Peronism – “the common sense of Argentines” – is fighting to the death against its ancestral enemy: inflation, that is, against itself, since from the day it was born, the movement founded by “the general” depends on its ability to distribute resources among those willing to provide it with the votes it needs to maintain its hegemony.When such resources began to become scarce, the first Peronist governments began to create money ex nihilo, flooding the country with banknotes and thus causing the prolonged inflationary process that, over the years, would make Argentina an economic swamp that only the most imaginative, or deluded, investors would dare to explore.
Although a Peronist president, Carlos Menem, managed to curb inflation by applying remarkably “liberal” measures, the fiscal discipline that would have allowed him to eliminate it completely was foreign to him, so that, over time, everything would return to normal. Alberto was not completely wrong when he stated that inflation is largely “self-constructed” because “it is in people’s heads”, but he forgot to say that those most affected by the strange disease that he diagnosed are politicians like him who, without paying paying attention to the concrete evidence that surrounds them, they insist on behaving as if Argentina were a much richer country than it actually is. Such an attitude helps them to add votes but, unfortunately, the consequences of his principled myopia have been terrible for tens of millions of families. Although few do it with as much tenacity as the Peronists, all professional politicians cling to the positions they have been able to win and try to defend their collaborators. It is therefore logical that, as the socioeconomic disaster worsened, the public sector they manage has reacted by recruiting more people.
It is their way of fighting against poverty that the politicians themselves cause when they stimulate inflation. Today, the most determined to continue fattening an already clinically obese state are Kirchnerist officials who consider the upcoming elections for lost. In addition to worrying about their personal future, they feel obligated to help family members, friends, and others who might be of use to them survive. It is for this reason that Axel Kicillof saved Victoria Donda from the sad fate of those expelled from the political class by appointing her to a ghostly position, that of “Undersecretary for Analysis and Strategic Political Monitoring” of the Buenos Aires government. She understands herself: it is always necessary to lend a hand to militants who have fallen into disgrace and in this way ensure the loyalty of those who might be tempted to change their boss. Peronism and, to a lesser degree, the UCR and parts of the PRO, are structurally inflationary.
With few exceptions, its leaders are convinced that the best way to solve the most urgent problems, such as those posed by extreme poverty, citizen insecurity and educational deterioration, consists of giving more money to the relevant departments. Although committing to do so can be electorally profitable, it also serves to boost inflation. Likewise, it guarantees that those who are preparing to oppose a government forced to combat the scourge will not lack compelling moral arguments: they will be able to accuse it of indifference to the educational deficiencies of young people, of wanting to starve the poor or enslave them, forcing them to do demeaning jobs and, if it seems advantageous to allude to such a stinging issue, to refuse to support the security forces so that they fight against drug traffickers and common criminals that infest urban centers.
The Peronists are already equipping themselves with rhetorical weapons that they will use against an eventual government of Together for Change that, they foresee, will begin its administration with a very severe adjustment. Some feel so impatient that they have already begun to test them by attacking Alberto Fernández and, in a less frontal way, Sergio Massa. With the presumed approval of Cristina, La Cámpora has adopted an ambiguous position regarding what the Minister of Economy is doing, although it is to be assumed that the boss does not want to break with the quick-moving Tigrense since it would not be so difficult for her to accuse her of being the primarily responsible for the resulting debacle. For the rest, if Massa’s “plan to arrive” fails prematurely, the bomb that, according to the macristas, Kirchnerism is assembling would explode in the hands of those who are building it, whether through treachery or because they do not know very well what they are doing.
Ultimately, it’s all the same. Is the government ruling? Often it would seem not, that its members, starting with Alberto, are so obsessed by the alternatives of the labyrinthine internal government that they have no time for matters that in their opinion are less important than Cristina’s judicial headaches. For their part, the other Peronists, whether they are “barons” from the suburbs or less exalted members of the national political nobility, are concentrating on maintaining control over the territories they believe to be theirs by natural right.
For many, it would be calamitous to lose control of such places, which is why different members of the national cabinet, such as Juan Manzur from Tucumán and Hurlingham’s boss, Juan Zabaleta, chose to return to their respective strongholds where, they believe, it will be more convenient for them. easy to weather the storm they see approaching. Not only Peronism but also other variants of populism -a political modality that is based on the notion that you have to give the people what they ask for without asking where the necessary resources will come from- are intrinsically incapable of handling economic crises like the one that is taking place. impoverishing Argentina. They can only take advantage of them, which they do by taking it out on those who seek to overcome them, thereby minimizing the chance that they will succeed. This is what has happened time and time again in recent decades. The so-called perverse cycle will continue until the disaster is so colossal that the bulk of the population comes to the conclusion that there will be no alternative but to turn its back on facile populism that, despite everything that has happened since the middle of the century, past, is still the creed of most of the political class.
For Massa, who hoped to make the hypothetical partial success of his term as Economy Minister the launch pad for an electoral campaign that was perhaps quixotic but still dignified enough to make him the new leader of the Peronist movement, the February index was a ferocious blow to the solar plexus. He knows that it will not be given to him to prevent the annual inflation rate from jumping over the symbolic three-digit barrier and then continue its journey towards the stratosphere. As much as the economists considered orthodox swear to believe that there will not be another hyperinflationary tsunami like the ones unleashed by the governments of Raúl Alfonsín and, before the convertibility plan was launched, Menem, the tenuous optimism they express is unconvincing. Without a government capable of taking more impactful measures than those tested by Cristina’s army, inflation will continue to gain strength.
It is paradoxical, but in order to solve what is commonly agreed to be the biggest problem suffered by the country’s population, a strategy would be needed that, in the opinion of almost everyone, would be politically suicidal. It is painfully evident that the government formally headed by Alberto has not the slightest idea how to deal with the economic catastrophe. Nor does he seem to have many ideas on how to solve or at least mitigate other major problems, including those raised by the expansion of the drug empire that has already established its headquarters in Rosario and is colonizing areas of the suburbs, or the activism of the Mapuches, authentic or by adoption, in Patagonia and the province of Mendoza.
Are there drug collaborators in the official ranks? There may not be any, but there is no doubt that there are characters who would be willing to cede large areas of the national territory to the still fictitious State of Wallmapu. It is a movement that is similar to others in the United States and Canada, where the claims of the pre-Columbian “native peoples” have the enthusiastic support of middle- and upper-class whites who claim to be ashamed of what their ancestors did.
Like all modern societies, Argentina is dealing not only with traditional problems related to the distribution of the economic product, but also with others, of new appearance, related to ethnic and sexual differences, which have been imported from the United States. For many members of the current Peronist government, such issues are decidedly more interesting than those that, despite their regret, have a direct and generally extremely negative impact on the daily life of virtually all their compatriots. As well as the endless infighting and, of course, the fight to free Cristina from the rule of law, they provide escapist-inclined ideologues with pretexts to focus on problems unrelated to those posed by an economy spinning out of control and far from bottom
