The influence of Donald Trump’s offer to grant an unprecedented financial aid package to Argentina, or rather to its current president, Javier Milei, who was undergoing partial parliamentary elections, was perhaps not as decisive in Milei’s unexpected victory as some experts claim, but it raises a question: to what extent does the Trump administration want to recover the disproportionate US leadership in Latin America, as it has exercised in the past?
Presidential elections will be held in Chile on November 16, with a very uncertain result between a candidate who brings together the entire left (but who, for the first time in decades, is a leader of the Communist Party) and José Antonio Kast, a candidate of the far right, who looks with suspicion at the even more far-right deputy Johannes Kaiser (National Libertarian Party). The outgoing government of the young Gabriel Boric, of the left-wing Frente Amplio, has done an important job, which some define as moderate, but the Constitution does not allow the renewal of consecutive presidential mandates.
Presidential and legislative elections will be held on November 30 in Honduras, a Central American country currently governed by a left-wing party and a president, Xiomara Castro. His new proposal is Rixi Ramona Moncada, but the one who appears first in the polls is a candidate, Salvador Nasralla, from the Liberal Party, even if he is a defender of the Salvadoran model. He fights in that position with the candidate of the National Party, the former mayor of the capital Nasry Asfura, representative of the more classic Honduran right. The United States exerts its influence in the country, not so much directly as through religious and highly ideological foundations, which support Trump without nuance and almost monopolize higher education.
This is not the case in Argentina, where education has been state and compulsory for almost two centuries, free at all levels, including university. Indeed, the Argentine public university has produced three Nobel Prize winners in medicine and chemistry (there are also two Argentine Nobel Peace Prize winners) and is internationally recognized. Higher education in private hands also has some noteworthy institutions.
In Argentina it is very likely that the influence of the aid offered by Trump, while important, was not decisive. The country has lived in a world of confusion for decades. He thinks he is rich when he is only rich in natural resources, but is unable to create the added value necessary for his economy. The arable land, among the most fertile in the world, is almost monopolized by soybeans, the planting, harvesting and sale of which is in the hands of a few large agricultural companies, which rent the plots from the owners and are also in charge of transporting the enormous harvesters and renting the endless row of trucks that will bring the product to the river ports of the Río de la Plata, on the other side of the world. Meanwhile, the owners of the plots live in retirement in nearby towns with periodic trips to Uruguay to convert their few monetary surpluses into dollars and secure their future.
The second important confusion is that a significant part of the population believes that Peronism is a left-wing movement, when in fact it is a space occupied by different ideological and interest groups. Perón was never a leftist nor did he have such an ideology in his head. His model, which inspired him, was the corporate state of Benito Mussolini. And Argentina continues to have a highly corporate state structure. Half the country hates Peronism with the same force with which another part venerates it. The victory of Peronism in the province of Buenos Aires, which occurred shortly before its defeat in the legislative elections, could respond to the deep distrust that Milei is beginning to arouse, even among non-Peronists. But in the legislative elections, the idea that Axel Kicillof, governor of Buenos Aires, also controlled the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate led to the mobilization of the distrustful. The victory of Milei’s party in the partial legislative elections is largely a victory for resignations. If Milei remains in power, we will survive today, although it is possible that we will founder tomorrow. But the castaways are more worried about today than about what will happen tomorrow. Tomorrow is far away everywhere, but in Argentina even more so.
