Argentina: The Late Twentieth-Early Twenty-First Centuries
The Late Twentieth-Early Twenty-First Centuries
After failing to achieve unity among the various Peronist groups, Perón declined the nomination from his supporters to run for president in the Mar., 1973, elections, which were won by Dr. Hector Cámpora, the Peronist candidate, who subsequently resigned from office to make way for Perón's return. When new elections were held in Sept., 1973, Perón was elected president and his third wife, Isabel Martínez Perón, vice president. Perón died in July, 1974, and was succeeded by his widow. Her government faced economic troubles, labor unrest, political violence, and deep divisions within the Peronista party.
In 1976, Isabel Perón was deposed by a military junta under the leadership of Jorge Rafael Videla, who served as president until 1981. The government suspended political and trade union activity, dissolved the congress, made alterations to the constitution, and removed most government officals. During the military rule thousands of citizens suspected of undermining the government disappeared in what became known as the “dirty war.” In 1981 Argentina petitioned the United Nations for possession of the Falkland Islands (
In 1983, Raúl Alfonsín won the presidency, but persistent economic problems plagued his tenure in office. Carlos Saúl Menem was elected president in 1988, bringing the Peronist Justicialist party back into power. A reform-minded leader, he stimulated economic growth and subdued hyperinflation in the early 1990s by instituting a major program of privatization, encouraging foreign investment, and tying the Argentine peso to the U.S. dollar. Constitutional amendments approved in 1994 placed curbs on presidential power and increased opposition power in the senate, while clearing the way for Menem to seek a second successive term as president. He was reelected in 1995. The Justicialists lost legislative elections to the opposition Alianza coalition in 1997, as the country struggled with recession and continuing high unemployment. Argentina's relations with Paraguay soured in 1999 when Menem's government sheltered Paraguayan Gen. Lino Oviedo for eight months; Oviedo was wanted for the murder of Paraguay's vice president.
In Oct., 1999, Fernando de la Rúa of Alianza was elected president, soundly defeating the Peronist candidate. De la Rúa's victory was in part a rejection of Menem's perceived flamboyance and tolerance of corruption during his last term. The new president moved quickly to institute austerity measures and reforms to improve the economy; taxes were increased to reduce the deficit, the government bureaucracy was trimmed, and legal restrictions on union negotiations were eased. De la Rúa also purged (2000) the army and state intelligence agency of the last suspected participants in the “dirty war” of the 1970s and 80s.
By late 2000, however, de la Rúa's presidency was under siege on two fronts. Several senators, mainly from the Justicialist party, were accused of taking bribes to vote for the government's labor-code revisions, and two cabinet members were also implicated. When the cabinet members were retained after a reorganization, Vice President Carlos Álvarez resigned in protest. The Argentine economy had slipped into recession in late 1999, and Argentina was forced in to seek help from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and private banks to reduce its debt. In Dec., 2000, an aid package of nearly $40 billion was arranged, and the government announced a $20 billion public works program that was designed to help revive the economy.
Further economic measures designed to revived the ailing economy were adopted in 2001, including the pegging of the peso for imports and exports to the average value of the dollar and the euro combined, additional government austerity measures, and additional billions in IMF aid. The economy remained in recession, however, aggravating the problems posed by the debt and by the restrictions that the IMF imposed in return for aid, and unemployment rose to around 20% at the end of 2001. In legislative elections in Oct., 2001, the opposition Justicialist party became the largest party in both houses of the national congress. In November the government began restructuring the debt, putting it essentially in default. Ongoing economic problems led to a crisis of confidence as depositors began a run on the banks, resulting in limits on withdrawals (largely lifted a year later), and the IMF took a hard line, insisting on a 10% cut in the budget before making further payments.
Nationwide food riots and demonstrations erupted in late December, leading the president to resign. A series of interim presidents and renewed demonstrations ended with the appointment of Justicialist senator Eduardo Alberto Duhalde as president in Jan., 2002. Duhalde, who had been a free-spending provincial governor and the Peronists' 1999 presidential candidate, devalued the peso, which lost more than two thirds of its value. The depressed economy, meanwhile, remained in disarray until early 2003, when it showed some signs of slow improvement.
Néstor Carlos Kirchner, the governor of Santa Cruz prov. in Patagonia, won the spring 2003 presidential race when former president Menem withdrew from the runoff election; polls indicated that Kirchner would win by a landslide. Congress subsequently repealed two amnesty laws, passed in the 1980s, that had protected military officers accused of human rights offenses, and in 2005 the supreme court upheld the move, overturning the amnesty laws as unconstitutional. Pardons given to several military government leaders were subsequently also overturned by the court, and arrest warrants were issued for Isabel Perón, who was in exile in Spain, and others. A number of former military officers and others were later convicted of human-rights crimes, including former Presidents Bignone and Videla.
Kirchner won favorable terms from from the IMF in Sept., 2003, refusing to make concessions in exchange for refinancing Argentina's debt. Kirchner's government continued into 2004 its policy of aggressively seeking more favorable terms, but was not successful in negotiating new terms for repaying private creditors until 2005, when some three quarters of its bondholders agreed to accept partial repayment. The economy grew strongly in 2003–5, reducing the unemployment rate, but the effects of the 2001–2 economic collapse continued to hurt many Argentines.
In Oct., 2005, the popular Kirchner benefited from the improved economy when his Peronists won control of the senate and a plurality in the lower house. With a strengthened political hand, Kirchner replaced his respected but more conservative economy minister with an ally. Argentina paid off its IMF debt in Jan., 2006, in an effort to regain greater flexibility in its economic policy. Kirchner also used the influence of his office to fight inflation by pressuring Argentinian companies into holding down price increases. His presidency also saw a trend toward renationalization of certain Argentinian businesses, including railroads and telecommunications companies.
In 2006 there were tensions with Uruguay over plans there to build pulp mills along the Argentina border on the Uruguay River. Argentinians fearing possible pollution from the mills blockaded several bridges into Uruguay, and Argentina accused Uruguay of contravening the treaty on joint use of the river. Argentina took the issue to the International Court of Justice, which accepted it but allowed construction of the one mill that Uruguay ended up building to proceed while the court decided the case. The court also refused to order Argentina to halt the protests, which continued until June, 2010. In 2010 the court largely ruled in favor of Uruguay, determining that it had met its environmental obligations under the treat, and it refused to order the mill to close.
Kirchner chose not to run in 2007 for a second term, but his wife, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who had served as a provincial and national deputy and national senator, mounted her own candidacy. Running strongly and promising to continue her husband's policies, she was elected in Oct., 2007, becoming the first woman to be elected president. In a court case in Florida, U.S. prosecutors later (Dec., 2007) alleged that $800,000 found (Aug., 2007) by Argentinian customs officers on a private flight from Venezuela was intended to be a secret Venezuelan government contribution to Fernández de Kirchner's campaign. The Argentinian government denounced the allegation, but two Venezuelans and a Uruguayan arrested in the United States in connection with the money pleaded guilty to acting as unregistered foreign government agents and revealed details of the payment and its coverup; and a third Venezuelan was convicted on similar charges in Nov., 2008.
Beginning in Mar., 2008, farmers protested increased export taxes on farm products by striking and blockading roads, leading to some food shortages in major cities at times. The government abandoned the tax increases in July after the Senate narrowly failed to approve them. Tensions between the government and farmers continued, however, into 2009, aggravated by drought and falling demand. In Mar., 2009, both sides reached accords on compensation for several clases of farm products.
In Oct, 2008, the government moved to nationalize 10 private pension plans. The government asserted it was acting to protect them from the global financial crisis, but many viewed it as a repudiation of the privatizations of the 1990s and also possibly as an attempt to secure funds in the face of a looming budget shortfall. The move caused stocks and the Argentinian peso to fall sharply; the national airline was also nationalized. The government subsequently used some of the pension assets as part of an economic stimulus package. Congressional elections in June, 2009, resulted in losses for the governing party, which failed to secure majorities in both houses.
In Jan., 2010, a move by the government to use foreign currency reserves to repay some of Argentina's international debt sparked a conflict between the president and the head of the central bank, Martín Redrado, who refused to transfer the reserves. The president sought to remove Redrado by emergency decree, but a court ruled that she could neither remove him nor use the reserves. Redrado, however, subsequently resigned. In Mar., 2010, the president issued new decrees transferring $6.6. billion of the reserves, and an appeals court upheld the decrees when the opposition challenged them. Debt swaps agreed to by June by most of the holders of the remaining bonds that Argentina had defaulted on in 2001 left about 8% of the original bonds outstanding.
The start of oil exploration in the waters surrounding the Falkland Islands in Feb., 2010, led the Argentinian government to impose restrictions on vessels traveling through its waters to the islands. The islands' status became an increasingly contentious issue in Argentina's international relations in subsequent months, leading to strained relations with Great Britain by the time of the 30th anniversary of the Falklands War in Apr., 2012. In Oct., 2011, President Fernández de Kirchner, bouyed by significant economic growth, easily won reelection and her Front for Victory won control of Congress, but high inflation associated with the growth was an increasing concern and led to government regulations designed to control capital flight. Discontent over the economy and other issues led to demonstrations and strikes beginning in 2012. In May, 2012, the Congress approved the nationalization of the former national oil company, which had been privatized in 1999. The Front for Victory retained control of Congress after the Oct., 2013, elections. In December, police strikes over pay in many of the country's provinces led to outbreaks of looting across Argentina.
In Jan., 2014, after the government's long-standing efforts to support the peso had depleted its currency reserves, it abandoned those efforts, which led to a drop in the peso's value, and then relaxed foreign exchange controls. In June, 2014, Argentina lost its appeal against a U.S. court decision that required it to pay the owners of the outstanding bonds that it defaulted on in 2001 if the country paid bond owners who had exchanged their defaulted bonds in the debt swaps of 2005 and 2010. Argentina subsequently refused, and in September the country was declared in contempt of court; the case restricted Argentina's access to international credit markets. Also that month, Vice President Amado Boudou was charged with corruption in connection with government aid received by a printing company he was accused of secretly owning; he was convicted in 2018.
In early 2015 the president was accused by a prosecutor of shielding Iranians involved in a 1994 terrorist bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in order to secure a trade deal. The prosecutor's death by a gunshot wound sparked a public crisis. A second prosecutor sought to pursue the charges, but they were dismissed. The president denounced the affair as a plot by Intelligence Secretariat agents to undermine her government, and had the congress vote to reorganize the agency.
Fernández de Kirchner was barred from running in the 2015 presidential election. Although the first round in October was won by the Front for Victory candidate, Daniel Scioli, he did not win by a large enough margin to avoid a runoff. In the November runoff, the candidate of the Let's Change coalition, Mauricio Macri, the center-right mayor of Buenos Aires, won 51% of the vote. In office Macri ended most currency controls and devalued the peso, resolved (2016) the outstanding bond claims that remained from the 2001 default, and moved to reduce government spending that subsidized the price of utilities and other items. In the Oct., 2017, legislative elections Macri's coalition won a plurality of the seats.
The withdrawal of international investments in the first half of 2018, due to changing international conditions and concerns about the Argentinian economy, created a liquidity crisis and led Macri to seek IMF aid, and the IMF approved a $50 billion credit line (later increased to more than $57 billion). Argentina's economy, however continued to be plagued by inflation (which approached 50% in 2018), devaluation, and a contracting economy. Late in 2018 the government adopted an austerity budget.
In Aug., 2019, President Macri placed a distant second in the country's open presidential primary to Alberto Fernández, the candidate of the main opposition coalition, the Peronist Frente do Todos; Fernández's running mate was former president Fernández de Kirchner. Macri subsequently announced a number of economic relief measures. In October, Fernández won the presidential election in the first round. In December, the new government's economic emergency package, including tax and spending increases and emergency government powers, was enacted. The subsequent COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 worsened the economic crisis, and the government sought to restructure its foreign debt, reaching a deal with private creditors by Sept., 2020. In fall 2021, former president Macri's conservative coalition outperformed expectations in the country's midterm elections, seriously weakening President Fernández. Soon after, in Dec. 2021, Macri was charged with conducting illegal surveillance against the relatives of sailors who died in a 2017 submarine accident, which he claimed were politically motivated charges.
Sections in this article:
- Introduction
- The Late Twentieth-Early Twenty-First Centuries
- Argentina During the Exile of Perón
- The Early Twentieth Century
- Independence and the Nineteenth Century
- Early History
- Government
- Economy
- People
- Land
- Bibliography
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