In Argentina, you can discuss inflation, IMF, zero deficit or if it is convenient to dollarize. But attenti: If you get on with the mate, you are touching a more sensitive nerve than the crack. Mate is religion, homeland and political scene all in one. And the last week he made it clear: the versus between Kirchnerists and libertarians under the “good of the mate” and the “anti-popular” returned.
The spark was Axel Kicillof, who arrived with thermos and mate Stanley A “ODISEA ARGENTINA “Carlos Pagni’s program in LN+. Pagni highlighted the political gesture of the governor who did not take whiskey if he did not kill, “as a good Buenos Aires.” A wink that unleashed the debate. For some, it was an act of authenticity. For others, the overact of the national and popular under an American brand whose Mate team is around half a million pesos.
The truth is that Kicillof turned a mate in trending topic and, incidentally, installed its “presidential 2027” profile with a cheaper gesture than any focus group. While Milei roars against the caste and exhibits his Bible of Mises, the Buenos Aires governor lowered a change and accommodated the bulb. Pure strategy: one shouts “Long live freedom, fuck!”, The other whisper “Do you want a mate?”
It is no coincidence that Ricardo López Murphy has left with the cutting plugs. The bulldog, always ready to defend the British forms of the five tea, published a tweet with photos of Massa, Mayra Mendoza, Kicillof and even Juan Román Riquelme, all with mate in hand. The idea was to iron: “Look at the club of the Mates, the true red circle.” What I did not expect is that the Internet never forgives: Sergio Chouza and dozens of users rescued photos of López Murphy himself cerebando like a champion. No one escapes the power of pumpkin.
Because there is the trap: the mate is too Argentine to reject it at no political cost. You can be an orthodox liberal, extremist libertarian or barricada Peronist, but sooner or later the mate reaches you. He finds you in the desktop, in the hall of Congress or on the Tapi Soccer Canchita. And if you don’t take it, be careful: you are “weird”, almost unfriendly. Milei knows. He grabbed the bulb in the context of the rural with Nicolás Pino by his side. But the gesture denoted his lack of experience. Nothing that their followers condemn: they boast of being “anti-popular”, as if denying the grass was a medal of modernity.
The contrast is brutal: on the one hand, those that show the mate as a flag of proximity, humility and belonging (Riquelme, Kicillof, Massa, Mayra). On the other, those that avoid it as if it were a distortive tax. And in the middle, Pagni trying to explain that a Buenos Aires governor taking mate is news.
And what does all this tell us? That Argentine politics is an eternal casting of symbols. Before it was the bass drum, the rabepela in the flap or roast in campaign. Today, the mate is the perfect wild card: cheap, transverse, harmless. No consultant charges fees to recommend it, but everyone puts it on the first page of the Communication Manual. “If you can’t talk about primary deficit, at least cebá a pair of mates,” would be the Creole version of the Keep it simple.
The funny thing is that even in this area Milei is dislocated. The president who refuses to be “neighborhood phenomenon” runs into an insurmountable limit: Mate’s round. It is the most populist ritual of all: circular, free and shared. Nothing more anti-liberal than passing a bulb from hand to hand. And the episode leaves a teaching: in Argentina, politics is not only measured in votes or economic indices, but in cultural gestures.
In the end, in Argentina you can bank zero deficit, dollarize or recite Hayek by memory. But if you don’t take mate, you are lost: not even the chainsaw saves you from being like a Martian. Because in this country, you can be radical, Peronist or libertarian, but if you don’t take mate … they call you from foreigner in your own land.
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