A country of astonishing and grand magnitudes, Argentina is the largest eighth country in the planet with 1,073,518 square miles. From that enormity come its 7,500 miles of borders; almost 3,100 miles of those are coasts, which project the 2,541,000 square miles of its continental shelf—one of the most extensive in the world. In that vast area, just over 34 million hectares produce agricultural products.
On top of these wonders, Argentina is one of 20 nations in the world with a permanent presence in Antarctica. It is the country with the most number of bases dedicated to scientific research—six. Three other Latin American countries also have bases: Chile has five, while Brazil and Uruguay have one each. Antarctica is a vast laboratory of a sort where they are investigating not only the possible impact human life can have on the continent’s 5.4 square miles (equivalent to 1.5 times the US territory), but also crucial matters about our globe’s gaseous origin and configuration.
Among Argentina’s various and recurrent peculiarities, one strikes me the most: it is a country with three official names. In addition to the ‘Republic of Argentina’, which we all know and use, ‘Confederation of Argentina’ and ‘United Rio de la Plata Provinces’ are also official.
Estimates indicate that there are some 45 million Argentines. After Uruguay, it is the country with the lowest illiteracy rate in the continent—two percent. Even though there are somewhat frequent publications on the fall of readership indicators, Argentina continues to be a reference throughout Latin America for the quality and quantity of books published in the country, for the international projection of its writers and artists, for the richness and variety of the country’s cultural activity, for the massive love of cinema and theater, and for the talent of some of its journalists and chroniclers. To this, we must add the extraordinary vitality of the Argentine cities. I am not only talking about Greater Buenos Aires, but about Córdoba, Rosario, Mendoza, La Plata, San Miguel de Tucumán, Mar del Plata, Salta, San Juan, Santa Fe, among others, urban centers of constant social, cultural, and commercial activity. Cities privileged having their citizens in the streets.
Often overlooked in regards to Argentina, the country of Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, and Ernesto Sábato, is the fact that there are three Nobel prizes. However, these were not granted in literature but science. Bernardo Alberto Houssay received the 1947 Nobel Prize in Medicine, the first Latin American to receive this award in a science field. Luis Federico Leloir won the 1970 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and César Milstein received the 1984 Nobel Prize in Medicine. It is necessary to add Sandra Myrna Díaz to this list, who as a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), founded in 1988, was part of the team who received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for its contributions to the knowledge of the subject.
Argentina is the second-largest economy in South America, after Brazil. And together with Brazil and Mexico, it is part of the Group of 20 (G20) founded in 1999 to bring together the world’s major economies, which represent 65% of Earth’s population.
An essential part of its territory is characterized by having favorable agricultural climatic conditions, which has been the basis of its economic development. Argentina’s first agricultural advances began in the 16th Century. Throughout the following centuries, stage-by-stage, there has been a gradual growth in every way: more products, more cultivated areas, and better yields. That process is what made Argentina one of the world’s agricultural powers.
The first thing to highlight is that Argentina is the leading exporter of beef—listed as the best quality of meat. In 2018, it exported more than 369 thousand tons, principally to China, Germany, Chile, and Russia. The quantity grew 77% with respect to 2017, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INDEC). Also, it heads the rankings of exports of soybean meal and oil, manufactured peanuts, and pears. It is the third exporter of corn, as well as of sunflower flour and oil. It is the seventh exporter of wheat; eighth exporter of sunflower seeds; and tenth exporter of wine. Finally, it produces five perfect of the world’s grains.
To grasp the importance that agriculture represents for Argentina’s economy, it is enough to cite some 2016 figures from the World Bank: while the world’s average agricultural sector contribution to GDP was 4.6 percent that year, it reached 7.5 percent in Argentina, well above that of the United States, for example, where it amounted to 1.1 percent. Agriculture represents more than 11% of employment, offered by more than 80 thousand companies. To the crops already mentioned, it is necessary to add sorghum, rice, vegetables, fruits, citrus fruits, peaches, plums, yerba mate, tea, tobacco, sugar cane, cotton, wood, fodder crops and many more.
A considerable part of agricultural production—over 20 perfect—involves technology. After the US, Argentina has the most significant and most extensive advances in this category. This is not an isolated phenomenon; it is part of a technological and industrial framework, unusual in Latin America. The import substitution policy, which was promoted several times throughout the 20th Century, first in the thirties and later in the late fifties, created a broad industrial base—for example, in the field of agricultural machinery—, promoted critical technological developments, made new sectors appear, and laid the foundations of a culture of advancement and innovation.
Although these processes are not exempt from failures and difficulties, they have produced exceptional results such as successful scientific and industrial developments that resulted in, for example, the design, fabrication, and export of satellites, through processes that go from the concept of the mission to its delivery. It also produced nuclear reactors, turbines, helicopters, radars, and airplanes. It develops and exports software, selling around two billion US dollars a year, fabricates chips, and develops solutions in biotechnology, nanotechnology, and computer science. In addition, it continues to be an important actor in the Latin America oil sector, though its oil industry declined from 2008 to 2017. In 2018, its production reached an average of half a million barrels a day.
A report produced by IERAL Institute last March concluded that 82 percent of Argentines identify as middle class, but according to technical criteria, only 45 percent meet those standards. This is just a symptom of an important controversy that occupies experts and politicians alike given the subjective nature of the factors that make it challenging to analyze the issue: who should be considered poor?
INDEC’s website reports that 32 percent of Argentines live under the so-called “poverty line.” Experts have accused the official organism in charge of census and statistics under Mauricio Macri’s government of modifying the methodology used by the previous government, to worsen the data and accuse the government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of this situation. INDEC has published a document, “The Measurement of Poverty and Indigence in Argentina” (2016), which explains the criteria that support its figures. That 32 percent is higher than the Latin American average of poverty, which, according to ECLAC, is 28 percent.
Mauricio Macri’s efforts to eliminate the obstacles for the functioning of the economy and to integrate the country to the global trade developments—as opposed to the protectionist practices of the previous Kirchner governments—have not met the expected results. The policies for cutting public spending, reducing or eliminating tariffs, and reducing subsidies to some public services, have not prevented price increases. Accumulated inflation from Macri’s rise to power in December 2015 to May 2019 exceeded 250 percent; the 2018 inflation rate alone was 47 percent. Nor have the policies prevented the continued currency depreciation, which has devalued against the dollar more than 350 percent.
And even though various sources, including the World Bank, point out that there are clear indicators of a likely stability stage, which includes a progressive reduction of inflation indexes, the next years will present a big challenge. Argentina must pay back the International Monetary Fund (IMF) $57 billion in very demanding shares: $3.8 billion in 2021; $18.5 billion in 2022; $23 billion in 2023; and $10.1 billion in 2024. There is not a single person who understands economics, inside or outside Argentina, and has not wondered if it is possible to meet payments of that size, especially those corresponding to the years 2022 and 2023.
This hard picture of inflation and recession has impacted the daily lives of Argentines. Poverty increased, reports estimate that around 2 million Argentines are undernourished, and the unemployment rate, according to official figures, is approximately 10%, which means a little more than 1 million people on the street.
In this framework, Argentines will choose their next president on October 27, between Mauricio Macri and the Kirchnerism duo. Macri bears the record of a failed economic program, which has had negative social consequences. The Kirchnerism duo has a history of corruption, nepotism, abuse of power, and other serious accusations, such as those derived from the death of prosecutor Alberto Nisman.
I write this article a couple of weeks after the Argentinian primary elections. The duo formed by presidential candidate Alberto Fernández—who served as Chief of Staff to presidents Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner—and by former president and vice presidential candidate Fernández de Kirchner unequivocally won against president Macri’s candidacy. Weeks before the run-off, it is difficult to imagine that the gap established in the primaries in favor of the Fernández-Kirchner duo will change.
In an (unsuccessful) attempt to break up the Peronist unity, Macri is running with vice presidential candidate Miguel Ángel Pichetto, who is a senator and member of the Justicialista political party, which was founded by Eva and Juan Perón. In fact, Macri’s electoral victory in 2015 was possible in a historic second round or ballotage due to the Peronism division. Back then, there were two Peronist nominations in the first round: that of Justicialist Daniel Scioli, then governor of Buenos Aires, and that of the legislative Sergio Massa, leader of the so-called Renewal Front of the Peronist coalition.
After a rough electoral debate, the primary day came on August 11. Until that day, international media reported that Argentinians would have to chose between Macri’s promise to continue his efforts of modernizing the economy and answer to the demands of the 21st Century—with its evident social aftermath—; or the promise of Kirchnerism to return to the subsidies and protectionism, which alleviates Argentinian families’ poverty at a very high institutional and moral cost: impunity for crimes committed in previous administrations.
It was predictable that the Alberto Fernández and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner duo had won this electoral process. The polls announced it. However, the significant difference of 15 points was unexpected. Now, unless an unforeseen and exceptional event occurs before the presidential elections, Alberto Fernández will be the next president of the Republic, and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the new vice president. Nothing less than the return of Peronist Kirchnerism to power, just four years later and amid considerable accusations and judicial corruption proceedings.
These results, which have perplexed political analysts around the world, constitute a lesson: the presence of Peronism in the social and political fabric of Argentina is stronger than the scandals and criticism against it. It speaks on its political capacity to adapt to the conjunctures and to produce messages that captivate the majority.
And why do they captivate? The messages speak to most people because there exists considerable social debt, which increased in the last years. The Peronist Kirchnerism has managed to maintain a populist message by capitalizing on the reaction against strictly economist policies—typical of adjustment programs, economic openness, and privatization. These recipes from the so-called Washington Consensus do not measure with precision and sensitivity the negative social impact that they cause, and discard, even in their gradualist modality, a possible path for structural reforms that point to an inclusive and sustainable economy.
Another lesson from Argentina’s recent event has to do with the dangerous phenomenon of the “judicialization of politics.” No one doubts that all efforts must be made to strengthen the rule of law and close the paths to corruption until it is eradicated. But it must be done without politicizing that action. When the rule of law is politicized, polarization extends and occupies the Judiciary, until it is destroyed. It leaves the country—or countries—without credible tribunals. Furthermore, the most perverse phenomena of them all, those involved in corruption (even if they partook in it) end up being perceived as victims of persecution and political revenge, instead of recognizing a process that seeks justice.