how is this event possible?

“They called me from Eduardo. The idea was to install an economist who worked for him, who they told me was somewhat eccentric, in friendly media. There was quite a bit. The axis of communication they wanted was very clear: hit Peña”.

Sitting in a cafe in Alto Palermo, who narrates the anecdote that happened some time ago to Juan Luis González, author of Crazy. The unknown life of Javier Milei and his irruption in Argentine politics (Editorial Planeta), is a communication consultant, expert in lobbying journalists, businessmen and politicians who worked for Corporación América. He quickly understood the request. He had to open the door to TV programs for the person in question, introduce him to drivers and help him put together his media agenda. In other words: facilitate the rise to fame, equipped for that with a good sum of money.

Let’s break down the scene. Eduardo is Eurnekian, the eccentric economist is Javier Milei and Peña is Marcos, Mauricio Macri’s almighty former chief of staff.

The roots of history must be sought long before, when the now candidate for president for Freedom Advances started working at the holding company armenia Eurnekian in 2008. His experience in the company was lackluster for many years until something, however, changed: his boss went to war with Mauricio Macri, who had come to power.

Juan Luis González recounts that Franco Macri, the father of the former president, had been a friend of Eurnekian for decades. Both of them had as one of their hobbies to treat Mauricio since he was young. “El boludito”, the owner of Corporación América nicknamed him. But when the boludito came to power, he sought to execute his revenge, or at least he thought he saw that the armenian in the systematic audits that the national government carried out on its airport business. Whether for personal reasons or due to a business dispute, the truth is that Eurnekian was convinced that Mauricio Macri was determined from the presidency to seize the concession for the Ezeiza and Aeroparque airports, two of the jewels of his business. An important note in passing: all the businessmen involved in this story, if they know anything, is doing multimillion-dollar businesses hand in hand with state contracts. Yes, from the state.

The war had started and Javier Milei had been chosen as one of the soldiers of the armenia. Eurnekian had what to boost his media counterattack with. His extensive list of businesses (some of which can be found on the Corporación América website) make this man one of the richest businessmen in the country, according to the magazine Forbes. An interesting investigation by CEPA also puts the magnifying glass, with a lot of information, on Eurnekian’s business network and his “complex scheme of off-shore companies located in remote parts of the planet.” Within this multi-million dollar scheme, the media always stood out. He was the owner of Cablevisión, Fibertel, the newspaper El Cronista Comercial, the Aspen, Metro and Del Plata radio stations, the Magic Kids channel and the A channel. Key fact: although Eurnekian divested a large part of its stake in Grupo América -which is not the same as Corporación América-, the shareholders’ agreement -according to Crazy– allows man still today to influence the journalistic programs that are broadcast on the channel.

That is why, if the media figure of Javier Milei was built from somewhere, it was from the screens of America. It wasn’t just Fantino, it wasn’t just his charisma, it wasn’t magic. Perhaps Eurnekian’s needs actually coincided with the impulse that the economist was already showing to rise to fame. But the truth is that they were infinite packages of television minutes planned from factories of the most concentrated economic power that, in a certain political and social climate of discontent, connected with millions of people disenchanted with the last governments. And beyond the particular interests involved in this story, there were not a few who, after the initial impulse, jumped on to give a handle to the figure of the economist in pursuit of shifting the agenda of public debate to the right or, even, speculating that his appearance would take away votes from the electoral rival of the day. Some think today that the matter got out of hand.

Eurnekian did too got Milei straight into party politics. Come on, José Luis. Give Javier a hand. Figure out where you can put it”says Juan González that it was the request that the armenia he did to José Luis Espert when the latter went to visit him in 2018 in search of funds to pay for his electoral campaign. That day would begin the path that would culminate (provisionally) with the triumph of last August 13, with previous steps for agreements, ruptures and a legislative scale before the presidential candidacy.

Between that day when Milei launched into politics with help and today, however, things happened . That Milei has launched as a outsider for his own and without political support not the only myth promoted by the candidate Freedom Advances. There is also much that is false in his account of the caste. Beyond the political functionality of this idea, which as Milei presents it is to protect and hide the interests of powerful businessmen like Eurnekian, targeting only “the politicians” (who govern for them), it is also true that if there is something in the political construction of the current candidate is agreements to spare with the most rancid of the Argentine political caste. Regarding businessmen, let’s note something else in passing: this Thursday, Milei was one of the candidates who took an exam before the economic power at the Council of the Americas. Within the framework of that event, in addition to his public exposure, he also held a meeting alone, on the first floor of the charming Hotel Alvear, with some magnates such as Alejandro Bulgheroni, Mario Grinman, Adelmo Gabbi and, of course, Eduardo Eurnekian. For many businessmen Milei was not “plan A”, but they are adjusting to the idea.

We return to the issue of caste. After having broken with many of his original allies of liberal ideas, the truth is that thanks to his sister Karina (“the Boss”, as he calls her) and the empowerment as a ship owner of Carlos Kikuchi (former adviser to Domingo Cavallo) for the federal projection of space, Javier Milei closed agreements, alliances and candidacies with names too traditional of Argentine politics.

Anyone who has closely followed the early provincial elections knows this and will have encountered not only the scandal of complaints about the sale of candidacies, but also surnames with enormous weight on the lists. If two are enough for a sample buttons from Mano de Milei Martin Menem took that last name to the polls this year in La Rioja, just as he did Ricardo Bussi in Tucuman.

There could be many cases, but these two are emblematic: the candidate from Freedom Advances He usually says that the government of Carlos Saúl Menem was the best in Argentine history. An admirer of his ideas, as well as those of Margaret Thatcher, he reveals in this way that what he promotes is not so new, but rather, on the contrary, he is a confessed supporter of old and failed recipes that have impoverished millions of people all over the world. the world.

On the other hand, the case of Bus’s is in itself the synthesis of the scam that means in the mouth of Javier Milei the idea of freedom. That candidate in Tucumán, son of the genocidal Antonio Domingo Bussi and belonging to the Fuerza Republicana party who claims the last military dictatorshipis a faithful expression of much of the thought of the candidate for president who, like his candidate for vice, Victoria Villarruel, is a denier of the crimes of the dictatorship and denies the 30,000 disappeared. They are also staunch enemies of the freedom of more than half of the population, women and their right to decide over their bodies.

In seconds, Milei shows off her “thought”. She questions the number of the 30,000 missing. She says that Menem was “the best government in history” and juggles to explain that Bussi, who has lived on politics for three decades, “is not caste.” He has nothing of a rebel. pic.twitter.com/NrqyYd9rIu

— Alejandra Arreguez ✊🏽🚩 (@AleArreguezPTS) September 30, 2022

Javier Milei is not “the one who knows” either. Perhaps on one of its sides trumpist, for years he has accustomed us to his shouting television shows, treating his current opponents as ignorant, although adding the seasoning of the quote to innumerable economists of the liberal tradition, with which he has convinced many people that has the recipes to get out of the Argentine economic disaster. With one detail: more like a lazy student than a true scholar, he has laid bare that in many of his books and articles what he overturns are not his own ideas, even quoted, but rather has repeatedly committed plagiarism. Copy and paste, in other words. You probably don’t even understand what he puts.

How is this event possible?

It exceeds this article to inquire about the psychological profile of a man who is being debated if it is or is done ; how much show and how much madness there is in the media performances of the man with few friends and a lot of loneliness; from a complex family history in a violent home but who nevertheless returned to live with his parents at the age of 50 to later move to a charming gated community in Benavídez; that he adores his deceased dog Conan with whom he claims to be able to communicate and of whom he has had clones made; that he is convinced that “the One” entrusted him with the mission of getting into politics to be president. Too crazy for so many votes. But that’s how we are.

The truth is that 30% of those who voted in the PASO have left him in the race with certain chances of reaching the presidency. The measure of his rise is proportional to the resounding failure of the bicoalitionist regime that is dying, fragmented, broken, and above all distanced from the lives of millions of people whom he only knows how to impoverish and frustrate. As much as inclining them to give their vote to the “Crazy”, who has been knowing how to exploit the bitterness of the pandemic and its confinement measures, as well as the sad passions generated by the decadent Argentine capitalism and the leadership of union organizations that with their complicit passivity makes millions of individuals feel abandoned to their fate, in tune with what happens in other latitudes of the world that give phenomena that, if they are not the same, Yes it is true that they are relatives. In the Bolsonaro family of Brazil or in the leaders of Vox in the Spanish State, today this subject finds some of his friends in the international arena.

In Argentina, after the PASO, Sergio Massa continues to ease the way, with devaluations and adjustments that only generate more discontent, while the Right of Together for Change is still barely recalculating after the slap.

A lot of water has flowed under the bridge, but the story is half over. He confronts all this disaster by planting an exit to the left and pointing out the real dilemma: we must attack the caste, yes, as the Left Front always did, denouncing, for example, the privileges of legislators, officials and judges. But not to protect those who hide behind it. What Milei is silent about is that those political functionaries from the traditional parties govern for the banks, the big employers in the countryside, the mining companies or the energy companies and applying the IMF plans, all actors whom he never questions. Behind his demagogy, the plans of the self-styled libertarian, if applied, would turn against the vast majorities, including many workers who have voted for him with illusions or out of pure rejection of the current state of things. It is them or us, the big businessmen or the working majority. To turn history around, you have to affect the interests of the true owners of the country.