alternatehistory.com
The Alan Smith Government (1980-1986)
Alan Smith Government (1980-1986)
Taking the helm of the National Coalition amid unprecedented scandal, Alan Smith faced a monumental task: restore confidence in the government, restore relations within the party, and do so while dealing with the looming threat of Argentina’s saber-rattling dictatorship. His first two years in power were marked by paralysis as his anti-corruption agenda put a strain on intra-party relations, and his cabinet was pulled in opposite directions over how best to deal with tensions across the River Plate.
His efforts to clean up government put him into conflict with the Popular Party, as the easiest targets for his campaign were the nominally independent agencies and commissions that fed the network of political posts that ensured Oriental power brokers were invested and involved in keeping the Coalition in power. He was forced to back down when his threats to privatize the Oriental Railroad Trust nearly lead to mass resignations, and his efforts to improve oversight of military spending was slow walked through the bureaucracy by his minister’s under-secretaries.
When Argentina invaded the Falklands, panic spread across the country but Smith finally had an opportunity to portray himself as a uniting figure – both for the nation at large and his cabinet in particular: he took to the airwaves mere hours after the news had broken to address the nation, putting his gruff, confident voice to good use and announcing the reinforcement of troops in the Oriental provinces to shore up defenses, the call up reservists and the elevation of the air-force’s alert level. This early show of leadership helped calm spirits in the Capital, and as the days passed and the troops on the border settled into a tense staring contest with Argentine regulars on the other side of the river, the populace rallied behind the embattled National Coalition.
Hoping to capitalize on the jubilation after the Argentine surrender in June, Alan Smith called for elections in August, but his larger majority – reducing the number of independent MPs to fewer than 10 for the first time since 1974 – would put even more strain on the National Coalition: the right wing felt emboldened to demand the ministries it had lost in 1980, but infighting within the right hampered their efforts, and the tensions between Alan Smith and the most hawkish members of the Coalition would soon begin leaking to the press as each faction within the right sniped at the other through the Telegraph and the Times.
The first real signs of the terminal fatigue that would lead to the collapse of the National Coalition system show up in this period, coinciding with the gradual decline of the military junta in Argentina. While there had been no opposition to Smith’s stance toward the Falkland war – a position of armed neutrality with more or less overt logistical support for British forces – his naked attempts to capitalize politically on the conflict provoked a backlash from more dovish sectors that felt reinvigorated by the process of democratization across the River that culminated with Alfonsín’s historic triumph in October 1983.
Smith’s government would never recover its initiative: the fractures in the right would only continue to grow, headed especially by newly-minted minister of Social Services Mark Dancy – a position that he joked publicly he’d inherited from his father, ignoring that he’d retired from parliament to preempt investigations into his spending practices – who clamored for a new generation of conservative politicians to take the helm. The left for its part would spend the rest of his term healing old wounds, a process jump started by Guevara’s martyrdom and accelerated by the success of Alfonsín’s appeals for national healing and repudiation of dogmatism and political violence.
Alan Smith himself would end his term a marginalized figure in a majority that he believed he’d won personally, and the knowledge that the party would owe its miraculous survival until the 1986 election to the previously anonymous Speaker Blanco rather than his own efforts would represent the nadir of a career that had spanned two decades and had – for all his faults in the aftermath – headed the country well in the face of the existential threat of a war on its doorstep. He was a leader suited for the heady days of the 1970s, when the region’s myriad dictatorships gave the National Coalition a clear and visible enemy to contrast themselves against; but the 1980s, a period of democratization in Latin America spearheaded by its two largest neighbors required a new approach, and highlighted the authoritarian elements that had only ever been tolerated as the price to pay for not being like the dictatorships next door.
Alan Smith Cabinet (1980-1986)
It is perhaps easiest to wrap your head around the peculiarities of Platte if you pay attention to what close neighbors would find most perplexing: a visitor from Buenos Aires would feel quite at home in Montevideo - provided he had at least conversational english skills - but its verdant suburbs and proudly ostentatious manors would certainly leave an impression; Argentine or Brazilian ranchers would fit right in among Oriental or Anglo ranchers, but a visiting Englishmen would likely be aghast at the sound of thick English accents huddled around a kettle of hot water with a single mate making the rounds; Candians and Australians would find the entire country charmingly familiar, but they too would ultimately feel left out as the country seemingly grinds to a halt every Sunday but for football rather than church.
Inhabitants of Platte, whether Anglo or Oriental, black, white or mestizo, take pride in their place as a crossroads of cultures in the region. Close ties to Buenos Aires, long considered a cultural beacon in Latin America, have survived even as politics attempts to cleave the countries apart; and the upheaval which has so dulled the Argentine capital’s sheen has been a boon to Montevideo, which has been a familiar home for many an Argentine artist looking to escape persecution of one kind or another.
But far from the din of Montevideo, Oriental culture has oftentimes been identified in opposition to Argentine culture, or rather, the omnipresent porteño influence which turned prominent Montevideo neighborhoods into replicas of Buenos Aires’ most iconic boroughs. Salto alone produces enough music, radio and writing to at least keep up with Argentine imports, and other prominent Oriental cities like Colonia, Tacuarembó and Paysandú shift the balance ever so slightly in favor of domestic over imported media.
The end result is two very different relationships with the Spanish language: the Spanish spoken in Montevideo resembles the one spoken in Buenos Aires, adopting many of its mannerisms and its expressions as artists crossed the River Plate and brought their slang with them; while the Spanish spoken in the north of the country borrows heavily from English, and was once described mockingly as a “Shakespeare pretending to be Cervantes”.
Anglo culture would similarly have a Montevideo/Interior divide, with Landsend occupying Salto’s place as the main counterweight to the capital. Eventually the location of an American naval base and the headquarters for Atlantic Television (which would be the first channel in the country to affiliate with an American broadcaster), Landsend embraced its new world roots and diverged from Montevideo’s anglophilic media bubble.
It would also have the benefit of earlier nationalization of its television market, in contrast with Spanish-language television which depended primarily on Spanish imports (hugely popular in Salto and the rest of the Oriental northern provinces) or Argentine ones, and would -- in the case of Montevideo’s Radio Monte Carlo -- find success in Argentina long before they were able to reach a national audience in Platte. In an odd case of catch-22, the dependence of Spanish-language broadcasters on Argentine media made national regulators wary of granting them broader licenses, but their difficulty in accessing the broader Plattinean market also made them more dependent on imports to keep costs down.
This sort of political tension would cast a shadow on Plattinean culture in general; it was especially stifling for television and major radio networks, as they benefited from the National Coalition’s patronage and were expected to repay the patronage with favorable portrayals and an understanding that the regulations were lax as long as certain political expectations were met.
On the margins of the mainstream however, two radically different movements spread below the Coalition’s radar. The first were the spattering of church-affiliated radio stations, eventually unified under the local Catholic Church’s ownership, that turned into a symbolic rallying flag for the nation’s Catholic Orientals who yearned for an escape from the Coalition’s media clutches. Ostensibly non-partisan and apolitical, the Coalition’s resistance to granting the Church a national license to operate a unified radio station sought in theory to prevent that from changing but its limited reach would simply solidify its role in the rural, Catholic north.
The second were the university-based radio stations, most of them reinvigorating by George Roem’s investment in new infrastructure for the country’s universities: some of the oldest universities in the country had a history of small-scale broadcast operations, and their capacities would be greatly improved with new facilities at the new Salto campus and especially Montevideo’s University City. They skirted national regulations by simply staying local, but the combination of institutional prestige and careful messaging gave them an outsize cultural impact.
Taking the helm of the National Coalition amid unprecedented scandal, Alan Smith faced a monumental task: restore confidence in the government, restore relations within the party, and do so while dealing with the looming threat of Argentina’s saber-rattling dictatorship. His first two years in power were marked by paralysis as his anti-corruption agenda put a strain on intra-party relations, and his cabinet was pulled in opposite directions over how best to deal with tensions across the River Plate.
His efforts to clean up government put him into conflict with the Popular Party, as the easiest targets for his campaign were the nominally independent agencies and commissions that fed the network of political posts that ensured Oriental power brokers were invested and involved in keeping the Coalition in power. He was forced to back down when his threats to privatize the Oriental Railroad Trust nearly lead to mass resignations, and his efforts to improve oversight of military spending was slow walked through the bureaucracy by his minister’s under-secretaries.
When Argentina invaded the Falklands, panic spread across the country but Smith finally had an opportunity to portray himself as a uniting figure – both for the nation at large and his cabinet in particular: he took to the airwaves mere hours after the news had broken to address the nation, putting his gruff, confident voice to good use and announcing the reinforcement of troops in the Oriental provinces to shore up defenses, the call up reservists and the elevation of the air-force’s alert level. This early show of leadership helped calm spirits in the Capital, and as the days passed and the troops on the border settled into a tense staring contest with Argentine regulars on the other side of the river, the populace rallied behind the embattled National Coalition.
Hoping to capitalize on the jubilation after the Argentine surrender in June, Alan Smith called for elections in August, but his larger majority – reducing the number of independent MPs to fewer than 10 for the first time since 1974 – would put even more strain on the National Coalition: the right wing felt emboldened to demand the ministries it had lost in 1980, but infighting within the right hampered their efforts, and the tensions between Alan Smith and the most hawkish members of the Coalition would soon begin leaking to the press as each faction within the right sniped at the other through the Telegraph and the Times.
The first real signs of the terminal fatigue that would lead to the collapse of the National Coalition system show up in this period, coinciding with the gradual decline of the military junta in Argentina. While there had been no opposition to Smith’s stance toward the Falkland war – a position of armed neutrality with more or less overt logistical support for British forces – his naked attempts to capitalize politically on the conflict provoked a backlash from more dovish sectors that felt reinvigorated by the process of democratization across the River that culminated with Alfonsín’s historic triumph in October 1983.
Smith’s government would never recover its initiative: the fractures in the right would only continue to grow, headed especially by newly-minted minister of Social Services Mark Dancy – a position that he joked publicly he’d inherited from his father, ignoring that he’d retired from parliament to preempt investigations into his spending practices – who clamored for a new generation of conservative politicians to take the helm. The left for its part would spend the rest of his term healing old wounds, a process jump started by Guevara’s martyrdom and accelerated by the success of Alfonsín’s appeals for national healing and repudiation of dogmatism and political violence.
Alan Smith himself would end his term a marginalized figure in a majority that he believed he’d won personally, and the knowledge that the party would owe its miraculous survival until the 1986 election to the previously anonymous Speaker Blanco rather than his own efforts would represent the nadir of a career that had spanned two decades and had – for all his faults in the aftermath – headed the country well in the face of the existential threat of a war on its doorstep. He was a leader suited for the heady days of the 1970s, when the region’s myriad dictatorships gave the National Coalition a clear and visible enemy to contrast themselves against; but the 1980s, a period of democratization in Latin America spearheaded by its two largest neighbors required a new approach, and highlighted the authoritarian elements that had only ever been tolerated as the price to pay for not being like the dictatorships next door.
Alan Smith Cabinet (1980-1986)
- Prime Minister – Alan Smith (Conservative)
- Speaker – Daniel Blanco (Popular)
- Deputy Prime Minister – Marcus Meadows (Christian Democrat)
- Chief Whip – Jonathan Miller (Alliance)
- Economy Minister – Charles Everett (Conservative)
- Foreign Minister – Tom Weaver (Alliance)
- Justice Minister – Stephen Sanders (Alliance)
- Health Minister – Margaret Dawson (Christian Democrat)
- Education Minister – Elizabeth Bailey (Alliance)
- Defense Minister – Andrés Jiménez (Popular)
- Labour Minister – Julian Wickham (Christian Democrat)
- Social Services Minister – Mark Dancy (Conservative)
- Telecommunications Minister – Joaquín Peretti (Popular)
It is perhaps easiest to wrap your head around the peculiarities of Platte if you pay attention to what close neighbors would find most perplexing: a visitor from Buenos Aires would feel quite at home in Montevideo - provided he had at least conversational english skills - but its verdant suburbs and proudly ostentatious manors would certainly leave an impression; Argentine or Brazilian ranchers would fit right in among Oriental or Anglo ranchers, but a visiting Englishmen would likely be aghast at the sound of thick English accents huddled around a kettle of hot water with a single mate making the rounds; Candians and Australians would find the entire country charmingly familiar, but they too would ultimately feel left out as the country seemingly grinds to a halt every Sunday but for football rather than church.
Inhabitants of Platte, whether Anglo or Oriental, black, white or mestizo, take pride in their place as a crossroads of cultures in the region. Close ties to Buenos Aires, long considered a cultural beacon in Latin America, have survived even as politics attempts to cleave the countries apart; and the upheaval which has so dulled the Argentine capital’s sheen has been a boon to Montevideo, which has been a familiar home for many an Argentine artist looking to escape persecution of one kind or another.
But far from the din of Montevideo, Oriental culture has oftentimes been identified in opposition to Argentine culture, or rather, the omnipresent porteño influence which turned prominent Montevideo neighborhoods into replicas of Buenos Aires’ most iconic boroughs. Salto alone produces enough music, radio and writing to at least keep up with Argentine imports, and other prominent Oriental cities like Colonia, Tacuarembó and Paysandú shift the balance ever so slightly in favor of domestic over imported media.
The end result is two very different relationships with the Spanish language: the Spanish spoken in Montevideo resembles the one spoken in Buenos Aires, adopting many of its mannerisms and its expressions as artists crossed the River Plate and brought their slang with them; while the Spanish spoken in the north of the country borrows heavily from English, and was once described mockingly as a “Shakespeare pretending to be Cervantes”.
Anglo culture would similarly have a Montevideo/Interior divide, with Landsend occupying Salto’s place as the main counterweight to the capital. Eventually the location of an American naval base and the headquarters for Atlantic Television (which would be the first channel in the country to affiliate with an American broadcaster), Landsend embraced its new world roots and diverged from Montevideo’s anglophilic media bubble.
It would also have the benefit of earlier nationalization of its television market, in contrast with Spanish-language television which depended primarily on Spanish imports (hugely popular in Salto and the rest of the Oriental northern provinces) or Argentine ones, and would -- in the case of Montevideo’s Radio Monte Carlo -- find success in Argentina long before they were able to reach a national audience in Platte. In an odd case of catch-22, the dependence of Spanish-language broadcasters on Argentine media made national regulators wary of granting them broader licenses, but their difficulty in accessing the broader Plattinean market also made them more dependent on imports to keep costs down.
This sort of political tension would cast a shadow on Plattinean culture in general; it was especially stifling for television and major radio networks, as they benefited from the National Coalition’s patronage and were expected to repay the patronage with favorable portrayals and an understanding that the regulations were lax as long as certain political expectations were met.
On the margins of the mainstream however, two radically different movements spread below the Coalition’s radar. The first were the spattering of church-affiliated radio stations, eventually unified under the local Catholic Church’s ownership, that turned into a symbolic rallying flag for the nation’s Catholic Orientals who yearned for an escape from the Coalition’s media clutches. Ostensibly non-partisan and apolitical, the Coalition’s resistance to granting the Church a national license to operate a unified radio station sought in theory to prevent that from changing but its limited reach would simply solidify its role in the rural, Catholic north.
The second were the university-based radio stations, most of them reinvigorating by George Roem’s investment in new infrastructure for the country’s universities: some of the oldest universities in the country had a history of small-scale broadcast operations, and their capacities would be greatly improved with new facilities at the new Salto campus and especially Montevideo’s University City. They skirted national regulations by simply staying local, but the combination of institutional prestige and careful messaging gave them an outsize cultural impact.
- minifidel
- Word Count: 1.7k