In early 1982, when I was a correspondent for the Inter Press Service Agency in Argentina, I was asked by the head office to interview the leader of the Radical Civic Union, Raúl Alfonsín, whom I did not know personally. I replied, via telex, that it seemed more appropriate to interview another Radical, Luis León, senator of the Movimiento de Afirmación Yrigoyenista, a more combative leader.
They did not accept my suggestion and the new answer came by telephone: “Interview Raúl Alfonsín, who is going to be the next president: the Socialist International says so”.
The interview was very cordial, in his law office on Avenida de Mayo. And I met a man who sold humility and firm convictions. Corollary, he won the 1983 presidential elections with a message of democratic hope that struck a chord with Argentines after seven years of calamitous and genocidal military dictatorship, with its toll of thousands of victims of repression, an economy adrift and the war adventure in the Malvinas Islands, which left the Argentinian people even more dismayed.
His triumph had nothing to do with my interview (aimed at getting his name into the media and political world beyond Argentina), in which he took stock of the thousands of victims of repression, an economy adrift and the ill-fated war adventure of the Malvinas Islands.
Alfonsín restored freedoms, offered political dialogue, but his six years in office resulted in a steady erosion of his leadership due to the painful economic adjustment, the failure to fight hyperinflation and recession, pressure from Peronist trade unionism and the image of weakness in the handling of the military issue.
What people remember today is that culture returned to the squares, where old people, young people and children gathered once again. In foreign relations, Alfonsín promoted the Argentina-Brazil-Uruguay axis of integration, the genesis of what later became the Southern Common Market (Mercosur).
The limitation of the trials of the genocidal military leadership through the laws of Full Stop and Due Obedience served to encourage a series of seditions that once again endangered the recovered democracy.
The United States considered democratic systems to be weak and, in the framework of the National Security Doctrine, beyond the Condor Plan of previous years, encouraged support for military coups that would harden the position in the face of the emergence of parties and movements opposed to US interests.
The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) closely monitored Raúl Alfonsín’s policy towards the Armed Forces, which were accused of systematic human rights violations. Even before he took office, he was a focus of attention for US spies, who were interested in his policy of prosecuting the military.
The information comes from the files declassified by the White House at the request of human rights organisations, and which the Centre for Legal and Social Studies (CELS) and the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo made available for online consultation on the 40th anniversary of Alfonsín’s triumph.
In December 1983, the CIA published a report entitled “Indications of Political Instability in Key Countries”. One of those countries was Argentina, shortly before Alfonsín took office. US analysts assessed that Alfonsín’s victory over the Peronist Justicialist Party and the disarray within the Armed Forces would give him a six-month grace period to push through reforms.
“We do not foresee any serious threat of military intervention during Alfonsín’s first year in office, but the re-emergence of significant social tensions could tempt military leaders,” the CIA said.
In January 1984, the CIA produced a new report warning that the radical government wanted to proceed with caution in the investigation of military personnel accused of involvement in the disappearances. It spoke of tensions between Defence Minister Raúl Borrás, Education and Justice Minister Carlos Alconada Aramburú and the more progressive sectors over the scope of the prosecution.
According to the US intelligence agency, Alfonsín’s idea was a wide-ranging investigation but that only a small number of cases would reach the courts. At that time, not only were proceedings before the military justice system, but civilian courts had also begun to investigate what had happened in the clandestine detention centres.
This went beyond the policy of trying only the members of the first three military juntas. In the January 1984 report, the CIA maintained that Alfonsín was determined to keep the issue out of the orbit of Congress, which the US government considered more difficult to pressure and/or manipulate.
In a recently re-circulated interview, Alfonsín insisted on the recovery of democracy, alluding to its elementary form, i.e. the right to vote periodically, a primary freedom, a beginning. He added that this step was the basis for the flourishing of “positive liberties”, so that people could live in dignity.
Hence his famous phrase “with democracy you can eat, cure and educate”, which he corrected in 1992: “With democracy, you can eat, cure and educate, but you cannot work miracles”. Alfonsín understood that the times demanded a conceptual legitimisation of democracy, given that the results were going to take time. “We have a method: democracy for Argentina. We have a fight: to defeat those who from inside or outside want to prevent that democracy,” he said.
Argentina was a country that related to the world according to the coordinates of the East-West conflict. State decisions were strictly linked to the outline of policies audited by the United States in what was the era of the fight against communism.
During the months of the election campaign, Alfonsín had made it clear what foreign policy steps were to be taken. Dante Caputo, his Foreign Minister and a direct link to French social democracy, said in 1989 that one of the foreign policy priorities was to disconnect Argentina from the consequences of the East-West conflict. “This is probably the least public story of our foreign policy, but it is the one I value most: a story that corresponds to the defensive part of our policy…”, he said.
In a complicated international scenario, at the beginning of the Second Cold War, Argentina proposed Latin American integration as a fundamental way out of the parameter of the East-West logic with which the previous government had operated.
During the Alfonsinist period, progress was made towards regional integration both politically and economically. Politically, Argentina supported Latin American nations on various occasions, such as the promotion of the creation of the Contadora Support Group in rejection of the US blockade of Nicaragua.
This integrationist relationship was reciprocated, since, for example, (almost) the rest of the region voted in favour of Argentina’s claim to sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands in different multilateral ambits such as the UN. On the economic front, progress was made as a bloc through the signing of treaties and agreements to increase regional trade.
In November 1984, the public dialogue between the then Foreign Minister and Catamarca Senator Vicente Saadi to show their positions on the signing of a peace treaty between Argentina and Chile to put an end to the Beagle Channel conflict drew thousands of viewers. It was the first televised debate in Argentine history. It seemed, then, that another democracy was possible.
The issue presented too many obstacles, since the conflict was almost a century old, the other side was the dictator Augusto Pinochet, the Malvinas War was still hot, the sovereignty issue was sensitive, and to all this had to be added the diplomatic errors of consecutive Argentine governments and negative arbitration awards for the country.
Advised by the Socialist International, Caputo knew that he had to give up a lot because there were situations that had no turning point. With decree 2,272 of July 1984, Alfonsín determined that there would be a popular consultation for the approval of the Beagle Channel boundary treaty with Chile in accordance with the result of the papal mediation proposal.
Caputo confessed that “After the first week in office, Alfonsín called me to the Casa Rosada and told me: ‘This has to be resolved in the shortest possible time. So, get him on board with this issue'”. The Socialist International also preferred to support Chile and the Pope,
Peronism did not look favourably on this agreement and denounced it as a surrender of sovereignty and even a betrayal of the fatherland. They claimed that it was Argentina’s worst diplomatic defeat so far this century, that the Treaty was a real act of surrender.
In the vote, the government claimed a great triumph. However, there was still one more step to be taken, namely approval by Congress, because the referendum was non-binding. No one took into account the Senate, where the Peronist majority intended to assert its power.
When the vote was taken in March 1985, opposition senators challenged clauses and accused the government of presenting adulterated and apocryphal maps. Finally, the Senate approved the Peace and Friendship Treaty with Chile, settling a centuries-old dispute. The vote was decided by only one vote difference. The handover of the Beagle Channel was consummated.
Restarting Argentina’s economy?
After the signing of the Cooperation Treaties that Argentina signed with Italy (1987) and Spain (1988), Germany expressed its interest in promoting industrial cooperation. An agreement was signed in Munich with the German company Siemens to continue work on the Atocha II nuclear power plant.
At the same time, between 1986 and 1987, Argentina received aid credits from the Italian government. Contacts were strengthened and at the end of 1987, with the presence of Alfonsín in Rome, a Cooperation Treaty was signed, with 150 projects involving companies from both countries in petrochemical and construction projects.
Following the Treaty signed with Italy in 1987, the following year another was signed with Spain. Negotiations had begun with the visit of Spanish President Felipe González to Buenos Aires in October 1987. The Treaty aims to boost bilateral cooperation in the political, economic, scientific-technological and cultural fields. The European heads of the Socialist International did their business with the slogan of “relaunching the Argentine economy”.
The elections
The elections were held under the 1957 Constitution, imposed during the military dictatorship, which provided for indirect suffrage and a six-year presidential term without the possibility of immediate re-election.
The election was polarised between the two traditional political parties of Argentine democracy, the Radical Civic Union (UCR) and the Justicialist Party (PJ, Peronist), which together obtained almost 92% of the votes. It was the first defeat of the Justicialist (Peronist) Party. Alfonsín was unable to finish his term of office because he “resigned” from office five months earlier, on 8 July 1989, in the midst of a serious crisis.
Alfonsín won the 1983 elections with a message of democratic hope that struck a chord with Argentines after seven years of calamitous military dictatorship, with its toll of thousands of victims of repression, an economy adrift and the Malvinas Islands war adventure.
He restored freedoms, offered political dialogue, but his six years in office meant a steady erosion of his leadership due to the painful economic adjustment, which failed in the fight against hyperinflation and recession, and the image of weakness in the handling of the military issue, where the limitation of the trials of the former military leadership through the laws of Punto Final and Due Obedience were not enough to prevent a series of seditions that seriously endangered the recently recovered democracy.
However, Alfonsín was not succeeded by Vice-President Víctor Martínez, but by the already elected successor president, the Peronist Carlos Saúl Menem.
During the first year of Alfonsín’s government, dissent gave way to agreements that materialised with the Argentine president’s visit to the US in September 1984, when the “realist turn” took place, establishing a bilateral relationship in which Argentina recognised US power but did not align itself with US policy.
From that moment on, and as part of the strengthening of the bilateral relationship, Argentina sought US assistance, among other things to consolidate the democratic system and to solve the foreign debt problem.
In January 2001, amid economic turmoil, with the country risk skyrocketing and the stock market plummeting, Raúl Alfonsín requested a change in the economic model. From Paris, where he travelled to take part in the congress of the Socialist International, he also spoke of the urgent need to reschedule the foreign debt and anticipated that “a new adjustment will not be tolerated”, especially if it again affects salaries and pensions.
“The model is very much in check”, concluded the man who once stood as the main opponent of the dollarisation drive: in his speech at the Socialist International on 9 November 1999, he requested the cancellation of the foreign debt for poor countries and a rescheduling for emerging countries, as in the case of Argentina. He considered that this would undoubtedly be the first “indispensable” step to remove it from recession.
The geniuses of European social democracy convinced him that this would undoubtedly be the first “indispensable” step to remove it from recession. In April 1989 inflation was 489% and in May 1989 it was 764%. The year ended at 3,079%.
Dissent manifested itself in his position on the Central American crisis and his defence of the principle of “non-intervention” in the face of US advances in the region, through the creation of the Contadora Support Group, which he will talk about later.
Forty years later, the ultra-right-wing Javier Milei arrived at the Argentine presidency, putting democracy at risk, with a script opposed to what Raúl Alfonsín had intended, in that opening of the new democratic era after the barbarism, surrender, and genocide of a civil-military government, whose actions those who have occupied the Casa Rosada since 10 December are today trying to deny.
During the campaign, Milei aimed his cannons (also) against Raúl Alfonsin, whom he used to call “the failed hyperinflationary of Chascomús”. Recently, an old video of the ultra-right-winger was revived in which he says that his best therapy was to buy a doll, to which he glued Alfonsín’s face, and thus, by hitting it, he unloaded emotionally.
