2023-08-13 01:00:00
Marita, Liliana, María and Recaredo were able to vote for the first time on October 30, 1983 after seven years of dictatorship. Living the democratic act that forty years later is part of common sense, was a crucial event on that historic day that crowned Raúl Alfonsín as president-elect and bulwark of self-determination for Argentines.
Joy, excitement, uncertainty, fervor and fear were some of the sensations experienced by voters. However, they all agreed on the strong conviction and the desire to star in something that had not happened for a long time. That day 85.5% of the register voted and the Radical Civic Union prevailedwith 51.75% of the votes, over the Justicialista Party, with the candidate Italo Luder at the head, who attracted 40.16% of the electorate.
Raúl Ricardo Alfonsín and Víctor Hipólito Martínez headed list 3 of the Radical Civic Union (UCR) that took office on December 10 of that same year, 1983.
Deolindo Bittel accompanied Italo Luder on list 2, the formula chosen by the Justicialista Party. That, that of 1983, meant the first Peronist defeat in presidential elections. In September 1973, the party created by Juan Domingo Perón had been represented by Héctor J. Cámpora, then winner with 62% of the vote.
17% of Alfonsín voters came from new voters that represented a third of the register. In addition, 54% of the female electorate also favored the radical formula.
Voters had to decide between 13 lists and Alfonsín prevailed in 17 of the 24 districts, the Justicialista Party won in Jujuy, La Rioja, Santiago del Estero and Tucumán.
17% of Alfonsín’s voters came from new voters who represented a third of the register
Three days after taking office, the democratic government decreed the trial of the members of the three military juntas that usurped power in 1976. Although from then on, Argentina would begin to travel a difficult path of recovery, the consolidation of democracy was running.
This is how those who voted for the first time remember 1983
Pharmacist and native of the Buenos Aires town of Arrecifes, María Tognolotti, “Marita” and her sister went to study in San Luis because, having grown up in a dictatorship, they were afraid of being university students in the convulsed Buenos Aires of the late 1970s. .
Marita was 20 years old when she voted for the first time and remembers coming to school with both fear and excitement about not knowing exactly what she looked like, worried about not revealing her vote or wearing something that would make her contest the possibility of choosing her candidate. “We went with the document in hand and the vote between our clothes so as not to waste time, and since then I always carry the ballot from my house, it is a custom.”
Marita remembers that day and sighs: “Oh yes…! I spent my entire adolescence in the 70s with the military, we couldn’t go out, we were afraid; My father studied in Buenos Aires, he traveled, and I still remember the feeling of fear that he would not arrive at night and that something would happen to him. “It was a very ugly time and that is why when in 1983 we were able to go vote for the first time it was something festive. We did not want the military or a Peronist government to return and all the youth and my generation leaned towards Alfonsín, ”she reveals.
“I was studying in San Luis, I remember, and I went to see him there when he was campaigning, and that San Luis was always very Peronist, to death!”
From then on, Marita did not stop participating in any of the elections. “I always came to vote in Arrecifes, until today when I am 60 years old. They called me to be at a table, but because of my fibromyalgia and hiatus hernia, I asked for exemption, but as a citizen I want to elect the new authorities.”
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“My clients in my pharmacy know my opinion, who I am going to vote for… I lean towards Patricia Bullrich’s line and obviously the Peronists, nothing at all”, he emphasizes.
By October 1983, Marita’s father had already died and her mother remarried Marcial, a “very liberal” notary public who adhered to the UCEDE. “I talked a lot about politics with him, and she told him: ‘look Marcial, the UCEDE is not going to do anything, for me you have to support him Alfonsín’ . And Alfonsín won over all the people who voted for him. We had this feeling that we could be a free country. My wish is that now many people also go to vote ”, he expresses.
When Argentina was a party
María Tagliapietra came alone to the Buenos Aires suburbs from Between rivers, just before the waters of the Salto Grande dam buried her city, Santa Ana. The 1983 elections took her by surprise, with a husband affiliated with the UCR, and already two of their four children. She was always skilled, she was already wandering around the fairs of Berazategui, Florencio Varela and Quilmes., selling the cushions, curtains and “country” dolls, which she made with her own hands to make ends meet. “My husband was with Leopoldo Moreau and worked at the Ministry of Economy, but that was not enough. I don’t really know what he was doing there, because I didn’t get into politics. I listened and did not think,” he recalls.
“In 1983, I was in the dark, I didn’t know what democracy really was, so I went to vote like nothing, but nervous, I didn’t know how to do it… I didn’t even take scissors to cut the ballot. This time I’m going to take it,” notify.
“I remember that we waited for the results at home, stuck in front of the tv from 6 pm; me with my mate and my husband, with his red wine. We kept looking at each other without moving, until the results were in. It was a joy! I always loved Alfonsín, he was a leader, he did have authority. Alfonsín was the father of democracy”, evaluates Maria.
“I liked Alfonsin, had integrity for taking decisions. I believe that what she promised she fulfilled until they did a dirty trick on her, I liked her respect for the family, the law, things from before. 40 years have passed, and now, removing some of these yellowish ones, the ones from the Pro, the rest is all negative. Today society is morally destroyedthe economy could improve, if the politicking changes, but respect was lost and also our rights as human beings, because now everyone overwhelms them,” he analyzes with the wisdom that the years have given him.
Alfonsín, inexhaustible model of coherence and determination
With Alfonsín in government, María stopped touring the fairs and became a school cook. always smiles. She tells that is Christian and evangelizes and that she always went forward. She was widowed young, but never wrinkled. She raised her 4 children alone and 23 grandchildren have already arrived. She is not surrounded by her abundance, but she feels that her life smiles at her and Maria always thanks and talk about faith. “When I was retired, I got to know the sea for the first time, in Mar del Plata. A month ago, one of my boys took me to the Iguazú Falls and in October, another invited me to El Bolsón. reel, because they take me everywhere!
1983, return to democracy
Liliana González Olguin is from Bernal, a notary public with a degree from the Universidad del Salvador. She lived with her parents in Ezpeleta, when she had to vote in 1983. “For us, who we are a generation that spent a lifetime without having votedIt was the first time we did it. It was very exciting. Since I studied something related to the legal field, my interest was even more particular, ”she reviews.
“It was really lived as a party and the situation arose that whoever led radicalism had a very particular charisma. Alfonsín was a magnet, because his speech was democracy, the Constitution and it was lovely to listen to it, ”he emphasizes.
“The possibility of voting was a fundamental change and in the universities, a kind of liberation, even for dialogue. We students felt it was incredible that this could happen,” she recalls.
Despite being daughter of a radical, Liliana had never been linked to politics. “Alfonsín was civility, that man was the doorknob to enter a life regulated by other rules and where everything was supposed to change ”, he reviews. “I remember that he had come to Quilmes, I went to see him and it was fascinating to listen to him and I also went to the Obelisk when he closed his campaign, it was a rock star”.
“On the day of the vote we all get together for lunch at my mother’s house and there we wait for the result. It was a fascinating event for us. Within the family nucleus there was a notorious dispute, because the maternal side was peronist staunch and on the other, with a radical father, he was like a Boca-River”details Liliana, but clarifies that, despite the rivalry, everything was joy when they learned that there was a new President elected by the majority.
Elections 1983 and 40 years of democracy
“I am the son of an army officer who he was a fervent democrat despite the fact that he had participated among the officers who fired Perón. He believed that society should be able to govern itself without too much headache. My mother was a member radical more or less since he was born and I had a sister peronistother of antiperonan affiliate of the Christian Democracy that made us recruit a few, a brother-in-law of the Intransigent Party and, still today, we are all different, but we can get along even talking about politics. As old we are less different than when we are young”, introduces Recaredo Antonio Vazquezand lawyer from San Telmo with 5 children.
He also voted for the first time in 1983. “I was 26 years old and I went with my three-year-old son and the Opel Ka 180 that my father had given me three years before, for my wedding. It was the time when cars could be left on the street. I had to vote at the Juan Martín de Pueyrredón school, in Chacabuco and the US, where I had done 5th year. By then one of my 9 siblings had already passed away. At noon we had lunch together at my parents’ apartment. Three or four of us were already married and one sister lived in Viedma, another in Corrientes,” recalls Recaredo, who at the time was fighting with a printing company in the Agronomía neighborhood.
So I felt identified with Alfonsin. To me he was a democrat and ended up demonstrating it with its pluses and minuses, despite the fact that I wasn’t good at economics as demonstrated by the efforts of Bernardo Grinspun and Juan Vital Sourouille. At that time, I had a printing company with serious economic problems and one of the things that Alfonsin said was ‘I am going to go with the manager of Banco Nación to lift the blinds of the companies that they are beaten’. And he never came and I had to close, “he comments, but it does not sound like a reproach.
“Now I am more restless with the future. 2001 showed us that there was less patience, but now, if the new government does not show reasonableness, difficult things can happen. We have deteriorated the lives of Argentines too much. My fear is that society has not learned what has already happened to us and that we have a headache again”, she is sincere. Of course, today she will go to vote.
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