“Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!” was heard this Sunday afternoon in front of the doors of the Argentine Congress and the Plaza de Mayo. Javier Milei had just been named the eighth elected president of a democracy that turned 40 this Sunday, and a few minutes later he began to break with tradition. The right-wing extremists received the baton from Peronist Alberto Fernández, refused to address MPs and went into a crowded square to address Argentines.
“Hello everyone!” he roared at the top of his lungs and the place erupted in applause; “You have ruined our lives!” he exclaimed, and the people replied: “Thieves, sons of bitches!”; “There is no alternative solution to adaptation,” he said, predicting poverty, hunger and even hyperinflation. The Argentines who came to celebrate their new president listened in complete silence to the portent of difficult times.
The convention center was full. Teenagers dressed in gala attire arrived there, having voted for the first time at the age of 17. A retired teacher from a province that was a bastion of Peronism complained that her native Formosa was “the Cuba of Argentina.” An unemployed private security guard who had made a chainsaw a symbol of the president's conformity, or a mother with her fifteen-year-old daughter who asked to “end the insecurity” so that the young woman “does not leave the country.” Workers and students waved the flags of Israel, Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil. Young Americans, French and British, nomadic workers or student exchange workers, with burning dollars and curiosity. Recently arrived Russian families with children born in the country and new nationalities. All residents of a country to which the new president has proposed “freedom” to “get out of poverty” and “a state that does not dictate our lives.”
People gather outside Congress to watch Milei's post-inauguration speech. AGUSTIN MARCARIAN (Portal)
Under the intense summer sun, Laureano, Agustín and Mateo, all 17 years old, arrived at Congress around 10 a.m. They wore shirts, jackets and pleated pants to celebrate their president's inauguration. “We voted for the first time this year. I wanted someone else because with Peronism or with Mauricio Macri we only had misery,” summarized the first. “Milei becomes chaste, let's say, because she makes agreements with everyone… but that's how she builds the national unity that others promised but couldn't.”
Fátima, a 63-year-old retired teacher, explained that she only voted for Milei to defeat Peronism in the second round and that she did not come to celebrate Milei “celebrating the festival of democracy.” Originally from Formosa, one of three provinces that retained its Peronist vote in the last election, she said she was celebrating “the end of corruption.” “My province is Argentine Cuba,” he said, “where most of us are poor and the few rich ones are very rich.”
On the other side of Avenida de Mayo, hundreds of supporters waiting for Milei outside the government palace listened to the president on the giant screens. They sought refuge in the shade of the trees. They listened in silence to the president, who said that the “inheritance” he received from the outgoing administration could not be “worse” and listed the macroeconomic problems that would plague his administration: uncontrolled emissions, budget deficit, exchange controls, high interest rates, low activity levels, high inflation… “There is no alternative to shock and adjustment,” he concluded, and in case there was any doubt about the message he wanted to convey, he clarified: “There is no money.”
Silvina Di Vito, 47, was among those who listened to him in secret. This therapy aide left school at age 12 and has worked continuously since then, she said. “I'm not afraid of adaptation because I've lived conformity my whole life. They won't take anything away from me. On the contrary: it gives me hope for a better life,” he explained. Later, as Milei began to recite, as usual, the definition of liberalism, which says that it is “unreserved respect for the life project of others, based on the principle of non-aggression, in defense of the right to life, to freedom” Now to Property…,” Di Vito felt euphoria, hope, emotion: “It’s nice to be a part of it.”
Supporters of Javier Milei carry figurines of chainsaws as they wait outside the official residence in Buenos Aires. Matilde Campodonico (AP)
Milei finished his speech and got into a convertible to meet his little sister Karina Milei, his strategist and largest company, whom he calls “The Boss.” They walked together the two kilometers to the Casa Rosada, the headquarters of the executive branch, where, hours later, Milei would meet with the foreign leaders who came to Buenos Aires to greet him: the Ukrainian Volodimir Zelenski, the Chilean Gabriel Boric, the Paraguayan Santiago Peña or King Philip VI. from Spain. He was also supported by his colleagues on the global far right: Hungary's Viktor Orbán, Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro and Vox's Santiago Abascal.
His followers clung to the fences and waited in silence for him. There were no drums or trumpets. The new president passed in front of them and his supporters beamed and shouted “Argentina, Argentina!” Milei entered the Casa Rosada for the first time as president. From the page, one of his followers expected even more from this historic moment: “He's going to go to the balcony, right?” Like Perón.”
He left two hours later. From the country's most famous balcony, he shouted the cry that took him from anonymous to president of the nation in eight years: “Long live freedom, damn it!”