Argentina has long been a nation of political and economic upheaval, and the recent summoning of ex-president Fernando de la RÃ before a tribunal to respond to his role in the violence accompanying riots in the Plaza de Mayo in December of 2001 served to reopen old wounds. During the recession of 2001, tens of thousands of protestors took to the streets of Buenos Aires in response to de la RÃ's fiscal policies, which resulted in fierce demonstrations that caused 5 deaths and 107 injuries. De la RÃ eventually was acquitted of any wrongdoing in proceedings in October of 2007, but the investigation was reopened on October 7th of this year by federal judge Claudio Bonadio. To understand the motivation behind the latest call for the presentation of de la RÃ it is necessary to first examine the broad issues of his tenure in office and the reasons behind the riots.

The 1990s: A Return to Prosperity

The story of de la RÃ's meteoric ascension to power and his subsequent fall from grace began during his predecessor's administration in the early 1990s, which was at the time a period of presumed prosperity for Argentina. Under President Carlos Menem and his superstar Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo, new policies, such as pegging the peso to the dollar, were implemented that everyone had assumed effectively ended inflation, which had reached 5,000% by 1989.
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