Connecting the 2001 Economic Crisis Recovery and the Tango in Contemporary Argentina
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POLITICS, PERFORMANCE, AND IDENTITY: CONNECTING THE 2001 ECONOMIC CRISIS RECOVERY AND THE TANGO IN CONTEMPORARY ARGENTINA By Olivia Garcia Undergraduate Honors Thesis submitted to the faculty of the International Studies and Dance programs Muhlenberg College May 7, 2020 Thesis Committee: Dr. Cathy Marie Ouellette (History/International Studies), Advisor Dr. Mohsin Hashim (Political Science/International Studies) Dr. Leticia Robles-Moreno (Theatre & Dance) Acknowledgements This honors thesis represents the culmination of two years of independent research on contemporary Argentina. There are many people I wish to thank who have, over the years, been a part of making this project possible. Thank you to Kelly Cannon for providing support for my research, and to the entire Trexler Library staff for assisting in the process of finding and obtaining works from all over the world. I also want to acknowledge and thank the International Studies Department at Muhlenberg College for shaping and framing my research interests and scholarship over the past four years. To my committee members, Dr. Hashim, Dr. Ouellette, and Dr. Robles-Moreno, I thank you for your support, in all forms, over the course of this project. I wish to extend a special thanks to Dr. Ouellette for encouraging me to start an independent study on Argentina in my junior year; if it had not been for that semester, this final and culminating thesis might never have come to fruition. 2 Table of Contents Introduction 4 The Argentine Tango 8 Tango in Perón’s Argentina 13 The 2001 Crisis: Convertibility and the Rupture of Argentine Neoliberalism 17 The Cacerolazos 21 Who Were the Piqueteros? 22 The Tango in Crisis 25 Argentina’s Recovery: The End of Convertibility 26 The Return of the State 28 Kirchnerismo and the New Argentine State 31 The Tango as the ‘Other’ 38 The Tango’s Economic Value 39 Tango’s Renovación in Argentine Identity 43 Export v. Home Tango 45 The Solidification of Tango as Cultural Heritage 47 Conclusion 49 3 Introduction Crises are times of change; when faced with one, the country before the crisis exits it as a different state. The changes which ensue, are, however, not always a rupture from the past, but can also be a return to, or evolution of, said past. In analyzing how a country recovers from a crisis, and how that recovery provides insight into the resulting identity of the people, various metrics of study need to be introduced. It is here where this research will connect the performative with the political. This research focuses on the watershed moment of Argentina’s 2001 economic crisis. This time period brings up essential questions about Argentine identity, specifically in Buenos Aires. Known as the home of the Tango, and as the center of Argentina’s government, Buenos Aires became the place of protest and identity shift during and after the crisis. In this study, the pulse of Argentine identity is concentrated on Buenos Aires, the central government’s hub and the birthplace of the Tango. There are many reasons for this, however the most central being that Tango is most commonly referenced in connection to Buenos Aires– Argentina has within it many folkloric dance styles, however Tango and its role as an identity signifier is, rightly or wrongly, concentrated in Buenos Aires and aggregated to the rest of the country. This connection between Tango, Buenos Aires, and the crisis is essential to framing my research questions. In studying the post-crisis recovery in Buenos Aires, the importance of Kirchner’s presidency is studied in connection with Tango’s reintroduction into society and the reintroduction of the state in Buenos Aires. That leads to my research question, which asks: to what extent is the renovación of the Tango, both as a commodity and as a genuine form of popular expression, a result of the 2001 economic crisis and the subsequent recovery in the city of Buenos Aires? This question connects the political and economic changes in the city and uses performance as a measure of continuity or change in the time period. 4 Studying performance is an untapped phenomenon that should be used to understand how citizens define their identity in response to political and social upheaval. Analyses of political and economic change can, at times, be confined to certain perimeters, bringing about a straight- forward and often one-sided investigation into complex crises. However, it is my understanding that the inclusion of performance, because of the ways it presents national identity, is a part of the puzzle of investigating a state in a moment of hardship. In this study, I define performance as not only art that is done with an audience in mind, but also as the acts that are done everyday which reflect the identities we chose to put on and present. Performance is both explicit and implicit– it is done both on purpose and subconsciously. The Tango is a form of performance that is done in both of those circumstances, meaning it penetrates all parts of life; it does not exist solely in Tango shows, bars, etc. That is what makes it a complicated source of analysis, and an essential one in order to understand Argentina’s recovery from the crisis. Moments of shift and change in one part of a state always influence its other parts– this can be said of shifts in politics and their consequential influence on shifts in performance and identity. Thus, to leave out such disciplines in an investigation of a crisis is to forego certain truths of the ways a crisis can ricochet into the society in which it happens: it is this lacuna that this research hopes to address. In order to best use performance as a metric for political, economic, and social shifts after a crisis, the origins of the art form in question need to be investigated. The history of it, its evolution over the years, and the identities embedded within it require in depth investigation. An identity is something a person presents to show others who they are. There are many situations in which one does this– in their personal life, religious life, gender, etc. In this essay, the specific identity I will be analyzing is national identity. Citizens of a place who share common ties have the ability to present certain traits and truths in order to create a national identity. This identity is 5 one that goes on to represent the nation itself, and, if it becomes properly homogenized in society, it can be the only acceptable identity for a citizen to present. According to performance studies scholar Diana Taylor in her text Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina’s “Dirty War,” this national identity is not something that everyone in a nation inherently shares, but is the common act of putting on and stepping into the right traits in order to fit the predetermined mold of national identity decided upon by those in power.1 Defining nation-ness is the essence of what identity does and is, and is thus crucial for understanding what it means to be a part of a nation. Taylor offers that national identity is a performance– it is not something we inherently are, but a set of traits and actions that a people chose to conform to and perform in order to fit in, express loyalty, and, in some cases, blend in.2 This definition will guide my analysis, and from this point forward the word “identity” will carry with it all of the aforementioned nuances as it is mentioned. This research studies the all-important Tango in relation to Argentine culture and identity throughout its history. Argentina has an art form that has been claimed by its government and its citizens over its history as its national art form. This paper uses secondary and primary source research to investigate Tango dance from its origins to its renovación in the 2000s. Studying Tango and how it has defined Argentina’s national identity will provide an understanding of the role Tango has played in the crisis recovery, and it’s connection to policy changes in Argentina’s government as it strove to revert back to Argentina’s golden age after the crisis. The Tango is used in this study to measure and interpret the identity of the Argentine people after the 2001 economic crisis, during which the country recovered from economic, political, and social turmoil. An analysis of the crisis and the recovery of the crisis will align the 1Diana Taylor, “The Theatre of Operations: Performing Nation-ness in the Public Sphere,” in Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina’s “Dirty War,” (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997) 91-117. 2 Ibid. 6 people’s and the government’s return to the Tango, as the government returned to populism through Nestor Kirchner, while also exploring the economic viability embedded in the Tango’s rebirth in the 2000s. In order to connect Tango with the crisis recovery, it is important to understand the economic shifts taken in the 2000s by the government after Menem’s administration. After failed attempts by the government to use neoliberal economic policies in the 1980s and 1990s to open and grow Argentina’s economy, general discontent, protesting, and looting all led to a shift in official policies. Kirchnerismo was then installed in the government, and its revert back to familiar populist political measures and Argentina-first economic policies led people to regain their trust in the government and Argentine identity. As Kirchner’s power solidified, so did Tango’s– the art form re-established itself in the city of Buenos Aires.