La Presidenta

On Sunday, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was elected president of the Republic of Argentina, succeeding her husband, current president Nestor Kirchner. I’ve received a number of emails from friends and family in the States wondering if the election of a female president has been greeted as some kind of breakthrough in Argentina—a cause for rejoicing at the land of silver’s progressivism. The answer, at least in the Federal Capital of Buenos Aires, is an unequivocal no.

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (widely abbreviated as CFK, which I originally, and perplexedly, read as KFC) placed second in Capital Federal, and, while she won Buenos Aires province, she did so only narrowly. She and her husband (whom the press calls “los pengüinos” alluding to their pre-presidential home in the southern Patagonia province of Santa Cruz) are viewed by many here as lucky recipients of a booming economy that has gone through an inevitable period of post-Crisis growth. The skinny of Nestor Kirchner’s administration is that it’s been passive, ineffective, and corrupt. Cristina’s presidency, it’s feared, will represent a continuation, and likely a worsening, of those policies.

My favorite quote that I’ve heard about Cristina came from one of her dozen opponents, the smug governor of San Luis, Alberto Rodriguez Saá. “Cristina has lots of handbags, and few ideas,” Saá said in an interview with La Nacion, Buenos Aires’ broadsheet daily. It would be easy to label Saá’s remark as misogynist (although to his credit, Saá lauded Elisa Carrio’s courage in the same interview), but Cristina’s public appearance—coiffed, always dressed to the nines and, indeed, often accompanied by a designer handbag—seems to bring on comments like Saá’s. This brings me back to the piece I wrote this summer for the Chicago Tribune advocating Oprah as the best presidential choice for the Democrats. I thought, and continue to think, that the press and the public tend to have two categories for famous women: hyper-masculine ice queens (Merkel, Thatcher, Clinton), and flighty, emotional babes short on substance (Royal, Kirchner, although this category tends not to apply to female politicians who, by and large, feel it's better to be feared than loved). How appropriate then that Ségolène Royal was present at CFK’s election night party at the Intercontinental Hotel in Buenos Aires—two women whom the press never quite took seriously, although the penguin triumphed while the Parisian went down in defeat.

And what was Buenos Aires like on this momentous election night? My friends and I, used to the party-all-the-time spirit of the city, expected to find demonstrators at the Plaza de Mayo, a rabid crowd outside Cristina’s bunker at the Intercontinental, and a buzzing energy or edgy anxiety on the streets. Instead, there was only silence. No one cared. “It’s Sunday,” repeated a few cops, security guards, and pedestrians. Of course, it’s really about the tortured relationship between Argentina and its politics—an institution that let’s people down everywhere, but takes special pleasure in crushing the hopes and dreams of Argentines.

Now, the magazines are asking, “how will she govern?” CFK seems to want to spend more time out of the country—especially in the US and Europe—and is less enamored than her husband of Chávez and his policies. Indeed, Cristina reported that the most popular man in Latin American, George Walker Bush, has invited her to the White House.

If she’s as short on substance as many porteños say, then Argentina’s best hope is that she can schmooze up foreign investors abroad, while a few good cabinet appointees manage to guide Argentina through the looming inflation crisis. No one here is jumping for joy, but maybe it’s time the country had a little more luck than otherwise.