Louis vinker
02/14/2021 11:39 AM
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 02/14/2021 3:47 PM
Former President
Carlos Saúl Menem died this Sunday at the age of 90
after having been hospitalized for several days for a "urinary infection" that was complicated and forced his hospitalization due to "basic" cardiological problems.
The news was confirmed to
Clarín
by Menem's own environment, from where they pointed out that
the president's health had complications in the last hours
that led to the death of the man who ruled Argentina during the 90's.
"
Follow me, I am not going to disappoint you,
" promised Carlos Menem in his first electoral campaign that led him to the presidency of Argentina in May 1989.
It was, perhaps, his most famous phrase, but one that only time will place in its true dimension.
In a troubled country - hyperinflation, looting, uncertainty - like the one at that time, nobody imagined where Menem would take us.
Six years later, he obtained his re-election, after executing a social and economic program opposite to the one he had promised.
But, at the same time favored by achieving a framework of certain stability, which had been given by the
Convertibility Law
executed by Cavallo.
It was the same system that, once exhausted, would lead to its decline - in terms of its personal projection and that of the entire country - with the outbreak of 2001. It would be another story.
No one was unaware of Menem's charisma and popularity when he launched his presidential candidacy in the late 1980s, after serving as governor of La Rioja for two periods (1973-1976, and then since 1983 with the restoration of democracy).
Even so, it seemed surprising that with his
strange "look" and with contradictory proposals
, he could defeat the Peronist apparatus that stood behind a more traditional and formal candidate such as
Antonio Cafiero
who, moreover, had been exercising the governorship in Buenos Aires without so many shocks. Aires.
But - as his own television advertisement would say many years later -
"Menem did it
.
"
In July 1988 he defeated Cafiero and won the candidacy for Peronism.
And due to the economic deterioration suffered by the government of Raúl Alfonsín, the path to presidential victory was open.
Taking Eduardo Duhalde as his running mate, he defeated the radicalism that nominated
Eduardo Angeloz
and became president in the midst of a troubled country.
The violence, looting and hyperinflation did not cease.
The cover of Clarín the day that Menem was elected president.
Olivos, 1989. The then president Alfonsín (left) and Menem, in the villa in Olivos during the transition period, in 1989. / Archive
President Alfonsín had to bring forward the handover of command by almost five months - it was held on July 8, 1989 - and immediately Menem caused the first surprise: he summoned the most powerful group of that time (Bunge and Born) and the political reference for the economic area of ultraliberalism,
Alvaro Alsogaray.
It did not work for him in principle, until two years later Cavallo would take the reins of the Economy and set the course for what “Menemism” meant to a large extent: privatizations, total modification (and several times improvement) in public services .
And good deals for companies.
"My Government was the most successful in all history"
, was one of his favorite phrases.
“The economic plan was mine.
I told Néstor Rapanelli to execute him, but he did not dare.
That is why the replacement came for
Erman González
, who started this transformation process in the economic sphere.
The reform of the State, the privatization of public companies, the emergency law, the consolidation of the internal debt.
These are tasks that Cavallo later began to fulfill, but the fundamentals were already in place, ”he said.
Many had been warning that this structure was not so solid ─for example, during the shock caused by tequila of 96/97 that raised unemployment to more than 15% ─ and that it would end up exploding, as it finally did, although under another government.
Menem left when his economic scheme had already run out, he faced opposition from broad layers (trade unions, retirees, SMEs).
And, above all, when awareness was growing due to corruption scandals, which included officials from different lines.
"We largely destroyed industrial corruption with privatizations,"
replied Menem, who nevertheless had to face different legal cases until the end.
Carlos Menem with his daughter Zulema in the Legislative Assembly this year.
The historian and political scientist
Natalio Botana
summarizes that “the Menem decade is a decade of institutional corruption.
It is a decade that, after the guise of an economic stabilization and a very important investment in infrastructure and public services, which existed, concealed a very large populism that was translated into politics with the provinces.
The brutal borrowing was to cover public spending.
In the 90s,
Argentina changed inflation for external debt and that was fatal
, because it produced a desolate social landscape, with a drop in wages and an increase in unemployment ”.
Carlos Saúl Menem was born on July 2, 1930 in
Anillaco
, La Rioja, a small town where his Syrian ancestors had arrived a few years before.
A town that then had less than a thousand inhabitants.
He received his law degree from the University of Córdoba and came to politics through legal advice to the local CGT and the defense of those who were reprisals during the Liberation Revolution.
Already within the Justicialist camp, he reached the governorship in 1973 and held it for the three years of that Peronist period, until the overthrow of President Isabel Perón.
The persecution ordered by the dictatorship also reached him, he was one of the first detained, confined in a boat with other Peronist leaders and, later, "exiled" in Tandil and finally in Formosa, under a hostile climate.
A story from that time tells that he
requested authorization to leave there, when his mother died, to be able to be at the funeral.
And Videla denied it.
The same Videla whom Menem himself, already president, would pardon many years later ...
At the beginning of the 1980s, and with the decline of the dictatorship, Menem gradually returned to political activity.
And when the Justicialist candidate Italo Luder lost to the Alfonsinist wave in the first elections of the new democratic time, surprisingly Menem - again governor of La Rioja - emerged as one of the names of the "renewal", like Carlos Grosso or Antonio Cafiero.
However, he distanced himself when he wanted to continue claiming the name of Isabel Perón.
He was already on his own project, the one that would lead him to the presidency.
His
political and economic program was "elastic" and even confusing
, he added by right and left without worrying too much about ideologies or antecedents.
The truth is that he had a good adhesion in popular sectors and what happened between those years 1988/89, due to the economic deterioration, cleared the way for him.
Later, yes, in the presidency, he would take a concrete course.
With a Congress that, in general, responded to him, he was able to carry out - through Cavallo first and Roque Fernández later - his privatization program.
His brother Eduardo in Congress, Eduardo Bauzá and Carlos Corach in the political sphere and Guido Di Tella in foreign relations, were some of his main swords.
The "
1 to 1" with the dollar, after tame inflation, gave air for other policies
.
He crushed the last of the face-painting uprisings, led by Seineldin.
But later he pardoned the repressors of the dictatorship.
In the international arena, he aligned himself with the United States (made George Bush his personal friend and tennis and golf partner) and tried to regain ties with Great Britain.
Carlos Menem with George HW Bush, playing tennis in the 90s, a time of carnal relations.
Although it also formally sealed the beginning of Mercosur.
The more "traditional" unions of the labor movement, in general, responded to him, but he had strong opposition from the militants, from Moyano and the CTA to the teachers, authors at that time of milestones such as the Federal March and the teaching tent.
Menem's years were also marked when our country suffered
the most ruthless terrorist attacks
: against the Israeli Embassy, in 1992, and at the headquarters of the AMIA, on July 18, 1994. A pain, a controversy and a lack of justice that continues to this day.
In various areas, administrations and officials from Menem's time were synonymous with
causes of corruption
, almost from the beginning with
Swifgate
or adulterated milk, for example.
And Menem himself had to bustle through the Courts, they even arrested him again for five months in 2001: the alleged cover-up of those responsible for the attack on the AMIA, maneuvers with some privatizations and, perhaps the most serious, the sale of arms to Croatia and Ecuador, linked to the explosion of the Río Tercero Military Factory.
Menem had covered Cavallo with praise in his "golden moments", but then the relationship declined.
And it was Cavallo himself who
came out to mark events and supposedly "corrupt" officials
or to denounce the complicity of some with characters like Yabrán.
In the end, Menem decided to relieve him and put Roque Fernández in his place, until then head of the Central, and the economic guidelines were maintained.
The Menem that made crucial decisions for the country ─from the sending of ships for the war in the Golf to the economic transformation─ also “went down” to the level ground or to the connection with popular characters:
Madonna
could follow
(to whom he gave the balcony of the Rosada for the filming of Evita) or the
Rolling Stones
, but also the artists of our environment.
He played basketball in the middle of a National Team exhibition at Luna Park or broke traffic rules by driving a
Ferrari for more than 200 km.
for a birthday in Pinamar.
Carlos Menem hosted the Rolling Stones in 1995.
He admitted that the pardon of the heads of the dictatorship - convicted by the famous trials of 1985 - was
"the hardest and most difficult measure"
in his mandate.
In an interview with
Página 12
he justified himself as
follows
: “
I thought it was the only way to pacify the country.
And that he should pardon, not only the military, but also civilians.
Like Firmenich ”.
The Pact of Olivos with Alfonsín at the end of 93 opened the way to the Constituent Assembly of 94, which allowed the reform.
And for Menem, reelection.
In many respects, representing an advance over the previous norms and in others, with issues in debt, the lines of the Constituent Assembly remain in force until today.
With his authorized “re” and a relatively calm economy, Menem, accompanied in the Peronist formula by Carlos Ruckauf, broadly won the 1995 elections, over the alliance (also Peronist, but more oriented towards progressivism) led by José Octavio Bordón and "Chacho" Alvarez).
Later, he began to flirt with the possibility of a new period, but there, yes, it was his own party - with Buenos Aires governor Eduardo Duhalde as a reference - that came out to stop him.
The 99 candidacy was for Duhalde, later defeated by the Alliance, consecrating Fernando De la Rúa.
There, after 10 years and five months, the Menem government ended.
As the country marched towards a new crisis, Menem had to attend to other fronts.
On the one hand, the judicial, where the
cause of the sale of weapons led him to prison in 2001
.
He had already been divorced (including scandal and the intervention of the Military House) from Zulema Yoma, at the beginning of the presidency.
They had only met again due to the tragedy of their son, Carlos Jr, who died when his helicopter fell in 1995, near San Nicolás.
And with the new decade, already at 71 years of age, Menem remarried: this time with the Chilean presenter and former Miss Universe, Cecilia Bolocco.
It was brief, they had a son, Máximo, and they quickly divorced.
After that outbreak in 2001, and once Duhalde called elections for April 2003, Menem dreamed of a new term.
Neither the country nor he were the same.
And its base of popular support had evaporated, it would not be enough with the charisma nor, much less, with the memories.
Even so, he won in the first round with a Peronism that was divided (Menem, Rodríguez Sáa, Kirchner).
It was 24% for Menem, 22% for Néstor Kichner, almost a stranger in the big leagues until a few months before.
Carlos Saúl Menem in a hearing in the trial for the cover-up of the AMIA attack. Photo Emmanuel Fernández.
The "antimenemist" sentiment immediately aligned itself behind the governor of Santa Cruz: Menem's own close associates - mainly governors such as Romero and Marín - convinced him to decline his nomination and not run for the ballot.
On May 25, 2003, another era began, another "ism" ... Kirchnerism.
And it was Néstor himself, and his wife (later president) Cristina, who chose "Menemism" as a direct target of their criticism: for that past, for the privatizations, for the pardons.
And for everything that appeared as questionable.
Menem, already weaker, replied:
"With Nestor as governor, they had always supported me
.
"
The Menem-Cristina relationship was reestablished much later.
Menem was elected as a senator for La Rioja in 2005. Two years later he tried to regain the governorship, but was third.
Instead, he remained as a senator since 2011 and also since 2017 (here his nomination had to be reaffirmed by the Supreme Court, as he continued to face legal proceedings).
Recently, upon meeting Duhalde again and celebrating 30 years of his national victory, Menem wrote: “Three decades ago, the Argentine people confirmed to me the responsibility of governing an Argentina in crisis, a mission that I carried out for more than a decade.
We received it in ruins, in the midst of hyperinflation and looting, leaving it running, without hatred, aimed at progress ”.
He always tried to make this his memory.
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