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By: Anish Beeram
Known for being the second female president of Argentina and the first female head of the Argentine presidential ballot, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner revolutionized the Front for Victory Party by bringing it closer to the Peronist center, appealing primarily to the working class and lower-income. Throughout her two terms in office, she used her position as president to tackle long-standing problems, both domestically and internationally, in order to create a more inclusive Argentine society.
What is her background?
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s political life began in 1973 when she met her future husband, Néstor Kirchner at the National University of La Plata. He taught her about the nature of Argentine politics surrounding the military coup of 1966, as well as the return of the former president Juan Perón. She slowly became associated with the Peronist left of Argentinian politics, looking to strike a balance between the distinct economic class disparities. In the 1976 Argentine coup d’état, when Isabel Perón was ejected from office, de Kirchner took the opportunity to bide her time to build political influence.
How did she become a leader in Argentina?
In the 1995 general elections, de Kirchner flexed the fruits of her labor when she was elected a national senator for Argentina. Very quickly, she made a name for herself as a revolutionary, opposing bills that uniquely benefitted other Latin American countries like Venezuela and Chile. She served as a proponent for the Argentine working class and advocated for strengthening the domestic economy, rather than relying on the international market. The right-wing bloc viewed her as a threat, as she consistently badgered the private sector to relinquish power to the state enterprise. However, in 2003, she transitioned from senator to First Lady when her husband was elected as the 50th president of Argentina. Throughout her husband’s time in office, she took a step back from direct involvement in politics, and in 2007, she used her husband's platform to run for the presidency as a part of the Front for the Victory party. In a landslide victory, she won the election in the first round of voting with barely over 45% of the vote. This support came primarily from the rural and suburban working class. Despite losing in the largest cities, Buenos Aires and Rosario, she capitalized on her overwhelming lead throughout the rest of non-metropolitan Argentina.
What were her policies?
Throughout her two terms in office, she used her position to address inflation rates, energy infrastructure, privatized hedge funds, and asymmetric international trade deficits to create a more progressive Argentina.
Agriculture. Soon after her election, she began an initiative to restrict international ties, focusing more on domestic goods. To this end, she raised tariffs on soybean exports from 35% to 44%, eliciting mass protests by agriculturalists against her new taxation plan. Her intention was to reduce domestic food prices by making export crops unprofitable. Consequently, farmers would turn to harvest staple crops like wheat, which would increase domestic food supply at lower net costs. This move was meant to alleviate the effect of inflation on the lowest income Argentinians, who spend more money on aggregate food costs per year. However, Argentinian farmers refused to switch the type of crops grown, and instead went on long-term strike.
Social Security. One of her most popular policies was the expansion of social security. In 2009, she created the Universal Child Allowance, a grant program that gave money to struggling or unemployed parents for the purposes of taking care of their children. This program became a hallmark of her fight against poverty in Argentina.
Energy Infrastructure. De Kirchner spent both of her terms grappling with decades of failed energy policy. Early in her first term, she fixed the prices of electricity, gas, and water, while increasing government subsidies for private sector energy providers. Next, to combat the energy trade deficit, she subsumed the YPF, Argentina’s largest energy provider, into the national government, ending the mass privatization of energy monopolies. This policy faced heavy backlash from right-wing supporters in Congress, as they viewed the decision as an “authoritarian” takeover of the private market. Unfortunately, YPF began hemorrhaging money because they could not afford the high costs of oil drilling, forcing Kirchner to rely exclusively on energy imports from Chevron. Blackouts became frequent, and the trade deficit widened.
Foreign Policy. She was a strong proponent of the “pink tide” movement, a left-wing initiative by Latin American leaders to distance themselves from the U.S. and Europe. As such, Argentina grew closer to Venezuela, Brazil, and Ecuador, while slandering America and Europe in the Argentinian news. She blamed America specifically for predatory hedge fund debt, as well as large economic capitulations through currency controls. Kirchner also played a large role in turning local news sources against Europe, as she accused them of intentionally weakening the Argentine economy through long-standing trade deficits.
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner represents the new wave of progressive thought in Argentina. Although her tenure was plagued by corruption scandals, right-wing political gridlock, and shortsighted policy repercussions, she opened the door for future change by giving political representation to the low-income, suburban class in Argentina.
Discussion Questions:
What steps did Argentina take against privatized energy monopolies?
How did Fernández de Kirchner affect the profit of Argentine farmers?
How did the western world respond to Argentina’s critique of American capitalism?
Sources Used/Further Reading:
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