Elections
vs. Democracy In Argentina
By Naomi
Klein
The Nation
12 May, 2003
In most of the world, it's the sign for peace, but here in Argentina
it means war. The index and middle finger, held to form a V, means to
his followers, Menem vuelve, Menem will return. Carlos Menem, poster
boy of Latin American neoliberalism, president for almost all of the
1990s, is looking to get his old job back on May 18.
Menem's campaign ads show
menacing pictures of unemployed workers blockading roads, with a voiceover
promising to bring order, even if it means calling in the military.
This strategy gave him a slim lead in the first election round, though
he will almost certainly lose the runoff to an obscure Peronist governor,
Nestor Kirchner, considered the puppet of current president (and Menem's
former vice president) Eduardo Duhalde.
On December 19 and 20, 2001,
when Argentines poured into the streets banging pots and pans and telling
their politicians, que se vayan todos, everyone must go, few would have
predicted the current elections would come down to this: a choice between
two symbols of the regime that bankrupted the country. Back then, Argentines
could have been forgiven for believing that they were starting a democratic
revolution, one that forced out President Fernando de la Rua and churned
through three more presidents in twelve days.
The target of these mass
demonstrations was the corruption of democracy itself, a system that
had turned voting into a hollow ritual while the real power was outsourced
to the International Monetary Fund, French water companies and Spanish
telecoms--with local politicians taking their cut. Carlos Menem, though
he had been out of office for two years, was the uprising's chief villain.
Elected in 1989 on a populist platform, Menem did an about-face and
gutted public spending, sold off the state and sent hundreds of thousands
into unemployment.
When Argentines rejected
those policies, it was hugely significant for the globalization movement.
The events of December 2001 were seen in international activist circles
as the first national revolt against neoliberalism, and "You are
Enron, We are Argentina" was soon adopted as a chant outside trade
summits.
Perhaps more important, the
country seemed on the verge of answering the most persistent question
posed to critics of both "free trade" and feeble representative
democracies: "What is your alternative?" With all their institutions
in crisis, hundreds of thousands of Argentines went back to democracy's
first principles: Neighbors met on street corners and formed hundreds
of popular assemblies. They created trading clubs, health clinics and
community kitchens. Close to 200 abandoned factories were taken over
by their workers and run as democratic cooperatives. Everywhere you
looked, people were voting.
These movements, though small,
were dreaming big: national constituent assemblies, participatory budgets,
elections to renew every post in the country. And they had broad appeal.
A March 2002 newspaper poll found that half of Buenos Aires residents
believed that the neighborhood assemblies will "produce a new political
leadership for the country."
One year later, the movements
continue, but barely a trace is left of the wildly hopeful idea that
they could someday run the country. Instead, the protagonists of the
December revolts have been relegated to a "governability problem"
to be debated by politicians and the IMF. So how did it happen? How
did a movement that was building a whole new kind of democracy--direct,
decentralized, accountable--give up the national stage to a pair of
discredited has-beens? The marginalization process had three clear stages
in Argentina, and each has plenty to teach activists hoping to turn
protest into sustained political change.
Stage One: Annoy and Conquer.
The first blow to the new movements came from the old left, as sectarian
parties infiltrated the assemblies and tried to drive through their
own dogmatic programs. Pretty soon you couldn't see the sun for the
red and black party flags, and a process that drew its strength from
the fact that it was normal--something your aunt or teacher participated
in--turned into something marginal, not action but "activism."
Thousands returned to their homes to escape the tedium.
Stage Two: Withdraw and Isolate.
The second blow came in response. Rather than challenge sectarian efforts
at co-optation head-on, many of the assemblies and unemployed unions
turned inward and declared themselves "autonomous." While
the parties' plans verged on scripture, some autonomists turned not
having a plan into its own religion: So wary were they of co-optation
any proposal to move from protest to policy was immediately suspect.
These groups continue to
do remarkable neighborhood-based work, building bread ovens, paving
roads and challenging their members to let go of their desire for saviors.
Yet they have also become far less visible than they were a year ago,
less able to offer the country a competing vision for its future.
Stage Three: Just Don't Do
It. Argentina's screaming and pot banging went on, and on, and on. Just
when everyone was hoarse and exhausted, the politicians emerged from
hiding to call an election. Incredulous, the social movements made a
decision not to participate in the electoral farce--to ignore the churnings
of Congress and the IMF and build "counterpowers" instead.
Fair enough, but as the elections
took on a life of their own, the unions and assemblies began to seem
out of step. People weren't able to vote for the sentiment behind December
19 and 20, either by casting a ballot or by boycotting the election
and demanding deeper democratic reforms, since no concrete platform
or political structure emerged from those early, heady discussions.
The legitimacy of the elections was thus left dangerously uncontested,
and the dream of a new kind of democracy utterly unrepresented.
The campaign slogan that
won the first round was the astonishingly vague "Menem knows what
to do and he can do it." In other words, maybe Nike was right:
People just want to do something, and if things are bad enough, they
will settle for anything.
Politics hates a vacuum.
If it isn't filled with hope, someone will fill it with fear.
Naomi Klein is the author
of No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (Picador) and, most recently,
Fences and Windows: Dispatches From the Front Lines of the Globalization
Debate (Picador).