Carlos “Chacho” Álvarez won’t talk. He doesn’t want to give interviews. He is sitting at a varela Varelita table, a frozen Palermo bar in time. There is no toast avocado nor no similar heresy. There are coffee,Sánguches of Milanesas,Barullo and Vermut. he is wrapped in a scarf because his health is fragile. But not so much to avoid teaching with a particular politician, attack it cruelly, judge it without a hint of compassion.

That politician who Carlos “Chacho” Álvarez criticism without mercy is called Carlos “Chacho” Álvarez, the same one that receives it every morning in the mirror of his department, a few blocks from the bar.

“I have no political authority to speak,” he says to those who consult him to justify his silence as he resigned from the vice presidency.he accuses himself of having disappointed millions of Argentines who trusted his political force, the Frepaso of the nineties, who saw in their promises a path to overcome menemism, to remove their corruption and give moral values to economic stability. That experiment of the alliance, which united Frepaso with the UCR, ended up exploding with the convertibility crisis and 2001. And then Néstor Kirchner phagocitated his leaders, stayed with the progressive electorate and discarded the flag of the fight against corruption.

“My political project failed, I can’t talk about anyone,” Álvarez, 76, is judged, without regard, to denied an interview. The diners of Varela Varelita They greet him, they share hours of talks with the most illustrious client, but no one manages The nation. He won’t talk.

However, with his body raised in front of the coffee served in a glass, with his wavy hair covered with gray hair and his sagacious and imperturbable lucid oratory; Chacho’s figure is projected on the present. It transmits teachings that explain the policy of Argentina and the keys to its deterioration.

Álvarez was vice president of Fernando de la Rúa, but when he was convinced that His government paid the Peronist senators to approve laws the relationship between the two entered into crisis. then, From the rua He appointed a cabinet with unfriendly leaders to Álvarez and the vice president ended up resigning. Its portz accelerated the alliance crisis and difficulties in sustaining convertibility. By then, Peronism had smelled weakness and reached out any collaboration. The same senators who had been denounced by the bribes now encouraged the crisis. Social protests ended up marking the end and Legislative Assembly He opened the door to a succession of presidents of the PJ: Ramón Puerta, Adolfo Rodríguez Saá, Eduardo Camaño and Eduardo Duhalde.

since then, Chacho departed from the microphones and did not speak anymore. He chose ostracism as a form of atonement. He put together a study center focused on the integration of Latin American countries, the Center for Political, economic and Social Studies (CEPES), and avoided stepping on national politics as if it were a forbidden place, as if it were a temple that deserved to be expelled. Néstor Kirchner offered to be a chancellor in replacement of Rafael Bielsa,but rejected it. he agreed to represent Argentina in the commission of permanent representatives of Mercosur (CRPM). That position was providential. Álvarez never processed the pension For his passage through the vice presidency, as Boudou did, and lives in the usual neighborhood, a few blocks from the Varela Varelita Bar, where the habitu -after they know him as if he were part of the setting.

The diners ask him about Peronism, the force where he began his journey, and Álvarez tells them about “The three taboos “ that chain it: accept that it is impossible to build a country without an orderly macroeconomy, face the problem of insecurity and face a moral regeneration.

Of mercy He thinks that “he wants to govern as an outsider, but he needs support” and that the problem of the third way is to “strengthen in the province of Buenos Aires.”

It is It has four children of three marriages. Friends say that Paula, a daughter of her last wife, liliana chiernajowsky he loves her as his own. He also has two own grandchildren and two, from Paula, who call him grandfather.

Liliana Chiernajoowsky died in 2016. in the bar they know that the mention of his name marks the only moment when the unstoppable fluidity of Chacho’s story breaks. “My most challenging partner”, He defines it, and makes silence, seeks to rebuild. Then he returns to politics and recovers the sagazo tone, as if time had not passed.

Álvarez It is on an individual table next to a column, in the center of the bar. The strangers approach to shake hands. Believes that Argentina needs “Consensualism” a country where the ruling class, from different parties, agrees basic rules, whatever the winner of the elections.But Argentina advanced precisely in the opposite direction. Especially after 2008, kirchnerism and then pro bet on Build an enemy To strengthen your identity. As then, the confrontation characterized the Argentine political process. “They are all disciples of ernesto Laclau” summarizes Álvarez in front of one of the assistants, in reference to the populism theorist who promotes antagonism as an organizer of the political space. Instead of mooring,with Milei the confrontation was exacerbated through language.

Chacho once represented the common porteño and came to campaign Uploaded to the groups where he distributed Frepaso brochures. Sometimes he took 12 to the terminal to talk to passengers. Or he got down at random stop and sat in a coffee to address him with questions. They were campaigns in analog times, before delivering them to trolls and bots, before life was mediated by applications, that political speeches were assembled for Instagram or Tiktok.

Faced with the present, Álvarez feels a character of another time, a defeated Quijote, who saw how politics hugged money and his figures became multimillionaires, like his contemporary José Luis Manzano which went from the enclosure that they shared in the Chamber of Deputies to the owner of Integra Capital, with shares in mining, oil and media companies.

Now, with a spoon of metal, Álvarez runs the foam of a glass cut And the memories go back to the times when together with Germán abdala they invented the Group of 8 as an option to the hegemony of union orthodoxy. At that time, the big guilds, such as metallurgical, financed PJ. Then the money came to Argentine politics from other sectors. Manzano was the emblematic exponent. Not the only one. And that society between politics and businesses extended to the present in the figure of the facilitators, the operators that intertwine both shores.

In that world,Chacho looks like a Jurassic Park character. One day, when the Senate presided over, more than two decades ago, it occurred to him to publicly publicize the list of camera employees. Names appeared that led to figures from all parties, a geological sedimentation of accommodations. He even had to call Raúl alfonsín because a person was very close to the radical leader. Since then,most senators hated him. And nobody still used the word caste.

It costs him to reach Chacho’s lungs.

The founder of Frepaso suffers from COPD. A friend repeats a criticism against progressivism that ever embodied as the main character: “You cannot imagine a model that gives the State centrality and, at the same time, to parasitize it, want to live on its resources.”

It has acute and critical diagnoses about politics, but with none it is as taxable as with yourself. “I have no right to talk about anyone,” he repeats with a smile of resignation,and rejects an interview.

Its internal exile, His autocastigo, stands out for contrast to the other resignations of the Argentine leadership. The renunciation of the minimum agreements, to ethical demands, to social sensitivity.And so,that lack of piety with himself,is finally illuminating about The shortcomings of the present.