To his detractors, Javier Melei is rude, ignorant and a danger to democracy. He’s also undoubtedly one of the most popular politicians in the world and the new face of populism. We profile Argentina’s chainsaw-wielding president and meet his closest supporters, like his hairdresser and ex-girlfriend, Lilia Lemoine, now also an MP, or his personal clairvoyant who regularly passes on advice from his late dog…
It seems like the dead dog’s advice might be working because, after his first year in power, inflation is down from 25.5% to 2.4%,. There’s a $19 billion trade surplus and 5% growth expected in 2025. Like tens of thousands of other tax exiles, Juan was able to repatriate part of his fortune and is now investing heavily in real estate and commerce. Landowner Alessandro saw his taxes fall, along with the environmental constraints for raising his 200,000 cows.
But Milei’s extreme spending cuts have hit the poorest hardest. The Vargas family has to urgently move because with the deregulation of the real estate market, their landlord has just tripled their rent. It’s an untenable situation, as the father recently lost his job in the Ministry of Labor, along with more than 35,000 other civil servants.
In the city of Rosario, government minister, Patricia Bullrich, is responsible for implementing a new hardline policy against the drug gangs. We join her to discover how the state is regaining control.
From the vast wilderness of the north of the country, threatened by the acceleration of lithium mining, to the bourgeois neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires, this is an immersion in Javier Milei’s ultra-liberal Argentina.