AN ANALYSIS OF THE CONSTRUCTION OF A NEOLIBERAL PERONISM FROM THE OFFICIAL SPEECHES OF CARLOS SAUL MENEM

Abstract

Based on the speeches of Juan Domingo Perón, the present work proposes to think about the strategies of discursive appropriation elaborated by the ex-Argentine president Carlos Saúl Menem, that aimed to create a new peronist identity. In order to account for his objectives, Menem appropriated the central ideas present in Peron’s speeches, such as social justice and economic independence, reassigning them. Furthermore, he repeated several strategies of this ruler: the exploitation of the economic crisis, the construction of national opponents to be fought and the appeal to the unity of support to the government. It seeks, with that, to understand how Menem used the main symbols of peronism to defend an antagonistic political-economic project, linked to the assumptions of the Washington Consensus.