Broken Promises? The Argentine Crisis and Argentine Democracy ed. by Edward Epstein, David Pion-Berlin (review)

The Latin Americanist, Spring 2007 All of the qualities described here -narrative pacing, style, structure make Cuba Libre an excellent text for undergraduate students who are not necessarily focusing their studies on Cuba, the Hispanic Caribbean, or even Latin America more broadly. It would find a welcome context in the kind of historical surveys that are taught in History, Latin American Studies, Spanish, or other departments. The body of the text is slim enough to make it accessible reading, while the bibliographical essay at its conclusion provides the undergraduate student with excellent suggestions of sources for a chronologically and thematically focused term paper. The essay progresses chronologically through the book‘s six chapters, generally mentioning broad, useful overviews and moving on to thematic groupings of sources on each general period. Dosal briefly mentions gaps in the literature, as well as areas of scholarly abundance, and attempts to guide the student past these opposite difficulties with well-chosen selections. Robert Lesrnan Department of Modern Languages Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania BROKEN PROMlSES? THE ARGENTINE CRlSlS A N D ARGENTINE DEMOCRACY. BY EDWARD EPSTEIN AND DAVID PION-BERLIN (EDS.). LANHAM, MD:LEXINGTON BOOKS, 2006, P. 306, $75.00. Crises constitute potential switch points in the fate of a nation. While they pose the risk of collapse and chaos, they can also open up opportunities for innovative projects and new departures. How did these opportunities and risks play out in the Argentine crisis of 2001/02? This informative volume sheds important light on the question, focusing especially on the repercussions for democracy.Given Argentina’s long history of politicalinstability, concerns ran high at the timeof thecrisis:Would military intervention or police brutality destroy democracy? Would the discontent citizenry reject the entire ”political class” and fall for a populist savior who, like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, would establish political predominance and suppress competition? Not all prospects were bleak, however. Argentina’s dire economic straits and social emergency had stimulated new forms of popular mobilization and organization, such as protest movements of jobless people (piqueteuos), urban neighborhood associations, and communitarian barter clubs. Could this bottom-up effervescence give Argentine democracy a stronger participatory dimension and induce greater responsiveness and accountability among a political elite that had systematically disappointed the citizenry with its ”broken promises”? Considering these prospects and risks, the volume under review suggests a striking degree of continuity. Neither did serious challenges to democracy materialize nor did popular initiatives prompt a significant renewal. Instead, as on several occasions before, Argentina now has a Peronist president who Book Reviezus uses a populist political strategy to consolidate his power. As regards dangers that were averted, the editors’ competent introduction mentions-and Rut Diamint’s chapter shows-that the armed forces for the first time in Argentine history stayed on the sidelines of a profound crisis; for instance, Congress alone determined presidential succession after the forced resignation of Fernando de la Rua. This remarkable fact deserves more emphasis and explanation than it receives in Diamint’s analysis of continuing deficitsin civilian control of the military. From a less critical perspective, Eric Stener Carlson highlights in his particularly interesting, ”anthropological” analysis of Argentina’s gendarmerie that many of these front-line agents of repression against protesters actually identify with the discontent citizens who engage in disruptive acts such as road blockages. Gendarmes often see themselvesas“poor people in uniform” whosufferfrom hardship, understand the reasons for protest, and therefore refrain from using excessiveforce when discharging their constitutionally assigned task of clearing roads and battling rioters. This self-restraint is surprising, given that Argentina’s forces of order have been known to trample on legal rules and humanitarian principles, as Marcel0 Fabian Sain’s trenchant, chilling analysis of the notorious Buenos Aires provincial police confirms. Yet despite these unpropitious background conditions and an initial outburst of police violence, the 2001/02 crisis was resolved rather peacefully. In sum, worst-case scenarios certainly did not come true. On the other hand, bottom-up initiatives and efforts at renovation did not fulfill the high promise that many participants and some academic observers attached to them either. As Edward Epstein shows,piqueferoactivism declined with economic recovery and the popular election of a new president...