In an Argentina in crisis, Menem assumed his first presidency nearly 30 years ago

Carlos Saúl Menem badumed, almost 30 years ago, on July 8, 1989, his first presidency in an Argentina hit by hyperinflation and social crisis that determined the anticipated government provision by Raúl Alfonsín.

The governor of the time, La Rioja, led with Eduardo Duhalde the formula of the Front of Popular Unity (Frejupo) and won the elections of May 14 that year.

The Peronist candidate won 47.49% of the vote and was imposed on the team of the UCR, which included the governor of Cordoba, Eduardo Angeloz, and Juan Manuel Casella, who added 37.10% of the votes cast.

The Frejupo has been awarded 312 representatives out of a total of 600 within the electoral college, the body entrusted with devoting the president, according to the mechanism of indirect election provided for by the constitutional norm in force at that time.

The failure of the spring plan launched by the radical government in October 1988 to contain inflation and win the elections has not yielded the expected results and, after the elections, the rise in prices has become unstoppable and the dollar's price was important. .

The salaried sectors supported a constant liquidation of their incomes and, in the face of a rapidly deteriorating social situation, supermarket looting took place in Greater Buenos Aires and the suburbs of Rosario on May 29 of the same year. year. .

After two days of incidents, more than 300 looting and vandalism were recorded, more than 2,000 detainees and about 15 dead in various clashes.

The monthly inflation rate was about 20%, capital flight was constant and financial speculation seemed to be the only profitable activity in this country in crisis.

December 10 was the expected date for government delivery, but in this context, a five-month transition seemed very difficult to achieve.

Alfonsín, who had changed cabinet after the elections, sent Rodolfo Terragno, a former minister of public works and a man he trusted, to negotiate with Menem a smooth transfer in these complex circumstances.

The president-elect has received Terragno with the men who will compose his future cabinet, among them the economist Domingo Felipe Cavallo, who will badume the post of Chancellor, then badume the reins of the portfolio of the economy. , from where he designed the convertibility of one peso per dollar, that would last until 2001.

After learning that Alfonsin was planning to resign, Menem told Terragno that he was not able to badume his duties and, after consulting with his future cabinet, he asked the minister to resign. sent executive power "one more month".

As Terragno himself revealed years later, Menem even offered to badume his brother Eduardo, who was acting president of the Senate, but the upper house member refused and he let it know to the elected president that "you can not".

The acting head of state asked Terragno to come back and announced on the night of June 12 that he was leaving office on the 30th of the same month, but in subsequent negotiations it was established that the transfer date was Saturday, July 8th.

Menem, who during the election campaign promised "salariazo" and "the productive revolution", agreed before his hypothesis an economic program with the Bunge & Born group, based on a high exchange rate, privatizations, renegotiations with external creditors. and fiscal discipline.

Miguel Ángel Roig was the kid-born man of this group who badumed the function of minister, but died a week later. He was replaced by Néstor Rapanelli, another leader of the company.

In an international context that marked the collapse of the Soviet bloc, Menem adhered to Washington's consensus policy and alignment with the United States.

Phrases such as "we are wrong, but we are fine" or "major surgery without anesthesia" proposed by Menem in the early days of his tenure, seemed to be in tune with neoliberal-oriented new times, which replaced conceptions distributed that Peronism cultivated since its origins. .

After another hyperinflation in the early 1990s, price stability would be linked to the convertibility, privatization of utilities, the 1994 constitutional reform and the 1995 presidential re-election for another four years, during which Menem would have realized more than once. decade in the head of the state.