Michael Casey | The Image Mirror

ALFONSIN: ARGENTINA’S LATEST MARTYR

It is universally human to remember the recently deceased in positive, idealized terms. Innately reminded of our common mortality at such moments, we incline toward respect and ignore the less favorable elements of the subject’s recently ended life - witness the polite treatment that Richard Nixon received in 1994.

But when the deceased is a public figure who was thought in life by large numbers of people to have possessed desirable qualities, this instinct can push to extremes. More than idealized, the subject becomes idolized. Because their qualities are perceived to have been “lost,” they take on the status of a quasi-martyr even if they die of natural causes late in life, giving rise to a mass emotional release that can pose a powerful challenge to those in power. When this idolized figure is presented in a contrasting light to the government of the day, the regime’s failings are given emphasis, with the effect being that of a foil character. Against an icon of perfection, the administration’s political brand is diminished. And because the deceased is beyond reproach, there is no counterattack strategy available, regardless of how excessive the adoration may have become among the grieving masses.

Such is the dilemma facing the Kirchner regime of Argentina – currently headed by President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, but more precisely embodied in the figure of her husband and predecessor Nestor Kirchner – with the recent death of former President Raúl Alfonsin at age 82, which has prompted a massive outpouring of public grief. Argentine political culture is obsessed with death: national holidays are celebrated on the dates the country’s independence heroes died; one left-wing activist movement calls itself the 26th of July Movement, named for the date on which the beloved Eva (Evita) Peron died in 1952; and of course the country gave the world Che Guevara, the ultimate martyr hero for doomed resistance movements.

As with Guevara’s failed attempts to stir revolution in the Congo and Bolivia, Alfonsin, who in 1983 led Argentina out of the darkness of its seven-year dictatorship, was in many respects a failed President. He was forced to end his term six months early in the midst of a crisis that saw inflation hit 2,500%. But just as Che followers who’ve built an icon around the ideal of a man who had the courage to die for his convictions are blind to his many faults, Alfonsin’s administrative record seemed forgotten, or at least irrelevant, as tens of thousands lined up to pay their respects to him last week. Instead, the focus was entirely on his reputation as an honest politician who treated his opponents with respect and who strived for democracy in its purest form. The very idea is a rarity in modern Argentine politics and, more importantly, stands in stark contrast to the adversarial, blatantly Machiavellian style of the Kirchners.

My colleague Taos Turner weighed in on this issue yesterday, with a blog that was illustrated with a local Noticias magazine cover showing Nestor Kirchner looking down on the body of Alfonsin as it rested in state last week and which bore the headline, “Argentina at the crossroads:”

“[Alfonsin’s] death represents an inflection point for Argentina, potentially a point of no return from which the bitter politics of the past will struggle to survive amid a renewed desire for civility and virtue. The Kirchners, who have delivered some of the most virulent speeches in modern Argentine politics, will now have to think twice about the Argentine appetite for rancor and incrimination. No longer will they so easily be able to engage in their traditionally firebrand accusations against the “oligarchs and coup mongers” who seek to overthrow them.”

Anyone with a connection to Argentina like mine should hope that Taos is right. But whether or not the statement proves true, I would describe the country’s current crossroads a little differently: as that of a ruling power that has reached a tipping point in terms of positive versus negative images. Its balance sheet of symbolic value is in deficit, a situation that’s graphically represented in the Noticias cover photo – the figure of a flawed, failing, dishonest politician juxtaposed against that of a untouchable model of integrity who has already passed to the next life.

During his stewardship of the gangbusters recovery from the 2002 crisis, Nestor Kirchner engendered strong popularity among Argentines, but as the economy soured and he and wife’s approval ratings plummeted, he has resorted to recklessly populist fiscal measures and has deliberately stoked civil conflict, pitting key sectors of society against each other to divide the opposition and force provincial leaders into financial and political dependency on the state. Weighed against the revered former leader, who belonged to the opposition Radical Party, this cynical brand of politics is now a net negative in terms of the political returns for Kirchner’s public image and that of his faction of the Peronist Party.

One should not put the Kirchners in the same camp as the junta that ruled through the Argentine “Dirty War” – Nestor and Cristina have built some of their own image-building strategy on pushing through human rights trial against the “repressors” of that era. But their regime’s legitimacy faces a similar image management problem.

One can think of Alfonsin as the equivalent of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo during the dictatorship. The courageous Mothers, who held weekly vigils in Buenos Aires’s most important public space, sowed the seeds of the generals’ eventual downfall with a ritual that shamed the dictatorship, drew international support for their cause and inspired other Argentines to overcome their fear, until then the military’s most effective weapon. Their genius lay in the aesthetics of the gesture: the Mothers’ white head scarves and peaceful circling of the monument offered an image of honesty and longed-for simplicity - that of a mother in search of her child - and it contrasted starkly with the heartless violence of the generals. It’s this same idea – a clash of symbols – that now bedevils the Kirchners.

Ironically, Hebe Bonafini, the leader of a vociferously left-wing faction of the Mothers is now a key Kirchner ally who shows a remarkable capacity for running against the grain of popular sentiment. She is one of the very few people to have openly criticized Alfonsín since his death and did nothing to boost her public image by doing so. With or without the fiery tongue of Bonafini, and with the Argentine economy sliding into recession, it’s hard to see how the Kirchners can restore their public image-brand in a way that counteracts the differentiating power of their new competitor: the Alfonsin brand.