SINCE ITS founding by landowners in 1866, the Rural Society of Argentina—motto, “To Cultivate the Soil is to Serve the Nation”—has been a potent ally for governments of the right and a daunting foe for the left. The society’s campus in Buenos Aires, home to a big annual agricultural fair, dominates a city block in the heart of the capital. Hosting The Telegram for a chat about geopolitics, society officers deplore decades of economic mismanagement by populist left-leaning governments, which caused inflation to soar and the Argentine currency to sink. On the way out, they show him some of the society’s historic treasures, including a carved armchair used by the late Pope John Paul II.