Economic Crisis and Identity in Neoliberal Argentina: Claudia Piñeiro’s Las Viudas De Los Jueves

ECONOMIC CRISIS AND IDENTITY IN NEOLIBERAL ARGENTINA: CLAUDIA PIN)EIRO’S Las viudas de los jueves James M. Griesse University of South Carolina—Beaufort “Image is everything” (slogan for Canon advertising campaign) “Las apariencias engañan.” As the year 2001 came to an end, Argentina as a nation-state appeared to be on the verge of collapse and disintegration.1 The neoliberal policies of president Carlos Menem’s government had produced solid economic growth for several years in the 1990s, but these same policies led to a recession in the late 1990s. Eventually, after a few years of recession, an extreme economic crisis broke out in December of 2001 when the government could no longer uphold the convertibility law which fixed the value of the peso at a one-to-one ratio with the dollar. In this climate of crisis and panic, there was a run on the banks, followed by the freezing of deposits, massive protests, and food riots. The situation was virtually unmanageable as Argentina had a total of five different men in the presidency during a two-week period. The crisis of 2001 is the backdrop of Claudia Piñeiro’s recent novel, Las viudas de los jueves, winner of Argentina’s prestigious Cları́n Novel Prize in 2005. This novel tells the story of the lives of four Argentine women and their families, who live in a gated community in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, and how the recession of the late 1990s and the impending crisis affects them. These upper middle-class families are determined to maintain their standard of living, which is increasingly threatened by the recession. Their class identity is largely based on their level of consumption , and in accordance with the theories of Jean Baudrillard and Pierre Bourdieu, the objects of their consumption function as signs that indicate their class status and mark their differences from other classes. However, as the recession worsens and the nation appears on the brink of collapse, the appearances of upper middle-class prosperity in the gated community can no longer be sustained. Las viudas de los jueves is a radiograf ı́a of Argentina’s middle class at the turn of the century, a middle class for whom appearances are everything. In this essay, I argue that Piñeiro’s novel uses the broad theme of appearances to question consumption as a basis for citizenship and to critique the neoliberal turn in Argentina as a solid foundation for economic modernization and prosperity. C  2013 Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 57 The Latin Americanist, December 2013 Las viudas de los jueves takes place during the presidency of Carlos Menem (1989–1999) and the two years following his presidency, up to a few months before the economic crisis erupts in December 2001. During his two terms in office, Menem implemented a series of neoliberal economic reforms, including the privatization of state enterprises, economic deregulation , reduced government spending, the opening up to foreign investment , and the convertibility plan, which set the peso-dollar exchange rate at a one-to-one ratio. Menem thus completed the transition to neoliberalism begun under the military dictatorship of 1976–1983. The government claimed that its neoliberal policies would lead to economic recovery and a high level of modernization that would allow Argentina to assume the status of a First-World nation (Copertari 4; Svampa, Los que ganaron 38). These economic reforms did manage to stabilize the economy and produce significant economic growth, after the problems with hyperinflation and servicing the foreign debt in the 1980s (Skidmore, Smith, and Green 272, 274). However, as the government cut programs and services and thus abandoned its role as an agent of social integration, there was a significant increase in social inequality and polarization (Svampa, Los que ganaron 15). The strong and expanding Argentine middle class began to shrink and became divided between “ganadores” and “perdedores” (Svampa, Los que ganaron 15, 39–40). Thus, Argentina transformed into a “sociedad excluyente,” as it adopted “un esquema de crecimiento económico disociado del bienestar del conjunto de la sociedad . . . donde convergen modernización económica y dinámica de polarización social” (Svampa, La sociedad...