The information was not a leak or an off: it was a post. This weekend, from Lausanne in Swissin the middle of a European tour that included Madrid and Barcelona, Dante Gebel showed the beginning of his political setup. “Meeting with friends in Europe, making plans for the future,” he wrote in X. The photo was not innocent: next to him were Juan Pablo Brey, Eugenio Casielles and Jose Minaberrigaray. That is, hard unionism, libertarian detachments and construction operators. Everything condensed into a neat, almost naive postcard. But deeply political.
The scene, strictly speaking, exposes the first structural contradiction of the Gebel phenomenon. He presents himself as an outsiderlike a man who lives outside the country—based between California and Miami—, oblivious to the logic of local power. But its political table is made up, precisely, of the most classic aspects of Argentine politics: unionism with the capacity to cause damage, operators with a past in party structures and shipowners who know the territory. There is no anti-system purity. There is recycling.
“Vasco” Minaberrigaray is Union Secretary of the Union of Textile Industry and Related Employees (SETIA). And from their own site they warn that “under the umbrella of Argentine Consolidationsectors of unionism, SMEs and social organizations began to articulate a space with a territorial presence and discourse focused on unity and the need for leadership that manages to synthesize diverse interests.” “The photo is food for this scenario,” they add.
But the case of Brey is the most paradigmatic. General Secretary of Aeronavegantes, with a dual role in the union and in its social work, member of the CGT, with real power to paralyze flights throughout the country. Its history combines all the elements of traditional unionism: family structure inserted in Aerolíneas Argentinas, parallel businesses, cross links between politics, union and state company. That he is, furthermore, one of the architects of Gebel’s presidential project is not a detail: it is evidence that the “new leadership” is based on old logics of power.
“My relationship with Dante goes back many years and in all this time I was able to see the leadership that he has and how he has formed teams throughout his life and how he has also directed them, which is why I believe that he is a very important figure and that he would do very good for the country,” Brey said in his own words a week ago. They are enthusiastic about bringing Moyanism to the table (it is close to Pablo MoyanoHugo’s son, with good ties in turn with Máximo Kirchner and Cristina).
But the link between the two is not only political: it is organic, economic and family. Brey’s father is listed as director of River Church, Gebel’s church in Californiatogether with the pastor himself Daniel Darlingthe man who manages the group’s financial structure. Darling is not just another actor: he has a relationship of more than six decades with the Brey family and is, in addition, godfather of Juan Pablo himself. The scheme is as closed as it is explicit: the father participates in the religious foundation, the godfather manages the funds and the son deploys his union power to politically project the spiritual leader. Everything remains within the same circuit of trust.
This is where the second critical point appears: opacity. Gebel built an empire in the United States based on churches, foundations and companies with minimal controls. He leads a network that includes Dante Gebel Ministries INC, River Church USA Incorporated, Open Line Group LLC, Favorday and DMG Entertainment Group Corp. His partner, Rich Guerra, has 169 other church-businesses registered in California. It is a model that mixes faith, business and structure under a regime where religious organizations are not obliged to make their finances transparent.
Gebel himself displays that success as part of his message: a man who was born in a humble house in Billinghurst and today lives among mansions in California, He travels by private plane, appears with luxury cars and claims to have donated more than 46 million dollars since 2020. But there are no public balance sheets, audits or documents that allow verifying the origin, destination or traceability of these funds. The narrative is circular: he receives donations, shows them as a blessing, claims to redistribute them, and the cycle begins again.
That point is not minor. Because if the political project advances, that opacity automatically becomes a political problem. Argentina is not California: the demand for transparency, media pressure and public scrutiny are others. What today functions as a spiritual story can become a gray area difficult to sustain.
The third actor in this construction is less visible, but just as relevant: Mario Pergolini. It does not appear in the photo of Switzerland, but it is part of the scaffolding. His link with Gebel is media, creative and strategic. It provides production, narrative and reach to the Argentine digital and television ecosystem. It is, in fact, the communication partner that can translate a religious phenomenon into a political proposal with public volume.
That triad—faith, money and means—is the real basis of the project. It is no coincidence that Gebel himself has left the door open to a presidential candidacy: the idea is not improvised, it is an ongoing process.
Now, the context enables this type of experiments. The emergence of Javier Milei broke a historical barrier: the possibility of an outsider coming to power. But he also left a lesson: without structure, power becomes unstable. Gebel seems to have taken note. That is why it is not limited to its religious base or its charisma. It seeks union anchoring, libertarian recycling and media support.
The problem is that in this attempt at synthesis all the tensions are exposed. A pastor who preaches prosperity, but whose economy is opaque. An outsider who relies on one of the most representative union members of the old practices. A spiritual leader who builds political power from outside the country. And an assembly that appears as new, but reproduces known logic.
The photo in Switzerland, then, is not an anecdote. It’s an x-ray. It shows the heart of a project that is still in an embryonic state, but that already shows its limits. Gebel wants to be more than a religious or media phenomenon. He wants to be power.
The question is not whether he can build a candidacy. The question is whether it can sustain it when the logic of politics—accountability, transparency, conflicts of interest—begins to lift the veil of that world where everything, until now, is explained as a “blessing.”
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