Mariano Grondona

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Mariano Grondona (b. 1932 in Buenos Aires) is an Argentine lawyer, sociologist, political scientist, essayist and commentator. He has been a journalist for several decades, appearing in print media and on television, and has written several books. He has also taught as a professor in several universities; both in Argentina and in other places... ^[1]

Contents 1 As an academic 2 Media career 3 Political standing 4 Bibliography 5 References

[edit] As an academic

Grondona studied Law and Social Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). He did postgraduate studies on Sociology at the University of Madrid, and on Political Science at the Political Studies Institute of Madrid. Since 1987 he was a professor of Political Law at the UBA. He worked at the University of Harvard since the mid-1980s and until the 1990s as a visiting academic, professor and research.

[edit] Media career

Grondona directed a magazine, Visión, between 1978 and 1995. He was the international news writer for the daily newspaper La Nación between 1987 and 1996, and then become a political op-ed writer in the same, a position he keeps as of 2006. ^[2]

Grondona appeared alongside Bernardo Neustadt in leading political commentary TV show Tiempo Nuevo until the pair broke up in 1986.^{[citation needed]} Since 1989, he has had his own weekly program.

In 1997 he received two Konex Awards and Konex Merit Diploma for Communication-Journalism. Ten years earlier he had been granted a Konnex Merit Diploma on the field of Political Analysis. ^[3]

In the 2000s he has conducted two radio shows, Las claves del día and Pensando con Mariano Grondona.

[edit] Political standing

Grondona's views are considered right wing, with a strong Catholic element (as opposed to the more liberal ideology of other right-wing opinion leaders such as late Álvaro Alsogaray). In matters of Argentine foreign policy, he favors alignment with the United States.

In the mid-1960s, Grondona supported the coup that brought dictator Juan Carlos Onganía to the presidency, and held public office in his government, though he grew disappointed and was later dismissed; he stated that he "had tried to make a De Gaulle of Onganía, and got a Franco instead".

In the 1970s he first supported presidents Héctor José Cámpora and Juan Perón; after Perón's death during his term, Grondona also supported the policies of Isabel Perón's Welfare Minister José López Rega, founder of the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance (one of the first death squads formed in Argentina).

As Isabel Perón's government fell apart, he advocated the participation of the military, and welcomed the beginning of the National Reorganization Process in 1976. A non-authorized biography of Grondona, El Doctor, by Martín Sivak (2005), revealed that he worked as an advisor of military junta member Brigadier Basilio Lami Dozo, on whose request he wrote a government programme titled Bases Políticas para la Reorganización Nacional (echoing Juan Bautista Alberdi's Bases and Points of Departure for the Political Organization of the Argentine Republic). ^{[4] [5] [6]}

Grondona was one of the few leading intellectuals that opposed the 1984 Beagle Channel resolution, calling for a "No" vote in that year's referendum (regarding whether to accept the mediation of the Holy See in a border dispute with Chile).^{[citation needed]}

In his program "Hora Clave" of March 16th, 2003, he declared about the dictatorship in power in Argentina from 1976 to 1983, that " The rational behaviour, in any war, is to be on the side of the winners".

In the same program, he declared on the day of the death of the former Chilian dictator Augusto Pinochet, that "Without Pinochet, Chile would be as developed as Cuba is", as well as "I can accept that someone has a fascist ideology [...], but what really disappointed me is the fact that he had bank accounts in Switzerland. That is what is untolerable".

[edit] Bibliography

• Política y Gobierno, Buenos Aires, Columba, 1962.
• La Argentina en el Tiempo y el Mundo, Buenos Aires, Sudamericana, 1967.
• Los Dos Poderes, Buenos Aires, Emecé, 1973.
• La Construcción de la Democracia, Buenos Aires, Eudeba, 1973.
• Los Pensadores de la Libertad, Sudamericana, 1986.
• Bajo el imperio de las Ideas Morales, Buenos Aires, Sudamericana, 1988.
• Values and Development, Harvard University, Source Book, 1988.
• Toward a Theory of Development, Harvard University, Author's Workshop, 1990.
• El posliberalismo, Buenos Aires, Planeta, 1992.
• La corrupción, Buenos Aires, Planeta, 1994.
• La Argentina como vocación, Buenos Aires, Planeta, 1994.
• El mundo en clave, Buenos Aires, Planeta, 1996.
• Las condiciones culturales del desarrollo económico, Buenos Aires, Planeta, 1999.
• La realidad, Buenos Aires, Planeta, 2001.

[edit] References