We are at a pivotal moment in our history. We have reduced poverty, stopped deficits, restored security. Sunday, freedom advances or Argentina retreatsthe Argentine president, shaggy hair and black leather jacket, shouted into his megaphone in the Nueva Cordoba district, a student area, at the end of the campaign this week. Next to him on the tank, his tight team; his sister Karina of course, his young cameraman Santiago Oria, and Gabriel Bornoroni, deputy of Cordoba. “Milei has given a whole distraught youth a taste for politics. We have statesmen like him once every two or three hundred years, it’s an opportunity for Argentina, and a whole generation has understood that well.”specifies the latter.
Despite everything, we were far from the immense crowd of 2023 which had accompanied him in this same city of Cordoba, just before propelling him to power in the second round of the presidential elections, with a national record vote of almost 75% of the votes throughout the province. It was also in Cordoba that Javier Milei, the former television economist, met in 2019 one of the architects of his success, the intellectual and influencer Agustin Laje, 36 years old, who brings together millions of people every day. followers on his YouTube channel. “Milei touched the hearts of the poor when we thought that the right did not speak to the poor. He appealed to young people when we thought that the right was for old people. Before, people thought that to be revolutionary you had to be left-wing. Today, to be revolutionary is to be right-wing! » likes to recall the author of The cultural battlepublished in 2022.
In La Cumbre, 60 kilometers north of the town where Che Guevara grew up before becoming the global icon of the revolutionary left, Facundo Cepeda, 30, a secondary school teacher, is part of the right-wing counterculture. He narrowly missed the march, in 2023, to become one of the youngest mayors of La Liberté Avance. Since then, he has spent his time with his team of young activists combing the terrain in difficult, sometimes hostile neighborhoods. “Get out of there, you dirty fascist, we don’t want your propaganda Yankee »we hear that day, as he places a leaflet on the mailbox of a dilapidated villa. “In general, things are going wellhe confides, because people know me, but here, before, almost all the residents were living on social assistance cut by Milei, so obviously, it hurts them to have to start working again to live. » Married and father of a newborn, Facundo finds a way to welcome a street youth into his home: “John lost his parents, he didn’t know where to sleep. Today he has a job and is an activist with us. » For Facundo, the Christian faith is very important: “It gives me values of work, respect and sharing. »
Javier Milei appeared as a rockstar again
Not very far from the president, in the procession on Tuesday, there was Martina Arance, 19 years old, section leader of the La Liberté Avance party, youth coordinator in several towns in the province. A pastry chef by profession, this hardworking young woman has lived all her life in a working-class neighborhood of Rio Ceballos, in the large suburbs of Cordoba. In the kitchen of her grandmother, with whom she lives, in addition to making cream cakes which she sells to order and distributes herself, she revises her law to become a lawyer. “Contrary to what the predominantly progressive media in this country say, my life has improved since Milei came to power. While inflation was breaking records around 2,000%, it is now under control and I finally know what I can buy each day. And then, with Milei, there are fewer restrictions and burdens, I finally get the fruit of my work. »
His “truth speech” seduces
Martina is a fighter who can no longer stand the “welfare mentality” instilled by the couple Nestor and Cristina Kirchner during the almost two decades during which they were in power. “This is what led us into the wall, people had become accustomed to living on subsidies, to doing nothing. » The daughter of small traders, she lives in a house with a tin roof, at the top of a small hill. It is reached by small slippery dirt steps. “Before Milei, I wasn’t in politics. But I immediately agreed with his truth-telling. He said he would clean up the economy to create a more favorable environment for investment. We knew, by voting for him, that the first years would be hard, that we would have to make sacrifices”she specifies.
Her fiancé Lucas Lopez, 27, works part-time in his father’s small bedding business. The rest of the time, he devotes himself to his association for the liberalization of firearms. “Once, six thieves wanted to break into our househe says. We managed to scare them away thanks to our guns. The police cannot be everywhere. And our president wants to be inspired by the American model. I have Kirchnerist neighbors who are against carrying weapons. One day, they were attacked by bandits, they immediately called me to scare them away. I agreed and they got away with it. But see, populists are hypocrisy. As long as the danger does not affect them directly, they teach great moral lessons. »
Lucas met Javier Milei in person during his first 2022 appearance with the chainsaw. He was seduced by its simplicity: “Today, our president knew how to remain himself. He continues to sing metal and we young people love it! It’s a change from crooked politicians in suits and ties. He sacrifices himself for the country, not to fill his pockets, as the caste would have us believe. »
Last September, scandals of supposed corruption splashed the president’s entourage, including Karina Milei, his own sister, secretary general of the presidency, accused of embezzling funds from a disability agency. “Milei is a good, honest guyhe swears. Maybe some people around take advantage of it, but not Karina. As luck would have it, the Kirchnerists pulled out some stuff just before the legislative elections to trip him up, and it could work. »
The opposition led by Axel Kicillof, much less good orator than Milei but a fine tactician, seems sure of his victory
Victory remains uncertain
Despite an electoral campaign led vigorously by “el leon”the lion, like the incredible energy of Gonzalo Roca, 45 years old, head of the list of Liberty Advance in Cordoba, Milei is not sure of winning his bet to obtain the majority in the next Argentine Parliament. “The business climate weighed down his campaign, where just three months ago, this election should have passed like a letter in the mail”summarizes Luciano Roman, one of the editorialists of the major conservative daily The Nation. Thursday evening, 400 kilometers from Cordoba, Javier Milei once again appeared as a rockstar, dressed all in black and surrounded by thousands of young fans, for his last meeting in Rosario. “I am the lion,” roared the beast in the middle of the avenue! Don’t run away from me. I am the king of a lost world. I am the one who will destroy all his accomplices”he sang in his belching deep voice in a packed stadium. From the slum in the suburbs of Cordoba, where he lives, Franco Rios, a young 23-year-old Uber driver, joyfully commented on the scenes of jubilation on TikTok, in front of his 80,000 followers. “Our president is a true liberal-libertarian, modern anti-wokist. He reaches out to everyone, does not interfere in everyone’s private life; straight, gay, as long as they do not make their condition a political fight”he specifies.
If Javier Milei believes in the chances of his camp and has called his troops all week for an electoral surge this Sunday, the opposition led by Axel Kicillof, much less good orator than him but a fine tactician, seems sure of his victory, like the famous Kirchnerist influencer Hernan Letcher, who sums up with irony, after a week of presidential shows: “There is a disenchantment with Milei. »
