Posts
This was posted just a few
hours ago in the New York Times. The situation in Argentina is of course pretty
bad, and the article does a good job explaining many of the problems (and its main problem, Peronism) . Keep in
mind, Argentina is not alone in this mess. The problem is global by now, although as
always some countries are better off than others.
FerFAL
USHUAIA, Argentina — A bon
mot doing the rounds in post-commodities-boom South America is that Brazil is
in the process of becoming Argentina, and Argentina is in the process of
becoming Venezuela, and Venezuela is in the process of becoming Zimbabwe. That
is a little harsh on Brazil and Ve Argentina, however, is a
perverse case of its own. It is a nation still drugged by that quixotic
political concoction called Peronism; engaged in all-out war on reliable
economic data; tinkering with its multilevel exchange rate; shut out from
global capital markets; trampling on property rights when it wishes; obsessed
with a lost little war in the Falklands (Malvinas) more than three decades ago;
and persuaded that the cause of all this failure lies with speculative powers
seeking to force a proud nation — in the words of its leader — “to eat soup
again, but this time with a fork.”
A century ago, Argentina was
richer than Sweden, France, Austria and Italy. It was far richer than Japan. It
held poor Brazil in contempt. Vast and empty, with the world’s richest top soil
in the Pampas, it seemed to the European immigrants who flooded here to have
all the potential of the United States (per capita income is now a third or
less of the United States level). They did not know that a colonel called Juan
Domingo Perón and his wife Eva (“Evita”) would shape an ethos of singular
delusional power.
“Argentina is a unique case
of a country that has completed the transition to underdevelopment,” said
Javier Corrales, a political scientist at Amherst College.
In psychological terms — and
Buenos Aires is packed with folks on couches pouring out their anguish to
psychotherapists — Argentina is the child among nations that never grew up.
Responsibility was not its thing. Why should it be? There was so much to be
plundered, such riches in grain and livestock, that solid institutions and the
rule of law — let alone a functioning tax system — seemed a waste of time.
Immigrants camped here with
foreign passports rather than go through the nation-forming absorption that
characterize Brazil or the United States. Argentina was far away at the bottom
of the world, a beckoning fertile land mass distant enough from power centers
to live its own peripheral fantasies or drown its sorrow in what is probably
the world’s saddest (and most haunting) dance. Then, to give expression to its
uniqueness, Argentina invented its own political philosophy: a strange mishmash
of nationalism, romanticism, fascism, socialism, backwardness, progressiveness,
militarism, eroticism, fantasy, musical, mournfulness, irresponsibility and
repression. The name it gave all this was Peronism. It has proved impossible to
shake.nezuela.
No comments:
Post a Comment