Historic expectations sort of fulfilled

The sad case of contemporary Argentina

If you are one of the infinitesimally small number who don’t know, Argentina won the World Cup 2022. It is utterly impossible to overstate the importance to Argentines.

This is a country seen a hundred years ago as the likely challenger to the United States as leader of the world. No, it was not Australia. It was not China as the Qing collapse accelerated. It was not Russia, Britain, Mauritania, or anywhere else. Argentina, with its European immigrants, vast resources, open spaces, etc etc etc, was the country likely to be the future. Writers compared Washington, the cattle path, to the beauty of Buenos Aires’s architecture in terribly unflattering terms for the Yanks.

Then the Great Depression hit. Argentina’s relatively successful competitive political system fell prey to a military overthrow in 1930. And it then took almost eight decades for another regime to finish its elected term. Instead, upheaval of various types prevented governments from getting things from start to finish.

The Justicialista Movement, Juan Domingo Peron’s creation in the 1940s from workers’ support, proved the central force in the country with lots of implications. In the 1940s and ‘50s, other parties countered the Peronists (the alternate name for the group) with different options for the country. The fights were whether the Peronists would rule under the power of unions or anyone could stop their fascist socialist views. Eva Peron, the famous Evita, was a public face for Juan Domingo’s organizing of labour during the 1940s. The 1940s through 60s were anything but successful for this place with so much potential. In the 1950s, Argentina was a regime proclaiming dubious aspirations such as developing indigenous nuclear weapons while having no identifiable external threats.

Juan Domingo retook power in the early 1970s as an aging organizer who additionally embraced curious partners for his last run in office. He lasted a few months before his third wife, a former dancer, assumed power upon his death. On 26 March 1976, the Argentine military seized power yet again with a plan for ‘national reorganization’. That plan included ‘disappearing’ and torturing tens of thousands of ‘leftist’ opponents, running the economy into the ground with mismanagement, and igniting nationalist fervor by initiating war again Britain over the Islas Malvinas in April 1982. Under the misconception that British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher would cede the islands rather than deploy Her Majesty’s armed forces such a vast distance to protect these geostrategic assets, the war was a surprisingly successful one for the outmatched Argentina armed forces although not one they could win. On 31 October 1983, human rights attorney Raul Alfonsin, who the regime had abused, won a competitive democratic election, ending national reorganization.

The following forty years have included political and economic disappointment for the Republic. Alfonsin proved a political symbol of hope and probity but could never tame hyperinflation. Peronist Carlos Saul Menem ruled for over a decade by building a Justicialista movement around himself as Peron had done half a century earlier, rather than constructing a new, genuinely reformed nation. The sins of excess and poor management were borne on the backs of poor, with street people proliferating in a country rich with wheat and beef. The 1990s were a corruption-plaguing era followed by a messy reckoning to Menem’s bizarre economic policies the ended in debt repayment failure. The 2001-2002 financial crisis required five presidents in ten days.

Just last week, the current Vice President, Cristina Fernandez de Kitchener was indicted for public corruption in now almost a century of unmitigated political and economic chaos.

But Argentina is the land of beef, wine, and futbol. What most other states would save about not having won the Cup since 1986 is that Argentines view these victories as birth rite but, instead, they rather offer a metaphor for the challenges the nation faces.

Expectations of victory were fulfilled in futbol; can it help elsewhere in this fascinating country with so many advantages? Unfortunately, actions create consequences. Time will tell what it takes for politix to meet futbol’s success. FIN