THE PERONISM FROM CÓRDOBA IN THE EIGHTIES: DEMOCRACY BETWEEN ELECTIONS AND THE MARKET

Abstract

This paper analyses part of the recent history of peronism in Córdoba in the mid-eighties. In this period, there was a direct replacement, driven by an internal coalition called “Renovación Peronista”, along with a symbolic transformation that included the nomination of Domingo Cavallo, a neoliberal economist, as the third candidate for national deputy in the 1987 legislative elections. We aim to show that the “Renovación Peronista” in Córdoba implied two inseparable dimensions: the emergence of a new local party leadership defending democratic values and the consolidation of the representative institutions; and the first approach, in 1987, of the peronism in Córdoba with intellectual and entrepreneurial sectors that demanded structural reforms for a market-oriented economy. Starting from a categorial device that articulates the language of organizational analysis of political parties with the political theory of discourse, we will study in the first place how the local party organization dealt with these internal differences between 1984 and 1987. Then we will analyze the double dimension of the new coalition’s political line: the defense of democratic values and the vindication of structural economical transformations. Throughout this paper, we analyse fragments of local press from those years, with focus in what the main actors of the aforementioned political processes argued to justify their decisions and proposals.