Good historians help us understand the present by knowing the past better.
They also allow us to distinguish the permanent from the contingent, the continuities and the changes, the foam of the waves and deeper currents, in the whirlwind of current times.
And in that sense, they can better inform us about the crossroads we face.
That is what happens with the work of José Carlos Chiaramonte, the great historian who died on March 1 at the age of 92.
Hours later, President Milei presented in his first speech before the Legislative Assembly his particular interpretation of why we arrived here “after a hundred years of decline.”
Chiaramonte's last note, published in Clarín on 12/17, 2019, seems to be written today, in debate with the President's decadent and refoundational vision.
It goes back further - why a hundred years?
why not 200? - to focus on the persistence of pre-republican traditions, coming from old Spanish law, inheritance from the colony and monarchical absolutism.
While one of the characteristics of natural law, the foundation of the old constitution, was the protection of human rights against abuses of power, another was the admission of recourse to dictatorship in the event of risks to the subsistence of the state.
Thus, the history of the former Spanish American colonies records the frequency of the use of exceptional powers:
“In Argentina, extraordinary powers were prohibited by the Constitution of 1853, the dictatorship lost legitimacy without disappearing from political life, adopting various forms. : abusive federal interventions, electoral restrictions until 1916, coups d'état, states of siege, military governments.
Although fortunately, since the presidency of Raúl Alfonsín, the last changes in government were the product of electoral processes, the consequences of the chronic problems of the representative regime and democracy still persist.”
The current Attorney General of the Nation, Rodolfo Barra, the jurist closest to the current president, as he was to Carlos Menem thirty years ago, explained - and pondered - in a report to Daniel Santoro in this newspaper, that "Argentina
, in the culture of the people and the powers of the Constitution, it is a hyper-presidential country
. ”
And President Milei proposes “returning to Alberdi's ideas” while asking for special powers to govern and exhibiting a new form of caudillismo that responds to the climate of the time, but perhaps also has its roots in other moments in history.
The Latin American countries never adequately rooted the representative regime or federalism, Chiaramonte concluded - "the chains of Spain do not oppress us but its traditions overwhelm us," he recalled on another occasion, the lament of Esteban Echeverría -, warning us in any case that History does not condemn us to repetition:
“Although the use of the past to explain the present usually gives unreliable results, a reinterpretation of the historical process opened by the independence movements, in addition to its importance in clarifying the history of that period in the past, also offers some keys to understanding what happened. until the present".
See also
See also
Rodolfo Barra: "If Congress feels offended, it can annul the mega DNU or fire the Chief of Staff"
See also
See also
José Carlos Chiaramonte, the historian of the origin of Argentina, died