In Argentina, three generations of a Peronist family weigh their vote
World
In Argentina, three generations of a Peronist family weigh their vote
RIO GALLEGOS, Argentina(Reuters) - Catalina Cepernic's great-grandfather Jorge, a sheep-farm owner in Argentina's windswept Patagonia, was the first member of the family won over to the ideas of Juan Domingo Peron, the former president who spawned the country's most powerful political movement.
Peron's calls in the mid-1940s for better working conditions, wages and state pensions resonated with Jorge, his family recounted, as he listened to the charismatic leader's speeches on the radio from his farm in this remote corner of South America.
The Cepernics remain a Peronist family, three generations of the clan told Reuters, but their support for the movement has faltered. That could be a warning sign ahead of Sunday's presidential election, which opinion polls suggest will be a close contest and where the Peronist government faces being toppled by a radical libertarian outsider.
Catalina, 27, plans to back the Peronists, but said many in the family, who still live in and around the original farm, would cast blank votes, confirmed in interviews with her father, aunt and her grandfather, the son of the late Jorge.
"Maybe a few will vote for Peronism," she said from her home in the province of Santa Cruz.
Peronism has sought to preserve the social justice pledges of Peron, but it is a nebulous and shifting movement that over the decades has selected its policies from across the ideological spectrum. It has ruled Argentina for over half the time since Peron's first presidency in the 1940s, and has been the ruling power currently since 2019.
Now its presidential candidate, Economy Minister Sergio Massa, faces the real prospect of defeat in Sunday's run-off vote against Javier Milei, a far-right libertarian who wants to reduce the size of the state and "detonate" the political status quo.
That comes amid the country's worst economic crisis in some two decades, with inflation at 143%, two-fifths of Argentines in poverty and a recession around the corner. Many blame the economic woes on the Peronists, especially the movement's powerful left-wing.
Even traditional Peronist supporters are apathetic.
Catalina remembers the excitement, age 7, accompanying her great-grandfather to vote. Now she feels disillusioned and says she is only supporting the Peronists out of fear of Milei, citing his plan to limit access to abortion.
"At home, politics was always present before," she said. "Today I don't identify with Peronism and I'm not sure if their policies reflect what my relatives fought for all those years ago."
'REFLECTION OF SOCIETY'
Marcela Cepernic, 52, Catalina's aunt, said over the years she has mostly voted for Peronism and left-wing parties, but in this election "does not have the stomach" to support Massa due to the country's dire economic situation.
"I grew up in a Peronist family, and I'm planning to vote blank," Marcela, a retired school teacher, said from the ice cream parlor she now runs in El Chalten, a village in Santa Cruz province.
