A crowd was waiting this Sunday for Javier Milei, 53, at the Buenos Aires polling station where he voted shortly after noon. The scene was chaotic. A swarm of supporters, dozens of journalists recounting the last hour live on television, some closet-sized bodyguards surrounded the far-right candidate’s car and, suddenly, the door opens and a skinny, petite, dyed blonde woman comes out. She is Karina Milei, 51, the little sister of the president-elect tonight, the person he trusts most, his campaign strategist, his stylist, the person he considers “the Messiah.” In private he calls her Kari; in public, The Boss, thus, in masculine, or first lady.
Now that Javier Milei has swept the elections, the spotlight is on this powerful and discreet woman who likes to dress in intense colors.
Many in Argentina consider it the gray brain of the Milei phenomenon. Since she burst into Argentine politics like a whirlwind—for some as an essential breath of fresh air, for others as a serious danger—Milei has left many statements that are difficult to forget. Also some dedicated to Karina. “You know that Moses was a great leader, but he was not good at spreading the word. Then, God sent Orón to spread the word. Well, Kari is Moisés and I am the one who divulges. “I’m just a popularizer,” Milei explained during an interview, excited and in tears. By then Milei was already a deputy. He had one year left before the presidential campaign. Months later, the next president was in a meeting with some rabbis when they talked about the Messiah, whose return to Jerusalem the Jews are waiting for, and the politician intervened: “The thing is, the Messiah is my sister, he has already arrived,” according to the story. local press. The rabbis must have been stunned.
Karina Elizabeth Milei is two years younger than her only brother. Little is known about her, what the politician has said, what the allies and detractors of the couple filter, both of them, and little else. She keeps a low profile. She doesn’t give interviews, few have heard her voice.
They are children of a marriage formed by a bus driver and a housewife. They grew up in the Villa Devoto neighborhood, in Buenos Aires, and they both went to the same Catholic school. Both are single, without children. And for years they have been a professional couple.
Karina always had a very close relationship with Javier, who as a child was mistreated by his father in the face of his mother’s complicit silence, something for which he has forgiven us, and who was harassed by his schoolmates. The son has not spoken to his parents for years, in public he calls them “parents.” She, on the other hand, maintains a relationship with them. In that loneliness that accompanied President-elect Milei in his childhood and adolescence, Karina was often the only company.
Representative of the La Libertad Avanza party, she signed the document in which the party denounced “a colossal fraud” in the final stretch of the campaign, which the party renounced the following day. But she did not even deign to respond to the summons of the electoral authorities.
“You always have to have someone to report to. In my case I report to my sister,” said Deputy Milei in another interview. She is the person who for years has managed her agenda, her interviews, her conferences in Argentina and abroad. And she is the gatekeeper, the person who controls who has access, and who does not, to the economist who has burst into Argentine politics like an earthquake. A control that she exercises with an iron hand as her older brother advances in his career towards the Presidency.
Graduated in Public Relations, she studied pastry making, is an amateur sculptor and was co-owner of a tire store. When her brother was just an economist who was starting to go on TV as a talk show host, she was in charge of managing his assets.
It was also Karina who convinced Javier to banish the suits and adopt that veteran rocker look with leather jackets like the one he wore this Sunday to vote in the presidential elections. The ultra candidate only got out of the car after El Jefe Karina inspected the cordon of private bodyguards organized to protect him to the fenced corridor through which he accessed the electoral college. “He is the most wonderful being in the world,” he said of her in another interview. It remains to be seen what role Karina adopts when her brother’s term begins on December 10, if she prefers to continue working behind the scenes, if she jumps into the public sphere as a powerful first lady or, who knows, if she assumes an executive position. in the next Government.
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