Javier's Milei's Amputation Regime for Argentina

[Judi Lynn]

The country’s new president has imposed a set of brutal austerity measures as part of a so-called “chainsaw plan.” The carnage is already mounting.

JACOB SUGARMAN



Javier Milei, Argentina’s new president, lifts a chainsaw during an election rally on September 25, 2023, in Buenos Aires.
(Photo by Tomas Cuesta / Getty Images)

BUENOS AIRES—The crowd marches languorously down Diagonal Norte toward Argentina’s presidential palace bearing a series of cardboard characters painted a metallic grey. Together, they spell out the phrase “Son 30,000”—the estimated number of people who were killed or forcibly disappeared during the US-backed dictatorship that ruled from 1976 to 1983.

It’s just after noon on March 24, the country’s Day of Memory for Truth and Justice, and hundreds of thousands have taken to the street to commemorate the victims of the Argentine junta and declare “nunca más” (never again). But this year’s march is uniquely fraught. In November, Argentina elected economist and television personality cum politician Javier Milei—a self-styled anarcho-capitalist who openly denies the junta’s crimes.

Earlier that morning, while demonstrators flooded Plaza de Mayo outside, the Casa Rosada released a nearly 13-minute video on X, formerly Twitter, providing a “complete” accounting of the period, with testimonials accusing left-wing guerilla groups of acts of terror. Six days before, the human rights organization HIJOS (Hijos por la Identidad y la Justicia contra el Olvido y el Silencio—“Children for Identity and Justice against Forgetting and Silence” ) published a statement announcing that one of its members had been bound and sexually assaulted, and that her assailants had spray-painted the letters “VLLC” on the wall of her home. (Milei’s personal slogan is “Viva La Libertad Carajo,” or “Long Live Freedom Dammit.”)

“He’s an idiot,” said Beatriz Conde, a 73-year-old retiree from nearby Avellaneda. “I should apologize to the idiots, poor things. Milei is worse. He has no heart. He’s garbage.”

More:
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/javier-milei-argentina-100-days/