Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner embrace at the end of the campaign for the 2007 elections in Buenos Aires. Jorge Saenz (AP)
Kirchnerism is the son of a failure. In December 2001, the ultra-liberal economic model begun ten years earlier by Carlos Saúl Menem collapsed with President Fernando de la Rúa’s helicopter flight. Five presidents succeeded one another in a week, poverty skyrocketed and anarchy threatened to destroy everything. Peronism, personified by Eduardo Duhalde, embraced the hot potato. He devalued the currency, corrected the economy and distributed money to those most affected. Meanwhile, an unknown figure emerged from the southern tip of Argentina. The governor of the province of Santa Cruz, Néstor Kirchner, had built a strong provincial state structured around him and funded by oil royalties. In 2003, when Duhalde had to choose a name to put a stop to his enemy Carlos Menem once and for all, he met Kirchner.
Peronism monopolized everything. He was so powerful that in these elections, the first since the Corralito crisis, he put forward three different candidates, who received more than 60% of the vote. Néstor Kirchner took second place with 22%. But Carlos Menem, the winner of the first round, had a surprise in store: convinced of the defeat in the tie-break, he dropped out of the race and left the presidency unrivaled to the almost unknown Patagonian governor without votes. On May 25, 2003, exactly 20 years ago, Kirchner was sworn in as president, mingled with the crowd, suffered a cut on the face from an accidental hit with a camera, and declared himself the helmsman of a new Argentina. Kirchnerism was born.
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On March 24, 2004, the commemoration of the 1976 military coup, Néstor Kirchner had the painting of one of its directors, the dictator Jorge Rafael Videla, removed from the military academy. Thus endorsing the banner of human rights, forgotten by President Carlos Menem after pardoning the leaders of the dictatorship, he won the respect of the left. The political dimension of this strategy has remained to this day: human rights organizations supported the Kirchner project, celebrated the repeal of the pardon laws Kirchner administered, and unequivocally supported the new president. Kirchner had managed to establish himself as a benchmark for a left-wing Peronism nostalgic for the 1970s, initially a victim of the dictatorship and neoliberal policies of another Peronism, right-wing Peronism represented by Menem. Kirchnerism had already achieved de facto power in 2003 and just a year later also an epic and a story.
In Argentine politics, it is customary to say that Peronism rules with tailwind and opposition. Kirchner could not have had better winds. He inherited from Duhalde an economy emerging from the rubble with parallel surpluses, a competitive currency as a result of devaluation and incipient growth. Argentina’s GDP was soon growing at 7% a year, poverty dropped from 50% to just over 30%, and public money was poured into relief schemes for the poorest. The government based its growth model on stimulus to domestic consumption, a currency issue to finance the deficit and a tough policy to reduce external debt. In January 2006, the President announced the cancellation of Argentina’s $9.8 billion debt to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in a single payment and with central bank reserves.
Outside the borders, the region was already seeing the benefits of China’s greed for raw materials. Kirchner was soon riding the wave of South American progressivism, which had protagonists in Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Uruguay in an unprecedented combination of forces. Those were the days of the “Alca, to hell” proclaimed by Hugo Chávez at the 2005 America Summit in Mar del Plata, which George Bush had to prematurely abandon without being able to push through his idea of a continental trading bloc.
Argentina had good times. The President and his wife, Senator Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, ensured a bedroom transition that was accomplished in the 2007 election with twice as many votes as in 2003. But little by little the world changed. In 2008, Kirchnerism lost its first major political battle against a powerful enemy. “The fight against the country,” as it was called, was a failed attempt to apply mobile withholding taxes to soybean exports. From the parliamentary defeat that resulted in the negative vote of Vice President Julio Cobos, a more confrontational Kirchnerism developed with clear enemies: the mainstream media, export-focused economic groups and businessmen.
This confrontational epic still continues. Néstor Kirchner died unexpectedly in 2010 and his widow was re-elected a year later with more than 54% of the vote. The economic model was already showing signs of exhaustion. Inflation rose month by month as currency issues financed the deficit, the commodity boom slowed and the international political situation became increasingly unfavorable. The last years of Cristina Kirchner’s second term in office were characterized by resistance: the 2015 elections had to be held when the economy was booming. The government restricted the foreign exchange market, devalued the currency, froze public utility tariffs and renegotiated some of the external debt, while creatively setting inflation rates to mask the seriousness of the situation. Cristina Kirchner finally handed over power to a liberal, Mauricio Macri, and worked out the operational return from the plain text.
In 2019, aware of her voting restrictions, Kirchner delegated the Peronist candidacy to Alberto Fernández, her husband’s former prime minister, with whom she had been at odds for years. Her popularity waned, but four years ago no one doubted that she and only she should choose the representative of the movement in the elections. Fernández became president with her as vice president, a political monstrosity that soon suffered from its original sins and exploded into the air. On May 25th, Kirchnerism celebrates its entry into the Casa Rosada and Fernández is not even invited to the party on the Plaza de Mayo in front of the Casa Rosada.
Kirchner continues to claim the right to organize the internal party, but is facing growing criticism over the apparent failure of his engagement with Fernández. The Vice President is caught in a complex trap, forced to fight against a government that is her hand, yet inclusive. In a recent interview, he even admitted that he is fighting to keep the third of voters who are completely loyal to him alive. It’s not the scenario she and her husband imagined 20 years ago.
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