Argentina General Discussion 🇦🇷

[Estrella]

Where exactly do the Trotskyists do well?

In relative terms they do best among Fernandez voters, Southerners (specifically Patagonians and people from Buenos Aires province) and Gen-Zs, albeit to a far lesser degree than the libertarians.

If you want to see for yourself just check the link and scroll to the very bottom. It's a little long and it's in Spanish but it's intuitive enough to understand.

Their base is younger middle class porteños (people from Buenos Aires City), they also do quite well in Mendoza
Also, most FIT voters prefer FpV to JxC, but not by that much, and the parties themselves (especially MST) hate Cristina Kirchner

I have never seen them do particularly well in Buenos Aires Province, either on the Conurbano or el Interior

Is Buenos Aires province mostly working-class (at least in the metro area) given the province generally votes for FpV even when the city has generally voted for the UCR/JxC.

Conurbano, the ring of suburbs around the city of Buenos Aires, is very working class (though with growing gated communities) and has always been a Peronist stronghold. The rest of the province is more favorable to non-Peronists, but because conurbano contains most of the population, the province as a whole is usually safe Peronist.

[Estrella]

Looks like the farce that is PASO (aka "primaries" where no candidate has any significant opposition because if they did they'd have decamped to form their own party) will be scrapped. The government is for, JxC is against, probably because in 2023 they'd for once have a competitive primary to resolve the Macri/Larreta conflict.

Also, a poll:

https://twitter.com/AmericaElige/status/1355618581996683266

Remember when Espert/Despertar/Frente Libertario/whatevs was at like 15%? Maybe he's crashed and burned, but it's more likely that Argentine polls are just shxt (either then or now).

[Estrella]

So PASO might or might not happen; what we know for sure will happen are the midterm elections.

The lower house, Chamber of Deputies, has 257 seats, of which half are elected every two years - 127 are at stake in 2021, those that were elected in 2017. Seats are theoretically allocated to provinces by population, however there is significant bias towards smaller provinces. This, in combination with only half of a province's allocation being elected at any one time means that small parties find it difficult to break through outside the most populous regions, Buenos Aires City and Buenos Aires Province. Regionally-based parties, built around a local caudillo (usually but not always a Peronist) have tended to do quite well, though.

The current numbers are:
Frente de Tod☀s 119
Juntos por el Cambio 115
Consenso Federal 11
Hacemos por Córdoba 4
Frente Renovador de la Concordia 3
Frente de Izquierda y de los Trabajadores – Unidad 2
Movimiento Popular Nequino 1
Frente Progresista Civico y Social 1
Partido Socialista 1
Juntos Somos Río Negro 1

The upper house, Senate, has 72 seats, three for every province + the city of Buenos Aires. The ticket with the most votes wins two seats, the runner-up one. 24 seats are up for election, those in Catamarca, Chubut, Córdoba, Corrientes, La Pampa, Mendoza, Santa Fe and Tucumán.

The current numbers are:
Frente de Tod☀s 41
Juntos por el Cambio 26
Parlamentario Federal 3
Frente Renovador de la Concordia 1
Juntos Somos Río Negro 1

Seats up in the Chamber / Seats up in the Senate


Now, a short Who is Who (though I guess most people following this are already familiar with the actors, whatevs):

FdT is the oficialismo, the more-or-less centre-left governing alliance that managed to unite almost all Peronists left right and centre for the first time since the 90s. Not amazingly popular but they're doing okay.

JxC is the main opposition, a more-or-less centre-right alliance of PRO (right-liberals), UCR (big-tent liberal anti-Peronists), CC-ARI (left-liberals/Lilita Carrió appreciation club) and other smaller parties. Rather ineffective in opposition and stand to lose a lot - 2017 was a great result for them.

Consenso Federal is a sad and doomed from the start attempt to create a "third way" between two main blocks. Their ideology is a complete mystery even more than usual for Argentina and they're connected by little more than their presidential candidate Roberto Lavagna, a great and competent economist but a terrible politician.
 
Parlamentario Federal is a rag tag and bobtail technical group in the Senate that attempts to revive the old Federal Peronism, aka I-hate-the-Kirchners-but-only-when-it-suits-me.

Hacemos por Córdoba is a local party in the province of (gasp!) Córdoba. Basically Peronists - their landslide victory in last provincial election was seen as a sign that Macri is in real trouble going into 2019.

Frente Renovador de la Concordia, Movimiento Popular Nequino and Juntos Somos Río Negro are regionalist parties in a similar vein, operating in Misiones, Nequén and Río Negro.

FIT-Unidad is an alliance of small and otherwise irrelevant far-left parties (PO, PTS, IS and MST), gaining in popularity thanks to charismatic leader Nicolás del Caño.

FPCyS and their sidekick PS are whatever remains of Hermes Binner's 2011 alliance and in effect a regional party in Santa Fé, for a long time a stronghold of centre-left anti-Peronism for reasons that elude me.

Libertarians or whatever José Luis Espert's party is calling themselves today haven't won seats last time, but they've been polling pretty well lately and will most likely be able to win something in Buenos Aires.

[Estrella]

Carlos Menem has died at 90 after a long series of health problems.

A sad day, despite all the issues he had during and after his Presidency. Nevertheless, this also shows that the prophecy is coming true.

Which prophecy?

Looking at the grand cycle of Argentine history, we find that things function in roughly 70 year spans.

1810-1880
1880-1945
1945-2021

Similar to the period between 1940 and 1945, people are dying that symbolize the old culture and politics. In these years, Alvear, Roca's son, Justo all died. While now, people like Maradona and now Menem have died. This is a strong signal that the political-cultural cycle that started in the 1940's is coming to an end, along with what it represents.

Probably for the best.

[Estrella]

Looks like Argentina has taken diplomatic pettiness to a new level: the official statistics on confirmed cases etc include numbers from Falk- er, nuestras Islas Malvinas lmao

[Estrella]

Looks like Cristina is in legal trouble, again.

De qué está acusada Cristina Kirchner en la causa dólar futuro

According to the prosecutor Taiano's indictment, between September and November 2015, the Central Bank of Argentina traded dollar futures contracts on the Rosario Forward Market (ROFEX) and the Open Electronic Market (MAE).  "As a result of this operation, as of December 2015, the Central Bank of Argentina had open contracts on the ROFEX and the MAE for almost 17 billion dollars with a maximum maturity date of 30 June 2016," it said. And for that, the BCRA's board of directors extended the institution's limit to act in the dollar futures markets. "To meet these obligations, the BCRA's assets suffered losses of 77 billion pesos". [note: at the time approx. 5.5 billion USD]

Bonadio indicted Cristina Kirchner, Kicillof, Central Bank directors and members of the National Securities Commission. According to him and prosecutor Eduardo Taiano, "the fraud against the public administration was the result of the agreement and coordination of the highest state officials, who from their positions arbitrated the necessary measures to achieve it". "In accordance with the instructions of the National Executive Power, the authorities of the Central Bank of the Argentine Republic, with the necessary intervention of the National Securities Commission, sold in a short period an important volume of future dollar contracts at fictitious values, abusively obliging the entity, and therefore, society as sovereign of public assets," he said.

Judge Bonadio decided to send the proceedings to trial. In that resolution, the magistrate explained that the former president committed the crime of fraud by ordering operations to be made with the dollar in the futures market at a price well below the market price, a situation that - after the devaluation that brought the exchange rate in line - forced the state to pay the difference between the real value and that of the note at the time of closing the contract, which caused millions in losses to the treasury.

Her response was... in character, let's say. By which I mean she went on TV and yelled for almost an hour about various unrelated topics (but what about Macri and 2001 and megacanje and retirees and IMF and people's suffering, huh?).

[Estrella]

In news that's apparently huge in Argentina but totally ignored internationally, there have been massive protests in the province of Formosa against the reimposition of lockdown measures that have turned into protests against the Peronist governor, Gildo Insfrán.

Formosa is the poorest of Argentina's provinces and has traditionally gone for Insfrán by Stalinesque margins. The generous interpretation of this is that this is simply the result of machine politics, as a majority of the population is employed by the state and Insfrán regularly hands out raises. The not so generous interpretation is that hired Paraguayans are brought in for elections and anyone who raises trouble, particularly journalists, face harassment from Peronist informants, officials and paramilitaries. Thanks to Argentina's federal system and the friendly government in Buenos Aires (though to be fair Macri didn't do anything when he had the chance either) the province has turned into something like a Venezuela within Argentina.

Interestingly, Formosa is hardly the only province to be run this way. The most extreme case of this was Santiago del Estero until before mid-2000s. Here are some interesting bits from an academic paper I once somehow found.

Santiago del Estero is Carlos Arturo Juárez. I say it without vanity.
 —Carlos Arturo Juárez, 1983

Meanwhile, in the arid and impoverished northern Argentine province of Santiago del Estero, Governor Mercedes Aragonés de Juárez was presiding over the collapse of a half-century-old provincial authoritarian regime. She was the wife and longtime political partner of Carlos (“Tata”) Juárez, a Peronist caudillo and the province’s virtual political owner since he first assumed the governorship in 1949. In 2002 the provincial legislature ordered the Juárez couple’s images placed on provincial postage stamps and issued a resolution proclaiming them “Illustrious Protectors of the Province.” By early 2004, however, things had changed dramatically for the Illustrious Protectors. The murders of two young women, linked to members of the provincial elite and security services, sparked massive local mobilizations that attracted scrutiny from the national press and the central government. The dirty little secrets that had been no secret at all to provincial residents for decades were now a matter of national debate. Conflict in Santiago del Estero had escaped the parochial confines of the Juarista political system. It was now nationalized.

On repeated occasions Juárez and his wife unleashed judicial action to intimidate opponents in the media and the political establishment. Juarista institutional control was supported by its vast patronage system. Over 87 percent of the economically active population was employed by the provincial government. Where institutional control and clientelism failed to neutralize opponents, outright repression filled the void. One notable case involved El Liberal, the largest-circulation newspaper in the province. After the paper reprinted articles critical of Governor Aragonés that had appeared in national newspapers in 2002, government followers launched hundreds of lawsuits that were duly processed by local judges. Facing financial ruin, the newspaper stopped reprinting national reports about provincial politics.

The provincial intelligence system reported directly to Carlos Juárez. The Directorate of Information (known better by locals as “D-2”) operated under the direction of the provincial chief of police, Muza Azar. Azar is named in Nunca Más, the 1985 report by the National Commission on Disappeared Persons (Conadep) as responsible for the detention, torture, and disappearance of local residents during the 1976–83 military dictatorship. The authors of a report prepared in late 2003 for the national Secretariat of Human Rights referred to the directorate as a “provincial Gestapo.” The report noted that, in a province of eight hundred thousand people, the D-2 had created over forty thousand secret files on the activities of politicians, judges, journalists, clergy, businessmen, and, mostly, ordinary citizens.

At times the local opposition did manage to attract national attention to their province’s plight. The most famous of these was a two-day urban riot (known as the Santiagazo) during a provincial financial crisis in December 1993. At that time Juárez was serving a stint in the national Senate. President Carlos Menem ordered a federal intervention in the province to restore public and fiscal order. This did little to change the local political status quo, however. Santiago del Estero was a province that delivered solidly Menemista majorities in national elections. The president had little interest in dismantling a provincial power structure that served him well politically, even if he did not fully trust Carlos Juárez, its political owner.

The system of provincial power known as Juarismo thrived when it succeeded in keeping the province in a state of “rigorous isolation.” It collapsed when local politics became nationalized. The beginning of the end seemed inconsequential. On February 6, 2003, in an area of abandoned fields known as La Dársena, a woman dragging a cart braved the scorching heat to scavenge the fields for cattle bones, which she sold to make her living. On that day the seeker of animal bones stumbled upon human remains. The bodies of two young women lay partially concealed in the tall grass. Soon thereafter the murders were linked to prominent members of the Juárez political clique. This revelation and the uproar that followed provoked a successful center-led assault against the provincial authoritarian regime one year later.

Not long after the two murdered women were discovered, a provincial human rights organization named the Madres del Dolor (mothers of pain) organized a series of large silent marches (marchas del silencio) throughout the capital. The protesters received crucial support from the bishop of the Catholic Church of Santiago del Estero—one of the few local institutions with national linkages that Juárez had failed to neutralize. This was probably not for lack of trying. The previous bishop of Santiago, an articulate Juárez opponent, died mysteriously in a 1998 car accident on a rural road.

In early April 2004 President Néstor Kirchner invoked the federal government’s powers of intervention and ordered the removal from office and arrest of Nina Aragonés and Carlos Juárez. He appointed a federal “interventor” to govern the province. The president’s delegate announced the dawning of a new democratic age in provincial politics, courtesy of the central government.

(Edward L. Gibson: Boundary Control - Subnational Authoritarianism in Democratic Countries)

[Estrella]

Correct me if I'm wrong but it looks like in Argentina a party that polled strongly in the smallest regions could end up well over the national threshold but below the provincial qualification to the point where in some provinces you could get over 30% of the vote and still get no seat in a supposedly "proportional" system.

Poland also uses D'Hondt and while Poland has some degree of the same issue (PSL won 2% more votes than Konfederacja but ended up winning triple the seats) but as far as I know there aren't any cases of parties literally failing to win seats after crossing the threshold otherwise. I guess it works well for caudillos; is the system intentionally designed like this and why didn't Macri do anything when he had the chance?

There isn't a national threshold. It's like Spain: only provincial-level results matter, so parties with a strong local base (=Peronist caudillos) are naturally advantaged. Case in point: in 2015, Chubut Somos Todos won 0.4%, Progresistas won 2.4% and FIT won 3.9% - yet all of these parties won 1 seat each. Macri didn't really have a chance to do anything about it (he needed those Peronist caudillos too).

I guess caudillos are part of the reason, but fairly strong regionalist sentiments mean that elections have to take place in individual provinces. Plenty of parties were f/cked over by this system historically - all sorts of small left-wing parties that sprung up after 2001, conservative liberals in Ucédé and Acción por la República, Modin (far-right party of crazy coupist general Aldo Rico), or Partido Intransigente back in the 80s. These parties only stood a chance of winning seats in Buenos Aires province, the Capital, and some more anti-Peronist inclined provinces like Santa Fe and Córdoba.

I'm not sure what the solution would be. Huge disparities in population between provinces would mean that just increasing the number of seats wouldn't work, and Argentine politics is quite personalist, so I don't see the appeal of nationwide lists.

Also, in the latest news from Formosa it turns out that about a hundred pregnant Wichí are hiding in the mountains to avoid having their babies taken by the police. Yet still no international coverage; apparently reality TV tier drama about the British royal family is more important. What a world

It appears that Gildo is in dire need of an immediate personal meeting with Pachamama, if I may say so.

[Estrella]

Just gonna leave this out here.

[Estrella]

hahahaha r/argentina is having a field day with this

(Alejandro Biondini is a literal Nazi)

[Estrella]

A very rambling speech, the Brazil part barely is heard (I had to watch it twice to hear it well), but it's a perfect example of a political speech where he talks a lot and says nothing.

"pero particularmente también soy un europeista, soy alguien que cree en Europa"

I think he's saying he wants to run to replace Charles Michel.

[Estrella]

This is tangentially related to politics at best, but... have you ever heard something so off the wall bizarre that you thought it must be made up but it turns out to be real and for a second you start to doubt your grip on reality?

es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ley_de_padrinazgo_presidencial

Law 20,843 of presidential godparentage is an Argentine legislation that guarantees the godparentage of the President of the Nation in office at the time of the birth of the seventh male child or the seventh female child in a series of siblings of the same sex.

This law has its roots in Russian immigration in Argentina and in the belief that the seventh male child is a werewolf and the seventh female child a witch. In the Czarist Russia of Catherine the Great, the imperial godparentage was granted as a means of magical protection against these evils and prevented children from being abandoned.

In 1907 Enrique Brost and Apolonia Holmann, a Russian couple who settled in Argentina, gave birth to José Brost, their seventh child in [you couldn't come up with a more unbelievable place name if you tried] Coronel Pringles (Province of Buenos Aires). Because of this, they sent a letter to President José Figueroa Alcorta to sponsor him. This was the beginning of a tradition that also granted the godson a scholarship to contribute to his education and food.

On September 28, 1974, María Estela Martínez de Perón converted this tradition into law.

[Estrella]

And the law is still enforced!

Por ley, Alberto Fernández será el padrino de la séptima hija de una pareja de Bariloche

[Estrella]

After, what, six months, I FINALLY found the energy to write some more chapters to that guide to Argentine politics or whatever. The previous parts are on pages 1 and 2 in this thread.

[Estrella]

Theme of the Traitor or the Hero: Eduardo Lonardi / Pedro Eugenio Aramburu
1955—1958

In 1955, the tension brewing in Argentina since Perón's accession to power finally exploded. The Revolución Libertadora, Liberation Revolution, as the ensuing coup d'état became known, was short but brutal. From street shootouts between pro-Perón and anti-Perón army units to indiscriminate bombing of civillians on Plaza de Mayo, it would be more accurate to call it a brief civil war. By some estimates, as much as 2000 Argentinians lost their lives. Even officers didn't spare their fellow military men; on September 16, a Lieutenant General visited the artillery garrison in Córdoba, went straight to commander's bedroom and asked him to join the coup; when he refused, the General shot him on the spot. It was perhaps fitting that when Perón fled and the army needed to find someone to replace him in the post of President - ideally someone of their own - they picked this man. His name was Eduardo Ernesto Lonardi.

Lonardi took office on Friday, September 23, 1955; but even before that, pockets of resistance to the coup began to appear. Perón was gone, but Peronist organizations still controlled the trade unions and with them millions of workers. Lonardi decided that the solution to this delicate situation was the tried and tested carrot and stick. On the one hand, he put on a conciliatory image; his motto was ni vencedores ni vencidos, neither victors nor vanquished - a powerful slogan coming from Justo José de Urquiza, the first president of Argentina. On the other, he unleashed a radical campaign to destroy democratic institutions that was very unlike the "military removes the president and hands the reins of power to his civillians opponents" situation of the Infamous Decade. He dissolved the Congress and Supreme Court, intervened in universities, sacked all provincial governors and replaced them with his puppets, appointed anti-Peronists to leadership of CGT, the main trade union confederation, and launched a massive purge of any Peronists in positions of power. Thousands of officeholders, union officials and party activists were arrested, sentenced in kangaroo courts and imprisoned in Usuahia.

The junta also tried to win the hearts and minds of the people. They attempted to destroy Perón near-saintly image among the working class by, among many other acts of propaganda, distributing an edited photograph showing him being raped by black boxing champion Archie Moore. Some time after, a graffiti appeared, saying Puto o ladrón, lo queremos a Perón - fаggot or thief, we want Perón. In office or in exile, Perón remained a hero for many Argentinians, and this cult of personality would go on to live much longer than he did - but we'll get to that later. Lonardi, unfortunately for him, didn't command such sympathies - neither among the people, nor among the army who grew increasingly tired of him. A split emerged in the Armed Forces: on the one hand, "Catholic nationalists", hostile to Perón himself but not so much to his policies; on the other, "liberals" who wanted to dismantle all Peronist social and political reforms and return to a laissez-faire economy. Lonardi belonged to the nationalist camp, but liberals were overall stronger and had the support of the Vice-President, the fanatical far-right admiral Isaac Rojas. After only fifty-two days in office, Lonardi resigned after threats from the liberal wing to bomb Casa Rosada if he refuses to leave. To this day, he and his fellow officers are remembered either as traitors, or as heroes who tried to save the country from Perón.

A postage stamp commemorating the first anniversary of the Revolution

The man who replaced Lonardi was another Lieutenant General - Pedro Eugenio Aramburu. In contrast to the military-only Lonardi cabinet, Aramburu appointed several UCR figures. This may make him seem moderate, but he was anything but. He ordered the imprisonment of 9000 union officials and disqualification of 150,000 factory delegates, fired 10% of police officers under the guise of "deperonization", banned the public display of Peronist symbols such as the Justicialist Party logo, the Marcha Peronista or even Perón's name, and ordered the unsuccessful assassination of Perón, then in exile in Venezuela.

Back in 1949, Perón put in place a new constitution. After the Revolution, many of its progressive articles were repealed (such as the ban on racial discrimination, expanded workers' rights or equality between men and women), but it was still a fundamentally Peronist document. This made Lonardi uncomfortable, and so he decided to call an election for a constituent assembly that would create a replacement. The election wouldn't be completely free, of course; Peronists were banned from participating, and so the main anti-Peronist opposition, the UCR, became the strongest political force - or it would have, had it not split in twain. There was the Intransigent Radical Civic Union (UCRI), broadly speaking the left-leaning faction, ambivalent to Peronism, and the Radical Civic Union of the People (UCRP), the right-leaning and strongly anti-Peronist faction.

The vote took place on July 28, 1957. UCRP won 34% of valid votes, UCRI 28%, Socialists 8%, Christian Democrats 6%, Democrats 5% and Communists 3%. But none of these parties won; the victory went to blank and spoiled ballots that comprised a quarter of all votes cast, most of them obviously coming from Peronists who followed their leader's instructions from exile. This greatly dimished the perceived legitimacy of the Constitutional Convention - in fact, on its first day, UCRI leader Oscar Alende challenged its legitimacy and the party soon withdrew from the convention, leaving it without a quorum. The convention still continued and reestablished the pre-Perón Constitution of 1853, with some new amendments tacked on. Despite the circumstances in which it came about, the new-old constitution restored some of Perón's social reforms and paved the way for an eventual return of democracy.

The dictatorship was very unstable from the start. First signs of resistance came in June 1956, when general Juan José Valle made an incompetent and half-hearted coup attempt against Aramburu, the Levantamiento de Valle; it failed within hours and Valle was executed, along with 15 rebel soldiers and five civillians. There were no more rebellions from within the army, but trade unions were becoming restless. At first, strikes were sporadic occurences that were easily repressed with some arm-twisting and the occassional bullet; but it wasn't long before they became bigger, more frequent and more united. In 1957, a wave of strikes swept the country, affecting virtually every industry: steel, textiles, printing, food, even white collar industries. After a telephone and telegraph workers strike, the junta declared a state of emergency and repression intensified. Union officials and even ordinary workers who were deemed to have become too uppity had their houses searched and were often fired and blacklisted from employment. It was to no avail - strikes continued.

The junta's irrational hatred for everything associated with Perón made them attempt to dismantle his economic model of import substitution industrialization and replace it with an export-oriented agrarian economy like in the good old days. It never worked properly, but it did have the effect of increasing the value of peso in international markets, making Argentine exports more expensive and hurting the economy. The junta responded to this with an incredibly mishandled devaluation that increased prices of food by as much as 200%. Unsurprisingly, people didn't like this. As far back as November 1956, commodore Julio César Krause sent Aramburu a report in which he outlined the economic and political unsustainability of the regime. Aramburu ignored it, but as the time went on, even he realized that the situation was untenable and called a presidential election for February 1958. Just in time for the vote, Intransigent Radicals and their candidate Arturo Frondizi reached a pact with Juan Perón. The Perón-Frondizi pact stated that Peronism will remain banned, but Perón will instruct his sympathizers to vote for Frondizi as the lesser evil.

After this, the result was never in doubt. Frondizi placed first with 49% of the vote and UCRI won every single provincial governorship; Ricardo Balbín of UCRP placed second with 32%, followed by Christian Democrat Lucas Ayarragaray and Socialist with a fabulous moustache Alfredo Palacios, winning 3% each. On May 1, 1958, Arturo Frondizi took the office of President of the Nation. The Revolución Argentina was over.

[Estrella]

There Are More Coups: Arturo Frondizi / José María Guido
1958—1963

To save Perón, one has to be against Perón.
— Augusto Vandor

As mentioned previously, Frondizi's party, the UCRI, was fairly left-leaning and sympathetic to Peronist economic policies, if not so much to the man himself. Indeed, Frondizi had previously written a book advocating nationalization of Argentine natural resources. His favoured economic policy was desarrollismo, developmentalism. It was a more advanced version of the old import substitution industrialization - the government would place high tariffs on imports to encourage the growth of domestic industry, yet also attract foreign investment, nationalize key sectors and intervene in the economy to faciliate growth. The man in charge of this policy was Rogelio Julio Frigerio, an economist with an uncanny resemblance to Ronnie Barker (okay, maybe just to me). This policy was successful - Argentina entered an economic boom and reached levels of GDP per capita comparable to developed Western Europe. Heavy industry modernized and massively increased production, while light industry produced a variety of consumer goods that even the working class could afford.

Frondizi also announced the "Battle for Oil": with the help of foreign investment, Argentina was to become self-sufficient in hydrocarbons. The battle was a success as well, dramatically expanding the country's oil extraction and refinement capacities, in addition to starting large-scale coal mining in Río Turbio and helping with development of hitherto desolate Patagonia. Internationally, Argentina developed friendly relations with both West and East. Domestically, he tried to ensure social peace by courting "Neoperonists" - a faction of CGT that promoted a "Peronism without Perón", led by the secretary of Metalworkers Union, Augusto Timoteo Vandor.

All was not well, though. The involvement of foreign investors in Frondizi's megaprojects caused protests from nationalists in the military and leftists in unions and universities. The Larkin Plan, a proposal to close 15,000 kilometres of underused railway lines, caused a five-week railway strike that forced the army to take over rail operations. Then there was the laica o libre dispute. Rather confusingly, it had little to do with secularism or freedom - it was a fairly technical issue about whether to allow private universities to award certain types of degrees. This aroused a surprisingly heated debate with massive demonstrations in favour or against ("let's go out and protest about something" had become a typical Argentine pastime at this point, even more than elsewhere in Latin America). It was indicative of political polarization that enveloped the country even after Perón's departure - indeed, it seems to have gotten worse. There were troubles in foreign relations, too - the Snipe incident nearly led to an outbreak of war with Chile.

Frondizi did not take kindly to protests opposing his policies. Soon after coming into power, he created the Plan for Internal Disturbance of the State, better known as CONINTES. It involved declaring a state of siege throughout the country, placing the police under military control, suspending civil rights, designating certain areas as "military zones" and banning protests or strikes. This plan is considered to be the forerunner to indiscriminate state terrorism of the 1970s and 1980s. CONINTES was first executed in November 1958 for thirty days and then in March 1960 for almost a year. It succeeded in supressing student and worker protests, but it also caused Peronists to radicalize and form guerilla groups, the most famous one being the Uturuncos. More than 1500 bomb attacks took place during Frondizi's presidency; the most tragic being an explosion at Shell headquarters in Córdoba that resulted in 13 deaths. Ironically, CONINTES was largely based on a plan that Juan Perón came up with towards the end of his presidency.

According to the constitution, the President was elected for a six-year term, with Chamber of Deputies renewed by halves every two years. Frondizi's UCRI won a landslide two-thirds majority in the 1958 election, but in 1960 lost badly to UCRP; nevertheless, they kept a narrow majority as only half the seats were up for reelection. When 1962 came around, Frondizi realized that the situation was untenable and took a radical step: he decided that Perón must remain in exile, but Neoperonists would be allowed to take part in the upcoming elections. These organizations, splintered into a million pieces, united into a single Justicialist Front and won the election with 34%, compared to 26% for UCRI, 21% for UCRP and 7% for a coalition of provincial conservative parties. In the province of Buenos Aires, Peronist André Framini won the governorship with 42% of the vote.

PERÓN IS BACK

The military was already angry with Frondizi for his friendly meeting with Che Guevara, but this was the last straw. The night after the election, Minister of Interior was summoned to Air Force headquarters and presented with an ultimatum: remove all Peronist provincial governors and dissolve the Congress. Frondizi agreed to the former but not the latter, and after learning of a plot to kill him, he moved from Casa Rosada to more defensible Quinta de Olivos. The Secretary of War convened a meeting of generals, where they discussed what should their course of action be. Option one: keep Frondizi as president, but under absolute control of the military. Option two: remove Frondizi from office and replace him with his Vice-President, as the constitution dictates. Option three: remove Frondizi from office and replace him with a civillian government, handpicked by the Armed Forces. The military couldn't agree on what option they should go for, and Frondizi used this to buy time and try to shore up his position. Finally, the commanders agreed on option number three.

On September 28, the Armed Forces executed CONINTES and met with the President, requesting his resignation. He refused and instead commanded general Rosendo María Fraga to take command of the Campo de Mayo garrison and lead resistance to the coup. However, Fraga was arrested on the way and the plan was foiled. At 04:30 in the morning of September 29, Frondizi was arrested and taken to Martín Garcia Island - previously the place of exile for Hipólito Yrigoyen and Juan Perón. This left the office of Presidency vacant. The army deliberated about who should replace Frondizi, but the deposed President had one last ace up his sleeve. The night before, he arranged that upon his arrest, Vice-President José María Guido would be sworn in to the Presidency, denying the military a chance to pick a puppet of their own. In a race against time, generals sympathetic to Frondizi stalled the announcement of the coup while Supreme Court judge Julio Oyhanarte managed to convince the rest of the court that the alternative to Guido was a military dictatorship. Around 17:00 on September 29, 1962, José María Guido took the oath of office and was proclaimed President of the Nation. The army had no choice but to accept.

The manner in which Guido ascended to the office was spectacular; his rule, less so. In exchange for tolerating him as the legitimate head of state, the military requested that he ban Peronism and Communism, restrict the power of trade unions and, in effect, let them vet all major decisions. Guido scheduled a presidential election for July 1963, devalued the peso by 60% and carried out an austerity programme, leading to a recession. There was also the forced disappearance and presumed murder of metalworker and Peronist Youth activist Felipe Vallese. But the most impactful event to happen on Guido's watch was the Navy revolt - the battle between azulos y colorados, Blues and Reds, a battle that brought the country to the brink of civil war. The Blues were pro-democratic moderates (very relatively on both counts) supported by the Army and the Air Force; the Reds were extreme anti-Peronists supported by the Navy, led by the notorious madman Isaac Rojas.

Picture, thousand words, etc.

Anyway, the election. Peronist voters were demoralized and didn't rally behind any lesser evil non-Peronist, as they had behind Frondizi in 1958. Arturo Umberto Illia of UCRP won a very underwhelming victory with 32%; Oscar Alende of UCRI came second with 21%, and former dictator Pedro Eugenio Aramburu of far-right pro-military UDELPA came third with 18%. On October 12, 1963, Illia was sworn in as President, the fifth since Perón's departure.

[Estrella]

Jujuy. The northernmost province of Argentina, high up in the Andes, on the border with Chile and Bolivia. They have deserts, cacti, mountains, lots of indigenous people (Jujeños vienen de los indios, querido Alberto)... and midterm elections. The current governor is Gerardo Morales of UCR and Frente Cambia Jujuy, a sort of local version of Juntos por el Cambio.

According to preliminary results, Morales' FCJ wins with about 42%, Frente de Todos got absolutely curbstomped with 13%, followed by far-left FIT with 7%, Frente Primero Jujuy (dissident Peronists) with 7%, Frente Todos por Jujuy (another dissident Peronists) with 7%, Valores Ideas Acciones (localists) with 5% and Frente Unidad para la Victoria (guess what, dissident Peronists) with 5%.

[Estrella]

FIT does oddly well in the northern province of Nequen if I’m not mistaken. Any similarities between the two for these results very much better than how they do nationally? What demographics are they pulling in the votes, because it sure can’t be underpaid and precarious undergrads?

I assume you mean Salta - Neuquén is in the south, but FIT does relatively well there too. Anyway, I tried, but I couldn't find anything that would explain it. I suppose that's not really surprising; outside Buenos Aires, the best thing you can do to explain voting patterns is throw your hands in the air and mutter something about personal vote and clientelism.

[Estrella]

Today, Macri gave an interview to La Nación. He mostly gives correct observations about incompetence of the current government, but, er, what the hell is this:

People go and invest. They have a sleeve [sic] and buy a flat in countries like United States where if someone occupies your flat, the judge doesn't ask you if you are South American. He asks for your papers and if you are the owner, he evicts them. Here, if you don't have a contact, a friend, they discuss whether to evict you or not. You get a fake Mapuche in the south and he steals your house, burns it down and the State supports him.

You won't be surprised to find out that he did a llegamos de los barcos three years before Alberto.

[Estrella]

On a different note, UCR is having a mini-crisis at the moment. The party is split between the aforementioned conservative governor of Jujuy, Geraldo Morales, and the progressive ex-Kirchnerist Minister of Economy, Martín Lousteau. It's all very complicated and motivated more by petty personal enmities than ideology, but as I understand it, the dispute started when some Lousteau-adjacent people began to oppose the re-election of Mario Negri as the chair of Juntos por el Cambio and UCR caucuses. Morales, on the other hand, strongly supports Negri, as does the Elisa Carrió and her Civic Coalition (yes, they still exist).

[Estrella]

Anti-union Gestapo: Former Minister Marcelo Villegas is charged

Marcelo Villegas, the former Labour Minister of [Buenos Aires governor] María Eugenia Vidal during the Cambiemos government, was indicted this afternoon by federal authorities. Prosecutor Ana Russo requested evidence from judge Ernesto Kreplak to initiate the investigation into the ex-official's maneuver against the unions.

"The videos show a meeting of June 15, 2017, where there is a judicial table in the province of Buenos Aires armed by Vidal's mafia," said the interventor of Federal Intelligence Agency, Cristina Caamaño, referring to the material found during a cleaning of hard drives. The then-Minister of Labour is heard saying: "Believe me that if I could have it, and I will deny it everywhere, if I could have a Gestapo, an onslaught force to finish all the unions, I would." The statements were delivered at a meeting with construction businessmen at the Banco Provincia.

At the meeting, officials guaranteed to the businessmen that they had a strategy coordinated with the courts and endorsed by "the nation and the province." They sought to promote an investigation resulting in prosecution of various people linked to the centralized union activity in the construction industry.

"The scheme is the following: we need to pre-constitute a series of elements to launch a legal case, that legal case is launched from the point of view of labour or from the point of view of more than labour, of threats, and these words are launched with the testimonies of about ten people that we are already working on", said former minister Villegas.

On the one hand, yes, the CGT is corrupt af, but this just sounds like Cambiemos is five seconds away from singing praises of Videla. Which some of them are.

[Estrella]

During the election campaign, Javier Milei promised that if he's elected, he will hold a lottery and donate his congressional salary to one randomly chosen person. This was seen as an imaginative but completely unrealistic publicity stunt - of course he isn't going to give away his salary just like that. Right?

mipalabra.javiermilei.com

"My Word Javier Milei" received more than 1,200,000 visits in less than 24 hours. "Last night, 20,000 people logged on every minute," he said. To register, participants are asked to enter their name, surname, ID number, email, phone number and date of birth. Then the system assigns them a number with which they can participate in the live draw, which will be made by Milei himself in Playa Grande. "Only those over 18 years of age and natural persons can do so," he said.

[Estrella]

Similarly to my comments above (And I apologize if I'm nitpicking, your posts are overall great!), I think a lot of your economic praise for Peron is misplaced. For instance you mention the IAME Justicialista, but as the page you links to mentions, less than 200 were ever, the engines had to be imported from Germany, and the car was never commercially available. More importantly, the economy as a whole was never too great under Peron: their was a perception of economic success, buoyed especially by government propaganda, but a lot of Argentina's issues (for instance, inflation) which continue today emerged under Peron. Even during the post-war boom, for instance, while the Argentinian economy did grow, it grew far more slowly than either its neighbors or comparable first world countries.

No problem! You seem to know more than I did when I wrote this two years ago, so feel free to nitpick

[Estrella]

Something I love about political debate that apparently happens in literally every country in the world is how discussions about changing the electoral system usually devolve into clueless extreme assumptions that have no connection to reality: one group thinking that electoral reform will be a magic bullet to solve all political problems (see Italy's love of single-member districts or some of the arguments for PR in FPTP countries) and the other panicking about end of the world, often with a heavy dose of looking down on voters as idiots.

Anyway, ballot papers in Argentina look like this:



Like in the US, most - but not all - elections take place on the same day. Every party has its own ballot paper listing its candidates for each office with big photos, logos and colour to make them easy to distinguish. Sometimes, up to six offices can be on a single ballot paper: President, Chamber, Senate, governor, provincial legislator and mayor. Parties that don't run, say, presidential or municipal candidates have a boleta corta, where those offices are missing. Voters who want to vote for these parties or want to vote for different parties on different levels need to literally split their ticket and cut the ballot with scissors.

There are many arguments both against (psychologically restricting choice) and for (ease of voting - for a straight ticket at least - and counting) this system. The provinces of Córdoba and Santa Fe have moved away from it entirely and introduced boleta única, a single ballot paper for all parties (all offices on one ballot in the former, separate ballots for each office the in latter). For years, there has been talk of switching to this system on the federal level, but as usual with electoral reforms, it went nowhere. After the last election, opposition raised the boleta única proposal again and earlier this week, a motion obliging the government to start debate on the project somewhat surprisingly passed the Chamber with Juntos voting for and Todos against.

It remains to be seen if this will go anywhere, but still, there have been some strange reactions: from the inevitable dubious warnings about how it's actually a Macrist conspiracy, to things like this thread: boleta única will cause fragmented legislatures (because people will be able to vote split ticket without playing origami?), more personalist and province-based politics (as if that wasn't the case now), bigger ballot papers (...) and end of the world Argentina turning into Peru - all, of course, in the interest of shadowy powers who want paralyzed legislatures so that they can rely on courts (this complaint is presumably not unrelated to the government's recent spat with the judiciary). Hm.