Dante Gebel is about to arrive on stage three hours later. Dressed in a black suit that looks expensive, he already danced, sang songs by Julio Iglesias and José Feliciano, imitated his mother with a reedy voice, made some veiled jokes about Javier Milei and Patricia Bullrich, quoted Neruda and Shakespeare, projected images of Diego Maradona, showed photos of the humble house in San Martín in which he grew up and, above all, made the audience that came to see him burst into laughter tonight. In fact, he did everything except what one expects from an evangelical pastor, a nickname that he has been trying to get away from for years: “Jesus” appeared for the first time 40 minutes into the show, in a mention almost in passing, and you have to wait until the end of the event for him to recite the “sermon on the mount,” one of the most famous sermons of the son of God. If an attendee was not attentive or if they left before the “influencer” – as they prefer to call themselves – finished, they might think that what they went to see was a play that was half standup and half late night show. “I see that there are some here with long faces, who are taking out the ‘spiritualometer’, waiting for me to talk more about the Bible, to stop the jokes, well, this goes for all of you,” Gebel says halfway through the work, before starting to sing some classic ballad from the eighties, in a knowing laugh with his own audience.
The first to be aware of this game is Gebel. He defines his theatrical and media appearances – such as the program he has on Channel 13, produced by Mario Pergolini, and on Radio 10 – or on the networks – where he has so many followers that he has already reached one billion views – as “a Trojan horse.” “It is an evangelistic task, where I can reach people who otherwise I would not be able to reach, we do it on purpose, so that it does not have that religious overtone and that people say ‘hey, this is another pastor who makes offerings,’” he will later say at the River Church. That is a stadium in California, United States, with the latest technology and capacity for almost 5,000 people that belongs to his foundation where he has held two services every Sunday for 15 years but with a more “evangelistic” focus. There God, the Bible and Jesus are much more protagonists, and the meetings usually close with a prayer and with the hands of the faithful pointing to heaven. This search, with one leg in the cultural and the other in the spiritual, is not celebrated by everyone: some more classic evangelicals whisper under their breath when they see Gebel doing one of his graces.
On the other hand, “Presidente”, the tour that just ended with two packed Gran Rex and which toured all over Argentina to a full house, is designed for all types of audiences. Or for every type of voter: the show – “it’s not another classic political campaign,” it’s the descent – revolves around what Gebel would do if “he were President for a day.” Although the synopsis promises something more concrete than it actually is – the pastor/influencer expands on “five measures” that are quite abstract, such as home, old age and death – the important thing is not what is said but what is chanted. “President, president,” his audience shouts at various moments in the show. “I would like him to get involved, he has God on his side,” says “Martita,” an eighty-year-old woman who was moved to tears by the event, especially because Gebel came to sign a Bible for her when it was over. “I like Milei, I always voted for him, but if Dante shows up I would go with him,” says Juan, a thirty-something who sells homemade cubanitos online. “They can’t vote for me yet, but who knows what Providence has in mind for the future,” is the answer that Gebel gives during the show, similar to what he has been answering in different interviews. Although with María Laura Santillán he took a step further and said that “I would be willing, I would like to, not necessarily president, but I would like to do something more official.”
However, neither he nor his fans are the only ones who have this idea floating around. A Peronist scrum is already working to encourage him to take the final step, while his contacts in the media have already guaranteed him coverage, in addition to money that was even spilled on the networks and that has different tweeters spreading it. Added to this is the evangelical growth in the country, which reaches 20 percent of the population, and which landed strongly in Congress for the first time. And everyone involved in this plot is caught by the same question: if a marginal and unstable economist like Milei came to government, why not someone like Dante Gebel?
Biography. It all started with a miracle. One in the strict sense of the term. On May 1, 1975, Gebel was seven years old, had Asperger’s syndrome diagnosed, and life was about to fall on him: his mother was going through terminal cancer with no chance of survival, while his father was sinking deeper and deeper into alcohol. But that day he set foot for the first time in a church in Del Viso, in the deep suburbs, and the impossible happened. A pastor “introduced them to the Lord” and their mother “was healed.” Since then Dante could never separate himself from religion, and it was no coincidence that he ended up within the ranks of evangelical Pentecostalism: within the great family that is this religion, this branch is the one that understands miracles and signs of the Holy Spirit as something that can appear at any time, and can heal, provide work, or heal a couple. Marcos Carbonelli, Conicet researcher and author of the book “Evangelicals in Argentine Politics,” estimates that 90% of local evangelicals are Pentecostals or neo-Pentecostals. Gebel, however, does not incorporate healing into his services or shows.
