Argentina’s gamble

The defining image of Javier Milei’s rapid rise to power in Argentina was his favourite campaign stunt: waving a chainsaw above his head and promising to crush the political elite. The garden tool served as a symbol of his libertarian, small-state ideology. The state is not the solution, he told delegates of the World Economic Forum; it is the problem.

When Milei took office in December 2023, Argentina was in the grips of a deep economic crisis, with monthly inflation at 25 per cent. By January, a little over a year later, this figure had fallen to a projected 2.5 per cent and the government budget is now in surplus. But this result has been achieved through drastic measures: tens of thousands of government workers have been trimmed from the payroll and entire departments shuttered.

Argentines are now split on whether this cost-cutting is a masterly gambit that will transform lives for the better, or an irresponsible gamble that is doomed to fail. If you believe Milei’s supporters, Argentina is showing the world how it’s done and is on the brink of prosperity. If you listen to his critics, then the poorest in society and basic rights have been thrown by the wayside.

Even as inflation has fallen, poverty has soared. And Milei has made no secret of his disdain for human rights, attacking feminism, climate change advocacy and independent journalism. The right to protest has been stripped back and welfare support has been cut. During his campaign he promised a referendum on abortion access, though he has not yet acted on that. In October, Amnesty International published an open letter to the president in which it expressed “serious concerns” about the human rights situation in the country, citing poverty and freedom of expression.

While swathes of Argentines have been buoyed by what they see as the country’s growing economic stability – buying property and opening savings accounts for the first time – others fear what could happen next.

Inflation falls, poverty rises

Milei was an unlikely candidate for the presidency. He entered politics in 2021, just two years before ascending to power. He was previously an economist, best known for wild rants on television and dressing up as libertarian “superhero” General Ancap (from anarcho-capitalist), whose mission was to “kick Keynesians in the ass”. He advocates for “freedom”, which he interprets narrowly as economic freedom and individual property rights.

On many measures Milei has delivered economic success. By slashing government spending and reining in inflation, the state ran a surplus in 2024 up until December, turning a tide after more than a decade of budget deficit. For Nicolás Saldías, a senior analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, Milei “has beaten expectations on many fronts and in many ways it’s a successful presidency so far”.

But the impact on ordinary Argentines has been stark. The poverty rate surged to 53 per cent in the first half of 2024, up from 40 per cent in 2023, although some private estimates suggest it began to fall again by the end of the year. Funding for the welfare state has been slashed, along with jobs and salaries in the country’s substantial public sector, leading to rising unemployment. For much of the year, Argentina was in a recession, from which it only emerged in mid-December.

“The economy is growing in a very uneven manner,” said Saldías. “Sectors that sell to the domestic market are struggling, especially construction, and Milei has really cut to the bone in terms of state spending. It’s a really mixed picture.” The economy seems to be turning a corner, with the International Monetary Fund projecting growth at 5 per cent this year. However, given that GDP shrank by 3.5 per cent in 2024, following a 1.6 per cent contraction in 2023, this growth will only just about reverse those declines.

Meanwhile, the poorest Argentines have been left in a desperate situation, with the removal of subsidies and the lack of support for safety nets like food banks. Lore Dominguez, 42, works for grassroots organisation La Poderosa, which runs a soup kitchen in one of Buenos Aires’ slums. Sitting in a small room with a basic cooker and stacks of giant pots, Dominguez says Milei’s supposed economic successes haven’t been evenly distributed.

“People living in the slums haven’t received [help] from the government. It’s been a year since Milei became president and the situation in the slums has worsened,” she said. “Economic [policy] is not enough. I still have to work three jobs. The state is totally absent for us.” She added: “They say what he is doing is for Argentina. It’s not for Argentina. In this country there are no more middle-class people. There are the poor and the millionaires.”

The middle classes are feeling the effects and could soon run out of patience, confirms Marcelo Garcia, Americas director at US geopolitics consultancy Horizon Engage. Meanwhile, the sight of families searching through large public bins has become more common and some have abandoned cooking with gas in favour of wood fires due to soaring fuel costs. Milei insists that it is the “political class” paying the price of his cuts, rather than ordinary people. But the majority of Argentines, who pride themselves on living in a middle-class nation, are struggling to pay the bills, while those in extreme deprivation are facing homelessness and starvation.

‘Witch-hunts’ and clampdowns

Then there is the political climate. Argentines know better than most the dangers of authoritarian rule. In 1976 the military seized power in Argentina. The terror that the junta wrought over the next seven years is by some estimates the bloodiest seen across South America’s many dictatorships of the period. Human rights groups suggest that as many as 30,000 people were killed. In what came to be known as death flights, supposed dissidents were flown out over the sea in the middle of the night and pushed from planes to perish in the icy waters of the Rio de la Plata.

Perhaps as a consequence, Argentines feel a strong connection to democratic principles, like the freedom to protest and freedom of the press. And some fear these are under threat in Milei’s Argentina.

Tens of thousands have taken to the streets since Milei too power to oppose his policies, but restrictions on protest are increasing. In December, police were granted additional rights to target protestors who blocked roads, while those bringing children to protests were warned they could be sanctioned. Some protests have been violently opposed by rows of police in full riot gear. In August, pensioners protesting a decision not to increase their payouts in line with inflation were met by police with pepper spray. One attendee, Rubén Bogado, 72, said he saw elderly protestors beaten with sticks and targeted with pepper spray and tear gas. “The repression and arbitrary arrests are an attempt to intimidate, but they cannot hide the anger of those who are legitimately mobilising to protect their rights,” he said.

Journalists, too, have been a target for Milei and his allies. In February, a press union said that a dozen journalists had been hit by rubber bullets while covering a protest, while the Argentine Journalism Forum has documented at least 52 occasions of “stigmatising rhetoric” and harassment. Milei also has the backing of an army of internet trolls who have been known to harass critical journalists and opposition politicians. Luciana Peker, a well-known feminist writer, has left the country following harassment from supporters of Milei. She told the Guardian that women are facing a “witch-hunt” from the “ultra-right”.

As a result, Argentina fell from 40th to 66th place in the 2024 Press Freedom Index compiled by the charity Reporters Without Borders. The organisation said: “The election of Javier Milei, a president openly hostile to the media, poses a disturbing new threat to the right to information in the country.”

‘Never again’

According to Facundo Iglesia, a reporter for Crisis, an Argentine political magazine, Milei claims to be democratising access to information by posting on social media, thus bypassing “lying journalists”. It’s a similar tactic to President Trump and Elon Musk in the US. But Milei’s rhetoric is marked out by its viciousness, Iglesia said. “Even if Milei isn’t directly involved, these constant attacks on journalists definitely embolden people.” While Iglesia said he is not aware of colleagues self-censoring the stories they write, he said he would “think twice” before posting his stories on social media.

Ernesto Calvo, a professor of politics at the University of Maryland, who has studied online trolling in Argentina and Brazil, said the consequence is that people remove themselves from online spaces, which then become more polarised. “They lock their accounts or close them altogether. They are moving people from the public sphere to the private sphere,” he explained. “This didn’t start with Milei … Every party has trolls. What’s different, I think, is the scale at which the libertarios are doing this.”

When the military seized power in 1976, Miriam Lewin was a student and an active member of a left-wing group. She was held prisoner in a clandestine prison camp a stone’s throw from Argentina’s national football stadium. She can still recall hearing the wild celebrations of the crowds from her prison cell when the national team won its first World Cup in 1978.

Milei has concerned Lewin and other civil liberties advocates by appearing to downplay the crimes of the dictatorship. He and other members of his administration have cast doubt on estimates of the number of people killed by the dictatorship and have characterised the period as an “internal armed conflict”. Lewin feels it is important to re-tell her story now because of the political situation. “I think that knowing about the death flights is more important than ever because of the kind of government we have,” she explained. “They vindicate the dictatorship.”

Christopher Sabatini, a commentator at Chatham House who founded the journal Americas Quarterly, said there is a risk in threatening the country’s shared historical memory. “In Argentina there is a sense of nunca mas – never again – when it comes to the dictatorship,” he said. “There have always been those apologists for the junta, but they didn’t speak so publicly. Now they are out of the closet a little bit.”

The president’s choice of friends has also fuelled concern. He has made no secret of his courting of President Trump, a leader who cast doubt on a legitimate election result and was accused of encouraging a coup. In December, Argentina hosted CPAC, a conference of right-wing politics, for the first time. Among the speakers was Jair Bolsonaro, the former Brazilian president who has been charged in relation to a coup attempt. “I think it’s a really bad idea to be friends with these people,” said Julio Montero, a professor of politics at the University of San Andrés in Buenos Aires. “These people are not democrats.”

However, even the most ardent critics do not believe Milei would directly threaten democratic election results. Lewin said: “There is a lot of repression in the streets during demonstrations and they do things that were not acceptable [before].” But the sort of mass arrests common during the late 1970s are not happening, she said. “I think the memory of the dictatorship is still very vivid in us, so people just don’t support irrational arrests.” Most of the Argentines who support Milei do so because of his promises to fix the economy rather than his culture war battles, Garcia said. “Trumpism has a base movement with real people – flesh and bones – willing to go and storm into Capitol Hill,” he said. “Milei hasn’t built that yet.”

Threats to Indigenous communities

Thus far, Milei’s route to reshaping Argentina has largely been through policymaking, and he has big plans for the future. Elective abortion access in Argentina was only legalised in 2020 after the protests which became known across Latin America as the Green Wave. Milei has labelled abortion “aggravated murder”, rhetoric that has caused concern about the rights of women and other minorities. Although no concrete steps have been taken to restrict abortion, reports suggest that some healthcare workers have refused to carry out procedures.

Indigenous rights have also been threatened. If there is one sector of the economy that Milei is pinning his hopes on it is mining. Argentina boasts the second largest shale gas deposit in the world and is home to one fifth of the planet’s lithium, a crucial component in electric car batteries. Local governments have been leaned on to approve projects and global investors have been offered significant tax incentives to plough money into Argentina.

But this could be at the expense of local people. Crucially, an emergency law designed to protect indigenous land rights has been annulled. In Mendoza province, the western region famous for its vineyards, the indigenous Mapuche community is fighting 34 mining projects it says it was not properly consulted about. Gabriel Jofré, a Mapuche leader in Mendoza, said that climate change is already making it harder for his people to work the land using traditional techniques. He told the Guardian, “Our territories are an inseparable part of our identity and culture. They are our source of food and traditional medicine.”

Javier Milei is not a dictator. Even his biggest critics do not claim that. But there is legitimate fear for the future of human rights and the economic prospects of Argentinians under what are promised to be even harsher conditions of austerity – Milei has said that the country’s belt needs to be tightened even further this year.

At the same time, his Freedom Advances party is weak in Congress and he has shown some willingness to negotiate and compromise in order to build a broader support base. He will have his eyes firmly fixed on the midterm elections in October. Success in those would go a long way to securing his grip on political power. And of course, the elephant in the room is that a majority of Argentines still support him. His 66 per cent approval rating in December was the highest on the continent – the second highest in the world. For now, at least, this means that the concerns of activists and political opponents are likely to be pushed aside.

“People losing their jobs is a serious reality – but what Milei has done is supported by most Argentines,” said Saldías. “[In 2023] people feared there was a hyperinflation coming. The fact that didn’t happen and inflation fell is a massive change in expectations. His primary promise to the population is being fulfilled.”

However, the extreme cuts he is implementing still represent a risk. In the 1990s, Argentina’s government responded to hyperinflation with a swathe of public spending cuts, privatisations and currency controls. The situation improved – until 2001, when the economy collapsed, access to bank accounts was restricted and wide-scale protests erupted. Some Argentines, weary from decades of boom and bust, might now be watching with a sense that they’ve seen it all before.

This article is from New Humanist’s Spring 2025 issue. Subscribe now.