A young woman pushing a stroller squinted at the beef cuts on display at Victor Aguilar’s butcher shop. “How much is the rump roast?” she asked before frowning at the price and walking away.
Aguilar, who owns this shop in Villa 31, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Buenos Aires, shook his head. He doesn’t bother to post prices anymore, with inflation—now over 120 percent—growing daily. “It’s like that,” he tells The Progressive. “People don’t come in ready to buy anymore. They come looking for beef and leave with wings. Or else they just leave.”
This is the fraught climate leading up to Argentina’s October 22 general election, one characterized by deepening economic and political turmoil driven by widespread frustration over the inaction of the country’s two main coalitions.
Benedikt von Loebell / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 DEED
Javier Gerardo Milei, then chief economist at Corporación América, attending the World Economic Forum on Latin America in Panama City, 2014.
No one has benefited from this upheaval more than the rightwing presidential front-runner Javier Milei. As an economist, former YouTube influencer, and relative political outsider, Milei’s popularity has soared along with his call to replace the Argentine peso with the U.S. dollar, a policy that would hypothetically halt inflation but plummet purchasing power. His populist brand of politics is often compared to Donald Trump and former Brazilian President Jaír Bolsonaro.
For Aguilar, like many others in Argentina’s impoverished neighborhoods, Milei represents full-scale change, a promise that is appealing in a nation where poverty rates just surpassed 40 percent and a growing number of people are eating out of dumpsters to survive. “We are always with the same parties, and with the same problems,” Aguilar says. “So let someone else try. With Milei, we are going to get our act together.”
Galvanized by growing desperation, Milei—a first-time congress member and founder of La Libertad Avanza, a political coalition he cobbled together two years ago—has catapulted to the limelight by embracing an extreme free-market ideology, Argentina’s historical far-right military regime, and a Trump-inspired social agenda.
Milei received the highest number of votes of any candidate in Argentina’s August primaries, shocking a traditional establishment that he calls “the political caste,” an ode to Trump’s depiction of Washington as a swamp needing to be drained.
At the center of Milei’s campaign is an austerity-heavy economic platform he has dubbed the “chainsaw” plan.
At the center of Milei’s campaign is an austerity-heavy economic platform he has dubbed the “chainsaw” plan, which includes shrinking the state to the bare minimum, “blow[ing] up” the Central Bank, and officially dollarizing Argentina. Milei, a self-proclaimed “anarcho-capitalist,” leans not on a message of defending the nation’s greatness but on halting its decay, a powerful and personal message for young Argentines who have become used to economic turbulence and believe there is nothing left to break. “If we don’t change today,” Milei told supporters at an August rally, “the only possible destiny is that we become the biggest slum in the world.”
But Milei has been vocal about plenty of other, far-reaching priorities, such as banning abortion, relaxing gun controls, and relocating Argentina’s Israeli embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which are also all issues core to the U.S. right.
“[Milei] is very influenced by the agenda of the American alt-right,” said Maria Esperanza Casullo, an Argentine specialist in rightwing populism. “There is a consumption and imitation of content that does well in those circuits, issues that historically have been completely alien to Argentina.”
In an interview with former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson in September, Milei questioned the science behind climate change, slammed socialism, and railed against Argentine Pope Francis for having “a great affinity” for the “bloody dictatorships” of Cuba’s late Fidel Castro and Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro.
But for the notorious Argentine dictatorship—a U.S.-supported regime responsible for the death or disappearance of more than 30,000 people during the 1970s and 1980s—Milei has reserved a kinder tone, in line with the nation’s historical far right that has long refuted the court-declared genocidal characterization of the regime.
In the last two months, both he and running mate Victoria Villarruel, a fellow congress member who comes from a military family, made public statements in defense of the deeply controversial “two demons” theory, which claims that the dictatorship was fighting a civil war.
“There weren’t 30,000 disappeared,” Milei said in a presidential debate in early October, suggesting the much smaller figure of 8,753 that initially originated in a government report after the return of democracy. “In that war, the state forces committed some excesses,” he told the audience, “but the terrorists [of leftwing parties fighting the government] . . . also committed crimes against humanity.”
In the last months, Milei’s plans and combative language have led to the eruption of large demonstrations in Buenos Aires.
Amelia Rayno
In Villa 31, one of Buenos Aires, Argentina's poorest neighborhoods, residents shop warily, based on the day's price.
In addition to human rights activists rejecting Milei’s “denialism,” and feminist and LGBTQ+ groups denouncing his assault on civil rights, workers’ organizations have taken to the streets to rebuke the economic measures that most economists believe will exacerbate Argentina’s economic woes, deepening poverty and inflation while making its enormous International Monetary Fund (IMF) debt more difficult to repay.
Meanwhile, Milei’s recent statements urging Argentines to dump their pesos for dollars have already contributed to dramatic devaluations of the Argentine currency in exchange markets, battering purchasing power.
In the last months, Milei’s plans and combative language have led to the eruption of large demonstrations in Buenos Aires.
“There are a ton of problems with total dollarization in Argentina,” economist Julián Zícari says.“Not only would thousands of companies go bankrupt, but unemployment would dramatically rise, wages would sharply fall and [with the eradication of the Central Bank] the government would lose its own tools of intervention to address those problems.”
Many of those fighting the advent of Milei in the presidential Casa Rosada also expressed disillusion with the other top candidates—which include ruling Peronist coalition candidate Sergio Massa, the current economic minister, and law-and-order opposition candidate Patricia Bullrich—but said Milei invokes deeper fears.
“For me, it seems that not only is democracy at stake,” protester Celeste Gonzalez says, “but our lives. It shouldn't be about voting for the ‘least bad’ but for the working class, the youth, the collectives, the LGBTQ+ community, the fear comes from that—the fact that he’s coming for us.”
Milei has already promised to crack down on such protests if he takes office. The warning itself is reminiscent of similar language from the dictatorship, which managed to quell dissent only through terror.
“Resistance is in the DNA of the Argentine people,” Argentine voter Nora Gilges said at a September demonstration. “So I believe even those who eventually will vote for these proposals, when the reality of them comes to their bodies, their homes, their jobs, their families—from our DNA a popular response will arise.”
“Resistance is in the DNA of the Argentine people,” Argentine voter Nora Gilges said.
Since Argentina’s October 22 election features three strong candidates, a run-off between the two who receive the most votes is expected to be held in November. Polls suggest Milei will advance.
While it’s worth acknowledging that voters in the United States and Brazil rejected both Trump and Bolsonaro, Casullo believes a Milei win would revitalize the rightwing populist movement in the region. “Argentina, even with all of its problems, is the third or fourth largest economy in Latin America, and a country with major visibility in the world,” she notes. “After how badly it ended with Bolsonaro, [Milei taking office] would be super invigorating for that [rightwing] movement.”