Paul MoyanoFor a change, he was furious. He walked the walls. He had it decided, and he circulated it to whoever wanted to hear it: he was going to resign from his position in the dome of the CGT. The President had met for dinner with the other two leaders of the workers’ union to exchange ideas for the event on October 17, but no one had notified him. they had left him out, by the way. That night, September 26, hardly anyone slept in the trucker’s circle, starting with him.
The morning of the following day was for Alberto Fernández something very similar to deja vú. He was again in the Quinta de Olivos picking up a phone to beg his interlocutor not to get off the boat. He was Moyano Jr., just as at the beginning of the year the one who told him that he was leaving had been Maximo Kirchner, when he left the leadership of the ruling bloc in Deputies and never again exchanged a word with the President. But with the truck driver, Alberto did a little better. Pablo finally did not leave the workers’ central, and they say next to him that this was by direct order of Hugo, not because of the presidential call. That yes, it could not avoid the fragmentation of acts that finished undressing before the whole country the terminal state of the Front of All.
In that September phone call, the president’s explanation for the snub (“I told Daer and I thought you were coming with him”) was not enough. Neither was the invitation to dinner, which took place on the night of that day. On the emblematic date of Peronism, on the central stage of Argentine politics, which is the May PlazaPablo ended up sharing the stage with the President’s other adversary, the son of Cristina Kirchner. It was the formalization of a tactical alliance that shakes the ruling party and that generates fights in all the terminals of Peronism.
back room
This anniversary, with the stage set up in the middle of a half-filled Plaza, was far from resembling what had happened in that same place 77 years ago. Firstly because the leader of Peronism -such as Fernández, president of the National Justicialist Party- was not even invited, and secondly because the bulk of the darts that were launched on this day had him as the recipient. Alberto also suffereda few meters from his office in the Pink House, a political rude of magnitude. Swarming through the crowd were two ministers of the once tough Albertism, Gabriel Katopodis, from Public Works, and Jorge Ferraresi, from Habitat. Rumors about both grow daily that, as Juan Zabaleta did and in the near future Juan Manzur will do (see box), they left the Cabinet to return to their respective mayors in the suburbs.
Máximo was one of the speakers at the event, and fired ammunition against traditional trade unionism and, on a smaller scale, against the direction of the Government. But Pablo, whose speech was announced, preferred silence, an attitude that attracted attention. “Hugo told him to stop screwing around and not to talk, that he had already made quite a mess with the act itself,” they say in the corridors of CamionEros. The photo of Pablo and Máximo, the two smiling sons, above the stage, circulated through all the conversations of the ruling party. That’s right.
The truck driver and the camper, who strengthened relations during the macrismo – with a key intermediation of the current Minister of the Interior, Eduardo “Wado” de Pedro-, represent the extremes in each of the worlds in which they orbit. Pablo is, for the bulk of the trade union world, a savage who inherited the worst habits of his father. They treat him as unmanageable, unpredictable, they say that he thinks only of himself and his people and that he strikes first and then negotiates: almost a carbon copy of what the bulk of Peronism thinks of Máximo.
But the similarities -in addition to being first-time children of a politically emblematic family- go much further. It is that both are united by fear. The first coincidence was the resistance to macrismo. Both Pablo and Máximo faced the fight against the government previous when many in unionism and Peronism chose to maintain a friendly relationship with the administration on duty (among them, Pablo thought, was Hugo, with whom he spent entire months without speaking). The episodes of opposition to the 2018 labor reform attempt, led by the trucker, brought them closer. The relationship was strengthened during 2021, as the Frente de Todos was breaking down.
Both, too, share enemies. The two have a long quarrel with traditional trade unionism, which they consider pactist and pragmatic for others, and with Justice. The ghost of a multiplicity of causes that, they suspect, can advance if the winds change, lurks over both of them. There they share another idea. TBoth Pablo and Máximo are more than disappointed with the course of the Government, and they share the intimate belief that the 2023 elections are lost. Several who were in the back room of the act of the 17 invite you to read what happened in that line. “It is that we have to prepare ourselves for what is to come. The right is going to win and it is going to come for the labor reform and for us, they are going to want to put us in jail”, says a historical side of Moyanism.
There is a sensitive fiber there that nobody wants to talk about, and that is hidden in plain sight. It is the weakness that hides behind both: La Cámpora is no longer the unstoppable organization that fell in love with all the youth, while the K legacy turns sepia and threatens to achieve its worst electoral performance in history, and trade unionism in general -and Pablo, in crisis with his family and separated from the decision-making of Truckers at the national level – has less and less members and also less credibility. It is a reality that the numbers reflect. According to an April survey by the University of San Andrés, unionism has only 16% approval, while Máximo Kirchner usually leads all social disapproval surveys: 52% said they had a “very bad” image of him , according to a measurement from the beginning of October by the consulting firm Innovation, Policy and Development.
Here is the real reason for the alliance. Neither Paul nor Maximusdespite the swagger in the Plaza de Mayo and the tremors they cause within Peronism, they have the power that both parents once had. What happened on October 17 was not a show of strength, but precisely the opposite.
Blue blood
Unlike Máximo -who maintains fine harmony with his mother and is her spearhead in the political arena-, Pablo is going through a family war. The fights with Hugo are on the rise since the times of the macrismo, and now they remain as a constant ghost. Although he controls the sectional of the province of Buenos Aires, the most important, Pablo was marginalized from the leadership of Truckers at the national level due to his fight with Hugo. The very troop of that union does not see Pablo as a leader, and everyone takes it for granted that he will not be able to succeed his father in the future. In fact, despite the distance between the two, Hugo continues to be Pablo’s main supporter, and ultimately, as happened when he threatened to resign from the CGT, he orders him.
There is also a cunning double game here. Pablo plays the bad cop and Hugo the good one, in a tweezers operation that works both for the political thread and for the union. In fact, there are several who regularly walk the workers’ union who swear that the fight between the Moyanos is pure fiction. “The strong quilombo between them appears almost at the same time as the fight between Kirchnerism and Albertism. Hugo, who smokes under the water, made this theater so that Pablo would be the tough one to make him the interlocutor with Máximo and La Cámpora”, they say in those corridors.
The logic would be that behind the family war there is a division of tasks, something that, beyond speculation, happens in practice. Pablo occupied the role of the most combative of the family, which instinctively brings him closer to Kirchnerism, while Hugo, who has maintained a cold relationship with Cristina for years, maintains the dialogue with Fernández and the Government. “Alberto must be banked, he is the President”, is a maxim that the truck driver often repeats. Between Alberto and Hugo there is a cordial relationship, although the appointment without consultation of the new Minister of Labor, “Kelly” Olmos, did not amuse anyone in the trade union movement. However, Hugo, on the day of the oath, posed for the cameras hugging the new official. He maintains quick reflexes despite his age.
The one that Pablo does not tolerate is Facundo, the brother who resigned from his deputy bench and who became a staunch critic of the ruling party. In private calls him “the tourist” for his irregular relationship with trade unionism. With Jerónimo, the youngest of the clan, he maintains a certain tension: Pablo had strong clashes with Jerónimo’s mother, Liliana Zulet, Hugo’s wife.
The management of funds from the Camioneros social work is the background of that crack, since that is the big box that the unions control. This is a crucial issue at present for all the large unions: the State maintains a debt with them that is estimated at 15 billion pesos. Those who know the cloth say that the act of the CGT in Obras Sanitarias on October 17, in which the traditional unionism surprised by requesting greater participation in the lists next year -in addition to the criticisms it launched against the Government-, it is necessary to read it along these lines: with a membership that tends to decline, with the ghost of labor reform looming after 2023 and with State payments to social works frozen, the possibility of equalizing the loss of power is through a greater number of deputies and legislators.
the sky by assault
For Máximo it is also a profitable alliance. La Cámpora was never able to gain a foothold in the trade union world, where they are viewed with mistrust. For CFK’s son it is a pending account. Since he has chaired the PJ of Buenos Aires, he has done field work and incorporated several representatives of the union world into the party’s table. There is also a strategic move there. Máximo shares the fears that run through all of Peronismwhether political or trade union: it is the ghost of the left, whose union representation has been growing and which, in fact, achieved an important victory in the tire workers’ union.
In any case, the Moyano-Kirchner affair was born and lives more out of necessity than love. And in Peronism, from 1945 to this part, there is a maxim that never fails: the other is only accompanied to the cemetery gate.
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