Unlike other end-of-year crises—historically associated, in the Argentine political imagination, with non-Peronist governments—the incidents of the last few hours in Lanus and Quilmes expose a different and more disturbing phenomenon: the disorder emerges from within Peronism itself, and it does so in districts governed by The Camporathe core that for more than a decade embodied the idea of leadership, discipline and Kirchnerist verticality.
That in less than 48 hours two rural municipalities become the scene of violent protests, burning of tires and even the symbolic burning of a Christmas tree in front of a mayor’s office is neither a minor fact nor an anecdotal excess. It is, rather, a symptom. And like every symptom, it refers to a deeper pathology: the implosion of a political authority that no longer orders, does not arbitrate and, above all, does not inspire obedience.
In Lanusthe protest in front of the municipality governed by Julián Álvarez was carried out by organizations historically aligned with territorial Peronism: the Evita Movement, sectors linked to the UTEP and groups orbiting the universe of Juan Grabois. In Quilmesthe day before, the scene was similar: pickets, confrontations with the Police, detainees and an unprecedented public crossing between Grabois and Mayra Mendozaemblematic figure of La Cámpora Buenos Aires.
The reading they make of the camporismo is revealing: they do not see a genuine social claim there, but rather an action with political intentionality. A warning. Or something worse: a show of force in the middle of an internal one that can no longer be hidden. Suspicions point both outward and inward. Outwards, because some leaders believe that former allies—Grabois and Emilio Pérsico, among them—could have recalculated loyalties. Inward, because others point out that the spark does not come from the “enemy”, but from the fragmentation of the Buenos Aires PJ itself.
The context aggravates that reading. Cristina Fernández de Kirchnerthe figure who for years functioned as the final arbiter of all disputes, is today politically absent. First admitted to the Otamendi Sanatorium, then confined to house arrest in San José 1111, her capacity to intervene is null. The data is neither medical nor judicial: it is symbolic. Kirchnerism built power around a very personal leadership. Without that leadership, the building creaks.
In this void, conflicts emerge that were previously resolved in private. The fight between Grabois and Mendoza is not a simple tactical disagreement over a municipal ordinance on metered parking. It is the expression of a harsher dispute: who controls the territory, who manages social intermediation and, above all, who keeps the businesses associated with organized poverty. The “trapitos” grouped in cooperatives referenced in the Grabois universe are not only informal workers: they are a political base, cash and pressure power.
From camparismo they say it without euphemisms: they accuse these movements of “doing business with marginality.” From the other side, they reply that the municipalities govern “with their backs to the people” while declaiming social sensitivity against the government of Javier Milei. Both things can be true at the same time. And therein lies the seriousness of the picture.
What until recently was a strategic alliance—La Cámpora providing institutional management and social movements guaranteeing streets—today seems like a broken bond. Worse still: a link turned into a threat. The message heard in Lanús (“if the mayor doesn’t come down, what happened in Quilmes will happen”) is not rhetorical. It’s extortionate. And it marks a change of era.
For years, Peronism made the street a political asset. Today, that same street becomes ungovernable. The excesses at the end of the year, that old ghost associated with the collapse of power, no longer hit governments other than the PJ: they now reveal an incendiary internal within a Peronism that lost leadership, lost history and is beginning to lose territory.
The most disturbing fact is not the burning of a Christmas tree. It is the certainty that, without Cristina, Kirchnerism ceased to be a coherent system of power and became a sum of disputing factions. And when Peronism fights with itself, the street stops being a tool and becomes a mirror. An uncomfortable mirror, which returns an image that is difficult to accept: the end of a reign that no longer orders even its own.
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