The Secretary of Culture of the Nation, Leonardo Cifelli, starred this Thursday in an inauguration to be forgotten—or perhaps for history—at the opening of the 50th Buenos Aires International Book Fair. Before some 1,500 people gathered in The Ruralthe official committed a blooper that is difficult to overcome for whoever holds the position: when paying tribute to the greatest Argentine writer, he called him “Jorge Luis Borgeres”. As if that were not enough, he placed his death “30 years ago”, when Borges died in 1986, that is, 40 years ago.
The error was immediate ammunition for an audience that was already loaded. The boos accompanied Cifelli from the beginning of his speech, but reached their peak when the official—former producer of Fátima Flórez—decided to explicitly thank the president. Javier Milei and to the general secretary of the Presidency, Karina Mileifor the supposed cultural achievements of management. The room responded with whistles. Cifelli did not shrink: “In case you didn’t understand, I’ll repeat it again. Thanks to Javier Milei and Karina Milei”he insisted, which multiplied the reactions.
Far from lowering his tone, the secretary chose the chicane as a shield. “Argentina began to free itself from structural problems that functioned as a permanent limit to thinking about the future,” he said, and asked the question that became the hit of the night: “Did you fix the YPF thing or did Javier Milei’s government fix it?”. In the intervening moments he tried to calm the waters with the phrase “Guys, stop it, there are four of them” and demanded that those present take down the banners, including one that read “How long will our books be with Martínez de Hoz and the Rural Society?”
Before, the president of the The Book Foundation, Christian Rainonehad also received his share of catcalls when mentioning the Minister of Human Capital, Sandra Pettovelloand the Chequelibro program. And the head of the Buenos Aires Government, Jorge Macrihad his own moment of tension, although he came out better than his predecessors on the podium.
Cifelli did take advantage of the speech to announce measures: the reactivation of the National Awards 2026 with an endowment of up to 90 million pesos, new calls from the INCAA for screenwriters with awards exceeding $150,000, and a record investment of $2.3 billion for the Libro% program—an increase of 50% compared to the previous year—, in addition to new lines of promotion for playwriting, fiction and essays.
The writer Ana María Shua summed up the atmosphere with irony: “It is difficult to avoid boos against Secretary Cifelli, the creator of ‘Bórgeres,'” he wrote on his networks, regretting at the same time that the scandal had overshadowed the dialogue between Selva Almada, Gabriela Cabezón Cámara and Leila Guerrierothree of the most important voices in current Argentine literature. Cabezón Cámara, for his part, took advantage of his intervention to launch his own slogan: “The Glacier Law is not touched”.
The night also had its moment of relief with the surprise performance of Fito Paezwho performed solo on the piano Disarm and bleed by Charly García, The last curda —with music by Aníbal Troilo and lyrics by Cátulo Castillo— and Maturana by Manuel J. La Feria, which has as its slogan “memory and future” and that will extend until May 11 in La Ruralthus began with the polarization that seems to have been established as a tradition of the event.
