Peronism is in full mutation in Argentina. The latest example was the closing of the campaign of its presidential candidate, Sergio Tomás Massa. Unlike his predecessors, Massa did not take a mass bath this Thursday in a large stadium surrounded by political, social and union leaders. Nor have flags of Juan Domingo Perón and Evita, nor of Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández, been displayed around them. The candidate has appeared alone in his most recent public appearances as part of a surgical campaign that seeks to remove him from the Government of which he is a part as Minister of Economy and present him as the candidate of the coming Argentina. Given the lack of achievements to show, he has opted for a textbook strategy: diverting attention to his opponent, the far-right Javier Milei. Even that Argentina that is coming is defined—at least until Sunday—under the threatening shadow of Milei: a productive Argentina, with external commercial ties not limited by ideology, in which organs will not be sold nor will there be free carrying of weapons and in which free public education and healthcare are guaranteed.
With that gaze set on the horizon, the setting chosen this Thursday for its last act was a nod to the new generations, the Carlos Pellegrini secondary school, in Buenos Aires. Greeted with the shout of “pre-si-den-te, Massa, pre-si-den-te!”, He had a talk behind closed doors with the students, jumped up and took selfies with them and only then gave a brief statements to the press waiting outside. “The greatest utopia they can have is to defend equal opportunities as a value of our society. It is to think that the son of a bricklayer or a rural laborer has the same opportunity as anyone else to be president,” he stressed to applause. This public school, one of the most renowned in Buenos Aires, is a Rare avis in the current context, marked by the great support for Milei among those under 25 years of age. At the Pellegrini school, where 2,500 students between 14 and 18 years old study, support for the ultra is much lower and the majority vehemently criticizes Milei’s attacks on public education.
Hours before, candidate Massa had built a bridge in the opposite direction: he brought chocolates and flowers to his oldest voter, Magdalena, 104 years old, a resident of the Buenos Aires town of Berazategui. And the day before he shared mate with a group of tenants who expressed their concern about the ordeal that renting has become in the Argentine capital, where the offer is minimal and almost all dollarized.
The transformation of Massa’s image in the campaign has been a highly studied strategy. When defining his candidacy, the first step was to erase that traitor past with which a large part of the militancy identified him for the seven years in which he remained away from the powerful former president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. There was public praise and acts shared with the entire Peronist liturgy: songs, drums and flags. But once that sin was forgiven, the prodigal son took the reins of the destiny of Peronism while the other figures left the main stage.
The objective has been to show him as a close man and open to dialogue. A candidate attentive to problems that he promises to solve, although many have worsened during his administration, such as rampant inflation – which exceeds 140% year-on-year -, poverty, the deterioration of education and public health and the lack of credit and housing, among many other problems. To achieve this, the campaign has focused on a multitude of small acts that have later been summarized in informative bulletins lasting just over a minute and released to the media and social networks.
Massa’s prominence contrasts with the absences of the president, Alberto Fernández, and his vice president, Fernández de Kirchner. The negative image of both among citizens is a burden for the final stretch of a campaign aimed at that 10% of undecided people that the surveys reveal. The result of Sunday depends on your votes, in which one of the closest elections in Argentine democracy is held. The polls point to a technical tie. “Voting for Massa does not make you a Peronist,” say viral messages on social networks that try to bridge the gap between Peronists and anti-Peronists that has divided the country for decades. “It was a campaign designed in stages: to retain the Peronist vote, to expand by confronting Milei and now to seek the centrist vote,” summarizes a Peronist leader.
fear campaign
Without medals to display, Peronism resorts to an effective weapon: fear. “Massa permanently acts as a mirror to Milei,” says Carolina Barry, academic coordinator of the History of Peronism program at the Tres de Febrero University (Untref). “The economy is a disaster and the social situation does not have great achievements that can be shouted and cheered in a stadium where the masses widely acclaim the candidate. Many people are voting for Massa more out of fear than love and that means changing the campaign and focusing it on Milei’s weaknesses, on her extreme positions,” adds Barry.
Massa is the visible face of a capillary campaign, which extends far from the cameras throughout the Argentine territory. There, the orders come from provincial governors, mayors and leaders of social organizations who have been going neighborhood to neighborhood, door to door, for a couple of months to win votes. The entire Peronist machinery at the service of the candidate.
Milei’s proposals to cut rights – “because someone has to pay for them” -, added to his insults and violent messages and attacks on the Argentine electoral system – which he accuses of being fraudulent – and the consensus against the dictatorship, have generated such panic among part of the citizens, especially among the older generations, some of whom have spontaneously joined the militancy for Massa.
My grandfather, 79 years old, 56 as a doctor graduated from the UBA and a life dedicated to the public hospital and teaching. Today he defended the value and right of public health and education for the city.
Because of its history, because I defend democracy and because I study at the UBA#MileiNo pic.twitter.com/yCLAUrdQRx
— manuela (@ManuuG__) November 14, 2023
Among them is Ana Fernández, granddaughter of one of the three Mothers of Plaza de Mayo who were kidnapped in 1977 by the military regime and thrown alive from a death flight into the sea. Fernández decided to spread the story of her life on the subway to convince passengers not to vote for the extreme right led by Milei. “My mother was 16 years old when she was kidnapped pregnant with me. “She went to a concentration camp where they stripped her of everything, even her name,” she can be seen narrating to the passengers in a video that has gone viral. Ricardo Gené, a 79-year-old doctor who explained the importance of having free, quality public healthcare, was also encouraged to repeat this strategy.
Massa’s official campaign ended this Thursday, as established by Argentine electoral law, but that of the militancy will continue until Sunday. “We all save Argentina because if it sinks we all sink,” summarizes a Peronist militant who has not rested for a couple of months.
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