Argentine Civil-Military Relations: From Alfonsin to Menem

As this book goes to press, Argentina is once more in the throes of political crisis. At the close of 2001, Fernando de la Rua, Argentina’s third popularly elected president since the military government of 1976 to 1983, resigned just 2 years into his term. A constitutional successor resigned after a week, having irritated the factions in his own party to the extent that they refused to support him. Riots that caused the deaths of 26 citizens and 13 police brought the third interim president down. Then more rioters broke into the halls of Congress and set fire to the building, causing the fall of the next successor. A commentator for La Nación observed that Argentina was living a “crisis without precedent” and that its political leadership was playing its last card. When Eduardo Duhalde assumed the leadership of a hastily assembled unity government— the fifth president in 2 weeks—he addressed the Argentine people, saying: “The country is broken.”