Don’t Cry For Me Argentina: The tragedy of chainsaw economics

JAVIER Milei,  the President of Argentina, is an eccentric spectacle full of theatrics.

He had carefully, if somewhat loudly, cultured the image of an indomitable chainsaw-wielding warrior against leftists or communists, whatever that means within the context of that beleaguered country, a group he is fond of insulting on national television. Despite the protestations of his sensitive interviewers, he revels on the irrationality of his own assumptions and insists on the illogicality of his thesis.

He came to power in 2023 on the promise of fixing an economy whose construct is predicated on free social programmes. As unaffordable as the size of the social largesse was and continues to be, the reasons attributed to it, however, remain anti-intellectual, fascist even.

For indeed, the high mark of fascism, whether in Europe or Latin America for that matter, has been anti-intellectualism. The fascists, of the ilk of Milei, tend to draw massive conclusions from infinitesimally small observations.

Milei’s pronounced so- called libertarian policy postulates, especially of reducing public spending, enjoyed support from the middle class, the entrepreneurial cadre and the capitalist overlords. As a constituent of the most financially endowed segment of Argentinian society, this category wields a disproportionate advantage over its working-class compatriots. They own the monopoly of the media and its sharpened US narrative.

The energetic self-proclaimed tantric sex guru with a knot of unruly black hair, generally known as ‘El Loco’, the crazy one, had a lot of earth-shaking ideas that undergirded his policy universe.

He wanted to abolish the Argentinian Reserve Bank on day one in office, a sure sign of a visionary without a vision, setting himself up for abysmal failure.

He had a list of government departments that he sought to abolish with haste, especially those whose main focus was the delivery of social services. True to form, on assuming the reins of that powerful office, he slashed 70 000 public jobs, to the consternation and dismay of the working classes.

On assuming office, he was sandwiched between a Democratic Biden and a popular trade unionist leaning Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil. Trump regained the Presidency in the winter of 2024 while an ally, Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right Brazilian leader as he then was,  had since left office and already bivouacked somewhere in the political expanse of the United States.

On Trump’s re-election, Milei attended the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC for short, where he brought the chainsaw that had become his campaign sabre, a tool of severity to slash inflation, bring down external debt and grow the economy.’

Even Musk adopted it as a lance for DOGE to pierce the bulge of waste in the US Federal Government. After all, with so many lithium reserves, portending great utility for Tesla’s electric car batteries, the world‘s richest man, as he then was, was bound to idolise ‘el loco’.

And so in ways that could not have been contemplated, a whirring chainsaw became synonymous with financial prudence and thrift.

Yet, Milei’s selling political leverage was the abolition of the peso so as to move straight to dollarisation. Something compelling attracted him to this failed Zimbabwe experiment. He and his eminent USAID advisers were convinced that Milei would acquit himself admirably, whereas the Zimbabweans, who waded through a hyperinflation mess, deeply mired in an interminable political and economic crisis that has subsisted for over a decade, had failed miserably. In his laissez-faire approach, he was convinced that where Harare had faltered, his chainsaw would triumph.

So soon after his inauguration, the preeminent resident of Quinta de Olivos had a few but urgent tasks to accomplish. First, he had to reject the invitation of his country to join BRICS.

Second, he had to reject China’s $6.7 billion currency swap deal. And whilst at it, he needed to insult the Chinese and the Brazilians as rabidly unconscionable communists, the kind he is avowed not to do business with.

Above all, Javier Milei only had to do one prominent act of generosity. He had to pledge loyalty to Zionism and profess an undying love for Donald J. Trump, which he executed with panache.

Such unconditional support for Zionism and its genocide campaign in Gaza is about to pay off.  Rafael Grossi, the Argentinian diplomat heading the International Atomic Energy Agency, who has been accused on several occasions by Iran of spying on Iranian nuclear sites on behalf of the Israeli military intelligence, may be handsomely rewarded. Trump, Netanyahu and Milei have tipped Grossi for the UN top job, that of Secretary General.

All that is diversionary. It has become painfully apparent that Milei is uninterested in learning anything from history. The series of financial crises of Argentina is not wholly attributable to the Perons only. Indeed, the military coup that toppled Juan Peron in 1955 ushered in a succession of right-wing presidents whose reigns had set the stage for the economic tragedy that has persisted to date.

Out of the abyss of selective amnesia, or revisionism if you will, another distinct feature of neo-fascism, is the unwillingness to acknowledge that the history of Argentina is writ large with mis-governance by all those libertarian right-wing governments, peppered with a strange penchant for brutality, injustice and a wholesale intolerance for different political opinions.

Between 1946 to 2023, the rule of left-wing parties or what has assumed a special epithet called Peronism, has been interluded between and among corrupt and repressive right-wing governments and unspeakably brutal military juntas.

The streak of right-wing military adventurism was brought to a sudden end by a grand folly. Leopoldo Galtieri, the leader of the military junta, declared war on the United Kingdom over the Isle of Malvinas, commonly referred to as the Falkland war. Argentina surrendered in embarrassing defeat, setting the stage for democratic elections that have endured ever since.

The carefully scripted narrative of Milei the saviour took an oblique turn when he was campaigning for the local government elections of Buenos Aires. He was pelted with stones and loudly accused of being insensitively corrupt. His sister’s appointment as chief of staff in the Presidency upset a great number of supporters and opponents in equal measure. For his supporters, ‘el jefe’, the boss, as his sister is derisively referred to, ensures to block all access to her president brother.

The truth about Milei’s regime is that it is broke, both morally and financially. It holds one-third of all IMF borrowings and happens to be the largest debtor to the International Monetary Fund. At the end of September 2025, after struggling for months to curtail runaway inflation, the country lost $1.1 billion in 72 hours. The value of the peso collapsed spectacularly as 90% of the currency was in free fall.

Seeing their only Latin American vassal going through a crisis, President Trump and Scott Bessent offered a rescue package of a $20 billion swap deal. Oddly, this package deal comes within the context that the US soybean farmers, who were the largest supplier to China in 2024, had not exported a single bushel by the end of May of this year. By a twist of fate, against this swap deal, in the stead of the US farmers, Argentina would become the largest supplier of soybeans to China!

If Trump is castigated for lack of empathy for his farmer constituency, think again. The swap deal is meant to keep the operations of Chevron in the Vaca Muerte shale basin, where the US oil giant has turned Argentina into Latin America’s fourth-largest oil producer. And so, it was all about oil all along!

Milei may or may not win the forthcoming presidential elections. For the unforced errors he had committed since 2023, the outcome would be irrelevant. The country has been sold to the highest bidder. And the poor have become desperately poorer.

If the song was befitting for an Evita Peron who lamented the loss of the love of her people, so would a Milei. At sixes and sevens with them, he would, supposing he wins, explain how he still needs their love, chainsaw and all.

But if he loses, nothing will constrain him from belting sonorously Argentina’s most iconic song. Don’t cry for me, Argentina!

* Ambassador Bheki Gila is a Barrister-at-Law.

** The views expressed here do not reflect those of the Sunday Independent, Independent Media, or IOL.

Get the real story on the go: Follow the Sunday Independent on WhatsApp.