Buenos Aires City candidates far behind in the Rucci-Tosco debate
It was Tuesday the 13th, and beyond superstitions, fate had nothing good in store for the two protagonists of this story. It was February 1973, and less than a month remained until Peronism returned to power after 18 years of proscription.
Union leaders José Ignacio Rucci, a metalworker and general secretary of the General Confederation of Labor and a representative of the Peronist right, and Agustín Tosco, of the Luz y Fuerza union, a leader of the Cordobazo and a self-proclaimed Marxist, met in a television studio to debate their conceptually opposing positions on the role of the working class and Argentine politics in the twilight of a military dictatorship.
This past Tuesday wasn't the 13th, although there was also a televised political debate. But not between two people, but between no fewer than 17! One from each list of candidates for Buenos Aires City legislators who will compete in the elections in Buenos Aires City exactly two Sundays from now. In the exchanges between all those summoned, the banter prevailed, and concrete proposals were missed.
Given the ideological gulf that separated them, no one believed 52 years ago that it would be possible to bring Rucci and Tosco together to present their ideas under the same roof. But it happened, something unthinkable today, where, despite the multitude of screens—then there were only five over-the-air channels, and today they've been joined by seven cable news channels and a host of streaming offerings—the confrontation of ideas is entirely unusual. Nowadays, interviewees don't go to stations they don't empathize with. This produces a double impoverishment of what TV currently offers on the subject: there's virtually no contrasting of different ideas on a single screen. This homogenization leads to a constant merry-go-round of recurring guests who bore with the repetition of their positions, rarely exposed to the stress of having to struggle against someone who thinks differently. The only thing left standing that allows for the public to hear contrasting opinions of leaders, or those aspiring to be leaders, are precisely the debates required by law at the national level and in some districts before the elections, such as the one held last Tuesday on Canal de la Ciudad. From the private sphere, almost alone, the program A dos voces , broadcast on TN, has a long history of organizing engaging debates between candidates before voting.
Tosco and Rucci were recruited for the program Las dos campanas (The Two Bells) on Teleonce (the predecessor of today's Telefé), hosted by journalist Jorge Conti and the program's producer, Gerardo Sofovich. He made his debut there as a host, a profession he continued to pursue successfully in the following decades.
The program sought to have guests who were peers in their professions, but with diametrically opposed positions. For example, on another broadcast, boxers Ringo Bonavena and Goyo Peralta faced off. Another memorable match was César Luis Menotti versus Carlos Bilardo.
Teleonce had already overtaken Goar Mestre's Channel 13 in audiences when the popular owner of the newspaper Crónica, Héctor Ricardo García, took over the San Cristóbal station. Both stations suffered the intervention of their companies by the Peronist government in mid-1973, and their outright expropriation in August of the following year.
The City Channel, which is public and owned by the city government, could be nearing its end if the presidential spokesperson and first candidate for La Libertad Avanza for the metropolitan legislature were to achieve his wish. He recalled that the PRO (Progressive Party of Buenos Aires), which has governed the city for 18 years, had promised to shut it down, but that didn't happen. "Today, they allocate 4.5 billion pesos in their annual budget. If Kirchnerism could, it would fill it with sycophants and activists. We're going to shut it down," Manuel Adorni pledged.
It's very poorly watched. For example, the debate between the Buenos Aires City legislative candidates achieved less than 0.1 viewership points , although when that broadcast was taken over by other channels and social media, which replayed its most notable segments, it was still widely disseminated.
It's interesting to review the audio (the images are gone) of the Rucci-Tosco summit, which is easily found on Google. That broadcast reached 45 ratings, comparable to the excitement of a World Cup match.
Also on the bill is a theatrical reenactment, entitled The Debate , which is more educational than dramatic. It can be seen at the Multitabaris, starring Pepe Monje as Rucci and Gabriel Rovito as Tosco. The program is embellished with the sponsorship of five powerful unions.
That era surpasses this one in the high level of civility that this respectful exchange of ideas was able to have, without grievances, personal attacks, or overlapping voices, light years away from the boisterous debate we witnessed a few days ago.
There was more respect on television back then, but less on the street, where the bullets that took Rucci's life seven months later spoke, because that's how the "young idealists" of the Montoneros decided. And Tosco died two years later in hiding because, having received death threats from the Triple A, he couldn't receive adequate treatment for the neurological illness he suffered. Every era has its downsides.
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