Javier Gerardo Milei, the right-wing populist President of Argentina elected on November 19, has not yet officially taken office when one of his appointments is already causing a stir. On Friday, the new head of state chose Rodolfo Barra, 76 years old on December 19, as justice minister and one of the most powerful men during Carlos Menem’s second presidency as attorney general of the Ministry of Finance. The lawyer remained in office between 1993 and 1996, when he was forced to resign after Noticias magazine revealed his past in the youth wing of the Tacuara National Movement, a far-right Peronist group founded in 1957 that turned to neo-Nazism over the ’60s.
The organization was responsible for anti-Semitic violence, including murders, kidnappings and vandalism, as well as the defacement of Jewish buildings. The magazine featured a front-page photo of Barra, aged 15, giving the Nazi salute. The news caused a stir, also because the terrorist attacks against the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 and against the Jewish charity Amia in 1994, which claimed 85 lives, were still recent. Under pressure from many fronts, the minister decided to leave his post on the eve of a large protest demonstration by the Argentine Jewish community, the largest in Latin America, in front of the Casa Rosada, the government building in Plaza de Mayo.
Barra’s return to the crime scene did not go unnoticed. The Argentine Forum Against Anti-Semitism (Faca), made up of dozens of intellectuals, journalists and academics, defined the appointment in a post on X as “a direct affront to the democratic and plural spirit” of Argentina. “A new government cannot begin its work by accepting into its ranks people who profess anti-Semitism or any other form of expression of hate,” the organization writes, calling on Milei to give in. This is the same position as Memoria Activa, the association founded by the relatives of the attacks on Amia and the Israeli Embassy: “Today, almost 28 years later, we repeat our demand for resignation.”
The delegation of the Argentine-Israeli Associations (Daia) expressed itself more gently and promised that the fight against anti-Semitism and discrimination would be the focus here too. But Claudio Avruj, former head of Daia and secretary for human rights under the presidency of Mauricio Macri, criticizes Daias Position sharp: “As a former director of this association, I say that Barra has to do the same for us today as he did back then.”
In a television interview, the Treasury’s new attorney general tries to add water to the fire: “I apologize for what I did, I was 15 years old.”