The presidential triumph in Argentina of Javier Milei In the second round of November he was profusely highlighted by the Latin American and world press, especially for the change that this implies for the country and for the great economic challenges that he will have to face in his administration. This is why Milei is the character of 2023 for the Newspapers of America Group (GDA)a consortium made up of 12 Latin American media outlets to which it belongs TIME.
In these three weeks that he has been in office, the president has already announced a series of measures to try to stop the rampant inflation and fiscal deficit that is eating away at the southern country. However, on Wednesday of this week, just 10 days after taking office, he faced the first popular challenge in the streets, with protests by social movements demanding against their economic policies.
And now it's his turn to do the most difficult thing: govern. The libertarian, like Bilardo, is a resultist. He knows that management is everything.
The truth is that Milei knows that he achieved what seemed impossible: the Presidency of Argentina. She knows that she became the most disruptive and perhaps most dominant figure of 2023. And she knows that he entered the history books. But, billard player as he is, he also knows that victories are not celebrated until the referee blows the final whistle. As the legendary world champion coach Carlos Salvador Bilardo said, only when the match ends will it be clear whether his game is to celebrate or to be disgraced.
The libertarian is currently living a very different reality from the one he suffered a few years ago, when he had to choose whether to eat himself or his dog. His path was arduous. The little that is known about his childhood and adolescence is painful. He suffered physical and psychological violence in his house and bullying at the Cardenal Copello school in Villa Devoto, he recounted more than once, abuses that led him to cut all ties with his “parents” for years.
From those early years he had a nickname and two hobbies left. “The crazy one,” they called him at school. And that's how they also knew him in the Chacarita youth teams, where they remember him as an impetuous goalkeeper. Times when he had blonde hair with bangs in the Rod Stewart style, although he was more into the Rolling Stones, to whom he paid tribute with “Everest”, the band with which he glimpsed a certain “rockstar” fame.
At the University of Belgrano he studied Economics and gained his first work experience. He was an intern for six months at the Central Bank (BCRA), although it ended badly, as he had to admit in the debate prior to the second round. He completed his first master's degree and added another at the Di Tella University, while consolidating his adherence to libertarian ideas or “anarcho-capitalism.”
Those initial experiences showed him very far from a repudiation of “caste.” He advised the national legislator Ricardo Bussi and was the chief economist of the Acordar Foundation, the 'think tank' that Guillermo Francos – today his Minister of the Interior – set up to provide ideas for the presidential campaign of Governor Daniel Scioli. In the same way that between 2013 and 2015 he approached Sergio Massa's bunker with Guillermo Nielsen and his friend, the economist Diego Giacomini. And he worked for Eduardo Eurnekian at Aeropuertos Argentina 2000, where he met another bastion of his cabinet: Nicolás Posse.
They were hard years for Milei. She was juggling to make ends meet, those close to her remember, while she was facing very serious problems with the Public Revenue Administration. They were times when she had only one worn out dark striped suit and she weighed 120 kilos because of a life choice: she ate pizzas for a long time to buy better food for 'Conan', her dog.
Milei defined that English mastiff as his “son.” And she confessed among her intimates that God had assigned them a mission. She even explained to them that he and 'Conan' met 2000 years ago, in the Roman Colosseum, as a gladiator and a lion, but that they did not fight. Because “the One”, as God alludes, told them that they would join forces when the time came. And that moment arrived. In Argentina in 2023.
In public he avoids delving into that mystical vein. But Milei is convinced that “the One” speaks to him, although sometimes he resorts to the tarot reading skills of Karina, his sister, to evaluate who he can trust, or to the veterinarian Celia Melamed to talk with his dogs, something that he does not confirm. denies “What I do inside my house is my problem,” he told the newspaper El País.
Catholic by origin, in recent years Milei leaned towards Judaism. He studies Torah with Rabbi Axel Shimon Wahnish as his spiritual guide, the same rabbi who has just been announced as a future ambassador to Israel. He has Moses as his “idol”, he visited the tomb of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson on his trip to New York as President-elect, and his religious journey explains his rhetorical invocations to “the forces of Heaven” and the Maccabees, as a liberation movement , in many of his speeches.
Milei is also convinced that “the One” and he share the same economic vision. He is based on the ideas of Professor Jesús Huerta del Soto. “God is libertarian,” the Spaniard proclaims from YouTube, where he affirms that “the State is the incarnation of the Evil One, of the devil, the transmission belt of evil.”
For years, Milei also went to a psychologist every Friday afternoon, although the meetings ended abruptly. The professional died in the pandemic. She then went to another therapist, but abandoned the sessions.
In public, he alludes very little to that facet of his life, which the journalist Juan Luis González addressed in the book “El loco.” But in May 2022, for example, he accused Rodríguez Larreta of wanting to interfere in his “medical history.” “One of the threats I receive is: either I agree to get out of politics or tell me what psychotropic drugs I take.”
With 'Conan' dead, estranged from Giacomini, his courtship with singer Daniela Mori broken off and prior to Fátima Florez's emergence into his life, Karina increased her emotional influence over him. He went from selling decorated cakes through Instagram to evaluating “energies” and “constellations” of those who approach him.
For Milei and her sister, the political arenas are unfamiliar. They never participated in the military or even showed interest in politics, although the leap was made by decantation. Many saw Eurnekián behind. But reducing his political career to the influence of a businessman would also be a mistake. Milei filled a space that was empty after two decades of frustrations with Kirchnerism.
What led you to take the leap into politics? Milei repeats that the time had come to face the “cultural battle” against “caste.” He did not fare badly, although on his way to the Casa Rosada he accumulated controversies. Due to the massive expulsion of leaders and militants from the first hour, due to complaints of plagiarism in his books, among others.
But he won. Milei managed to embody a social feeling of anger and frustration with the traditional leadership of Argentina, which lacked political representation. And now she has the hardest part: governing. The libertarian, like Bilardo, is a resultist. He knows that management is everything.
Hugo Alconada Mon
THE NATION
ARGENTINA
GDA
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