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Social media gaffes may undermine Argentine president

Cynthia Arnson, Director of the Latin American Program, is quoted in an article regarding the role of social media in undermining Argentine President Cristina Fernandez. According to Arnson, "she's acting recently like a person who's become unhinged."

Someone should do Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner a favour by taking away her smartphone and tossing it into the Rio de la Plata, the broad blue waterway that wallows past Buenos Aires on its way to the Atlantic Ocean.

“She’s acting recently like a person who’s become unhinged,” said Cynthia Arnson, director of the Latin America Program at the Wilson Center in Washington.

[...]

Around the time of her meeting this week with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Fernandez pulled out her smartphone and sent a message to her 3.5 million Twitter followers, inexplicably making fun of her hosts’ accents.

“More than 1,000 attendees at the event,” she tweeted in Spanish, here rendered in English. “Are they all from ‘La Campola’ and they came just for the lice and the petloleum?”

“La Campora” (not “La Campola”) is an Argentine youth organization that serves as a training ground for Fernandez’s political supporters. “Lice” is a deliberate misspelling of “rice” and “petloleum” of “petroleum.”

“What a crass, crude, and racist remark,” said Arnson. “It was so clueless.”

[...]

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Latin America Program

The Wilson Center’s prestigious Latin America Program provides non-partisan expertise to a broad community of decision makers in the United States and Latin America on critical policy issues facing the Hemisphere. The Program provides insightful and actionable research for policymakers, private sector leaders, journalists, and public intellectuals in the United States and Latin America. To bridge the gap between scholarship and policy action, it fosters new inquiry, sponsors high-level public and private meetings among multiple stakeholders, and explores policy options to improve outcomes for citizens throughout the Americas. Drawing on the Wilson Center’s strength as the nation’s key non-partisan policy forum, the Program serves as a trusted source of analysis and a vital point of contact between the worlds of scholarship and action.  Read more

Latin America Program

The Wilson Center’s prestigious Latin America Program provides non-partisan expertise to a broad community of decision makers in the United States and Latin America on critical policy issues facing the Hemisphere. The Program provides insightful and actionable research for policymakers, private sector leaders, journalists, and public intellectuals in the United States and Latin America. To bridge the gap between scholarship and policy action, it fosters new inquiry, sponsors high-level public and private meetings among multiple stakeholders, and explores policy options to improve outcomes for citizens throughout the Americas. Drawing on the Wilson Center’s strength as the nation’s key non-partisan policy forum, the Program serves as a trusted source of analysis and a vital point of contact between the worlds of scholarship and action.  Read more