The Supreme Court left Cristina Kirchner’s conviction in the road case: six years in prison and perpetual disqualification to exercise public office. They signed Horacio Rosatti, Carlos Rosenkrantz and Ricardo Lorenzetti. In judicial matters, the matter is closed. But in politics, what was closed is just a chapter. Is this the end of an era or the beginning of a strategy for CFK to become something stronger than a candidate: a symbol?
Since he went to answer, Cristina armed the stage. In a message with surgical scenery, from the headquarters of the PJ pointed against the “Judicial Party”, he spoke of proscription and suggested that economic power needed to get it out of the game. He launched criticism of Héctor Magnetto, the historic CEO of Clarín, and treated the supreme judges of “monigotes.” The tone, far from a retirement, was the one who is still on the court. Maybe not as a player, but as owner of the ball.
It is not a new idea. CFK has been rehearsing the role of persecuted for a long time. In his allegation he said that the sentence was written before trial. He talked about media and judicial execution. And of the attempt to leave her outside the system, although her political capital remains intact.
That figure – the cornered but active leader – connects with a very Peronist logic: that of the sacrifice that legitimizes and matches the creator of the movement, Juan Domingo Perón, who spent 18 years in exile, proscripted, but governing the party to remote control. Cristina, proscribed, also ceases to be the option on the ballot, but can become a banner. In this case, its exclusion, for the most faithful sector to it, does not erase it: it multiplies it. Leave it in a position to bless, veto or mold the one who comes. And at the same time triggers the fear of those who already suffered the “foster” of Cristina. Governors, mayors, trade unionists. Everyone accompanied in each choice, but when they won they felt excluded. This time the experience provides a different temperance: the trade unionists are cautious, the Peronist governors almost or listened to and the mayors are expectant. The hunger games are about to begin.
The conviction, from a pragmatic point of view, ends up ordering what Cristina Kirchner did not know how to order: the succession of Peronist leadership. Until a few weeks ago his headquarters was discussed by Axel Kicillof. Now, your situation places it in a different position: it can influence, order, point. Convert your condemnation into a story. And that story, held. Not with the classic style of the office and the pen, but as head of a narrative that others cannot write.
Cristina’s martyr had a necessary previous step, which was to announce her candidacy in the third electoral section of the province to get up at the judges and put them in the dilemma of condemning a potentially winning candidate. Unlike what he always does, delay the nomination until the last moment, this time he rushed because he knew that his sentence was being cooking in the highest court. That would allow him to talk about proscription, although the truth is that the evidence in the road file is devastating against her.
The cause. In the file it was determined that there was an institutional structure mounted to systematically benefit Lázaro Báez, Kirchner’s personal friend. The nucleus were 51 tenders in Santa Cruz, granted almost exclusively to the Austral Group. 80 percent of the national road work that went to Santa Cruz ended in its companies. The silver was by decree, without going through Congress. Focus was made on Decree 54/2009, which enabled the discretionary use of the road trust. For the judges, that firm of Cristina Kirchner was another piece of the gear. For defense, it was a general norm, in force until today.
What broke was parliamentary control. For years, the budgets for Santa Cruz arrived at Congress cut or disguised. The Prosecutor’s Office called him “informative blackout.” In parallel, the technical expert opinions (five in total, but all with irregularities) served to show the other face of the system: routes that were charged and did not do, unfinished works and advanced payments to construction companies with little more than a seal. The commercial relationship between Báez and the Kirchner was not denied either. On the contrary, the defense recognized her. Hotels, rentals, transfers. For the judges, that was the background reason: the economic link that closed the circuit. And to that were added text messages from former Public Works Secretary José López, who talked about the “Cleaning Plan”, recovered from another cause. Although the defense questioned its legality, the court read them as a clear sign that, at the end of Cristina Kirchner’s mandate, they knew there were things to hide.
There were also reports of the AGN and administrative stationery that joined without oral debate, another point of rubbing with the defense, which raised it as a violation of the right of defense. But for the judges, the combo reached. It was not necessary to prove that Cristina signed each file: it was enough to demonstrate that he knew, sustained and did not stop. That was what they wrote. And that is what is now discussed in another plane, more narrative than criminal. This was the main criticism made by the Court to the writings of Carlos Beraldi, the former president’s lawyer.
One of the flanks that the defense lawyer most exposed were the links between judges and leaders opposed to Peronism. He showed photos, spoke of Paddle matches with Mauricio Macri, put together the map of affinities, but never finished explaining why that would invalidate the impartiality of the court. The Court marked it: a lot of signaling, little concrete demonstration. Nor did he accept that the commercial society between Cristina and Lázaro Báez, a fact that, for the judges, signs the condemnation would accept without gutting. He did not try to discuss the criminal relevance of that bond or disassemble his logic.
Another point that highlighted the ruling was the failed timing. Beraldi did not seek the messages taken from José López, who were later a key part of the ruling. He did not objected them when the Prosecutor’s Office presented them, and when he wanted to react, it was already late: the test was inside and with a bow. For the Court, what was not there was a solid legal strategy. And that emptiness ended up playing against: he gave air to the hypothesis that Cristina chose the political fight because in the technical-legal field there was not much left to do.
Reaction. At the same time that the failure came out, Kirchnerism was activated as if they had pressed a red button. There was no surprise, but I did reflect. Cristina went from condemned to victim and the narrative reorder with surgical speed: this is not justice, it is persecution. That same night on Tuesday, June 10, militants began to arrive first at the headquarters of the PJ on Matheu Street and then to her house as if it were a cathedral of the aggrieved. Fogones, songs, flags, old glories of Kirchnerism and new faithful. Cristina came out twice to greet. He did not speak, but he did not need: with the gesture he achieved to light the liturgy.
But the day also had overflows. There were highway cuts, airplane arrest and even a group of militants entered the TN facilities, the Clarín group news channel with a mixture of anger and adrenaline. There were shouts, songs against Héctor Magnetto, stones and damage. The cars of the journalist Marcelo Bonelli, the consultant Jorge Giacobbe and other workers as a dressing room, a editor and a cameraman broke.
The next day the novelties continued: CFK requested the house prison and requested that it be in the coqueto department of San José Street, corner Humberto Primo, in Constitución. It is the department of his daughter Florence, with whom he lives since the days after the murder attempt he had in September of 2022. Pinotea floors, marble details, a stately style and ceilings 4 meters high. And below, as an entrance, an allegorical Iron Gate. The choice of the place has a fundamental reason: being close to his daughter Florence and his granddaughter Helena. In a report with Pablo Duggan in C5N in 2023, the former president said: “My daughter needs me and I feel that if something happened to me, she would suffer a lot and could aggravate her pathology, her illness. She told me: ‘Do not think about me, do what you have to do.’ My daughter is an extraordinary woman who is sick.”
The other reason for the choice of the place has to do with the proximity with the power center. Once the foam of the crowded people down at the door of their house, the pilgrimage could begin to their own “iron door”, as in the 60s in Madrid when Argentine leaders visited Perón in exile.
Meanwhile, Cristina moves. Since Wednesday, the headquarters of the PJ in Matheu was again a thread office. Without cameras, without communications, with the presence of some mayors, trade unionists, camoristas. On Thursday, it was sought to give greater breadth to the call and Sergio Massa, Juan recordois and Guillermo Moreno participated, but no one of Axel Kicillof, his challenger in the internal of Peronism until before the conviction. Everything indicates that it will continue.
The question floats in the air: are they going to respect the symbolic centrality of Cristina or someone is encouraged to dispute that role?
For now, she achieves what few: grow in defeat. You don’t need to win an choice. It reaches him to impose the tone of the story. Its exclusion feeds the epic. He doesn’t seek to come back. Seeks to stay. From another place, but with the same weight. Not with votes, but with Aura. Convert the conviction into consecration, the judicial judgment into a flag, the forced withdrawal in the center of the scene. Become a myth.
