Horacio Rodriguez Larreta interrupt a meeting. It is Wednesday, August 31, and the last rays of the sun enter through the windows of the Buenos Aires Government headquarters. The boss of that place has just received a video of almost two minutes on his cell phone and the work meeting with his team stops. Larreta brings the phone -adorned with a Racing case- close to his face and studies it as if he were a student before entering to take an exam: the images follow minute by minute of the operation at the intersection of Juncal and Uruguay streets, and the head of government wants to make sure that everything goes according to his plans.
It is that, as everyone in the Buenos Aires leadership and also in the red circle knows, what happens in those blocks of Recoleta is much more than a deployment of the security forces or a traffic problem, in the same way that the billboards they were much more than fences: on those meters of asphalt not only the future presidential candidate of the opposition is being played, but also his plumage. Falcon or dove is the being or not being that chases Larreta.
gray smoke
Those who maintain that the thesis of a hardened head of government is a fiction of little flight are those who did not see it in the last summit of Together. It was on Tuesday the 30th, at the “Happening” restaurant, the same one that, a few days ago, had been the venue for the hot meeting due to the Carrió tsunami. And this time, the meeting was even worse.
The spicy lunch was the unexpected correlate of the decision of Diego Luciani. The sentence requested by the prosecutor of the Vialidad case generated a butterfly effect that made the political climate rarefied and returned the central role to Cristina Kirchner. The vice president, skillful in her own thing, used that push and the trouble at the door of her home to send Molotov cocktails to the yellow inmate, where there was already an appropriate climate for the fire. From his networks -“Mr. Larreta’s fences”, he titled one of his letters, in a slogan that K leaders and the militancy later made their own- and from an improvised podium in Juncal and Uruguay, he chose as his great enemy the head of government during weekend. Patricia Bullrich joined that fire and unleashed a barrage of napalm with his statements, calling the City’s position “weak” and purposely absenting himself from the press conference the City put together to respond to CFK.
Days later, when the figure of Larreta had already gained strength in the media discussion, the vice pointed her cannons at Bullrich. That double game, which had nothing Solomonic about it, and the post Luciani political tension were the Trojan horses that sneaked into the food at the Costanera.
“You have to support me here, it is not a political issue but a management issue, you can’t go out and criticize me everywhere. This is not for positioning or to gain an advantage.” He threw a visibly angry Larreta at Bullrich. It is not clear if the use of that word was on purpose or not, but it did spread like wildfire among all those who look askance at the former Minister of Security: now Larreta and his people call him “Ventajita”, an acid tribute to the nickname that Macri put on Massa. “It is that I am consistent with what I always raised, Horacio”, returned the president of the yellow party. The founder of the PRO was also sitting at the table, but -in an attitude that raised the temperature among the hard larretismo- he preferred to distance himself: “Patricia has the right to comment and Horacio too”, said Macri, dribbling the mud with Calabrian cunning.
But the great anger was saved for last. At the meeting it had been agreed that the only one who would speak later would be María Eugenia Vidal, but when Bullrich faced the microphones he could not resist the temptation. “When the government makes decisions, it must maintain its position”, he launched after lunch, replicating almost word for word the criticisms he had made before the summit, and pointing to him for having ended up negotiating with CFK after putting up the fences. Larretismo exploded with anger. “It has no codes and never had them”, they synthesize in larretismo. Larreta, in private, is less explosive but just as forceful: “Patricia does not help the unit.” The city burns.
cracks
There is another factor that triggers the internment, less visible than Luciani’s ultra-mediatized allegations or CFK’s tantrums. It is the only one that no one can control: time, which brings each passing minute closer to the definitions of the 2023 candidacies and, above all, the style they will have.
The fact is that the latest events have struck precisely that nerve fiber: the form and imprint that the future government will have if Together succeeds. Fences are just the tip of the iceberg in the debate on hawks and dovesa fight in which different ways of understanding society, the economy and politics compete and that, ten months after the closing of the lists, is far from having a winner.
Larreta shows himself and always showed himself to be a moderate and, in these days of tension, he repeats that he will only get tougher if there is violence or excesses in front of him. Close to him they repeat that thesis and also decode it with a reading about his style: “It is that Horacio does not feel comfortable being all day in the ring throwing pineapples”. The logic that they point out in their circle is that it will only be “halconized” if the situation warrants it -as happened in the battle of Recoleta or last year with the removal of the co-participation-, but that, in the course of a normal life, its position would be to seek consensus, and uphold its historic banner of “governing with 70 percent.”
It is a thesis that presents several obstacles. First, there is the fact that Argentina is far from being a normal country and that tensions like those in Juncal and Uruguay could perfectly well become an everyday routine. The second thing is that Larreta, beyond the declarations, has been exhibiting a toughness in crescendo. He was against inclusive language, against social plans and, as Bullrich did at the time with Chocobar, he photographed himself with the police wounded in the weekend repression, to name a few cases. Gabriel Vommaro, author of “Mundo PRO” -the book that in the historic bunker of the party on Balcarce street they give to young people who have just arrived at the party to read-, maintains that the head of the Buenos Aires Government is a victim of the cracked spirit of the time. “Aware of the mismatch between the idea that brought him here and the reality that overwhelms him, Larreta seeks to hit the table so that they listen to him and so that, eventually, they choose it. But every time he takes a step in that direction, Bullrich doubles his bet”, synthesizes the sociologist.
That is why Larreta walks on that thin red line, between what it claims to be and what the situation intends it to be. In that mess he also sends winks to the tough: he says that he cut off any dialogue with his historical friend Massa (“They love each other very much, but with Sergio you already know how he is, whatever the other talks about will be filtered”, they say close to the head of government), he makes it known that his economic plan would include a strong adjustment of the fiscal deficit, and It also advances in a growing operation to seduce intense macrismo. He first added as national shipowner the deputy Omar de Marchi, one of the opposition ultras, close to the former president. He now he formalized the pass of Waldo Wolff, another deputy of the halcones -who moved away from Bullrich, unleashing in her a murderous anger-, to the team that will seek that his successor in the City be Jorge Macri. Not only that: the cousin’s campaign team is commanded by Fernando de Andreis, the shadow of the former president, and seconded by Hernan Iglesias IlliaMacri’s ghostwriter, and Julián Gallo, the man who managed his social networks when he was president.
“What Horacio wants to do is very difficult. All these, if Mauricio played, they will go with him in a second. And if Mauricio does not go but the situation calls for hawks, no matter how hard he is, the vote will go to Patricia, ”says one of the priests of the space. In the Buenos Aires headquarters of Uspallata they are aware of the tension. “Cristina put Horacio in the ring, and that’s good, but from here to the World Cup he has to prove to our voters why he is the best candidate in the space. They are going to be the most difficult months of his career”, ventures a member of his team about what fur Larreta will wear from here to 2023. Now the head of the Buenos Aires Government ventures a new strong idea, as he said in an interview with Alejandro Fantino: “ An eagle soaring from above.”
hard to crack
The most radicalized of the intern have the current times in their favor. Not only because of the radicalization of Kirchnerism, which drags the entire Front of All with it, but also what is happening outside with phenomena such as the Javier Milei. “The entry of the radical right to the democratic game was pressuring the more moderate right to radicalize to avoid the migration of votes, as happened with the People’s Party of Spain, that he turned to the right to avoid escapes towards Vox, and what happened in Austria, where the conservatives ended up blending in with the extreme right and co-governing with it,” says historian Pablo Stefanoni in his book “Has the rebellion turned to the right? ”.
But you don’t have to go to libertarians to see this problem. There are many who maintain -several of them with access to the PRO’s reserved surveys- that in an internal Larreta against Macri or Larreta against Bullrich would win the falcons, despite the fact that they are the least likely to win in a general election. It is a thesis that has, among others, the former president himself. “Who do you think is the 41 percent?”, is a rhetorical question that he repeats in private, displaying the growing confidence he has in himself. The darts that Bullrich throws hurt, in larretismo, due to this logic: the voter of Together, perhaps also squeezed by the endless economic crisis or simply by social weariness, is increasingly closer to hard positions.
Larreta’s 2023 team is working on all this mess. The man has already opened a campaign bunker (see box), with a permanent staff of collaborators, and the priests of the national army usually pass through there. In addition to De Marchi is Philip Michaelhead of the Buenos Aires Cabinet, Augusto Rodriguez Larretathe off-road operator brother, Maximilian Corachundersecretary of Buenos Aires and son of the historic former Menemist minister, Francis Quintanavice-president of the Council of the Judiciary, and Fernando Straface, among others. Roberto Zapata, from the team of Jaime Duran Beardtends to bring their surveys closer, while the economic area is led by Hernan Lacunza and the advice of Martín Redrado weighs more and more on foreign policy. Larreta has his team. Now you need to survive the war of feathers.
