Menem was also extremely flexible as a politician, and began his career as a self-made disciple of General Juan Domingo Peron, who founded the populist movement that bears his name and placed the economy largely under state control. Menem, who served as president for two years between 1989 and 1999, transformed the country – but in the opposite direction.
“I do not know if I will get the country out of its economic problems, but I will certainly make a nicer country,” Menem once said. He enjoyed the company of celebrities while presenting the Rolling Stones and Madonna in Buenos Aires, and no doubt picked up the criticism after receiving a red Ferrari as a gift from an Italian businessman in 1990.
“It’s mine, mine and mine,” Menem, a racing enthusiast, told television cameras. “Why would I donate it?”
Later, he reluctantly agreed to auction the car for $ 135,000, with the proceeds of the state coffers.
The son of Syrian immigrants whose family owns a winery, Menem was a compatriot, three-time governor of the northwestern province of La Rioja, and was known for his shoulder-length hair and mutton beard when he became internationally known.
He won the nomination for the Peronist Party and won the 1989 presidential election, using economic and social chaos in Argentina. The country was trapped in an annual inflation rate of 5,000% and the poor fired supermarkets to get food.
Under Menem, the economy showed strong growth, inflation fell to single digits and the peso, the national currency, enjoyed unprecedented stability when pegged to the US dollar. The long hair and bowls were gone and the flashy clothes replaced with imported, handmade suits.
At the heart of Menem’s recovery plan, trained by energetic Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo, was the withdrawal of the state from the economy.
Menem has removed control over prices and interest rates. He sold the state-owned telephone company, airlines, racetracks, steel mills and the oil giant YPF, then South America’s largest company. He cut the state’s payroll and encouraged foreign investment. He once restrained powerful unions that formed the backbone of the Peronist movement and was angry at the cut in government wages that eliminated jobs.
In foreign affairs, Menem withdrew Argentina from the Non-Aligned Movement, a Cold War structure that promoted independence from the United States and – less so – the Soviet Union, and forged strong ties with Washington.
Argentine troops participated in the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq, joining the UN peacekeeping force in Haiti and the former Yugoslavia.
During Menem’s term, Argentina was the scene of deadly bombings – against the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 and a Jewish center in 1994. Argentina accused Iran of involvement; Iran has denied this. Menem was later tried for the alleged cover-up of those responsible for the attack on the Jewish center, but was found not guilty in a trial in 2019.
As president, Menem prevailed in disputes with the Argentine military, whose coup in 1976 led to the extrajudicial killings and disappearances of tens of thousands of people. He spent the armed forces and abolished the highly unpopular military conscription system.
He upset human rights groups by granting pardon to former military junta members serving life sentences for crimes related to the disappearance of Argentine dissidents during the 1976-1983 dictatorship. The pardon was extended to former guerrillas in what Menem described as a process of national reconciliation.