At the La Biela café, on a spring Sunday two weeks before the first round of the presidential elections in Argentina, it is difficult not to resort to the old cliché: “Crisis? What crisis?”
The terrace is packed with people drinking frothy coffees with milk and three or four half moons (croissants). Inside, where Borges was chatting, River Plate is winning one to zero against Boca Juniors. Outside, the spectacle is a bustle of Sunday people happily crossing Plaza Martín, in one of the most affluent districts of Buenos Aires. Some are tourists who go up to see Evita Perón’s deco pantheon in the famous Recoleta cemetery. Others go to the Recoleta Urban Mall shopping center.
Founded in 1850, La Biela is one of the dozen “notable” coffee shops in Buenos Aires, protected by those regulations of the Argentine State that the libertarian candidate Javier Milei wants to crush with his chainsaw. Today, in a carnival atmosphere in Recoleta, the only saw visible is the instrument, played with a violin bow, of a street musician performing an ethereal version of Bohemian Rhapsody.
Even the newsstands – still numerous in Buenos Aires – are having fun. “People like you come and ask me who I’m going to vote for,” says one. “I answer that I will vote for Juan Moretti; He will give meat for everyone, but it will have to be eaten raw; They look for him on his cell phone, but of course, Juan Moretti does not exist.”
Despite the casual atmosphere in Recoleta, Milei does exist and so does the crisis. With inflation already at 120% annually, the latest rapid appreciation of the dollar has driven the so-called blue exchange rate – one of the different exchange rates used to trade currencies – from 700 to 1,000 pesos per dollar. Soon inflation will rise to 140%. The mini-economic recovery after the pandemic that took employment to record levels and gave a breath of life to the candidacy of Sergio Massa, Minister of Economy of the center-left Peronist Government, is already far away. “Argentines know how to put up with inflation, but we are already heading towards stagflation (recession and inflation in tandem),” said a former minister of current President Alberto Fernández.
Many residents of districts like Recoleta (their savings in dollars are invested outside the country) are shielded. Some multinationals already pay part of executives’ salaries in dollars. They can even go on vacation. The flights to Rio de Janeiro are full of Argentines, despite the unfavorable change. But the great masses in Buenos Aires cannot even leave their neighborhoods. They fight daily against uncontrolled prices with a minimum wage in pesos that, in exchange, is already the lowest in Latin America.
Lacking dollars can be the most humiliating exclusion of all. Perhaps that is why the green bill that Milei raises like a flag at his rallies, along with the chainsaw, functions, paradoxically, as a symbol of popular demand.
Of course, it’s a hoax. “People think: Great, they are going to pay me my salary in dollars!” says a veteran radio journalist interviewed in another “notable” cafeteria, the Petit Colón, opened in the seventies, but whose interior is decorated with deco chandeliers, Marble and leather benches evoke – as do the five-digit prices – the atmosphere of Weimar. Only the old remember the catastrophic end – hunger and social unrest – of the de facto dollarization of the convertibility system implemented by Carlos Menem almost three decades ago. Some Menem advisors are already members of Milei’s team.
There is fear that Argentina is headed towards a crisis similar to that of 2001 with Milei in charge. “I think a social and economic upheaval is coming, a very strong revulsion,” said the former minister. Poverty – understood as a level of purchasing power that does not even allow for the purchase of the basic basket – already exceeds 40% of the population. Only the multi-employed survive. “I do three jobs,” says a security guard at a construction site in the peripheral neighborhood of Matanzas.
Traditionally, these were Peronist voters, especially in the years of radical redistribution of President Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007), when aggregate salaries rose from 27% to 43% of GDP. Now they are the ones who can make Milei the next president of Argentina.
“What drives Milei is tiredness with the usual politicians,” the former minister continued. In the primaries, in August, 30% of the vote went to Milei and another 30% did not vote. “Now it is likely that those who did not vote will opt for Milei.”
There is Milei’s trump card. Their vote covers almost all demographic and socioeconomic segments of the electorate. “There are three myths about the Milei voter: that he is cheto (posh), young, and that in the past he has voted for the center-right (Together for Change, of the candidate Patricia Bullrich),” states a report from the group of Betta Lab analysis. In reality, “it is a transversal vote” that crosses all categories, he explains. The “crazy” candidate has admirers in the “notable” downtown cafes and street barbecues in the popular neighborhoods. But his incendiary speech also fears total destabilization. At the moment, the polls indicate a narrow victory for Milei, who would later compete in a second round with Sergio Massa. But as the veteran radio host summed up on Petit Colón after a sip of his espresso, “polls are as reliable lately as reading the grounds of this coffee.”