The Argentine revolution

In Argentina there is a man who has just discovered reality. His name is Javier Gerardo Milei and, to the surprise of so many, and unfortunately even more, he has presided over that country for a month. In this brief period, infatuated with his position and the supposed support of the majorities, he launched those two monuments to authoritarianism that were called Decree of Necessity and Urgency 70 and Law of Bases and Starting Points for the Freedom of Argentineshis two attempts to impose his whims in droves.

Its preparation was almost naive, a botched job. Milei's advisors and amanuensis – and Milei himself – accumulated in those two gatherings everything they could think of, with the illusion that society would accept all their ideas because many had voted for the boss for president. Some were more innocuous: dressing judges in black robes, for example, and making them use hammers like in American movies, or closing the National Endowment for the Arts because, deep down, a nation really doesn't care about arts – and even less so if you vote for Milei. Others are decisive: that millions of workers lose their right to strike and that overtime is no longer paid extra and that thousands and thousands of tenants are left on the street and that three people together on the street are a conspiracy that the police can repress and that millions cannot pay for electricity or transportation and that Elon Musk takes all the lithium – and thus, half a thousand stools of all colors.

The plan was, at the same time, daring and candid, and even more so when his boss has that special way of talking about it: this week, for example, he explained that the result of his changes would be seen in the long term. In his end-of-year speech he proposed a 45-year journey “to be like Ireland.” Later, during the January sales, he clarified that “you see its consequences in 15 years: your children and grandchildren are going to live wonderfully well” – he told a journalist to justify his Decree of Necessity and Urgency.

The urgency that the Constitution allows for these decrees is not measured in decades; not even in years. So in the middle of his daydreams reality appeared, in the form of courts – already more than 30 – that question his decree and suspend its applications, and legislators who are not so convinced of committing suicide by giving the Executive Branch the power to legislate for four years. , under the pretext, once again, of urgency.

It was brutal: suddenly poor Mr. Milei discovered with indignation that there is something very cumbersome called politics and that the forces of heaven, his allies, do not seem sufficient to leave it behind. In our countries, institutional policy is organized precisely to prevent sudden changes, to maintain the structure of the system. The paradox is that this device was invented by the great economic powers to contain the threat of leftist leaps and shocks; Now, however, it serves to hinder this far-right restoration – which would benefit, above all, the great economic powers. It is funny to see how some of its representatives are torn between the option of preserving the structure – the “republic”, “democracy” – and that of supporting measures that please and suit them.

This section of the Argentine future hangs on that pendulum. Liberal deputies who would like to support certain measures but not at the price of accepting their own uselessness, judges who would want to validate the decree but they know that would destroy their credibility, big bosses who take less care of themselves because they know they don't need it. The usual right, the defender of its order and its old laws, depends these days on a lawless person who wants to favor it with the methods of radical change that it always rejected. That is, now, the Argentine revolution, its most recent invention: using the mechanisms that the classic left was so reproached for to refound a right-wing country. If it works, many powerful people in the world will assume that what they call democracy is not their best option and, then, may some god catch us confessing – because Mr. Milei will seem, in retrospect, like a little sister of charity.

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