Javier Milei He triumphed in the elections of that already distant November 19 because the majority understood that the country was not viable in which there was a lot of money for those who governed it and their friends but very little for the bulk of the population. Fed up with the constant deterioration of his own standard of living, he decided it was time to try a really drastic change.
Although when he approached power anarcho-capitalist softened its most stinging proposals, such as those supposed for the free sale of organs and the right of everyone to arm themselves to the teeth as happens in some places in the United States, has not abandoned the dream of making Argentina a country radically different from the existing one, a much more meritocratic one that is not harmed by a parasitic “caste” of professional politicians, militants and their many dependents who live off the money provided by others.
Well, very soon the man who, in an astonishingly short period of time, turned the national political order upside down will get to work. Shielded by the support of almost 56 percent of the electorate, and by the painfully evident failure of the Kirchnerist regime that effectively quit the forum several months ago, it will try to completely transform the civic culture of a society that for many decades was had allowed itself to degenerate into a shadow of what it had once been.
For many, the not easy construction of the government that will accompany him in the first phase – Milei would say “generation” – of a project that until recently seemed quixotic since, like the knight with the sad figure, what the libertarian proposed was Returning to a past that in his opinion, and that of many others, was strikingly better than the depressing current situation that had befallen him, has been a continuation of the very long electoral campaign, with its moody internal affairs and unexpected maneuvers of ambitious characters seeking positions.
That this was the case can be understood. Like the pre-candidates and candidates for elective positions, Milei has been forced to take into account not only the professional skills and ability to work as a team of the people willing to collaborate with him but also his alleged political influence. He chose to privilege those who could influence the legislatures over those who, presumably, would guarantee him a certain technical effectiveness, which is why There are more Peronists among those appointed than Macristas. Likewise, the decision to remove Victoria Villarruel from security management has been surprising. Patricia Bullrich will rule in that extremely important area, while the Minister of Defense will be her running mate, the atypical radical. Luis Petri.
Villaruel has motivated the repudiation of many for its refusal to respect the official narrative of human rights that, after leaving Santa Cruz, the Kirchners enthusiastically adopted, which minimizes the seriousness of crimes against humanity committed by “young idealists.” ” to focus on the aberrant acts of soldiers who acted in the name of the State. Since they murdered, tortured and kidnapped within the framework of a systematic plan, talking about “excesses” is clearly inappropriate, but it is also inappropriate to celebrate similar crimes that were perpetrated by members of groups with a totalitarian ideology that, if they had won “the war dirty”, they would not have hesitated to emulate their bloodthirsty Cuban companions.
As for the “disappeared”, the sacred number of 30,000 was invented for propaganda reasons; Conadep, whose moral authority remains greater than that of militant organizations, estimated that, as Villaruel and Milei emphasize, there were fewer than 9,000. There may have been others but, as Graciela Fernández Meijide once said, the one who had participated in the Commission promoted by the government of Raul Alfonsin: “Are you going to tell me that there are twenty thousand families that have not reported the disappearance of a member?” Since the relatives of those murdered by the military dictatorship usually receive money from the State, it is unlikely. Be that as it may, the “revisionism” of those who are about to be installed in power has contributed to the image of “ultra-rightists” that they dress in the eyes of those who fear them.
Faced with the challenges that await him, Milei has embraced a rare combination of extreme pessimism and optimism that some would describe as delusional. He foresees that the next two years will be very hard, with stagflation – productive stagnation and inflation through the roof – that will negatively affect virtually everyone, but that once the ordeal that he knows is inevitable is overcome, as long as he cures it of its structural ills, the economy will grow rapidly until Argentina is finally a true world power. Is such a forecast realistic, or is it just a technocratic version of the old myth according to which the only thing the country needs to recover is a good harvest?
There are those who believe that Milei exaggerates when he states that high inflation will persist for a few more years even when, from day one, with an “omnibus law” he manages to apply a shock policy aimed at eradicating it. Those who think this way point out that in the coming months Exports of grains, hydrocarbons from Vaca Muerta, lithium and other mining products will greatly increasewhich would enable a faster recovery than that predicted by those resigned to a prolonged period of generalized poverty.
Some foreign observers agree: in the opinion of a British media outlet, The Daily Telegraph, “the stars are perfectly aligned” for the Hayekian of the chainsaw and, in view of the collapse of confidence in the existing order, “the tabula rasa begins to make sense.”
Be that as it may, it is legitimate to ask whether the country would benefit from a partial recovery that would be attributed to nothing more than its abundant natural resources, since it would serve to slow down the reforms and thus prolong the life of the traditional model in which human capital always has mattered much less than geological luck. After all, at the root of national decline is a scale of values that is based on the notion that, sooner or later, the solutions to socioeconomic problems will arise from undergroundnot the behavior of the population, and therefore the only thing that governments need to do is find the fairest way to distribute what is provided by God or Mother Nature.
This is not a minor issue. For the country to take full advantage of the eventual stabilization of the economy, the performance of those sectors of the population that have become accustomed to depending on politicized charity would have to greatly improve. The problem thus posed will not be solved by the generosity or sensitivity social of a given government but by the will of each one to make the maximum effort, hence the “cultural revolution” that some see underway.
There are signs that the many young people who rebelled against populism that are declaredly supportive but in truth understand very well what is at stake. antisocial of the Kirchnerists to join Milei’s hosts, but it may have only been a temporary phenomenon, not a permanent change. Meanwhile, those who have prospered and acquired a certain notoriety by organizing the poor to force those in charge of welfare to give them more money will continue trying to intimidate Milei who, for his part, wants to marginalize them by eliminating intermediation as soon as possible, although he says that until further notice will keep “the plans.” The one who, starting tomorrow, will be President of the Republic also threatens to apply the law to all those who violate it by occupying public places, a task that will correspond to Bullrich who, judging by what he says, is determined to comply with it firmly.
Milei has chosen her communication strategy well. She has played “there’s no money” a popular slogan, but it promises that, after a period of bitter struggle, the country will be able to enjoy a degree of prosperity that is comparable to that prevailing in the developed capitalist world. Although almost all political movements claim to be determined to benefit the people materially, Milei’s rhetoric in this sense is more persuasive because variants of the scheme he has in mind have been successful in many other countries, while those proposed by traditional Peronists, Radicals, Trotskyists and others have failed catastrophically everywhere they have been tried.
The strange thing is not that Milei and his sympathizers have opted for liberal capitalism to remedy the socioeconomic ills that have prostrated the country, but that until very recently there have been few politicians who dared to do so. Although Argentina is far from being the only country in which capitalism has always had a bad pressin others the complaints made against the only system that works well tend to have repercussions only in cultural and academic circles, without the diatribes that agitate the right-thinkers having prevented the local government from taking very seriously the risks posed by the fiscal deficits and, above all, the inflation that they usually cause.
