Javier Milei (Buenos Aires, 52 years old) has achieved the fame with Argentine politics that eluded him in his youth with football and rock. The ultra-presidential candidate, clad in a leather jacket and with his iconic mane left unkempt by “the invisible hand of the market,” took a mass bath on Wednesday at the end of the campaign. As explosions and scenes of destruction were projected on the screen, Milei made his way through the audience, took the stage and sang feverishly: “I am the king of a lost world.” El León has benefited like no other from the Argentines’ fatigue , created by successive economic crises and triple-digit inflation that is emptying their pockets. He found a culprit for the country’s decline: the caste – which, in his opinion, consists of politicians, businessmen, trade unionists and journalists – and dedicated to it a battle cry that lights up his rallies: “The caste is afraid.” This populist leader was the Candidate with the most votes in the August primary and is the favorite in this Sunday’s general election.
Javier Milei greets his supporters during a campaign rally in Buenos Aires, Argentina.Photo: AP | Video: EPV
On stage, the La Libertad Avanza candidate sometimes seems like the leader of a football fan base ready to drive out this caste, which he describes as “parasitic and stupid”. [ladrona] and useless”; In others, he is more like a messianic preacher, announcing an old new world – with roots in the 19th century – in which there will be no pesos in Argentina, but dollars and a liberal state reduced to its minimum. In television debates, wearing glasses and using a slower tone, he conveys the image of a visionary professor who wants to convince students that Argentina can be the United States if they give him 35 years.
Not all of his voters support a controversial program that includes abolishing free public education, deregulation of the firearms market, making labor laws more flexible, examining the feasibility of free organ sales and abolishing abortion. What unites them is that they want change, and they want it now. “Let them all go,” his followers chant, and Milei speaks to them with his chest puffed out and his hands raised: “Don’t let a single one remain.” “To be at the center of every situation without having to engage in a constant dialogue with those present , is still the place where he feels most comfortable,” says his unauthorized biographer Juan Luis González, author of The Crazy Ones. That was already the case when, in 1983, on the eve of the country’s return to democracy, a prepubescent Milei danced like his idolized Mick Jagger in the courtyard of the Cardenal Copello School. Years later he formed a Rolling Stones tribute band, Everest.
Javier Milei of the La Libertad Avanza party holds his glasses during a press conference.AGUSTIN MARCARIAN (Portal)
Javier Gerardo Milei was born on October 22, 1970 in Buenos Aires. He turns 53 on Sunday, the day of the general election. His current popularity contrasts with a lonely and violent childhood. The son of a bus driver who eventually became the owner of a transport company and a housewife, Milei grew up being beaten, humiliated and verbally abused. There was a beating that left its mark on him: in 1982, when the Malvinas War began, he said loudly in front of the television at home that it would end badly. The comment outraged his father, who began beating him with brutal force. Her sister Karina, a witness to the attack, suffered shock and was taken to hospital. “Your sister is like this because of you. If she dies, it’s your fault,” her mother told her. As an adult, he cut all ties with them for more than a decade. “My parents don’t exist for me,” he said without batting an eyelid during his first television appearances. He resumed contact with them during the pandemic, but they are outside his close circle of trust.
Milei says little about her private life. He never married nor had any children. His family consists of his sister Karina, whom he calls “The Boss” and who is also his campaign’s highest authority, and his “four-legged children”: Murray, Milton, Robert and Lucas, named after their favorite economists. They are clones of Conan, the mastiff dog he idolized and who died in 2017. Death did not interrupt the communication between Conan and him: according to González, they speak to each other through a medium.
Courtship with the Kirchner impersonator
After his victory in the primaries, the candidate’s love life took a turn: he began a romance with actress Fátima Flores, known on television as an impersonator of former President Cristina Fernández de Kircher.
Actress Fátima Flórez, partner of presidential candidate Javier Milei, listens to his speech at the end of her election campaign in Buenos Aires, Argentina, today. JUAN IGNACIO RONCORONI (EFE)
“You’re strange, aren’t you?” veteran TV presenter Mirtha Legrand told them as she invited them to her table. The couple exchanged hearts and compliments in front of her.
In the conversation with Legrand, the candidate’s sexual history was not mentioned, as he had revealed in previous interviews that he was a tantric sex teacher and was nicknamed “bad cow” because he did not ejaculate more than once every three months.
His classmates remember him as a withdrawn boy who wasn’t too fond of socializing and never had a girlfriend. He could have been a victim of bullying, but the uncontrolled outbursts of anger that still characterize him today saved him. If someone crossed the line, he didn’t hesitate to confront them. Today it remains the same. Milei shouted at the EL PAÍS photographer when he asked her to smile for the portraits he took of her before the interview, and also verbally attacked journalists and television panelists, in many cases women, without asking for forgiveness or to show remorse afterwards.
This angry character led to him being nicknamed “El loco” at school, a nickname also used by his football mates in the clubs where he played as a goalkeeper: Chacarita Juniors and San Lorenzo. “Just like in life, he was a goalkeeper. He threw himself everywhere, he didn’t care about anything. He was one of those strong guys, big, half crazy,” recalls ex-footballer Gabriel Bonomi, a member of the Chacarita team in which Milei played, on the Infobae portal.
“Our enemy is the state”
During Argentina’s last hyperinflation in the late 1980s, he traded loot for business books. He graduated in economics from the University of Belgrano, where he later taught, and completed postgraduate studies at the Institute of Economic Development and the University of Torcuato di Tella. He carefully studied the ideas of John Maynard Keynes and then rejected them. As a liberal, he rejects any government intervention in the market.
Javier Milei as a young man when he played football.
“If I had to choose between the state and the mafia, I would choose the mafia. Because the mafia has codes, the mafia sticks to them, the mafia doesn’t lie. And above all, the mafia competes.
The year was 2020. These statements from Milei caused great controversy, but were not the candidate’s worst definition of the state. “We must recognize who our real enemy is. Our real enemy is the state. “The state is the pedophile in the kindergarten with children chained and bathed in Vaseline,” he had declared a year earlier, when he was not yet in politics.
Around this time, Milei appeared at a cosplayer festival in Buenos Aires, dressed as General AnCap (anarcho-capitalist) with a mask and trident. “I come from Liberland,” he announced to those present, “a country where no one pays taxes.” “My mission is to kick the Keynesians’ asses,” he announced. Four years later, this superhero from a fictional country is vying for the presidency of Argentina, with an advantage over his main rivals, the Peronist Sergio Massa and the conservative Patricia Bullrich.
From television to politics
In his professional life, Milei alternated his university teaching work with jobs as an economist for years. He was an adviser to General Antonio Bussi, who had been governor of the northern province of Tucumán during a dictatorship and reiterated his position in a democracy; Chief economist at former presidential candidate Daniel Scioli’s Acordar Foundation and investment risk manager at Corporación América, a business conglomerate led by Eduardo Eurnekián, one of Argentina’s richest men. One of them is América TV, the television on which Milei debuted in 2016 and which catapulted him first into media stardom and later into politics.
Supporters of Javier Milei during a campaign rally in Buenos Aires. MATIAS BAGLIETTO (Portal)
Sources from this economic giant emphasize Milei’s great skill in making long-term financial forecasts, but also the difficulties he had in transferring these forecasts from theory to practice. They also remembered how easily he lost his temper when someone contradicted him. “He did some brilliant analysis, but if someone disagreed with him, he could easily shut them up by saying, ‘Shut up, jackass,’” they recall.
This explosive temper turns off some voters but attracts others who welcome his daring to say what many think but remain silent. This is the case with young men and adults who have felt threatened by the rise of feminism in recent years. Some for fear of rejection due to complaints of harassment on the street, at school or at work. Others are due to women’s conquest of spaces of power and sexual diversity thanks to labor quota systems. “I’m not going to apologize for having a penis,” Milei has said several times. The candidate assumes that if he reaches Casa Rosada, he will abolish the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity and repeal laws such as abortion and comprehensive sex education, among other things. Feminism has mobilized to stop it at the ballot box.
Link with Vox
Milei was elected deputy in 2021 alongside Victoria Villarruel, who is running for vice president today and will be responsible for the security and defense portfolios if she comes to power. The major government cuts he is planning – and which he symbolizes with a chainsaw modeled after the American Republican Rand Paul – exclude these ministries. Villarruel, a member of the military family and a denier of Argentina’s dictatorship, expects to expand his budget.
Javier Milei speaks during an event on August 24, 2023.AGUSTIN MARCARIAN (Portal)
It’s a beneficial alliance for both: Milei attracts voters dissatisfied with economic policies, and Villarruel adds voters who identify with far-right values, such as anti-abortion and opponents of the territorial claims of indigenous communities and sexual diversity rights. Villarruel also helped him forge alliances with the global far right, particularly the Spanish party Vox. This Sunday in the La Libertad Avanza bunker will be present members of the formation led by Santiago Abascal as well as Eduardo, son of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
The biggest short circuit with conservative circles is his conflictual relationship with Pope Francis. After calling him an “idiot” and “representative of evil on earth,” he accused him a few weeks ago of having “an affinity for murderous communists” and of violating the Ten Commandments by defending social justice. His ideological father, Alberto Benegas Lynch, called at the closing ceremony of Milei’s campaign to cut ties with the Vatican while the Argentine remained at the head of the Catholic Church.
This populist candidate portrays Argentine democracy as a 40-year desert. At the end of this long journey, he sees himself as the destroyer of inflation, the owner of the “only solution” to make Argentina a power.
It has much of traditional politics against it, but also many economists – who warn that Argentina does not have enough dollars or access to credit for dollarization – and big business people. At the end of August, his speech to the Council of America was greeted with icy silence, in contrast to the applause that Bullrich received. Two weeks ago, he decided to confront the organizers of the Ideas Colloquium, the country’s main economic forum, and organized a parallel lunch with nearly a hundred of them. One of those present was the former president of the HSBC bank, Gabriel Martino, who was part of the team of the mayor of Buenos Aires, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta. “You come from Larreta,” he told him when he recognized him, a gesture that was later criticized by Martino’s colleagues. “It was unnecessary for nothing. One wonders how he will act as president in such a case and it is inevitable to think about blacklists,” murmured one of those present.
Milei shares with former President Carlos Menem a desire to privatize public companies and reduce government spending, but he treats his opponents very differently. Menem, a snake charmer, tried to win her over to his side; Milei, on the other hand, blows up bridges. “Menem would have greeted him with a hug,” another businessman said after the candidate’s rudeness to the banker. At the end of the election campaign on Friday, he once again showed his contempt for those who think differently. “There are people who don’t want to change, who don’t want to vote for us because we don’t care about them. Leave them failure and decadence,” he declared. His speech is all or nothing. It only helps if he wins in the first round.
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