Two days after the presidential elections here in Argentina, I have seized what I feel to be an opportune moment to pick up where I left off in my study of the roots and flaws of machismo.
I chose now, not only because I have neglected my quest on purpose in fear of actually working out why machismo is so inherently unpleasant and doomed, but also because Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, wife of the late president Nestor Kirchner re-took the presidency on Sunday by some 53,9pc.
Cristina, or “esa mujer” (“that woman”) as her not so avid porteño fans refer to her, began her first term in office immediately after the end of her husband’s second.
Certainty this time round as to whether or not she would run again was somewhat lacking in the first quarter of 2011.
“Cristina is tired,” explained many a newspaper, in the run-up to the announcement of the presidential candidates. “The death of Nestor in October of last year seems to have used up all of Cristina’s political energy,” one family friend commented to me over coffee in May.
Despite my recent introduction to the country’s politics last year, I had even noticed Cristina’s fatigue and morose public appearances, the dramatic impact of which was heightened by her strict dedication to mourning dress.
However, Mrs. Fernandez was quick to erase any trace of doubt in her followers and spectators when on 21 June she announced her re-election campaign. “Please don’t worry,” she told Argentinians through a television broadcast. “I am fine and will be running again to serve my country.”
“So you’ve got yourself a female president! Isn’t that great?” My nana asked me over the phone, long distance from Boston, Mass.
I couldn’t bear to disagree even in the slightest with my nana, and gave an ever-so half-hearted “yes” in response.
The trouble is, I wouldn’t even know where to start to explain why this female figure, whose achievements and high-powered position as a leader of a Latin-American country should not necessarily make feminists worldwide incredibly proud.
A long standing problem for any foreigner in Argentina is coming to terms with the political jungle that Argentina has created for itself. As a foreign correspondent, I admit that at times, even I still find it very hard to understand.
How can a woman president, who, claiming the presidency by a landslide for a second time, not make a feminist absolutely ecstatic and full of hope for a country where the machismo is so strong and pungent you can almost smell it in the air?*
I, two years on, am still trying to answer my own question.
I refuse to merely brush Mrs. Fernandez off as a puppet of her late husband’s regime, as would the opposition. However, I also refuse to instantly accept her as a role model for feminists everywhere, if for nothing else, but for leading a country where a woman’s reproductive rights are severely limited.
Red paint that has run and dried, un-coincidentally like fresh blood, scream the words “Abortion is murder” from the outer walls of the state university medical school building. Like the eyes of a portrait painting, the words follow pedestrians around the entire building, which is conveniently located next to one of the largest public hospitals in Buenos Aires, hospital de las clinicas.
In Argentina, abortion is a crime punishable by imprisonment, except in cases where the pregnancy is the result of rape, when the mother’s life is in danger or when she is mentally ill or disabled.
However, according to a study prepared by experts from the University of Buenos Aires and the centre for population studies, every year some 460,000 to 600,000 Argentinian women resort to abortion.
According to journalist Mariana Carbajal, every hour seven women are discharged from a public hospital in Argentina after being treated for abortion-related complications.
“Complications resulting from abortions,” Carbajal adds, “have been the leading cause of maternal death in this country for the past 25 years.”
Can we argue that limited reproductive rights in Argentina have to do with its inherently flawed machista tradition, even though the country is led by a woman? Is the country’s female president more machista than we realize?
The research continues…
*I mean quite literally – the smell most common to fill one’s nostrils as walking down almost any street in capital federal is that of meat cooking on the parilla, or barbecue, which is “a smell produced by men's hardwork here in Argentina,” a porteño clarified for me once.
