Argentina elected a new president last month. Cristina Kirchner will succeed her husband Nestor next May. It was a surprise that Nestor stood way for his wife, but under the Argentinean constitution a president can only serve for two terms.
The next presidential term will be marred by a worsening economic situation, and therefore Cristina Kirchner will bear the brunt of this. Then in 2011 Nestor will return with the political capital he still has stored up, and complete the task of restoring the bosses to the position they enjoyed in the neoliberal 1990s. At least, that’s the plan.
In 2003, Nestor Kirchner became president. The government’s strategy has been to call for “national unity” to rebuild the economy and encourage a social pact between capitalist and worker, which included some reforms for the working class to alleviate the suffering of the early 2000s.
In 2001, Argentina’s banking system collapsed after a three-year recession provoked by unsustainable debt levels, and the loss of spending power caused by the austerity measures needed to repay those debts. This crisis came about because of the 1990’s neo-liberal binge of privatisations and spending cuts backed by IMF loans.
Widespread fury at the bourgeoisie led to rioting and the popular demand “out with them all!” A revolutionary crisis opened up which saw a 36-hour general strike, nationwide demonstrations and five presidents come and go.
Through this crisis, Kirchner’s predecessor and then ally Eduardo Duhalde came to power, on the basis of being a Peronist populist who could appease a radicalised working class. The Peso was devalued and fell to 3:1 with the dollar, ruining savers who had paid in when the rate was 1:1. Massive inflation resulted and poverty reached record levels.
Politically, the government promised to end the “culture of impunity” by prosecuting the perpetrators of the 1976-83 dirty war carried by the military dictatorship, and reforming the security services. For example, groups such as the Madres of the Plaza de Mayo (mothers of the disappeared) have been invited regularly into the presidential palace and courted as close allies of the government.
These human rights credentials lie in ruins, however, because of the disappearance of Julio Lopez, who was due to give evidence against soldier Miguel Etchecolatz, on trial for human rights abuses. Lopez disappeared in September 2006 and has not been seen since, and serious doubts have emerged over the quality of the police investigation. The cause of Lopez has repeatedly mobilised tens of thousands of protesters demanding his immediate re-appearance and justice against those responsible. The most recent one, in September, directly blamed the state for failing to ensure Lopez’s safety. Despite government rhetoric about ending impunity, right-wing death squads still operate and the security forces are widely suspected of collaboration. Therefore on one of its main platforms, the government has failed dismally to deliver.
Cristina won’t find the economic situation any more comforting: inflation is running at around 14 per cent. This renders fairly modest the 19 per cent annual wage increase agreed between pro-government businessmen and the unions, and has an even worse effect on those half of workers whose employers do not belong to that pact and receive far lower wage rises. The result is that only a fifth of workers have recovered the buying power that they had in 2001, before the economic crisis.
Devaluation caused a “high-dollar” model of economic development whereby Argentine producers and foreign investors take advantage of the resultant cheap labour. In turn, the demand from richer countries for these “competitive” goods and services results in them becoming ever more expensive for the Argentine worker: so workers get third world wages but pay first world prices.
As a result class conflict is intensifying. There have been wildcat actions by tube workers; their union responded with an attack on the more radical shop stewards. Nationwide teachers’ strikes have rocked the country and been met with heavy repression; chemistry teacher Carlos Fuentealba was killed by a rubber bullet fired from point blank range by the police on one demonstration. Solidarity action over the killing brought the country to a standstill. This represents a rebirth of militant workers’ action after the revolutionary crisis of 2002-3 and, after the crushing of the movement in the dirty war of the 1970’s, the coming to power of the military dictatorship which laid the basis for the neoliberal reforms. Now the employed working class has experienced a huge upsurge in militancy as it demands a return to the living standards it experienced before devaluation.
The tasks of rebuilding the strength of the workers’ movement after the failure of the 2002 revolutionary struggle is already under way, but to really begin to make gains and make inroads into the privileges of the Argentinean bosses, the workers must consign the lies of national unity to the dustbin of history. The task of creating a new mass workers party which will fight for a socialist revolution and a collectively owned economy under workers control must come to the fore in the struggles ahead.
Cristina Kirchner has been likened in the media to Evita Peron, wife of General Peron who swept to power as president in 1946. His support was particularly strong among the working class where he carried out pro-worker reforms as labour secretary before being dismissed in 1945. As president, Peron nationalised several key industries and continued improving the standard of living of workers. However, he created a tightly controlled party and trade union movement that crushed any left-wing dissent and in which supporters of fascism operated. This unstable alliance of bosses and right-wing labour came unstuck in the post war crisis of the early 1970s and was overturned by the military coup of 1976.
But the legacy of Peronism lives on in both Kirchners. The bosses’ brought back Nestor Kirchner to deal with the uprising of 2002-03 by repression and with some reforms. And it is the tradition of Peronism within the workers movement that the current wave of struggles will have to defeat. That is why revolutionaries must call for a break with Peronism and its traditions, and for the unions to build a workers party.