The end of Kirchnerism

New Left Review

Volumn , Issue 53, 2008, Pages 79-95

  Svampa, Maristella ^a  

^a INSTITUTO DE CIENCIAS   (Argentina)

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EID: 57349177030     PISSN: 00286060     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (28)

1. The only previous female head of state, Maria Estela Martínez de Perón, was elected vice-president in 1973 as the running mate of her husband, Juan Perón; she became president on his death in 1974, and was then overthrown by military coup two years later.
2. 'Child hunger deaths shock Argentina', Guardian, 25 November 2002; Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos (INDEC).
3. This move to strengthen the independence of the judiciary was rather undermined in February 2006 by a law increasing political representation - and government control - in the Consejo de Magistrature (Judicial Council), a panel responsible for selecting, disciplining and dismissing judges.
4. The process suffered a setback in September 2006, however, with the disappearance of Julio López, a former desaparecido whose testimony had been crucial to the case against a police chief eventually sentenced to life imprisonment; López's unknown fate highlights anew the persistent links between the repressive apparatus of the dictatorship and the present-day security forces, and casts doubt on the viability of further trials.
5. According to INDEC figures, there were 1,028,770 beneficiaries of the PJJHD programme; 530,000 of the Plan de Pensiones; 410,000 of the Familias para la Inclusión Social; 575,000 on the Manos a la Obra (Let's Get to Work) scheme; and 32,000 registered for the Seguro de Capacitación y Empleo (Training and Employment Insurance).
6. For more on this topic, see Maristella Svampa and Sebastián Pereyra, Entre la ruta y el barrio. Las experiencias de las organizaciones piqueteras, Buenos Aires 2003.
7. It must be said, however, that the piquetero organizations contributed to their own isolation and delegitimation - notably the Trotskyist groups, which portrayed Kirchner as a mere continuation of what went before, and thus failed to recognize Peronism's adaptability. Their calls for continued popular agitation in the end underestimated the vast asymmetry of forces between movements and government, as well as the vulnerability of the sectors they sought to mobilize.
8. Data from www.casarosada.gov.ar.
9. CEPAL, Statistical Yearbook for Latin America and the Caribbean, 2006. Unemployment figures do not include those enrolled in welfare programmes; if these are included, the 2007 figure is 9.8 per cent: INDEC.
10. Claudio Lozano, Ana Rameri and Tomas Raffo, Crecimiento y distribución. Notas sobre el recorrido 2003-2007, Instituto de Estudios y Formación, Buenos Aires 2007.
11. Lozano, 'Comportamiento de los sectores dominantes', paper presented at a conference on the Plan Fénix, Buenos Aires, September 2005;
12. and 'La Argentina desigual', Moreno, no. 179, 7 December 2006.
13. Figures from INDEC.
14. The April 2000 Law is known as the 'Banelco Law', after the chain of ATMS of the same name: at the time, many suspected the UCR government of bribing Peronist legislators to vote in favour of it, a fact which was later confirmed. The Law was repealed in 2004.
15. Claudio Lozano et al., 'Clandestinidad y precarización laboral en la Argentina de 2006', Instituto de Estudios y Formación, 2006;
16. Clarín, 14 June 2007, citing INDEC data.
17. In March 2006, a fire in an illegal workshop in the Buenos Aires port area killed six Bolivian immigrants, most of them minors - sparking a campaign against all such sweatshops. La Nación, 24 June 2006.
18. The official rate for 2007, for example, stood between 8 and 9 per cent, whereas most analysts estimated it to be between 18-20 per cent; by June 2008 the official annualized rate was 9.3 per cent, but others put it as high as 25 per cent.
19. Data from Centro de Estudios Nueva Mayoría. Though the figure dropped to 501 in 2006, in the year to March 2008 the number was up to 638.
20. The CGT, meanwhile, has split in the wake of the 2008 farm protests: Hugo Moyano supporting the government, and a 'dissident' faction led by Luis Barrionuevo - sacked by Menem from the Social Works Administration for declaring that 'no Argentine makes money by working' - backing the demands of the farmers.
21. According to 2007 data from the Ministry of Labour.
22. Julián Rebón, La empresa de la autonomía. Trabajadores recuperando la producción, Buenos Aires 2007.
23. La Nación, 1 February 2008.
24. Of the 593 roadblocks reported for 2007, for example, 52 per cent were by local people, students and retailers, with trade unions responsible for 23 per cent; piquetero organizations accounted for only 3 per cent, illustrating the scale of their decline. Figures from Centro de Estudios Nueva Mayoría.
25. Pierre Salama, 'Argentine: le choc de la hausse des matières premières', manuscript, July 2008;
26. Grupo de Estudios Rurales, '17 de Abril: Día Internacional de la Lucha Campesina', Realidad Económica, 2004, p. 112;
27. CEPAL, Statistical Yearbook for Latin America and the Caribbean, 2007.
28. Claudio Katz, 'El agrocapitalismo de la soja', Argenpress.info, July 2008. In June, in the midst of the crisis, Fernández put forward a revised scheme for the licenses, due to expire in October.