Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
11
ARGENTINA ON
THE REBOUND?
The severe economic crisis of 2001 lingered long enough to be
compared to the Great Depression of 1930. Unemployment
spread, gross national product plummeted, money lost value, crime
expanded, and poverty shot up to include half the population
of Argentina. However, the comparison to the 1930s differed in
one important detail. The military, now much reduced in stature,
remained in the barracks. The memory of misrule and wanton vio-
lence of the generals had sobered the middle class considerably since
the 1970s, and no one dared knock on the barracks door. It remained
for the civilian politicians to reestablish public confidence without
resorting to bloodshed. The Peronists who dominated the Congress
and the provincial governorships took it upon themselves to recon-
stitute the power of the executive branch.
The senators, deputies, and governors found a willing couple
in Néster Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. They had
come out of the south, where Néster had been a two-term governor
of the wool and petroleum-producing Patagonian province of Santa
Cruz. He united the party to become a dominant force as president.
Cristina became a senator, then succeeded her husband—through
elections—in the presidency. They managed politics adroitly, not
always a simple thing in Argentina, except when accompanied by
economic expansion. The country found its salvation from the 2001
crisis just as it had in the 1880s. The economy took off on the export
of cereals from the farms and
estancias
of the rural heartlands. The
value of the peso stabilized at an exchange rate of 3 to 1 with the U.S.
dollar. Argentine products competitively found expanding markets
for foodstuffs with all the old trading partners in addition to some
new ones, namely the booming India and China. However, do not
