Raul Alfonsin

Raúl Ricardo Alfonsín ( listen) (Chascomús, Buenos Aires province, March 12, 1927-Buenos Aires, March 31, 2009) was a lawyer, politician, statesman and promoter of Argentine human rights. He was councillor, provincial deputy, national deputy, national senator and president of the Argentine Nation between 1983 and 1989. He was highlighted as leader of the Radical Civic Union and the Radical Civic Union of the People. He also served as vice president of the Socialist International. Many sectors recognize him as “the father of modern democracy in Argentina”.

In 1983, after the presidential elections, he assumed the position of president of the Nation, with which the civic-military dictatorship self-styled National Reorganization Process ended. It was also the end of successful coups in Argentina, as there were no further interruptions to the constitutional order since then, although it took until 1990 for the military uprisings to end. Alfonsín's management is known mainly for the trial of the Juntas, as well as for the Peace and Friendship Treaty between Argentina and Chile and the agreements with Brazil that led to the formation of Mercosur. In 1985 he received the Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation "in consideration of the difficulties of the political transition, upon taking over the government of the Argentine Republic after a war with dramatic consequences."

Alfonsín began his government with the slogan "with democracy you can eat, heal and educate." His economic policy was marked by a very high external debt that defaulted in 1988, high inflation that turned into hyperinflation on May 14, 1989 and a stagnant economy that fell from a GDP of 103,000 million dollars in 1983, to 76,000 million dollars in 1989. In the labor field, the Alfonsín government did not authorize collective bargaining for workers. wages, established salary increases by decree and fell out early with the unions and the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) by arguing that there was a "union-military pact", keeping the union law of the dictatorship in force - which among other things prohibited to the CGT-, and to try, just 7 days after coming to power, the approval of a Trade Union Reorganization Law (called the Mucci Law, by the Minister of Labor Antonio Mucci) that, with the declared objective of "democratizing" the union entities, established the obligation to include minorities in the executive committees and limitations for re-election. From the CGT, opposition parties and groups of labor lawyers, it was reproached that this reform had not been consulted with the unions, as required by the regulations of the International Labor Organization, and that the limitations that were intended to be imposed on the unions did not apply to other private law associations, nor did they respect the principle of statutory autonomy. The project obtained half approval in Deputies on the night of February 10 to 11, 1984, but on March 14 of the same year it was discussed in the Senate compound and rejected by a single vote, the negative vote of Elías Sapag being definitive, of the Neuquén Popular Movement. From that moment, the Alfonsin government experienced a strong conflict with the unions – including 13 general strikes and more than 4,000 sectoral strikes – until 1988, when the Alfonsinista government agreed to talk with the unions. Mucci resigned from his position and was appointed ambassador in Ecuador. Juan Manuel Casella, Minister of Labor after Mucci's resignation, considered that it was a "tactical error" by Alfonsín "not to sit down and talk with the unions before sending the project" since "the union leaders could feel attacked without a previous conversation". He handed over command to the justicialist Carlos Menem in 1989 in advance, in the midst of a hyperinflationary process.

After leaving the presidency, he made the Pact of Olivos with Menem, which allowed the realization of the Argentine constitutional reform of 1994. A few years later he participated in the formation of the Alliance for Work, Justice and Education, which led to the government to Fernando de la Rúa. He briefly served as a senator for the province of Buenos Aires between 2001 and 2002, when he resigned from his bench, never holding elected office again. He passed away on March 31, 2009 due to lung cancer. Three days of national mourning were decreed and thousands of people attended the burial ceremony, which he kept in his coffin in Congress and then transferred it to the Recoleta Cemetery.

Alfonsín left the presidency with his popularity declining due to the poor economic results of his administration and the impunity laws that he promoted to prevent the prosecution of crimes against humanity committed during the last dictatorship. However, his image His personal life was largely rehabilitated over the years, and many polls and subsequent studies find that Argentine public opinion in general rates his figure positively among the different presidents in Argentine history. A 2018 survey, which evaluated the performance of the presidencies after the restoration of democracy, placed Alfonsín in first place.

Childhood and youth

Casa de Alfonsín since 1957 in Chascomús, where he lived with his family. Today is a Hotel Museum to visit.

Alfonsín was born on Saturday, March 12, 1927 in the Buenos Aires city of Chascomús, a town dedicated to agriculture and livestock 120 km south of the city of Buenos Aires. He was the eldest of the six children of Raúl Serafín Alfonsín Ochoa (October 12, 1899 – July 20, 1964) and Ana María Foulkes Iseas (August 22, 1906 – July 14, 2003). His father was a well-known retailer based in Chascomús. He was of Spanish and Afromestizo descent through his paternal line —his paternal grandfather, Serafín Alfonsín Feijóo (1857-1933), was a Galician migrant from Pontevedra. On the other hand, her mother had Welsh and Malvinense ancestry through her paternal grandparents Ricardo Foulkes Logdon (1847-1923) and María Elena Ford McViccar (1856-1937), respectively, and Basque through her maternal grandmother, Dominga Etchegoyen Galarreborda (1855-1935).

He completed his primary studies at the Escuela Normal Regional de Chascomús and his secondary studies at the General San Martín Military High School, from where he graduated with the rank of reserve second lieutenant. He had Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri and Albano Harguindeguy as classmates.

He studied Legal Sciences at the Law School of the University of Buenos Aires, graduating as a lawyer in 1950.

On February 4, 1949, shortly before his 22nd birthday, he married María Lorenza Barreneche (1926-2016) with whom he had 6 children: Raúl Felipe, Ana María, Ricardo Luis, Marcela, María Inés and Javier Ignacio Alfonsín Barreneche, born in 1949, 1950, 1951, 1953, 1954 and 1956, respectively. Of all of them, Ricardo Luis Alfonsín is the only one who is dedicated to political activity, having been a candidate for president.

Since 1957 he lived with his family in the house located at Calle Lavalle 227 in front of the Banco Nación de Chascomús. Where he also practiced his profession as a lawyer and journalist.

Beginnings

In 1950 he began his political activities in the Movement for Intransigence and Renewal of the Radical Civic Union, in Chascomús, where he participated in the founding of the newspaper El Imparcial.

In 1954, at the age of 27, he was elected councilor in Chascomús, a city where the UCR defeated Peronism, and in 1955 he was imprisoned for the Liberating Revolution. In 1958 he was elected provincial deputy in the Province of Buenos Aires and national deputy during the radical government of Arturo Illia between 1963 and 1966, in which he was vice president of the Bloc of National Deputies of the Radical People's Civic Union (UCRP). Finally, in 1965 he was elected president of the Buenos Aires Province Committee of the UCRP.

On November 17, 1966, during the military dictatorship of General Juan Carlos Onganía, he was briefly detained for having reopened the Provincial Committee.

Movement for Renewal and Change

Alfonsín in 1963, at the time of the campaign for the Illia-Perette formula.

From the installation of the Argentine Revolution, a permanent military dictatorship, Alfonsín strengthened his contacts with the center-left sectors, such as the socialism led by his friend Guillermo Estévez Boero, and began to develop, from the Province of Buenos Aires, a social democratic thought within radicalism that would have a considerable impact on youth. In that first Alfonsinista nucleus were Bernardo Grinspun, Roque Carranza, Germán López, Raúl Borrás, among others.

With politics prohibited and a conflictive international situation, the progressive youth of Argentina was faced with the concrete option of joining the armed struggle. Alfonsín expressly rejected the armed struggle as a path of social progress, which was adopted at that time by some Catholic, nationalist, Peronist and left-wing groups, to offer a broad sector of youth a peaceful channel of center-left militancy. Alfonsinism supported the slogan “Free elections without proscriptions”, as an alternative to “Neither coup nor election: revolution”. The forbidden political activity forced Alfonsín to express his opposition to the dictatorship and disseminate his arguments through his journalistic activity: he was a columnist for the magazine Inédito -directed by the radical de Avellaneda and journalist Mario Monteverde- under the pseudonym Alfonso Carrido Lura.

The young radicals of the Junta Coordinadora Nacional (founded in 1968) and Franja Morada, who had maintained an active militancy against the military dictatorship, began to approach Raúl Alfonsín. Among those young radicals were Luis Cáceres, Sergio Karakachoff, Federico Storani, Leopoldo Moreau, Marcelo Stubrin, Adolfo Stubrin, Enrique Nosiglia, Juanjo Cavallari, Facundo Suárez Lastra, Gabriel Martínez, Carlos Muiño, Jesús Rodríguez, Ricardo Lafferriere, among others.

In this way, Alfonsinism began to define itself as an internal progressive line against Balbinismo-Unionismo, which expressed a conservative attitude within the Radical Civic Union.

In September 1972, in Rosario, the Movimiento Renovador Nacional was created, demanding a national, popular, democratic and liberating program, and proclaiming Raúl Alfonsín as presidential candidate in the UCR inmates. In the internal elections of the province of Buenos Aires, on May 7, 1972, the Balbinism-Unionism prevailed with 44,113 votes against 29,939 for Alfonsinism. On June 16, Balbín is re-elected president of the radical National Committee. On November 26, the internal ones to choose the formula: Balbín-Gamond 160,767 votes against 121,548 for Alfonsín-Storani. Various leftist forces are trying to get Alfonsín to leave the UCR and lead a combative formula. In a secret meeting between Benito Urteaga and Raúl Borrás, even the Workers' Revolutionary Party, which leads the guerrilla Revolutionary Army of the People, proposes the formula Alfonsín-Agustín Tosco, the general secretary of Luz y Fuerza de Córdoba, a Marxist and one of the leaders of the Cordoba CGT. Alfonsín refuses.

In 1973, the Radical Civic Union lost the elections to Juan Domingo Perón. Shortly after, in May, Alfonsín expanded the scope of the sector he led to create the Movement for Renewal and Change, with a highly critical position of the Balbinismo strategy of national unity, against any agreement with Peronism, and a program of social democratic left that proposed agrarian reform, a new university reform, the democratization of unionism and the establishment of a social democracy, in the form in which this concept had been developed, within the doctrine of the Radical Civic Union of the years &# 39;60 by Miguel Angel Zavala Ortiz.

Formation of the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights

On December 18, 1975, three months before the military coup that began the National Reorganization Process (1976-1983), Alfonsín was one of the personalities who founded the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights (APDH). This association was the first created in Argentina to deal with the systematic violations of human rights that at that time began with the activity of the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance (AAA or "Triple A"). Their first meeting took place during the month of December 1975 in the House of Spiritual Exercises that depended on the Church of the Holy Cross and was convened by Rosa Pantaleon and in addition to Alfonsín himself, the Bishop of Neuquén Jaime de Nevares attended, Rabbi Marshall Meyer, Bishop Carlos Gatinoni, Dr. Alicia Moreau de Justo, Oscar Alende, Susana Pérez Gallart, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel and Alfredo Bravo.

The APDH played an important role defending human rights, supported the work of CONADEP, and fought against impunity for crimes against humanity committed during the National Reorganization Process. Part of the responsibility for prosecuting said crimes fell on Alfonsín himself, when he was president, during the Trial of the Juntas.

During the military dictatorship, Alfonsín provided his legal services free of charge to defend opponents and present habeas corpus for the detained-disappeared, an activity that by itself used to mean death.

He made several trips to Latin America, the United States, Asia, the Soviet Union and Europe, where he met the leaders of the Socialist International (IS), denouncing the massive violation of human rights that was taking place in Argentina.

In 1976 he founded and directed the magazine Proposal and Control, one of the few opposition political magazines in those early years of the military government.

Falklands War

In 1982, before the Malvinas War, and advised by a group of intellectuals such as Jorge Roulet, Dante Caputo and Jorge Sabato, Alfonsín and former president Arturo Frondizi were the only politicians who opposed military action on the islands Malvinas, being the exception in the Argentine political panorama. Alfonsín maintained that the purpose of it was to achieve the strengthening of the dictatorship. He demanded that the military government provide true information on the progress of the conflict.

This same group influenced Alfonsín's decision to promote the fall of the Military Junta headed by Galtieri, proposing that he assume a civilian government of national unity led by former president Arturo Illia in order to proceed with democratization. It took as its model the Karamanlis Solution developed in Greece after the dictatorship of the colonels fell into disrepute after the war with Turkey.

The defeat in the Malvinas war weakened the Process politically. The military leaders accused each other, the sectors that had supported them (as part of the Church or the business community) no longer did so, and the repressive discourse lost legitimacy. This in turn led to an increase in political mobilization and a decrease in self-censorship in the press, which began to reveal controversial actions by uniformed officers (mainly the existence of disappeared persons), which until then had been silenced. When the political ban was lifted, the parties went through a period of massive affiliation in society: it is considered that when the 1983 elections were held, one in three voters was affiliated with a political party.

1983 Presidential Election

poster of the presidential campaign.

Electoral campaign: Now the Argentinian with Alfonsín.

Alfonsín and Luder salute after the 1983 elections.

Previous actions

Since the end of 1982, once the process of transition to democracy began under the presidency of General Reynaldo Bignone, Alfonsín first became president of the Radical Civic Union when the Renovation and Change Movement prevailed in the internal party elections. Shortly after, he was nominated as a candidate for President of the Nation, when the other radical candidate, Fernando de la Rúa, declined his candidacy due to the broad support that Alfonsín was receiving throughout the country. Víctor H. Martínez, one of the leaders of the strong UCR of Córdoba, was nominated as a vice-presidential candidate. Alfonsín was one of the two main presidential candidates, the other being the Peronist Ítalo Luder for the Justicialista Party (PJ). There was then a general feeling that Peronism would be a clear winner, even among the radical leaders themselves. However, the polls showed a sustained growth in the vote for Alfonsín.

The campaign

Alfonsín's electoral campaign was characterized by renewing the channels of political communication in Argentina. Eight months before the election, Alfonsín appointed Raúl Borrás, a radical from Pergamino and a relative of former President Arturo Illia, as campaign manager. He also hired publicist David Ratto. At that time, the Argentine political parties used to minimize the importance of advertising as a method to achieve electoral adhesion and it used to be carried out by the political leaders themselves. The advertising team decided to personalize the campaign, focusing on the image of the candidate and highlighting his natural qualities. Several slogans had a massive impact, such as the phrase "Ahora Alfonsín", or the image of a shield with the colors of the Argentine flag and the initials "RA", corresponding to both Raúl Alfonsín and the Argentine Republic. Alfonsín's "greeting" was also important, in the form of a "hug from a distance", which arose from the gesture that Alfonsín himself had in an act at Luna Park on December 7, 1982.

At the same time there was a traditional political campaign, with acts, graffiti, visits to homes. It developed harshly and there were many clashes between radical militants and Peronists who struggled to put their candidates on the big walls of various neighborhoods in the Buenos Aires suburbs.

A key moment of the electoral campaign was the denunciation of a pact between the leadership of the armed forces and the union leadership not to prosecute the crimes committed by them, which had repercussions throughout the world.

The expertise of the leaders of the UCR campaign will be evident with the denunciation of the so-called "military-union framework", an alleged agreement between representatives of the unions (read the nerve center of the Peronist party at the time) and the military on the way to leave the house of government. Through the denunciation of this political settlement—which according to the surveys was considered by the bulk of the voters as something real and negative for the country's destiny— Alfonsín managed to identify his main opponent with the immediate past, with the conflicting period 1974-1976, and with the dictatorship. This political move was made—according to an analysis by Oscar Landi—at a time when the experts agreed that the rate of the intentional voting by the RCU had stabilized as the Peronism grew.

Heriberto Muraro

Alfonsín's campaign sought above all to convey an image of peace, carefully avoiding any conflict, violent gestures at events, or aggressive speeches. When sectors of the Peronist Youth launched the slogan "We are Rage," the Radical Youth chose "We are Peace." The prevailing idea in the PJ was that the possibility of defeat was very low, since it had the guaranteed worker vote.

To accentuate the importance of his democratic message, he chose to recite the Preamble of the National Constitution to close his speeches in the acts. On the other hand, the closing of the PJ campaign (the following day) was highlighted by the burning of a coffin with the initials of the UCR. Although the defeat of the PJ (the first in free elections) is sometimes attributed to this action, most political analysts and all recognized pollsters believe that Alfonsín would have triumphed anyway.

Elections

The elections were held on October 30, 1983 and Alfonsín triumphed, obtaining 51.7% of the votes compared to 40.1% for Peronism. The Military Junta chaired at that time by Reynaldo Bignone intended to hand over command six months later, but after some lobbying Alfonsín took office on December 10, the date on which a large popular rally took place in the Plaza de Mayo.

Instead of waving from the balconies of the Casa Rosada, as was the custom, Alfonsín spoke from the Cabildo of Buenos Aires.

Presidency of the Nation

Alfonsinist Spring

Alfonsín receives from the president de facto Reynaldo Bignone the presidential band at Casa Rosada.

On December 10, 1983, Raúl Alfonsín assumed the presidency of the Nation. His government faced two large groups of problems: the consolidation of democracy, its diffusion to all areas of society, the relationship with the Armed Forces; and the general work of government conditioned by inflation and the debt crisis.

Alfonsín's government had a new force behind it: the civil society that had voted for his proposal to build a Rule of Law, to which the corporate powers (FF. AA., Church and Unions) should submit and consolidate a system policy that would resolve conflicts in a peaceful, orderly, transparent and equitable manner.

People experienced euphoria and the illusion that democracy alone would solve economic and social problems, peacefully imposing itself on the powerful established interests that opposed it. The government, in its diagnosis of the crisis, considered that the economic problems were less significant than the political ones: the fundamental thing was to eliminate authoritarianism and find authentic ways of representing the citizen's will: freedom of expression, freedom of opinion, a society of participation, pluralism and the rejection of dogmatisms was sought. A mass literacy program, the pedagogical congress, the elimination of censorship in artistic activities were carried out. There were profound transformations in the university and in the scientific system. The intellectuals from exile returned, occupying the media and were employed as advisers or technical officials. In the field of individual relationships, the divorce law and shared parental authority were promoted.

This first period of Alfonsín's presidency, characterized by great support from the population and a general climate of optimism, is known as "alfonsinista spring" (also as "democratic spring") and lasted until December 4, 1986 when Alfonsín announced the Full Stop Law, which would provoke a protest of 50,000 people on December 19, being the same enacted on the 24th.

The Justicialismo, surprised by its first defeat since 1946, objected to the legitimacy of Alfonsín's victory. While he was trying to reorganize himself, unionism acted as a battering ram to dismantle the president's initiatives. The Senate, where the UCR did not have a majority, blocked the Union Reorganization Law promised by Alfonsín in his campaign and later refused to join CONADEP. Justicialism decided to shake off its movement tradition and revalue the political party, influenced by the success of Alfonsín. The leadership's resistance to that change promoted ruptures and the Peronist Renewal was born (a name similar to Alfonsín's Movement for Renewal and Change). For the 1985 national elections, Justicialismo fractured and the UCR triumphed in all but two provinces (La Rioja and Formosa). The two most influential Peronist leaders proclaimed themselves part of the Renewal: Antonio Cafiero and Carlos Menem.

Human Rights Policy

After assuming the democratic authorities on December 10, 1983, President Alfonsín, in agreement with the Senate, controlled by Peronism, appointed a new Supreme Court of Justice. In the photo Carlos Fayt, assuming as Minister of the Court.

Human rights policy was one of the most prominent aspects of Alfonsín's government. He had to face the challenge of consolidating democracy in a country with a long tradition of civil-military dictatorships that had led to State terrorism, with massive and systematic crimes against humanity, among which thousands of missing persons, including children, stood out. The disclosure of the atrocities committed and the eventual prosecution of those responsible was, on the one hand, a claim by human rights organizations with massive support from the population, such as the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, as well as a need to build a solid democracy based on the principles of "truth and justice", but on the other hand it dangerously stressed the transition, due to the fact that the military and the sectors of national and international power that supported it continued to be active and with the capacity to carry out new coups d'état. At the time the democratic government took office, in December 1983, dictatorships installed under the National Security Doctrine established by the United States in the Cold War, with strong international recognition, still predominated in Latin America, while all the countries bordering Argentina (Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay) were ruled by dictatorial regimes.

Under these conditions, Alfonsín's human rights policy achieved two highly significant achievements in Argentine and world history: 1) the Nunca más report, which documented thousands of cases of disappearances, murders, torture, rape, stolen babies and clandestine centers of torture and extermination and was widely disseminated to the population with enormous impact; 2) the Trial of the Juntas, in which five of the military leaders were sentenced, two of them to life imprisonment, amid strong pressure and threats to the democratic order.

Without ignoring the high impact of its achievements and the limitations imposed by the pressures and threats of the time, including the carapintada uprisings, the Alfonsinista human rights policy has been criticized for equating the crimes committed by the guerrilla organizations with those committed by the dictatorial State, in what has been known as the "theory of the two demons" and for having favored impunity for thousands of cases of crimes against humanity, through the Full Stop and Due Obedience laws. The Alfonsinist laws they closed all the trials for crimes against humanity, with the exception of the theft of babies, consecrating the impunity of more than 3,600 criminals.

The Alfonsinista human rights policy was resisted by broad sectors of the military and conservatives, who came to carry out three uprisings known as "carapintadas" during his government (to which an additional one was added during the presidency of Carlos Menem.

Those who justify the decisions he made to stop the trials against the military maintain that at that time the Armed Forces did not obey the president's orders and that there was no power to suppress the insurrections, which would have led to a bloody coup. state and eventually to a devastating civil war.

Alfonsín himself thought that he had saved "democracy with the Full Stop Law". Two decades later he reflected in an interview on the decisions he adopted at that time:

The measures we took, which we did with a rationality criterion, were not commensurate with the emotional of the people at that time. So it was something that was seen as an enormous frustration, in general, by all Argentines. Accompanied by all human rights organizations and especially by opposition political parties. So when Menem later made the pardon, he thought it was much less serious than what I had done. On the other hand, it was nothing but fulfilling what he had pointed out during the campaign: the main responsibility is those who command, the second one that has been exceeded in the execution of the orders and the third, those who in that framework of terror there, believed in the legitimacy of the order given. So, about those I didn't want it to be worth it.

The Initial Rules

Five days after the democratic government took possession of political power, on December 15, 1983, President Alfonsín sanctioned decrees 157/83 and 158/83. The first ordered the prosecution of the leaders of the guerrilla organizations ERP and Montoneros; the second ordered the prosecution of nine of the ten members of the Military Juntas that led the country from the civic-military coup of March 24, 1976 until the Malvinas War. On the same day, it created the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP), made up of independent personalities such as Ernesto Sabato, Magdalena Ruiz Guiñazú, Graciela Fernández Meijide, among others, with the mission of surveying, documenting, and recording cases and evidence of violations of human rights, to found the trial of the military juntas.

Also on December 15, Alfonsín sent a bill to Congress declaring null and void the self-amnesty law No. 22,924 issued by the military government. A week later the project was sanctioned as Law No. 23 040, the first law of the new democratic stage.

An important debate had taken place within the UCR on the position to adopt on the kidnappings and murders prior to the coup d'état of March 24, 1976. Alfonsín finally decided to validate the Amnesty Law issued by the National Congress on March 27 of May 1973, but prosecuting the crimes after May 25, 1973 committed by the guerrilla organizations Montoneros and ERP, ordering the leaders of said organizations to be prosecuted, although at the same time it decided not to prosecute those responsible for the crimes committed in the same term by the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance (Triple A), responsible for hundreds of kidnappings and murders.

Conadep and the Nunca Más report

Writer Ernesto Sabato gives president Alfonsín the report of CONADEP, known as Never again..

On September 20, 1984, CONADEP produced its well-known report entitled Nunca más and went to deliver it to President Alfonsín accompanied by a crowd of 70,000 people. The president ordered it published by Editorial Universitaria of Buenos Aires (Eudeba) and was a publishing success with an initial circulation of 40,000 copies and ten reprints in the following six months.

The Alfonsinista government also authorized Conadep to make a television presentation of the Report, on one of the State channels. Due to the pressures, Alfonsín had the intention of canceling the transmission, causing the writer Ernesto Sábato to threaten to resign from the presidency of Conadep if the program was not broadcast. Finally, the program was broadcast, but Conadep had to reluctantly accept that Interior Minister Antonio Tróccoli opened and closed the program to "explain" the government's position, arguing that the human rights violations recorded in the report Nunca más constituted "only one aspect of the drama of violence in Argentina", the other aspect being "the irruption of subversion and terrorism fueled from distant borders", thus outlining the so-called "theory of the two demons". The program reached 20.5 rating points, which it was equivalent at the time to approximately 1,640,000 viewers.

The Report Nunca más and its wide dissemination produced first-order political, legal and cultural effects: it formed a large body of irrefutable evidence that allowed us to know the magnitude of disappearances and torture in the Argentina, at the same time that it legitimized in the national culture the cause of human rights and the struggle of the organizations active in Argentina.

Trial of the Boards

The Trial of the Juntas was a project by Alfonsín that began to take shape after the Malvinas War, recommended by a group of experts among which Carlos Nino stood out. Alfonsín intended to prosecute only nine of the ten soldiers who made up three of the four military juntas that led the dictatorship, exempting the military who made up the last one from responsibility. Simultaneously, and to contain possible coup movements, Alfonsín adopted an approach known as the "theory of the two demons", ordering the prosecution of the guerrilla leadership for the acts of violence committed after May 25, 1973, the date on which the democratic authorities elected in the elections of March 11, 1973 assumed power, who were overthrown on March 24 from 1976.

Assumed the new democratic government in December 1983, President Alfonsín, with the agreement of the Senate in the hands of Peronism, appointed all the members of the Supreme Court and the different courts that made up the Nation's Judicial Power, among they are the Federal Criminal and Correctional Chamber of the Federal Capital, which would be responsible for definitively prosecuting the military juntas; two of its members, the radicals Ricardo Gil Lavedra and Andrés D'Alessio, had belonged to the group that Alfonsín had created in 1982 to establish the human rights policy of his eventual government. In turn, D'Alessio he recommended the Peronist León Arslanián. On the other hand, because at that time the President of the Nation was in charge of the body of federal prosecutors, Alfonsín appointed Julio César Strassera as prosecutor before the Federal Chamber of the Federal Capital and his deputy Luis Moreno Ocampo.

Alfonsín's original plan was for the Armed Forces themselves to purify themselves by prosecuting and convicting the military juntas, so that the sentence would then be reviewed in second instance by the Nation's Judiciary. To do this, Alfonsín sent to Congress a bill that assigned to the federal jurisdiction of the Judiciary the function of reviewing in second instance the sentences of the administrative courts of the military field. In Congress, the project had an addition proposed by the senator for Neuquén Elías Sapag and supported by Peronism, also assigning to the Judiciary the power to replace military courts and directly arrogate the trial, when there are unjustified delays and inactions.

It quickly became clear that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces would not investigate or prosecute those most responsible for human rights violations during the dictatorship. On October 4, 1984, the Federal Criminal and Correctional Chamber of the Federal Capital made the decision to move the military court that was prosecuting the juntas to take charge of the trial directly. The Chamber prosecutor appointed by Alfonsín was Julio César Strassera and his deputy was Luis Gabriel Moreno Ocampo.

On April 22, 1985, the oral trial began. The situation registered a growing level of tension that led Alfonsín, that same night, to send the country a dramatic message on a national television network denouncing the activity of groups that were organizing a coup d'état:

There have been some embarrassing episodes in Argentina (...). In the name of an unsuspecting responsibility that we have assumed with humility but with unalterable firmness, I denounce to the Argentine people the dissoluting activity of those who predict chaos and anarchy, impell social explosions, augur international isolations and, ultimately, become pregoners of national disintegration. The most foolish have dared to tempt senior officers of the Armed Forces with various proposals, ranging from alleged coalition cabinets to the possibility of a coup. This activity cannot be attributed to resentment or perversity exclusively; there must be, moreover, mental misuse... You know, without a doubt, that there are tensions originated or exacerbated by the process to the military junta. A new stage of an unprecedented trial in the world will begin, of such importance that, according to my opinion, it will end with 50 years of democratic frustration and national decay... The trial can be carried out because there is a decision of civility, but also because there is a decision of the men of arms. Not all understand it, not all understand it, there are even those who consider it unfair, but even squeezing the teeth wish to subject themselves to the norms, principles and methods of the rule of law. There has been no military defeat here that imposes the criteria of the victor, nor has there been a virtuous civil society in front of a victimized military society. We've all been guilty in one way or another.

Raúl Alfonsín, 22 April 1985

On August 14, the trial stage closed and on December 9 the sentence was handed down condemning Jorge Rafael Videla and Eduardo Massera to life imprisonment, Roberto Viola to 17 years in prison, and Armando Lambruschini to 8 years in prison and Orlando Ramón Agosti to 4 years in prison. The other four defendants were acquitted.

To establish the degree of responsibility of the military leadership, the court resorted to the "Roxin Doctrine", elaborated by the German jurist Claus Roxin, which maintains that in cases of "mediate authorship" of a crime there is joint criminal responsibility between who the immediate executor and who gives the order. The ruling also established in its point 30, that the superior officers, who occupied the zone and sub-zone commands, and all those who had operational responsibility in the criminal actions proven in the trial, should be prosecuted. This point enabled hundreds of new lawsuits.

Due to its characteristics, the condemnation of the military juntas carried out by a democratic government was an unprecedented event in the world, which contrasted sharply with the negotiated transitions that took place in those years in Uruguay, Chile, Brazil, Spain, Portugal and South Africa.

Full Stop Law

Alfonsín knew that the Trial of the Juntas could trigger new trials for crimes against humanity that would involve broad sectors of the Armed Forces, and even civilians, and he sought from the outset to prevent this spillover, believing that it depended on it the very continuity of democracy. Since the electoral campaign, Alfonsín supported the "theory of the three levels of responsibility", for the perpetrators of crimes against humanity: "those who had given the orders, those who had complied with it in a climate of horror and coercion, those who had exceeded compliance".

However, the evidence presented before the Conadep and the Trial of the Boards, especially the application of the Roxin Doctrine and point 30 of the ruling, put an end to the Alfonsinista policy of limitation of liability and enabled new trials against those responsible for human rights violations in cases such as ESMA, La Perla, the Camps Circuit, and various other proceedings, many of them derived from the cases in which the members of the Boards had been convicted.

In order to limit the scope of the new open trials, the Office of the Attorney General, under the command of President Alfonsín, prepared on the initiative of Defense Minister Germán López, on April 24, 1986, the so-called "instructions to the military prosecutors" who ordered to support the position that the military who had committed crimes against humanity following orders, it should be presumed that they had acted under "insurmountable error" and therefore it was necessary to request their dismissal or declaration of innocence. Since the Instructions had been prepared by López, he had to resign from the ministry.

But the judiciary rejected the position of the executive branch. Judge Jorge Torlasco, one of the members of the court that tried the Juntas, resigned from his position and his entire judicial career, as soon as he learned of the instructions given to the prosecutors, in protest against the interference of the Executive Power with justice. Almost immediately and complying with point 30 of the judgment of the Trial of the Juntas (Case 13/84), the Judiciary moved in the direction of condemning all those who participated immediately and mediately in the commission of crimes against humanity.

On May 19, 1986, a member of the Córdoba Province Police found charges of trinitrotoluene (TNT) in a sewer inside the Córdoba Army Garrison, where the car carrying the president was expected to pass Alfonsín. The following year the Garrison gave refuge to the then major Ernesto Barreiro to avoid his appearance before justice, unleashing the first carapintada uprising.

On December 2, 1986, Federal Court No. 1 of La Plata handed down a sentence in the Camps Circuit case, condemning Ramón Camps, Ovidio Pablo Riccheri, Miguel Etchecolatz and four other repressors for the crimes committed in more than thirty of clandestine detention centers under the jurisdiction of the Buenos Aires Police. Alfonsín immediately tried to stop the escalation of discontent in the Armed Forces and drafted a bill to limit to 60 days the term to prosecute the perpetrators of all crimes of crimes against humanity committed during the dictatorship. As soon as the project reached public opinion, the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo sent a letter to Minister Tonelli, denouncing that the project, as it was drafted, implied declaring the "legal death of the disappeared children", nullifying all possibility of discovery. and restitution. Alfonsín then ordered to modify the project to exclude from it those crimes unrelated "to the alleged action against terrorism, such as, for example, the suppression of the marital status of minors."

On December 5, 1986, Alfonsín spoke on national television to announce the sending to Congress of the Full Stop Law project:

On 13 December next, three years of the message I addressed to the Argentine people to announce the government's political decision to judicially investigate human rights violations. There is a clear growing difficulty, as a result of the lengthy length of investigations with the consequent delay in assigning responsibilities. The causes of this delay are varied, but the truth is that both the victims of illegal repression and a considerable number of Armed Forces personnel are directly affected, who experience doubts about their eventual procedural situation. Thus, we are sending to the Congress of the Nation for its treatment in extraordinary sessions, a bill that contemplates a period of extinction of criminal proceedings that allows in the least reasonable time to release from suspicion those who, more than after years of initiation of investigations, have not been formally considered suspects by the judges, as I said before, also seek to expedite such proceedings.

President Raúl Alfonsín, 5 December 1986

While the National Congress dealt urgently with the Alfonsinista project, the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo called a march to Congress that had the support of the Peronist trade unionism represented by the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), the currents of the Peronist left in columns in the Peronist Youth and even the radical university students organized in Franja Morada. The march brought together more than 60,000 people, surprising locals and strangers by the number of people mobilized for human rights.

In the debate held in the Senate, the pro-government position expressed by the radical senator Antonio Berhongaray confronted the position of the opposition defended by the Peronist senator Alberto Rodríguez Saá. Both senators sought to sustain their respective positions based on the judgment of the Judgment of the Boards. Berhongaray defended the restricted position in terms of responsibility, distinguishing the three levels outlined by Alfonsín, used as an argument the fact that the Nuremberg Trials against Nazism had also had acquittals and cited the Peronist amnesty of 1973 as a precedent. Rodríguez Saá defended the broad position in terms of responsibility, based on Alfonsín's own clarification that in no way could "excesses" go unpunished and that therefore all those who had committed crimes sanctioned by the Penal Code, such as such as homicide, torture, humiliation, rape, torment, injury, robbery, etc.

In Congress, the majority of the Peronist bloc and Senator Sapag of the Neuquén Popular Movement voted against the Full Stop Law, but the radicalismo had the support of a minority of Peronist congressmen, as well as the vote of several provincial parties, and managed to approve the law in both Senators and Deputies, in just two days, on December 23. Only two radical deputies, Manuel Díaz and Federico Storani abstained in protest. It was the first of a series of regulations known as "Impunity Laws", obtained under the threat of losing the democratic system again, which would be annulled fifteen years later in 2003; Alfonsín himself agreed with the annulment of those laws enacted two decades earlier.

But the Full Stop Law did not have the desired effect and multiplied the complaints, accusations, summonses, and prosecutions of soldiers identified as perpetrators of crimes against humanity, adding some 400 more defendants to those already existing, increasing discontent in the military and conservative, national and international spheres.

Easter Week 1987: first carapintada uprising

The failure of the Full Stop Law to stop the trials led Alfonsín to order the preparation of a project that would give the force of law to the theory of the three levels of responsibility. On March 23, he gave a speech in the Córdoba town of Las Perdices announcing that the government would shortly present a bill to exempt from responsibility those perpetrators of crimes against humanity who "had to comply with orders in circumstances such that they practically constituted coercion." ».

In Holy Week of 1987 there was a large military rebellion made up mostly of young officers called "carapintadas" led by Lieutenant Colonel Aldo Rico, who entrenched themselves in Campo de Mayo, the country's main military garrison, located 20 km from the Pink House. The insurgents rose up to prevent the arrest of then-major Ernesto Barreiro, a military man recognized as one of the torturers at the La Perla clandestine detention center, and they demanded "a political solution to the military trials," which deviated from what was established in the Penal Code.

Alfonsín responded by ordering the Army to mobilize its forces to force the surrender of the insurgents, but the military chiefs made it clear that they were not willing to obey the presidential orders. Millions of people took to the streets to oppose the military uprising and the CGT, led by the Peronist trade unionism, declared a general strike in defense of the constitutional government. For several days the country was on the brink of civil war. Alfonsín, accompanied by the president of the Justicialista Party and the main political leaders, announced to the crowd gathered in the Plaza de Mayo, from the balcony of the Government House, the sending of loyal troops to demand that the rebels give up their attitude.

A few hours later it was evident that there were no troops loyal to the President and the Constitution. Not a single one of the military units summoned in the Federal Capital, and adjacent areas, responded to that order. Only Brigadier General Ernesto Alais showed moderate willingness to act and slowly set out with his tanks from his garrison in the province of Corrientes, located a thousand kilometers away, in the direction of Buenos Aires. Despite this, when these forces arrived in Zárate, in the province of Buenos Aires, the intermediate-rank officers stopped their march and made known their decision not to advance against their comrades in arms.

The government debated whether to march with the unarmed crowd on Campo de Mayo, where the insurgent soldiers were, but decided not to do so because of the risk of bloodshed and civil war breaking out.

Instead of this, Alfonsín personally went to Campo de Mayo on Sunday, April 30, to meet with the insurgents. Years later, Aldo Rico himself would say about him: “He came without custody, we could have killed him, we could have done anything. He entered the Infantry School alone with a brigadier who was with him”. Hours later, he announced that the mutineers had abandoned their attitude, with a speech to the crowd gathered in the Plaza de Mayo, which provoked rejection in many defining the rebels as "Malvinas heroes":

Compatriots! The mutiny men have deposed their attitude... As appropriate, they shall be arrested and brought to justice. It is a group of men, some of them heroes of the Falklands War, who took this wrong position and reiterated that their intention was not to provoke a coup. But in any case they have led the country to this tension, to this shock that we have all lived, of which the Argentine people as a whole have been the main protagonist. In order to avoid bloodshed, I have instructed the army commanders not to proceed to repression, and today we can all thank God: the house is in order and there is no blood in Argentina. I ask the people who have entered Campo de Mayo to retire. It is necessary to do so, and I ask all of you to return to your homes to kiss your children, to celebrate Easter in Argentina. To avoid bloodshed, I gave instructions to the Army's commands, so that the repression would not proceed. And today we can all, thank God, the house is in order, and there is no blood in Argentina.

Some considered Alfonsín's attitude towards the rebel military as an act of surrender and others, on the other hand, praised him for having known how to avoid a confrontation in which deaths could have occurred.^{[citation required]}

Alfonsín and Jorge Luis Borges.

Law of Due Obedience

Faced with the evidence that the democratic authorities had no military power to stop the coup, Alfonsín guaranteed that there would be no new trials against the military for human rights violations. These measures were specified in the Law of Due Obedience (by which it was declared illegal to penalize members of the Armed Forces whose grade was below Colonel, for having acted by virtue of the so-called "due obedience", that is, the obedience of a subordinate to his superiors) and the replacement of Lieutenant General Héctor Ríos Ereñú, in command of the Argentine Army, by Lieutenant General José Dante Caridi.

Caridi was prosecuted for crimes against humanity, he had been head of the Air Defense Artillery Group 601 in the city of Mar del Plata where a clandestine detention center operated, he claimed what he called "the war against subversion" » and maintained that it was «a page of glory for the Argentine Army»; he defended the cause of the rebel military and publicly demanded that «the scars be closed once and for all», warning that « as long as these causes remain unresolved, without providing a solution to the requirements of the armed forces, these events will continue to be repeated." In fact, Caridi became spokesman for the carapintadas in the government and defender of an amnesty.

Just two weeks after the Holy Week uprising, Alfonsín sent the Due Obedience Law project to Congress. of the civil war" and admitted that the project would release the perpetrators of the crimes committed during the dictatorship, also stating that this was not to his liking.

The Alfonsinista project legally established, without the possibility of proof to the contrary, that the "chiefs, junior officers, non-commissioned officers and troop personnel of the armed forces, security, police and prison forces" who had been perpetrators of crimes during the dictatorship, they had carried out these acts out of "due obedience" and therefore should be exonerated.

In the Chamber of Deputies, it was the president of the Chamber, deputy Juan Carlos Pugliese, who defended the pro-government position, accepting from the beginning that it was a law that enshrined impunity and that it was not what the UCR wanted:

If we could talk not about what it is but about what we want, I would say that what we want is not this bill. We would have hoped that in 1983 the Armed Forces would have judged themselves and recognized themselves before the country, in a free self-criticism, that they had done wrong and in a way that the whole country rejected. [...] The issue went to civil justice. We would have wanted, in the shortest possible time, to have the necessary evidence and to act with the responsibility and prudence of an independent justice, it would have been issued in respect of all cases submitted to its forum. This is what we would have wanted, but not what happened. [Now] we have this project that, as the president of the Nation said, we do not like; that is, we do not like it because by this initiative they can surely remain as not punishable many that would have to be condemned.

Member Juan Carlos Pugliese

Several opposition parties questioned the Alfonsinista project. The Christian Democratic Party stressed that a pardon, like the one enshrined in the bill, should be accompanied by recognition of the crimes. The Justicialista Party, through the mouth of deputy Antonio Cafiero, questioned the project, arguing that, since it was an amnesty, it implied "erasing and forgetting" the crimes, arguing that justice should be applied and if that was not considered sufficient, for reasons of State, the presidential power of "selective pardons" had to be resorted to, which, since it was a pardon studied on a case-by-case basis, allowed various extenuating factors to be taken into account, including real cases of due obedience.

The Due Obedience Law and the carapintada uprisings had an impact on Alfonsín's loss of popularity, which would be reflected in the defeat of the Radical Civic Union in the 1987 gubernatorial and parliamentary elections.

The uprisings and#34;paintfaces#34; from 1988

The Due Obedience Law closed investigations and trials for crimes against humanity and exonerated convicted criminals who had “obeyed” orders, but it did not stop the face-painted uprisings, nor the pressure from the military and conservative groups that were in ascent. Two new "facepainted" would be produced in 1988.

In January, Lieutenant Colonel Aldo Rico would command the Monte Caseros Uprising, in the town of the same name in Corrientes.

In December the Villa Martelli Uprising took place under the command of Colonel Mohamed Alí Seineldín, who sought a general and unrestricted amnesty for members of the political-military organizations of the 1970s.

Takeover of the La Tablada barracks

On January 23 and 24, 1989, there was a bloody attempt to take over the 3rd Mechanized Infantry Regiment located in La Tablada, in Greater Buenos Aires, by the left-wing guerrilla group Todos por la Patria. The Army and the police suffered 11 casualties and 54 wounded, while Todos por la Patria had 32 dead and four disappeared.

President Alfonsín maintained that he was the one who ordered the repression, something that was also shared by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights when investigating the facts. But investigator Felipe Celesia maintains that during the first day, the repressive operations inside the they were under the autonomous command of the military power and that President Alfonsín was only able to assume control of them as of the following day.

The repression carried out by the Army was characterized by a high degree of violence with multiple human rights violations, including torture and disappearances, which contrasted with the treatment given in 1987 and 1988 to the three carapintadas military insurrections. In 1997, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) considered it proven that the Argentine State shot, tortured, and harassed several of the people who were detained, avoided investigating crimes against humanity committed by the military and other officials, in addition to not respecting the right to due process.

The events of La Tablada further strengthened the military and conservative sectors that sought to reverse the impact of Nunca Más, the Trial of the Juntas and the Trials for crimes in the Falklands War, as well as the strengthening and social legitimization of human rights organizations and the subjection of the Armed Forces to political power. The situation of the democratic government would weaken even more with the hyperinflationary process that was unleashed in February 1989. In the presidential elections of May 14, the radicalismos lost the government at the hands of Peronism. Alfonsín was unable to finish his term and "resigned" the position to the president-elect Carlos Menem, who took office under very precarious conditions. Around the end of 1989, the Fall of the Berlin Wall marked the beginning of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. The Washington Consensus reached in that same year ended up forming a new international order, with strong effects on the governments of Argentina and Latin America at that time.

Economic policy

The economic and social situation in which Alfonsín assumed the government was really unfavorable, internally and externally. In 1982 the Latin American debt crisis broke out, due to Mexico's moratorium and the refusal of creditors to refinance loans, as well as the demand that the debt be paid with the assets of the debtor States. Internally, the Argentine external debt had gone from 7,875 million dollars at the end of 1975, to 45,087 million dollars at the end of 1983. Likewise, the inflation rate was on the rise: 87.6% in 1980, 131.3% in 1981 and 209.7% in 1982. On the other hand, the wage delay and poverty, which had increased from 5% in 1975 to 21% in 1982, anticipated great social pressures once democracy was reconquered.

The Argentine situation was not exceptional. For Latin America, the decade of the 1980s was known as the lost decade due to fiscal problems, high inflation, and the impossibility of paying the external debt that most of the countries in the region suffered. To this is added the fall in the prices of raw materials during the 1980s, which meant a marked deterioration in international trade for countries that export raw materials.

First stage

In a first stage, Alfonsín resorted to the economic scheme that the radicalismo had used with considerable success during the presidency of Arturo Illia 20 years before. His Prime Minister of Economy, Bernardo Grinspun, and a large part of his collaborators had been part of that team. At that first moment, Alfonsín and most of the Radical Civic Union basically considered that the validity of democratic institutions guaranteed that the economy would respond to the needs of the population. From that first stage comes a remembered phrase that he repeated throughout the electoral campaign: “ With democracy you eat, educate and heal ”.

Grinspun's economic policy, of a heterodox nature, sought to improve the purchasing power of wages and boost the internal market to generate industrial employment. To try to control inflation, a strong control of public service rates was implemented. In 1984 the GDP increased by 2.6%, but the macroeconomic imbalances were serious. The deficit was close to 12.5% of GDP and inflation reached 625% per year, while real wages had increased by only 35%.

Southern Plan

In February 1985, Alfonsín replaced Grinspun with Juan Vital Sourrouille in order to implement an economic policy that would attack inflation head-on. On June 14, Alfonsín and Sourrouille announced on television the launch of the Austral Plan, which created a new currency, the Austral, frozen all prices in the economy, and established a " eviction" to unindex the contracts. The Austral Plan was a non-monetarist plan, which was based on the idea that, in an economy with high inflation for several decades, like Argentina's, the only way to achieve stability was by stopping what was called "inertial inflation", that is, say the anticipation of inflation by economic agents. Only then could the structural causes be attacked.

The Austral Plan worked well at first, but its effect was short-lived. In October, the monthly inflation rate was 2%, an unusually low rate for the Argentine economy over the past half century. Economic stability played an important role in the sweeping electoral triumph of radicalism in the parliamentary elections of November 1985.

However, by 1986, inflation again showed an upward trend and the relative prices of each sector began to be affected, a situation that was aggravated by the large drop in the prices of Argentine export products (40% in the period). The government then announced a relaxation of the strict rules of freezing prices established a year ago that did not give much result.

Economic and political decline

By 1987 it began to become evident that a structural economic reform was necessary to resolve the gap between the resources available to the State and the functions it performed. The chronic underfinancing of the State could no longer be resolved by resorting to pension funds, nor by domestic and foreign indebtedness, nor by issuing money.

In July 1987, the ministers of the Economy, Sourrouille, and of Public Works and Services, Terragno, jointly announced a package of measures for the reform of the public sector. On that occasion, Sourruille said:

The multiple functions of the State, functions that were arising in the last half century, not because of an ideological whim, but the heat of a more or less spontaneous social consensus, today cannot be covered with due efficiency or solvent without affecting stability... to advance towards this different growth it is necessary to act on a key piece in the gear of national life: the State. The National Government has already begun a process of reforms in the State, which we intend to deepen today. The crisis of the old model is not resolved in the false antinomy of more or less state, but in the construction of a new type state.

Gerchunoff

Evolution of poverty during the Alfonsín government in Gran Buenos Aires

The Alfonsín government was unable to make much progress on this state reform plan, partly because of the opposition of Peronism in Congress, and partly because the popular political parties of the time, including the Unión Cívica Radical, were extremely committed to the statist and nationalist ideas that had dominated most of the 20th century. Finally, these reforms will be carried out drastically during the government of Carlos Menem, using in his own words, a method of "major surgery without anesthesia". The fiscal deficit continued, and it began to be financed by issuing currency, which led to a resurgence of inflation, despite the new monetary sign.

External debt

Hyperinflation

In August 1988, inflation reached 27.6% per month. In October, the Alfonsín government put into practice a rescue plan, the Spring Plan, whose primary objective was to reach the elections with the economy under a minimum of control. It basically consisted of an agreement to moderate price increases with the Argentine Industrial Union and the Argentine Chamber of Commerce and a new exchange regime, in which the State mediated in the purchase and sale of foreign currency.

But the high external and internal indebtedness, stagnation, low investment in capital goods and infrastructure, and a serious fiscal imbalance made the Spring Plan short-lived. The exchange operators rejected it, it did not generate confidence and additionally at the beginning of 1989, the World Bank suspended its aid to Argentina. On February 5, Minister Juan Vital Sourrouille, the president of the Central Bank, José Luis Machinea, and the Secretary of Finance of the National Ministry of Economy, Mario Brodersohn, resolved to apply changes in economic policy. For this, they arranged to decree a bank holiday for 48 hours. During May 1989, the exchange rate ―which was officially fixed― rose from 80 to 200 australes for every US dollar ―equivalent to an abrupt 150% monthly devaluation― which naturally tended to greatly increase the already already strong inflationary pressures. Inflation, which in January 1989 was 387%, grew to 460% in April. That year the price of the dollar rose 2,038% and at the end of the year, inflation was 3,079%. The hyperinflation of 1989 caused an increase in the percentage of people living in poverty from 25% at the beginning of 1989, to the historical record of 47.3% in October of the same year.

In view of this, Minister Juan Vital Sourrouille, the president of the Central Bank, José Luis Machinea, and the Secretary of Finance of the National Ministry of Economy, Mario Brodersohn, resolved to apply changes in economic policy. After decreeing a two-day bank holiday, it was resolved that given the growing demand for dollars, priority would be given to preserving the stock of reserves and the Central Bank was not going to tender more dollars, allowing currencies to float freely. In turn also a "devaluation guideline" for the commercial market of 6% for that month. Another of the measures was the implementation of a third type of exchange.

During May 1989, the exchange rate ―which was officially fixed― rose from 80 to 200 australes for every US dollar ―equivalent to an abrupt 150% monthly devaluation― which naturally tended to increase greatly measure already strong inflationary pressures. Inflation, which in January 1989 was 387%, grew to 460% in April. That year the price of the dollar rose 2,038% and at the end of the year, inflation was 3,079%. The hyperinflation of 1989 caused an increase in the percentage of people living in poverty from 25% at the beginning of 1989, to the historical record of 47.3% in October of the same year. Many of the transactions began to be carried out through barter or using the US dollar as a reference.

Public works and services policy

Upon taking office, Alfonsín appoints Roque Carranza as Minister of Public Works and Services. In 1987 he is replaced by Rodolfo Terragno.

Public works

In 1983, the government took over the Subterráneos de Buenos Aires company (Sbase). Between 1983 and 1989, 150 cars are rebuilt and lines E (four new stations) and D (one station) are extended. In addition, a tram that bears the name of premetro is launched. In 1987, Law 23,514 was passed, assigning 50 million dollars a year for the expansion of the subways.

Public services

During the period 1983-1989 there was a strong process of deterioration of public services due to low investments. The Argentine electricity sector experienced a serious crisis in 1988. The shortage of electricity had begun in April 1988, which led to power cuts. In that month, rotating cuts of 5 hours per shift were made. With the arrival of summer, and the expected increase in demand, the problems worsened and worsened, several incidents were added: the Atucha I nuclear power plant went out of service, two pumps at the Río Tercero reservoir hydroelectric plant failed, and a fire in La Pampa affected transmission lines from the El Chocón plant. The lack of electricity also affected the water supply. This is how Obras Sanitarias de la Nación had to distribute it in tanks to the areas of Greater Buenos Aires.

The government responded by deepening the savings measures. In addition to the power outages programmed on a rotating basis, public lighting, television broadcasting hours - which came to broadcast only 4 hours a day - and the attention time in banks were reduced; Nocturnal sporting events were prohibited, and an order was even set for blackouts of shop windows and marquees. In addition, on December 1, 1988, the application of summer time was resumed. The crisis was attributed to the "lack of investment in generation, stating that in the period 1984-87 investment in generation reached US$28 million when in reality it should have been around US$250 million. In general, the period between 1980 and 1990, was considered the "decade of divestment". The State had to use imported fuels for electricity generation and supply the gas network.

In the telecommunications sector, a modernization plan called Megatel was launched, however, by 1989 the plan had failed.

As for water and sanitation, OSN's investment in 1985 was 67.8 percent of what was needed to maintain supply, and only 19.5 percent in 1989.

Privatization of public companies

Public companies were responsible for 80% of the fiscal deficit, which the government considered essential within the framework of the Austral Plan. After the electoral defeat of 1987 and the appointment of Terragno, the government decides to advance more decisively with the privatizations. However, they were opposed by the Justicialista Party, so they could only carry out two of them. A decade later, Terragno remembered this time as follows:

The option was not to privatize or not to privatize, but to do so as we proposed or to let another come to privatize in any way. Public companies had become a leaflet of corruption, inefficiency, overexpenditure. There was no way to correct that.

Rodolfo Terragno (1998)

In 1987, the privatization of the Austral airline was ordered, which became part of the group led by the metallurgical businessman Enrique Pescarmona (IMPSA), through the company Cielos del Sur S.A. While mobile telephony remained in the hands of Movicom. The privatization of the telephone company ENTel did not come to fruition due to internal disagreements within the government.

Social and labor policy

National Food Plan

Labor policy

One of the pillars of Alfonsín's speech that led him to victory in 1983 was the denunciation of an alleged "union-military pact". The denunciation was aimed at identifying Peronism with authoritarianism and at subsume unionism in Peronism.

Seven days after taking office, Alfonsín launched his union project. This opened the confrontation with the unions, sending to Congress a union reform project known as the "Mucci law", with the objective of including minorities in the unions' leadership bodies. The project was approved by the Chamber of Deputies, but rejected by the Chamber of Senators, dominated by the Peronist opposition that controlled the CGT. A few trade union sectors supported the idea, but the leftist parties - which would have had a chance to enter the leaderships - they decided not to support the change.

But the project had the effect of quickly uniting all union sectors, and establishing a logic of confrontation between the radical government and the unions, which will be expressed in 13 general strikes organized by the CGT. These strikes were classified^[who?] as political, since, since the CGT was controlled by Peronism, the general strike was an instrument used by the Justicialist Party to hinder the action of the radical government.

For its part, the radical government was directly opposed to reestablishing the collective bargaining mechanisms, in order to preserve the power to set wages in the hands of the State. However, negotiations with the unions were permanent.

In the six years of the Radical government, there were almost 4,000 sector and company strikes (67% in the public sector) and 13 general strikes.

In 1987 Alfonsín changed his tactic of confrontation with the labor movement and offered the Ministry of Labor to José Rodríguez, leader of SMATA and one of the main union leaders in the country. Rodríguez did not accept but the big unions proposed Carlos Alderete, general secretary of Luz y Fuerza. As a result of this agreement, the Alfonsín government drew up a new Union Law that was approved in 1988 (law 23,551), with the unanimous support of all unions and parliamentarians from all political parties. Instead, it was questioned before the ILO by the Argentine Industrial Union (UIA), the main business organization in Argentina. This complaint would be continued into the 1990s by the CTA.

Justice, defense and security policy

Military domes

During the term of Raúl Ricardo Alfonsín, there were constant changes in the leadership of the three Armed Forces, especially in the Argentine Army.

As head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces, he appointed Lieutenant General Julio Fernández Torres on December 16, 1983. After making personal observations regarding events that occurred during the last military regime, an internal military crisis ensued. President Alfonsín ordered Defense Minister Raúl Borrás to relieve him, which materialized on March 4, 1985. He was succeeded by Brigadier General Teodoro Waldner, who took office on March 8 of that year and served until July 11. from 1989.

The Navy of the Argentine Republic was the most stable of all, since Admiral Ramón Antonio Arosa, appointed head of the force on December 16, 1983, remained in charge of the navy until the end of Alfonsín's mandate on July 8, 1989.

Two commanders followed one another in the Argentine Air Force. On December 14, 1983, Brigadier General Teodoro Guillermo Waldner was placed in charge of aeronautics, who later became head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces on March 5, 1985, remaining the head of the Air Force. in the hands of Brigadier General Ernesto Horacio Crespo, who accompanied Alfonsín until the end of his term.

The most unstable force was the Argentine Army, since there were five incumbents during the government of Raúl Alfonsín, they were division generals Jorge Hugo Arguindegui (1983-1984), Ricardo Gustavo Pianta (1984-1985) and lieutenants generals Héctor Luis Ríos Ereñú (1985-1987), José Segundo Dante Caridi (1987-1988) and Francisco Eduardo Gassino (1988-1989).

Takeover of the La Tablada barracks

Social rights policy

Among her social policies, the divorce law and shared parental authority stand out, as well as the defense of human rights. She spoke out in favor of the decriminalization of abortion, however, she did not present any project to avoid a cross with the Church.

Shared parental authority

In Argentina, shared parental authority had been established in 1949, through the constitutional reform carried out that year. The repeal of said reforms by military proclamation in 1956, and the ratification of said repeal by the Constituent Convention of 1957, reestablished inequality between women and men for several more decades. In 1974 Congress re-established shared parental authority, but President María Estela Martínez de Perón vetoed the law. Basically, the influential conservative sectors in Argentina argued that the unity of the family requires that one of the spouses have "the last word", and that for cultural and traditional reasons, it was reasonable that that power was attributed by law to the man.

In 1985, during the Alfonsín government, shared parental authority was reestablished through Law 23,264, a right long claimed by women.

Divorce Law

Creation of the National Genetic Data Bank

Creation of the National Institute of Indigenous Affairs

Institutional reform

In 1985 the Council for the Consolidation of Democracy was created, which worked on different reform projects such as constitutional reform, the transfer of the Nation's capital, a new broadcasting law and the creation of Mercosur.

Proposal to move the capital

Map of the area federalized by law 23,512 of 1987.

On April 16, 1986, Raúl Alfonsín gave an effusive speech from the balconies of the Ministry of Economy of the province of Río Negro in which he invited the Argentines to "advance towards the south, towards the sea y hacia el frío" and where he announced the transfer of the Federal Capital to the Patagonian area made up of the cities of Carmen de Patagones (in the Province of Buenos Aires), Viedma and Guardia Miter (both in the province of Black river). It was an ambitious project, which is known as the Patagonia Project, whose purpose was to decentralize the political and economic power of the country, excessively concentrated in Greater Buenos Aires, also promoting the settlement of Patagonia.

To carry out the project, the National Congress sanctioned Law No. 23,512 and created the Entity for the Construction of the New Capital Company of the State (ENTECAP), which was to design and plan the construction of the buildings where they would operate the administrative agencies of the Government and the different infrastructure works necessary for the settlement of the population and to avoid the negative demographic impact on the inhabitants of the cities and towns already existing in the federalized area.

The project was strongly rejected by sectors linked to the political and economic interests of the city of Buenos Aires and by the Buenos Aires media, which called it "expensive", " pharaonic" and "unnecessary". This anti-transfer political front that was put together was fundamentally made up of neo-conservative sectors, whose main leaders and referents included the engineer Álvaro Alsogaray, who from the outset opposed the transfer. These sectors did everything in their power to bring it down. A great debate was also opened on the eventuality that the City of Buenos Aires would return to the jurisdiction of the province of Buenos Aires, which was resolved with article 6 of Law 23,512, which established the provincialization of the City once the federal authorities were established in the new capital and that a Constituent Convention should be called to organize its institutions. This law was the immediate antecedent of the current Buenos Aires autonomy. When Carlos Saúl Menem assumed the presidency, he tried to continue with the project to transfer the Capital, but later, pressured by the conservative sectors with whom he was politically allied, he decided to annul it by dissolving ENTECAP, liquidating his assets and properties. The transfer law was repealed by Congress through the sanction of the Argentine Legal Digest.

Those who supported the project have criticized Alfonsín for his lack of political decision to carry it out and for not having carried out acts that would make the transfer irreversible, "through government actions in Viedma, such as signing decrees&# 34;. Alfonsín himself regretted not having done so, when he replied to a journalist: "Not having gone, even with a tent, to Viedma as the Capital. That was a rude mistake". The officials appointed by him as head of ENTECAP are also criticized for delaying the time by making studies and models and for designing a project that was too expensive, which gave arguments to the opponents of it. This body was also highly questioned for operating more in Buenos Aires than in Viedma, where it should have its headquarters.

Despite having been annulled by the Menem government, on many occasions Raúl Alfonsín expressed his desire for some government to resume the Capital Transfer project. In 1990 he included the issue in point III, which refers to Federalism, of the Bases of Political Action of the Radical Civic Union, which says: «Promote territorial reorganization and decentralization of the population. Timely implement the transfer of the Federal Capital”.

The Constituent Convention of 1994, which arose from the signing of the Pact of Olivos, introduced in the new constitutional text the possibility of moving the Federal Capital out of the City of Buenos Aires and the provincialization of the latter, through the Articles 45 and 129. The first of these maintains that "The Chamber of Deputies will be made up of representatives directly elected by the people of the provinces, of the city of Buenos Aires, and of the Capital in case of transfer..."; and the second says that "The city of Buenos Aires will have an autonomous government regime, with its own powers of legislation and jurisdiction...", but that "...A law will guarantee the interests of the National State, while the city of Buenos Aires is the capital of the nation…".

Education, science and technology policy

In 1984, President Raúl Alfonsín created the National Commission for Functional Literacy and Permanent Education (CONAFEP). The National Literacy Plan (PNA) designed by Professor Nélida Baigorria was implemented. When the government took office, the data from the 1980 census indicated an illiteracy rate of 6.1%. In the 1991 census, illiteracy had been reduced to 3.7%, a percentage similar to that registered by Spain and Canada. In 1988, the PNA of Argentina received the prize awarded by the International Reading Association of Unesco.

At the University, he reorganized the national universities under the principles of the University Reform, basically guaranteeing full university autonomy, co-government between teachers, students and graduates and free undergraduate studies.

National Pedagogical Congress of 1984-1988

In 1984, by Law No. 23,114, the radical government of Raúl Alfonsín convened a National Pedagogical Congress supposedly to address the deficiencies of the educational system, but with the purpose of defining whether Public Education should be State or not State, which would depend on whether private schools would continue to receive financial support from the State and if middle- and low-income parents could choose the type of education for their children in privately run schools. by far the antinomy public education-private education. And during that pedagogical Congress, two approaches were confronted with respect to this.

Alfonsín entrusted the organization of the congress to his educational team, headed in 1984 by Minister Carlos Alconada Aramburú, and Deputy Adolfo Stubrin, both with statist approaches. The statist approach was promoted by radicals and communists; and the non-statist approach, which was finally the one that triumphed, was defended by the Argentine Episcopal Conference, the Christian Democratic Party, the Justicialista Party, the Union of the Democratic Center, the Integration and Development Movement and a huge mobilization of parents They had their children in private schools. 400,000 people participated in that call.

The national assembly was held in Embalse de Río Tercero (Province of Córdoba) in March 1988 and after the triumph of the non-statist approach, the government of Alfonsín entered into a crisis and a few days later a teacher strike left no classes for two months to millions of students in state schools.

Science and technology

Foreign Policy

Alfonsín with President Reagan at the White House.

Alfonsín maintained an active international policy implemented by his Foreign Minister, Dante Caputo, the only one who remained for almost his entire term. The priorities were to strengthen the democratic system in Argentina, prevent the Cold War from regenerating the concept of national security, promote the regional democratization process, resolve border issues, generate greater regional negotiating capacity against the great powers and promote integration. subregional. Caputo was elected president of the United Nations General Assembly in 1989.

Alfonsín is a co-founder of the Group of Six to promote détente and disarmament. Together with Olof Palme (Sweden), Julius Nyerere (Tanzania), Indira Gandhi (India), Andreas Papandreou (Greece) and Miguel de la Madrid (Mexico).

During his government, he made a series of international trips, including to the United States, the Soviet Union, China, Spain, and Cuba. He maintained close relations with the democratic government of Uruguay, headed by Julio María Sanguinetti, who took office in 1985.

Alfonsín sought the support of friendly European governments, such as Spain, France, and Italy. He was received with honors, but there was no financial support: "Alfonsín's prestige was enormous," says Federico Storani, then president of the Foreign Relations Commission of the Chamber of Deputies. Lots of claps, lots of parola. And little twine".

Creation of Mercosur

Alfonsín took office surrounded by dictatorships and was convinced that only a democratization process would stabilize democracy in Argentina. He developed a policy of explicit support and support for the opposition parties. In Chile he promoted the coalition of the center and the left to resist Pinochet, in Paraguay he pressured Alfredo Stroessner and in support of the parties opposed to the ruling Colorado. He gave the head of state treatment to the leader of the Uruguayan White party, Wilson Ferreyra Aldunate, outlawed by the military regime.

By supporting peace with Chile and integration with Brazil, Argentina eliminated the two oldest hypotheses of war. Instead, she did not resume relations with Britain and kept up missile development, with the purpose of putting pressure on Britain with the Condor II, whose range included the Falkland Islands. The purpose: to resume negotiations for the recovery of the archipelago by peaceful means.

He also imagined the Contadora Support Group, to promote, together with Brazil and other South American nations, a process of rapprochement in the Central American crisis and avoid an intervention by the United States, which supported the Nicaraguan contras. The concern of the Alfonsín government to promote multilateral mechanisms and supranational integration, he also led it to promote commercial integration between Argentina and Brazil, one of the most persistent cases of international confrontation in the world.

Since the end of 1982 and the election of Franco Montoro as governor of São Paulo, Alfonsín perceived the rebirth of a democratic process in Brazil. For his assumption, Alfonsín invited Montoro, Ulisses Guimarães, Helio Jaguaribe, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and Fernando Gasparián. In the middle of the decade, Alfonsín ordered his chancellor, Dante Caputo, to start the process of subregional integration. Thus, at the beginning of 1985, Alfonsín proposed to the president-elect of Brazil, Tancredo Neves, to start a process of economic integration between Argentina and Brazil "to strengthen democracy, deal with foreign debt and enable productive modernization" which was welcomed by the Brazilian president. Shortly after, Tancredo Neves died, but his successor José Sarney enthusiastically adopted the integration project, and authorized Ambassador Francisco Thompson Flores to make a large purchase of Argentine wheat under disadvantageous conditions, for purely political reasons. From then on, the integration project developed rapidly:

• On 28 July 1985, in an unprecedented decision for its foreign policy, Brazil accepted the Argentine proposal and joined the Contadora Support Group, together with Peru and Uruguay.
• On November 30, 1985 Alfonsín and Sarney signed the Declaration of Foz de Iguazú, a basal stone of Mercosur. In 2004, Argentina and Brazil jointly resolved that the Argentine-Brazilian Friendship Day will be held on 30 November.
• On 29 July 1986, the Act for Argentine-Brazilian Integration was signed. This instrument established the integration and cooperation programme between Argentina and Brazil (PICAB) based on the principles of graduality, flexibility, symmetry, balance, preferential treatment against third markets, progressive harmonization of policies and participation of the business sector. The core of PICAB was sectoral protocols in key sectors.
• On 6 April 1988, the Alvorada Act was signed, by which Uruguay joined the regional integration process.
• The Treaty on Integration, Cooperation and Development between Argentina and Brazil was held on 29 November 1988. The Treaty set a 10-year period for the gradual removal of asymmetries.

Complementarily, during the Alfonsín government, Argentina and Brazil shaped several integration protocols, for specific sectors, implemented by their Secretary of Industry and Foreign Trade, Roberto Lavagna, later Minister of Economy under Presidents Eduardo Duhalde and Néstor Kirchner.

The process would be completed on March 26, 1991, already during the presidencies of Fernando Collor de Mello and Carlos Menem, with the signing of the Treaty of Asunción in which Mercosur was constituted.

Some analysts consider that the integration process of Argentina with Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay, launched by Alfonsín, is one of the highest and most transcendental points of his government work.

Treaty of Peace and Friendship with Chile

For Alfonsín, guaranteeing peace with Chile was a priority issue from the moment he took office:

Neither did the radical government begin, on December 10, 1983, gave precise instructions to advance in the search for a solution for the southern deferendum.

Raúl Alfonsín

In 1978, the British Queen released the Arbitration Award of 1977, which had been given to her for her knowledge and publication by an Arbitral Court of five judges appointed in 1971 by mutual agreement between presidents Allende and Lanusse. The sentence, (see text deposited in the United Nations Beagle Channel Arbitration between the Republic of Argentina and the Republic of Chile, Report and decision of the Court of Arbitration), determined that the disputed islands belonged to Chili. The Argentine military government declared the award null and void and subsequently launched Operation Sovereignty to occupy the islands. From then on, the Holy See remained a mediator trying to bring the parties to an agreement that did not contradict the award of the British Crown.

In 1984, mediation was practically exhausted and Chile was still governed by a military dictatorship. The persistence of the conflict was a factor strengthening militarism in both countries, and therefore an immediate threat to Argentine democracy.

In 1983, the pope presented a second solution proposal (the first had been rejected by Argentina). Alfonsín considered it necessary then to close the conflict by accepting the Holy See's proposal. As a first measure, Alfonsín signed a Joint Declaration of Peace and Friendship in Vatican City on January 23, 1984, in which the two countries pledged to reach a "just and honorable" solution to the conflict, "always and exclusively for peaceful means”.

But the Alfonsinista government assessed that the most critical moment was going to occur when the Holy See's proposal was known, and the nationalist sectors began to question it, underlining the losses of sovereignty against their maximum claim. Alfonsín himself made this conclusion years later about the consequences of that Treaty:

We must look with pride and hope how much relations between Argentina and Chile have progressed over the past 21 years, reaching unsuspecting levels of mutual trust and cooperation. Since those difficult first years, the path that has passed has been very great and the relationship with Santiago is now one of the central and indispensable pillars of our country's foreign policy. In addition, Chile participates as a country associated with Mercosur and in full form in the South American Community, integration projects that seek to join us in a common destination. The immense mountain range has become a knot of union, from where we can look excited to the horizon, which announces us a better future.

Raúl Alfonsín

Popular consultation on the proposal of the Holy See

This led Alfonsín to try to create a strong internal consensus that would allow him to approve the Holy See's proposal and at the same time prevent the strengthening of the military coup leaders in both countries. There was a certain danger that the Peronist majority in the Senate, pressured by the demand to defend sovereignty, would reject the proposal of Pope John Paul II.

Alfonsín then, first included in the Act of Coincidences between the political parties that was signed on June 7, 1984, a point establishing that the proposal made by the Holy See should be accepted. The Act was signed by 16 political parties, including Peronism, being rejected by 4.

But fundamentally, Alfonsín sought to generate a solid internal consensus through a non-binding referendum, but which put pressure on the senators. Although the main leaders of Peronism (Lúder, Cafiero, Carlos Menem, Lorenzo Miguel, Isabel Perón) were in favor of accepting the papal proposal, opposition to it had grown and included several Peronist senators such as José Humberto Martiarena, Oraldo Britos, Francisco Villada, Vicente Leónidas Saadi, Olijuela del Valle Rivas, Libardo Sánchez; radicals like Ramón Vázquez; nationalists like Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, Alfredo Rizzo Romano, Alberto Asseff; Socialists like Alicia Moreau de Justo and Jorge Abelardo Ramos, among others.

Under these conditions, the famous television debate between Dante Caputo and Vicente Saadi took place, which had a decisive impact on the triumph of the "SI" to the papal proposal. On November 25, 1984, the plebiscite was held and the "SI" with a support of 81.32%. Four days later, on November 29, 1984, the Treaty of Peace and Friendship with Chile was signed.

Then a new problem appeared. The Chilean Communist Party has launched its military apparatus to form the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front that takes up arms against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. And he hopes to secure a safe rear on the Argentine side of the cordillera, with the backing of the Argentine PC. The risk of being involved in a conflict led Alfonsín to raise the issue with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on his trip to Moscow in 1986. The Soviets denied his participation. Alfonsín raised it with Fidel Castro in Havana, that same 1986. A year later, the PC of Chile abandoned the military line.

The Cartagena Group

Cartagena, Colombia.

The Alfonsín government tried to create multilateral mechanisms to deal with the foreign debt issue that would allow Latin American countries to act jointly. The heterogeneity of the Latin American countries, and mainly the final decision of Mexico and Brazil to negotiate bilaterally, considerably limited the possibilities that joint action opened up. However, the attempts to form a "debtors' club" promoted by the Alfonsín government would anticipate the subregional and regional integration processes that would take place in the 1990s, and South-South multilateral coalitions, such as Mercosur, the Community South American of Nations and especially the Group of 20.

The so-called Cartagena Group began to take shape in January 1984, at the Latin American Economic Conference (CELA) held in the city of Quito, at the initiative of Ecuadorian President Osvaldo Hurtado. On that occasion, Alfonsín's Minister of Foreign Relations, Dante Caputo, presented the Argentine proposal:

Argentine democracy does not accept the trap in which the international financial system and the minorities associated with it have placed it by generating this overwhelming foreign debt. National states have been used to outrun these speculative groups. The fate of the continent is going out of this trap. (...) The crisis we suffered may have as a counterpart the creation of an invaluable opportunity to finally make the integration of Latin America and the Caribbean a reality.

Dante Caputo, Minister of Foreign Affairs

On June 21 and 22, 1984, the foreign ministers and economy ministers of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela met in the Colombian city of Cartagena to form the Cartagena Group in which the maximum position promoted by Argentina to create a practical mechanism of the highest level for joint action in foreign debt negotiations did not prosper, but it issued a document called the Cartagena Consensus which created a regional consultation and follow-up mechanism. In 1985, the Cartagena Group considered the "Baker Plan" insufficient.

The Contadora Group and the Group of Eight

With a spirit similar to that inspired by the Cartagena Group, the Alfonsín government promoted a joint multilateral action of the Latin American democracies to guarantee peace and democracy in the region.

With this objective, the Argentine government promoted support for the Contadora Group, a joint action initiative to promote peace in Central America that Colombia, Mexico, Panama, and Venezuela had established in January 1983.

To this end, on July 29, 1985, in Lima, taking advantage of the meeting of presidents to attend the inauguration of President Alan García, Argentina, Brazil, Peru and Uruguay jointly announced the creation of the Contadora Support Group (or Lima Group). Both groups of countries together became known as the Group of Eight, and it played a very important role in the pacification of Central America. Particularly important was its performance when the Central American countries adhered to the proposals of the Group of Eight, on January 14, 1986 through the Guatemala Declaration.

Later, the Group of Eight expanded its concerns to other problems of regional interest, addressing the situation of the Malvinas Islands (urging negotiations between Argentina and Great Britain), the foreign debt and protectionism in developed countries.

Since 1990 the Contadora Group adopted the name Río Group.

Advancing the elections

Pressured by the economic recession, the growing rejection of union leaders, the lack of support from business leaders and the fear of a new attempt by military groups, Alfonsín announced on April 21, 1989 the advancement of the elections presidential elections for the following May 14 (since they were to be held in October) with the idea that they would reassure the country. On this particular move, years later Alfonsín declared that at first he considered it a serious mistake, but over time he understood that he was in an extremely complex situation.

In the presidential elections of May 14, the candidate of the Radical Civic Union, Eduardo Angeloz, was defeated by the candidate of the Justicialista Party, Carlos Menem. However, contrary to what Alfonsín had supposed, the situation in the country did not calm down: when the results of the elections were known, Argentina went from the phase of recession to that of hyperinflation, which brought poverty to 25% at the beginning of 1989, to the historical record of 47.3% in October of the same year, and inflation rose sharply from 460% in April to 764% in May.

Internal disturbances

The precarious economic situation, the lack of food, and the alignment of many groups (in Rosario for example) with the opposition governor Víctor Reviglio and/or the lieutenant governor Antonio Vanrell, both from the PJ were the perfect breeding ground for the riots in Argentina in 1989. Without confirming whether they are related to the opposition of the PJ or not, the fact is that the demonstrations and looting of supermarkets continued between the months of May and June, during the last stretch of the radical administration, causing the 29 Alfonsín ordered the State of siege to pacify the situation; calming down as soon as they had started after the handover, even with hyperinflation present.

The first riots began in Rosario -the third largest city in Argentina after Greater Buenos Aires and Greater Córdoba- when several people began to demand that some supermarkets distribute food for free. They quickly spread to other cities, including the GBA itself. The police reaction itself was rather passive during the first two days, which contributed to the generalization of the disturbances. It is still open to debate whether this passivity was on purpose or if, on the contrary, the police were caught off guard and soon found themselves overwhelmed by the massive dimension that the riots reached. Seeing how difficult it would be to go through the months that remained until the delivery of the presidential command on December 10 in the midst of this context (and the growing rejection of unions, businessmen and the military), Alfonsín announced on June 12, 1989 that he would also He brought forward the transfer of command for the 30th of that month, whereas it was originally scheduled for December 10th. The announcement caught even Menem himself off guard, who did not want to take power so soon, so after negotiations it was agreed that the transfer of command would take place on July 8. Thus, on July 8, 1989, Alfonsín handed over the presidency to Menem and the first transfer of two democratically elected presidents since the return to democracy took place (although the mandate of the outgoing one was not fully fulfilled). However, hyperinflation continued after Menem took office, and inflation levels prior to May '89 would only be reached in February 1991 (582%).

Among the structural economic transformations designed by the Alfonsín government, it is worth highlighting the initiation of an economic integration process with Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay that gave rise to Mercosur. This initiative has been considered "the most lasting legacy of the entire economic policy of the Alfonsín government."

End of term

Alfonsín and the president-elect Carlos Menem on May 31, 1989 in the Quinta de Olivos.

Alfonsín was due to finish his term on December 10, 1989. However, the economic recession, the growing rejection of union leaders, the lack of support from business leaders, and the fear of a new attempt by military groups, They influenced Alfonsín to announce on April 21, 1989 that he was considerably advancing the date of the elections, establishing them on May 14, almost seven months before the handover of command. With this measure he sought to appease the plight of the country. Alfonsín, in the future, would describe as & # 34; a tremendous mistake & # 34; on his part, having advanced the elections in this way, although on the other hand he also reflected that the context made any route very difficult.

The two candidates with the possibility of being elected were the radical Eduardo Angeloz, for the Radical Civic Union, and the Peronist Carlos Menem, for the Justicialista Party.

According to polls at the time, until January 1989 the possibility that the Unión Cívica Radical would win the elections again had a serious foundation. However, as the months passed, the worsening of the recession diminished the possibility of victory.

Alfonsín passes the command to Menem.

On May 14, Carlos Menem won with 47% of the vote, compared to 37% for the radical candidate. Contrary to what Alfonsín had assumed, the situation in the country did not calm down: Argentina went from recession to hyperinflation, in May inflation reached 78% per month and poverty began to grow exponentially: in May it was 25% and in October 47%. Looting began to take place and a wave of violence spread, which caused Alfonsín to declare a state of siege on May 30.

With a situation worsening day after day, pressure from unions, businessmen and the military, and the conviction that he had to sacrifice his mandate for democracy to be maintained in Argentina, on June 12, 1989 Alfonsín announced that he would also The handover of power would be in advance, on the 30th of that month, instead of December 10 as had been arranged. This announcement surprised Menem himself, who had no plans to take power so soon, so negotiations began between both. Finally, on July 8, 1989, the transfer of command from Alfonsín to Menem took place, and the first succession between two civilian constitutional leaders from different parties since 1916 was completed.

At the end of that year, the Buenos Aires daily Ámbito Financiero published an article analyzing the elections, entitled "Golpe de Mercado", where he hit Alfonsín:

This democratic Argentina does not want more military coups but has adopted a strategy to defend itself from the demagogue of politicians.

As for hyperinflation, it would prove difficult to stamp out completely, and would continue after Menem's inauguration. Inflation levels prior to May '89 would only be reached in February 1991 (582%).

Cabinet

Ministries of the Government of Raúl Alfonsín
Portfolio	Owner	Period
Ministry of Economy	Bernardo Grinspun Juan Vital Sourrouille Juan Carlos Pugliese Jesús Rodríguez	10 December 1983 - 18 February 1985 19 February 1985 - 31 March 1989 31 March 1989 - 14 May 1989 14 May 1989 - 8 July 1989
Ministry of the Interior	Antonio Tróccoli Enrique Nosiglia Juan Carlos Pugliese	10 December 1983 - 15 September 1987 15 September 1987 - 26 May 1989 26 May 1989 - 8 July 1989
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship	Dante Caputo Susana Ruiz Cerutti	10 December 1983 - 26 May 1989 26 May 1989 - 8 July 1989
Ministry of Defence	Raúl Borrás Roque Carranza Germán López José Horacio Jaunarena	10 December 1983 - 27 May 1985 27 May 1985 - 8 February 1986 8 February 1986 - 2 June 1986 2 June 1986 - 8 July 1989
Ministry of Education and Justice	Carlos Alconada Aramburú Julio Rajneri Jorge Sabato José Gabriel Dumón	10 December 1983 - 21 June 1986 21 June 1986 - 10 September 1987 10 September 1987 - 26 May 1989 26 May 1989 - 8 July 1989
Ministry of Labour	Antonio Mucci Juan Manuel Casella Hugo Barrionuevo Carlos Alderete Ideler Tonelli	10 December 1983 - 24 April 1984 24 April 1984 - 31 October 1984 31 October 1984 - 25 March 1987 30 March 1987 - 16 September 1987 16 September 1987 - 8 July 1989
Ministry of Health and Social Action	Aldo Neri Conrado Storani Ricardo Barrios Arrechea Enrique Beveraggi	10 December 1983 - 15 April 1986 15 April 1986 - 16 September 1987 16 September 1987 - 26 May 1989 26 May 1989 - 8 July 1989
Ministry of Public Works and Services	Roque Carranza Roberto Tomasini Pedro Trucco Rodolfo Terragno Roberto Pedro Echarte	10 December 1983 - 27 May 1985 27 May 1985 - 3 July 1986 3 July 1986 - 16 September 1987 16 September 1987 - 26 May 1989 26 May 1989 - 8 July 1989

Post-presidency activity

Pact of Olivos and Constitution of 1994

The city of Santa Fe, seat of the 1994 Constituent Convention.

After the 1989 electoral defeat, Alfonsín remained president of the Radical Civic Union. At that time, fundamental transformations were taking place in the world that little by little would be called "globalization". The Menem government was adjusting his policies to the dynamics of globalization, but in the early 1990s there was great confusion about the true nature of the process.

In the 1991 parliamentary elections, the electoral performance of the Radical Civic Union, obtaining 29%, was even worse than that of 1989. This led Alfonsín to resign from the presidency of the National Committee, although Mario Losada, a trusted man of the former president, remained in command.

Alfonsín then created the Argentine Foundation for Freedom of Information (FUALI) from where he began to reorganize and publish several books in defense of his administration.

In August 1992, leaders close to Raul Alfonsín, and with his explicit support, formed the Movement for Social Democracy (MODESO) with a strong social democratic and reformist discourse and in defense of the Welfare State. The concept of "Social Democracy" as a kind of statism and even moderate protectionism, far from both collectivism and classical liberalism, it had been advocated, from the Unión Cívica Radical del Pueblo in the 1960s, by Miguel Ángel Zavala Ortiz. Zavala Ortiz had died a year before the 1983 elections, but his thinking on economics and foreign relations had a great influence on Alfonsín's, both directly and through two of his closest collaborators, Conrado Storani. and Dante Caputo. With this act the Movement for Renewal and Change was extinguished, giving rise to a new internal line of radicalism, the MODESO.

The electoral performance of the radicalismo in the parliamentary elections of October 3, 1993, where the party obtained 30% of the popular vote at the national level, led Alfonsín to understand that a new approach was necessary for the entire process and especially from the then-named "menemismo", which was increasingly strengthened, with widespread social support and determined to reform the Constitution to allow his re-election in 1995, even forcing current constitutional norms.

Alfonsín then maintained that it was necessary to dialogue and reach an agreement with President Carlos Menem. Despite the opposition of the main radical leaders (Angeloz, de la Rúa, Storani and even Losada), Alfonsín was again elected president of the National Committee of the UCR in 1993. Immediately afterwards he secretly met with Menem in the house of its former foreign minister, Dante Caputo, who was in Haiti, near the presidential residence, and ended up reaching an agreement known as the Pact of Olive Trees.

The Pact of Olivos was an agreement to reform the National Constitution but establishing basic guidelines on the conditions of the re-election of the president and the contents of the constitutional reform. There it was agreed not to hold a plebiscite, and to accept the one-time re-election of the acting president, but shortening the first term, at the same time that the terms of the senators were shortened, a third senator was incorporated by the minority, it was established the figure of the Chief of Staff and the Council of the Magistracy to attenuate presidentialism, while the decree-laws were subjected to precise rules, several third and fourth generation rights were included and priority was given to international treaties over the laws.

A few days later, when Alfonsín took office as president, he presented the Pact to the National Committee of the UCR. Although it generated an important discussion and the harsh opposition of some important leaders, such as Fernando de la Rúa, the National Committee approved the Pact of Olivos by 75% of its members.

The Constituent Convention met in the City of Santa Fe between May and August 1994 and produced the important Constitutional Reform of 1994 in which 43 articles were modified. Alfonsín himself was a conventional constituent there.

The Pact of Olivos had a very negative impact on the UCR, which in the elections for conventional constituents obtained the lowest percentage in its history up to then (19.9%), and in the presidential elections of 1995 it fell even more to 17.1%, constituting for the first time in history the third force (second was FREPASO). The electoral disaster cost Alfonsín the presidency of the UCR although he remained in the National Committee as Secretary of International Relations. In this role, he managed in 1996 the incorporation of the Radical Civic Union to the Socialist International.

He was a member of the Club de Madrid.

Attack in San Nicolás

By the end of February 1991, the former president had begun a proselytizing tour of radical nuclei in the province of Buenos Aires, in an attempt to sustain a party that was falling apart after the early end of his term.

On February 23, it was his turn to speak in San Nicolás de los Arroyos, at the door of the Nicoleño committee of the UCR, on Miter street, and there some five thousand co-religionists gathered to listen to him. That day, the hotel and the committee received bomb threats, something routine for the former president. At 10:20 p.m., Alfonsín begins his speech. Expressionless, a young man standing to one side of the box, a handful of meters from the ex-president, takes out a long 32-caliber revolver, aims and fires, but thanks to a failure in the barrel of the weapon, he did not achieve his goal. The historic custodian of Alfonsín, Daniel Tardivo, pounced on the former president, threw him to the ground and covered him with his body. The former president, without really knowing what had happened, took up the microphone and concluded his speech.

The attacker in San Nicolás was Ismael Edgardo Darío Abdalá and he was 29 years old. He had worked at SOMISA and had a brief stint at the National Gendarmerie. In 1984 he had left everything to enter the Mormon church and preach the gospel in Buenos Aires. "Systematic delirium" was the concise description that the psychiatrist treating Abdalá gave to the judge in the case, which dissolved into that mental insanity and Abdalá was hospitalized. Two years later, he took his own life.

Prior to this attack, he had suffered two other assassination attempts. The first was during a formal visit in May 1986, to the Third Corps of the Army, in Córdoba. A bomb was found that would detonate when the president arrived at the scene. The attack was discovered and impossible to specify.

Raúl Alfonsín had suffered a large number of bomb threats during his tenure, but none had materialized. The second attempted attempt on his life was in October 1989, when he had already left the Presidency. It was an attack without warning or threat. In Alfonsín's house, a regular location for political meetings, a loud noise was heard that knocked down several walls of the house. Miraculously, the president was not at his home when the bomb exploded. The hearth was empty.

National Committee of the UCR 1995

When Rodolfo Terragno was elected president of the National Committee of radicalism, Alfonsín was chosen to be in charge of the party's foreign relations.

The Alliance

The electoral fall of the UCR and the evidence that Menem was seeking a third term, even forcing the letter of the new Constitution led Alfonsín to approach FREPASO. On August 3, 1997, the Alliance for Work, Justice and Education between FREPASO and the UCR came to fruition, in a meeting held at the home of Federico Polak, spokesperson for Raúl Alfonsín. To direct it, a table of five members was constituted, The Group of Five (Raúl Alfonsín, Carlos «Chacho» Álvarez, Fernando de la Rúa, Graciela Fernández Meijide and Rodolfo Terragno). The Alliance obtained a notable triumph in the 1997 parliamentary elections, reaching 45% of the votes throughout the country and even winning in the Province of Buenos Aires, whose list of national deputies was headed by Graciela Fernández Meijide, a rising figure in national politics from the FREPASO.

Alfonsín then became director of the Instituto Programático de La Alianza (IPA). Under the direction of Alfonsín, the IPA was organized as an open space in which hundreds of intellectuals, specialists and activists, from all tendencies and areas of activity, participated in the elaboration of the Alliance's government program and a scheme of new theoretical and political paradigms, guides for action, that would support a new «alliance culture» with social democratic characteristics. The task of synthesis was left to Dante Caputo. However, in the end, the Alliance candidates rejected the IPA's programmatic proposals and presented a more moderate alternative program. In fact, the Alliance presented itself to the elections with two programs, the one prepared by the IPA under the direction of Alfonsín, and the one prepared by the candidates personally. This disagreement led Alfonsín to resign in February 1999 from the leadership of the IPA, from the UCR Political Action Commission and from the possibility of fighting for the presidency of the UCR National Committee.

In 1998, President Carlos Menem launched a confused campaign to be allowed his third term, which included the possibility of a plebiscite or special authorization from the Supreme Court. Faced with this, Alfonsín reacted by warning that in this case the Alliance would call for civil disobedience, because it would imply an institutional coup. He said then:

The subject is of extraordinary importance, because it means ending the institutions of the Nation, transforming a democratic government into a de facto government... with the pact (of Olivos) the President gave his word. It's not a personal matter, but it's obvious that I was a protagonist. That's why I feel betrayed.

Finally, on March 10, 1999, the Chamber of Deputies declared that Menem could not be reelected again.

On June 17, Alfonsín suffered a serious car accident, in which he feared for his life, but from which he recovered faster than expected.

In the presidential elections of October 24, 1999, the presidential candidate of the Alliance, Fernando de la Rúa, won.

In November Alfonsín was appointed vice president of the Socialist International and in December unanimously elected president of the National Committee of the UCR on the proposal of Fernando de la Rúa.

During the Rúa government, Alfonsín maintained an intermediary role between the diverse and heterogeneous forces that made up the Alliance, in order to preserve their unity. However, as President De la Rúa accentuated his alliance with the most conservative sectors, Alfonsín gradually distanced himself from the government.

In the parliamentary elections of October 2001, he was elected senator by the minority of the province of Buenos Aires.

2002-2008

October 1, 2008: then President Cristina Kirchner and her husband, former President Néstor Kirchner, receiving Alfonsín on the occasion of opening her bust in the President's Hall of the Casa Rosada.

Alfonsín in 2003.

On December 20, 2001, in the midst of an economic crisis and social unrest —which included the so-called "cacerolazo"—, President De la Rúa resigned. Alfonsín, as a senator, supported the election of Eduardo Duhalde as provisional president, to later resign from his seat in July 2002. Roberto Lavagna, Minister of Economy under Duhalde and Kirchner (until 2005), had been Secretary of Foreign Trade at the time of Alfonsín for a brief period. During his term as senator, Alfonsín actively collaborated with the provisional government, and it was he who advised Duhalde to appoint Lavagna as Minister of Economy.

On March 24, 2006, 30 years after the 1976 military coup, Alfonsín led an act in front of the Navy Mechanics School (ESMA), in which he vindicated the role of his government in the trial of the boards and its human rights policy, and questioned the government of Néstor Kirchner, for the non-consensual modification of the law on the Council of the Magistracy.

In 2008, Alfonsín, afflicted with a serious ailment, underwent treatment in the United States. On July 2 of the same year, the Legislature of the Province of Buenos Aires named him an illustrious citizen, recognizing him for "his permanent contribution to democracy and human rights." That same night, the tribute act was held at the Teatro Argentino de La Plata, where more than 4,000 people thanked him for his inexhaustible defense of human rights and democracy.

That same year, on October 1, in a tribute directed by President Cristina Kirchner, which was attended by more than 400 people, a bust was inaugurated in her honor in the Hall of Busts of the Casa Rosada.

Freemasonry

Alfonsín also belonged to Freemasonry. This information had been revealed in 2021 by one of the main promoters of Freemasonry in Argentina, Professor Antonio Las Heras, and in 2022 it was confirmed by Pablo Lázaro, Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Argentina of Free and Accepted Masons. On March 31, 2022, on the anniversary of his death, Lázaro himself, from the official page of the Grand Lodge, published the following statement: "The anniversary of his passage to O:.AND:. It is a great opportunity to share with everyone the former President of the Nation's membership of the Independence Lodge, in which he shared the work with other HH:. identified with the cause of Human Rights, freedom, Democracy and Justice as Simón Lázara, whose work is permanently valued and remembered. Argentine Freemasonry pays homage to a man, a president and a Brother who magnifies our Order". That same year, on another anniversary of his presidential assumption, on December 10, the Grand Lodge organized Tribute to Alfonsín in the Recoleta Cemetery. In it, Eduardo Lázara took the floor, in his position as Grand Second Warden, and delivered a speech on the work of the government 1983-1989 and the importance of Freemasons such as Alfonsín and Dante Caputo. As he expressed, "Alfonsín shared Masonic jobs in the Independence Lodge, which was also made up of other personalities who had a high commitment to the defense of human rights, democratic life, and the construction of the Republic&# 34;.

Death

Cartel placed in tribute to Alfonsín in the house of the Radical Civic Union in the city of Córdoba.

Farmhouses at Alfonsín's funeral in Buenos Aires City.

He died at the age of 82, on March 31, 2009, due to lung cancer and after his health was aggravated, in his last days, by bronchial aspiration pneumonia.

The Government of Argentina decreed three days of national mourning for the death and his remains were veiled from the early hours of April 1, 2009 in the Blue Room of the National Congress attended by authorities and politicians from different parties, a Approximate number of 80,000 people who had to wait in line between five and six hours. Among the political authorities who participated in the event were former presidents Carlos Menem, Fernando De la Rúa, Eduardo Duhalde and Néstor Kirchner; President Cristina Fernández could not be present because she was at the G-20 Summit in London. The following day they were taken in a military carriage escorted by the Regiment of Grenadiers on Horseback to the Recoleta Cemetery, in Buenos Aires. The remains of the former president rested temporarily in the vault of the fallen in the Revolution in the Park until the 16 May they were transferred to an individual monument in the same cemetery in a place built on gray and beige marble, where there is a cross on top and a luminous stained glass window through which a dim light enters. The phrase from the preamble to the National Constitution that he used to repeat during the presidential campaign is engraved on a marble, as a review of his intentions and legacy: «... In order to establish the national union, strengthen justice, consolidate internal peace, provide the common defense, promote the general welfare and ensure the benefits of freedom for us, for our posterity and for all the men of the world who want to inhabit the Argentine soil...».

Alfonsín's death also prompted international reactions. Peru and Paraguay decreed one and three days of national mourning respectively, while the presidents of Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Nicaragua and Chile sent strong messages of condolences on the death. Uruguayan President Tabaré Vázquez passed through Congress, as well as former foreign presidents Julio María Sanguinetti (from Uruguay), Fernando Henrique Cardoso and José Sarney (from Brazil). Condolences also came from Spain from President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and the leader of the Popular Party, Mariano Rajoy, as well as from the OAS and the United States. US President Barack Obama sent Cristina Fernández a letter in which she wrote « President Alfonsín was a founding figure in the consolidation of democracy in Latin America. We join those throughout the Americas who express their respect and esteem for his integrity and his commitment to democratic principles and human rights ».Finally, a mass was celebrated in his memory in the City of Vatican.

Tributes

Band and staff of Raúl Alfonsín.

On June 20, 2009, the "Presidente Dr. Raúl Ricardo Alfonsín" in the town of Villa Zagala, General San Martín district, in the Province of Buenos Aires.

In December 2012, the Deliberative Council of Ramallo, Province of Buenos Aires, at the request of the Radical Youth of Ramallo, declared and recognized, through a resolution, the former president of the Nation Dr. Raúl Alfonsín, «Father of democracy argentina», as an honorary title post mortem; and invited the Deliberative Councils of the Province, the Chamber of Deputies of the Province and the Chamber of Deputies of the Nation to issue in the same sense. Similarly, on December 10, 2012, the Monument to Raúl Alfonsín was inaugurated in the town of Villa Ramallo.

In April 2018, the Konex Foundation awarded the "Konex de Honor" award to Raúl Alfonsín for considering him an outstanding personality who died in the last decade.

In the years after his death, Raúl Alfonsín's positive appreciation grew and he received multiple tributes throughout the country. Statues and busts were inaugurated in different cities in his honor: La Plata, Vicente López, Mar del Plata, Chascomús, Dolores, San Juan, Córdoba, Chubut, among other locations.

Alfonsín's bust in the Bust Salon.

Distinctions and Decorations

Raúl Alfonsín's Arms Shield as a Knight of the Order of Isabella the Catholic.

• : Grand Cross, Special Class, Order to Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
• : Special Class of the Order of King Abdulaziz (1986)
• : Necklace of the Order of the South Cross
• : Gran Cruz de la Orden al Mérito de Chile
• : Grand Necklace of the Order of Boyacá
• : Necklace of the Order of Elizabeth the Catholic (8 June 1984)
• : Grand Necklace of the Order of Sikatuna (17 July 1986)
• : Grand Cross Knight adorned with the Grand Cord of the Order to the Merit of the Italian Republic (11 March 1985)
• : Grand Cross of the Order of Chrysanthemum
• : Necklace of the Order of the Aztec Eagle (4 April 1984)
• : Grand Cross of the Medal of the National Congress of Peru (1985)
• : Medal of the National Congress of Venezuela

Doctor Honoris Causa

• : Universidad Tecnológica Nacional de Buenos Aires (1984)
• : University of New York (1985)
• : University of New Mexico (1985)
• : Yale University (1986)
• : University of Bologna (1987)
• : Cuyo National University (1987)
• : University of Santiago de Compostela (1988)
• : Universidad Complutense de Madrid (1988)
• : University of Naples (1990)
• : Universidad Nacional del Litoral (1996)
• : Universidad Nacional de Río Cuarto (1998)
• : University of the Centre (1998)
• : South Technological University in Tierra de Fuego (1998)
• : Universidad Nacional de San Luis (1999)
• : National University of Luján (1999)
• : Quilmes National University (1999)
• : Universidad Nacional de Salta (2005)
• : National University of the Northeast (2008)

Posts

Wrote numerous articles, and books:

• The Argentine question (1981)
• Now, my political proposal (1983)
• What is radicalism (1983)
• Democracy and consensus (1996)
• Political Memory (2004)
• Foundations of the Democratic Republic (2007)

In addition, a recorded conversation of more than 50 hours by Pablo Giussani, edited by Editorial Sudamericana with the title Why, doctor Alfonsín? (1987), in the that reflects on facts of political life, his militancy and his ideals.