Her supporters passionately proclaim their loyalty to Argentina’s first elected female leader, but a mysterious death threatens to bring her rule to a sour end

Under a torrential downpour, hundreds of thousands of people marched in silence in Buenos Aires on Wednesday evening. Soaked to the bone, old and young alike held their ground to pay tribute to Alberto Nisman, the crusading prosecutor whose death under mysterious circumstances one month ago has created political turmoil with as yet unforeseeable consequences in Argentina.

If such a massive and spontaneous display of respect for the man who dared accuse Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in court of attempting to cover up what he alleged was Iran’s role in the deadliest terrorist bombing in Argentina’s history grated on the mind of the president, she certainly did not show it.

“In the Chinese horoscope, I am a snake,” Fernández cheerfully posted on Twitter the next day, Thursday, which happened to be her 62nd birthday.

Cristina Kirchner (@CFKArgentina) En el horóscopo chino soy serpiente. Cuando en la cena, en China, le comente al Presidente Xi Jinping y su esposa…



Glaringly absent from her Twitter feed was a single reference to the march, or even words of condolence for 15-year-old Iara Nisman, who bravely walked in her father’s honour despite longstanding death threats against her family.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Alberto Nisman’s former wife, Sandra Arroyo Salgado, and their daughter Iara take part in the silent march. Photograph: Claudio Santisteban/Demotix/Corbis

The march came days after Fernández learned she may face formal charges based on Nisman’s allegations that she derailed a criminal investigation into a 1994 attack on a Jewish cultural centre, which killed 85, in order to exonerate five Iranian suspects. Nisman’s 289-page criminal complaint was made public on 14 January. Four days later he was found dead with a gunshot wound to the head in his Buenos Aires apartment. He had been due to present his findings to Congress the next day.

Nisman’s death may yet prematurely end her time in office, but Fernández’s life story to date reads like a fairytale. She was born in Tolosa, a suburb of the university town of La Plata, in Buenos Aires province, known as Barrio del Tambor (Suburb of Drums) for its Afro-Uruguayan carnivals held to the beat of colourful candombe troupes. Much has been made in recent biographies of a rumour that her father, Eduardo Fernández, a bus driver, moved in with her mother only once Fernández was a schoolgirl, suggesting that he was perhaps not her real father at all.

These rumours have never been confirmed, but those who knew her back then say her parents had a strained relationship, punctuated by political disagreements. He was an anti-Peronist, she was a devotee of Eva Perón. Eduardo died 33 years ago. Fernández has seldom if ever referred to him in public.

At age 22, studying law at the University of La Plata, she met a young student from the faraway Patagonian town of Río Gallegos who swept her off her feet. Within six months she had married Néstor Kirchner. That young love proved extraordinarily hardy and provided a solid foundation for what was to be the most important political marriage in Argentina since that of Eva and Juan Perón three decades earlier.

But unlike Evita, who held no elected post, the energetic and highly intelligent Fernández launched herself into an independent political career that quickly outshone that of her husband. While Kirchner rose to governor of his native province of Santa Cruz, Fernández became a senator, making a name for herself as a fiery anti-corruption legislator at the National Congress in Buenos Aires.

The couple took the nation by storm with Kirchner’s surprise win in the 2003 presidential elections, a year after the worst economic crisis in the country’s history. Argentina had defaulted on a foreign debt of $132bn and the collapse carried away with it the fragmented remains of the middle-class Radical party, under whose rule the economy had run aground. The Radicals’ implosion left Kirchner’s Peronist party without competition in what had long been a two-party system.

“The Radicals had hurled Argentina off the cliff not once but twice,” said Steven Levitsky, professor of government and a Latin America specialist at Harvard. The party had led the country into a painful bout with hyperinflation in the late 1980s under a previous administration. “You leave the country in flames twice in a row and you’re going to be destroyed.”

With the economy in tatters but with no viable opposition to question his bold tactics, Kirchner broke with the IMF, stood up to big business and bondholders and led the economy on a dramatic turnaround that felt nothing short of miraculous. The couple’s popularity ratings soared to over 70% and stayed there for years. In 2007, a surefire candidate for re-election, Kirchner stood aside and let his wife compete for the presidency instead.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Fernández walks in front of her husband, Nestor Kirchner after her inauguration in 2007. Photograph: Reuters

The rest is history. Buoyed by solid approval ratings and a booming economy, Argentina’s first elected female president introduced generous social spending programmes that boosted her popularity even further. The reforms included what may be her proudest achievement, a universal child benefit plan that has helped many families out of poverty and raised school attendance to peak levels.

Her husband’s sudden death from heart failure in 2010 provoked an outpouring of public sympathy that only solidified her heart-to-heart relationship with a large segment of voters. In 2011 she easily won re-election, leaving rival candidates in the dust.

Her identification with the poor has led young people to join Peronist youth groups by the thousands. To opponents, their fervour resonates with chilling authoritarian overtones, but supporters passionately proclaim their loyalty to the president.

“Cristina for me signifies love for the humble,” says 16-year-old Valu Villagra, a secondary school student who joined the Movimiento Evita three years ago. “My life changed. Reality isn’t on television, it’s outside, on the street, in the neighbourhoods and with the people.”

Valu participates in workshops for the prevention of violence against women. Her level of passion and personal sacrifice is shared by countless other young people similarly inspired to perform voluntary social work by a president referred to by almost everyone in Argentina by her first name.

Although Argentina’s economic performance has stalled at the tail end of Fernández’s second term, with inflation at 40%, economic growth stagnant and unemployment slowly rising, even orthodox economists are quick to concede that the economic legacy of 12 years of combined Kirchner-Fernández rule, with average growth between 3% and 4%, should look positive when she steps down from office in December. (The constitution bars her from seeking a third term in the elections slated for October.)

“It’s a peculiar brand of populism because it isn’t leaving the country in debt,” said Nicolás Dujovne, an economist. “They’ve financed their social spending with inflation, not debt. Argentina will be in a much better situation than Spain or Portugal, countries with much larger debt problems.”

Despite the economic feat, the president may be best remembered for the unenviable task of putting on trial the ageing perpetrators of Argentina’s last dictatorship, who made tens of thousands of young opponents “disappear” in death camps more than three decades ago.

Although the top echelon of the 1976-83 regime had been convicted in early trials after the return of democracy, lower-ranking killers and torturers remained free until 2003 when Kirchner overturned amnesty laws protecting them from prosecution. The new trials got off to a slow start and only went into full swing under Fernández. Today, more than 1,000 former officers are facing charges. “The genocidal killers are being tried up and down the country,” said Taty Almeyda, an 84-year-old mother whose son Alejandro Almeyda was one of the “disappeared”.

The trials were long resisted by conservatives, including conservative Peronists, and have been the subject of some acrimony, especially from opponents of the president who accuse Fernández of using human rights to boost her popularity. “They still don’t forgive her for the trials,” said Almeyda.

With her trademark confrontational nature, Fernández has shown herself willing to take on all comers. She has confronted Britain in a verbal war over the Falkland Islands, is quick to blast the powerful holdout bond funds that placed Argentina in technical default last year, and has even attempted to dismantle the big media groups in Argentina that she insists are continually planning to oust her government, exposing herself to not entirely unfounded accusations of limiting freedom of the press.

In doing so, she has herself eclipsed the solid economic and social advances that would otherwise stand to the fore. These include landmark achievements such as same-sex marriage, no small feat for a woman governing a country renowned for its virile machismo.

But such obscured feats could count for nothing in the short term, after the lightning bolt of Nisman’s death seared a before-and-after line through her presidency, already plagued by abundant charges of corruption and authoritarianism. One former close aide remarked privately that the massive response to Nisman’s death had been so vehement, and the government’s handling of it so inept, that it could threaten her ability to hold on to office until December.

Perhaps Fernández has suffered from too much of a good thing. “The collapse of the opposition and high growth rates gave Fernández a blank cheque,” said Levitsky, the Harvard professor. “Nobody could say no to her, and if nobody can tell her she’s wrong, she’s going to make mistakes no matter how brilliant she is. Unilateral government often leads to abuse.”

For her supporters, especially among the young, Fernández can do no wrong. “We support Cristina even in the hardest moments, such as the one we are going through now,” said 16-year-old Valu. The months ahead look bleak for the president, but for many Argentinians Fernández will continue to hold a place only slightly below that accorded Evita in the country’s political firmament.

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner: a profile

Born: February 19, 1953, La Plata

Career: The daughter of a bus driver, she marries Néstor Kirchner at 22 in most significant political marriage since the Perons. Carves out her own political identity as anti-corruption MP at the National Congress in Buenos Aires.

High point: Elected Argentina’s first woman president in 2007. She introduces a universal child benefit plan that helped many poor families.

Low point: Accused by Argentinian federal prosecutor of attempting to cover up Iran’s involvement in the bombing of a Jewish community centre in 1994. Four days later, Alberto Nisman is found dead.

She says: “Memory and freedom must be everybody’s daily exercise in order to prevent a new holocaust and a renewed violation of human rights.”

They say: “The president can’t walk with us, can’t look us in the eye, because she knows Alberto Nisman’s death has splattered her government with blood” – Pablo Lanusse, prosecutor.

• The subheading on this article was amended on 23 February 2015. An earlier version said Fernández was Argentina’s first female leader.



