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Relato K (English: K narrative) is the name given by their critics to the alleged propaganda that promotes Kirchnerism in Argentina. The expression has been part of Argentine public debate during the 2010s and 2020s and thus frequently used by journalists and politicians. [1] [2] The concept has also been used and studied by historians and political scientists. [3] [4]
The main overarching theme of the "Relato K" is a purported conflict between the people and the factions that oppose the general will. [5] [6] Under this interpretation, Néstor and Cristina Kirchner are aligned with the people. [7] The latter side is usually composed by the non-Kirchnerite media (mainly the Clarín newspaper), [8] [9] the rural industries, [10] [11] [5] the financial services, [12] the vulture funds, [13] [14] and the imperialism and local Argentines aligned with it. [7] 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. [7]
Kirchnerism polarizes all people and organizations under this scheme, and does not acknowledge neutral parties. [15] [16] As a result, those who do not agree with Kirchnerism find it hard to stay neutral, and usually become anti-Kirchnerite themselves. [17] [ better source needed ]
Most information, people and events that would contradict the main premises of the Relato K are simply ignored, instead of explained. [18]
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, which owned the licence up to that point for a pay-per-view service, it was announced as an attempt to guarantee free access to football broadcasting. The nationalized football broadcasting was named Fútbol para todos (English: Football for All). It was used afterwards to promote Kirchnerite propaganda. [16] No private ads were used in the segment of television advertisement, which included only state announcements, and attacks to rival parties and the press, either inside state announcements or in 6, 7, 8 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. [19] [20]
The Kirchner government hired people to write in blogs, social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, internet forums and other web pages of public access. [21] Known as "Blogueros K" or "Cyber K", they were financed by the Chief of the Cabinet of Ministers. Their interventions are usually disruptive, and focused on discrediting the opponents with insults and cyberbullying. [21] An investigation from the TV program Periodismo para todos revealed a network of social bots registered in Twitter, posting messages of advocacy of the Kirchners. According to the investigation, 400 users committed identity fraud, 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 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. [22]
An instruction manual, named "Técnicas de resistencia activa: Micromilitancia" (Spanish: Techniques of active resistance: micromilitancy) was leaked in 2016. [23] 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 . [23] It encouraged 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. [23]
In 2021, Argentine historian Luis Alberto Romero (es) denounced that hundreds of articles on the history of Argentina were manipulated in the Spanish-language Wikipedia "with the classic taste of the K narrative":
In 2014, I was in charge of an Argentine History Encyclopedia, published by Clarín. I reviewed hundreds of articles in Wikipedia related to Argentine history, from little-known fighters for independence to well-known personalities of more recent history. There were few cases in which I did not find an intrusion or manipulation with the classic taste of the K narrative (Spanish: Relato K). [3]
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. [24] [10] [25]
During her governments, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner frequently used words in both grammatical genders, instead of using the standard male form. A common case is to replace the word "todos" (Spanish: "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. [26]
A group of intellectuals that supported the Kirchners' presidencies, Carta Abierta created the neologism "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. 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. [27] [28]
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner made a frequent use of the cadena nacional 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, it was used to make political announcements and opening of buildings and organizations. Some cadenas even featured comedy and part of a hip hop music concert. [29] 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. [30]
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 as an abuse of power. Director Martín Sabbatella ruled that the cadenas were legal, repeating the arguments advanced by Fernández de Kirchner. [31]
Fernando de la Rúa was elected president in 1999 in the Alliance ticket. He resigned during the December 2001 riots in Argentina, which brought the Convertibility plan 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, Diana Conti and Débora Giorgi. Still, Kirchnerism makes frequent harsh criticisms to the Alliance, 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. [32] [ better source needed ]
The Relato K does not have a coherent perspective of the cacerolazos (banging pots), 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. 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. [33] [34] Kirchnerism employed cacerolazos as a protest tactic against Mauricio Macri, but those were renamed as "Ruidazos", to avoid the contradiction.
Mauricio Macri became president in 2015, and succeeded Cristina Kirchner in office. His presidency is compared with the 1955 Revolución Libertadora military coup, which deposed Juan Perón. [35] 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. [35]
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. [36]
El camino de Santiago , a documentary about the Santiago Maldonado case, was released in 2018. It was co-written by Florencia Kirchner, the Kirchners' daughter, and directed by Tristán Bauer, who had formerly occupied different posts in the Argentine state-controlled media system under the Kirchners' administration, as well as the Venezuelan government's TV network Telesur, and would later be minister of Culture in the cabinet of president Alberto Fernández. [37] The documentary was criticized by then Security Minister Patricia Bullrich, who was in charge of the case at the time. She said that it was an example of the Relato K and that Kirchnerism tried to shoehorn it as a case of a forced disappearance to draw comparisons between the government of Mauricio Macri and the National Reorganization Process. She pointed out that some people interviewed in the documentary, such as Matias Santana, were tried for perjury. [2]
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, 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. [38] The period is named "Década ganada" (Spanish: "Earned decade"), a term used as a dichotomy of the name "Década perdida" (Spanish: "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. [39] [40]
The usual way to describe the period as the "Década ganada" is to compare the economic figures with the 1998–2002 Argentine great depression, 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. [41] [ better source needed ]
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, to decrease the morale of the people. As a result, she made an extensive use of the cadena nacional (initially conceived as an emergency population warning) to announce the news that she considered that did not had a significant news coverage.
The union leader Hugo Moyano, who supported the Kirchners at that point, attended a Kirchnerite political rally with a banner that reads "Clarín miente" (Spanish: 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, to discredit it. Despite the defamation campaign, Clarín is still the highest sold Argentine newspaper. [42] [ better source needed ]
As other contemporary left-wing populists in South America, the Kirchners make frequent praises to democracy in their speeches, to conceal their authoritarian policies[ unbalanced opinion? ]. [43] 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. [43] 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. [43] The 2011 presidential elections, won by Cristina Kirchner by a 54%, was often cited as a source of legitimacy for any policy.[ citation needed ] However, the Relato K does not grant a similar recognition to other elected governors that oppose them, such as Mauricio Macri. [44] [ better source needed ]
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. [45]
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. [45] [46] 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 and the Kirchner involvement in the Operation Car Wash. [45] A third approach relies on anti-imperialism and proposes that the scandals would be defamation campaigns seeking to topple them. [38] The impeachment of Dilma Rousseff is cited as well, proposing it to be a region-wide attack over the leaders of the pink tide, despite the lack of evidence of it. [45] A fourth approach proposed that Claudio Bonadio 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. [45]
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. [47] [ better source needed ]
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. [48]
The philosopher Ricardo Forster considered that all political movements have a relato, but wrote that there is a limit on the amount of manipulation of information that may be used by it 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. [49] Historian Norberto Galasso 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. [50] 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 from the program 6, 7, 8 rejected that interpretation. [51]
Néstor Carlos Kirchner Ostoić was an Argentine lawyer and politician who served as the President of Argentina from 2003 to 2007. A member of the Justicialist Party, he previously served as Governor of Santa Cruz Province from 1991 to 2003, and mayor of Río Gallegos from 1987 to 1991. He later served as the first ever First Gentleman of Argentina during the first tenure of his wife, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Ideologically, he identified himself as a Peronist and a progressive, with his political approach called Kirchnerism.
Cristina Elisabet Fernández de Kirchner, often referred to by her initials CFK, is an Argentine lawyer and politician who served as President of Argentina from 2007 to 2015 and later as Vice President of Argentina from 2019 to 2023 under President Alberto Fernández, as well as the first lady of Argentina during the tenure of her husband, Néstor Kirchner, from 2003 to 2007. She was the second female president of Argentina and the first elected female president of Argentina. Ideologically, she identifies herself as a Peronist and a progressive, with her political approach called Kirchnerism. Since 2024, she has been the president of the Justicialist Party, the main opposition party to the government of Javier Milei.
Página 12 is a newspaper published in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was founded on 25 May 1987 by journalist Jorge Lanata and writers Osvaldo Soriano and Alberto Elizalde Leal.
Aníbal Domingo Fernández is an Argentine Justicialist Party politician, lawyer, and certified public accountant. Throughout his career, he has remained a close ally to the former Presidents Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Between 2021 and 2023, he served as Argentina's Minister of Security in the cabinet of President Alberto Fernández.
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 members on the show's panel, and its motto was you are the sixth one. Since it was broadcast by Channel 7 at 8 p.m., the name was shortened to "6, 7, 8". In late 2009, the program was moved to 9 p.m., a new segment was added to be aired on Sundays at night, and new guest panelists were invited, making it more than six members. Nevertheless, the show's name remained unchanged.
The Argentine Governments of Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner had several conflicts with major media groups. Kirchner accused the Clarín Group, La Nación, Perfil, and related media of having promoted their overthrow.
The Presidency of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner began on 10 December 2007, when she became President of Argentina. She was an Argentine Senator for the Buenos Aires Province at the time of her victory in the 2007 Presidential election. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner became the second female president of Argentina, and the first one directly elected as such. In elections of November 2015, she was succeeded by Mauricio Macri as President.
Federal Peronism, also known as Dissident Peronism, is the faction or branch of either moderate, centrist or right-wing Peronism, that is currently identified mostly by its opposition to Kirchnerism, the left-wing faction of Peronism.
Periodismo para todos is an Argentine investigative journalism television program. It is hosted by the journalist Jorge Lanata, and airs on Sunday nights in eltrece. It was highly critical during the Cristina Fernández de Kirchner presidency. In 2013, it won several Martín Fierro Awards including best news TV program and best journalistic work for Jorge Lanata. During Fernández de Kirchner's presidency, it was censored in several provinces of Argentina with governors aligned with the president: Tucumán, Formosa Mendoza and Río Negro.
A number of cacerolazos, pot-banging protests, took place in several cities of Argentina on September 13 and November 8, 2012. The first, in September 13, was a national protest against the policies of the president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. The protests generated significant repercussions in local politics. The second, on November 8, was another much more massive protest in several cities in Argentina, including Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Rosario, Mendoza, Olivos, among many others throughout Greater Buenos Aires and other regions. There were also protests in Argentine embassies and consulates in cities such as New York, Miami, Madrid, Sydney, Bogotá, Santiago and Barcelona, among others. Its complaints were almost the same, but the difference in size was very big. The protests are considered not only a call to Kirchnerism, but also to the opposition, because they did not have a strong leader.
General elections were held in Argentina on 25 October 2015 to elect the President and National Congress, and followed primary elections which were held on 9 August 2015. A second round of voting between the two leading candidates took place on 22 November, after surprisingly close results forced a runoff. On the first runoff voting ever held for an Argentine Presidential Election, Buenos Aires Mayor Mauricio Macri narrowly defeated Front for Victory candidate and Buenos Aires Province Governor Daniel Scioli with 51.34% of votes. Macri's vote count of nearly 13 million votes made it the highest number of votes any candidate has ever received in Argentinian history until Javier Milei's victory in the 2023 presidential election. He took office on 10 December, making him the first freely elected president in almost a century who was not either a Radical or a Peronist.
The K money trail was a 2013 journalistic investigation into political corruption in Argentina. It began with reports on the Periodismo para todos television program hosted by journalist Jorge Lanata. The investigation was named "the K money trail" to imply that former presidents Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner were involved. The investigation showed embezzlement had taken place and suggested the money trail involved Néstor Kirchner, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and an alleged partner, businessman Lázaro Báez. The journalists concluded that Báez diverted money intended for public infrastructure to tax havens. The television show led to an official investigation. In April 2016, Lázaro Baez was arrested for corruption charges and jailed in the Ezeiza Federal Prison Complex awaiting trial. In mid-2020 he was transferred to house arrest as the proceedings were put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, Báez was sentenced to 12 years in prison for money laundering. In June 2023, a separate case looking into possible wrongdoing by Cristina Kirchner was dismissed after the prosecution failed to produce evidence.
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was the President of Argentina between 2007 and 2015 and the Vice President of Argentina between 2019 and 2023.
Lázaro Báez is an Argentine businessman. Báez is a central figure in the so-called corruption scandal known as The Route of the K-Money, surrounding former Argentine presidents Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner; the case was also known as Lázarogate.
Unidos y organizados is an Argentine political coalition, composed by minor organizations that supported the presidency of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. It includes La Cámpora, the Evita Movement, the Humanist party, the Communist party, the Peronist Youth, Nuevo Encuentro, Frente Transversal, M.I.L.E.S. and Corriente de Liberación Nacional (KOLINA). The name was taken from a speech of Cristina Fernández at José Amalfitani Stadium on April 27, 2012.
The Hotesur case broke out in Argentina in 2014. Hotesur is a firm that administers the hotels in El Calafate that belong to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and her family. Initially, it was suspected of not paying taxes, but the investigation headed by judge Claudio Bonadio led to suspicions about a possible case of money laundering, involving the businessman Lázaro Báez as well. As a result, the government attempted to force an impeachment of Bonadio.
Juan José Aranguren is an Argentine businessman. He was Chairman of Royal Dutch Shell of Argentina for fifteen years and served as Minister of Energy during the Mauricio Macri's administration.
The Frente de Todos was a centre-left political coalition of political parties in Argentina formed to support President Alberto Fernández and Vice President Cristina Kirchner.
Veníamos bien, pero de golpe pasaron cosas or simply abbreviated as pasaron cosas, is a phrase that was uttered by Mauricio Macri, former president of Argentina on 17 June 2018 during an interview with Jorge Lanata, well-known for being a fervent opponent of kirchnerism as well of the austere policies of Macri, while trying to justify the worsening of the country's economic situation in the last two months, in which an exchange rate run occurred that culminated in the resignation of the president of the Central Bank of Argentina, Federico Sturzenegger on 14 June, while resigning to the post, it was left an erratic accumulated inflation of 95% and a devaluation of the peso of 175%. By pronouncing the phrase, Macri sought to release the government from any responsibility regarding the country's crisis, stating that it was the product of a greater worldwide situation, in which the world was in a "very volatile financial situation", remainings of the financial crisis of 2007–2008.
On 1 September 2022, a man attempted to assassinate Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the vice president and former president of Argentina. The assailant approached Fernández de Kirchner as she met with supporters outside of her official residence in Recoleta, Buenos Aires, and attempted to shoot her in the head with a semi-automatic pistol. The pistol failed to fire, and the suspect was immediately arrested on scene.
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