“Did Argentina really exist?“. This question was asked 31 years ago by an imaginary archaeologist. comedian Tato Bores . Television screens showed Helmut Strasse at 2492 in the distance. Wearing khaki pants and shorts, he was leading excavations in that country’s territory. I want to know “how and why” was in ruins. This scene made people laugh out loud. At the time, this was a criticism of the president’s government. Carlos Menem, The one who established parity between the peso, the national currency and the dollar until everything blew up during the great crisis of 2001. The figure of the playful Strasse is remembered with similar questions these days. “If it continues like this, our existence will cease.“, grumbles the grandmother at the door of a grocery store, astonished by the increase in prices. When the presidential elections are held in the country, the economy returns to its previous state, Annual inflation exceeds 140% and the dollar is once again awakening fantasies in a desperate population. Some of this pain is being capitalized by far-right Javier Milei, the poll favourite. The program that the military dictatorship could not complete 40 years after the elections that started the democratic transition. war with Great Britain It threatens to reactivate with the legitimacy of the elections held by the Malvinas Islands.
“You eat with democracy, you educate with democracy, you heal with democracy.“told Raul Alfonsin On his way to the presidency in 1983. Someone born in this century might ask sarcastically: “Did he really say that?” he asks. He delivers food on his bike. He doesn’t even know the name of the leader of the Radical Civilian Union (UCR), who made history for supporting cases against former Armed Forces commanders who supported state terrorism. His government failed to implement the certainties it proposed (nutrition, education and healing). Hyperinflation forced him from power six months ago. German archaeologist finds his own photograph among the rocks. The scene may be repeated with images of other presidents who have come after him, including the current president. Alberto Fernandez.
Poverty and hunger
Recovery of institutions under liability strong external debt It was not a sufficient guarantee of healing the social wounds that had become worse over the years and with the cyclical storms. Half a century ago, only 4% of Argentines were poor. This number will increase by 10 in 2023. Exports of processed food and agricultural-food products reached 26 billion dollars in 2021. These food sources do not reach many stomachs. 44% of children and adolescentsfood insecurity“. These draconian changes in the diet, often based on carbohydrates, began to change bodies. Unicef itself has identified the effects of malnutrition: Short stature and excess weight in the new generation. Hunger is also the driving force of a right-wing rebellion: 60 percent of young people up to the age of 24 say they will vote for far-right Javier Milei.
Argentina is so torn apart unrecognized by many travelers They come back after a while. fantasy of being youEuropean settlement in South America, fed by the assumption of the elite, has been shattered. Bonanza and misery coexist “naturally”. In 2018, right-wing president Mauricio Macri called: 48 billion of the dollar International Monetary Fund (IMF). Your friend’s efforts donald trump These bore fruit, and the organization transferred an amount of money unprecedented in its history, largely used to support the flight of capital abroad. After taking office, Fernández denounced the weight of inherited debt, but refinanced it with the IMF under conditions that caused him to lose millions of votes in the 2021 parliamentary elections and August primaries. The adjustment caused not only discontent. The fight had a name: Milei.
Children who do not understand what they read
In that distant land where great writers live Jorge Luis Borges First of all, 46% of third graders do not understand age-appropriate texts. Only 14% of poor students graduate high school with sufficient knowledge of languages and mathematics. Alejandro Horowicz is one of Argentina’s most prominent essayists and the author of ‘The Four Peronisms’; He observes the mutations with astonishment. “The right to education corresponded to a quality public education. For those born in 1950, reaching the third grade meant reading cover to cover, as well as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Today, a significant number of those school leavers are in the same building, because they cannot read or write “The school is a picnic area. And secondary school is not possible without primary school,” he tells his correspondent. But not in the books tiktok Here they encounter an angry far-right who talk to them about their frustrations. Horowicz continues: “The right to healthcare was supported by the public hospital, but today it remains defunded and under-supplied with precarious doctors and nurses and a dilapidated facility.
There is an obstacle on the way to the elections new speculative fever. Milei said it’s worth its weight”feces“and thousands of saviors appeared buy dollars. When Fernández arrived, the price of the North American currency was 60 pesos. He practiced this week 1000 pesos barrier. The impassive faces of Lincoln, Franklin, and Washington pinned to American banknotes provide the backdrop for the season’s disastrous end. Only a miracle could allow the Peronist candidate and the current Minister of Economy to do this. Sergio Massawin the elections.
The dollarizing illusion of the economy has already had bad experiences in Argentina. The persistent frenzy around the dollar as a savings and investment currency, indispensable for real estate transactions and even everyday trivialities, was identified by Tato Bores in a television program in 1962. We pay 135 for mango (peso). “If they wet our ears, we will pay 200,” he monologued in front of the cameras.
Every dark age points to the same problem. “He who bets on dollars loses”“The Dictatorship’s Minister of Economy, Lorenzo Sigaut, said in 1981. The Argentine peso collapsed by 30%. “I spoke to them with my heart and they answered me with their pockets,” lamented the Minister of Economy in 1988. Juan Carlos Pugliesepowerless to contain hyperinflation During the first post-dictatorship government. Three years later, Sunday Cavallo, An official of this military regime, the recycled helmsman of the Menem economy, pegged the price of the peso to the dollar and predicted sixty years of prosperity. Everything fell apart in December 2001.
Bores’ jokes from 60 years ago have strong validity today. “All Argentinians wondered what would happen,” the comedian said.We have all the dollars in the world“. On that day, “We will go to the USA and they will have to surrender the country to us.” According to official figures, the Argentines said, There are 428 billion 635 million dollars of assets abroad real and legal persons. This figure almost doubles the external debt and is close to the country’s GDP. Most of this money is the result of export-related smuggling and maneuvering.
environmental disasters
An old, self-flagellating joke that could sum up a history of failures referred to the great paradox of this country: four climates, rivers, a large sea platform and very fertile land. It was a gift from heaven, but God added a clause that turned the advantages into disadvantages: “We will fill that region with Argentinians“. The joke no longer corresponds to reality. Record fires destroyed more than 1.2 million hectares. long drought It affected millions of hectares in the central region. heat wave They were extreme. The agricultural frontier is expanding with soybeans and extensive livestock farming increasingly eroding the soil. Five million hectares were used for soybeans in the nineties. Today there are 18 million. Glaciers are receding.
87% of Argentina’s energy fossil fuels. “There’s a dream of abundance that still exists and is associated with the vision that nature should adapt to the economy and not the other way around. I think we need to talk about something beyond the development issue, in this sense, the place that the development issue has in the narratives of the elites. progressivism or neoliberalism. Economists are unaware of the environmental problem, researcher Maristella Svampa tells EL PERIÓDICO of the Prensa Ibérica group. He wrote a book that served as a wake-up call: ‘Ecological collapse is already here’.
According to Svampa, there is still belief in the idea that Argentina is an endless storehouse of resources. “It is a kind of fetish in which the belief that exploitation opens the door to shortening distances with the core countries.” Therefore, we are talking about the extraction of gas from underground (break) or lithium, regardless of environmental limits. “Elites argue that money from raw materials will be used to alleviate poverty. But by the end of the progressive cycle (2002-15, with Kirchnerism) rich sectors benefited more and poverty was not solved”. According to him, there is still a strong “fossilist consensus” in all political forces. “This closes down any discussion of environmental impacts.” And something worse: “Argentina has no roadmap for energy transition nor integration policies, nor coming.” Of all the presidential candidates, Milei is the only one who has not done this. I believe in climate change. He says it’s an invention.”cultural Marxism” and if they come to power they will spit on the Paris Agreement.
snake egg
Climate denialism is complemented by the rejection of consensus about the horrors of the last dictatorship and the destruction of a guiding idea of too little obedience: Where there is a need, there is a right. Social justice is “an aberration,” Milei said. The phenomenon it represents “is not born from a cabbage,” sociologist Pablo Semán, one of the academics who warned of what was coming in the desert, tells EL PERIÓDICO. A part of society gradually became “mileista”. “This started incubating in 2008“.
Semán, a student of the Pentecostal phenomenon, believes that Milei is aggressively deepening the turn to the right initiated by him. Mauricio Macri who is his guardian today, Patricia Bullrichpresidential candidate in the traditional conservative field. The pandemic was a suitable area for the spread of this radical discourse. The political leadership “irresponsibly” downplayed his rise. “Milei can’t win because she screams too much. HE Yesand leads to a wave of critical sensitivity towards the State, outbursts against politics and economics.” political “caste”, This person, who is seen as responsible for all evil, has gained supporters from those who have the least, especially male voters. Even in cities he has never visited, those who follow him on social networks are more impressed by his anger than his offers. Abolish the Federal Reserve and place economic sovereignty in the hands of the North American Federal ReserveSubmitting all worldly affairs, including organ sales, to the logic of the market.
“Caste is afraid“, the economist’s followers shout, ignoring the fact that Milei is one of his favorite children. But there is a truth to the song: more than 50% of Argentines feel a sense of fear at this point about what might happen at the ballot box this Sunday.