Javier Milei, the television panelist who won the Argentine presidential election wielding a chainsaw, will take office today in Buenos Aires. He begins a new stage in the second largest country in Latin America and the fourth in population, after Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. Many people in the world are going to turn their attention to Argentina to see what effects a drastic cut in public spending has in the attempt to stop inflation of 140%.
Unprecedented cuts. Dollarization of the economy. Total privatization of the public sector. Closure of the Central Bank. Maximum reduction of the government structure, strengthening of public security and prohibition of abortion. That is the core of the winning offer of the presidential elections, held in a double round. Milei won the runoff with 56% of the votes. Peronism, an omnipresent political movement, a great phenomenon of the 20th century that is very difficult to describe with European categories, seems to have lost severely. The world watches.
In Argentina the shock doctrine will be applied with 40% of poor people. The last time the Chicago School carried out an experiment of these characteristics, it did so with the help of bayonets in Chile, after the coup d’état of 1973. In Argentina, the ultraliberal doctrine will operate this time in a regime of public freedoms with the electoral support of an important part of those potentially affected. Scenes from the Weimar Republic on the banks of the Río de la Plata. The world watches.
In Argentina, the ability of the United States to regain power in Latin America will be tested, given the progressive advance of the People’s Republic of China as the main trading partner of the large Latin American countries from which it purchases raw materials on a large scale. In addition to being a large producer of soy, cereals and meat, Argentina is rich in lithium, a strategic material for the viability of electric cars. 46% of the reserves of this mineral, necessary for the manufacture of automotive batteries, are found in a geographical triangle formed by Argentina, Bolivia and Chile on the axis of the Andean mountain range. Argentina also has Vaca Muerta, a gigantic field of shale oil and shale gas, hydrocarbons that must be extracted from the rock using fracking techniques, hydraulic rupture of the subsoil. The world watches.
In Argentina, the sustainability of the story as a decisive instrument for political mobilization in the hyperconnected world will be tested. Milei and his sponsors have resorted to an extreme story in the face of an extreme situation: breaking everything to rebuild the country on new economic bases. The majority of Argentines have voted in favor of the shock and now we have to see what it consists of.
In the coming months we will see what the correlation is between idea and action. What is the depth of the shock and the precautions that are adopted to avoid a tragic social outbreak. What is the degree of truth in Milei’s words during the campaign, before being bridled, during the second electoral round, by the conventional Argentine right, led by former president Mauricio Macri. Milei, right-wing revolutionary, pioneer of a new stage in Latin America and beyond Latin America, or electrifying mask with which the Argentine establishment has been able to articulate a popular base capable of winning the elections against Peronism to make the adjustments that Macri could not carry out carried out between 2015 and 2019.
The story and its limits. We would be facing a huge experiment in mass psychology in a country on the brink of the abyss. The spectacle is fascinating and the world watches. In all defensive societies, energy today comes from the right side.
After a succession of victories for the left in most Latin American countries (Mexico, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia and Brazil, plus the traumatic experience of Peru), Milei represents the counterpoint. Facing Mexico, where the left can win again in 2024, Milei’s Argentina, herald of a possible return of Donald Trump to the White House. Milei can also resurrect Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and draws the attention of the entire European extreme right ahead of the European Parliament elections in June 2024.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán attended the inauguration. Volodymyr Zelensky has also traveled to Buenos Aires in search of Ukraine’s first great ally in Latin America. (At the last EU-Latin America-Caribbean summit, held in Brussels in September, the main countries on the other side of the Atlantic vetoed Zelensky’s presence at the meeting). Emmanuel Macron is also in Buenos Aires. When the world moves, France is there.
The representation of Spain is carried out by King Felipe VI, who was received yesterday at the Casa Rosada, and the Secretary of State for Latin America, Juan Fernández Trigo. The Government has not sent any minister, which constitutes an obvious political gesture. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, is busy at the General Affairs Council of the European Union next Tuesday in Brussels, in which a decision should be made on the official use of Catalan in the EU, and will then travel to Morocco. The Popular Party will be represented by deputy Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, whose mother is Argentine and with strong ties in the country, and by Esperanza Aguirre, former president of the Community of Madrid, fascinated by anarcho-liberalism. No member of the PP executive commission will be in Buenos Aires. Here is the expression of a certain caution. The only Spanish party leader who attends the inauguration is Santiago Abascal, president of Vox. Abascal was received yesterday by Milei.
Milei is an undisputed icon of the extreme right in Spain. Vox supported him when he went with the chainsaw on, promising to end the Peronist caste. The PP observes. Isabel Díaz Ayuso supported him in the second round, without saying her name. Alberto Núñez Feijóo knows Argentine politics, since more than 160,000 Galician citizens reside in the country with full right to vote in Spain. The PP is about to call early elections in Galicia, perhaps for the second half of February, and the vote of Galicians residing in Argentina will have its weight. Feijóo, who has worked on that vote for more than fourteen years, is treading carefully: among the victims of the Milei shock there will be quite a few Spaniards with the right to vote at home.
The Milei phenomenon radiates and will radiate on Spanish politics. He could be the herald of a social catastrophe or the messenger of a totally uninhibited right, capable of shaking the foundations of the European Union if Trump returns to the White House. Argentina is once again a subject of mandatory reading in Spain. For part of the Spanish political spectrum it will be a magnetic reference.