by VANESSA BAIRD
A stylish couple dances the tango in front of the Recoleta Cemetery – the capital’s great baroque and over-the-top celebration of mortality. The pair’s moves are bold, provocative, challenging.
The same might be said of the style and policies being pursued by Argentina today, under the leadership of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Challenges have been issued on various fronts:
To the vulture funds that are threatening to tip Argentina into another almighty default on its debt.
To the British government, accused of behaving like ‘a colonial power’ as Argentina musters international support for its reiterated claim on the Falklands-Malvinas Islands.
To the World Trade Organization, as Argentina goes its own way and applies import restrictions and currency controls – to the dismay of some of its trading partners.
To Argentina’s judiciary as the President tries to push through radical reforms to ‘democratize’ the courts.
And to the powerful Clarín group, as she tries to break up its media monopoly and restrict the number of cable licences it can hold.
Through its many outlets, Clarín tears into the government, blaming it for crime, corruption, economic slowdown and rising inflation. It also accuses the President of ‘authoritarianism’ and of trying to gag the ‘free press’. In April this year, massive protests brought more than a million Clarín supporters on to the streets of Buenos Air
These stories have featured prominently in the national and, to some extent, the international media.
But there is another story that generally slips under the mainstream media radar. A story not of government or policies or nationalism or media power, but of people and how they organize to survive. Of the challenges they face – but also those they present to business-as-usual.
It is a story of growing significance to people in parts of the world that are still struggling to survive the fallout of 2008’s catastrophic global financial crisis.
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