In other latitudes, it is not at all frequent that a politician manages to engender his own ism; to do so, he has to lead an ideological current different from those that had predominated until then and that, without encountering much resistance, ends up establishing itself as the new orthodoxy. It is what, at the time, they did Charles de Gaulle, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair by leading groundbreaking movements that would have repercussions in many parts of the planet.
In this area, as in many others, the Argentina is different. hereYes, there are many people honored in this way, perhaps because the great international tales have never had such an impact as in Europe and one-person parties have proliferated so much that it seemed relatively easy to many to improvise at first sight novel variants of the ideas in vogue, hence Alfonsinism, Menemism and countless others that would soon fall into oblivion.
Be that as it may, few isms have turned out to be so successful in Argentina, without influencing the thinking of politicians from other countries, such as the one embodied by the Kirchners. It has had a decidedly greater impact on national life than those produced by the teams of Raúl Alfonsín and Carlos Menem. A born pragmatist, after finding himself in the presidency, Nestor Kirchner began to assemble one based on pieces of matter that already existed but that others believed to be outdated. Touched up by his wife and successor Christinathe “story” made by Néstor seduced a substantial part of the electorate.
Not satisfied with inventing their own ism, the Kirchnerists assured that another, the one attributed to Mauricio Macri, it would provide them with a strong ideological enemy. It is for this reason that they were dealt a very painful blow by the decision of the target of their most poisonous darts to remove themselves from the list of presidential candidates, thus depriving them of an adversary who, both because of the unfortunate final stage of their economic management and because of the disadvantages which has given him a name notoriously related to “the contracting country”, contributed to unite them. Had he run, Macri could have won at the polls, but then he would have faced even more visceral opposition than the one that will surely try to ruin the administration of any other president from Together for Change.
Although it is to be expected that Alberto Fernandez continue trying to scare people by talking about the danger that subjects who share the ideas and principles of the hateful will return to torment them Macri engineer, You will know that the warnings in this sense had ceased to have the desired effect well before the founder of the PRO chose to step aside to play a role that is perhaps comparable to that of Lionel Scaloni in the world of football that he loved so much. excites. Because Kirchnerism is a movement that is intrinsically oppositional, it was convenient for it to have the candidacy of the man who in his own demonology embodied evil, a role that people like Patricia Bullrich will have to fulfill from now on. Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, Gerardo Morales or another Juntos por el Cambio aspirant, since for tactical reasons the propagandists of the ruling party are reluctant to bombard the libertarian with insulting epithets furious Javier Milei.
Although it is painfully evident that, in practical terms, Kirchnerism has been a disastrous failure, this is not to say that, after a brief interval, another creed with similar characteristics will not emerge based on the prejudices of those who had personal reasons for believing themselves to be victims of an unjust society that is alien to them.
With everything, although the Kirchners It was politically profitable for them to mobilize the resentment felt by so many, fanning it did not help them alleviate the many problems that had generated it. On the contrary, it would only serve to aggravate them even more, forcing the group’s leaders to try to supplement the emotional and largely negative part of their preaching with new ideas. To no one’s surprise, they have not been able to do it; like the country, they are bankrupt.
The Peronist coalition put together by Cristina, which, thanks to the extreme rigidity of the electoral calendar, still holds power despite its tragicomic ineffectiveness, is so intellectually empty that it is not even capable of producing attractive slogans. Nobody understands very well what “fight and come back” means today, which compares the alleged symbolic exile of the vice president with the authentic one of Juan Domingo Peron several decades ago; they are calling for the “return” of someone who has not left yet and continues to treat the de jure president as a docile subordinate. Although, to the outrage of the caciques of La CámporaAlberto has begun to rebel against the lady and refuses to abandon his own electoral candidacy, no one ignores that Cristina continues to be the top leader of the current ruling party.
Nor is it very clear what the most stubborn Kirchner supporters are thinking when they proclaim their resolve to “liberate the country”, a slogan that would make sense in the mouth of a sugar flake vendor who fantasized about overthrowing the government formally headed by Alberto. Sometimes it would seem that what such Kirchnerists have proposed is to defeat themselves or, at least, persuade their supporters that they are not responsible for what they have done because the real country, as opposed to the merely formal one, continues to be governed. by a ghostly dictatorship allied with the International Monetary Fund. Although there are those who say that Alberto should break with that body, which would be equivalent to declaring a new default, what they wanted to do is “liberate” Argentina from the laws of mathematics.
Demonstrations organized by government factions and leftist groups to commemorate the military coup of March 24, 1976 -a holiday that surely would have earned the enthusiastic approval of Jorge Rafael Videla and company- only served to make the prevailing conceptual confusion even more chaotic. With the exception of traditional leftists, those who participated seemed convinced that the military regime, disguised as a constitutional democracy, still ruled the country and was therefore responsible for all its many ills.
It is understandable that the Kirchneristas feel nostalgic for the 1970s and want to revive them, not only because they were younger at that time and kept all their illusions intact, but also because, over time, the military dictatorship would supply them with the most valuable part of their capital. political. Thus, it is much easier for them to attack it, as if it still existed, than it would be for them to make a serious effort to find solutions to the structural problems that for almost a century have held back the development of the country and that have provided the uniformed officers with pretexts apparently acceptable to take over government institutions sporadically. To be more precise, although the Kirchner militants insist on affirming their commitment to “memory, truth and justice”, they do not hide their willingness to replace them with selective memory, duly improved truths to adapt them to the story and a judicial system that would abstain to delve into issues involving their bosses.
In politics, slogans matter a lot. As Donald Trump and the Brexiteers reminded us, a catch-all can ensure victory for those who might otherwise be unable to achieve their goals. Unfortunately for the Kirchnerists, it would seem that shouting “Cristina or nothing” or variants, as the most fervent do, only works well in the most submissive corners of the Buenos Aires suburbs or in places frequented by rented intelligentsia.
The mood of such characters can be understood. They fear that if Cristina’s influence continues to wane, Kirchnerism will run the risk of melting like a jellyfish exposed to the sun because no one is in a position to take her place. It will be for this reason that so many militants, aware that without Cristina her activism would be meaningless, are willing to vindicate kleptocracy; they have to because otherwise it would be impossible for them to defend it.
There are many Kirchner supporters and their Peronist travel companions who have resigned themselves to suffering a humiliating defeat in the upcoming elections. Some are so pessimistic that they speculate that their eventual presidential candidate will come third, but it would be a mistake to hope that such a tremendous setback would be enough to permanently eliminate the corporatist facilitation that makes the gradual collapse of a “national project” that, until the middle of the last century, was considered one of the most promising in the entire world. Certainly, those interested in reigniting it will not lack the raw material – a sticky mix of resentments, greed, narcissism and disregard for ethical standards – that generations of ambitious politicians have used to gain the power and money that have allowed them to live well in an increasingly poor country.
