Between the Socialist Unity, the FREPASO and the Alliance: The magazine La Ciudad Futura and the Dilemmas of Progressive Intellectuals in the 1990s

Abstract

From its first issue, published in August 1986, the magazine La Ciudad Futura sought to draw a “frontier” within the tradition of the Argentine left by proposing the need to defend and deepen democracy while supporting Alfonsín’s reformist commitment. But, as the end of the 1980s approached, the hopes that the magazine’s participants had placed, not only in Alfonsín but in the entire “democratic transition,” seemed to be buried. The crisis of the radical government, the return of political violence, hyperinflation and the sharp turn that Carlos Menem imposed on the Peronist tradition created confusion and unease among the magazine’s members. This article seeks to investigate the positions of La Ciudad Futura in the early 1990s (1991-1997), a period that has not been addressed by the bibliography that dealt with the magazine. Among the many topics that occupied his attention, we will discuss one that occupied a central place in his pages: the characteristics that a “progressive coalition” should have to oppose the Menem government.