Relato K
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''Relato K'' ( es, K narrative) is the name given by their critics to the alleged
propaganda Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded ...
that promotes Kirchnerism in Argentina.


Media


Television

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner nationalized the broadcasting of football matches of the Argentine Football Association. Meant as a measure to damage the finances of the
Clarín group Grupo Clarín S.A. is the largest media conglomerate in Argentina. Overview Established as such in 1999, it includes the '' Clarín'' newspaper (the most-widely circulated in Latin America), Papel Prensa (the nation's principal newsprint manufact ...
, which owned the licence up to that point for a
pay-per-view Pay-per-view (PPV) is a type of pay television or webcast service that enables a viewer to pay to watch individual events via private telecast. Events can be purchased through a multichannel television platform using their electronic program guid ...
service, it was announced as an attempt to guarantee free access to football broadcasting. The nationalized football broadcasting was named ''
Fútbol para todos Fútbol para todos (''Football for Everyone'') was an Argentine television program that presented matches and tournaments of the Argentine Primera División, Primera B Nacional and Copa Argentina, as well as matches of the Copa Libertadores and C ...
'' (English: Football for All). It was used afterwards to promote Kirchnerite propaganda. No private ads were used in the segment of
television advertisement A television advertisement (also called a television commercial, TV commercial, commercial, spot, television spot, TV spot, advert, television advert, TV advert, television ad, TV ad or simply an ad) is a span of television programming produce ...
, which included only state announcements, and attacks to rival parties and the press, either inside state announcements or in ''
6, 7, 8 ''Six in the Seven at Eight'', usually called ''6, 7, 8'', was an Argentine political commentary TV program broadcast by the government-run Channel 7 since 2009. Its name comes from the fact that, when it first started airing, there were five memb ...
'' ads. ''6, 7, 8'' was aired immediately after the matches, but the television rating did not stick, and dropped from 15 points to 2. The lack of advertising from private enterprises caused a huge deficit in the program, forcing the state to invest 3.86 million dollars on a daily basis to keep it up.


Internet

The Kirchner government hired people to write in
blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...
s,
social network A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...
s such as
Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
and
Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
,
internet forum An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporar ...
s and other web pages of public access. Known as "Blogueros K" or "Cyber K", they were financed by the
Chief of the Cabinet of Ministers The Chief of the Cabinet of Ministers of the Argentine Nation ( es, Jefe de Gabinete de Ministros de la Nación Argentina; JGM), more commonly known simply as the Cabinet Chief ( es, Jefe de Gabinete) is a ministerial office within the governmen ...
. Their interventions are usually disruptive, and focused on discrediting the opponents with insults and cyberbullying.Mendelevich, pp. 52-54 An investigation from the TV program '' Periodismo para todos'' revealed a network of social bot registered in Twitter, posting messages of advocacy of the Kirchners. According to the investigation, 400 users committed
identity fraud Identity fraud is the use by one person of another person's personal information, without authorization, to commit a crime or to deceive or defraud that other person or a third person. Most identity fraud is committed in the context of financial ad ...
, using profile photos of other users. All those accounts had similar URLs, similar contents, similar posts, and published posts in the same time of the day. This network of users produced nearly 6,000 messages by month and 200 by day. This number of messages helped to establish "trending topics", the most popular topics of the day in Twitter. Ministers Nilda Garré and
Juan Manuel Abal Medina Juan Manuel Abal Medina (born March 1, 1945) is an Argentine journalist and politician who served as Secretary General of the Peronist Movement between 1972 and 1974. He later became a prominent lawyer in Mexico. Early life and entry into polit ...
shared many messages of those fake accounts, to further increase their popularity. The program also interviewed some people whose photos were used for the Twitter accounts, and confirmed that those accounts did not belong to them. An instruction manual, named "Técnicas de resistencia activa: Micromilitancia" ( es, Techniques of active resistance: micromilitancy) was leaked in 2016. It instructed people to disrupt Facebook pages and the forums of the most important Argentine newspapers, such as Clarín, La Nación, La Voz, and Infobae. It encourages the use of loaded questions to reveal the points of view of other people, and to reply by posting articles with information that harms the credibility of the government of Mauricio Macri, even if completely unrelated to the main article.


Demonstrations

Since his time as governor of Santa Cruz, Néstor Kirchner employed government-organized demonstrations. When the opposition made an important demonstration against the government, the government organized another one that supported them. This served to install an ideological polarization, well-known as ''la grieta'', and justify the government from ignoring the requests of the first demonstration.


Neologisms

During her governments, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner frequently used words in both
grammatical gender In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns ...
s, instead of using the standard male form. A common case is to replace the word "todos" ( es, "everybody") with the phrase "todos y todas", to address both male and female voters. This style grew beyond Kirchnerism and was adopted in other countries. However, during her vice president tenure, she started to refer male and female not by the character that may be "a" or "o", but the @ may be used in written language. Those styles have been rejected by the
Real Academia Española The Royal Spanish Academy ( es, Real Academia Española, generally abbreviated as RAE) is Spain's official royal institution with a mission to ensure the stability of the Spanish language. It is based in Madrid, Spain, and is affiliated with ...
. A group of intellectuals that supported the Kirchners' presidencies, Carta Abierta created the
neologism A neologism Greek νέο- ''néo''(="new") and λόγος /''lógos'' meaning "speech, utterance"] is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not been fully accepted int ...
"''Destituyente''" (which is not in the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy), a synonym of "''Destituidor''", during the
2008 Argentine government conflict with the agricultural sector The 2008 Argentine agrarian strike refers to the conflict between the Argentine national government and the 4 entities that represented the agriculture sector. The crisis began in March 2008 with four agricultural sector employers organizations tak ...
. It is used to describe someone or something that may be promoting a soft coup. The word has been used frequently since then to describe the opposition or critics of the government.


Cadenas

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner made a frequent use of the ''
Cadena nacional In several Latin American countries, a (; plural ), also referred to as a () or (), is a joint broadcast, over various media (usually radio and television), directed at the general population of a state. Initially conceived as a form of emergen ...
'' to broadcast messages. It is a system where the regular programming of all TV and radio networks is interrupted and replaced by a message delivered by the presidency. Although it was initially conceived as an
emergency population warning An emergency population warning is a method whereby local, regional, or national authorities can contact members of the public en masse to warn them of an impending emergency. These warnings may be necessary for a number of reasons, including: * ...
, it was used to make political announcements and opening of buildings and organizations. Some ''cadenas'' even featured
stand-up comedy Stand-up comedy is a comedy, comedic performance to a live audience in which the performer addresses the audience directly from the stage. The performer is known as a comedian, a comic or a stand-up. Stand-up comedy consists of One-line joke ...
and part of a Hip hop music concert. Many ''cadenas'' featured casual conversations of Cristina with alleged common workers and regular citizens. This intended to generate an image of a president close to the people. Later press investigations revealed that these people were low-rank government officials, and the format was eventually dropped. Fernández de Kirchner argued that the ''cadenas'' were legal, as she used them to announce government actions that the mainstream media may be concealing. The usage was denounced in the
Federal Authority for Audiovisual Communication Services The Federal Authority for Audiovisual Communication Services (Spanish: ''Autoridad Federal de Servicios de Comunicación Audiovisual'', AFSCA) was an agency of the government of Argentina with the power to regulate television and radio services. It ...
as an abuse of power. Director
Martín Sabbatella Martín Sabbatella (born 14 April 1970) is an Argentine politician and leader of the New Encounter party. From 1999 to 2009, he was ''intendente'' (mayor) of Morón, a '' partido'' in the Greater Buenos Aires metropolitan area. He was also a mem ...
ruled that the ''cadenas'' were legal, repeating the arguments advanced by Fernández de Kirchner.


Themes

The main overarching theme of the "Relato K" is a purported conflict between the people and the factions that oppose the general will. Under this interpretation, Néstor and Cristina Kirchner are aligned with the people. The latter side is usually composed by the non-Kirchnerite media (mainly the ''Clarín'' newspaper), the rural industries, the
financial services Financial services are the Service (economics), economic services provided by the finance industry, which encompasses a broad range of businesses that manage money, including credit unions, banks, credit-card companies, insurance companies, acco ...
, the
vulture funds A vulture fund is a hedge fund, private-equity fund or distressed debt fund, that invests in debt considered to be very weak or in default (finance), default, known as distressed securities. Investors in the fund profit by buying debt at a dis ...
,Mendelevich, pp. 210–211 and the
imperialism Imperialism is the state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas, often through employing hard power (economic and ...
and local Argentines aligned with it. Specific people or organizations may be placed on either side according to the political needs of the time, and the pro-Kirchner network may shift the support or criticism accordingly. Kirchnerism polarizes all people and organizations under this scheme, and does not acknowledge neutral parties. As a result, those who do not agree with Kirchnerism find it hard to stay neutral, and usually become anti-Kirchnerite themselves. Most information, people and events that would contradict the main premises of the ''Relato K'' are simply ignored, instead of explained.


History of Argentina


Presidency of Fernando de la Rúa

Fernando de la Rúa was elected president in 1999 in the Alliance ticket. He resigned during the
December 2001 riots in Argentina The December 2001 crisis, sometimes known as the Argentinazo (), was a period of civil unrest and rioting in Argentina, which took place during December 2001, with the most violent incidents taking place on 19 and 20 December in the capital, Bu ...
, which brought the
Convertibility plan The Convertibility plan was a plan by the Argentine Currency Board that pegged the Argentine peso to the U.S. dollar between 1991 and 2002 in an attempt to eliminate hyperinflation and stimulate economic growth. While it initially met with cons ...
to an end. Many former members of the De la Rúa's government worked for Kirchner in later years, such as Chacho Álvarez, Nilda Garré,
Juan Manuel Abal Medina Juan Manuel Abal Medina (born March 1, 1945) is an Argentine journalist and politician who served as Secretary General of the Peronist Movement between 1972 and 1974. He later became a prominent lawyer in Mexico. Early life and entry into polit ...
,
Diana Conti Diana Beatriz Conti (born 29 March 1956) is an Argentine lawyer and politician. She was a member of the Argentine National Congress both as a National Deputy (1997–1999; 2005–2017) and as a Senator (2002–2005); she also served as Undersecre ...
and Débora Giorgi. Still, Kirchnerism makes frequent harsh criticisms to the Alliance, in order to imply that only a Peronist may successfully rule in Argentina. None of those former members of the Alliance manifested any concern about those criticisms. The ''Relato K'' does not have a coherent perspective of the '' Cacerolazo''s, a protest tactic employed against De la Rúa. Initially, when the ''cacerolazos'' had so far only been used during the crisis, they were praised as a tool of
direct democracy Direct democracy or pure democracy is a form of democracy in which the Election#Electorate, electorate decides on policy initiatives without legislator, elected representatives as proxies. This differs from the majority of currently establishe ...
. Cristina Kirchner received her own ''cacerolazos'' years later, such as during the 8N protest and the 2008 conflict with the agricultural sector. The Kirchnerite writer Ernesto Laclau considered that those protests came from rich people who may be losing their former privileges, and thus should be ignored. Kirchnerism employed cacerolazos as a protest tactic against Mauricio Macri, but those were renamed as "Ruidazos", to avoid the contradiction.


Presidency of Mauricio Macri

Mauricio Macri became president in 2015, and succeeded Cristina Kirchner in office. His presidency is compared with the 1955 ''
Revolución Libertadora ''Revolución Libertadora'' (; ''Liberating Revolution'') was the coup d'état that ended the second presidential term of Juan Perón in Argentina, on 16 September 1955. Background President Perón was first elected in 1946. In 1949, a ...
'' military coup, which deposed
Juan Perón Juan Domingo Perón (, , ; 8 October 1895 – 1 July 1974) was an Argentine Army general and politician. After serving in several government positions, including Minister of Labour and Vice President of a military dictatorship, he was elected P ...
. Although many judicial cases against Kirchner gained renewed speed when she left office, none of the judges were appointed during the presidency of Macri. The ''Libertadora'' enforced the Peronist proscription with tortures and executions, absent in modern Argentina. The economic problems that were ignored by the ''Relato'' during the presidency of the Kirchners, such as the high inflation, unemployment, poverty and crime rates, are fully blamed on Macri, and treated as if they came into existence during his term in office.


Economy

The economy of Argentina during the Kirchner government saw an increased prosperity, which also took place in most of Latin America during the period. It was caused by the economic growth of
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
, which increased the international prices of primary goods. One of those goods is soybean. Still, the "Relato K" maintains that the economic prosperity is the result of a process of
industrialisation Industrialisation ( alternatively spelled industrialization) is the period of social and economic change that transforms a human group from an agrarian society into an industrial society. This involves an extensive re-organisation of an econo ...
. The period is named "Década ganada" ( es, "Earned decade"), a term used as a dichotomy of the name "Década perdida" ( es, "Lost decade") used to describe the 1980s economic crises in Latin America. Both terms are contested by historians, as the periods had both positive and negative aspects. The usual way to describe the period as the "Década ganada" is to compare the economic figures with the
1998–2002 Argentine great depression The Argentine Great Depression was an economic depression in Argentina, which began in the third quarter of 1998 and lasted until the second quarter of 2002. It followed the fifteen years stagnation and a brief period of free-market reforms. ...
, as in most cases the figures are better than those of the crisis. Other less favourable comparisons are ignored, such as the comparisons with neighbour countries during the same years, or with the economic history of Argentina on a larger scale (for example, with the pre-crisis figures of the 1990s). It also treats the period as an homogeneous one, and ignores the changes in the figures that took place within it.


The press

Despite the presence of a network of supportive media, Cristina Kirchner rarely makes reference to it, and when she talks about "the press" or "the media" in general, she makes reference to the press that is not part of such network. She claims that the media concealed the good news about her government and gave great significance to bad news, in order to decrease the morale of the people. As a result, she made an extensive use of the ''
cadena nacional In several Latin American countries, a (; plural ), also referred to as a () or (), is a joint broadcast, over various media (usually radio and television), directed at the general population of a state. Initially conceived as a form of emergen ...
'' (initially conceived as an
emergency population warning An emergency population warning is a method whereby local, regional, or national authorities can contact members of the public en masse to warn them of an impending emergency. These warnings may be necessary for a number of reasons, including: * ...
) to announce the news that she considered that did not had a significant news coverage. The union leader
Hugo Moyano Hugo Moyano (born January 9, 1944) is an Argentine labour leader who was Secretary General of the CGT, the nation's largest trade union, from 2004 to 2012. A schism developed within the CGT during 2012, and Moyano was elected to head the CGT's dis ...
, who supported the Kirchners at that point, attended a Kirchnerite political rally with a banner that reads "Clarín miente" ( es, Clarín lies), in reference to the '' Clarín'' newspaper. It was incorporated to the "Relato K" as a frequent slogan. It was not used for specific news published by Clarín, but to make reference to the newspaper as a whole, in order to discredit it. Despite the defamation campaign, Clarín is still the highest sold Argentine newspaper.


Democracy

As other contemporary left-wing populists in South America, the Kirchners make frequent praises to democracy in their speeches, in order to conceal their authoritarian policies. They work on the premise that the populist leader is the embodiment of the will of the people, and as such should be allowed to rule with unlimited power. Under this vision, any attempt to place limits, controls or oversight to their actions is described as an attack to democracy, or a veiled attempt to make a coup.Kaiser, pp. 54-55 The 2011 presidential elections, won by Cristina Kirchner by a 54%, was often cited as a source of legitimacy for any policy. However, the ''Relato K'' does not grant a similar recognition to other elected governors that oppose them, such as Mauricio Macri.


Corruption scandals

Many corruption scandals took place during the presidency of Cristina Kirchner, and other were revealed after it. The usual approach to those scandals was to completely ignore them, and make no mention about corruption whatsoever. This approach was abandoned after the decline of kirchnerite media, as independent reporters would usually ask them about the scandals. The answers are always generic, and never address any specific details of the scandals. One of those new approaches is to point to other scandals involving Mauricio Macri, and propose that the corruption scandals involving the Kirchners would not be an actual problem, because all Argentine politicians from all parties would be involved in similar practices. In this line, Ottavis proposed that the Kirchnerite officials are corrupt because they are human beings, subject to temptations. Another approach is to put the blame on the businesspeople that pay bribes, instead of those officials that receive them. This approach was used during the Skanska case, the
José López scandal José Francisco López was a low-profile Argentine politician who worked at the Ministry of Federal Planning, Public Investment and Services under minister Julio de Vido during the presidencies of Néstor and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. He ...
and the Kirchner involvement in the
Operation Car Wash Operation Car Wash ( pt, Operação Lava Jato) was a criminal investigation by the Federal Police of Brazil's Curitiba branch. It began in March 2014 and was initially headed by investigative judge in France, but unlike judges in the common law ...
. A third approach relies on
anti-imperialism Anti-imperialism in political science and international relations is a term used in a variety of contexts, usually by nationalist movements who want to secede from a larger polity (usually in the form of an empire, but also in a multi-ethnic so ...
and proposes that the scandals would be defamation campaigns seeking to topple them. The impeachment of Dilma Rousseff is cited as well, proposing it to be a region-wide attack over the leaders of the
Pink tide The pink tide ( es, marea rosa, pt, onda rosa, french: marée rose), or the turn to the left ( es, giro a la izquierda, link=no, pt, volta à esquerda, link=no, french: tournant à gauche, link=no), is a political wave and perception of a tur ...
, despite the lack of evidence of it. A fourth approach proposed that
Claudio Bonadio Claudio Bonadio (1 February 1956 – 4 February 2020) was an Argentine judge, who was in charge of Federal Criminal and Correctional Court No. 11 since 1994. In that role he intervened in causes of strong impact, some of which involved important ...
investigated and indicted Cristina Kirchner out of hatred, orders from Macri, or even both. This approach was slowly abandoned when several more judges and prosecutors continued with those investigations.


The people

The Kirchners make frequent appeals to emotion, claiming both that they love the people, and that the people love them. Rather than just their own supporters, the sentiment is attributed to the whole population of Argentina.


Kirchnerite interpretation

Cristina Kirchner downplayed the impact of state propaganda, suggesting that private media may be more powerful than it. She based her reasoning in the amount of money involved in the media market, which is bigger than the state budget destined to promote propaganda. The philosopher
Ricardo Forster Ricardo Forster (born 26 September 1957) is an Argentine philosopher, historian of ideas and political critic. He is professor and researcher at Universidad de Buenos Aires and University of Maryland. He is also member of the editorial board ...
considered that all
political movement A political movement is a collective attempt by a group of people to change government policy or social values. Political movements are usually in opposition to an element of the status quo, and are often associated with a certain ideology. Some t ...
s have a ''relato'', but wrote that there is a limit on the amount of manipulation of information that may be used by it in order to stay convincing. He also said that the people who criticize the ''relato'' may be motivated by resentment or elitism. Journalist Alejandro Horowicz considers that the ''relato'' is a tool used in the
class struggle Class conflict, also referred to as class struggle and class warfare, is the political tension and economic antagonism that exists in society because of socio-economic competition among the social classes or between rich and poor. The forms ...
. Historian
Norberto Galasso Norberto Galasso (born 28 July 1936 in Buenos Aires) is a historian and essayist from Argentina, who wrote numerous books related about the history of Argentina. His career as historian spans nearly 40 years. He studied economy in the University o ...
considers that journalism and foreign academia can not be trusted in their descriptions and reports about the Kirchners, as he considers that those have always been dominated by the ruling classes. Writer Pablo Alabarces considers that the state-owned media during the Kirchnerite regime reported reality and the private media reported complex lies and manipulations.
María Julia Oliván María Julia Olivan is an Argentine journalist. Awards Nominations * 2013 Martín Fierro Awards The Martín Fierro Awards ( es, Premios Martín Fierro) is the name of the most prominent awards for Argentine radio and television, granted by AP ...
from the program ''
6, 7, 8 ''Six in the Seven at Eight'', usually called ''6, 7, 8'', was an Argentine political commentary TV program broadcast by the government-run Channel 7 since 2009. Its name comes from the fact that, when it first started airing, there were five memb ...
'' rejected that interpretation.Alabarces & Oliván, p. 18


References


Bibliography

* * * * * *


See also

* Kirchnerism *
Post-truth politics Post-truth politics (also called post-factual politics and post-reality politics) is a political culture where true/false, honesty/lying have become a focal concern of public life and are viewed by popular commentators and academic researchers a ...
* Public image of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner {{Kirchnerism, state=expanded Kirchnerite propaganda Cults of personality Presidency of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner