There is only one reason why the presidential show at the Movistar Arena happened. It is not the one that the officials present rehearsed in the days before and after the event of October 6, where phrases such as “return to the bases” or “recover the mystique” were woven. That was just the official discourse they found to channel something that has no political, strategic or even rational explanation. Something called Javier Milei. The President was the one who insisted from the beginning of the year on the idea of holding a recital. He had been left wanting after what happened in 2024 at Luna Park, when he presented his previous book (which, as this medium verified, also had plagiarism) and sang “Panic Show” with his band.
But now he wanted more. In fact, he was so convinced of carrying out the show that there was no one who dared to tell him directly what many members of the Government suggested in these days with the recorder turned off: that it was crazy, in the middle of such a complex moment of the administration and with the José Luis Espert narco-scandal still latent. But the dissociation is not only between Milei and Argentine reality but also with his own government. A gap is increasingly opening up between the president’s whims and the advice given to him by those around him. The thing is that the libertarian believes that the show has to go on.
“I’m Javier Milei. I won’t be famous as an economist but I will be famous as a rockstar.” Those were, literally, the libertarian’s first words on Argentine television. It was on April 28, 2015, on Mariano Grondona’s program, his first step in that media career that would later lead him to success in politics. That phrase in his debut was much more than a joke: during much of his complex adolescence, the then young Milei tried without success to succeed as a singer in a rock band, greatly influenced by the music of the Rolling Stones.
History, of course, now seems to repeat itself as a mockery. The fact is that not even the front line of the ruling party was convinced of the act. Some who spoke with advisor Santiago Caputo assure that he himself was resigned to following the president’s whims, determined to fulfill his old desire to be acclaimed by a crowd while singing. Milei played nine songs, national rock classics, for more than an hour. He reverted some to add some proselytizing line drop or to mix insults towards Cristina Kirchner. There were also videos that played with the background content of the last book (“The Construction of the Miracle”, from the Hojas del Sur publishing house), in the papers the formal excuse for the event: clips showing Milei as a Jedi, from the Star Wars saga, or images of his presidency where he was portrayed as a mystical hero. Not only in the choice of the title of the book was the messianism that floods the President and his entire Government present.
The officials who spoke during the event – the entire Cabinet was present except Luis Caputo, traveling in the United States, and Guillermo Francos, who, as happened on the day of the Buenos Aires electoral defeat, was absent again without a convincing excuse – insisted on the idea that the event aimed at the “hard core” and “recovering energy” for the last electoral stretch. The truth, when it comes to Milei, is usually much simpler.
Beyond the music, what appeared at the Movistar Arena was the internal. It even took some edge from the show, materializing in colors: those in purple t-shirts were from “La Púrpura”, the group of Sebastián Pareja and Ramón “El Nene” Vera that responds to Karina Milei, while those wearing red were “Las Fuerzas del Cielo”, from Caputismo, who also escorted the President as he entered the stage. The bidding was felt: the fight to see who brought the most people was present from minute zero, while the soldiers of the star advisor spread the version that Pareja had taken over with an “apparatus”, that is, rented militancy. The only one who dared to support it in public was Flavio Arenales, the “supreme intellectual” of streaming Carajo, a Pai Umbanda bricklayer who says he was key in Milei’s victory thanks to a mystical battle he fought on election day against “the Evil One”: “We continue with people driven by Vera. A shame, all hooded guys and mafia faces,” he said. in their networks.
That night there was a novelty that did not go unnoticed by Karina, who had already been complaining about Milei’s decision – which was not agreed upon with her – to enter the stage with caputism. The thing is that Agustín Laje, who spoke before Milei, publicly gave support to “The Forces of Heaven” that he had been supporting in private, when he highlighted them in his speech. The general secretary does not forget these gestures. We’ll have to see what happens at Milei’s next show. If there is one.
