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Javier’s Milei’s Amputation Regime for Argentina [1]

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Date: 2024-04-04 09:30:00+00:00

World / Javier’s Milei’s Amputation Regime for Argentina The country’s new president has imposed a set of brutal austerity measures as part of a so-called “chainsaw plan.” The carnage is already mounting.

Javier Milei, Argentina’s new president, lifts a chainsaw during an election rally on September 25, 2023, in Buenos Aires. (Photo by Tomas Cuesta / Getty Images)

Buenos Aires—The crowd marches languorously down Diagonal Norte toward Argentina’s presidential palace bearing a series of cardboard characters painted a metallic grey. Together, they spell out the phrase “Son 30,000”—the estimated number of people who were killed or forcibly disappeared during the US-backed dictatorship that ruled from 1976 to 1983.

It’s just after noon on March 24, the country’s Day of Memory for Truth and Justice, and hundreds of thousands have taken to the street to commemorate the victims of the Argentine junta and declare “nunca más” (never again). But this year’s march is uniquely fraught. In November, Argentina elected economist and television personality cum politician Javier Milei—a self-styled anarcho-capitalist who openly denies the junta’s crimes.

Earlier that morning, while demonstrators flooded Plaza de Mayo outside, the Casa Rosada released a nearly 13-minute video on X, formerly Twitter, providing a “complete” accounting of the period, with testimonials accusing left-wing guerilla groups of acts of terror. Six days before, the human rights organization HIJOS (Hijos por la Identidad y la Justicia contra el Olvido y el Silencio—“Children for Identity and Justice against Forgetting and Silence” ) published a statement announcing that one of its members had been bound and sexually assaulted, and that her assailants had spray-painted the letters “VLLC” on the wall of her home. (Milei’s personal slogan is “Viva La Libertad Carajo,” or “Long Live Freedom Dammit.”)

“He’s an idiot,” said Beatriz Conde, a 73-year-old retiree from nearby Avellaneda. “I should apologize to the idiots, poor things. Milei is worse. He has no heart. He’s garbage.”

Conde noted that she’s been unable to survive on her pension, whose value has plummeted since Milei took office in December. She has also struggled to secure her prescription medication, which is in increasingly short supply.

“I’m here because the country is collapsing, and this guy is going to be the death of its elderly,” she continued.

Francisco Manterola, a 32-year-old history teacher from Buenos Aires, was similarly concerned that his country was careening toward catastrophe. Manterola, who had dressed his 6-month-old daughter in a white handkerchief like those worn by the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, said that he was afraid of losing his job as an archivist at the Ministry of the Interior—one of four he’s currently working to make ends meet.

“We hope it doesn’t happen, but they’re firing people indiscriminately,” he said. “We’re nothing more than numbers on an Excel spreadsheet to this government.”

In late February, Milei appeared at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, to take his victory lap after defeating former economy minister Sergio Massa in Argentina’s runoff presidential election. There, he gave a bear hug to a diffident Donald Trump and delivered a jeremiad against the perils of socialism to a half empty auditorium at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center. Prior to that, he made a pilgrimage to Israel to express his support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s campaign in Gaza and detail his own plans to move Argentina’s embassy to West Jerusalem—an announcement he has since walked back.

In Argentina, however, things have grown increasingly dire. A 54 percent devaluation of the peso announced days after Milei entered the Casa Rosada, coupled with a 36.6 percent inflation rate for 2024 through February, has priced essential goods out of the reach of working families while driving thousands more into destitution. A recent report from the Argentine Catholic University’s Social Debt Observatory found that 57 percent of the country is now living below the poverty line—the country’s highest rate since 2004.

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[1] Url: https://www.thenation.com/article/world/javier-milei-argentina-100-days/

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