Because Milei in Argentina should not be underestimated
Promises, messages and first moves of the new president of Argentina, Javier Milei. Guiglia's notebook
To understand who the Argentines are, the definition given by their great compatriot, the poet and writer Jorge L. Borges, who was denied the Nobel Prize for Literature only because he did not bleat in the progressive intellectual field, remains unsurpassed today. “Argentinians – said Borges – are Italians who speak Spanish and think they are English”.
Javier Milei, the new and just elected President of the Republic, is the popular and now institutional synthesis of this crazy mix.
In fact, they call him “El loco”, “the madman”, a way of saying that is often used in the Río de la Plata (“el loco Bielsa”, they also nicknamed an imaginative Argentine football coach). In those parts "loco" sounds with amused satisfaction: there is something ingenious about it, rather than the madness implicit in the expression.
Milei, in fact, is an honorary "loco". Gifted with remarkable intelligence (like Maradona in football, Piazzolla in tango or Pope Francis in religion), Milei ran an electoral campaign that made you laugh and cry, threatening with a chainsaw to cut off all the privileges of the caste: Buenos Aires has become the capital of favoritism, clientele, political corruption. And then he announced, like the economist he is, that he wanted to close the Central Bank and adopt the dollar instead of the peso. The intent is to liquidate the demagogic Peronism of those who have governed the country in the last sixteen years (first Néstor Kirchner, then his widow Cristina; authentic disasters for Argentina) to bring the nation back to the place it had and deserves: the lighthouse of Latin America.
El loco won with populism. But as soon as he took office in the Casa Rosada, a magnificent residence designed by Italian architects, he announced the truth in the streets and on live TV: "No hay plata", there is no money. By taking the first very harsh economic and financial containment measures to restore to Buenos Aires the international and monetary credibility compromised by the dramatic Kirchnerian period. And to lay the first brick of the recovery in a country that was once rich, but which today experiences 140% inflation and 40% of the population in a state of poverty. In short, to no longer sing the heartbreaking “don't cry for me Argentina”, don't cry for me, Argentina, no miracles: el loco, on the contrary, announces sweat, tears and blood. Sacrifices to rise again.
Naturally, the judgment on Javier Milei's new strategy (cutting the hypertrophied and clientelistic public sector, starting from the ministries, as an economic and psychological signal to encourage private enterprise and production, i.e. growth), will have to be given at the end of the mandate, not now. As well as paying attention to the hard line promised on security, which must never even undermine the sacred right to dissent.
But while waiting for "what will happen", a couple of lessons can already be learned.
1) With populism you may win elections, but you cannot govern.
The first moves of the man with the chainsaw and verbal extremism (he insulted more or less everyone, including his compatriot and our Pope, who however has already forgiven him and could soon fly to Buenos Aires), go in the direction of rigor and realism. So much so that the International Monetary Fund applauds the rediscovered Argentina.
That "loco" and anarchist saw fit to ally himself with the conservatives and liberals of former president Mauricio Macri, who represented a brief interlude of wasteful and sinister Peronism. To the point of having fished out the Minister of Finance and then head of the Central Bank, Luis Caputo, from the Macri government, appointing him Minister of Economy. “The Messi of Finance”, as they nicknamed him.
2) In the digital age, the demonization of the opponent always turns out to be a boomerang. What left-wing politicians and much of the international and superficial press have written about Milei, describing him as a far-right monster, a sort of Argentine Donald Trump and, at best, a real madman, has shown itself to be inconsistent with the conscious will of the Argentine people to free themselves from the damage of Peronism.
In reality, Milei's political and informational conformism has not digested his declared anti-communism. As if it were a crime of treason to speak ill of Nicolás Maduro, the mediocre, but no less ferocious Fidel Castro of Venezuela. Or free ourselves from China's insidious economic strategy also pursued in Latin America. Or side with the attacked Ukraine, rather than with Putin the aggressor. Or, again, to say that Argentina is with the West and with Europe, with the United States and with Israel, as Milei shouted, overturning the inconceivable Kirchnerian policy.
But in the social era where everything becomes known, misrepresenting and censoring the positions of an anti-communist president, that is, a person who praises freedom, out of pure ideology, no longer scares anyone. The Argentinians knew well what Milei was actually tickling and soliciting with his behavior like an elephant in a glass shop: the radical change compared to the previous government and to Russia and China, to Lula's Brazil and to the absurd philosophy of "non-alignment" for South Americans ” until yesterday he was watching.
We will see if Javier Milei will be up to the enormous task that awaits him: to bring the disastrous and tormented Argentina back among the countries of liberal democracy and open economy, that is, neither dirigiste nor statist, in a world horribly threatened by wars and terrorism and mutilated by theocratic regimes, poor women of Iran.
In the hope that "la locura", the "madness" that exploded in Buenos Aires, will help Italians who speak Spanish and believe they are English to rediscover at least a little of the reason they have lost for so long.
Published in the Alto Adige newspaper
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/perche-milei-in-argentina-non-va-sottovalutato/ on Mon, 25 Dec 2023 04:14:56 +0000.