The intellectual and specialist in international relations Carlos Escudé died this Friday, January 1 at 71 years of age for coronavirus, after having been hospitalized for more than two months for the disease. At the end of September last year, his wife, the sociologist Mónica La Madrid, had died for the same cause.
Escudé was a fervent defender of Argentina’s alignments with the United States and with China and had a special heyday in the 1990s, in which he defended and contributed to the International geopolitical positioning of the Government of Carlos Menem. His appearance was marked by the permanent use of a profuse beard, traditional round glasses and a cane.
The speaker and polemicist completed his higher studies as a sociologist at the Universidad Católica Argentina (UCA). Then he did several postgraduate doctoral degrees, for example in Political Science and International Relations at Yale University (Connecticut, United States) and at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University, in England.
He was pointed out as the ideologue of “carnal relations” with the United States.
When he was an advisor to then-Chancellor Guido Di Tella, he was singled out as the ideologue of “carnal relations” with U.S as part of its principle that peripheral countries should not confront those central nations, but be linked and associated with them. The same idea held when China it has definitely established itself as one of the world powers in recent decades.
As part of Escudé’s resume His work as principal investigator for Conicet and professor of Argentine Foreign Policy at the Center for Advanced Studies of the National University of Córdoba also stands out. Likewise, he reflected his approaches in various works. He was also a counselor at the Argentine Center for International Relations (CARI) and director of the Center for Studies of Religion, State and Society (CERES) at the Marshall Meyer Latin American Rabbinical Seminary.
One of the peculiarities of Escudé was its conversion to judaism in one of its more orthodox religious branches, for which, in addition, it took the name of Najmán ben Abraham Avinu.
On local politics, in recent years he criticized judicial investigations into the due to AMIA that involved former President Cristina Kirchner and also questioned measures applied by the Buenos Aires government of Horacio Rodríguez Larreta for people over 70 years in quarantine for the coronavirus.
On that occasion he had said: “I prefer a death from coronavirus rather than a life protected by Larreta“. Escudé’s wife, the sociologist Mónica Vilgré La Madrid, had also died of the disease last September. Indeed, one of her last television appearances was on the program Today It Touches Us, at City Canal analyzed what would be the lessons that the post pandemic would leave to Argentina.
Between the lauros and national and international recognitions who received the Order of Bernardo O’Higgins for his campaign for peace and friendship between Argentina and Chile; the Bernardo Houssay del Conicet award and the Konex diploma as one of the best Argentine political scientists of the 1990s.
B.D.N.
