UPDATE: The Kirchner Factor

...He also counts on his party's majority in both houses of Congress...

...Renowned leftist journalist Miguel Bonasso announced its creation...

...political relationship, and have locked horns within the PJ over key issues-the privatization of state enterprises, for example...

...Who is paying him to try and destabilize the government...

...They even waved flags and threw confetti from their balconies as they marched by But as piqueteros carried on with their blockades of roads and highways, they fell from the good graces of the middle classes, which historically lean to the right...

...Gradually piqueteros became an urban phenomenon...

...He had been convicted on charges of extortion involving the owner of a casino in the northern province of Chaco...

...Even former interim President Eduardo Duhalde admitted, "If Kirchner keeps on like this, Peronism will support his re-election in 2007...

...This social activism that flowed from the December 2001 upheaval caused middle class groups, who sought access to their frozen bank accounts, to temporarily sympathize with the piquetero movement...

...Kirchner wasted no time...

...But he has never said he plans to abandon Peronism...

...They contend the President aspires to consolidate a movement that "transverses" across all sectors of society...

...Also motivating the interim President was his adamant desire to prevent two-term former president Carlos Menem (1989-1999) from taking back the presidency Duhalde and Menem were, and continue to be, irreconcilable antagonists who fiercely vie for the leadership of the party So Duhalde's support for Kirchner was basically a marriage of convenience...

...It looks like they lost, that they were defeated, but underneath they created something irreversible...

...As a testament to Kirchner's popularity, the majority of his party's leadership believes in the inevitability of his reelection and consequently supports it, despite the contest being more than two years away Kirchner assumed the presidency after three consecutive terms as governor of the southern province of Santa Cruz, the second-smallest electoral district in the country with less than 1% of the national electorate...

...Kirchner's most popular early effort was the profound renovation of the judicial system and, specifically, the Supreme Court, which was a constant source of corruption during Menem's administrations...

...Kirchner promised the CTA that he would implement the International Labor Organization's Convention 87, which ensures freedom of association and the right to organize...

...Although he was scarcely known at the national level, his candidacy benefited from internal divisions within the party-for the first time in its history the PJ presented more than one candidate...

...Throughout his term, Kirchner has channeled a broad spectrum of popular protest to his benefit...

...Importantly, he has become a respected leader with his own political weight and has managed to capitalize on the complex social reality that has existed since he came to office in May 2003...

...According to his press secretary, Kirchner and his wife, Senator Cristina Fernandez-also one of the President's main political advisors-privately admit that only by winning the sympathy of social sectors uncontaminated by the vices of the large parties will they be able to confront the right...

...Castells has finally revealed his true political convictions and society now knows what to expect from him," concluded the document...

...I- 0 isJANUARY FEBRUARY 2005 UPDATE Menem received 24.4% and L6pez Murphy 16.3...

...Many political scientists and other scholars would agree with Casullo when he says of Kirchner: "He has managed to keep a foot both inside and outside of Peronism while trying to arrive at something else, because without a doubt we are presented with a political project that recovers and legitimizes protest...

...Translated from Spanish by Teo Ballve...

...Indeed, they have never had a trusting Argentine President N6stor Kirchner...

...Within the labor movement he focused on the independent Argentine Workers' Central (CTA...

...When they didn't kill detainees, they at least told you that you were apprehended because they didn't like what you thought...

...they almost exclusively reside in Buenos Aires and its surroundings...

...Duhalde wanted the Peronists to put forth a new politician, one without leverage inside the party and without an electoral base, and someone who would respond to his directives, allowing him to be the real power behind the throne...

...They believe it will become irrelevant once stalwart Peronists line up behind Kirchner...

...Bonasso created the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) in Argentina and won a legislative seat in 2003...

...The most active and discredited of these groups is the Independent Movement of Retired and Unemployed Workers led by Raul Castells, who is now on parole after recently spending two months in jail...

...He met with human rights groups, making him the first president in two decades of democracy to do so...

...But Kirchner won't admit that he arrested me because he does not like how I think...

...Nonetheless, media outlets have coined a term to describe his rapprochement with the most dynamic social sectors...

...The piqueteros were born in the 1990s deep inside the country's interior, a product of the mass unemployment created by the labor flexibilization of newly privatized state companies-above all, the petroleum industry...

...They were "victims" of their middle class origins and co-opted by Trotskyist groups-especially the Laborers' Party-whose militancy, despite their small numbers, isolated the assemblies from the rest of society Philosopher Ricardo Forster believes the assemblies and the 2001 upheaval "have to be interpreted like May 1968 in France...

...After nearly 20 months in office, he has managed to maintain record popular support...

...He borrowed the name from the political party of the same name in Mexico, where he was exiled during Argentina's last dictatorship...

...The popular assemblies that had occupied street corners and other public spaces, mainly in Buenos Aires, after the December 2001 crisis were already fading away when Kirchner took office...

...He lives in Buenos Aires and writes for Latinamerica Press among others...

...Since there are now nearly 30 piquetero groups directing protest actions, mobilizations are more numerous, yet their force has diminished and they have become increasingly unpopular, particularly in the minds of inconvenienced portenos-Buenos Aires residents...

...As the runoff election between Menem and Kirchner neared, Menem's defeat was practically certain...

...he has retained the banner of a progressive politician and he has succeeded in neutralizing the stubborn opposition of the old guard in his party, the Justicialista Party (PJ) of the Peronists...

...In fact, the middle classes began calling for the repression of piqueteros for altering the rhythm of their daily lives with blockades...

...In essence, this would officially permit the independent CTA to negotiate for higher salaries and better working conditions on a level equal to the CGT...

...Today, piqueteros are for the most 17NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS UPDATE part no longer found in the country's interior...

...The Board is supposed to act as a nexus between society at large and Kirchner, in step with his transversality strategy, but in reality it is not much more than a public relations maneuver...

...Although he is of basic Peronist stripe, he is not tied to the party establishment or its folklore...

...The CTA was an especially attractive group because it was at odds with the General Labor Confederation (CGT), which historically acts as Peronism's union arm...

...By "the right," they mean Menem and the ultra-neoliberal Ricardo Lopez Murphy of the Recreate Party...

...The options outside the PJ included groups and parties running the political gamut from right to left...

...WHEN NESTOR KIRCHNER ASSUMED THE presidency of Argentina in May 2003 with only 22% of votes cast, few imagined his approval rating would reach 90% only weeks later, much less that such support would last...

...But neither has he indicated that he is pursuing the ambitious project of constructing his own political base...

...Even some of its creators concede the project is destined for a slow death...

...To gain maneuverability for independent action in such a partisan context, Kirchner set out to create his own base of support...

...Faster than anyone could have imagined, the President has shed his narrow mandate and now enjoys tremendous popular support...

...He dropped out of the race amid his growing isolation within the PJ and a series of corruption investigations into his previous administrations...

...The backing of then-interim President Eduardo Duhalde also helped Kirchner...

...abbreviating the concept, media have begun referring to "Kichnerist transversality...

...In the April 2003 elections in which Kirchner garnered only 22% of the vote, 16 Andres Gaudin is a Uruguayan journalist who went into exile in Argentina in 1972...

...Echoing this idea last September, leaders with Peronist roots but distanced from its party structures launched the creation of the Coordinating Board for a New National Project...

...Kirchner's broad appeal has led some analysts to wonder if he intends to distance himself from the PJ, or perhaps build his own party...

...As traditional middle class intolerance of lower class activism resurged, Kirchner refused the demands for an aggressive response...

...Jorge Cevallos, who leads the piquetero group Neighborhoods on Our Feet, even asked, "Who is behind Castells...

...No government that usurps power is better than one chosen by the people...

...Human rights groups roundly condemned his comments, as did several nationally respected figures including Adolfo Perez Esquivel, winner of the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize...

...Other measures catering to this sector included terminating the concession of the Argentine Postal System, effectively returning it to state control, and the creation of a state-run airline and energy holding company...

...At the beginning of 2002, for example, members of popular assemblies expressed their solidarity with the piqueteros and received them as heroes when they would enter the city of Buenos Aires...

...When detained, he first thanked Lopez Murphy and Menem for the solidarity they had expressed upon his detention, and then, as if justice were still an appendage of political power, blurted: "The military dictatorship was more honest than Kirchner...

...Piquetero groups were the first to defend the President, calling Castells "a traitor...

...he was steadfast in opposing any heavy-handed responses to piquetero direct actions...

...He attracted progressives and intellectuals by capping rate hikes for public services privatized in the 1990s, and by discontinuing the privileges enjoyed by water and rail companies since the Menem years...

...As for the popular assemblies bom out of the 2001 crisis and the more combative and militant piquetero movement of unemployed workers, Kirchner took the tack of protecting them while awaiting their natural disintegration...

...He rightly gambled on their eventual fragmentation, and today some of these splintered groups are important allies of his government...

...Forster adds, "If the 2001 protests did not break the political parties-a stated aim in their discourse-they did succeed in creating a different cultural-political programmatic environment...

...Stated simply, the opportunity for change is always accompanied by the risk of chaos," says sociologist Nicolas Casullo in analyzing the Kirchner phenomenon...

...With his narrow electoral win and the conditional support of Duhalde, Kirchner approached the different sectors of society that felt unrepresented by all parties...

...Whoever assumed the government in Argentina [at the time of the election] faced the difficult task of transforming protest into politics, of somehow institutionalizing social mobilization that was anti-institutional...

...They created a different sensibility...

...He declared the non-applicability of statutory limitations on crimes against humanity committed during the last military dictatorship (1976-1983) and converted a building symbolic of the dictatorship into the Museum of Memory...

...He believed the piqueteros had legitimate grievances and he protected their right to protest until they tired and weakened...

...Joining Bonasso is fellow congressional deputy Francisco Gutierrez, a respected metallurgical union leader, and Eduardo Luis Duhalde (of no relation to the former interim President), who is Kirchner's Secretary of Human Rights and the founder of the Memory and Mobilization Party...

...18 Kirchner had no need to respond to Castells' accusations...

...Before his verbal confrontations with the International Monetary Fund and private creditors over payments on a debt of more than $165 billion, he set out to gain support by conquering neglected social sectors...

...Piquetero groups also began to fragment because of left-wing groups' attempts to capitalize on the movement, causing internal divisions...

...Like the assemblies, they have fallen victim to miniscule parties with Trotskyist roots, causing their atomization...

...Diverse civil society groups issued a joint declaration...

...It was an especially hot summer, and the assemblies greeted the piqueteros with sandwiches and refreshments...

...And their platform of demands changed constantly: one day they asked for subsidies, the next day they wanted seeds for a community garden or school supplies for their children...

...Divided into its factions, the PJ had no room for another caudillo...