That December 10, 1983, another story began to be written in Argentina.
Behind them were seven years of suffering: persecutions, exiles, torture, murders, disappearances, and even theft of babies whose identities were adulterated so that the architects and accomplices of the Argentine genocide could appropriate them. The dictatorship left an indebted economy that, embracing the neoliberal cause as a “logic of progress,” dismantled the national industry, causing unemployment and poverty. The dictatorship also left the pain of a war in the Malvinas Islands, in which more than 600 young soldiers lost their lives.
That December 10, 1983, we felt that we were ending a cycle in our history marked by interruptions of the institutional order: a 20th century crossed, since 1930, by civil-military coups that overthrew democratically elected governments again and again, to install de facto in the power of the republic to dictators subordinate to economic power in order to restrict the rights of workers.
Raúl Alfonsín was the visible face of that pivotal day in Argentine history. He assumed the presidency with a society wounded by the martyrdom of the dictatorship, an economy devastated by unsustainable debt and the destruction of the productive matrix. He ordered the trial of the military leaders who ordered the extermination plan carried out by the self-proclaimed National Reorganization Process. He must have done it at a time when the military still retained a certain power that led them to paint their faces to fight justice and thereby seek impunity for those who carried out that dark plan.
And that is why Argentina is an example in the world for its achievements in Human Rights. For the maturity and conscience of our people in the unwavering defense of democracy. That is our common ground, the place where we meet to resolve conflicts and express differences.
Alfonsín was the first to demonstrate that Peronism was fallible at the polls. Since then, Peronist, radical and conservative neoliberal governments have succeeded one another.
There were times when democratic governments relieved the State of debt and there were times when democratic governments contracted unsustainable debts that conditioned the development of the country.
There were times when democratic governments celebrated being the most praised in Washington, and times when democratic governments worked for the regional unity of Latin America and for multilateralism.
There were times when democratic governments interfered in Justice by persecuting opponents and there were times when democratic governments guaranteed judicial independence.
That’s how it has been.
It is definitely true that life is better in democracy. But it is also true that we could not or did not know how to put an end to the injustices and inequalities that exist to this day. Just as those of us who lived through the dictatorship know that daily life today is noticeably better than forty years ago, the youngest people face an unjust world, full of frustrations, where every morning we ask ourselves where we are going, why we do what we do, with concern for the present and uncertainty for the future.
With all these uncertainties (and perhaps others) democracy became stronger over the years. With marches and countermarchs, the institutional framework was respected.
This institutionality is not perfect. Everyday bad political action hurts her every day. Over the years, Justice (one of the three powers of the republic) was co-opted by conservatism and ended up more attentive to the de facto powers (economic and media) than to the imposition of law.
The Argentina of internal confrontation seems to be eternal: unitary and federal, radical and conservative, Peronist and anti-Peronist. The most harmful thing about our democracy is not having been able to overcome the dialectic of antinomy and not having strengthened our ability to live together while respecting differences. Mistreatment of the opponent is a constant practice. Disqualifications, verbal attacks and insults seem to be expressions of a method that seeks the absolute elimination of those who think differently.
In recent years, Argentina has been plagued with problems. Some generated by political ineptitude, such as having taken on a debt that is definitely harmful to our economy. Others, a result of the global context. The pandemic, the war and the greatest drought in the last hundred years followed each other relentlessly without interruption.
It was then that the opportunists of misfortune appeared. The degraded voices of authoritarians who fall in love with speeches designed to sow discouragement emerged. They never called for hope. They always spread hate. They appeared in the pandemic, denying the health isolation that the virus forced us to. They burned masks in public squares. They called not to get vaccinated while millions of lives were cut short.
When they attracted social attention, they began to deny democracy. They put politics in the place of the faint-hearted while proclaiming the need to privatize health, education and public services, to deregulate the financial system and the exchange market, to curtail labor rights, to deny the climate crisis, to renounce scientific and technological development, preach denialist speeches about State terrorism and despise any attempt to equalize genders in diversity.
In this labile democracy, corporate powers sink their tentacles. They occupy seats and courts. They appear like a hindrance to dictatorships. Those who deny State Terrorism today are the same ones who want to create an oppressed and impoverished society. Sometimes they present themselves in new clothes, sometimes with archaic speeches, but they always, inexorably, defend the interests of the powerful.
Ironically, when we celebrate forty years of democracy, in Argentina we witness the rise of a political force that disbelieves in the values of democracy and the transcendence of human rights.
Just as forty years ago we said “never again,” today we must say “democracy more than ever.” We must strengthen that vulnerable democracy with more active policies that lead to the social equality that is denied today.
We must be guardians of democracy and human rights. It is an ethical obligation and a citizen commitment that we have with our community, with our people.
If we have learned anything in these 40 years of democracy in Argentina, it is that social and political achievements are not once and for all, but rather they need us every day for their legitimation, their strengthening and their defense, but also for their expansion. , for their radicality and so that they dialogue better with our history and our future.
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