Later History

The Dirty War & Its Aftermath

The regime of Jorge Rafael Videla, established in the Junta, carried out a campaign to weed out anybody suspected of having Communist or Peronist sympathies. (Ironically, it was in this period that Evita was finally laid to rest in her current tomb in Recoleta Cemetery.) Congress was closed, censorship imposed, and unions banned. Over the next 7 years, during this "Process of National Reorganization" -- a period now known as the Guerra Sucia (Dirty War) or El Proceso -- between at least 10,000 and 30,000 intellectuals, artists, activists, and others were tortured or executed by the Argentine government. The mothers of these desaparecidos (the disappeared ones) began holding Thursday afternoon vigils in front of the presidential palace in Buenos Aires's Plaza de Mayo as a way to call international attention to the plight of the missing. Although the junta was overturned in 1983, the weekly protests continue to this day in Buenos Aires and in other large cities in the country.

With the Argentine population growing increasingly vocal about human rights abuses and the increasingly worsening economy, the military dictatorship sought a patriotic distraction.

Argentines have long laid claim to the Falkland Islands, known locally as the Islas Malvinas. The basis for the claim is that the territory, which was used for a penal colony beginning in 1828, was part of the Spanish Empire that Argentina conquered when it won independence. Argentina's early military rivals for power over the islands included both Britain and the United States. Argentina proved to be too young a nation with too little power to control such a remote region: The British seized the islands in 1833 by simply sending warships and a gentlemanly note to the Argentine commander in charge, José María Pinedo.

The taking of the Falklands had always been a sticking point among Argentines. In the early 1980s, Argentine President Leopoldo Galtieri assumed that invading the Falklands would be easy and bring much needed support to his government. Galtieri believed the invasion would go almost unnoticed by the United Kingdom (unbelievable in retrospect) because the U.K. didn't really want the islands and would not tolerate a loss of life to protect its far-flung turf. At the United Nations, Argentina had made several attempts to bring up their claim to the Falklands before the invasion, without any response from Great Britain.

The Argentines tested the waters by first invading the South Georgia Islands on March 19, 1982. On April 2, Galtieri launched the full-fledged invasion of the Falklands. The invasion was ill-fated, ill-planned, and tragic; nearly 900 people died in the short war. Most of Argentina's military forces remained on the Chilean border out of concern that British ally Augusto Pinochet of Chile would use the war as a reason to invade his eastern neighbor. Losses were heaviest on the Argentine side, including the sinking of the battleship General Belgrano with nearly 300 sailors aboard. Officially, neither side declared war on the other during the entire dispute. While no other powers contributed to the military effort, much of Latin America sided with Argentina, while Europe and the United States sided with Great Britain.

The war was a diplomatic nightmare for the United States, whose Monroe Doctrine, penned nearly 180 years before, technically required it to declare war on Great Britain. The war meant the end of the military regime, however, and the solidification of power for Great Britain's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Virtually forgotten in the greater world, it's almost a joke among English-speaking nations that Argentina would challenge one of the world's greatest naval powers. But the war is a serious issue for Argentines, who still lay claim to the Falklands.

Galtieri's defeat brought about his greatest fear: the collapse of his government. An election in 1983 restored constitutional rule and brought Raúl Alfonsín, of the Radical Civic Union, to power. In 1989, political power shifted from the Radical Party to the Peronist Party (established by Juan Perón), the first democratic transition in 60 years. Carlos Saúl Ménem, a former governor from the province of La Rioja, won the presidency by a surprising margin.

A strong leader, Ménem pursued an ambitious but controversial agenda with the privatization of state-run institutions as its centerpiece. With the peso pegged to the dollar, Argentina enjoyed unprecedented price stability, allowing Ménem to deregulate and liberalize the economy. For many Argentines, it meant a kind of prosperity they had not seen in years. The policies had a dark side, however. The new money controls devastated local manufacturing, and the country's entire export market virtually dried out. World financial crises in the late 1990s, including those in Mexico, East Asia, Russia, and Brazil, increased the cost of external borrowing and further made Argentine exports and industries uncompetitive. The chasm between rich and poor widened, squeezing out much of the middle class and eroding the social support systems put in place over the decades. This destroyed investor confidence, and the national deficit began to soar. Ménem was seen as a corrupt purveyor of cheap glamour. His wife, Cecilia, the former Miss Chile and Miss Universe, was hated by many and regarded as a trophy wife. Rumor has it that members of his government had a hand in the bombings of the Israeli Embassy and the AIMI Jewish Community Center bombings. Some of the accusations bear a racial tinge, given that he was Argentina's first president of Arabic descent.

After 10 years as president -- and a constitutional amendment that allowed him to seek a second term -- Ménem left office. By that time, an alternative to the traditional Peronist and Radical parties, the center-left FREPASO political alliance, had emerged on the scene. The Radicals and FREPASO formed an alliance for the October 1999 election, and the alliance's candidate, running on an anti-corruption campaign, defeated his Peronist competitor.

Less charismatic than his predecessor, President Fernando de la Rúa was forced to reckon with the recession the economy had suffered since 1998. In an effort to eliminate Argentina's ballooning deficit, de la Rúa followed a strict regimen of government spending cuts and tax increases recommended by the International Monetary Fund. However, the tax increase crippled economic growth, and political infighting prevented de la Rúa from implementing other needed reforms designed to stimulate the economy. With a heavy drop in production and steep rise in unemployment, an economic crisis was looming.

The economic meltdown arrived with a run on the peso in December 2001, when investors moved en masse to withdraw their money from Argentine banks. Government efforts to restrict the run by limiting depositor withdrawals fueled anger through society, and Argentines took to the streets in sometimes violent demonstrations. De la Rúa resigned on December 20, as Argentina faced the worst economic crisis of its history. A series of interim governments did little to improve the situation, as Buenos Aires began to default on its international debts. Peronist President Eduardo Duhalde unlocked the Argentine peso from the dollar on January 1, 2002, and the currency's value quickly tumbled. Within a few months, several presidents came and went in the ensuing crisis, and several citizens died in street protests throughout the country. The country's default to the IMF was the largest in history.

Argentina's economic crisis severely eroded the population's trust in the government. Increased poverty, unemployment surpassing 20%, and inflation hitting 30% resulted in massive emigration to Italy, Spain, and other destinations in Europe and North America. Anyone who had the passport to do so fled to Miami, Milan, and Madrid in particular. Piqueteros and cartoneros, the protestors and the homeless, became a visible presence throughout Buenos Aires and other large cities, as the unemployed in rural areas picked garbage for a living. Many of the protestors, it is claimed, have been paid off or fomented by various factions in government seeking to further destabilize the country and bring visible chaos to the streets.

Ironically, those who could not flee the country in the midst of the economic chaos stayed behind and built a stronger nation. While under Ménem, Argentina idolized Europe and the United States; now citizens had to look to their own historical and cultural models, the things that were authentically Argentine. The tango -- long expected to die out as a dance for the older generation -- found new enthusiasts among the young. It had always been seen as a dance that alleviated pain, and there was more than enough of that to go around.

Expensive ingredients for cuisine could no longer be imported, and so young chefs had to create using material grown in the country -- even ingredients dating back to the time of the Incas. Meat, of course, remained the center of the Argentine palate. The explosion of new cooking ideas was most exemplified by the emerging restaurant scene in Buenos Aires's Palermo Viejo neighborhood, where new chefs became national celebrities. Full cafes and restaurants seemed to deny that there was any economic crisis at all. Young designers, unable to show on the runways in Europe, and young women, unable to afford imported fashions, created a new market for strictly Argentine fashion innovations. Argentina's abundant leather and its own locally produced textiles became the material of choice. Artists, unable to find real jobs anyway, had time to explore their creative impulses.

The country further stabilized by 2003, with the elections of Nestor Kirschner, the governor of the Province of Santa Cruz in Patagonia, a province made wealthy by oil exploration. Kirschner had proven his economic savvy by sending the province's investments overseas just before the collapse of the peso. A left-wing Peronist, he saw many of his friends disappear under the military regime. Viewed by some as a proponent of open government, he has reopened investigations into this dark period in Argentina's history and also begun to go after the most corrupt of Ménem's regime. A consolidator of power, he and his wife -- Cristina Fernandez de Kirschner, a senator in her own right representing the Province of Buenos Aires -- are together the country's most important political couple. Under Kirschner, economic stability has returned, with exports of soy, oil, and meat pumping the economy, now that the fall of the peso has proven to have a silver lining. Learning from past mistakes, Kirschner has not allowed the country's destiny to be shaped solely by Europe and the United States. Much of the raw material Argentina produces is bound up in new trade agreements with China and other Asian economies. Tourism has become the third most important economic sector under his administration. While she has made no official declaration, rumors abound that Ms. Kirschner will run for president herself in 2007 -- a nod to the aspirations of a first lady who came to power more than half a century before her.

Beholding the images of Argentina's chaos, with police shooting protestors in 2002, no one would have imagined the relatively stable and happy Argentina we experience today. But now you hold this book in your hand, and you are one example of the millions who have come to Argentina as a guest, heralding an era of growth unseen here for more than 130 years. On the dawn of Argentina's bicentennial celebrations, a new era in the nation's history has begun.