In the second half of the Argentine presidential game, Javier Gerardo Milei became one of those professional politicians he hated so much. The lion, as he was called, stopped roaring. The ultra-liberal economist, known for his insults and outbursts of anger in front of the camera, remained calm even in the face of contradictions. He embraced the caste he wanted to kick in the ass. Have you also started hiding your opinions? “We will not privatize healthcare. We will not privatize education. We will not privatize football. “We will not allow the unrestricted carrying of weapons,” he promises in his most recent election advertising. Until a few months ago, the candidate of the right-wing extremist party La Libertad Avanza claimed the opposite. Deregulation of the arms market and privatization of education through a voucher system are proposals that he put forward in his election manifesto, but since they are not very popular, he is now putting forward others. Milei wants to come to power next Sunday against the official candidate, Economy Minister Sergio Massa.
Video: He is Javier Milei. Photo: Sebastián López Brach
The transformation of someone who for two years was considered a flamboyant outsider in the Chamber of Deputies brings to mind one of former President Carlos Menem’s most famous lines: “If I had said what I would do, no one would have chosen me.” But Milei says it and then reverses it, as was the case with his support for organ sales, child sales or election fraud allegations. His countless contradictions force Argentines to decide which of two versions of the candidate they want to believe. If If he wins, his true colors will emerge starting December 10, when the next president takes office.
Milei was born on October 22, 1970 in Buenos Aires in a middle class home. Son of Norberto, a bus driver who eventually became the owner of a transportation company, and Alicia, a housewife. Milei said he grew up suffering beatings, humiliation and verbal abuse. “Your sister is like this because of you. If she dies, it will be your fault,” her mother told her as her sister Karina suffered shock upon witnessing one of these beatings.
“All the beatings I got as a child mean that today I’m not afraid of anything anymore,” Milei warned in a television interview. The beatings were accompanied by constant verbal abuse: “My father always told me that I was trash, that I would starve and that I would be useless all my life.” As an adult, he severed the bond until the pandemic, when they broke up again met.
Milei Sr. was present in the voting bunker on the night of October 22nd when his son was greeted with applause, cheers and the Happy Birthday song. He turned 53 that day. In the first round he received 7.7 million votes. “Javier is very intelligent,” said Norberto Milei, “I see him well, I hope he does well.” He watched the spectacle from the side, away from the spotlight.
Completion of Javier Milei’s campaign on November 16, 2023 in Córdoba, Argentina. Sebastian Lopez Brach
Milei understood better than anyone the weariness of Argentine society due to the successive economic crises and the lack of answers for millions of people. For those who work hard but can’t make ends meet, for those who lock themselves in their houses when the sun goes down because they are afraid to go outside, for those who evade all the taxes that they because they doubt their fate: They are tired of their children not having classes in public school and having to wait months for a doctor’s appointment.
He plunged into politics, convinced that he had a mission: “End inflation forever, end insecurity forever, end the privileges of politicians forever.” In short, change and banish Argentina forever Peronism. He promised that Argentina could be the United States in 35 years if given time; in the year 40, Ireland. This corresponds to ten presidential terms, but the Argentine constitution only allows two consecutive terms.
Climate deniers
Milei’s transformation includes combating the progressive ideas of a country that is at the forefront of Latin America in realizing social rights. She proposes the abolition of abortion, which has been legal in Argentina since 2020. She makes disparaging comments about equal marriage, which has been in force since 2010. She denies the gender gap, which according to statistics is 26%. He denies that climate change is caused by humans. It proposes the privatization of public companies and even Argentina’s natural resources, such as the unconventional Vaca Muerta hydrocarbon field, its rivers and seas. The argument is that if the rivers have owners, they will no longer be polluted.
Their parents’ recent support doesn’t mean they’re part of the inner circle of a candidate many describe as lonely and distrustful. This boils down to his sister Karina, whom he calls “The Boss” because she is the highest authority on his campaign, and his “little four-legged children”: his dogs Murray, Milton, Robert and Lucas, named after economists who love him admire. They are clones of Conan, the mastiff he idolized and who died in 2017. Death did not interrupt communication between them: Conan and he speak to each other through a medium, according to his unauthorized biographer Juan Luis González, author of “The Crazy.” One. .
After his victory in the primaries, he began a romance with Fátima Flórez, known as a copycat of former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Non-verbal communication experts analyzed this link to find out whether it was real or fictional, but it was veteran TV presenter Mirtha Legrand who made the popular verdict: “You guys are weird, aren’t you?” in their social media exchange Called out in capital letters “I love you” and answered by the lover with “I am your lioness”. Gone are the intimacies that Milei revealed on television years ago when he claimed he was a tantric sex teacher and they called him a “bad cow” because he didn’t ejaculate more than once every three months.
Thousands of Milei supporters in the city of Córdoba, Argentina, on November 16, 2023. Sebastian López Brach
At school, Cardenal Copello was the crazy one, a nickname also used by his football teammates in the clubs where he was a goalkeeper: Chacarita Juniors and San Lorenzo.
His former classmates describe him as a withdrawn child who wasn’t too fond of socializing. A similar description is given by those who shared an office at Corporación América, a business conglomerate chaired by Eduardo Eurnekián, one of Argentina’s richest men and considered his first godfather. Both agree on their explosive temper, which continues to be a constant source of problems to this day. “You’re a shitty communist, you’re ruining the country,” Milei exploded in the elevator at a neighbor who asked him whether he had studied the British John Maynard Keynes in his economics courses. “Go away, you are mistreating me,” he shouted at the EL PAÍS photographer as he asked her to smile so he could take a portrait. Journalists and television panelists, in many cases women, are also on the long list of those who have suffered his outbursts of anger.
Authoritarian
This character has unyielding and authoritarian traits that worry those aspiring to the presidency. He and his vice-presidential candidate, Victoria Villarruel, deny state terrorism and minimize the crimes against humanity committed by the dictatorship – and condemned in democracy – as “excesses”. “Milei is deeply undemocratic. He gets very annoyed when people contradict him, he doesn’t like it at all when someone tells him something different than what he thinks, even if it’s good,” says liberal lawyer and financial expert Carlos Maslatón. This former activist of La Libertad Avanza, who distances himself from the candidate, cites as an example what happened years ago on his radio show. He expressed his opposition to a financial instrument and Milei angrily stood up and left the program. It took three weeks for me to call him back. Maslatón believes that behind these rudenesses lies a “very insecure” person.
When the President of the Chamber of Deputies, Cecilia Moreau, asked him to call her president and not president, he refused to do so. At the end of his speech, he left the hall shouting “Caste, caste, caste”.
The alliance between Milei and Villarruel was beneficial to both. The first attracted voters dissatisfied with economic policies, and Villarruel added those who identify with far-right values, such as anti-abortion activists, opponents of the territorial claims of indigenous communities and opponents of sexual diversity rights. Villarruel also helped him forge alliances with the global far right, particularly the Spanish party Vox.
However, Milei’s appearance has deepened the political divide in Argentina. Not even a highly cultural place like the Colón, the most important lyric theater in Colón, was safe from the extreme tension on the eve of the elections. The candidate’s presence did not go unnoticed this Friday. “Milei, rubbish, you are the dictatorship,” part of the audience and the orchestra booed him when they recognized him in a box. At the end of the performance, others applauded him.
Enemy of the state
Milei’s first calling was football, but hyperinflation in Argentina in the late 1980s led him to swap his football boots 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 studied Keynes’s ideas in detail and then repeatedly rejected them.
As a liberal, he rejects any government intervention in the market. His rejection was staged in front of the cameras with such violent metaphors that his rival, the Peronist Sergio Massa, delegitimized him as a candidate for the presidency of Rivadavia.
—The state is the pedophile in the kindergarten with children chained and bathed in Vaseline.
This is how he defined it in 2019, when he had not yet entered politics. “If I had to choose between the state and the mafia, I would choose the mafia because the mafia has codes, the mafia follows them, the mafia doesn’t lie and, above all, the mafia competes,” he said a year later .
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 topping the polls.
Milei entered and grew on the fringes, like many populists before him. Social networks helped him win over young people during the Covid-19 pandemic, especially those angry at a government that prevented them from going out due to strict lockdown restrictions. They laughed at the atrocities they heard, but they also began to realize the importance of the culture war with which Milei promised to transform Argentina. They later announced the word of Ultra to their parents and grandparents. “My son became a fan of Milei and insists every day that my husband and I vote for him. But I don’t know, he’s crazy, we don’t know what he can do,” admits the saleswoman at a stationery store in Buenos Aires, who is among the 10% of undecided people who can decide the election.
Distrust is widespread among business people, wary of the promised dollarization of an economy without dollars and fearing the chaos it could cause. A hundred renowned economists have signed a letter opposing these and other economic measures taken by the candidate, but his speech stands on this point. It has given way in its forms, but has no plans to do so in the economic sphere. “I will be economics minister,” he replied to someone in his closest team when asked for a name for this central department. If he is elected there will be a name, but Milei plans for him to just be an employee following his orders.
With his youthful postpunk look – messy hair and a leather jacket, even though the temperature rises above 30 degrees – Milei transforms himself into a mixture of rock star and messianic preacher at his rallies. It’s his favorite scene. “Being the center of attention in any situation, without having to engage in constant dialogue with those present, remains for him the place where he feels most comfortable,” writes González, the unauthorized biographer. Even as a child he tried to take over this place. In his schoolyard he imitated the dances of his beloved Mick Jagger, not knowing that decades later thousands of people would sing with him: “I am the king of a lost world.”
“It is difficult for him to have a relaxed dialogue in a social setting with several people,” says the liberal lawyer and financial expert Carlos Maslatón. He also doesn’t like to be interrupted. “He likes to give a speech and then walk away,” he continues. Interaction may include shouting and chanting, but may not be part of a shared chat.
Milei is a Catholic, but began to approach Judaism years ago and does not rule out converting to this faith in the future. During the presidential campaign, he said that his greatest reference was Moisés, whom he described as a great leader who did not have the gift of giving anything away. “God sent Aaron to spread the message. Kari [en referencia a su hermana Karina] It is Moses and I am the one who spreads it,” he assured.
Attacks on Pope Francis
In his professional life, Milei alternated his university teaching work with jobs as an economist for years. He was an advisor to General Antonio Bussi and chief economist of former presidential candidate Daniel Scioli’s Acordar Foundation. However, his CV stands out above all for his work during a decade under the leadership of the Argentine magnate of Armenian origin Eduardo Eurnekián. The billionaire gave him the media boost – through his television station América TV – and the contacts he needed for his political career. He later regretted it, at least publicly. “I have 3,700 employees in my company and one is absent. “What should I do?” he said days ago. What he criticizes most is his open criticism of Pope Francis, whom he considers an “idiot” who has “an affinity for murderous communists” and whom he now describes as “the representative of evil on earth.” “He is not up to the task of judging the Pope or giving an opinion about it,” criticized Eurnekián.
“They accuse us of creating the monster,” admits a source from this economic giant. If that’s true, they weren’t the only ones. Former allies of Milei say that Massa’s entourage also helped him initially compile the lists, hoping that Milei would split the opposition vote and wear down the classic conservative right. “I thought I would get 15%, 18% at most,” they say. When he doubled that number and left Together for Change, former President Mauricio Macri was the one who extended his hand. If he becomes president, he will need almost 5,000 friends to fill the most trusted positions in the state. He doesn’t have it, but Macri is ready to introduce him to many. The risk is that it will result in a two-person presidency, with one side facing the sun and the other in the shadows.
The joining of forces between Macri and Milei has multiplied and diversified their audience: young men are no longer the vast majority, but there are also middle-aged and older men and women. While the former saw in Milei a dam of resistance against the advance of feminism and sexual minorities, the latter see in him the man who can save them from another four years of Peronism. The newcomers chant the hit “La casta es feart” more timidly than the veterans because they were part of it until a month ago. They also missed the alpha male show in a truck with a chainsaw. This aggressive symbol of cuts has been replaced by the stuffed toy of Pochita, a character from the anime Chainsaw Man. It represents a demon, but no one would recognize it because of its cute appearance.
His inexperience was visible like never before in the last debate against Massa. The Peronist candidate cornered him and gave him one verbal blow after another in the form of questions. Milei tried to answer them as best she could, but at the same time she was fighting a non-verbal battle: she had to keep her manners in front of the cameras and not lose control. He did it. Massa exposed Milei’s lack of preparation to lead the country, but the beating was so severe that many sympathized with the cornered economist’s fragility and doubts.
Milei reached the final phase of the election campaign with the certainty that the only thing standing between him and an election victory was the risk of fraud, which the electoral judiciary and independent organizations disputed. From Córdoba, the most anti-Kirchnerist province in Argentina, this fearless man called on Argentines to free themselves and lose them too. “What risk are you talking about? From what jump into the void? We’re going to hell!” His success depends on convincing them that what he says is true.