The roots of Argentine street violence

The pension reform passed the lower house yesterday on a vote of 127-117. The legislative process has been fine, notwithstanding the near-fistfight on the floor and a lot of disingenuous rhetoric from the government. In those terms, and those terms alone, Argentine representative democracy looks to be in better shape than American representative democracy.

But the street response has been nothing less than shocking.

Why? Well, there are two hypotheses.

The first hypothesis is that the mobs were organized by the Peronist opposition to discredit the Macri’s Cambiemos coalition. In this view, the pension reform is only a convenient excuse for an opposition facing an existential struggle against its ideological opponents.

The second hypothesis is that the Macri administration miscalculated the meaning of its recent electoral victory. It failed to realize was how little trust it enjoyed. In this view, the violence is an inevitable product of the government’s attempt to offload adjustment onto the middle class in a society even more polarized than the United States.

Which view is correct? Likely both.

There is certainly a history of Argentine political actors orchestrating street violence for political ends. Consider Javier Auyero’s (U.T.-Austin) magisterial study of the 2001 riots. In his words: “Three mechanisms [operated] during the episodes: 1. the creation of opportunities by party brokers and police agents, 2. the validation of looting by state elites, and 3. the signalling spiral carried out by party brokers.” Similarly, soccer fan clubs have employed violence to help politicians. Politicized soccer violence emerged during General Jorge Videla’s dictatorship (1976-83). Videla organized fans to pressure potential opponents; the “barras bravas” also became a convenient venue to channel payoffs to regime supporters. After democracy returned in 1983, the barrabravas began to sell their “services” to various politicians. In short, there is a history of party politicians inciting and using violence; it would be more surprising if nobody abetted the recent riots. The President certainly thinks that somebody did.

But the Macri administration has ] given working or middle class Argentines little reason to trust it. He has made no moves to apply scratchy hairshirts to the richest: the (unavoidable) austerity is going to fall squarely on the middle class. The pension reform came in the wake of a  punishing series of electricity rate hikes with no commensurate increase in service.* It also comes in the wake of Macri’s post-election declaration that he wants to cut taxes on business and investors; no sign of a progressive tax reform here, a la Chile or Uruguay. (More on Uruguay here.) Pain always goes down better when it’s shared.

It is true that some sort of pension reform will be necessary and it is true that the opposition has both the means and the desire to foment street violence. But it’s the reluctance to spread the pain of austerity up the income ladder that lies, I think, at the heart of the problem.

* Electricity reliability is measured via two indices. SAIDI measures the average annual outage time per customer. In the United States, the median utility has a SAIDI around 1.5 hours (NYC is 0.3); in Argentina, it’s 4.5. SAIFI measures the average annual number of outages per customer. In the U.S., it’s about 1.1 (with NYC having 0.1). In Argentina, it’s 16.2. Mexico, for further comparison, is 0.8 and 1.0 in Mexico City and 0.5 and 0.6 in Monterrey. (The World Bank tracks these numbers.) To be fair, one wouldn’t expect electricity provision to improve in a day after a decade of Peronist mismanagement, but that is a reason for Macri to tread lightly.

Comments

[Laura Rubalcaba]

The second link provided in the story regarding Uruguay is not working. I'd be very interested to see that article. Would it be possible to have it sent to my email? Thanks in advance and Happy New Year!

[Noel Maurer]

Hi, Laura! I'll also send via email, but a corrected link is here:

http://www.commitmentoequity.org/publications_files/Uruguay/CEQWPNo21%20IneqTopIncomesUruguay%20May%202014.pdf