Argentina Archives - Public Seminar

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Mourning Maradona

Football, populism and Argentina’s civic religion

December 3, 2020 • by Mitchell Abidor

Diego Armando Maradona, the controversial and brilliant Argentine football star, died on Wednesday, November 25, 2020 in a Buenos Aires hospital. One of the defining figures in international soccer during the 1980s, Maradona is the stuff of legend. In his performance against England in the 1986 World Cup, he invoked ...

Media

Fake News, Conspiracy Theories, and New Media

Plan Andinia and Anti-Semitism in Argentina

October 12, 2019 • by Emmanuel Guerisoli

Cuneo’s oral manifesto went viral across multiple platforms, such as What’s App, Facebook, YouTube, and endless email chains, sparking a public debate over Argentinean Jews’ sacred and exclusive loyalty towards Israel. Pro-Cuneo posts offered many cases of public figures, all of them Jewish, that were Mossad double agents or involved ...

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Feminism, Elections, and Beyond

On the effects of the green wave in Argentina

September 24, 2019 • by Cami Baron and Gabi Mitidieri

When people from other latitudes ask us how we managed to achieve such mobilized feminisms, we have no other choice but to trace our history. The massive mobilization for Ni Una Menos in 2015 surprised us, but to prevent that energy from dissipating, the feminists that had been struggling for ...

Feature

Stormy Times in Argentina

A View from Buenos Aires

September 23, 2019 • by Margarita Gutman

The core of this article was written a week before the results of the primary elections on August 11, which massively rejected the national economic and social policies implemented by current President Mauricio Macri, as demonstrated by the 15 point spread between the victorious Alberto Fernandez and Macri. These primary ...

A Stormy Affair with the Dollar

A long history of devaluations matters for Argentina’s elections

September 20, 2019 • by Santiago Mandirola

On March 31st, 2019, the Argentinean football league crowned a new champion. Among the many posts on social media that commented on the event, one tweet asked: “how much was the dollar [in Argentinean pesos] the last time your team won the league?” and listed the value of the American ...

Feature

The Problem with “Neoliberalism”

Neoliberalism is polarizing the 2019 elections. Does it capture Argentina’s predicament?

September 19, 2019 • by Nicolás Saldías

I argue neoliberalism has become a shorthand whose usage does more harm than good. There are three (non-exhaustive) reasons why it is a problematic frame to understand Argentina’s predicament. First, neoliberalism is a concept that over-simplifies multi-causal processes into a narrative frame presented as a coherent whole. It creates an “us ...

When Debt Matters

Argentina’s new debt trap and the return of the IMF

September 18, 2019 • by Juan Matías De Lucchi

Because of its long-term effect, one of the most important negative effects of Macri’s failed policy has been the dramatic rise of the relevant public debt, which is debt denominated in foreign currency and held by the private sector and international organisms. This debt has gone from 73 to 172 ...

Feature

Assessing the Macri Legacy

How four years of economic policy matter for the upcoming elections

September 17, 2019 • by Michael A. Cohen

One of the most critical decisions that started this downward spiral was Macri’s rollback of “retenciones” or taxes on agricultural exports, primarily soy, that had been increased during the government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in 2008. This reduction in public revenue of about US$2 billion a year immediately ...

Feature

What is at Stake in Argentina’s Elections

A Series

September 16, 2019 • by Guillermina Altomonte and Lucas Ballestín

Beyond the economic debates animating the campaign (between Macri’s more restricted business-friendly form of the welfare state, and Fernandez’ mirror opposite: a sovereigntist, Keynesian Industrial Policy focused narrative), the campaign invokes debates about social justice and national sovereignty. For historical reasons, the Fernandez ticket links the presence and activity of ...

Feature

The Abortion Debate in Argentina

Or how men, priests, and the ignorant subjugate women

September 17, 2018 • by Emmanuel Guerisoli

In the very early hours of August 9, the Argentinean Senate missed a historic opportunity to become the first Catholic-majoritarian country in the global south to legalize voluntary abortion. Instead, the upper chamber’s total rejection of abortion revealed three dynamics that prevent women from acquiring full citizenship rights, and which ...

Feature

Argentina’s National Sport

On the uses and abuses of melancholic nostalgia

July 17, 2018 • by Lucas Ballestín

On June 30, fans of football all across ahe globe were struck (but not really surprised) by the defeat of an Argentine national team at the hands of an explosive France at the World Cup in Kazan, Russia. All across the world, Argentines and their sympathizers watched in sadness as ...

Feature

The Thick Line

On the impossibility of coming to terms with a dark past

March 16, 2018 • by Santiago Mandirola

"We split away the history of our recent past with a thick line. We will be responsible only for what we have done to help extract Poland from her current predicament from now on." – Tadeusz Masowiecki As Poland’s first post-Communist prime minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki sought to draw a thick line between the ...