"I did not vote or Nestor or Cristina, but see the poor and some rich crying laughing, shows that did several things well." (@ rayovirtual in Twitter).
If a single gesture, in my view, sufficient to vindicate the memory of Nestor Kirchner that was the removal of portraits of former dictators Jorge Rafael Videla and Reynaldo Bignone rooms at the Military Academy. The act of tremendous symbolic power, took place in March 2004, at 28 years of the coup, led by Videla, who overthrew President Isabel Martínez de Perón, and opened a dark age of indiscriminate repression in Argentina.
Kirchner, accompanied by his cabinet, ordered the army chief, Lieutenant General Roberto Bendini, "Proceed!" Grimly and majesty Republican and the officer proceeded to take down pictures of their predecessors. Then the president said then: "Make no mistake, the state terrorism is one of the bloodiest things that can happen to a company. There is nothing to enable the state terrorism, and less use of Force military. "
"I come to rescue the spirit sanmartiniano Army so that together we can rebuild the country with democracy, pluralism and social justice," he said, his voice hit.
For reasons of protocol, the chronicles of that historic moment, the only applause came from the ministers and officials accompanying him. Act followed in that same day, March 24, 2004, the director of Military Intelligence, General Jorge Cabrera, submitted his resignation to the Minister of Defence of the time, Jose Pampuro.
That powerful gesture was seared into the memory of the Argentine and not a few Latin Americans who saw in it a concrete expression of the subordination of military to civilian authority in a country whose transition to democracy was not free of threats decline.
As an example, just mention the uprisings "carapintadas" against Raul Alfonsin, culminating with painful transactions. And the double game of Carlos Menem, who along with repressing the sectors extreme fundamentalist Armed Forces (including Seineldin Mohamed, leader of the riots against Alfonsin), granted that the bulk of the military corporation was required: the impunity laws and due obedience to be applied in favor of the Crusaders the "dirty war."
But Kirchner was not only the high demands of leftist Peronism 70, a historical narrative that seemed lost after the 90 Menem came to power wrapped in the old populist rhetoric and then devote to privatize everything he could, in a decade in which the exchange one to one of the peso and the dollar fell to Argentina in the conformist spree "pizza Champagne. "
Besides being a standard bearer for a generation that was intended to systematically exterminate the "penguin" come from the south, after twelve years of effective administration of the province of Santa Cruz, from which he was governor, rebuilt Peronism blood pact with the common people, with ordinary citizens who saw in him a true leader committed to his cause.
And here is worth a digression: Chileans, ignorant, in general, we are of what happens beyond our noses, we often anathematize Peronism as a doctrine of Nazi-fascist inspiration that fuels the ever-despicable "Populism."
The truth is that Peronism is much more complex than that. And beyond the caricatures, the Argentines know very well that when his country was in flames in the crisis following the resignation of Fernando De la Rua radical, which generated three presidents in one year, the only policy area that could collect the disintegrated remains of the nation and return governance to the country was Peronism.
should then be careful in the analysis and approaches not binary, black and white, with realities which are governed by codes rather different from ours.
Néstor Kirchner was also a man of confrontation, no doubt. Left office in 2007, but not before installing his wife, Cristina, in the Casa Rosada. And in June 2008, they faced the "rebellion of the field, when they wanted to apply withholding grain exporters and half the country took to him.
And now finally, after mid-2009, lost the majority in Congress, the K, always faithful to the slogan that the best defense is offense, threw themselves into a quixotic battle against Press paper, the consortium formed by the two major newspapers across the Andes, La Nación and Clarín, in the name of diversification of sources of information and communication democracy.
Front attack against powerful enemies seemed to be in the DNA of the son of a postman and a descendant of Swiss Chilean-Croatian mother. Not for nothing faced without fear of the powerful English capital benefited from the privatization of Menem, and covered by the Partido Popular and PSOE.
not had trouble scuttling the FTAA at the Summit of Mar del Plata, which was passed to George W. downs Bush, at the hands of Evo Morales and Chavez. And unless you shook the pulse of time to get on the sidewalk in front of the IMF, when I wanted to push the issue of outstanding external debt or tax bills. His audacity was
prize, but at the same time he presented a bill inevitable. For a few it is even any doubt that politics was his passion full time and in no small measure was undermining an already health complex. "Death is not devoted to anyone or improve it, but lets see who will be more tough," he wrote today in The Nation, Beatriz Sarlo, an intellectual who never ascribed to his ideas, but gave him an admiring obituary before consequence. View
masses of old and young, men and women, leftists and trade unionists rather right, moved by the departure of Lupin (nicknamed so friends of his youth, in his Santa Cruz home because of its resemblance aviator adventurer with a cartoon of his youth) and crying his death in the streets, and confirms the clear evidence to those who most resented his death.
And that's enough for me, at least, I bow before his coffin with respect.
His enemies of yesterday and will now be able to repeat old and varied accusations. Who became rich in public office (which is not proven, since most of his personal fortune of U.S. $ 14.5 million, as did real estate lawyer.) That should spurious alliances with much of the corrupt union leadership (which itself is tested). And always subordinated foreign policy Argentina to the vagaries of domestic politics, as evidenced by their injunctions to Chile for the gas and with Uruguay over pulp mill.
In the Chilean case, we recall, moreover, at all times, it was a "hard" in both the Beagle conflict as in the Southern Ice Fields. But it is a minor detail the knowledge that as the child of a representative of a Chilean and Patagonian province, maybe he was forced to play that role.
However, in addition and subtraction of factors, the balance, in my humble opinion, is positive. For me, Kirchner will go down in history is the one that had the courage to take down the portraits of the coup of where they form new generations of military. And that is something. Especially seen from a country where the portrait of Augusto Pinochet is still part of the picture gallery above the office of commander in chief.
