Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
10
THE NEOLIBERAL
AGE BEGINS
The elections of 1983 marked many transitions for Argentina: The
military returned to the barracks, the first freely elected Radical
president since Yrigoyen took office, and the Peronists lost their first
presidential election. More important, President Raúl Alfonsín and his
advisers had to confront the problems the military had bequeathed
them. They now had to count the victims of the Dirty War and pros-
ecute those military personnel who had tortured and killed Argentine
citizens and mismanaged the war in the Malvinas. The other challenge
facing the new civilian administration in 1983 concerned the economy.
Burdened by inflation running at more than 300 percent and by an
international debt that had risen fivefold under the military govern-
ment, the Alfonsín government had to get the economy to grow.
Few in Argentina could be faulted for not recognizing at the time
that another, far more fundamental shift was taking shape as well.
Populism had ended in bankruptcy. No longer would deficit spending
stimulate domestic demand and industrial growth. No longer could the
nation afford to protect inefficient industries behind high tariff walls
that injured traditional agricultural exports. Sooner or later, the state
would have to confront its own failure at running the core industries
efficiently and begin selling them off to private investors. The economy
was not going to grow without infusions of foreign capital and technol-
ogy. Finally, the government had to bring down inflation and reduce
the debt; indeed, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) demanded
fiscal responsibility as a condition to advancing new loans to Argentina.
Sharing in common high levels of debt and inflation, all other Latin
American nations, except Cuba, also participated in this trend away
from populist economics.
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