Neoliberalism In Argentina Research Articles

The return of neoliberalism in Argentina: Toward a critical theory from (and for) the global South

The victory of Mauricio Macri in the 2015 Argentine presidential election led to a kind of return of neoliberalism, soon resisted by the people and the political opposition. In this paper I will address the question of how recent regressive neoliberal policies and austerity agenda have been defied and counteracted by progressive forces and the Argentine left-wing movements. To do so, I will periodize this country’s recent history and map the positions occupied by the local left in order to argue that neoliberalism has never been entirely hegemonic in Argentina. By doing this, I hope to contribute to the development of a critical theory from (and for) the global South.

The Failures of Neoliberalism in Argentina

: In the wake of the 1970 crisis, neoliberalism emerged as the dominant approach to economic development throughout the world. As a region faced with particularly difficult economic challenges, even Latin America has not been spared from the pervasiveness and dominance of neoliberal policy. Rooted in neoclassical theory, the arrival of neoliberalism displaced Latin American contributions for development that predominated during the postwar period, which highlighted the importance of the state in directing an industrialization strategy that allows peripheral economies to develop. In the case of Argentina, neoliberalism was supposed to overcome structural heterogeneity and economic unbalances inherited from state-led industrialization through policies oriented to liberalize the economy and downsize the state. However, contrary to these suppositions, neoliberalism tended to reinforce the peripheral positioning of Argentina in the global economy, as well as to deepen social and economic inequality.

Old Malbec in New Bottles: The Return of Neoliberalism in Argentina

Argentina has long been plagued by cycles of economic mismanagement, including multiple failed neoliberal experiments. Before his election as president, Mauricio Macri promised resumed growth, an export boom, lower inflation, a smaller budget deficit, and less poverty. Since then, has the new neoliberalism outperformed the old?Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Improving farmers markets and challenging neoliberalism in Argentina

Although typically invisible, neoliberal policies and ideologies are often at the root of why farmers markets struggle to offer affordable prices for consumers, sufficient income for farmers, and expand socially and environmentally sustainable food systems. Argentinian ferias francas, a variation on farmers markets, offer a unique case to examine how they may be designed to alleviate these issues by challenging neoliberalism through legislative mechanisms. Ferias francas emerged as an explicitly anti-neoliberal, grassroots response to Argentina’s expansion of neoliberal agricultural policies that stimulated global agribusiness and displaced small-scale farmers. Organizers partnered with municipal, provincial, and national governments to develop legislation to support small-scale farmers and to make the network of ferias competitive with global agribusiness. I ask, how can organizers expand farmers markets’ potential to fulfill the social and environmental goals of agri-food movements, given neoliberal capitalism’s constraints and contradictions? I analyze feria legislation by situating it in its social and historical context, and comparing legislative mechanisms to core elements of neoliberalism in the economy and in the everyday mentalities of agri-food activists. I find that mechanisms such as setting prices lower than neighboring supermarkets and establishing uniform prices for feria goods contest some aspects of neoliberalism. However, the ferias also reproduce neoliberalism, and are still subject to the price standards set under the global neoliberal agroeconomy, raising questions about their prospects for sustainability under neoliberal capitalism. This analysis of feria legislation makes neoliberalism’s influence on farmers markets visible and highlights legislative mechanisms that address some of its harmful effects.

Juan Pablo Ferrero , Democracy against Neoliberalism in Argentina and Brazil: A Move to the Left (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. xii + 264, £62.50, hb.

Juan Pablo Ferrero , Democracy against Neoliberalism in Argentina and Brazil: A Move to the Left (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. xii + 264, £62.50, hb.

Union Organizing after the Collapse of Neoliberalism in Argentina: The Place of Community in the Revitalization of the Labor Movement (2005–2011)

Recent Argentine history showed that since 2003 the labor movement became increasingly relevant due to protests organized by unionized formal workers. Labor revitalization in a context of persistent informality raised the following question: Were there union organizing strategies that related formal workers to the broader working class community that included informal workers? This article answered the question through the analysis of union strategies from three formal sector firms located in one city of the Northern Gran Buenos Aires, Argentina, between 2005 and 2011. The evidence from this comparison showed that in two of the factories there were union strategies to reach the community. The existence of a grassroots democratic union in the shop floor appeared as a necessary condition for inclusive union strategies. The scale of those relations varied according to the geographical pattern of workers’ housing, which was the result of the company’s localization strategy.

Neoliberalism in Argentina and Chile: common antecedents, divergent paths

AbstractThis paper contrasts the experiences of neoliberalism in Argentina and Chile, exploring why two countries that implemented apparently similar market reforms came to different stances on marketization: a post-neoliberal politics in Argentina, and a tempered neoliberalism in Chile that has only recently come under scrutiny. The paper traces the common antecedents that inspired these reforms and the different outcomes and reactions that they produced. In contrast to recent literature, which emphasizes one or another explanatory factor, this article offers a synthetic comparison of the historical, political, economic, and ideological factors in play, helping to understand how capitalists achieved a hegemonic class position in Chile and not in Argentina.

Tango feroz : Teaching a History of Politics and Economics of Argentina through Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll

This article directly resulted from the teacher/researcher experience, describing new analyses resulting from subtitling a film for curriculum incorporation: Tango feroz, la leyenda de Tanguito (1993). Set in Argentina in the sixties and loosely based on the life of José Alberto Iglesias Correa, also known as Tanguito, this film portrays an early exponent of rock nacional argentino . This article contrasts how this film has become known as a film that promotes women’s liberation, transgression of traditional race and class boundaries, and criticism of authoritarian neoliberal regimes, yet an analysis of the film’s dialogue and aesthetics reveals a double-register pregnant with ambiguity, in particular regarding the role of neoliberalism in Argentina’s national economy.

Resources for Reform: Oil and Neoliberalism in Argentina by Elana Shever.

Resources for Reform: Oil and Neoliberalism in Argentina by Elana Shever.

Resources for Reform: Oil and Neoliberalism in Argentina

Resources for Reform: Oil and Neoliberalism in Argentina

Elana Shever, Resources for Reform: Oil and Neoliberalism in Argentina (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012), pp. xiii+231, $70.00 hb, $22.95 pb and e-book.

Elana Shever, Resources for Reform: Oil and Neoliberalism in Argentina (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012), pp. xiii+231, $70.00 hb, $22.95 pb and e-book.

El Niño Argentino de Mauricio Kartun y la producción de sentido político: el teatro como "ladrillazo a la vidriera"

This article proposes that the political thought of Mauricio Kartun is a fundamental key for the analysis of his political theatre. Beginning with the theoretical notions of "concepción de teatro" and "estructura racional," El Niño Argentino (2006) is analyzed in its relation to socialist thought. The metaphor of El Niño Argentino is referentially sent back to Argentina's immediate past, to the government of Carlos Menem and the peak of neoliberalism in Argentina of the 90s. Kartun no longer believes in "dramaturgia de la seguridad, de la confianza ciega," which relied on the discourse of the Socialist Party and on the "soberbia" of a truth that was once believed to be flawless, but rather he continues to reaffirm his socialist conviction, which makes him — in addition to a playwright who participates in the current political movement — an intellectual of Carta Abierta. El Niño Argentino is theatre of "denuncia" (not of "anuncia"), a theatre that unmasks the subjectivity of the Right (rooted in the origins of Argentina, brutal during the years of the dictatorship and during their rise in this last period, since 2001), but that does not offer a solution. This is a theatre of the Left that shows no sign of resignation or despair, and through the act of condemnation, searches with persistent desire, for a new sociability.

Rise and Collapse of Neoliberalism in Argentina

The present crisis in Argentina, the worst crisis in Argentine history that reached rock-bottom levels in 2001-2, can be considered a crisis of neoliberalism, particularly of the severe structural adjustments applied in the 1990s and the beginning of the new millennium under the Menem and De la Rúa administrations. It was in this period that wholesale privatizations, deregulations of all kinds including those tending to the fully-fledged ‘flexibilization’ of labor markets, and an indiscriminate ‘opening’ to the world economy took place. This was also the period in which the foreign debt continued, increasing substantially until the recent default became inevitable. This article analyzes the way economic policy systematically favored the various large economic conglomerates operating in Argentina. In agro-industry, petroleum, telecommunication, electricity, water, and banking, both large national and transnational conglomerates were favored by measures related to structural adjustment programs of successive governments. In the midst of the present crisis these large conglomerates or grupos económicos are once again showing their muscle, pressuring the government to pay the foreign debt, increase public rates, compensate the banks for their losses due to capital flight, etc. In effect, the crisis itself shows the bare anatomy of the economic structure in which these large conglomerates reign supreme while being increasingly contested by numerous popular organizations of civil society.