The 18th Brumaire of Fernández?

Looters leaving a supermarket in Buenos Aires.

This weekend a relatively familiar event occurred in the Argentinian cities of Buenos Aires, Rosario, and Bariloche: lootings of supermarkets and other stores. Beginning Thursday night, people broke into those businesses and took as much as they could, from groceries to T.V. screens. Police forces tried to counter these attacks with tear gas and plastic bullets. At least 500 people have been detained and three more have died. Trying to prevent more of these incidents, the owners of shops were reported to have slept inside their properties, sometimes armed, and coordinated among themselves for more effective defense.

Most of the local and international press underlines that the current lootings bring back memories of 2001, a prelude to the most important economic crises in Argentina. The lootings in 2001 lead to severe political instability that ended when Néstor Kirchner was elected as President under a platform of reverting to a large extent the neo-liberal reforms of the 1990s. His wife, the incumbent Cristina Fernández, has continued with that program.

However, reverting the reforms does not seem to be having the planned results. The reasons analysts have given to explain these failures can be summarized in two points: the reverse of reforms was guided more by ideology than an assessment of what should be corrected, and the changes implemented have not been properly articulated. Within this context, since September President Fernández has faced general strikes, the fall of soy prices (which represent 25% of Argentina’s exports), the power system about to have its supply capacity surpassed, and the fear of the country suspending its external debt payments.

The lootings are inscribed in the larger economic picture. Fernández and her supporters say they were organized by the opposition (particularly the Workers’ General Union, CGT) to try to destabilize the country and make it impossible to maintain order, thus forcing the President to resign. The opposition of Fernández has two points of view: that the government itself is orchestrating everything, deploying now security forces in the streets to control looters which will be used later to facilitate a self-coup; or that it is more or less the natural consequence of the very bad performance of the economy after Fernández’s policies. For the time being, it seems that all political actors will try to get something from the lootings. Regaining order or listening to the claims of those affected by the economy appears as a second-place goal.