From posters with Maradona’s face to the lineup of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo. In Buenos Aires the electoral campaign towards the run-off is more felt than ever.
On Friday evening, a few hours before the ballot that will decide the future of Argentina, the far-right candidate Javier Milei showed up at the very prestigious Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, where Madamme Butterfly was on stage. When he was recognized during the interlude, the audience began to insult him in chorus: “Milei, you are the dictatorship” they chanted from everywhere, and some members of the orchestra even went so far as to accompany with their own instrument. An unprecedented scene, especially in one of the symbolic theaters of the “porteña” elite, which however describes very well what has been experienced in Argentina for several weeks.
The political polarization is palpable in the streets, plastered with the faces of the two candidates who will face each other at the polls this Sunday: the current Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa, and the eccentric “anarcho-capitalist” economist, Milei. It is precisely the latter that provokes the strongest reactions. As a star of political talk shows, where his aggressive and unscrupulous attitude and his peculiar hair made him nationally famous, Milei arrived in the political arena only two years ago, thanks to the support of some powerful entrepreneurs for whom he been an economic consultant, various political operators looking for a winning brand to place on a ballot paper and, indeed, the friendly media. In 2021 he managed to enter parliament, where he brought his invectives against “the political caste” and his theories against welfare. According to Milei, in fact, the big problem of Argentina, which has been immersed for years in an economic and social crisis that seems to have no end, is the State. And the solution lies precisely in reducing it to its minimum terms: “set fire” to the Central Bank, privatize education, healthcare and social services, adopt the dollar as the national currency, deregulate the market. In his most striking interventions Milei even spoke of legalizing the market in weapons, organs or children: if the market exists, the state must let it happen.
Milei’s eccentricity would garner very little support if the Argentine situation were not truly dramatic. Inflation has skyrocketed to 143% on an annual basis, purchasing power has collapsed, the exchange rate of the dollar, the reference currency for the price of durable goods, has increased by 160% against the Argentine Peso since January and poverty it stands at around 40% of the population. A disaster that especially afflicts the younger ones, the main electoral base of Milei’s party, La Libertad Avanza. In a country where you can vote from the age of 16, the majority of voters under 20 do not know another reality that is not marked by economic hardship and the inefficiency of the public administration. Added to which are the corruption scandals of which the traditional political leadership has often been the protagonist.
The people in the square (photo Paolo Vezzoli)
Sergio Massa, economy minister of Alberto Fernandez’s centre-left government, is perhaps one of the symbolic figures of that leadership deprecated by the “libertarian” youth. Politically trained in the liberal right of post-dictatorship Argentina, he has held public positions in almost all governments, from right to left, over the last 22 years. His posters on the streets across the country are often daubed with the word “chorro,” thief, a derogatory epithet Milei utters religiously whenever he refers to a traditional politician. The economic management of Massa, son of a Sicilian building contractor and a housewife originally from Trieste, is decidedly negative, and his electoral success alone can be explained thanks to the fear aroused by his rival. That in the weeks preceding the ballot he received warm support even from those nostalgic for the military dictatorship (1976-1983). His candidate for deputy, Victoria Villarruel, daughter of an army hierarch linked to the system of concentration camps created by the regime in the 1970s, and who in 1987 also refused to swear allegiance to the constitution, has more than once questioned the convictions against those responsible for the torture and disappearance of 30,000 people under the rule of the Armed Forces. Children of the disappeared, the emblematic Madres de Plaza de Mayo, family members and victims of state terrorism have launched the appeal in recent days to “beat Milei” this Sunday.
Challenge to the last vote
Meanwhile, signs of the electoral campaign that ended on Friday remain in the streets of Buenos Aires. In Boca, a historic neighborhood founded by Genoese immigrants, we remember the explicit support that Diego Armando Maradona gave to Sergio Massa when he was interior minister in Cristina Kirchner’s government: “La Boca knows that Dieguito would vote for Massa”, we read in some posters . But if fear of the far right clearly wins the battle on city walls, the situation would seem very different at the polls. All polls predict a very close head-to-head between the two candidates. Although Milei still boasts a slight advantage, the undecided represent, a few hours before the vote, around 10% of the electorate. An uncertain, very tense ending for one of the most singular elections ever in the Latin American country.
#Argentina #balance #posters #Maradona #Madres #Plaza #Mayo #Buenos #Aires #challenge #vote