Argentina: Up From Barbarism

As Argentina stumbles from one crisis to another, its weary population must take comfort from small mercies. The most recent armed uprising served to bring the country together. Unlike the three seizures of military bases which preceded it, last month’s bloody attack on the La Tablada garrison in suburban Buenos Aires was staged not by disgruntled military men but by remnants of an extreme left-wing guerrilla organization.

This fact allowed Argentina’s beleaguered President Raul Alfonsin--who hopes to be the first civilian in half a century to complete his term in office without being overthrown by the military--to praise the army and security forces and forge a common cause with them.

The return of terrorism, absent from Argentina for almost a decade, has plunged Argentina back into memories of its dark night of terror when an underground civil war and military repression claimed the lives of at least 30,000 people. Unlike the three military uprisings that Alfonsin has resolved without major bloodshed, the attack on the Third Infantry Regiment in La Tablada left a toll of 36 dead. Twenty-eight of the attackers were killed for the loss of seven soldiers and a policeman. Another 63 members of the security forces were wounded, while 14 of the guerrillas were taken prisoner.

The attackers have been convincingly identified as members of the People’s Revolutionary Army (ERP), a Marxist-Leninist guerrilla organization that was the most effective of myriad subversive groups operating in Argentina in the 1970s. These groups were ultimately responsible for the 1976 coup and the military’s use of state terrorism. The government said that the leader of the attackers was Enrique Haroldo Gorriaran Merlo, the only surviving founding member of the ERP.

Gorriaran Merlo had managed to avoid the fate of the other ERP leaders, who were hunted down and killed openly or were “disappeared” (the term used to describe the clandestine executions carried out by the military during the so-called “dirty war”), by fleeing to Nicaragua. He was named in a guerrilla communique as the leader of the group responsible for the assassination of Anastasio Somoza, when the deposed Nicaraguan dictator took refuge in Paraguay.

Alfonsin, in a stirring speech to Congress, described the aftermath of the La Tablada incident as “a nightmare of death upon death, brutality and barbarism . . . . This is the last great test of my government,” he said, “and we will not lose. . . . Democracy has been strengthened, but at a very high cost.”

For once, Argentines spoke as one in condemning the assault on the military base. Alfonsin was able to seize the opportunity to weld the armed forces and the civilian government together in defense of democracy by announcing formation of an advisory National Security Council. The revived threat of left-wing terrorism is a godsend for Alfonsin, who has struggled to find a way of meting out exemplary punishment for the murders, the torture and the moral degradation characterizing the military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1976 to 1983, without endangering stability.

By limiting court action to the members of ruling junta and to the most notorious of the commanders responsible for the grossest violations of human rights, Alfonsin has managed to contain the wrath of the men in uniform who have made most of Argentine history into military history. His government has been rocked, but has never been in danger of being toppled, by a series of pocket rebellions, the latest, and most serious, occurring last December.

Swept into office on a wave of totally unjustified euphoria almost six years ago, Alfonsin has reaped the ingratitude of his countrymen and women for failing to deliver the long-awaited, and continually frustrated, “Argentine Miracle.” Argentines seemed to imagine, after the bitter discovery that dictatorship was not a recipe for the prosperity they look upon as a birthright, that merely by casting a vote the old Parisien saying “as rich as an Argentine” would come true again.

The reality is that Alfonsin’s Radical Party, which wandered in the political wilderness--apart from a term truncated by a military coup in the mid-1960s--for more than 50 years, has never been noted for its efficiency in, or out of, government. Alfonsin has tried to turn traditional Radical policies on their head by privatizing cherished but moribund state enterprises. He has attempted to modernize a country that has remained stuck in the 1930s, but has had to be content with achieving his main priority--lasting the course and handing over office to a freely elected successor.

It has been Argentine attitudes that have defeated him. Alfonsin has found it politic to blame Argentina’s $54.8-billion foreign debt for the country’s economic plight. But a more plausible explanation is lack of confidence expressed, most tellingly, in the fact that Argentines have stashed away more billions than they owe. The savings of Argentines are kept in dollars and other hard currencies, under the mattress or in foreign banks and investments abroad.

It will take many years of democracy and stability--and, so far, the former has not come hand in hand with the latter, before Argentina can begin to recover from half a century of political chaos.

With little or no help from the Argentines themselves, Alfonsin has done his part by walking the tightrope from one election to the next without falling off. Providing Alfonsin can hand over the presidential sash and baton to his successor in May--in an Argentina free from the fear of military intervention--he will have assured his place in history.

Whether the hope that the Argentine Nightmare will be banished comes true also depends on the man Argentines choose to take Alfonsin’s place. Under Alfonsin, the sterile confrontation between Peronists and anti-Peronists has come to an end and Argentina is again enjoying normal political give and take without, saving the recent outbreak of terrorism, the violence that has been characteristic.

The Peronist presidential candidate, Carlos Saul Menem, a flamboyant provincial governor, promises, however, to take Argentina back to demagoguery, not democracy. His rival, Eduardo Angeloz, who had Alfonsin’s support in his bid for the party nomination, has built his political reputation by proving to be an efficient administrator. Under his leadership, Cordoba, second in size and wealth only to the province Buenos Aires, has become a showplace of thriving industry and good government.

The achievements of Angeloz as provincial governor are overshadowed, however, by the dismal failure of the national government’s economic policies. In the wake of the February devaluation of the peso, which sent interest rates soaring to more than 30% a month, Angeloz has to run against the appalling economic record of his own party. Yet, after trailing Menem in the polls by 10 points at the beginning of the year, Angeloz has been gaining ground. Since the bloody encounter at La Tablada garrison, Menem’s lead in the polls has dwindled to 3 points.

Argentines are clearly disenchanted with democracy as they have experienced it under the Radical Party. But voting is compulsory in Argentina, and as election day--May 14--draws near, the public seems to fear a return to the violent past more than a continuation of the current economic calamities. The staid, stolid image projected by Angeloz offers a safer ride on the roller coaster into the future than the dazzling but controversial figure of Menem.