suburbs, coming together to practice grass-roots politics. However, these only lasted for a few months as they were unable to institutionalise themselves and produce the policy programme and leadership necessary to survive in the long term and to aspire to obtain political power. The dominance of the traditional parties, and especially of peronism, of which kirchnerism is an offshoot, was never truly challenged.

Since 1983, Argentina has had a national two-party system dominated by the Justicialist and Radical parties (PJ and UCR, respectively). The national prevalence of these parties has never been called into question, although smaller third parties have emerged from time to time. A few of these were, and still are, confined to specific provinces and some of them have become powerful in their own districts, often winning provincial elections (the classic example is the Movimiento Popular Neuquino in the province of Neuquén). Some of them have attempted to transcend those limits and become viable options at the national level (the more succesful of these has been FREPASO who got to power in an alliance with the UCR in 1999). More recently, the centre-right PRO and Socialist party have been successful in Buenos Aires and Santa Fe respectively, but they tend to lack the territorial strength and ability to expand geographically without resorting to alliances with one of the “big two”.

Indeed, both peronism and radicalism have extensive political networks and localised grass-roots activist groups built over decades of political activity and relations of patronage, which are the base of their power. In the case of peronism, this set-up tends to strengthen the power of the governors, thus explaining the prevalence, to this day, of conservative caudillos in many provinces, which hinder the emergence of renewed leaderships.

As political scientist Andrés Malamud, one of the authors of the recently released book ‘La política en tiempos de los Kirchner‘ (‘Politics in the Kirchners’ years’, Eudeba) points out, rather than weakening this structure, the kirchnerist years have produced a “recharged two-party system”. The electoral reform introduced by President Fernández in 2009 will likely deepen this bipartisanship.

President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in 2010. (from Wikipedia)

The Memory of 2001

Political institutions are only part of the picture, however, and even though it is clear that they have not all “gone away” as the people demanded, it cannot be denied that the political culture in the last decade has simply not been the same as in previous decades.

Both in speech and in action, the Kirchners have put politics back on the agenda. The authoritative central role regained by the state, after being relegated by “the market” for too long, is a testament to this.

The neoliberal ideology that dominated in Argentina for 25 years is not only an economic policy, but a way to understand and to exercise politics. It proposes technocratic governments whose job it is to apply objectively formulated policies, leaving no room for debate and denying the conflicting nature of politics -and therefore, politics itself. The crisis of 2001 in Argentina showed that the supposed objectivity and neutrality of neoliberalism was false and that, after 25 years, there were clear winners and losers.

Kirchnerism, on the other hand, has based its political style and rhetoric around the notion of conflict. By doing this, it has recovered some traditional peronist forms of discourse, such as the building of an adversary, and an “us and them” dynamic. Much of this style borrows from the concept of “agonistic democracy”, a way of understanding democracy as an expression of dissenting points of view, whilst accepting that an absolute consensus is impossible to achieve. In this view, the main aim of the democratic system is to channel the hegemonic struggles within society -in order to avoid them being expressed through violent means- but without denying them.

Whilst some find this political style aggressive and violent, recovering the notion of conflict has given public debate a renewed vigour. Many political, economic and social debates which were unthinkable a decade ago have been put on the public agenda. These include the role of the state, the role of the corporations (economic and otherwise), minority rights, sexual, reproductive and gender issues, the role of the media, the country’s insertion in the global system, to name a few. Politics has been brought back to the centre of the stage -and that can only be good for democracy.

2001 also marked a generational change. The devastation brought about by the military dictatorship amongst the politically-engaged youth produced what is usually called “a lost generation” amongst those who came of age in the 1980s and 1990s. The social discipline imposed by economic hardship did the rest. The last decade, however, has seen the development of the generation who witnessed first hand, in 2001, the power of a mobilised society. While the continuity in the insititutional conditions means that this did not necessarily translate into the creation of new political parties, there is a new generation making its way from within the traditional political identities and through alternative social movements.

This engaged generation is arguably the most important legacy of the 2001 crisis, and a powerful constraint on the activities of the political class, as evident in the kirchnerist policy not to suppress political protests with force. In the last year, President Fernández has given a rising importance to the notion of generational change, both in her speeches and in her actions. The increasing influence of peronist youth group La Cámpora is probably the best example of how the new generations are being integrated into politics.

Traumatic events can often be cathartic and open the way to new and -sometimes- better things. They always leave traces in those who suffer them. The 2001 crisis became one of the most important events in the last few decades, in a country with an already turbulent history. We are only now beginning to see the mid-term effects of the crisis on the political system, and must not forget that deep, structural changes can take many years to manifest. Even though many negative aspects of everyday political practices have not been resolved, the capacity of the democratic system to adapt and to survive the 2001 crisis – something that would have been much less likely a few decades ago – is a good sign of maturity for a relatively young democracy.