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Argentina: An Orderly Transition
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13588 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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4 / 1988 |
1,195 Words |
| Author
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Dan Newland
Dan Newland is an American who has lived in Buenos Aires since
1973. He has written on Argentina, as well as on neighboring
Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay, for scores of publications. He
also worked for 13 years for the Buenos Aires Herald. |
When democracy returned to Argentina at the end of 1983, nobody thought the going would be easy. After all, there was no reason to think it would be: The country had just been through nearly eight years of harsh military rule, which included a four-year "dirty war" on leftist subversion that resulted in the "disappearance" of some 8,900 people and the deterioration of the country's political, social, and moral bases.
Furthermore, the military regime's flamboyant economic policies left the country with the third largest foreign debt in the developing world, at a time when the international market for Argentina's traditional beef and grain exports was on the slide.
But after winning a surprise landslide victory in October 1983, President Raul Alfonsin set to work consolidating the basis for a lasting democracy in a country where 35 of the past 50 years had been spent under military rule. The democratic spirit of his government, the discrediting of the military as a result of the "dirty war" bloodbath and the ill-fated war on Britain in the South Atlantic in 1982, and the disillusionment of the Argentine people with the armed forces as a viable political escape valve combined to make nonsense of early predictions that the new democracy would not last six months.
Four years later, democracy is still intact in Argentina. While to the casual observer abroad the road to stable democracy in Argentina may appear very rocky to date, it is important to note that a solid victory over authoritarianism has very recently been won here with the crushing of a military rebellion led by former Lt. Col. Aldo Rico.
Several antidemocratic plots have been uncovered since Alfonsin came to office, but two revolts led by Rico--a former army commando leader who received training with the U.S. Special Forces and saw action in the 1982 war against Britain--have constituted the most blatant attempts against constitutional order in the last four years.
But the prospects for lasting democracy increased dramatically between Rico's first revolt during Easter Week last year and his latest rebellion in January 1988. During last year's uprising, Alfonsin's government was backed into a corner when Rico and a small band of fellow officers and noncommissioned officers took over installations at the Campo de Mayo army base just outside of Buenos Aires. When the president ordered the rebellion put down, he found himself faced with an army that was reluctant to obey such
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