Foreign policy in the election campaign ; La política exterior en campaña electoral
Foreign policy towards Latin America in the period March to September 2019 was somewhat characterised by a low level of activity mainly due to the country's electoral landscape, which was shared with two other neighbouring countries: Bolivia and Uruguay. On 11 August, officialism was defeated in the PASO elections by a greater than expected difference, which undermined the legitimacy of the President-in-Office with the particularity that the elections defined only pre-emptive ones. The result was a context of great uncertainty regarding the near future (the general elections would be in October, two months later, and the handover in December, four months later). Between 12 August, the day on which the relative calm that the exchange rate had had weeks before the elections came back to the aires, and on 27 October, the day of the general elections, we saw the paradox of a legitimate candidate who had no office or formal decision-making power, who actually began to roll out an international agenda which he intensified after he finally became successful in October, but also with a smaller margin than expected, living side by side with a president whose political livelihood seemed to be tempting and who became a key priority: recovering in the elections, disciplining dissident voices within their space and positioning themselves as the leader of the future opposition, as well as the manism built around the possibility to turn it back and its impressive scenisation in the mass marches around the country. In this complex context, there are three issues to highlight outside bilateral relations with individual countries in the region: firstly, the situation in Venezuela addressed jointly by the Lima Group. Secondly, the signing of a free trade agreement between Mercosur and the EU, which the Argentinian government was tasked with promoting in its speeches as the main achievement of its external policy and even more so in recent years of Argentinian diplomacy. Thirdly, in April Argentina formally withdrew from Unasur, ...