Argentina General Discussion 🇦🇷

[Velasco]

There was a guy named Carlos Menem who was President in the 90’s who famously converted to Catholicism as their constitution required it at time. His Presidency is widely criticized for being tied to the country’s economic troubles at the turn of the millennium.

More like Carlos Meme I remember how Lumine's description of Menem as basically a caricature of Berlusconi helped get me to go down the rabbit hole of Argentine political history. He was, well, quite a character. Hell, he even drove a Ferrari.

(...)

And then there was, of course, ¡VAAAMO MEEENEM!

I love the Vamos Mebem video from the 2003 campaign. It reveals the man was ahead of his time. He was clearly the greatest showman, better than Berusconi

Once I got a little obsessed with the 2003 elections and wrote a long post in Spanish, with maps and stuff. I have forgotten nearly everything, but I think I compared Carlos Menem with Silvio Berlusconi: the 'politics of the spectacle'

https://saintbrendansisland.wordpress.com/2015/01/24/argentina-2003/

It's amusing to see how popular is the Trot candidate here, but I prefer Lavagna

[Velasco]

Somewhat off topic, but in 2003 the vote divided pretty starkly along geographic lines, with Menem dominating in the north, Kirchner in the south and Murphy picking up CABA and parts of Buenos Aires province. Did the vote split on personalist lines or was there something more at play?

There must be more factors at play, but surely the result in the provinces reflects the geographical origin of the candidates and which one was backed by the PJ local machine. The three peronist candidates won in a landslide in their home provinces: La Rioja (Menem), San Luis (Rodriguez Saa) and Santa Cruz (Kirchner). Duhalde controlled the PJ in Buenos Aires ptovince and helped Kirchner to win there, although the vote was very splitted throughout the province (Kirchner took the Conurbano, the rest looks like a mosaic). Aside from Menem in the north and Kirchner in the south, Rodriguez Saa won in the central-western Cuyo region (San Luis, Mendoza and San Juan) Lopez Murphy performed well among urban middle class voters (BS As city and some provincial capitals were his strongholds), as well as Lilita Carrio (she did well in CABA and Santa Fe province). Both Lopez Murphy and Carrio came from the UCR and did much better than the official candidate Moreau

[Velasco]

2- Menem won in santa fe, but Carrió came a very close secod, she won in the city of santa fe as well as the south of the province, including Rosario. I looked it up and it turns out she was allied to the socialist party, which, for whatever reason, has always been pretty strong in Santa Fe. The socialist candidate for governor actually got the most votes in the gubernatorial election that year, but got screwed over by the Ley de lemas system.

You are right in everything except for the ARI-PS alliance. Elisa Carrio didn't ally with the socialists in 2003, but in the following 2007 election with Ruben Giustiniani as running mate. The PS candidate Hermes Binner finally won the Santa Fe governorship in 2007 and came a very distant second in the 2011 presidential election as the Broad Front leader. In 2003 Carrio came first in Rosario and Mar del Plata; in 2007 she was the leading candidate in the CABA and came second nationwide behind Cristina (and Lavagna won in Cordoba, a peronist running for the UCR alliance)

I have a better map of the 2003 here

https://saintbrendansisland.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/argentina-20031.png

Decriminalization of abortion was a matter of time 💚

[Velasco]

Amnesty International: legalization of anortion is an historic victory

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/12/argentina-legalization-abortion-historic-victory/

Today Argentina has made an emblematic step forward in defending the rights of women, girls and people with reproductive capacity. It has also sent a strong message of hope to our entire continent: that we can change course against the criminalization of abortion and against clandestine abortions, which pose serious risks to the health and lives of millions of people. Both the law passed by the Argentine Congress today and the enormous effort of the women's movement to achieve this are an inspiration to the Americas, and to the world,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International.

It is estimated that 450.000 clandestine abortions are performed vevery year in Argentina and the women dead from 1983 onwards due to unsafe conditions amount some 3,000. For those having moral objections or reserves. I would argue that decriminalization and safe conditions are the best way to prevent that women die. Abortion is a traumatic experience and no woman undertakes it for fun m. But there are multiple reasons why women seek to terminate unwanted pregnancies, even facing serious risks. Legalization and safe conditions are the best way to prevent that (mostly poor) women die in clandestine abortions, as well as sex education snd gender equality are the best ways to reduce unwanted pregnancies and abortions. I understand and respect people with ⁶moral objections,  but not those opposing decriminalization

[Velasco]

Hugo Moyano is my hero and Alex forgot to say he is also the president of a football club called Independiente

More seriously,  we don't have  nothing comparable to Moyano's union in Spain.  However, we had recently a truckers' strike promoted by an association of self-employed truckers with alleged connections to the far-right. On the other hand, freight transport by rail represents less than 5% in Spain!

I have two questions:

What's the prevalence in Argentinian transport sector of that modern form of slavery called self-employment?

What's the remaining share of freight transport by rail?