Darío Alessandro, former leader of the Frepaso and Alliance – Telam bloc of deputies, has died

The former lawmaker and diplomat Daro alessandro, Anybody President of the Frepaso MP block and the Alliance but also Minister of Foreign Affairs and Ambassador to Cuba and Peru during kirchnerism, die this wednesday in the wee hours of the morning, at the age of 69, after cancer surgery.

Sociologist by training, son of a historian of Peronism who was also called Daro and who had been part of the intellectual core Forja, Alessandro was one of the founders of the magazine Vsperas which was published before the end of the dictatorship and then joined the editorial group of the magazine Unidos, led by Carlos “Chacho” lvarez.

He was national deputy for two legislatures, between 1995-1999 and 1999-2003, and during this period he was first leader of the Frepaso bloc and then, after the formation of the Alliance with the UCR, at the head of the unified bench of the coalition.

Alessandro had known parliamentary activity in the early days of Menemismo, as legislative secretary of the Group of 8 bloc.

This political space, which later became the creation of the Big FrontIt was made up of the deputies who broke with the justicialismo, then led by Carlos Menem, by raising their disagreement with the privatizations, the dismantling of the productive apparatus, the pardons and after having denounced acts of corruption.

One of the 8 deputies, among whom Germn Abdala, Luis Brunati and “Chacho” lvarez himself stand out, was precisely Alessandro’s father.

Between 1999 and December 2001, the deterioration and ultimately the collapse of convertibility ran through all of Alessandro’s parliamentary work in a complex scenario which, as those who have dealt with him over the years have recognized, has been ” very difficult ”and“ very exhausting. “in personal terms.

“Daro was a hardworking MP, a great activist, a very committed and passionate guy with the causes he chose., and he was also a very good parliamentarian, ”he recorded in dialogue with Tlam Jos Vitar, former deputy and current leader of Frente Grande in his province, for whom Alessandro “He must have played in a very difficult period” for the fall of the government of Fernando de la Ra and the social crisis of 2001/2002.

These unpredictable days, with mobilizations, assemblies in the squares, anti-political speeches and repression with the wounded and the dead in many parts of the country found Alessandro at the head of the Alliance bench, a role which for some witnesses of the moment he was confronted. with “civic sacrifice”.

On one of those nights in December 2001, during which the demonstrators entered Congress after forcing several doors, Alessandro himself decided to stay inside the premises of the Chamber of Deputies with the intention of to avoid – with his presence at the scene of the incidents – an episode of violence or increased repression.

His wife, the writer Marta Cichero, emphasizing an imprint of his political career, defines him as a person who in general “tried to combine positions, which was always more harmony than confrontation”.

Alessandro shared many years of activism with “Chacho” lvarez, from the early 1970s until the Alliance came to government in 1999, although they later parted ways. Asked by Tlam, the former vice president and founder of Frepaso said the former diplomat and former lawmaker who died in the early hours of Wednesday was “forever” a “great friend and colleague”.

“I have always loved his father as I loved mine, and in the most difficult times, Daro Sr. and Daro Jr. were, for me, fundamental people in my activism since the 70s,” Álvarez said. to this agency.

After Nstor Kirchner came to government, Alessandro was summoned by then Foreign Minister Rafael Bielsa to serve as Latin American Under-Secretary for Politics, a designation that coincided, according to the words of Vitar de Tucumán, “with the golden age of South America. integration.”

Later he was appointed Ambassador to Cuba and, with Cristina Fernndez in the government, Ambassador to Peru.