not important for her administration. Anthony Mills, deputy director of the International Press Institute, compared the harassment against the press in Argentina with cases in Venezuela and Ecuador. He considered it unfortunate that the president disparaged journalism, and pointed that the freedom of the press may be declining in Argentina. Midterm elections The 2009 midterm elections took place a year after the crisis with the farmers. The Kirchners were highly unpopular at the time, and people rejected their policies and governing style. The growing rates of inflation and crime also eroded their public support. Seeking to reverse their declining popularity, Néstor Kirchner led the list for deputy candidates at the Buenos Aires province. He was narrowly defeated by Francisco de Narváez, who led a Peronist faction opposed to the Kirchners. The Kirchners lost the majority of Congress as a result of the election. The Front for Victory recovered the majority in both chambers of the Congress during the 2011 presidential elections, when she was re-elected for a second term. The party had projects to amend the constitution and allow indefinite reelections, but lacked the supermajority required for it. A victory at the 2013 midterm elections would have given such majority, but the party was defeated in most provinces. Sergio Massa, a former cabinet minister of the Kirchners, won in the Buenos Aires Province by nearly 10 points with his new party, the Renewal Front. Argentina lacked a big opposition party since the collapse of the Radical Civic Union in 2001. Instead, Massa created an alternative party that also stood for Peronism. However, the party still retained a simple majority in Congress. This election was the first one where teenagers from 16 to 18 could vote. President Fernández de Kirchner, who had undergone brain surgery some weeks before, was hospitalized during the election and unable to join the campaign. Foreign policy Fernández de Kirchner was part of the "pink tide", a group of populist, left-wing presidents who ruled several Latin American countries in the 2000s. This group included, among others, Néstor and Cristina Kirchner in Argentina, Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador. She has been an unconditional supporter of Chávez and Maduro. As Paraguay rejected the incorporation of Venezuela into the Mercosur trade bloc, she took advantage of the impeachment of