Large crowds protest in support of Argentine ex-President Fernández as she starts house arrest

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Vowing that a conviction on corruption charges and a permanent ban from public office would not end her decades-long political career, Argentina’s former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner began serving a six-year sentence under house arrest as tens of thousands of her supporters rallied in the streets.

Her detention marked an ignominious turn for one of the most polarizing and influential political leaders on Latin America’s left who served one term as Argentina’s first lady (2004-2007), two terms as its president (2007-2015) and one term as its powerful vice president (2019–2023), dominating the country’s politics for the last two decades.

Still today, Fernández represents the face of opposition to radical libertarian President Javier Milei. Polls suggest that she and her left-wing brand of Peronism, Argentina’s nationalist populist movement championing workers’ rights, retains the support of some 30% of the country.

“We will return, and, what’s more, we will return with more wisdom, with more unity, with more strength,” Fernández, 72, told her ardent supporters in a speech recorded from home confinement and broadcast through loudspeakers into the streets of downtown Buenos Aires.

The case in which she was first convicted in 2022 found that she defrauded the state in awarding public works contracts to a friendly businessman. She vehemently denies the charges, accusing her opponents of weaponizing the justice system against her.

Before the court decision this month, she had been planning to run for a seat in the Buenos Aires provincial legislature.

“The real economic powers know this model has no future; they know it’s collapsing, and that’s why I’m in prison,” she said in her speech from her second-floor apartment in the southern Constitución neighborhood of the Argentine capital.

The scene of huge crowds setting off flares and chanting “We will return” underscored the sharp divisions in this South American nation that has long been shaped by Fernández, who vastly increased welfare and public employment during her tenure in a dramatic expansion of the state that left Argentina with sky-high inflation and massive deficits.

“We are all here to fight for Cristina’s freedom. If they restrict her more, we will do more,” said Gloria Araya, 64, a retiree protesting on Wednesday.

The economic shambles she bequeathed her successors helped vault her nemesis, political outsider Milei, to the presidency in late 2023.

Milei has succeeded in his flagship campaign promise of lowering inflation. In May Argentina’s monthly inflation rate plunged below 2% for the first time in five years, the government statistics agency reported last week.

But while prices have stabilized, the cost of living remains high in a country where wages are comparatively low. Investment has lagged. Many Argentines say they’re still waiting to collect on the economic revival that Mieli promised would follow the pain of austerity.

Some analysts say that anger over Fernández’s claims of political persecution could add fuel to those economic grievances and help rally an otherwise confused opposition to Milei.

“The conviction and sentencing of Cristina is a unifying force for Peronism,” said Sebastián Mazzuca, an Argentine political scientist. “If the opposition can link this claim that there was some injustice in her trial with concerns over income and purchasing power, they have an agenda.”