“If I told them what I was going to do, they wouldn’t have voted for me.” Carlos Saul Menem
Some time ago, back in the first days of March 2018, the first column of the so-called “Peisadillas” appeared in the pages of the newspaper El Litoral. Together with my father, Peiso, we had decided to write about “a lot of nothing and a little of everything”, which was his way of dribbling around political reality and the news bombardment. In accordance with his idea, he put dreams as a common thread, and through them he played with words, intertwined them, braided them into the dreamlike and the playful. In that first publication, where we explained what the column came from, with the title “Peisadillas” it said among other things “This introit or something like that that pretends to be a column, is the basis so that it does not fall, because as architects say and the architects ‘if there is no foundation (I’m not lying) the column will collapse’ (…)”
In March 2018, things were beginning to happen, and it was impossible to remain on the sidelines of a reality that was taking a strong and virulent toll on Argentine society. A society that was splitting in half and dividing waters: the so-called rift was at its peak. Mauricio Macri’s popularity was eroding day by day, inflation was rising at a rate of 40% per year and all values were in a worrying red. It was almost impossible to remain on the sidelines of a punishing reality that provided juicy headlines and fueled anger, shouting, and deafening silences. Let’s not talk about politics, we told ourselves, but it was impossible not to do so.
In the first two years of this column, while Peiso was alive, we experienced a change of presidency, allegations of corruption, the ineffectiveness of Macri’s economic plan, the largest tax increase in history (so far), the first months of Alberto Fernández’s government and the Covid-19 pandemic… which was where everything changed. It was impossible for us not to talk about reality, and obviously, talk about politics. What in its genesis was going to be a weekly costumbrist column with all the surreal madness based on the crazy dreams of a character in himself that was Peiso, decanted into a monthly chronicle, a critical vision with a certain aplomb and a hint of sarcasm, some other exercise of memory and a certain dose of humor.
And you, dear reader, may be wondering… And why all this introduction? Just to justify myself. The thing is that every time I sit down to write this column, I say to myself: “Today reality is going to slip away from me, I will go for dreams, traditions, customs, anecdotes. Today I am not going to talk about politics, today I’m not going to talk about Javier Milei.” But it’s impossible for me, I really can’t. In this blessed country, where with each passing day I become more convinced that we hate to love, things happen… but not only that things happen permanently, since that is part of life itself, but what happens, happens with a celerity and an immeasurable informative “waterfall”, full of nuances and colorful characters that blacken reality with impassive faces (if I may use the oxymoron), with the hardness of titanium in their stony features, which rewrite their truths based on lies that become real.
Many of these characters parade through channels and radios that are television studios where their interlocutors only know how to nod. Subservience to the power of the day, cronyism and disinformation channels are the order of the day. The “criminals in envelopes” are condescending lambs before the messianic presence of their own executioner. An executioner who used his words, his anti-political stance as a remedy for the evil that has plagued Argentina for a hundred years. Like the Messiah who came to save the masses from the ruling caste. An executioner who appropriated the media circus that ended up being the platform and became supporters of this unconventional, complex, picturesque, aggressive character, who presented a disruptive paternalistic sensitivity with his pets as the flip side of his harsh discourse. Like Dr. Henry Jekyll of his real Edward Hyde, from the novel by Robert Louis Stevenson.
His evident eloquence and histrionics generated complacency, among the laughter, astonishment and complicity that was the highlight on television sets and in related media. That character used the State to get where he got, and he uses the State to finance his trips, to pose with a duck’s mouth and in a dive with his greatest references and to give interviews in international media where he looks, feels very comfortable and that after six months and almost as if in a trance of mystical delirium, say: “I love. I love being the mole within the State. I am the one who destroys the State from within.”
Some time ago I read an article by a Spanish journalist where he analyzed the position of a particular politician from the ” Podemos ” party. The journalist in question wondered why some politicians arrived thanks to the clamor of the people, and once in office, became deaf to the same clamor that had put them in the desired place. Among other things he said: “They will be the frequency inhibitors used by the security services (…) The iPads that atrophy the sense of hearing (…) Frequent exposure to journalists’ microphones.” Then he came to the conclusion: “I don’t know what it is, but politics may produce deafness or some kind of strange alteration in hearing.”
For my part, I would add the excessive brightness of the lights in the television apartments and the exaggerated use of social networks, like X, the former Twitter. Place where hate is the daily bread; where hatred is recycled and multiplied into small hatreds, which add to large hatreds and repower hatred on gigantic scales (pardon the redundancy). What good can come from that place?
Milei continues flying, from the heights she only comes down to post and give a couple of notes… and continue traveling. She has already carried out eight tours to different parts of the world and has not brought a single investment to a country that urgently needs them. Of those trips, the vast majority of them were of a religious nature or were to receive awards, adding cucardas to his proud little chest as a famous anti-inflationary president (ahem) and guru of the libertarian dream as a verb made flesh. In that hustle and bustle there were presidents who avoided him, apocryphal awards, protocol problems, and nothing, but nothing positive for the country/state that he is trying to destroy through threats or future vetoes.
Democracy? With ear pain. Let us hope that the institutions that are responsible for ensuring the good of the population do not turn a deaf ear to the clamor of their people. Clamor that for now is just a whisper.
