Argentina’s President Benefits From Youth Enthusiasm

Kirchner Argentina’s President Benefits and Socialist Reforms Find Support From Weary Argentine Youth

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The Argentine president’s secret weapon? A super-charged youth movement.

BUENOS AIRES —

Moments after Argentina’s President benefits from the passed a historic bill in April to nationalize the Spanish majority-owned oil company, YPF, a banner taking up half of the Congressional chamber was unfurled from the balcony. It depicted former President Néstor Kirchner with his fist raised in the air victoriously.

The same banner was on view just a week earlier during a rally attended by 100,000 activists in support of “the project” – a left-wing political ideology implemented by Mr. Kirchner before his 2010 death, and continued today by his wife, Argentina’s current president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Both scenes were the work of La Cámpora, a political youth movement – 30,000-strong and mostly under the age of 30 – whose support for the president is unwavering.

Fernández was born on February 19, 1953 in Tolosa, a suburb west of La Plata, Buenos Aires Province. She is a daughter of Eduardo Fernández (of Spanish heritage), a bus driver, and Ofelia Esther Wilhelm (of German descent). She studied law at the National University of La Plata during the 1970s and became active in the Peronist Youth.