Argentina General Discussion 🇦🇷

[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

[PSOL]

I remember it with Cristina Kirchner. Seems fun!

[Edu]

lol If I had to guess I would say that the reason this thing became law is thanks to the influence of Jose Lopez Rega in Isabelita's government. The guy basically tought of himself as a wizard (He even tried a ritual to bring Peron back to life while the corpse was still in the bed)

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

lol If I had to guess I would say that the reason this thing became law is thanks to the influence of Jose Lopez Rega in Isabelita's government. The guy basically tought of himself as a wizard (He even tried a ritual to bring Peron back to life while the corpse was still in the bed)

Underrated historical nasty person, and yet I’m a sucker for silly laws like this.

[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%.

[PSOL]

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?

[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).

[PSOL]

Labor Unions, Environmentalists, and Indigenous People Unite to Defeat Mining Interests in Argentina

[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.

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

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.

He's referring to the ongoing crisis in Patagonia where "Mapuches" arbitrarily seize land, clear cut the old growth forests for firewood, beat people up and torch buildings indiscriminately. I put "Mapuches" in quotes because most have basically no connection to the actual local tribes and are more akin to activist LARPers than actual natives reclaiming seized land. They aren't carefully identifying and demanding their ancestral land, they're taking whatever a 20 year old shaman on mushrooms identifies as "sacred land".

Regardless of Macri's past bozo eruptions he's right about RAM and the like.

In parliamentary news, the government managed to somehow slip on a banana peel and fall flat on their faces by failing to pass a budget, not winning the votes of the friendliest independent Peronist caucuses or even the left. Apparently zero effort was made to negotiate with anyone or even in proofreading the budget, which referenced numbers that were years out of date.

But then, not to be outdone, the opposition failed to block a tax increase by a single vote because three Juntos deputies were absent: one had a positive COVID test and couldn't enter (I guess remote voting isn't a thing), one was in Germany for undisclosed reasons and the last was enjoying a trip to Disneyworld in Miami with her family. JxC leadership then unanimously - except Bullrich - voted against sanctioning any of the deputies, and as if trying to prove the "caste" rhetoric true also gave Todos the support to extend the term limits of mayors in Buenos Aires.

FIT-U has generally done well so far, with the defeat of the mining bill in Chubut representing a relatively popular and successful wedge issue for them that the other parties mostly ignored. Though they haven't always covered themselves in glory; Vilca made himself the subject of many memes when he responded to Milei's speech on the budget with something to the effect of "economists use big words to confuse us!"

On that note, the liberals initially seemed set on shooting themselves in the foot too. The split into two separate blocks caused both to fall short of the minimum to participate in committees. Milei caused further outrage when he missed the first day to hold a rally in Rosario and JxC partisans were quick to pounce to call him out for skipping work.

But then the liberals were all there to vote when it counted so that backfired. Milei's inaugural speech is already the most viewed on the official chamber of deputies Youtube channel and including mirrors just from Youtube and Twitter has millions of views in less than two weeks while Espert isn't far behind. So they're also back on the uptrend after a dip with the goal of expanding into the interior, and considering the impressive turnout even under unfavourable circumstances in the heart of traditional Argentine leftism they might actually pull it off.

https://twitter.com/AmericaElige/status/1475293346411302919

[kaoras]

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.

He's referring to the ongoing crisis in Patagonia where "Mapuches" arbitrarily seize land, clear cut the old growth forests for firewood, beat people up and torch buildings indiscriminately. I put "Mapuches" in quotes because most have basically no connection to the actual local tribes and are more akin to activist LARPers than actual natives reclaiming seized land. They aren't carefully identifying and demanding their ancestral land, they're taking whatever a 20 year old shaman on mushrooms identifies as "sacred land".

Regardless of Macri's past bozo eruptions he's right about RAM and the like.

What an absolutely tone-deaf post. You "could" describe every single machi (mapuche ancestral auhority) as someone on mushrooms. Machi don't have to be old, you become a machi by having prophetic dreams about it, usually, you come from a machi lineage but is not a requirement. I try to avoid looking at news of the conflict in Argentina because the standard discourse there is almost as racist as what you would hear from non-mapuche farmers in Malleco complaining about the indios and their evil human rights, but this strikes me as that some Argentinians have their stereotypes about mapuche having to be really old people living on remote mountain areas reductions not bothering anyone or else they are NOT REAL/are Larpers for benefits plus the other communities obviously not wanting to be associated with them by calling them fake. Also, your news article says nothing about it but in Chile at least they don't burn "Old-growth forests"; they burn forest plantations because they see them as extractivism that is going to leave them without water.

Mind you, I'm not defending the terrorist actions of that community whatsoever, but this paternalist discourse is exactly what led to the situation being so bad in Chile right now. For starters, the view of many Mapuche is that every land used to belong to them, so they have the right to take it. Land is the most valuable thing you can have according to their cosmovision and some also have the mindset that land is something unlimited and they can keep claiming it indefinitely. Some Mapuche communities also were expelled and relocated hundreds of kilometers from what their """actual""" ancestral lands would be and could hardly track them down. This mindset of the extremist groups is very problematic but you actually have to acknowledge what they are thinking to actually be able to deal with that.

This is honestly a very racist version of what the Chilean left used to say about the conflict at the other side of the Andes "oh, those are all montages to profit from insurance, REAL mapuches don't do that".

[Cortarán todas las flores, pero jamás detendrán la primavera]

On a different note, UCR is having a mini-crisis at the moment all the time.

FTFY

That particular crisis is over though, the two camps reached an agreement and made peace. Let's see if it lasts.

_{(It won't)}

[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.

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

The past few months have basically seen the same trend of inflation rising and both major coalitions fraying at the seams. The divisions really came to a head when the latest vote for an IMF agreement came up: JxC and slightly over half of the government voted in favour while the Kirchnerist wing of Todos plus FIT-U and the liberals/libertarians voted against.

So with FdT divided one may think the opposition could capitalize, but Juntos is almost as split, with Macri and his hawks increasingly sidelined within the coalition by Larreta's PRO doves and Radical governors in the interior like Gerardo Morales. Larreta seems to figure that he just needs to not screw up to be the President-apparent in 2023, and on that note he's probably right.

The biggest beneficiary of the division so far have been the liberals and Milei, whose support has tripled since the election, with particular growth in the interior (the governor of Corrientes, a province Milei has yet to visit, sounded the alarm that his support there already exceeds 20%. Depending on the poll his approval is either among the highest of any current Argentine political figure or is the highest period. He's more trusted by 2019 Macri voters to end inflation and somehow nearly 20% of Fernández voters feel the same.

https://twitter.com/agustinromm/status/1507426545773686784

Since the major parties have avoided picking political battles Milei has managed to repeatedly seize the conversation. His salary raffles might one of the most cost efficient campaigning tools ever, with over 2 million sign ups at this point. First the raffle alone generated publicity, then the opposition accusing him of populism, then the government launched an "investigation" and somehow a Kirchnerist organizer won the first raffle.

Now he's shaking things up with advocacy for dollarization. He coupled it up by officially declaring his intention to run for President in 2023 outside of JxC, but that he was willing to work with Juntos hawks like Bullrich and Macri...if they were to leave and join LLA instead.

snip

Certainly there are Mapuches with legitimate grievances throughout Patagonia, but the scammers chopping down trees in a national park to sell to tourists are not among them, nor are the folks from RAM trying to carve a new state out of the southern provinces led by a Chilean citizen. They don't have overwhelming popular support or even substantial popular support; they've been denounced by the actual local Mapuches and it only took two dozen Gauchos to end their arson spree, hardly an overwhelming popular uprising.

Incidentally, you're right that any Mapuches in Argentina have been relocated far from their ancestral lands because their ancestral lands are in Araucania. If a bunch of Burgundy Cross waving loons started claiming national parks in the name of Spain they'd have about as much justification but I doubt you'd demand we respect the Spanish cultural values of claiming to own all of the Americas by decree of the Pope.

[kaoras]

Racist SNIP

And where did I said that it was a popular uprising with broad support or that their claims were right? I took issue with your extremely offensive characterization of machis as "someone on mooshrooms". If you are not going to engage with what I actually say, then abstain to comment on the topic.

Plus, please don't go over that rabbit hole of "where Mapuche came from" (which you are using to casually deny the crimes of the Conquista del Desierto btw). I'm sure you are going to eventually start spitting the racist and discredited narratives about how the Mapuche genocided the Tehuelche or something.

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

Racist SNIP

And where did I said that it was a popular uprising with broad support or that their claims were right? I took issue with your extremely offensive characterization of machis as "someone on mooshrooms". If you are not going to engage with what I actually say, then abstain to comment on the topic.

I'm explaining exactly what happened without embellishment: a teenager on drugs identifying as a "shaman" and her friends claimed ownership of a national park on the basis of visions produced by those drugs. That isn't "offensive", that's factually what happened. If someone described FGM in direct terms would you get offended on behalf of the disrespect of the "offensive characterization" of a traditional cultural practice and start calling people racist?

Plus, please don't go over that rabbit hole of "where Mapuche came from" (which you are using to casually deny the crimes of the Conquista del Desierto btw). I'm sure you are going to eventually start spitting the racist and discredited narratives about how the Mapuche genocided the Tehuelche or something.

Jeesh, and you talk about me ignoring what you're saying?

The vast majority of the territory claimed by RAM is not populated by people who identify as Mapuches and a sizable portion (like Nahuel Huapi National Park) was beyond the reach of any Mapuche speaker even before the Conquest. That makes their claims absurd on the face even before the denunciations of the actual local Mapuche communities, no "genocide denial" necessary.

The vast majority of Mapuches actually indigenous to Argentina are Tehuelches and other groups that adopted Mapuche language and cultural traditions. They weren't "genocided" but treating them as identical to Chilean Mapuches is practically assuming that they were. These specific peoples can actually claim to be living in their ancestral homelands (or to have been excluded from them in the past) but that doesn't make those lands "Mapuche ancestral land" any more than some Amazonian tribe adopting Spanish culture would make their land "Spanish ancestral land". These people certainly have plenty of legitimate grievances with the Argentine and provincial governments but, again, they've repeatedly denounced RAM and the national park LARPers.

[Libertas Vel Mors]

The Olden Days

Riche comme un argentin, as rich as an Argentine. A phrase that might sound like a sarcastic quip today, but a hundred years ago, Argentina really was the envy of the world. How did the country fall from grace so hard, and how did it rise to those heights in the first place?

Let's start at the beginning.

❊❊❊

Sometime in the 1600s, shores of Río de la Plata. Under candlelight, a trader brags to his friends about the money he made from smuggling a load of goods with the help of another friend, a local ship captain, avoiding cost of shipping them to the "official" port, all the way to Perú. They all share a laugh and celebrate a job well done.

The Spanish arrived to what is today's Argentina only a decade after Columbus discovered "India", but colonization was slow. Gold, the thing that made it worth coming to what was to become known as South America, was further north, as were the centers of colonial power. In 1776, however, Spanish Empire estabilished the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata, with the trade port of Buenos Aires as its capital.

❊❊❊

1807, a street in Buenos Aires. A soldier of the Viceroyalty loads his flintlock with gunpowder, just in time to fire at a group of redcoats under the window. His comrades follow suit. The British see that they're outgunned and have no options left, only to retreat.

Early 19th century was a turbulent time on the shores of La Plata. During the Napoleonic Wars, the British, unsuccessfully, tried their hand at an invasion. Three years later, the Viceroy was overthrown and United Provinces of Río de la Plata declared independence and fought to keep it under the legendary general José de San Martín. Years of wars and chaos followed, but ultimately the Republic of Argentina was created.

❊❊❊

The ship is cramped, but then they all are, aren't they? A voyage from Naples to Buenos Aires is hardly pleasant like this, but the — hopefully — bright future waiting for the passengers at their destination makes it at least bearable. Argentina is even better than America, they said. You should try it. Great wages, lots of opportunities.

It better be worth it after all this seasickness, she thought.

Despite prospectors' best efforts, there were no precious metals to be found around the River of Silver, but there was something else: plenty of high-quality land to be used for agriculture, plenty of pastures to be grazed by cattle and plenty of opportunities for processing the cattle into meat, leather and other products that Europeans craved. The good winds of Buenos Aires carried ships full of goods to the old continent and returned with much-needed immigrants to work in the fields and factories. British capital financed railways and docks to help expansion further away from Buenos Aires, by now a rapidly growing city with a large middle class.

❊❊❊

1880s, Tierra del Fuego. A being arguably unworthy of being called human fires a shot into a bush. Someone was hiding here, someone of whom he thinks just the same. At night, he and his friends feast and celebrate another successful kill.

Argentina, and especially Buenos Aires, was seen as a part of Europe transplanted into an exotic continent. It wasn't just the riches, cafés, and top hats. Argentina is, to this day, arguably the "whitest" Latin American country, for a very simple reason: the vast majority of indigenous people were massacred in successive waves of "conquest of the desert" throughout the 19th century, when warlords, prospectors and landowners expanded further and further south. Today, indigenous people comprise only 1-2% of Argentine population.

❊❊❊

"People of Buenos Aires!"

The young man is only barely literate and struggles to decode the words on the poster. Still, he persists. It's too important not to know.

"The great revolution, the holy revolution..."

He keeps on reading, more and more fascinated by the triumphant call.

"Glory to the Army and the Civic Union!"

He leaves to join the barricades with a spring in his step.

The poster would later be proven to be perhaps a little too optimistic, but the events that led to its creation would nevertheless change the country.

A cabal of feudalists can run a country as their personal fiefdom only as long as the people don't know of any better alternative. The rapid economic growth of late 19th century gave Argentina a new middle class: ambitious and unwilling to put up with old hidebound squires. National Autonomist Party, the conservative party of power, found themselves facing a new opponent: Radical Civic Union, or UCR for short. A sudden economic crisis caused by near-bankruptcy of a bank was the last straw.

On July 26, 1890, UCR launched Revolution of the Park — an attempt to overthrow the old structures and implement universal suffrage. The revolution was suppressed within three days, but it was a democratic awakening. It marked the beginning of a series of attempted revolutions that would culminate in UCR democratically ascending to power.

❊❊❊

He holds the end of a stick of wax in the flame of a candle until it starts to melt. He then seals the ballot box. The voting can start now. It's the first real election in the country's history. Surely, this will mean that the still-young twentieth century will propel Argentina towards even more greatness, towards rule by the people and freedom. Surely...

President Roque Sáenz Peña was a conservative, but he recognized that some things cannot go on forever. He, like most of Argentines, was becoming more and more dissatisfied with political corruption and oligarchs who were preventing the country from moving forward. Universal suffrage, he thought, was the only way to prevent the rising discontent from turning into a revolution — there was yet another unsuccessful attempt to get rid of the oligarchy by force, and the elite feared that they might not be so lucky next time. In 1912, he implemented a law making voting compulsory for all adult male citizens. This was still only a third or so of the population, but it meant that Argentina would no longer be run by a small group of oligarchs and vested interests.

Sáenz Peña died in 1914 and did not live to see the consequences of the law named after him, but two years later, Argentines radically broke with the old order: a revolutionary leader was elected to lead the country.

I know this is old, but your characterization of the NAP is sorely wrong. The Generation of 1870 were not feudalists: they were liberal capitalists, albeit ones who took a sore view of popular democracy. Argentina under their rule experienced rapid economic and political development, and gave economic freedom to its citizens. Its flaw was an undemocratic system in which just a fraction of the population could vote, not feudalism or corruption. A good comparison would be to the United States: the Generation of 1870, and the National Autonomist Party/Unitarians, explicitly modeled Argentina after the United States in most matters save popular participation -- where they took an overly limited view, which proved to be their undoing.

[Lexii, harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy]

I'm pretty sire rhat Estrella was in part talking about the "voto cantado" , the roll call voting system that was used before the Ley Saenz Peña which established  universal (male) secret voting

Under this system it wasn't necessary to adulterate the actual results as patronage, intimidation and bribery worked fine enough

[Libertas Vel Mors]

I'm pretty sire rhat Estrella was in part talking about the "voto cantado" , the roll call voting system that was used before the Ley Saenz Peña which established  universal (male) secret voting

Under this system it wasn't necessary to adulterate the actual results as patronage, intimidation and bribery worked fine enough

I'm pretty sire rhat Estrella was in part talking about the "voto cantado" , the roll call voting system that was used before the Ley Saenz Peña which established  universal (male) secret voting

Under this system it wasn't necessary to adulterate the actual results as patronage, intimidation and bribery worked fine enough

I understand, but I wouldn't characterize that as feudalist -- just authoritarian and undemocratic. Feudal specifically connotes a governmental system in which individuals are tied to the land, which Argentina of course wasn't.