Evita North and South

Peronist President-elect of Argentina Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner‘s election might be said to presage the almost inevitable (she has Murdoch money) anointment of Hillary Clinton to succeed her husband in office, in what seems to be becoming rather a trend amongst a certain class of well-off and well-connected women. Mind you, there’s not a lot of sisterhood on display despite the superficial similarities; Kirchner is not happy to be compared to Clinton:

“Hillary (Rodham Clinton) was able to position herself nationally because her husband was president. She didn’t have a political career beforehand and that isn’t my case,” Fernández de Kirchner said in an interview with CNN en Español, referring to her 30-year career in Argentine politics.

That doesn’t bode well for future US/Argentine relations, does it?

But less flippantly, how did Argentina get to the political point where Peronism is once again in fashion? What happened to the people’s movements born out of the 2001 economic collapse? Bring yourself up to basic speed on the politics of the greater American continent and the contnuing malign influence of US foreign policy with John Pilger’s documentary, The War On Democracy. It’s now up on YouTube in ten parts here: if you have an acccount, load them all into ‘playlist’ and play back to back. Here’s part one to start you off:

Award-winning documentary maker John Pilger suggests that, far from bringing democracy to the world as it claims, the US is doing its best to stifle its progress. Talking exclusively to American government officials, including agents who reveal for the first time on film how the CIA ran its war in Latin America in the 80s, Pilger argues that true popular democracy is more likely to be found among the poorest in Latin America, whose movements are often
ignored in the West.

She may be female but Kirchner is no Michelle Bachelet. I’ll have no truck with the brand of feminsim that says any woman elected is better than none – a woman can govern just as badly and undemocratically as any man and that goes for Hillary Clinton as well as Kirchner. The Democrats and the Peronists both purport to be the champions of the poor, the little guys, the blue-collar and the dispossessed, but both actually work to advance neoliberal economic policy and corporate profit. It’s no coincidence that like the Peronistas both Clintons have adopted the Third Wayas their defining political stance, along with Tony Blair.

Kirchner may have more elected political experience than Clinton but just like Clinton there’s no denying she’s used her husband’s reflected popularity to boost her own quest for presidential power. Both are so firmly wedded to the notion of a corporate state they married it. That’s dedication to a cause, the cause of Evita Peronism.

By the time Nestor Kirchner announced he was stepping down to let his wife run, observers said she had fuller lips, tighter skin and a more lustrous auburn mane, prompting speculation about surgery and hair extensions.

It remains an open question whether this was a personal decision to offset the effects of age, a political strategy to court votes in an aesthetic-obsessed era, or both.

Newspapers gleefully reported that on foreign trips she brought large trunks of clothes and fashion helpers, and changed her outfit up to four times a day. Critics said the makeover was an effort to evoke the magic of Eva Peron, the icon who died in 1952 aged just 33.

Just like Evita, Kirchner’s clothes, shoes, handbags and hair are the stuff of gossip magazines and like Clinton she’s alleged to not be a stranger to Botox. It’s described as vanity but it’s something more insidious. It’s all about the image. masking state corporatism with an attractive, warm and fuzzy media-friendly facade. Don’t look at the policies, look at the hair!

To my mind Clinton’s at the very least a quasi-Evita Peronist. Trading on reflected glory? Check. Image management? Check. Cult of personality? Third Way-ist? Check. Corporately funded? Check. Hawkish on the military and defence? Soft on neofascism and torture? Check…

If the ascendance of Kirchner and Clinton tells women anything at all, it’s that we can only succeed to high office a] by marrying advantageously b] putting a softer, feminine face on the perpetuation of a political and economic system which keeps other women down and c] pandering to the corporate media’s trivialisation of politics. This is no big step foward for women.

This is how The Times described the Argentinian election – ‘Fatty’ v the new Evita in all-girl fight for Argentina” Murdoch himself may be bankrolling a woman for US president but that says it all about what the global press really thinks of women in presidential politics, doesn’t it?

The election of a woman in Argentina and the potential election of another in the US is not a sudden blossoming of equality, it’s the corporate status quo donning a velvet Prada glove over the hand holding the cattleprod.

Because to get back to my original point, that US and Argentinian politics are beginning to echo one another, the ironic thing about all this is that while the US (as Pilger shows) has been meddling in Argentinian politics for years in the cause of corporate world hegemony it’s rebounded and now both countries’ politics seem to be converging. Both have a politicised military, a greedy plutocracy, entrenched and growing social inequality and a fatal taste for the firm smack of authoritarian government. They’re more alike than they’d admit.

The US now has also a falling currency and an economy that’s could nosedive and has the potential to cause untold social disorder and chaos, just as Argentina did six years ago. What’s Hillary’s plan for that, if any? Will we see disposessed Americans selling their all on the streets like the residents of Buenos Aires had to? Americans north and south may find they have much more in common than they think.

Oh well, never mind. Let’s look on the bright side – at least their potential misery‘ll be misery with a kinder, gentler, less wrinkled face.