It is obligatory to vote in Argentina, and illegal not to. It's one of the laws that's taken sort of seriously, although a student of mine this morning told me he never changed residency from the interior, so he is not voting. It, like all laws, can be broken, although less so than, let's say, working here without a valid visa. However, the candidates do not need to debate. The election is on Sunday. All liquor stores and bars must be closed while the polls are open. The top four out of the more than a dozen congressional candidates, for Capital (Capital Federal is the autonomous city of Buenos Aires) had their debate late last week. It was impressive and fascinating, and of course, like all politics, somewhat a theater of the ridiculous. Everyone, though, has their eyes on the elections for the seats in the Province of Buenos Aires. The people from Capital have their own representatives, they do not vote for the candidates in provincia. The leading candidate in provincia, although by very little of a margin, is Néstor Kirchner, the predecessor and husband of the current president. Polls show that he is at a tie or a just barely ahead of one of his contenders. If he wins, but with only a small margin, of course it will be some sort of victory, but not a very good one. Provincia is stronghold of Peronismo and where "the couple" tend to be the most popular. It reflects on how weak Cristina (Fernandez de Kirchner) is. If, even in their stronghold, they can barely win, they are failing. They have alienated many Peronistas with their aggressive political style. Her first two years do not look so good. When I first got here I was caught up in spontaneous protest that was taking place throughout the country. It was my first or second full day here and my cousin had taken me for coffee in Belgrano, a mostly upper-class neighborhood. It was had been 100 days of the farmers' strike. They had stopped allowing agricultural commodities from moving from the rural areas where they are harvested/manufactured. It was a response to a completely inappropriate use of executive power. La presidenta had raised taxes on agricultural goods by a ridiculous percent (somewhere between 30 and 50, lamentably my memory fails me), but without passing at as a law through the congress. She bypassed the legislative process and then, when el campo went on strike, she refused to negotiate with them. The people were not protesting the farmers, they were protesting the absurdity of refusing to negotiate with them on the part of the government, a stubbornness that a weak economy based on agricultural commodities does not need in this global economy (even if a year ago was when only tremors of the economic earthquake to come). As a result, the country's agricultural sector was a at a standstill for about four months. There were posters all around the city of the military dictatorship that ended Peron's first presidency, when the military flew over Plazo de Mayo with bombers. The message intended was that the farmers posed the same threat as a military coup. Peronistas are not popular in Capital, so the president works in a city in which she is mocked and deeply disliked. The candidates in the provincial election have not debated because her husband refuses to, he knows that in the face of arguments and questions he will look bad. This government is spending. I am all for nationalization, after all I did go listen to the Soviet anthem, but so are many people here, they just care about who is doing the nationalizing. Like when this government nationalized pensions, without a blink and in a matter-of-fact way I was told by so many students: well, there is a need to for campaign money for the congressional elections in June. Or, Cristina did say she would pay off the Paris debt (after quoting it's number as much less than it is). None of these people believed that nationalization was wrong, none believed that there money was not going to spent quickly for anything less cynical than politics. Not the kind of politics that debates an issue, the kind that chooses Sarah Palin to garner support from evangelics for a republican presidential candidate who was never too popular with that group. The farmers' strike ended in a great Argentine drama. When Cristina ran, she made a big deal out of choosing someone from the main opposing party, a Radical. Julio Cobos was very much ridiculed by many in his own party for accepting the position. When the situation with the strike got so bad, Cristina finally decided to put the tax increase through the senate. It was a fifty-fifty vote. The constitution is based on that of the States, so the VP, in the case of a 50-50 senate outcome, casts the deciding vote. "Mi voto no es positivo"...he voted against his own running mate and got a quote put on t-shirts. A very dramatic line on a very dramatic day last winter. He was the accepted back into the fold of his own party, and Cristina has pretended like he doesn't exist. There are no juries on trials here, so the equivalent type of service is working at the ballot box. I was speaking with a girlfriend of one of my students, who is from the provincia de buenos aires, though a rich part. She said that suddenly boxes filled with ballots saying Cristina arrived to her station. Given the political profile of the country, she probably did win fairly, though it is known that politicians give the poorer people in provincia money, or a sausage sandwich and a bus ride to Capital to protest in favor of the government. Hundreds of pesos for people that have very little, and the basic, but traditional, choripan, a fixture at football matches, up north, as the Virgin was descending from the mountains to the tune of Sounds of Silence with indigenous flutes, hot off the grill, and at election time.
The debate I watched: The candidate who will probably come in first, who we would call the vice-mayor, but has way more power because BA has autonomy from Provincia de Buenos Aires, is a well put together woman. I'm sure she is intelligent, but she didn't have responses and voluntarily walked into a debate in which she knew she would have to be on the defensive. She is representing the current government of the city, the other three have a track record to attack her on. Gabriela Michetti...She will probably come in first. The guy who will probably come in fourth, because "the couple is so disliked here, was a very good debater because he used the language of the left, where he is originally from. He has to defend fake leftists. His ability to attack Michetti was very good. Easy: Mauricia Macri, the head of the government in the city, ran as an opposing ideal to the Kirchners, but the congress, which is very much controlled by the couple, for all of their posturing, has passed almost (if not all) of Macri's proposals into laws. They talk about the horror of the neo-liberalism of the awfully corrupt 90's, but have not done anything to reverse the trends established under Menem. Out of the top four, I like the most to the left who wore turtle necks with blazers in weird colors and looks older than his age and makes great documentaries. He sold me. Plus, it was very funny to see him go after the kircherista candidate who was pretending to be on the same side of the political spectrum by just telling the truth. Argentina used to be looked at as "ahead" of all of its neighbors. I have students that have travelled for work to Chile and Brazil. They talk about how those countries are going forward while Argentina falls lower and lower while the government lies about it. The president of Chile is a serious woman, Bachelet, a person more than a parody of women. Cristina never wears the same outfit twice and dresses in theme. When she was in France she wore her hair a certain "French" way, when Bill Clinton was here recently, she went to dinner with him in a "90's fashion." She always displays different members of her extensive hand bag collection. Her make-up is the butt of political cartoons, and on one of the most popular TV programs, which satirizes all the main politicians, she is played by a man. She as that drag queen sort of flair with her dramatic self-presentation. Brazil has Lula. They have more poverty, but it's a bigger country, and it seems to be going forward, and he seems more regionally and internationally credible. I found it so offensive to call the president her first name, very sexist. However, there are two President Kirchners, and she insisted on changing the word la presidente to la presidenta to further feminize it. Uruguay is considered one of the least corrupt countries, maybe least corrupt in South America and less so than many countries in Europe (according to the Spanish newspaper El País).
I was here when the first president after the last military dictatorship died. Raúl Alfonsín died right before I went up north. Not perhaps the best politician, but his death was another way to look back with nostalgia at a time when politicians were not corrupt. That would mean maybe less than five out of the last more than fifteen years, and he mismanaged the economy. His death put Reagan's to shame. His body was put out in the congress for a day and approximately 70,000 people went to go see his body. I went. I went because I felt like I could experience something truly historical in my time here: The person who symbolizes the return of democracy's death, something larger than myself. He was a Radical, a very popular party in Capital, the leading opposition to the Peronistas. Grown men were crying, the city was a at a stand still. But BA is always still BA, and portenos will be as they are. The scene was chaos at the congress. An uncountable amount of lines crunched into the length of two blocks. There were, police, but the weren't managing anything. Perhaps a sign that I have embraced the humor here, but it was quite funny: Two older women who were obviously skipping a section of the line by accident because it was impossible to discern any organization to the line system. You have people in a state of mourning, and then you have men no older than their early thirties yelling at them, saying "Old Peronist Cows, stop trying to skip everyone and go to the back of the line where you belong." Unbelievable. I never made it into the congress because I wasn't prepare to wait seven hours. I had weird reasons for going. Maybe a bit perverse. I find the whole putting-the-body-out-for-thousands-of-crying-people thing totally bizarre, I felt like I was in history and watching how people act and react in scenes like that is amazing. My best Argentine friend was not even born when until the end of his presidency and she stayed in her house crying for a whole day about his death. This theme of romanticizing when it seems to be something that was never personally experienced is everywhere, and it is so powerful. If affects elections, emotions, language. I keep coming back to this concept of nostalgia. All states rely on some mythologized past, and perhaps the past is nothing more than myth, but a daily life (everywhere, but manifested in different forms) that is constantly making references to past that is conveniently mythologized in the lamentation of the moment, brings us to constant state of mourning, and the contradiction between passion and resignation.
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