“We do not forget, we do not forgive, we do not reconcile”, said dozens of banners last Tuesday in Plaza de Mayo, in the center of Buenos Aires, in a historic demonstration for the Day of Memory for Truth and Justice in Argentina. Although March 24 is always a marked date on the calendar, this year’s was not just another appointment, as it marked 50 years since the civic-military coup d’état that led to the cruelest dictatorship in the country’s recent history, from 1976 to 1983.the cruelest dictatorship in the country’s recent history, from 1976 to 1983.Human rights organizations, such as the Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, had called to fill the square, as always, and the response was massive. Hours earlier, the Casa Rosada had published a video of an hour and a quarter in length, in which it claimed, as it has every March 24 since Javier Milei has been in government, a "Day of Complete Memory," in an insistent – and so far, unsuccessful – exercise to reconfigure the narrative and relativize the crimes committed by the State during the dictatorship.The Centre for Legal and Social Studies (CELS), an organization dedicated to safeguarding human rights and democracy in Argentina, has recently published the report Retrospective glances at the Argentine dictatorship: 50 years later, which confirms that 70% of the population rejects the 1976 coup d'état. While it is true that the official government condemns the assault on democracy itself – the day after the demonstration, spokesperson Manuel Adorni reiterated at a press conference that it is an event that "should never have taken place" – it also justifies it indirectly, as it points to left-wing terrorist organizations as the creators of a context of violence that needed to be controlled. Faced with this, the CELS study once again reveals the population's non-negotiable stance on the motives for the coup: 45% consider that there were no reasons to justify it, and 18% that there were "few".Regarding what happened with the military government, 61% consider that the so-called “National Reorganization Process” was a dictatorship that carried out a systematic plan of disappearances of people and violation of human rights, and not a government that faced a fight against terrorism, in which there would have been “excesses”, as the government of Javier Milei maintains. In this case, the differences between one vision and the other are notable, and they widen even more when we delve into the management of memory policies: according to Milei's government, they are “bias and revengeful”, and require a review that incorporates the so-called “complete memory” where victims and relatives of victims of terrorist guerrillas are taken into account, to help “reconcile” Argentine society.Only 1,600 bodies recovered

“If they want «complete memory», let them tell us where the disappeared and appropriated babies are”, Francisco, 44, told ARA, who went to the demonstration with his wife and his 5-year-old son: “We continue to wait for those missing to appear”. So far, the Argentine Team of Forensic Anthropology has recovered 1,600 bodies of people disappeared during the dictatorship, of which it has been able to identify around 800 – the last 12, this March in the excavations at the former clandestine center of detention and torture La Perla, in the province of Córdoba–. According to human rights organizations, the total number of disappeared by the dictatorship exceeds 30,000, a figure that the Milei government also disputes.“More than a denialist government, we have a government that advocates for the dictatorship”, Verónica Castelli, a militant of the organization HIJOS, tells ARA, “and it does so because it needs to continue the economic plan of that time, which is based on the destruction of national industry”. According to data from the Center for Argentine Political Economy, more than 20,000 companies have closed in the country during Milei's government. In fact, the slogan established for March 24th of this year has been “The same plan, the same struggle”, thus weaving a timeline between past and present that, on the one hand, equates the economic strategies of the dictatorship with the current ones, and on the other hand, vindicates and recovers the ideas that led the militants of that time to organize politically.Precisely in this juncture between the past and the present is where Castelli finds a key opening: young people. Part of her work as a member of HIJOS is to give talks about the dictatorship to children and adolescents in schools. “When they listen to you, and they see a first-person testimony, they understand many things and disbelieve what they receive through social networks.” This activist, who found her sister Milagros – illegally appropriated by the military – thanks to the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, finds it important to distinguish the reason for young people's support for Milei: “We all know that this government comes to power, in large part, thanks to the youth vote, dazzled by economic promises – but I doubt that the young people who voted for Milei have massively thrown themselves into vindicating the dictatorship or rejecting a process of Memory, Truth, and Justice in Argentina.” Sol, 27 years old, had not seen the video that Casa Rosada posted in the morning, but she is not interested. She looks at the square, full of people, and smiles: “It’s simple: we are a lot of people looking at history in an active way to decide how we want our present to be.”

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Argentine President Javier Milei will spend just over 24 hours in Madrid this weekend. The reason for his brief trip to the Spanish capital is the "dissertation" he will deliver this Saturday evening at the second edition of the Madrid Economic Forum, held at the Vistalegre Palace, which amounts to an ode to the most unrestrained capitalism. But before his speech, Milei took the opportunity to meet behind closed doors with various figures from the most liberal and ultraconservative sectors of the Spanish economic and political sphere, including the leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal. "It's always a pleasure to meet with my good friend and ally Javier Milei," the Vox leader stated in a message on the social network X.. "An international symbol of freedom who has returned Argentina to the path of prosperity and to the league of great nations," Abascal added. These words accompanied a photo of him with the Argentine president, who is wearing a work coat from the Argentine oil company YPF.

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Javier Milei's electoral drubbing in the last legislative elections in ArgentinaLast Sunday's victory surprised everyone, including Milei himself and his cabinet. Polls had not predicted 40% of the national vote and a win in 16 of the 24 districts, which will allow La Libertad Avanza, the president's party, to gain more than 60 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and triple its representation in the Senate. This represents a paradigm shift for the second half of Milei's term, as during the first half, the legislature has been his Achilles' heel: the Peronist majority, with occasional support from other political forces, has been able to block numerous legislative initiatives, which Milei has circumvented with decrees or presidential vetoes, effectively rendering them democratic. After Sunday's victory, Milei faces the next two years in a very different light: with greater governability in the institutions and with reinforced social legitimacy.

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The results of the legislative elections this Sunday in Argentina They consolidate the presence of President Javier Milei's party (La Libertad Avanza) in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, where Milei has been in the minority for almost two years. We analyze these results with Anna Ayuso, a senior researcher at CIDOB specializing in Latin America.

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"Today has clearly been a historic day for Argentina. The Argentine people have decided to leave behind 100 years of decadence and persist on the path of freedom, progress, and growth." These were the words of President Javier Milei to his electorate upon learning the results of the legislative elections, which consolidate the presence of his party, La Libertad Avanza, in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, where Milei has been in the minority for nearly two years of his term. This Sunday, 36 million Argentines were called to vote to finalize the composition of the chambers, and to everyone's surprise—including Milei himself and his cabinet—the support was massive and the victory resounding: 40% of the votes went to the Violeta party, which will be able to improve its policies once again."

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Javier Milei faces key legislative elections this Sunday in Argentina. The elections will redefine the composition of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, where half and one-third of the seats, respectively, are up for renewal. While midterm elections don't usually garner much attention in Argentina, this time they are being read as a plebiscite in the first two years of the chainsaw, and will prove decisive for Milei's governability heading into the second half of his term. As a minority in the legislature, the ruling La Libertad Avanza (LLA) party has seen numerous legislative initiatives blocked, given that the Peronist majority in both chambers—with occasional support from other political forces—has managed to gradually put the brakes on Milei's austerity plan. which has also been brutal for the most vulnerable sectors of societyMilei, who was sworn in with his back to the Congress building in December 2023, has frequently resorted to the presidential veto, a measure that has called into question the democratic nature of his administration, especially in the eyes of critical sectors who, beyond his style and manner, perceive him as an authoritarian leader. The accusations have inevitably influenced his image and projection, not only among the Argentine electorate but also among his international partners.

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On his twelfth trip to the United States since becoming president of Argentina, Javier Milei held a bilateral meeting with Donald Trump in New York, within the framework of the United Nations General Assembly. Aside from the summit, Milei urgently needed to address the rescue of the serious economic and financial crisis that Argentina is going throughAfter the electoral setback in the province of Buenos Aires, a legislative setback in Congress and an intervention in extremis of the Central Bank to maintain a fictitious price of the dollar – added to the backdrop of the corruption case that involves the core of the government's power – the macroeconomic values that, until now, had supported the ultra-liberal's management (and, in some way, justified the chainsaw plan), have been falling in a way

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Javier Milei is facing one of his worst moments since taking office as president of Argentina twenty months ago. Last Sunday, a clear defeat for the ruling party in the province of Buenos Aires, against a Peronist party that—despite internal divisions—went to the polls united, taking the pulse of a country and, above all, of an economic situation that is being affected in disparate ways: within Argentina's social majority, a portion is secure thanks, in part, to stable prices; while another portion cannot make ends meet and lives with an increasingly precarious quality of life.

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Javier Milei has suffered his first electoral setback since assuming the presidency of Argentina in December 2023. The province of Buenos Aires, the most populous in the country, voted this Sunday in legislative elections in which the ruling party obtained very poor results: it remained with around 34% of the votes, compared to . A result that was surprising, not because of the victory of Peronism - which is the most rooted political movement in this district - but because of the difference of almost 13 points between one force and the other, in a key pre-electoral context for Milei, who on October 26th will be playing to obtain a majority in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, in legislative elections in which, he claims, he has made Argentina.

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Argentine President Javier Milei had to be evacuated during an election caravan in the town of Lomas de Zamora, a stronghold of the Peronist opposition, when protesters began throwing objects and stones at the presidential motorcade. Milei was not injured and, once at his official residence, responded in a message to X, blaming the attacks on the former president's followers. Cristina Fernández, disqualified and under house arrest"Civilization or barbarism. Kirchnerism never again," the president wrote, accompanying the text with a photograph of one of the stones thrown his way, which struck the body of his armored vehicle.

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New tax policy measure in Argentina's capital. The Buenos Aires city government has announced that it will accept cryptocurrencies for the payment of local taxes, such as property taxes and vehicle registration fees. "The goal is for the city to become a world leader in crypto", proclaimed the head of the capital's government, Jorge Macri.

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The 66th Mercosur Presidential Summit took place this Thursday in Buenos Aires, during one of the blog's most uncertain times. Brazil and Argentina, the region's two largest economies, have differing views on the organization's purpose and usefulness. The meeting of heads of state in Buenos Aires highlighted the well-known differences between Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his Argentine counterpart, Javier Milei, who has passed on the six-month presidency of the blog to him.

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Before it exploded the war in Ukraine, almost 40% of all gas consumed in Italy came from Russia. But the war and sanctions imposed by the Kremlin forced the transalpine country to find alternative sources of supply. After Libya and Algeria, with which Rome signed several gas agreements, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Argentine President Javier Milei signed a memorandum this Friday to advance a project that will allow the production and export of liquefied natural gas (LNG).

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The Italian Parliament has passed into law a decree promoted by Giorgia Meloni's government that modifies the process for recognizing Italian citizenship. The Tajani decree—named after the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Antonio Tajani— limits the blood vessels (right of blood) to two generations of foreigners with Italian ancestry; that is, from now on only those who have parents or grandparents born in Italy will be able to receive a passport. Until last week, the legal principle of blood vessels included the descendants of anyone born in Italy after 1861, the date of the unification process. The news has fallen like a bucket of cold water in Argentina, where some 25 million people—more than half the population—have Italian surnames, and where it is estimated that between 40,000 and 60,000 applications for citizenship will now be discarded or, at least, put on hold.

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Javier Milei's government has launched what it calls the third phase of its economic policy. Last Friday night, the Argentine president announced on national television that he was ending the so-called exchange rate clamp for individuals, a regulation that limits the purchase of dollars—the currency in which Argentines who can afford to save typically—to a total of $200 per month.

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In 1960 – just 65 years ago, which is usually the retirement age – the sociologist Daniel Bell (1919-2011) published a text called The end of ideology. It opened a debate that was, in general, serious, substantial, and long-standing; the communicative context of that time, which we would now consider "elitist," allowed for it (today it would surely translate into a couple of "snobs" on X and two dozen anonymous insults). That debate lasted so long, and drew so many replies, that in 1988 Bell published a second text that referred to the first: Return to the end of ideologyThe fact that it came out just a few months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of real socialism, was considered by some to be a mere coincidence and by others to be a reasoned prediction similar to that made a decade earlier by Emmanuel Todd.

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He crypto fiasco The attack by Javier Milei a few weeks ago has once again exemplified the close relationship between the far right—especially the so-called anarcho-capitalists—and cryptocurrencies. The far-right president of Argentina promoted the digital currency $Libra as soon as it was launched on the marketMoments after seeing the light of day, its value swelled rapidly, only to suddenly deflate to record lows. The operation caused thousands of people to lose money: specifically, it is estimated that 44,000 followers of the Argentine leader could have been victims of the operation, although Milei claims that "only" 5,000 were involved. "If you go to the casino and lose money, what's the point?" he later justified. in an interview.

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A demonstration against pension cuts in Argentina erupted this Wednesday in the largest bout of police repression yet witnessed by the government of Javier Milei. What began as a protest against the Argentine president's austerity measures in Buenos Aires escalated into a pitched battle between protesters and police, resulting in 124 arrests and 46 injuries. One of them, photographer Pablo Grillo, is in critical condition after suffering a skull fracture from the impact of a tear gas canister.

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Javier Milei has inaugurated the political year in Argentina with a 70-minute speech in the Chamber of Deputies, where he took stock of the first year of his administration and made a projection of what is to come for this 2025. Before a half-empty chamber - several Peronist and left-wing deputies have decided not to attend - "Argentina's inauguration": after a 2024 in which the "caste model" was "sufficiently" called, the political year that now begins will serve to "rebuild the foundations" of the country. To this end, the ultra-liberal president has promised to apply the "deep chainsaw", which –he says– "is not just a government program" but "a long-term" state policy.

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The Argentine government has announced that it will investigate the sale of Telefónica's subsidiary in the country to the telecommunications group Telecom to avoid, it says, the creation of a monopoly. Telecom Argentina SA is one of the two main local telephone companies, the one that operates in the northern half of the country. The other half is dominated by the Spanish company Telefónica, which on Monday announced the sale of its business for 1.245 billion dollars (about 1.19 billion euros) to Telecom. The Spanish multinational's statement specifies that this operation is part of a strategy initiated in 2019 "to gradually reduce exposure to Latin America," where it operates in different countries, including Chile, Peru, Mexico and Colombia.

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