Crisis and insurrection in Argentina, 2001

Abstract

The massive popular insurrection of December 2001 put an end to the specific form taken by capital’s offensive in Argentina during the previous decade—surely one of the deepest in Latin America—centered on the insertion of the economy into the world market under the convertibility of the peso. This article offers a provisional analysis of the insurrection that ended convertibility; it explains the nature and dynamics of convertibility and its limits, increasingly evident during the depression, the political crisis and the wave of social struggles that began in mid-1998. The analysis of the popular insurrection concludes with the fall of convertibility and of the De la Rúa administration.