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Adam Freedman

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Posted Friday, Oct. 22, 1999, at 9:00 PM ET

Déjà vu--I was on the road to the city of Rosario, where I went last Tuesday for the closing rally of Alliance presidential candidate Fernando De la Rúa. Tonight, the Peronist candidate Eduardo Duhalde would hold his final rally.

There is no law in Argentina that closing rallies have to be held in Rosario; it was a coincidence that both main parties chose that city. There is a law, however, that campaigning has to stop a few days before the election. Argentines are meant to vote in a calm, sober atmosphere. Very civilized, that. Still, there can be too much of a good thing. For the next couple of days, one cannot even buy booze. Liquor stores did brisk business today as people stocked up for the weekend.

The Duhalde press bus turned out to be a minivan for the eight stubborn reporters who could not be persuaded to make alternative arrangements. As I mentioned yesterday, Peronists hate the press.

We arrived in Rosario to discover that the press tent ... ah, there was no press tent. Those journalists who needed to file stories (and you'd be surprised by how many of us planned to do just that) were allowed to use an office in a provincial government building, two miles from the scene of the rally.

In the late afternoon, I sat with the other reporters in a café, watching the gathering crowd. There is a striking class difference between Peronist and Alliance activists. Whereas the middle class drives the Alliance, organized labor forms the core of Peronism. Groups of beefy, red-faced workers marched toward the rally under union banners. From the sidelines, union organizers were barking orders into cell phones.

I interviewed one union leader who assured me that "Duhalde is perfectly positioned to win." If that is the case, then I really, really feel sorry for those who are positioned to lose. According to the latest polls, Duhalde is trailing De la Rúa by 17 percent. Not long after the interview, a voice came over the loudspeaker chanting, "The polls don't matter, the polls don't matter."

The founder of this labor movement, Juan Perón, was a soldier, not a worker. Indeed, Perón's contribution to Latin American politics was to combine the power of the military with organized labor--two great tastes, as it were, that go great together. Although the armed forces long ago split off from Peronism, the party maintains the military tradition of always keeping the troops busy. Party leaders were constantly putting the crowd through drills:

"Everybody lower your banners!"

"Raise your banners!"

"Lower all banners, except for Argentine flags!"

The speeches began shortly before 10 p.m. First came vice-presidential candidate Ramón Ortega, a former teen idol singer known by his nickname, "Little Stick." Once again, globalization was the most emotional issue, particularly IMF-imposed austerity measures. "We don't want conditions from anyone," cried Little Stick, "because the Argentine People are sovereign!"

Duhalde followed up on the same theme, declaring that globalization has favored "concentrated capital" and victimized "the little guy, the workers." He also went on for a long time about small business, which has become the surprise hit issue of the campaign. The main candidates are falling over each other to offer goodies to small businesses: tax cuts, tax forgiveness, refinancing debts, special institutes, and promotional campaigns. Having just switched careers to journalism, I now found myself thinking of opening a little kiosk in Buenos Aires and letting the good times roll!

But I had a story to file, and it was already well past deadline. There was no chance of finding my way back to the press office, so I went to the café to dictate my story from a pay phone. A crowd of impatient, would-be telephone users gathered around me as I flipped through my notes, composing the piece as I went along. When I finally hung up, the others let out a cheer.

With a sense of anticlimax, I thought, That was not just the last event of the campaign but also my last news story before I go back to the United States. After 14 months, I still have much to learn about Argentina. Covering the election campaign has, at least, helped me to understand a country that alternately reaches out to the world and shrinks back from the dangers of globalization; a country that is haunted by messianic political figures, but is about to elect a bland, scholarly lawyer as president.

I suddenly realized that two of the people from the telephone crowd were staring at me. They asked where I was from. One of them wanted to practice his English.

"Hey, New York," he said, grinning from ear to ear, "Fuck you."

Believe it or not, I am really going to miss Argentina.

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Posted Friday, Oct. 22, 1999, at 9:00 PM ET
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Adam Freedman went to Argentina as a lawyer and ended up as a columnist and Sunday editor of the Buenos Aires Herald.
COMMENTS

The Fraymaster adds:


Cristina Guzman, of Diputada de la Nacion, writes:

I have read your article on Slate concerning the Argentine political campaign, and your chronicle of the speeches in Rosario on November 20th. I was deeply shocked by some your remarks regarding the speech of the Alliance's candidate for vice-president, Mr. Carlos "Chacho" Alvarez.

You say that the "average Argentine will tell you that excessive U.S. influence is responsible for economic stagnation and a general moral decline." This is not true. I have been a national representative from one of Argentina's poorest provinces for five terms. I also lead a traditional local party that supports the Alliance, and I must say that it is rare to hear from the public that "excessive U.S. influence" is responsible for our economic and moral ailments. People in Argentina are very aware that economic and moral problems are due to dramatic failures by Menem's administration, and are not so naïve to think that what is happening in our country is because of "excessive U.S. influence."

You also say that when Alvarez made a plea for preservation of our cultural identity, "The crowd gave a such bloodthirsty roar that I found myself thinking: 'Taxi! U.S. embassy, and step on it!'" As a joke, I find this quite amusing. As an assessment of facts, I find it inaccurate. To defend our right to cultural identity is by no means a call for "Yankee go home," beyond the fact that Argentina has also attracted an unprecedented flow of investments from France, Great Britain, Spain, Italy, Chile and other countries besides the U.S. Telling the American public that the Alliance or its candidates are calling to combat the U.S. or its companies seems to me as a total lack of seriousness.

The Alliance is a pluralistic coalition, made up from the common goal to stop the failures of Menem's administration to give political credibility and long-term social sustainability to market reforms. We are aware that globalization is here to stay. It is a ruthless misinterpretation to suggest that Alvarez or the Alliance is against U.S. investments. To defend the right to our own cultural identity cannot be seen as an antagonistic feature in any way.

Moreover, preservation of our cultural identity should be seen as a sign of political development, since lack of identity often leads rulers to embrace models or patterns which uncritically taken, will lead to deception. (By the way, this is what happened to President Menem, who recently stated that "our teachers have let us down.") The Alliance will foster the way to profound changes in the polity, but not by the way of idiotic nationalism, but by the way of self-aware openness, giving juridical stability and political and social sustainability to market reforms. The American public should know this, and should not be misled by the subjective impressions of an accidental journalist.


And this reader writes:

I enjoy seeing this often unnoticed part of the world in a publication I enjoy immensely. Sadly, previous mentions of Argentina in Slate have mostly included passing sneers at nazi-harbouring and Evita Perón--which I dare say is more than the country is about--and a spot-on analysis by Paul Krugman of Peronist candidate Eduardo Duhalde's appeals to the Pope for economic deliverance. I'm pleased to say that according to polls, Duhalde's big mouth and sloppy economics will cost him badly, and he may be heading for the most resounding defeat of the Peronist party ever. But I guess we'll find out on Sunday.


(10/21)

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