This Wednesday, Buenos Aires will host the largest far-right event in the world: the Conservative Action Political Conference (CPAC). The guest list is long: from the president Javier Milei and several of his most important ministers, to prominent figures of the Republican galaxy who are preparing to return to the White House on January 20, including the Mexican millionaire Raúl Salinas Pliego or Santiago Abascal, leader of Vox.
“The largest gathering of non-lefties in the world.” This has been promoted by Eduardo Bolsonaro, who will be in Buenos Aires for the event, while his father, Jair Bolsonaroconvicted, disqualified and subject to a ban on leaving his country, will participate virtually. Everyone will be gathered to confront the “socialist virus,” as the son of the former Brazilian president called it.
The summit—which will take place in hilton hotel from the exclusive neighborhood of Puerto Madero, with tickets from 100 to 5,000 dollars—will be the possibility for Milei to position herself for one day as the center of international far-right currents. In this case, at a stellar moment: about to complete one year in the Presidency with approval numbers that are favorable to him, according to several polls, and with the recent victory of donald trump in the United States, who will have representatives in Buenos Aires, such as his daughter-in-law Lara Trump or his strategist Barry Bennet.
The choice of Buenos Aires as the venue responds to the closeness of both politicians, who were photographed at the Mar-a-Lago residence on November 15, in a scene where they also participated Elon Muskheading the Department of Government Efficiency. Milei had already greeted Trump in the United States in February, invited to the CPAC meeting: “We love the idea of having a chainsaw to represent that he is going to eliminate expenses,” the CPAC president had said then, Matt Schlappto explain why he had invited the Argentine president.
The landing of the CPAC for the first time in Argentina is also explained by the internationalization policy of the organization founded in 1974 by the American Conservative Union, which had Ronald Reagan as a great reference until having Trump as the main figure. The first summit outside the United States was organized in 2017 in Japan. Then, in 2019, it took place in Australia, South Korea and, hand in hand with Bolsonarism, also in Brazil, the first Latin American country to host it. In 2022 it arrived in Mexico and, finally, to its new stop, Argentina, a new mecca for the far-right.
The reactionary international
“These events produce a dimension of common imagination among them,” he says in conversation with Public Diego Sztulwarka graduate in Political Science and a student of the extreme right, at the doors of the event where there will be dissertations on topics such as communication, with the presence of Javier Negre or the Argentine anti-globalist Agustín Laje, and moderated by the presidential spokesperson, Manuel Adorni.
“An imagination about capitalism is being woven among them, a kind of future capitalism. They are imagining, especially around these technological bourgeoisiesthese new millionaires who are so close to Trump. “They are so euphoric and they are so exemplary for Milei, with that idea of state deregulation as a condition for the possibility of a relaunch of the capitalist imagination,” says Sztulwark.
“The second thing in common between them is more obvious: a feeling of instability and threat […]. They see the migrations, the loss of US hegemony on the Pacific, the BRICS, an autonomization of a gigantic area of populations that no longer submit to North American hegemony… There is a kind of feeling of horror, paranoia, counteroffensive and militarization, an agenda that has to do with the security, religious and sexual discourse,” he explains.
The formation of a reactionary international is not new. It has already had other initiatives, such as the formation of the Madrid Forum in 2020, with a scope of action more focused between Spain and Latin America, or the act of Vox organized in May with the presence of several international guests, such as Milei himself. In this case, the terminal is in the United States, now in the hands of the next president, which predicts a probable greater political power and capacity for articulation.
“They have a very correct perception that they do not have hegemony nor have they stabilized any durable political form, and that just as Trump won and lost, as Bolsonaro won and lost, Milei also won and could lose. That awareness of fragility seems to me a third common area: the awareness that they have a historic, unforeseen opportunity to turn an accident into a historic opportunity,” says Sztulwark, with emphasis on the Argentine experiment that oscillates between a perception of solidity and possible untimely collapse.
The new Washington-Buenos Aires axis
Milei appeared this week on the cover of the important magazine The Economistwith a large portrait and the phrase “what Javier Milei can teach Donald Trump.” The headline, which might have seemed like a fantasy a year ago, put Milei at the center of where he wants to be: as a prophet of an international crusade against the State, the “lefties”, in defense of a “West in danger”, now supported by the Republican who is back in Washington.
Trump’s return anticipates a closeness between both governments on geopolitical and cultural agendas. Milei has already shown signs of his overreaction in aligning himself with the United States in international politics, and within the Casa Rosada there is no shortage of those who imagine a bond that could once again be similar or greater than that of the 90s, then nicknamed “carnal relations.” by the president’s chancellor Carlos MenemGuido di Tella.
In this case they share a common adversary who, they propose, must be erased from the political map and ideas. However, there is no such affinity in economic matters, where Trump is characterized by his aggressive tariff policy, used in turn as a weapon of international negotiation, while Milei maintains the orthodoxy of free imports, with the consequent negative impact on the Argentine industry. , and the reduction of state capacity to a minimum.
Such a difference could have a meeting point if a currently uncertain situation actually advances. Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between both countries, as Milei proposed, a project that for the moment had no response from the counterpart, within the framework of economies that are competitive and not complementary. This FTA will be part of the agenda that Milei takes to the Mercosur Summit in Uruguay the day after the CPAC event, where he will arrive with the flashes and international media attention to fight with the Brazilian president Lula da Silva.
For the moment, Milei is preparing to be the center of attention of a reactionary international that has one of its new references in Argentina. Buenos Aires, which once was one of the epicenters of Latin American progressivism, is now the scene of confluence and construction of common imaginaries and plans of those who announce that the time has come for the most conservative forces.
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