Elections in Argentina have been my main focus in the past weeks. A week ago a runoff took place between the candidate for the progressive government that has been in chair for these past 12 years, against a conservative candidate who has been the mayor of the city of Buenos Aires for the past 8 years. Nobody really thought a year ago that this last candidate would stand any chance of winning, but strange things happen. The oldest party, the UCR (Civic Radical Union) stripping itself from its honorable past of civility and radicalism made a union with the “modern” and conservative party of the city giving them a federal structure to stand upon (as they lacked major representation in the rest of the country). Finally, to understand a bit more the results, the past elections of the party in chair and the big support for our, not for long, current president, made the party propose a moderate candidate that wasn’t in everybody’s complete liking. Thinking that the moderateness of him would attract recent dissidents as well as hard party liners, they thought they would win easily. This wasn’t the case. The party’s core supporters didn’t like him enough for being moderate and recent dissidents thought he was too aligned with the party. The result ended calling for a win of the conservative party with a 1.5% difference of the electorate (roughly 700K votes) over the Peronist party in chair.
Just to get a panorama of the proposals of both parties: on one hand the Peronist party Front for Victory was running on maintaining and deepening the policies that they have implemented over the past 12 years that were able to put the country back to its feet after the 2001 crash (every single one of these policies was rejected, voted against, and demonized by the opposing party); on the other a new party, with a candidate born from the financial world (personal friend of Mr. Trump) with a made-up coalition under the name “Let’s Change” (Cambiemos, name stolen from Spain’s new left) promising absolutely nothing, just a change, with their real intentions covered during the whole election process.
These are just some of the policies of the last government that “Cambiemos” was always against:
-Marriage and Gender Equality
-Heterodox economic policies designed to strengthen local economy and effective in reducing inequality (with a clear disalignment from the Washington Concensus)
-Trial and Sentencing to the Military in charge of the coup of the 70′s that tortured and dissapeared 30.000 young men and women.
-Expansion of rights (including expansion of welfare for low income families, incentives to study, creation of 17 public universities around the country, a huge affordable housing plan, between others)
-Re-estatization of: the national airline, the railway system, pension funds, and our natural oil resources (all of them sold and privatized in the nineties).
Again, Cambiemos’ line and vote in the senate was always to be against these policies, but to win an election they had to pretend to be for them in the last two weeks. Hence, hiding their possible cabinet and real plans, they made an election upon nothing, just ‘change’ and a good marketing campaign, publicity turned into propaganda. (Far right, disguised as center-financial right)
(Note: This is the first time in Argentine history the Right has achieved power through the ballot, every time before it had been through coups.)
Trying to search their proposals and analyzing their plans, I came across this web page. Its their thoughts on education, suddenly parts of Adorno’s text came into my mind: “What men want to learn from nature, is how to use it, in order to dominate, it and other men”; “Enlightenment is totalitarian”.
When you open the page you’ll see a weird illustration of a man (the candidate for the party) sitting at some futuristic control table that resembles too much to the vessel of the evil alien main character that invades the city of BA in our best known graphic novel “El Eternauta”. Take that hint (and note nobody in the campaign actually read this bastion of argentine culture, scary) I looked for the image in the novel, here the comparison.
Translation of first image: “Yes I’ve inserted on you what you call the teledirector, man…To you and your fellow man.”
Translation of second image: “Education is the strongest weapon to change the world”
Scrolling down on this web page about their thoughts on “education”, a series of what looks and sounds like weird commandments about education is displayed. Some examples:
The first one is weird enough to get an idea of the others:
01. That our children wish to be scientists and not television celebrities.
—Note: what is that supposed to mean? really the first of your maxims?—
04. If it costs little, its worth little.
—Note: money already as a part of the rhetoric, though probably interpreted as effort, could also be translated as “cheap is cheap”
06. Chagrin creates chagrin. Enthusiasm creates enthusiasm. Ignorance creates ignorance. Education creates education. The good and the evil are mutually contagious.
—Note: I don’t know even where to start. This sounds like a mix between Metropolis, 1984, Bible commandments, and some ‘new age’ rhetoric. The last sentence doesn’t make sense at all.
This is the way new totalitarianism is expressed. The shift of the right from Latin America. Beware my friends, good and evil are contagious. Education according to them can be summed up in about 22 commandments. Conservatism and totalitarianism comes disguised, as always, as the new simple apolitical technological advancement.
2087
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