by Pepe Escobar : posted with permission and x-posted with Consortium News
The presidential election in Argentina was no less than a game-changer and a graphic lesson for the whole Global South. It pitted, in a nutshell, the people versus neoliberalism. The people won – with new President Alberto Fernandez and former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (CFK) as his VP.
Neoliberalism was represented by Mauricio Macri: a marketing product, former millionaire playboy, president of football legends Boca Juniors, fanatic of New Age superstitions, and CEO obsessed with spending cuts, who was unanimously sold by Western mainstream media as the new paradigm of a post-modern, efficient politician.
Well, the paradigm will soon be evacuated, leaving behind a wasteland: $250 billion in foreign debt; less than $50 billion in reserves; inflation at 55 percent; the U.S. dollar at over 60 pesos (a family needs roughly $500 to spend in a month; 35.4 percent of Argentine homes can’t make it); and, incredible as it may seem in a self-sufficient nation, a food emergency.
“The Head of Macri: How the First President of ‘No Politics’ Thinks, Lives and Leads.”
Macri, in fact the president of so-called Anti-Politics, No- Politics in Argentina, was a full IMF baby, enjoying total “support” (and gifted with a humongous $58 billion loan). New lines of credit, for the moment, are suspended. Fernandez is going to have a really hard time trying to preserve sovereignty while negotiating with foreign creditors, or “vultures,” as masses of Argentines define them. There will be howls on Wall Street and in the City of London about “fiery populism,” “market panicking,” “pariahs among international investors.” Fernandez refuses to resort to a sovereign default, which would add even more unbearable pain for the general public.
The good news is that Argentina is now the ultimate progressive lab on how to rebuild a devastated nation away from the familiar, predominant framework: a state mired in debt; rapacious, ignorant comprador elites; and “efforts” to balance the budget always at the expense of people’s interests.
What happens next will have a tremendous impact all over Latin America, not to mention serve as a blueprint for assorted Global South struggles. And then there’s the particularly explosive issue of how it will influence neighboring Brazil, which as it stands, is being devastated by a “Captain” Bolsonaro even more toxic than Macri.
Ride that Clio
It took less than four years for neoliberal barbarism, implemented by Macri, to virtually destroy Argentina. For the first time in its history Argentina is experiencing mass hunger.
In these elections, the role of charismatic former President CFK was essential. CFK prevented the fragmentation of Peronism and the whole progressive arc, always insisting, on the campaign trail, on the importance of unity.
But the most appealing phenomenon was the emergence of a political superstar: Axel Kicillof, born in 1971 and CFK’s former economy minister. When I was in Buenos Aires two months ago everyone wanted to talk about Kicillof.
The province of Buenos Aires congregates 40 percent of the Argentine electorate. Fernandez won over Macri by roughly 8 percent nationally. In Buenos Aires province though, the Macrists lost by 16 percent – because of Kicillof.
Kicillof’s campaign strategy was delightfully described as “Clio mata big data” (“Clio kills big data”), which sounds great when delivered with a porteño accent. He went literally all over the place – 180,000 km in two years, visiting all 135 cities in the province – in a humble 2008 Renault Clio, accompanied only by his campaign chief Carlos Bianco (the actual owner of the Clio) and his press officer Jesica Rey. He was duly demonized 24/7 by the whole mainstream media apparatus.
What Kicillof was selling was the absolute antithesis of Cambridge Analytica and Duran Barba – the Ecuadorian guru, junkie of big data, social networks and focus groups, who actually invented Macri the politician in the first place.
Argentina’s new president, Alberto Fernandez, at right, with his vice president, former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. (Screen shot/YouTube)
Kicillof played the role of educator – translating macroeconomic language into prices in the supermarket, and Central Bank decisions into credit card balance, all to the benefit of elaborating a workable government program. He will be the governor of no less than the economic and financial core of Argentina, much like Sao Paulo in Brazil.
Fernandez, for his part, is aiming even higher: an ambitious, new, national, social pact – congregating unions, social movements, businessmen, the Church, popular associations, aimed at implementing something close to the Zero Hunger program launched by Lula in 2003.
In his historic victory speech, Fernandez cried, “Lula libre!” (“Free Lula”). The crowd went nuts. Fernandez said he would fight with all his powers for Lula’s freedom; he considers the former Brazilian president, fondly, as a Latin American pop hero. Both Lula and Evo Morales are extremely popular in Argentina.
Inevitably, in neighboring, top trading partner and Mercosur member Brazil, the two-bit neofascist posing as president, who’s oblivious to the rules of diplomacy, not to mention good manners, said he won’t send any compliments to Fernandez. The same applies to the destroyed-from-the-inside Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Relations, once a proud institution, globally respected, now “led” by an irredeemable fool.
Former Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, a great friend of Fernandez, fears that “hidden forces will sabotage him.” Amorim suggests a serious dialogue with the Armed Forces, and an emphasis on developing a “healthy nationalism.” Compare it to Brazil, which has regressed to the status of semi-disguised military dictatorship, with the ominous possibility of a tropical Patriot Act being approved in Congress to essentially allow the “nationalist” military to criminalize any dissidence.
Hit the Ho Chi Minh Trail
Beyond Argentina, South America is fighting neoliberal barbarism in its crucial axis, Chile, while destroying the possibility of an irreversible neoliberal take over in Ecuador. Chile was the model adopted by Macri, and also by Bolsonaro’s Finance Minister Paulo Guedes, a Chicago boy and Pinochetist fan. In a glaring instance of historical regression, the destruction of Brazil is being operated by a model now denounced in Chile as a dismal failure.
No surprises, considering that Brazil is Inequality Central. Irish economist Marc Morgan, a disciple of Thomas Piketty, in a 2018 research paper showed that the Brazilian 1 percent controls no less than 28 percent of national wealth, compared to 20 percent in the U.S. and 11 percent in France.
Axel Kicillof in 2014. (2violetas, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Which bring us, inevitably, to the immediate future of Lula – still hanging, and hostage to a supremely flawed Supreme Court. Even conservative businessmen admit that the only possible cure for Brazil’s political recovery – not to mention rebuilding an economic model centered on wealth distribution – is represented by “Free Lula.”
When that happens we will finally have Brazil-Argentina leading a key Global South vector towards a post-neoliberal, multipolar world.
Across the West, usual suspects have been trying to impose the narrative that protests from Barcelona to Santiago have been inspired by Hong Kong. That’s nonsense. Hong Kong is a complex, very specific situation, which I have analyzed, for instance, here, mixing anger against political non-representation with a ghostly image of China.
Each of the outbursts – Catalonia, Lebanon, Iraq, the Gilets Jaunes/Yellow Vests for nearly a year now – are due to very specific reasons. Lebanese and Iraqis are not specifically targeting neoliberalism, but they do target a crucial subplot: political corruption.
Protests are back in Iraq including Shi’ite-majority areas. Iraq’s 2005 constitution is similar to Lebanon’s, passed in 1943: power is distributed according to religion, not politics. This is a French colonizer thing – to keep Lebanon always dependent, and replicated by the Exceptionalists in Iraq. Indirectly, the protests are also against this dependency.
The Yellow Vests are targeting essentially President Emmanuel Macron’s drive to implement neoliberalism in France – thus the movement’s demonization by hegemonic media. But it’s in South America that protests go straight to the point: it’s the economy, stupid. We are being strangled and we’re not gonna take it anymore. A great lesson can be had by paying attention to Bolivian Vice-President Alvaro Garcia Linera.
As much as Slavoj Zizek and Chantal Mouffe may dream of Left Populism, there are no signs of progressive anger organizing itself across Europe, apart from the Yellow Vests. Portugal may be a very interesting case to watch – but not necessarily progressive.
To digress about “populism” is nonsensical. What’s happening is the Age of Anger exploding in serial geysers that simply cannot be contained by the same, old, tired, corrupt forms of political representation allowed by that fiction, Western liberal democracy.
Zizek spoke of a difficult “Leninist” task ahead – of how to organize all these eruptions into a “large-scale coordinated movement.” It’s not gonna happen anytime soon. But, eventually, it will. As it stands, pay attention to Linera, pay attention to Kiciloff, let a collection of insidious, rhizomatic, underground strategies intertwine. Long live the post-neoliberal Ho Chi Minh trail.
”Both Lula and Evo Morales are extremely popular in Argentina.”
That’s very good indeed. In short: To hell with neoliberalism and its cult of avarice, incompetence, and societal rot.
Nothing will change in Argentina because nothing can change in the neo-liberal global Reich. Members of the new administration will be long-term US sleepers, perhaps as high up as we’ve seen in Ecuador. Subversion will take a leap upwards, immediately, both by the plethora of US State intelligence agencies, but also by the economic hit-men of the Washington Consensus, the IMF, World Bank, WTO etc, and private Western NGOs from the Soros archipelago and elsewhere. The Zionazis will take a particular interest, naturally. There is NO escape without the end of the US Empire and the end of neo-liberalism, and the time left before the climate destabilisation disaster renders all efforts pointless continues to dwindle.
Nonsense!
Wet blanket statements such as yours (here) cannot contain the geysers of anger………prerequisites to the thinking and understanding and global consciousness which they clear the way for.
Remember, Necessity Is The Mother of Invention….and That Mother (Needs be!) is presently very, very pregnant indeed…… with possibilities for positive change…and problem solving!
Which most definitely DO NOT include handing over even more diabolical control of all credit globally to the Climate Change Fakers and Genocidalists….the IMF, BIS etc etc.
Your blindness to your own capitulation to the End of the World pessimism of these cannibalistic ghouls (who are quite real in their total Absence of Care for humanity) is a lot more alarming than what alarms you…..which is THEIR lies and propaganda
THEY will run Carbon Taxes, Carbon Credits and culling the human herd their way…..not the dupes of their apocalyptic End of The World propaganda….that is so plain to see…if heads of little people slated for elimination ………….are not covered by wet blankets of pessimism.
my poorly washed brain still cant understand how the blatant corruption and abuse of power by the Kirchners, the continuation of slash and burn capitalism and sticking to power by Morales, the blissful animalfarm dystopia of Venezuela etc are supposed to be solutions for the exact same shortcomings and inequalities of the neoliberal clown set. wishful thinking never ceases to amaze. Mexico one year into its new socialist paradise has just tripled the criminal epidemic and accelerated an economic contraction into full blown recession. lets see how Argentina and Chile fare in a year.
The same question occurs to me, Metternich. Surely there are options other than a false dilemma between two evils.
of course there is the alternative..the one in which the answers are contained: the peoples interest. that is where Fernandez and Fernandez must turn and Kicillof must turn: no compromises with that.
if they take the money boys and global finance seriously they are toast. they will be strung out into failure that may turn Latin America in to hell finally. there wont be any way back this time. time has run out: that is the way I see it..the terminal juncture we have arrived at.
Big Finance cannot afford to lose this one. they are surely pulling out all the stops: there is no way they can allow these develop if they hope to succeed: and there is only one way they can succeed: go to the people, bring them front and center..go full scale revolutionary
‘lets see how Argentina/Chile fare in a year?’ I am not waiting that long. they will be nowhere..locked horns in futile negotiations with the neoliberal money-power infrastructure.
its a waste of time..nothing can be solved that way anyway..dealing withe money boys. pass, go straight to revolutionary economic activity: take it all over, pass ownership over to those who work all industries, repudiate bad debt. or simply suspend them. don’t pay until the country is solvent again. then negotiate interest and principle. I would not pay at all..total repudiation.
clean out the bureaus of all those who are consensus, inside men, neoliberal sleepers. send to get real work for a living. we know who the creative radicals are but for it would be more confidence in the people..bringing the people front and center their interest which is the same as the national interest..as the driver of the program..and also as the protection of the program
it would be time to turn the entire country into militias..and for that the military must be over-hauled, made nationalist, popular and modernized. with the people front and center with real power the leadership can do all they need to do to really save the country. taking on the global money power is a waste of time. keeping those countries run as they always have been is also a waste of time. revolutionize from the ground up or forget it
let the US invade! they will have to fight all of Argentina and Chile too can the US still do that however?
and by bringing the people front and center that may be what is required to eliminate any possibility of divide and rule chaos by the CIA etc. the minority and their support who would still cling to neoliberalisn would be isolated and easy to deal with
All these states contain large numbers of Rightwing psychopaths, who hate other people along class, racial, sectarian, gender, sexual orientation and other lines, and who live only for themselves. These are a ready source of support even for bloody internal, death-squad, repression, as we have seen in Latin America for at least 200 years. These swine, naturally, worship the USA and its ideology of insatiable greed, massive egotism. insane belligerence, and hatred and contempt for others. And it is they who guarantee the imminent disappearance of Homo sapiens, Man the Sap.
Rightwing psychopaths of course leaves out all the other psychopaths and frames the issue according to one’s own favorite ‘winged’ psychopaths. Pepe’s language is good here … neoliberals and corrupt forms of political representation. To call that only rightwing seems to me shortsighted.
And the ‘imminent disappearance of Homo sapiens’ is of course arguable.
And there are many Americans that are not as you describe. Many are, to be truthful, but many are not and let’s not throw out blanket insults.
And to call Man, the ”Sap” is of course truly disrespectful to those that have survived on this very same earth for a very long time as well as disrespectful on many other levels.
a
“neoliberals and corrupt forms of political representation. To call that only rightwing seems to me shortsighted.”
Liberals are rightwing, neoliberals are even further to the right. Political corruption is almost always based upon personal greed and support of the capitalist system against the masses. It benefits a few, the rich employing the corrupt politicians and bureaucrats, hurts the rest. This is rightwingery.
Thanks vot tak.
I must admit the left wingery and right wingery looks to me like the same old buggery in the time of culture wars. The actual financial instruments used may be different, but there is no difference in terms of psychopathy or plunder. I don’t think our descriptors even come close to the reality as this type of wingery does not care. We have the IMF demanding certain economic strategies common in rightwingery if one is unlucky enough to deal with these psycho’s, but we also have the leftwingery in the EU wiping out their own populations for example with ‘kind and sweet’ policies of migrants to their countries, while helping to wipe out countries in the background there, to create those very migrants on which they build the leftwingery. You ask me, I say all this wingery is dancing buggery.
When you add anthropogenic climate destabilisation, at a rate more rapid than for at least 55 million years, massive pollution of every type, the insect Holocaust, the disappearance of large pelagic fish and large land animals, deforestation, the spread of deserts etc, etc, you get certain self-destruction within decades. All of these are worsening, with NONE improving, due to resistance from the ruling Rightwing capitalist psychopaths, and from the denialist industries. Any H. saps still extant in 2050 will surely regret their ‘luck’.
Perhaps they should try the Chinese method, putting the Laws of Supply and Demand to work to benefit the people, not just the parasites.
First of all, I wish them a world class security-apparatus, the locusts will strike back with all their power THAT is certain. I would book a series of talks with Moscow to that end….FIRST !
We know how it started the last time – with a BOOM! in a yahoo-site, remember ?
Make sure all foreign affiliated NGOs to be registered and closely watched night and day.
Erect high walls around certain foreign embassies and/or start long and extremly complex maintenance work of the infrastructure all around them, maybe including some novelty techs in searching for fracking gas or geothermal energy underneath them.
Present day South America, USA, England, Middle East and many other countries are quickly falling under the yolk of neo-liberal policies. This hollowing out of the middle class is creating the greatest division of rich and poor since we had monarchs and serfs. A western fiscal hooliganism or commercial fascism endeavors to privatize pension funds and welfare programs abandoning all pretense of humanity and civilization.
The idea of privatizing health, education and welfare will surely go down in history as one of the most pathetic and uncivilized ideas ever cooked up. If ever a decision was made to plunge the world into another Stalinist state this must rank up there with the invention of brown toilet paper.
In a ‘Stalinist’ education is free and universally available, and health, housing, transport and high culture free or very cheap. What you describe is a Friedmanite state, one where the ruling elite hate the plebs and delight in treating them with cruelty and outright contempt.
if you are a Party that has fought for and won election on your program you are aware of all of this, what you are up against and have devised a plan of social transformation the success of which must depend on popular participation, for the people in collective movement is the only force in whose interest such transformation lies, and who are capable of carrying out such a transformation, defending it, taking it through
the Party that wins on popular support must immediately capitalize on such popular support, not betray it in any way as to encourage popular dismay and popular regression of the Party. and in my estimation the way to take advantage of the poplar support, to broaden it and expand the chances of program is to begin from the start to meet popular needs..sincerely, seriously. to be up front as possible with the people, truthful and honest about the job ahead currently as you begin to do that job
food security is a problem in Argentina right now a country that was self-sufficient..well a place to begin addressing honestly, reversing the hollowing out of the middle classes and filling every empty belly. how can Chile and Argentina cooperate in this, staring immediately the progressive cooperation between both countries they are going to need on the way to self sufficiency and independence in multi polar world.
immediate connections with the positive global forces China and Russia as counter balance and trade and investment support in keeping the world financial powers at bay, while developing the popular internal base that would permit modernization of the military etc..that is military transformation into a popular nationalist force in and of the people and working in the interest of the nation
the point is to engage with international finance is you must, diplomacy negotiations but they must start from the interest of Argentina and not the demands of the Financiers. they can argue for about a year or two on the basis of discussion..but it must be the interest of Argentina/Chile etc.. all of the Latin nations first: “how do we survive and become prosperous? ‘we cannot do so under onerous financial western measures..so how can we cannot start from your perspective. you must offer us a clear plan as to how we can clear off these debts and develop no more etc”
that is not in the West’s interest of course but in the meantime these countries must take back their central banking and currencies from international finance..among their first acts. once they do so they are free to use their own cash for internal purposes without interest charges. and they can trade between China/Russia and their neighbors in their own currencies.
these countries with the weakening empire and the available alternatives can succeed currently if they are up to the task, if they are really prepared and intent on transforming their countries. I think the people are always ready..is the Party ready?
for Christina this is a better time than her previous one in power, greater chances of success. but is she a real, total nationalist in the sense she is ready to respond to truth and the development of understanding of the situation and what is required for survival..total transformation into real social democracy..socialism with ‘Argentine characteristics’? not some abstract ideological position but truth..ideology and truth must be a unity.
the truth is that survival of all of humanity is contained only in the interest of the people, all of the ordinary people ..in their collective interest whether they are aware of it or not. the Party must be aware of it..they must be ideologically pristine, advanced, on the ball taking the people to understanding if that is necessary and part of the purview they have won electorally. the electorally successful Party will not defeat the enemies of the people without the people in the actualization of the popular interest. and to do so the Party must begin immediately to enact the popular interest
if the Party do not they will frustrate the people who will know they are being badly led, misled, and and failing again. whether they can put it into words or not the people will know if only sensing whats going on and popular dismay will rise. the Party will be wasting the popular opportunity they won at the polls, and this time in probability terminally. the capitalist understand the stage..they always do and as always in the application of their physics they are ready to take Brave New World all the way.
I am always suspect at power won at the polls, in elections. organized political parties are minority vested interest political interests and for that reason alone are suspect from the start..until they prove out.
You forgot to mention the privatisation of the jails.
This is where you learn what they really want to pay you!
Leaving the innocent unemployed and fodder for the system.
both internally and internationally, resources like the Saker ought to focus on the role of the Party in social transformation, to clarify popularly the stage and the opportunity for the Parties in Latin America right now.
also to put the backs of the Parties against the wall in a glare of global clarity about their opportunity to transform their national states into functioning democracies in the interest of all their peoples..and how this can be done, the may ways and approaches that are possible towards the only from of social organization that will bring peace and prosperity, that will civilize the people, the society to make sure the Parties are aware that the world is aware of them.
the so called alternative press must play the role of educating the people…all the people, ordinary upwards in the truth of social existence that we know and how best such truth may affect our lives for the better. and if it is not doing so why it is not doing so
such knowledge must become the simple property of all the people. the alternative media and its progressive content must replace the MSM as the source of popular routine intellectual content. the role of the parties in latin America at this time is a great opportunity to begin such development in the popular mind of the stage society has arrived at varied ways on the principle of popular democracy, and what the Latin developments contain and what the Parties that have won must do to be successful in the interest of social advance locally… and what such success will mean globally
the Alternative media must not flinch from the truth that if the Parties fail again, betray the popular confidence placed in then, the best popular result, and the best development even now….but as the people have given the Parties another chance, if they fail this time, the alternative is for popular action, out in the streets to take over the nations and place the popular interest front and center in social transformation. what they people want and need can be effected only by the people themselves, taking over finally and irrevocably the entire nation and effecting the popular will in the process
social control by the people in the routine running of the nation is the way forward even no, as for sure the political parties will quail before the job they must do and for that and other reasons of class they will fail. by this the cannot wait any longer and will no longer, wait allowing the social power to be sequestered into the hands of minorities who for many and obvious reasons have failed to carry out the popular mandates placed in their hands electorally..and will fail in any subsequent opportunities, that the time for that is done.
It is arguable that “Hong Kong is a complex, very specific situation” compared with other flashpoints discussed by Pepe Escobar. It is dangerous when interests other than justice are at play. In a world becoming increasingly chaotic, there is a dark underlying logic propelling us towards world war.
The ‘underlying logic’ is simply that the Western ubermenschen of the USA, the Five Eyes and NATO have no intention of surrendering Full Spectrum Dominance, forever, over the world. These are self Chosen People, and as far as they are concerned Chinese, and even Russians, are ‘mere Asiatics’, a lower form of Life and civilization, who must be put in their place, and if the world must be destroyed to achieve that Holy Crusade, so be it.
For sure the revolutionary process will be messy…..will contain trial…and error…and reaction…but so what???
It will not be the same.
Let’s see what Kiciloff …and others emerging to take their shot at doing better than their predecessors ………is made of ….and can grow into…before we get all hand wringing.
That is our task….as well in whatever capacity we can engage.
Obviously China and Russia provide a new element of better possibility in terms of various forms of assistance.
Many here wish to axiomatically rule out anything positive ever coming out of the USA…as well. That is understandable…but a major error of temptation…to deem themselves infinitely better….by “virtue” of being able to see our evils better from afar…than people here …who avoid the mirror…can…all the while coming up short of solutions!
However, that too is changing. Much more self examination is occurring here…than in a century or so!
Ergo, It is all up for grabs now…everywhere. And I mean in terms of opportunity for improving Justice and Wisdom…..and science and production……..not merely the “same old, same old” looting and egoic positioning atop an exploited, maddened humanity….by all but a tiny handful of individuals…anywhere at all.
Kirchner? I’m suspicious, wasn’t she also full neolibshit way back?
Great discussions here as inspired by Pepe Escobar’s latest article.
Some folks here may be looking at too many details given the power of neo-liberalism and political tensions in Latin America.
If, however, we look at the turmoil on a global basis, it’s undoubtedly true, the neo-liberal policies are encountering difficulties. Neo-liberalism has done nothing positive all these years except to endow a small minority of the population to grow enormously wealthy at the expense of the many millions.
At the same time, we are seeing the rise of both China, Russia, some Middle Eastern and Asian nations forging ahead by weening themselves off the US DOLLAR. They’re establishing new trade routes and lifting many out of the edges of much poverty.
If you study the history of fallen empires, you see, especially in the US, a massive over-reach wherein said Empire loses its potency to contend against rising powers. It’s like the Dutch boy running around trying to plug up all the holes filled with a surge of water. A hopeless cause.
This same urgency is what killed off the Spanish/British/Dutch Republic & the Genoese Empires.
It will take time, but in 10-15 years, you’ll see how all these Latin American nations rise from the death-trap of Neo-liberalism. Hopefully, (and we live in America) the US $$/Military powers will be greatly reduced.
They wont go down w/o some kind of a cyber fight.
In 10-15 years the ecological collapse will be rapidly worsening, and politics will take a back-seat to the struggle for survival that little bit longer.
There may not be 10 to 15 years for life on the planet. Insects gone, major food shortages in a year or two. Geoengineering must stop.
The only hope for Latin America is the destruction of the U.S. dollar. When the dollar dies the empire will not have the capacity to buy governments. After a period of uncertainty the political right will wither away and die. That ideology is built on corruption and greed and without it’s enablers it has no future.