Let's change imitates Bolsonaro | The alliance in power …

The election year always generates new challenges for political forces engaged in obtaining votes. In this context, the electoral strategists of Cambiemos have turned to the evangelicals, a group which until now had no electoral role in our country but which was one of the pillars of the recent triumph of Jair Messias Bolsonaro in Brazil and of Alberto's election. Fujimori in Peru in 1990.

At the present time, there is no structure bringing together evangelicals involved in politics. Everyone acts alone and in different spaces. Alfredo Olmedo, MP for Salta Cambiemos, exuberantly explains his religious status to justify his political acts. The legislator was baptized in May 2017 in Salta, in the church "Jesus is the center". In the province of Buenos Aires, Pastor Gastón Bruno, who until 2015 held the position of Vice President of the ACIERA (Christian Alliance of Evangelical Churches), resigned from this post to run for office. deputy of Cambiemos. He is currently director of educational affairs management at the Directorate General of Culture and Education of the Province of Buenos Aires and one of the main links of the governor María Eugenia Vidal with the evangelical world. There have been appearances of evangelical political activists in the debate over the decriminalization of abortion, an opportunity in which the most active have been shown under the slogan "Both lives".

The strategy of Cambiemos is to co-opt, by ideological affinity but also through social badistance links, with different evangelical groups and congregations with the undeniable goal of playing a role similar to that played in Brazil.

There is no updated data on the number of evangelical faithful in our country because the most serious survey on religions in Argentina (coordinated by the sociologist Fortunato Mallimaci) dates back to 2008. L & # 39; investigation is being updated and the results will be known by the middle of the year. this year, but researchers from CEIL-Conicet and other specialists of the subject point out that the number of evangelicals is rising today to about 10% of the population. Baptist pastor Rubén Proeitti, president of Aciera, says that "evangelicals will exceed 9 million believers". Walter Serantes, pastor of Tiempo Church of Renuevo in Tigre and secretary of the Union of Assemblies of God, badures that there are 5,000 churches in the only province of Buenos Aires.

With the estimates now in sight, it can be argued that the number of evangelicals would not have increased substantially since the last measure, as was the case in Chile and Peru. Brazil is the country where the proportion of evangelicals is the highest: 26% of the population, according to a Pew Research Center study published in November 2014.

But apart from any speculation about their numbers, the evangelicals consciously increased their visibility in public space, abandoning the calm and silent attitude of other times. There is a greater territorial presence through the temples and places of worship, as well as through actions related to the social and personal accompaniment of those who suffer, not to mention the spaces they occupy in different prisons. Given these capacities, the state – with change but also before – uses evangelical congregations and their pastors to channel social badistance, which increases the political capacity of these groups and their territorial impact.

As in any institution and as in the Catholic Church, evangelicals aspire to increase their share of power and to influence decisions. To this end, they have expanded their action on the radio and their level of dialogue. Not only with the government of Cambiemos, but already from the previous administration. Alicia Soraire, a faithful evangelical and nowadays deputy of Tucumán (FpV-PJ), was one of Alicia Kirchner's most direct collaborators in social development. Hugo Moyano and his family also testify to his evangelization. Aciera said that "as such, it has no political position, nor does it favor a determined party policy" although "we celebrate and encourage believers to stand up for it. engage in society with the desire to be salt and light and instruments of truth and justice ".

One element that has allowed evangelicals to penetrate the popular sectors is their proximity to everyday life. According to Marcos Carbonelli, doctor of social sciences and researcher at Conicet, these groups promote "the link between the spiritual and material restoration of people: it is not only about believing that it will be saved in the future." Redemption also happens here and now and manifests itself in concrete material accomplishments, such as obtaining a job, abandoning an addiction, rebuilding a person. Family link. "

The expression "conservative evangelization", used on several occasions by badogy with what is happening in Brazil, is imprecise and can be confusing. "To say so would imply a coherence and a systematicity difficult to find empirically," says Joaquín Algranti, doctor of social sciences and member of CEIL-Conicet. "In a way very similar to what is happening in Catholicism, in the evangelical world and in the Pentecostal world in particular, generally reflects the same positions as in society," said Pastor Néstor Miguez of the United States. Evangelical Church. Argentine Methodist (IEMA) and President of the Argentine Federation of Evangelical Churches (FAIE).

Check out the history of Argentina to find several examples of evangelical referents engaged in popular struggles. Recently, the Ecumenical Movement for Human Rights would not have been possible without the evangelicals and without the mysticism and commitment of the Methodist Bishop Federico Pagura, one of the most of its founders.

A phenomenon like that of Brazil in relation to an evangelical political bloc (the "evangelical bench") of conservative alignment can happen in Argentina? It is the politicians of Cambiemos who went in search of evangelicals as part of a strategy of officialism thwarted by the critical attitude of the Catholic hierarchy, priests and faithful aligned with Pope Francis.

Carbonelli states that "there are great differences between Brazil and Argentina because in our country, political identities remain strong, with a territorial presence". For example, he says, "although the evangelical presence has developed in the neighborhoods and the faithful go to the temples, this is not done at the expense of the Peronist tradition of these same families. there is no room for exclusively religious identities. "

According to Algranti, it is necessary to differentiate "the strategy of some pastors and leaders in search of representativeness or projection of the actual action of believers who usually answer politically to different logics of religious ads, which Is not easy to guide the vote ". And "far from observing a monolithic position," says Carbonelli, "the constitutive heterogeneity of this (evangelical) religious world leads to diverse and dispersed political positions that prevent any badociation with a democratic threat."

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