Communist leader Antonio Gramsci wrote in his Quaderni del carcere (“Prison Notebooks”) that each generation must discover its own “historic mission.” For the Italian, each generation can become an active historic subject if it manages to intertwine its experience with a consistent political and cultural vision. A generation is not defined by its times but by its capacity to assume a leading role.
If the generation of Raúl Alfonsín, Carlos Menem and Eduardo Duhalde consolidated democracy so that it could persist, despite the structural problems of our country, we might say that the generation of Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Mauricio Macri set into motion different paradigms whereby they tried to resolve the debts still maintained by our democratic system.
Macri has been sent into retirement by President Javier Milei and Cristina is striving to block any renewal of Peronism, whether by direct confrontation or by summoning Governor Axel Kicillof to arrive at an agreement for Buenos Aires Province.
Nevertheless, the muchachos poskirchneristas are playing the game at both ends – and CFK does not seem to be able to control them all.
In Buenos Aires City there is something new under the sun: Leandro Santoro's modest defeat in the nation’s capital will suffice to maintain his projection as a candidate with his own electoral constituency. Such is Peronism. Nevertheless, that same defeat weakens Kicillof and boosts Fernández de Kirchner. Kirchnerism maintains that it cannot win without her strategy and hence her pen to define candidates.
Irreverent and believers in dialogue, not top-down, they are not linked to corruption and, most importantly, they have no bosses, answering to themselves. The muchachos poskirchneristas express a renewal which could include Juan Monteverde in Rosario and Juan Grabois as the most radical porteño but all clearly share a generation along with some characteristics.
The muchachos poskirchneristass have some victorious defeats and are growing stronger in one of the worst moments of Peronism. If Santoro’s honourable defeat was the most recent, Juan Monteverde made himself famous by almost winning the mayoral race in Rosario and finally triumphing within Santa Fe Peronism, while nevertheless losing to Radical Governor Maximiliano Pullaro in last April’s constituent assembly elections.
If the Peronists only lose one election after the other, at least some of them find consolation within the defeat.
Furthermore, many of them have one interesting aspect in particular – they have ideas, programmes and proposals. But, returning to Gramsci, what is their mission?
Perhaps to rescue politics from the apathy which is beginning to emerge and which materialises itself in the low turnout in this year’s elections.
Perhaps to discuss Argentine problems with more grounds and less fanaticism.
Perhaps to establish a floor of three or four points of basic consensus on which to refound a political system which has gone destroying itself – and the forces composing it– all this century.
Leandro Santoro is a Peronist ally with Radical roots from Alfonsín. He dislikes the authoritarian tendencies of the Partido Justicialista but even more the pro-Milei radicales con peluca. Santoro is a progressive but not a fanatic – he has defended the use of Taser stun guns in the City of Buenos Aires because he understands that they are less lethal than firearms and easier to audit.
After his defeat, he had a bad night in which he did not address the militants but the next day he had already started talking about an “anti-Milei front” with hints to ex-City mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta and Unión Cívica Radical Senator Martín Lousteau.
In a recent rally, Kicillof answered in similar terms: “A broad front in Buenos Aires Province to stop the chainsaw.” The governor faces a tougher battle. He is the target of CFK, who accuses him of being an ungrateful traitor. He also governs the least safe province in the country with the violent crimes in Greater Buenos Aires battering his image.
Yet Kicillof has managed to construct a solid stance against Milei along with mayors, trade unionists and other leaders like fellow-governor Pullaro and the veteran Radical Federico Storani.
“Axel is austere,” say those close to him and that is precisely the image he wishes to construct: a sober and pragmatic but also idealistic politician.
The Cuenta DNI scheme, used in Buenos Aires Province and City alike, represents for many people the possibility to eat meat and to defend, somewhat, the consumption slashed by the libertarian chainsaw.
Fernández de Kirchner’s announcement that she intended to run in the Third Electoral Section was a manoeuvre against Kicillof, not Milei – and against an impending Supreme Court ruling.
The Third Section is the stronghold of Peronism, which has never lost in this zone of Greater Buenos Aires. CFK sought refuge there to contest the leadership with the governor who is bracing himself for a possible defeat by the government.
If populism, as described by Ernesto Laclau, consists of finding an enemy to whom all the evils of society us attributed –(which is what both Milei and Cristina and even Macri have done), it may be the mission of this generation of political leaders to construct a form of politics in which the other side is simply somebody who thinks differently, whom you should either convince or hear out.
by Matías Rodriguez Ghrimoldi
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