The pandemic disrupted my frequent transatlantic travel. But they invited me to the Buenos Aires Book Fair and I didn’t hesitate. I had forgotten the queues at check-in, the security controls, the outrageous price of a bottle of water… There are also novel behaviors: a woman greets the flight attendant “It’s nice to be traveling again!”. The fair in Buenos Aires began with a speech by Saccomanno that was critical of publishers. A tribute to Almudena Grandes was held in a room for 80 people. The buckthorn phenomenon had room for a thousand. Javier Milei, leader of La Libertad Avanza, who was giving away his salary as a deputy, also occupied it, shouting “freedom, damn it!”. 200,000 pesos. Some call it far-right; others include it in the category of libertarian rights. In Spain there are many. He says he is “anarcho-capitalist” or “liberal libertarian”. Milei hit it at the fair while the piquetero movement paralyzed central Buenos Aires to demand aid from the Fernández government, and a taxi driver told us the aid is eating away at people who don’t want to work. Those who, like him, work from sunrise to sunset feel hurt and see in Milei one of those honest and original types who come to correct the ways of politics – right or left – always corrupt. Forgetting that “freedom, damn it,” is only freedom for those who can afford it, the cab driver selects the surgical team that will transplant the gold-covered kidney taken from a poor child. It is not a freedom based on social justice. It’s a goddamn “freedom, goddamn it.” Freedom of texture similar to that of Vargas Llosa: “Between Bolsonaro’s clown and Lula da Silva, I prefer the first.” He is left with the “little cold”, the mass graves, the devastation of the Amazon, the slavery that prevails in certain parts of Brazil, the exile of Marcia Tiburi, who wrote How to Converse with a Fascist and had to flee. The freedom of Tiburi would not be “freedom goddamn it” but a freedom with a clear conscience to understand that without equality and human rights there is no freedom worthy of the name.
Continue reading