Social Conflict in Argentina (1989–2017): Democracy in Dispute

• Date: 01 July 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20924369
• Published date: 01 July 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X20924369

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 233, Vol. 47 No. 4, July 2020, 96–111

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20924369

© 2020 Latin American Perspectives

96

Social Conflict in Argentina (1989–2017)

Democracy in Dispute

by

Leandro Gamallo

Translated by

Mariana Ortega-Breña

An analysis of the evolution of social conflicts in Argentina between 1989 and 2017 in

terms of three aspects of collective action—the actors in contention, their main demands, and

their chosen forms of struggle—reveals important changes since the country’s return to

democracy. Collective action has extended to multiple actors, channeled weightier demands,

and expanded its forms. With the emergence of progovernment and conservative social

movements, it has become apparent that not all movement participation in the state implies

weakness, subordination, or co-optation and that social movement action does not necessar-

ily mean democratization or expansion of rights. The right-wing government of 2015 opened

up a new field of confrontation in which old divisions and alliances are being reconfigured.

Un análisis de la evolución de los conflictos sociales en Argentina entre 1989 y 2017 real-

izado a partir de tres grandes dimensiones de la acción colectiva (los actores contenciosos, las

demandas principales que enuncian y las formas de lucha que emplean) revela cambios impor-

tantes. La acción colectiva se ha extendido a más actores, ha canalizado demandas más amplias

y se ha expresado de maneras más heterogéneas. Con el surgimiento de movimientos sociales

oficialistas y opositores de índole conservador, se ha hecho evidente que la participación de las

organizaciones sociales en el estado no siempre significa debilidad, subordinación o cooptación

por parte del estado y que la movilización social no necesariamente implica procesos de democ-

ratización o expansión de derechos. La llegada de una alianza de derecha en 2015 abrió un

nuevo campo de confrontaciones que redefinió antiguas alianzas y divisiones.

Keywords: Social conflict, Collective action, Social movements, Argentina,

Kirchnerism

The analysis of the evolution of social conflicts that follows will address three

fundamentals of collective action: the actors in contention, their demands, and

their modes of struggle. These categories will be linked to the dynamics of polit-

ical-institutional processes and, to a lesser extent, to different models of economic

development. These three aspects will be viewed as independent but interrelated

in such a way that drastic alterations in one area lead to changes in the others.

Transformations in institutional policy and macroeconomic models will be con-

sidered as part of the fundamental context for the various historical struggles.

Leandro Gamallo is a CONICET/IIGG-UBA assistant researcher and an assistant professor of

sociology at the University of Buenos Aires and the author of Violencias colectivas: Linchamientos

en México (2014). Mariana Ortega-Breña is a freelance translator based in Mexico City.

924369LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X20924369LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVESGamallo / SOCIAL CONFLICT IN ARGENTINA

research-article2020

Gamallo / SOCIAL CONFLICT IN ARGENTINA 97

My theoretical framework is based on the so-called emerging synthesis

developed by McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald (1999) and taken up by McAdam,

Tarrow, and Tilly (2005), thus including both empirical and theoretical contri-

butions with regard to resource mobilization, the structure of political oppor-

tunities, and framing. I will survey some of the research on transformations in

the field of conflict using databases of contentious actions, in-depth interviews

with social leaders, and ethnographies on social organizations, among other

things.

StruggleS AgAinSt neoliberAliSm And

itS overthrow (1989–2001)

The last Argentine civil-military coup took place in 1976 and set off a cycle

of reforms that would irreversibly change the social structure, replacing the

previous development model with a pattern of capital accumulation funda-

mentally aimed at financial valorization (Basualdo, 2011).1 The long-term

effects of the changes enacted by the last dictatorship (1976–1983) included the

deindustrialization of the economy and the growing predominance of financial

capital, a readaptation of the state as a redistributive mechanism, and the recon-

figuration of the relationship between capital and labor by means of a geno-

cidal policy that resulted in 30,000 missing activists, the political disarticulation

of the labor movement, and a generalized disciplining of the remaining social

body (Azpiazu, Basualdo, and Khavisse, 2004).

Stemming from the struggles of unions, political parties, and human rights

organizations during the last years of the regime, democracy returned after the

dictatorship’s defeat in the 1982 Malvinas (or Falklands) War. However, that

defeat (which was evidenced by the imprisonment of its main leaders for

crimes against humanity only a few years later) must be assessed in terms of

the success of the long-term transformations within and among social classes

that it caused: the homogenization of the business elite and the heterogeniza-

tion and social and political fragmentation of the working class (Villarreal,

1985). Argentine social conflict, which had centered around the classic dispute

between capitalists and workers, became more complex as the social structure

was transformed.

The breakup of the labor power articulated around the union movement

greatly increased during the 1990s, when the Carlos Menem administrations

(1989–1999) implemented more radical neoliberal policies that affected the

smaller and less concentrated industrial branches and the purchasing power of

workers. Policies including economic openness, financial liberalization, selec-

tive regulation of markets, and the furthering of a new kind of state based on a

broad privatization of public goods and services (Cantamutto and Wainer,

2013) were introduced in response to an acute 1988–1990 economic crisis char-

acterized by hyperinflation and a vertiginous increase of poverty and social

marginality.2 During 1989 Argentina experienced a wave of looting of unprec-

edented proportions in recent history that prefigured transformations in the

collective action of the popular sectors. The looting not only represented new

forms of confrontation that overflowed existing channels for participation but