By
Alexis Dritsos and Tomás Crowder-Taraborrelli
Photos by Lucas Chillemi
Tomás Crowder-Taraborrelli is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies at
Soka University of America, California, USA. He is an associate producer of
ITVS and POV, from the Public Broadcasting Service in the United States. He is
on the editorial board of the journal Latin American Perspectives (LAP),
of which he is co-editor of the film section. He is co-editor of Film and
Genocide (University of Wisconsin Press, 2012) and El documental
político en Argentina, Chile, y Uruguay (LOM Ediciones, 2015). He also
co-edited two special issues for LAP: Political Documentary Film and Video
in the Southern Cone: 1950s-2000s (2013), and Media, Politics and
Democratization in Latin America (2018). He is currently co-director of the documentary
film journal Revista Cine Documental.
Address: Soka
University of America, 1 University Avenue, Aliso Viejo, California 92656
Alexis Dritsos is a member of the National Economic Commission of the
Socialist Party and was a candidate for National Deputy for the Socialist and
Popular Front, in 2017. He currently works for the National Treasury Department Council of
the Judiciary of the Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires. He publishes weekly
articles on politics and economics and appears regularly on radio and TV as a
pundit.
Address: Calle 13b, Nro. 556, City Bell, Provincia de Buenos Aires, CP
1896. Argentina alexis.dritsos@gmail.com
Lucas Chillemi is a
professional photographer living in Buenos Aires. He works as an agricultural
administrator in Tres Arroyos. He is a member of the Association of Graphic
Reporters of Argentina (A.R. G. R.A). He works as a freelance photographer and
is the art director of Espacio Makarius.
Address: Avenida Corrientes 1584, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires,
C1042AAO Lucas.chillemi@hotmail.com
Abstract
Argentine
President Mauricio Macri’s price hike policies have deeply hurt the Argentine household
economies. This essay seeks to understand the rationale behind the policies and
to analyze the rhetoric that Macri has deployed to justify it. Macri and
members of his government have made bold pronouncements in the press
articulating an elitist, discriminatory view of social advancement. Faced with
popular resistance from social movements, opposing political parties, and
citizens, price hikes have solidified Macri’s neoliberal approach and are an
indispensable component of his austerity plan. In this essay, we consider ways
in which price hikes have become a bold instrument of social control and
political indoctrination. In particular, we are interested in Macri’s
deployment of price hikes and austerity measures as a counter-offensive to
successful grassroots movements that emphasize economic and environmental
sustainability as a principle of effective social organization.
La vida es un vaso de gaseosa aguada,
como una secuencia de bromas pesadas.
Disfruta este trago porque al terminar
habrá que pagar y quizá pagarlo de más;
habrá que insistir como lo hicimos tantas veces...
Life is a glass of watery soda
like a sequence of heavy jokes.
Enjoy your drink because when finished
we will have to pay
and maybe pay more;
we will have to insist
as we have done so many times (Babasónicos)
We began writing this essay in February 2019. Argentina was
suffering once again under the calamitous policies of a neoliberal government
and the draconic mandates of the IMF. The road to development, according to
this ideological framework, is labor flexibilization and austerity. News
programs and newscasters were assessing the political fortitude of Mauricio
Macri’s administration. Will Macri and his party win reelection in October 2019?
Or will rising utility costs, inflation, interest rates, unemployment, be
enough to sway the electorate to vote for a political party of the opposition?
In 2015, right-wing candidate Macri won the presidential
election by a narrow margin, aligning the country once again with the
transnational neoliberal block. During the
campaign, Macri promised a set of policies that would correct the problems
inherited from the previous administration- la
pesada herencia- without violating acquired rights. As expected by Macri’s critics on the left, the new president
rolled out a series of fiscal measures that did away with utility subsidies; chipping
away at the purchasing power and well-being of middle and low-income
households. Soon after, inconsistencies became visible, contrary to the
optimistic forecasts promoted by the government.
The policies of seduction, with respect to foreign capital,
involved several measures that went against the interests of the majority of
the population. The discourse of pragmatism, as Max Horkheimer argued in the Eclipse of Reason (1947) in the aftermath of the World War II,
degrades all complexities to a simple “rational” plan: “In our day, the hectic
desire that people have to adapt themselves to something that has the power to
be, whether it is called a fact or an ens
rationale, has led to a state of irrational rationality” (90). In many
aspects, Macri’s economic plan is structured on “planned obsolescence” (Foster
and Clark, 2012: 9). The casting aside of sectors of production and its
workforce mirrors the strategy imposed by the Dictatorship in the 1970s and by
two democratically elected governments of early and late 1990s (Menem and De la
Rúa) all of which led up to a tragic social genocide in the wake of the 2001
economic crisis.[i]
Since 2015 Argentina’s economy has displayed the all too
familiar signs of neoliberal malaise: inflation has risen to around 50% a year,
the peso was devalued by 400%, interest rates have ballooned to 65% making it harder for small businesses (PYMES) to
borrow money, and poverty has risen to 32%. Even more alarming is the loss of purchasing
power, as salaries depreciated between 15% and 20% (Katz, 2019). As if this were
not enough, Macri’s government has borrowed 57 billion dollars from the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), and has opened the economy up to imports,
wrecking industries. Luciana Zorzoli (2019) writing for Jacobin puts it this way: “Reestablishing
ties with the IMF allows Macri to both reconnect with ruling economic hubs and
introduce a powerful external actor that can help discipline political and
popular demands in the country (by loading the country up with debt) and push
through his neoliberal program” (2). In addition, Zorzoli explains to readers
that this rescue package from the IMF is the most generous package in the
institution’s history. When looking at
perfect storms like this, Claudio Katz
reminds us in La economía marxista hoy:
seis debates teóricos (2010) that these economic conditions are fertile
ground for speculators and vulture funds (72).
