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looted, 14 persons dead, and
another 1,800 arrested. Menem
forced Alfonsin to vacate the
presidency five months early.
Immediately, the inauguration
of Menem calmed the nation.
The new president himself
assuaged his opponents with his
remarkable gift for symbolism.
Astor Piazzolla, for example, the
country's greatest tango artist
and composer since the death of
Gardel, had been a vocal critic
of the Peronists during the cam-
paign and announced that he
would leave Argentina if Menem was elected. The president-elect,
therefore, came to a Piazzolla concert and publicly begged him not
to leave. “Stay, Astor,” he requested. “Stay, because we need you”
(Christian 1989, 4). The gesture won over the musician, who remained
in his homeland until his death three years later.
Raúl Alfonsín (left) hands over the presidency
to Carlos Saúl Menem in July 1989.
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Página 12)
Menem to the Rescue
No one was prepared for the direction that President Menem would
take in his economic policy. This Peronist embraced neoliberalism. He
appointed economists who had worked for the former military regime
and who had liberal credentials. Privatization became the president's
policy; for example, the new director of the national telephone com-
pany vowed to sell off the industry's assets to the private sector (in
effect, putting herself out of a job). Menem also pledged to reduce
the nation's burdensome international debt by privatizing other state
industries such as the state oil company, YPF; the national railways; and
the national airline, Aerolíneas Argentinas. The proceeds from these
sales would be applied toward reducing the national debt. Moreover,
Menem revealed plans to lower trade tariffs, streamline the bureau-
cracy, and remove obstacles to foreign investment. As momentous as
these changes would be, the cure for inflation formed the centerpiece
of Menem's economic reforms.
For his minister of economics, Menem chose Domingo Cavallo, a
Harvard-trained economist. Cavallo followed some of the monetarist
notions of the Chicago School of Economics identified with Nobel
