A far-right, social-media-using president-elect who admires Donald Trump will take office in Argentina, which has the third-largest economy in Latin America, on Dec. 10.
“The whole world was watching! I am very proud of you. You will turn your Country around and truly Make Argentina Great Again!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform concerning libertarian economist Javier Milei’s victory on Sunday.
The White House said President Joe Biden called Milei to congratulate him on his win and spoke of “the strong relationship between the United States and Argentina on economic issues, on regional and multilateral cooperation, and on shared priorities, including advocating for the protection of human rights, addressing food insecurity and investing in clean energy.”
Milei, a 53-year-old former television pundit, won nearly 56 percent of the vote in a presidential run-off, beating Sergio Massa, the center-left minister overseeing the country’s troubled economy under current President Alberto Fernandez.
Voters Call For End to Economic Misery
“Voters in this nation of 46 million demanded a drastic change from a government that has sent the peso tumbling, inflation skyrocketing, and more than 40 percent of the population into poverty,” The Washington Post reported. “With Milei, Argentina takes a leap into the unknown — with a leader promising to shatter the entire system,”
During an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson in September, Milei called on Trump to “continue with his fight against socialism, because he’s one of the few who fully understood that the battle is against socialism, that the battle is against the statists.”
In his first speech as president-elect, Milei told Argentines that “the model of decadence has reached its end. There is no turning back.”
“Enough of the impoverishing power of the caste,” he said. “Today we once again embrace the model of liberty, to once again become a world power.”
Milei will take office on the 40th anniversary of Argentina’s return to democracy after the fall of its punishing military dictatorship.
“We don’t have anything to lose,” Tomás Limodio, a 36-year-old business owner who voted for Milei in Buenos Aires on Sunday, told The Washington Post. “We’ve had this type of government for so many years, and things are only getting worse.”
John Flores, 24, a nursing student, said: “Massa wants to fix the problems that he himself created. “We’re tired, especially the young people.”
Concerns About the Future
Others are worried about Argentina having a president who has called Pope Francis, a fellow Argentine, an “evil” leftist, climate change a “socialist lie” and says he will hold a referendum to undo the three-year-old law that legalized abortion in the overwhelmingly Catholic country.
Bolivia’s former President Evo Morales said he would never “wish success to fascism, ultra-conservatism and neoliberalism,” Reuters reported.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro described Milei’s win in a post on X, formerly Twitter, as “sad for Latin America.”
Veronica Cerminaro, a 44-year-old public sector employee in Argentina, told The Washington Post about Milei: “With that man, I don’t see a future for anyone.”
