BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA – Tens of thousands of people filled the streets of Buenos Aires, Argentina’s capital, Sunday night to celebrate the re-election of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, a figure both loved and criticized, who captured the votes of more than 50 percent of the electorate.
Signs with messages such as, “Love defeats hatred” and “I am not an Indignant. I am a happy man,” flooded the historic Plaza de Mayo in the city center. As fireworks lit up the night sky in front of Casa Rosada, the office of the president, the spirited crowds chanted in unison the different songs composed especially for this electoral campaign.
“Cry, cry the right because we, the youth, are having fun,” sang groups of people while waving flags with the face of Cristina Kirchner. “We are going to demonstrate that Néstor isn’t gone. We won again. Gorila [a sector of the opposition], you won’t return anymore.”
They also danced and sang to music that played over the speakers set up at the Plaza de Mayo for the celebration.
“Let’s go, brunette,” they sang along to one popular rock song. “Nobody is dead.”
With the lyrics of their songs, they summarized various concepts confirmed by the electoral victory: the reissue of a government of the center-left, the popularity of Cristina Kirchner, the force of the figure of the deceased Néstor Kirchner – her husband who preceded her as president from 2003 to 2007 – and the disjointment of the amorphous opposition that was long defeated before yesterday’s vote.
For the people gathering in the Plaza de Mayo, the name “Cristina,” as everyone calls her here, represents concepts such as inclusion, change, strength and stability.
“Cristina is an idol,” says Aldo, a man of about 60 years old who declined to give his last name. “She is a genius. She is ours.”
Many supporters celebrating here asked not for change during her next term, but rather for a deepening of current measures.
“The victory of Cristina means the continuing of a national and popular project,” says Ana Espada, a woman of about 40 years old.
Argentines celebrated Sunday night the re-election of Cristina Kirchner – cheering, singing and honking horns throughout the capital into the early hours of Monday morning. The election results came as no surprise to her supporters or the opposition, which many agree is disjointed. Still, there remains intense division between the fans and critics of the Kirchners, who generate love in some and hate in others.
Cristina Kirchner, who was the first woman to be elected president in the country’s history, garnered nearly 55 percent of the votes. The second leading candidate received less than 20 percent.
In the months leading up to the elections, numerous alliances were assembled and disassembled within the opposition in search of a formula that would succeed in ousting the president. But the August primary elections showed that none of the resulting formulas had a shot at victory.
“The opposition doesn’t exist,” says Alejandro Arauz, a teacher who spent days hoping for yesterday’s victory for Cristina Kirchner. “It is something deformed and regrettable.”
With most expecting Cristina Kirchner’s victory even before the vote, the general objective of the opposition wasn’t more than electing its legislators to Congress since it knew the presidency was out of reach. But the governing party attained enough seats in both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies to make it impossible for the opposition to block future projects by not attending the votes for them.
Natalia Bermejo, 26, is politically active in La Cámpora, the youthful wing of Kirchnerism, the government of the Kirchners.
“It succeeded in renewing the popular participation,” she says of the government.
In recent years, there has been a surge in the public’s attendance at political functions and participation in debates about the government and its policies both in traditional platforms and online. Forums, blogs and email chains have multiplied on the Internet in favor of or against the governing party.
“The truth is that this government – first Néstor’s and [now] Cristina’s – above all, has exceeded our expectations,” Bermejo says. “It is a government that represents the interests of the majority. It’s a government that knew how to open the debate of privileges for some or rights for all.”
For Bermejo and for many, one of the biggest successes of the Kirchners’ administrations was the fight against the concentration of media ownership through the 2010 Media Law, which combats the formation of monopolies and oligopolies in the communication sector. But at the same time, the law also generated a strong antigovernment campaign from the principle print media of the country, Clarín and La Nación.
“One couldn’t create a true change of reality without giving a fight against the media,” Bermejo says with the conviction of someone who has worked for the party.
The other central axis of the administration has been its human rights policy. The wounds of the military dictatorship that governed Argentina from 1976 to 1983 are still open here. Many families and human rights organizations continue to look for the hundreds of children who were stolen from people kidnapped by the military and raised in adopted families. And each year on March 24, the anniversary of the military coup, people fill the streets remembering the 30,000 people whom human rights organizations estimate the dictatorial government disappeared.
The ideological and financial support of those searches and those reminders was and is the primary base of the Kirchner government. Broad sectors – from the left to human rights organizations, and even many who criticize other aspects of the administration – remember the emblematic moment on March 24, 2004, when Néstor Kirchner took down the pictures of former repressors that still hung in a military building here.
But from the center to the right, there is also no lack of people who say that it’s best to look forward and stop crying for the dead.
“One has to continue moving forward!” says Roberto González, a taxi driver who doesn’t support the Kirchner government. “Enough with that of the disappeared!”
Gónzalez says that the government should worry more about guaranteeting the security of the citizens.
“When you work at night in a taxi, you see everything,” he says. “Street life is very difficult. And the government isn’t doing anything about that.”
Many opposition candidates used the question of insecurity to attack the government of Cristina Kirchner during the electoral campaign. The antigovernment news channels here, such as TN and Crónica, divulge daily cases of assault and kidnapping, while local businesses promote the installation of armored doors in houses.
Inside those groups of critics, Cristina Kirchner has many nicknames. For example, some call her “The Queen” and “The Mare,” satirizing what they qualify as despotism, abuse of power, authoritarianism and corruption.
“The Kirchners were suspected of illicit enrichment when it became evident that their wealth had grown 400 percent in the last years,” says Silvia Fazio, director of a middle school in the province of Buenos Aires, who emphasized that there was no corresponding investigation.
The opposition radio and TV stations have dedicated a lot of space to describing their clothes, their shoes and the large sums spent on beauty. Some women say that Cristina Kirchner represents them with much integrity, but others criticize the emphasis she places on appearance.
While her supporters emphasize that she delivers speeches without needing to read a word, her opponents qualify her security on platforms as arrogance and pride.
Her universal allowance for the child, a monthly monetary allowance that benefits informal workers, the unemployed and domestic servants, also generates debate here. While those who support her call it one of her greatest merits, her critics accuse her of demagogy and of not generating genuine employment options for the population.
“What they do is called demagogy,” read one of the chain emails circulated on the Internet in the days before the polls. “It is bread for today and hunger for tomorrow. The people can only dignify it if it lets them earn their bread and their future with an honest job that permits them to grow and to prosper.”
On an international level, while some recognize the integration she has generated with other countries in the region and her ability to confront the influence of the United States, others accuse her of having unholy ties with the government of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela.
And meanwhile, there’s no lack of people who spend hours speculating about her romances and a supposed love affair with her new vice president, Amado Boudou, who likes to appear with a leather jacket and an electric guitar slung over his shoulder.
Argentine society seems to be divided into two parts – although yesterday’s results proved which is larger – those who support the government unconditionally and those who detest it with all their hearts.
Sociologist Gabriel Ravano, a professor of political theory at a local teachers college, supports the re-election of Cristina Kirchner. He says that large economic groups who don’t benefit from the government’s measures, such as owners of large tracts of land and media groups, create this division.
“The government of the Kirchners doesn’t set up dichotomies of catastrophic nature, but [rather] a series of very powerful sectors does, linked to wealth more concentrated, more unproductive and more predatory, represented by an oppostion that doesn’t deserve the name as such,” Ravano says.
He says these sectors are wary of the Kirchner government, which he counters operates rationally and democratically.
“To those sectors, a certain democratization of social life, definite rights and guarantees, they seem to them a kind of Communist advancement,” he says. “Kichnerism is a kind of social democracy in an Argentine way that moves by genuinely rational and democratic rules.”
What is certain is that Cristina Kirchner’s government generates intense emotions on both sides. There is both passion and hate, both love and distrust.
“What does Cristina awake in me?” Fazio asks. “She generates anger in me. I see a manipulator of feelings and expectations of the people, principally of the young. She is an arrogant, close-minded and authoritarian one. She doesn’t look for dialogue. She moves toward unnecessary confrontation all the time.”
Far from this anger, Bermejo lifts her face a little as if she is looking for words in the air.
“I hope that Cristina is our leader for many more years,” she says.
Bermejo compares the newly re-elected president to Juan Domingo Perón, the historic leader of Argentina whose administration left indelible marks on the socio-cultural geography of the country.
“One can’t imagine another president,” she says. “This feeling of there is no other president possible has passed only with Perón.”