by Argentina has a colorful new liberal president and the left is already worried about him: but the Argentinians who fled the economic disaster that befell their country are now thinking of returning.
Some call Javier Milei “el loco” (the mad man) or “the wig”, even though his hair is real. He played in a Rolling Stones cover band in his youth and still looks the part, sporting mutton chops and wearing leather jackets and turning up at campaign rallies with a chainsaw, symbolic of his plans to cut spending and taxes and eliminate ten of the ten Ministries of Argentina. .
A bachelor for life who is the son of a businessman and a home maker, he is a tantric sex guru and advocate of group sex, although sex education in schools is called a Marxist plot to destroy the family and he wants to redo the referendum of the Argentina 2020 made it legal. abortion He is a climate change and vaccine skeptic who has earned praise from Donald Trump, who said he will make Argentina great again, and Elon Musk. He also sparked organized protests by Taylor Swift fans, and called his country, Pope Francis, a “disgraceful communist” and worse. Milei has four 200-pound English Mastiffs he calls his four-legged babies, all named after his favorite right-wing economists. They were cloned in the United States from Conan, a beloved dog who died in 2017 but claims he continues to be counseled by a psychic.
As a newcomer to politics elected to congress in 2021, Milei memorably described the Argentine government as “a pedophile in a kindergarten, with the children chained and bathed in Vaseline.” It is not entirely wrong. The left-wing Peronists have ruled Argentina for 16 of the last 20 years and, even in a piece attacking Milei, the New York Times admitted that their far-left policies have “awakened the country from a boom to bust.”
Inflation is at 143 percent, the peso has lost about 90 percent of its value against the US dollar on the black market, and 40 percent of the country is below the poverty line. It is a national shame for proud people. At the end of the 19th For centuries, Argentina was so rich that the phrase “rich as Argentina” was a thing, but now Argentina ranks 126th in the World Bank’s ease of doing business index and 94th in Transparency International’s corruption perception index, behind countries in developing countries such as Burkina Faso, Belarus, and Benin.
In April 2020, one US dollar bought 80 pesos on the semi-official, “blue dollar” black market exchange. Argentina implemented two of the longest and strictest lockdowns in the world during the Pandemic, and Milei was an outspoken opponent of those measures. The economy got stuck and never came back. When I visited in August 2022, my tour guide, Celeste, told us that we had reached a “historic time of hyperinflation.” We got 330 pesos to $1 and, for us, Argentina was cheap. But inflation has worsened since then, and one US dollar now buys more than 900 pesos. (Note: The exchange market is closed today, as it is a national holiday, so we will have to wait until Tuesday to see how the election affects the market.)
Like many other young Argentines we met, Celeste left the country during the crisis to seek citizenship in Italy. She says there were more than 200 young Argentines in the small town of 2,000 she settled in southern Italy, all seeking EU citizenship based on Italian ancestry. With the economy in shambles, it should be no surprise that an outsider like Milei could beat Sergio Massa, the economy minister who led leftist policies that led to runaway inflation, going 56 percent to 44 percent. One Argentinian friend, Patricia, told me in an email that the country needed a change. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a crazy choice,” she said. “We are tired of inflation, injustice, corruption and welfare.”
Apart from joint ministries, including the women’s, gender and diversity ministry, Milei has said he would like to ditch the peso in favor of the US dollar, close the central bank, loosen gun laws, reduce spending, taxes lower, slash regulations. , introducing a school choice voucher system, and privatizing state media, the national oil industry and others. “Today puts an end to this idea that the state’s loot is to be shared between politicians and their friends,” he said.
Milei has also taken a much softer line on the Falkland Islands than most Argentine politicians. He takes the position that the islands belong to Argentina but that the islanders – who desperately want to remain British – must have a say in their future. He praised Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister who launched the British operation to recover the Falklands from Argentine invaders in 1982, as one of the “great leaders in the history of humanity” during his campaign. This drew predictable criticism from his opponents and the “war veterans” movement, but he failed to lose the election.
Also predictably, the Western liberal media has none of his freedom agenda. The BBC rubbed him as a “far-right” “radical” like Trump and former Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro, although neither are citizens. The New York Times also described his victory as a victory for the “far right” and criticized him as a conspiracy theorist and Trump wannabe.
Milei should not be dismissed so easily but he has his work cut out for him. His Liberty Advances party has only seven of 72 seats in the Argentine Senate and 38 of 257 in the house. He’s clearly an eccentric, but he got more than half the vote in a nation of 46 million people, so it’s tempting to label Milei a “far right” extremist when the same news outlets don’t describe any nobody at all, even the actual communists. , as far left.
Although the intellectuals in Europe and North America are disapproving, many Argentines are feeling optimistic. Celeste says there was jubilation on the Whatsapp group of Argentine exiles in Italy and Spain after Milei’s victory. She says many of these young exiles hope to return to their beloved country if Milei and his free market policies turn the country around.
“If Argentina becomes more stable and we gain more dignity, I think many will return because they never wanted to leave Argentina in the first place,” she said.
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