Photo: Associated Press

"Ego," the Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa once memorably observed, "is the little Argentine in all of us." The truth of this pithy maxim never ceased to impress me during the 27 months when I was stationed in Buenos Aires in the late 1980s as Newsweek's South America correspondent. The Argentines' capacity for self-absorption seemed endless and would express itself in a number of ways, from the collective obsession with a storied past, when Argentina ranked among the world's ten richest countries in the early decades of the early 20th century, to the need to highlight their more European society and culture vis-a-vis those of their Latin American neighbors. To this day, the international news sections of Buenos Aires' leading dailies regularly feature stories analyzing how Argentina is factoring into the calculations of top policymakers in Washington, as if the editors at those newspapers can't quite bring themselves to tell readers that their country barely flickers on the radar screens of the Bush White House or Condoleezza Rice's State Department.

That national trait may help to explain the imbroglio that Argentina's recently inaugurated President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner created for herself within days of taking office last month. Last August a Venezuelan-American businessman named Guido Antonini Wilson made headlines when an alert customs agent at Buenos Aires' main international airport discovered nearly $800,000 in cash in his luggage that he had failed to declare. Antonini surrendered the money without protest and left the country in a hurry. But he got tongues wagging in Buenos Aires: He flew into the country in the wee hours of a Saturday morning aboard a private plane that chartered by an energy company belonging to the Argentine government headed by Cristina's husband and lame-duck president Nestor Kirchner. Over time the episode receded from the front pages of the Argentine press until the second week of December, when a U.S. prosecutor in Miami said in open court that the moolah had been earmarked for the president campaign coffers of the Argentine First Lady, who was elected to replace her hubby by a landslide in late October.

The news broke on the third day of Fernandez' presidency. Instead of saluting the exemplary role of an Argentine public servant in exposing the suspect funds, she chose to play the anti-gringo card. Visibly irate, Fernandez accused the Bush Administration of engaging in "garbage operations" to smear her government's image, apparently in retaliation for the friendly ties her husband Nestor has cultivated with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. "We don't need anyone to tell us who should be our friends," Fernandez fumed. "This president may be a woman, but she will never allow herself to be pressured." The First Gentleman chimed in, reminding his fellow Argentines that their country was no colony of the United States. Neither the ex-president nor his wife-successor bothered to mention that none of the four foreigners indicted by assistant U.S. attorney Thomas Mulvihill for conspiring to cover up the $800,000 suitcase affair is of Argentine nationality.

Cristina Fernandez is a lawyer by profession and, by all accounts, no one's fool. While she can't be expected to possess an intimate knowledge of the U.S. judicial system, a cursory bit of due diligence on her part would have revealed the simple reality that federal prosecutors do not base their indictments on the foreign policy dictates of whoever is occupying the Oval Office. Having opened her mouth before carefully considering her government's response to the indictments, Fernandez now finds herself in a pickle. The State Department's top official for Latin American affairs has publicly rebuked the Argentine president for her remarks and abruptly suspended a trip to Buenos Aires scheduled for this month. U.S. diplomats are taking their sweet time approving the recent designation of the Argentine consul in New York to become the country's new ambassador in Washington. For her part, Cristina has gone into bunker mode, canceling her plans to attend this month's annual World Economic Forum summit in Davos despite her penchant for globe-trotting. Given the view from Buenos Aires, however, it comes as no surprise that an Argentine chief of state would smell a sinister plot by Uncle Sam to discredit her good name under the circumstances. Since Argentines spend so much time thinking about themselves and where they stand in relation to the rest of the world, shouldn't everyone else be doing the same?