The day after, without a crack: from Ricardo Forster to Beatriz Sarlo, how intellectuals imagine the country of the post-pandemic

05/03/2020 - 12:34

• Clarín.com
• Politics

Two long weeks ago in a videoconference with Grupo Puebla references, Alberto Fernández outlined an idealistic vision about the future of the country and the region after the coronavirus, which threatens health and the world economy. "What I am proposing is a more dignified life in the world, and if we cannot do it in the world, at least in Latin America," the President synthesized before the center-left Ibero-American leaders.

26 intellectuals who refer to harsh Kirchnerism, Albertism, the left and Cambiemos and independents share and contrast that vision and who were summoned by the Government for a collaborative book with an explicit title: "The future after Covid-19" .

They coexist in this experiment that tries to circumvent the crack from former members of the Open Letter, such as Horacio González, Ricardo Forster and Atilio Borón ; going through political scientists of different shades, such as María Esperanza Casullo and Andrés Malamud ; even the ever-critical Beatriz Sarlo and the former head of the Argentine Political Club and supporter of Cambiemos, Vicente Palermo , who months ago defined the President in an interview with La Nación as "a crack at politics without convictions." 

Convened by the presidential adviser and director of the Argentina Futura program of the Head of Cabinet, Alejandro Grimson ; Twenty-six thinkers from all ideological currents share the logical belief that the world will not be the same after the pandemic .

The book, which will be published online in the coming days, would be limited to the academic world if it were not for Grimson - who met the President only in 2018 - gained ground in Fernández's micro-world of power: he collaborates with the speeches of the head of state and even represents the Casa Rosada in ministerial meetings. That is why, also, the president is expected to highlight it in his agenda; all ministers will receive a copy.

Lucrecia Cardoso, Alejandro Grimson, Natalia Calcagno and Franco Vitali. Photo by Luciano Thieberger.

"I think such a diverse book has never been published. For us, plurality is a means and an end in itself, "says Grimson, a research social anthropologist at Conicet, about the authors of the anthology as " an emergency book . "

Clarín read sections in advance. Some essays are more analytical, others more purposeful, such as Sarlo's, which reflects on taxing great fortunes . “The best the future of the pandemic can bring is a tax reform, with an emphasis on personal property. Entrepreneurs will pay more if they are wealthy, not if their businesses are prosperous and productively invest their profits. If the pandemic turns us into a more just tax country, we will be able to say that we have won and that there will be a future, ”says the literary critic in what seems to be an allusion to the tax on great wealth promoted by Kirchnerism.

Vicente Palermo , who evokes in his article the purchases with surcharges in Social Development , which ended with the dismissal of 15 officials, is rather pessimistic about the changes that Argentina will produce after the pandemic. "The problem is that our country has an experience of critical situations that have produced conservative results over and over again," he suggests.

Malamud and the Portuguese Helena Carreiras reflect on how the pandemic allowed the health discussion to enter the Olympus of high politics and generated the paradox of stronger but interdependent states.

Juan Gabriel Tokatlian , from the Universidad di Tella, argues for changes, but he does not expect them. Forster - a Kirchner with a black palate turned into a presidential adviser - instead warns that all the "certainty of the infinity of capitalism, and all its correlates, has collapsed."

María Esperanza Casullo , author of Why Populism Works , admits that her article is more about the past than about the future. "My idea is that we discovered that in the emergency of the pandemic it was the old 'inefficiencies' in Argentina that sustained us. We have to work more on them instead of trying a modernization that always escapes us, ”he points out before listing the questioned bras: federalism, Conicet, national universities or the Malbrán Institute.

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Writers such as María Moreno and Gabriela Cabezón Cámara also participate in the book ; the presidential adviser and researcher Dora Barrancos ; the sociologist Eduardo Fidanza ; the graduate in philosophy Diana Maffia and the anthropologist Rita Segato ; both feminist activists.

As the opposition and the ruling party re-tighten the rope around quarantine restrictions, the economy and home prisons; some of their respective cultural references try joint responses . Like the former, they do not necessarily agree.