“It’s just one person fighting against an entire system,” he posted. Lourdes Arrieta from her personal account on Several months ago, the representative left the La Libertad Avanza bloc in Congress to be part of the Coherence, which he later abandoned to enable his entry to United Provinces a few weeks ago.
Since Arrieta She became a national representative for the province of Mendoza in December 2023. Her legislative management was marked by a series of controversies that fueled various public and political scandals on the national agenda. The representative, initially elected within the milleismo, accumulated criticism and reproaches both inside and outside Congress for her conduct, internal decisions and changing alignments.
Unusually, one of the episodes that had the most media impact was his presence in a committee meeting in the Chamber of Deputies with a “kawaii” rubber duck on his head. A viral TikTok trend that thousands of people adopted as a symbol of optimism, but that in a legislative context generated stupor and a tone of ridicule in the media. The gesture, which was the subject of various questions and criticism on networks, was established as a symbol of Arrieta’s unorthodox image in Congress.
But, by far, his career faced a turning point with the scandal over the visit, on July 11 of last year, to soldiers convicted of crimes against humanity in the federal prison of Ezeiza. Arrieta was part of a delegation of legislators from La Libertad Avanza that met with repressors from the last dictatorship, including Alfredo Astizwhich caused strong social and political rejection by human rights organizations and opposition sectors. Initially, the deputy tried to justify her participation by saying that she did not know who the detainees she visited were, claiming that she was born in 1993, but the controversy deepened when she filed a criminal complaint to have the facts investigated, blaming deputies from her own bench.
After that controversial episode, the internal crisis in her block worsened when Arrieta herself denounced his colleague Nicolás Mayoraz for gender violenceafter a block meeting in which, according to her, she was threatenedly rebuked, an episode that was denied by the libertarian caucus. Of course, the sum of these conflicts ended with her departure from LLA, announcing her resignation before they were going to expel her. From there, the Mendoza woman formed her monoblock called “Forces of Heaven – Liberal Space”seeking to consolidate a supposed independent political identity.
Far from ending the controversies, the process of distancing from the ruling party continued this year, when Arrieta joined a group of legislators who broke with the leadership of the Milei brothers to form the new legislative bloc called “Coherence”along with Marcela Pagano, Carlos D’Alessandro and Gerardo Gómez. This space was defined as liberal and center-right, with the aim of distancing itself from internal decisions and questions about the management of the original bloc.
Beyond that change, the political trajectory of the deputy remained unstable, a few weeks ago He left that bloc to join the United Provincessharing a bench with figures such as Martin Lousteau and the former governor Gisela Scagliain what was interpreted as another change of political space in just over two years in the lower house. Throughout these episodes, it is taken for granted that Lourdes Arrieta will continue on her lonely path in the different blocks that wish to house her.
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