From the Revolution of Joy to the Agreement with the IMF. Neo-liberalism, Extern Debt and Dependency during the Government of Macri

Abstract

This work analyzes the discursive and argumentative strategies of Mauricio Macri to legitimize the subordination agreement to the IMF in 2018. Macri tried to justify the financial agreement through the metaphor of the journey of a gradualist path towards a better future for all Argentines and as the only possible alternative. In this framework, the preventive agreement with the Fund constituted a realistic and necessary decision, which responded to unforeseen changes in the international context and lacked alternatives. As it was the correct path and the only possible one to balance public accounts, promote growth and development, going off that path meant going backwards and generate a strong economic crisis that would harm the entire society. From this narrative of the evolutionary path, Macri staged an optimistic story and sought to disqualify any alternative to the policies of external debt, fierce cut in public and social investment and recessive fiscal adjustment. At the same time, he whip up as blackmail the danger of falling into an even greater crisis if it applied alternative measures to neoliberal ones. From the enunciative level, Macri related the pact with a commitment to tell the Truth, inscribed within an ethos of sincerity. This positioned him as a President who supposedly acted in a responsible, sensible and realistic manner. In this way, the President intended to justify the deepening of debt and neoliberal adjustment policies against workers and retirees, which meant recession, a sharp drop in the purchasing power of salaries and assets, an increase of poverty and unemployment, loss of national sovereignty and autonomy and growing of social exclusion.