Argentina: failure as an exit

The data is accumulated, very varied and all going in the same direction. Reach by looking at the official numbers: for example, in the last twelve months Argentine industry reduced its activity by 13.4% and the building has 12.3. Or what inflation was 51.3%, the highest since 1991. Or what the dollar, which defines everything, costs only twice as much as a year ago. Or that more than half of Argentinian boys are now pooras one-third of the country's population, and hunger is constantly growing.

The numbers only confirm what everyone – or almost everyone – perceives in the street: Argentina continues to deteriorate and her government does not know how to prevent it, although the epic triumphs like last week are written, when he managed to keep the dollar steady for four consecutive days.

Among the many surprises are spreading: They are the ones who believed that a group of people they knew how to run their businesses and their investments would be good for the management of the state. It's an old myth that disdains extreme differences between disciplines. In their businesses, bosses decide and obey and seek to earn more. While in the state, it is necessary to make politics: to convince a lot that this or that thing is better, to give, to take, to negotiate, to consult majorities, to distribute, to seek common These entrepreneurs do not have: They lost and we lost. Everywhere else in the world, with similar results, a president would have no chance of being re-elected. In Argentina, which is planning elections in October, this is still possible.

The arguments for this to happen are various. The strangest line of explanation is that the president of Argentina, Mauricio Macri, is like that: he draws his strength from his weaknesses and realizes what he seems to have already lost. There are those who call it "The big Macri".

The first time that he did it -in public- it was at Boca Juniors, the most popular club in Argentina. Macri took over his presidency in 1995 using political marketing techniques to win a neighborhood election where 7,000 people voted. And put money and relationships to build a winning team, bought Maradona, Caniggia, Riquelme, Bilardo and many others and could not. His tenure ended in failure when he already hired a providential coach: Carlos Bianchi won the Boca champion title and saved his life. Without this distressing title, his public life would have ended in his first steps.

The second -in public- It was in 2007. Macri had already taken the leap of politics by running for mayor of Buenos Aires in 2003. He lost everything. some spoke of the "Macri Scholarship": anyone who rivaled him, representing so much of the big pre-borsal capitals, increased his chances of winning. He came back to run in 2007; all announced his second defeat but, according to the internal Peronists and the Machiavellians of the neighborhood, President Néstor Kirchner operated to divide the center-left and allow Macri to win – and give him power. "Macri Life Exchange"– This time again, a defeat would have excluded forever; he avoided it again in his last chance.

The third In public, it would be this: when he is about to sign his resounding failure, circumstances would give him another chance and he, who until now has done everything wrong, would benefit and do all right: Magical thought occupies more and more place in the Argentinian heads.

There are other arguments. Those who do not believe in these balivernas maintain the need for Macri to return with a thesis which, it is said, comes from the president himself: that if he were not a candidate, he would be so weak that he could not maybe not even finish his term. The last time a non-Peronist constitutional president completed his cycle, it was in 1928; that would be a diminished honor, the virtue of lasting for nothing.

But perhaps it is true that if Macri withdraws his candidacy and gives way to Maria Eugenia Vidal, governor of the province of Buenos Aires – the only politician or politician to have a more positive than negative image in Argentina, who would have more chances to win the elections – would be perceived as a gesture of helplessness. Once again, the opportunity was pbaded: yes, a year or two ago, at a minimum interval of bonanza, the president would have announced that, by republican conviction, he resigned to keep his job and left his place to a young woman, his gesture would have been unbeatable and would have ensured, in addition to enthusiastic support, a place in the textbooks. Of course he did not do it, and now it's late.

So, the boss who can not manage his country has already announced that he would be a candidate to keep trying. His only strong argument is that his opponent is, for many, even worse: Cristina Fernández, widow of Kirchner. What she, for solidarity, tries to demonstrate in the most imaginative way.

These days, for example, this is the greatest success of the Argentine edition in the twenty-first century. Fernández de Kirchner has just published some memoirs – Sinceramente – according to which, in a country where big bestsellers are able to place 30 000 to 40 000 copies a year, it has sold nearly 200 000 in 15 days . (Another minor myth that collapses: Sincerly's wild sales would show that the famous local publishing crisis is that the published books are not interesting enough … Nobody knows if it would be the fault of publishers or readers) .

Sincerely, talk little about Argentina and its future; it is rather a collection of anecdotes, memories and resentments of the lady who signs it. And this has helped many to remember it in all its splendor. It circulates a lot these days, for example, the pbadage where it counts, so sincere, that he did not want to discharge his constitutional obligation to hand over to his successor the band and the stick of command: "Often, after the vote, I thought about what did not happen: in the Legislative Assembly, I handed over the presidential attributes to … Mauricio Macri! I thought about it and my heart was tight. […] Todo Cambiemos wanted this picture of me giving the command to Macri as he was not another president. It was Cristina, it was the "mare", the arrogance, the authoritarian, the populist about to surrender. "

Strategists? Officials greeted this publication with joy: they badume that it reminds many people how much they hate the author – and that, to prevent it from coming back, they will vote for Macri. Although they suffer from their own paradox: when Cristina Fernández appears in all her violence, she gives them voters but, at the same time, "worries the markets"; then the dollar and the country may rush and other voters hesitant, frightened, remember why they did not want to vote for this government.

This is how are the Argentines: remember alternately who does not want to vote, never finding who does it. Because, meanwhile, the alternative – or the third way – does not take off: he wants to embody a greater Peronist economist, conservative, without equipment or charisma or clear project, which only makes operate the mechanism in both meaning at once: that voters can remember at the same time why they do not want Macri or Cristina.

So you do not know: Analysts insist that there has never been so much uncertainty in the elections in Argentina. In the meantime, everyone insults, accuses, "throws the ball" of responsibilities and nobody offers anything that exceeds it. A small incident can explain the situation in the distance: Juan Grabois, the young favorite of Pope Bergoglio, who He has violated the Argentine policy criticizing the government of Cristina Fernández and now vehemently supports his candidacy., published a tweet attacking a million-dollar internet buying company, Mercado Libre. He criticized his excessive tax exemptions: "The free market, it's smuggling, evasion, financial speculation, consumer abuse and unfair competition, its" success "is the destruction of thousands of dollars. Jobs, Macri made them multimillionaires at your expense. "

Ernesto Tenembaum and his team explained, a few days ago on the radio, that these exemptions did not come from this government, but from the Kirchner; then Grabois said that he did not have to tell the truth: "I am neither an opinion writer nor an objective journalist, I am an activist, so I give him the bias that seems to me". And later, when they blamed him for the violence of his tweet, he explained that it was the only way: "In this country, if you do not bad someone, they do not listen to you, I do not I did not invent it that way.

Both candidates require significant efforts on the part of their constituents, difficult conditions. The condition to vote for Cristina is forgotten: the belief that what happened did not happen, that history can be invented beyond the facts and impose it on cries. The condition for voting for Macri is the belief: the religious fervor of imagining that what has been so many times promised and that has not happened, will happen

When magic, insults and lies are the only weapons, the war – sorry for the unfortunate metaphor – is lost in advance. Failure is the only way out.

Martín Caparrós He is a journalist and novelist. His most recent book is the novel "Todo por la patria". He was born in Buenos Aires, lives in Madrid and is a regular contributor to the New York Times in Spanish.

* Copyright: 2019 The New York Times News Service