I’d have to read on the argentinean junta, but if the experience there is anything like Brazil’s there’s only a misconception that it was ‘neoliberal’. For starters, the regimes predated the washington consensus. And as it turns out, authoritarian officers aren’t liberal people in any way. What the brazilian junta did was un-do or freeze social progress. If before you can see the state capitalist machine wanting to develop internal consumption, the juntas fully endorsed outright fascism and social hierarchy. ‘What is good for the rich is good for the poor’, rather than negotiated settlements or any sort of policy oriented towards the consumer base or unionization. Nonetheless, what was good for the rich was to keep the developmentist money spigot going, only for the rich. Privatization is a post-volcker shock, post hyperinflation political project.
It’s kinda like how Bolsonaro not that long ago actually liked Hugo Cháves. The brain of latin american officers is a mush of wanting to impose strongman rule and only some of them come across having an actual ideology - leftist or otherwise.
I could be wrong though. Maybe the Argentinean junta was less statist than ours. But even so, Menem, Macri and now Milei does make for a nice aliteration does it not?
I’d have to read on the argentinean junta, but if the experience there is anything like Brazil’s there’s only a misconception that it was ‘neoliberal’. For starters, the regimes predated the washington consensus. And as it turns out, authoritarian officers aren’t liberal people in any way. What the brazilian junta did was un-do or freeze social progress. If before you can see the state capitalist machine wanting to develop internal consumption, the juntas fully endorsed outright fascism and social hierarchy. ‘What is good for the rich is good for the poor’, rather than negotiated settlements or any sort of policy oriented towards the consumer base or unionization. Nonetheless, what was good for the rich was to keep the developmentist money spigot going, only for the rich. Privatization is a post-volcker shock, post hyperinflation political project.
It’s kinda like how Bolsonaro not that long ago actually liked Hugo Cháves. The brain of latin american officers is a mush of wanting to impose strongman rule and only some of them come across having an actual ideology - leftist or otherwise.
I could be wrong though. Maybe the Argentinean junta was less statist than ours. But even so, Menem, Macri and now Milei does make for a nice aliteration does it not?