The Fall and Rise of Alfonsín: Argentina's Fragile Democracy

In 1983, Raúl Alfonsín took office as Argentina's first democratic president after the brutal military dictatorship. His presidency promised justice, economic stability, and a break with the past. But within months, he faced a collapsing economy, military rebellions, and an impossible balancing act between prosecuting human rights abuses and preventing a coup. This episode follows Alfonsín's desperate gamble: the Plan Austral to tame hyperinflation, the CONADEP investigation and Nunca Más report, and the shocking Easter Week mutiny by the carapintadas. We explore how his government navigated the Trial of the Juntas, the Ley de Punto Final and Obediencia Debida, and why his early popularity gave way to the hyperinflation that ended his term. Even his successor Menem's free-market shock therapy couldn't fully escape the pattern. Alfonsín's story is a cautionary tale of democracy's fragility in the face of economic crisis and military pressure, but also a testament to the resilience of the rule of law in a country that had seen so little of it.

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