Three weeks after his landslide victory in Argentina's presidential election, Javier Milei officially took office on Sunday, December 10. No longer knowing which saint to turn to, the population ended up turning to the antithesis of those who led the country into a dead end. After growing weary of pretending they still believed in politics, Argentines chose the man they nicknamed "El Loco" ("the madman"), in the hope that the result would not be worse than the decades gone by, under the sway of a corrupt caste out of touch with their daily lives.
This collective therapy sounds more like a distress signal than active support for this "anarcho-capitalist," social media and TV show entertainer, who has made the chainsaw brandished at his rallies the emblem of a clean slate policy. The caricature, outrageousness and crass demagoguery that have been brought to power must be interpreted first and foremost as giving the finger to a system that has lost all credibility.
Milei's breakthrough was no accident. It's payback for the long descent into hell by a country which had everything it needed to remain one of the most powerful in the world, but which, through its many mistakes, ended up dramatically marginalized.
Argentina's negative exceptionalism is summed up by the apocryphal phrase of American economist Simon Kuznets: "There are four kinds of countries in the world: developed countries, underdeveloped countries, Japan and Argentina." Post-war Japan is emblematic of rapid expansion. Argentina is the perfect counter-example: a country that ranked among the world's top five powers at the end of the 19th century, before declining inexorably, despite exceptional natural resources. It's a textbook case.
In the half-century preceding World War I, the country grew by an average of 6%. Buoyed by its meat and cereal exports, it became a land of emigration for Europeans. By 1914, half the population of Buenos Aires was of foreign origin. But by disrupting the boom in world trade, the conflict dealt a fatal blow to the Argentine economy. Export power was transformed from an asset into a harmful dependency.
In fact, the country's prosperity at the end of the 19th century masked an economy that was lagging behind industrially. Argentina was rich, but not modern. The large landowners who held the country, anxious to have access to cheap labor, did not encourage massive investment in education, something that was reserved for the elite. The other emerging power at the time, the United States, made the opposite choice, betting on human capital in order to support development of an innovative and competitive industry.
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