Hear
Smoke, beams of white light, the first hits of Bertie Benegas Lynch’s drums. Among the darkness of the stage Luna Park The figures of five musicians and a singer can be seen. It’s his song: “Panic Show”, but The Lion doesn’t appear. The libertarian band, which debuts tonight, plays the second song. He plays it all. Nothing. Until finally, from the other side of the stadium, he advances in the middle of the people, surrounded by guards, Javier Milei. There is pushing and fighting all around them. “Look at me, I’m the lion,” she bursts into “Panic Show” this second time.
Luna Park, which gradually filled up over the hours, is almost full, but the public walks without problems. Not him, who achieved the fury that this theatrical entrance required and took almost the entire song to cover the distance of 30 steps to reach the stage.
And now the show begins. Out of control, Milei jumps and harangues the audience, goes from one end of the stage to the other, hits his chest with clenched fists, makes his open hands tremble as if he were in a trance. Her shirt tucked away beneath her long black leather overcoat, in a return to her rocker look. “Dear, I wanted to do this because I wanted to sing,” she says when she takes the microphone and laughs loudly, almost darkly.
The President shouts “Panic Show”, which plays for the third time, now all sung by him. “I am the king, I will destroy you. “The whole thing is my appetite,” he reverts to her, with blue eyes wide open and eyebrows raised.
Thus began an act absolutely extravagant, off the record for Argentine politics; especially in times of crisis and adjustment. It was two hours of a pagan mass celebrated by a President in ecstasy.
The night was divided into different events. Like a play composed of independent and somewhat unconnected numbers, the show put on for the presentation of Milei’s latest book he alternated rock with an exhibition on economics of the President, personal anecdotes, spontaneous encounters with people from the public and a finale with three friends – the President, his spokesperson, Manuel Adorniand the deputy José Luis Espert– sitting in a living room, in front of the libertarian militancy, remembering old times, distributing thanks and praise, and celebrating themselves.
Once the first stage was over, the micro recital, the lights were concentrated on a lectern and the rest of the scene was left in darkness. “Hello everyone,” the President said with a raspy and somewhat imposing tone. In each new appearance on stage, Milei was reintroduced – or reintroduced. She now had a calmer voice and a big smile. She then began with a series of thanks: to her sister, to her ministers,…. Time and again the event moved away from the formal reason for the call: the presentation of “Capitalism, socialism and the trap neoclassical”.
There were two rings in the audience. In the VIP, in chairs next to the stage, were the ministers of the National Cabinet, the President’s parents, leaders of La Libertad Avanza and Pro, and special guests. Behind, militants and many wild libertarian sympathizers who had arrived on their own and stood in long lines to enter.
Milei’s night was full of mockery and irony against those he considers his enemies; the usual ones, like “the red ones” and the “aborteros”; and the new ones, like the book Fair (“With the attempted boycott, the Book Fair gave us this party. Thank you, Kirchnerists,” he laughed) and the Spanish president, Pedro Sanchez. “Sánchez, compadre,” the people began to intone and he stopped them, although he seemed delighted. “No, man, Mondino is going to ask me for overtime,” he laughed, alluding to the diplomatic problems that his management has accumulated.
Something similar had happened seconds before, when the audience chanted that Cristina Kirchner is going to go to prison. “I would accompany them, but they are going to accuse me of violating the independence of powers, don’t you think I already have a lot of trouble?”
“Basically, I come to present my recent book,” Milei had said, as if to establish order, when he stood behind the lectern. In this second act, the President mutated into an economics professor who spoke in a technical language incomprehensible to the vast majority of those present, who, however, listened attentively to his long theoretical reflections. The President’s histrionic outings helped maintain the audience’s concentration, such as when he celebrated the “mathematical beauty of the theory of value” and said: “I enjoyed it more than my first Playboy.” He also contributed to the fact that the sentences constantly included sarcastic references against someone. The criticisms were always very well received by the audience. And the angrier, the better. They were responded to with applause and whistles.
Among the audience there was a small group that not only followed Milei’s speech on economics, but also made comments to the shouts. The President reproached them for excessive purism and asked them for flexibility. “If not, the lefties will eat us,” he told them. It was a group of men that Milei had quite far from the stage, to the right of him.
The audience was mostly young men, but there were also women and some fathers and mothers with young children. There was no shortage of eccentric characters such as “Milei’s double” born in Florianópolis, who in a suit and with a disheveled wig, had an acceptable resemblance to the President. “Am the Milei of Floripa. I am a politician and economist. Tertiary professor and I want us to also get rid of the left in Brazil.” Against all odds, he could prove it: in his wallet he had his document and a credential as a substitute deputy for the Liberal Party, that of Jair Bolsonaro.
The Brazilian-tuned Milei was almost as bizarre as a Mickey that with the little that was understood from under his big foam head he defended dollarization. “For the United States, for the dollar,” she said to explain her disguise. She said that hers was all at her lungs. That when he uses his true identity he is a mechanic in Ituzaingó Oeste, that he rented the costume for 20,000 pesos and that he stood in line like anyone else to get in.
The area around Luna Park had been filled with people since early morning. Although the Government claimed that it was a private act, there was federal police They were stationed all around Luna Park, which was completely fenced. And the search, with a metal detector at each of the entrances, was carried out by uniformed personnel from the Airport Security Police (PSA). They are two forces that depend on Patricia Bullrich.
At 5:30 p.m., hundreds of people waiting to get a ticket formed in incomprehensible lines that snaked throughout Plaza Roma.
At the finish line, at the corner of Bouchard and Lavalle, those who had their tickets in hand were pressed against the fences (like Nazareno, from Saavedra, who proudly said that he had been the first to arrive at Luna Park, at 10 ), with whom they had made the entire queue and realized that those who distributed tickets were no longer there.
Branko and Gastón, who had been selling cups since 3 p.m., bought two tickets in the rush at 5:45 p.m.: both for 6,000 pesos, from a couple who swore they had gotten them on the right. “Now I resell it for 10,000. We are liberals. It’s the market,” Branko joked. If they had waited, a few hours later they would have gotten in for free.
Hanging from his neck, Branko carried a red bag, in which he only had one cup left, with a photo of Donald Trump surrounded by burly men: “This is the one of muscular liberalism.” They had sold the other 42. One for 7,000 and two for 10,000, was the promotion. The hit were the ones that had only one inscription: “Lágrimas de zurdo”.
In front of Luna Park, deafening drums forced the street vendors to shout. “Milei’s masks cost 3,000, the ducklings cost 1,500,” said Mariano, who sold the yellow ducklings that are all the rage. “I went to Once to look for more. These come out again,” he said. A man from Córdoba came to life and put brown wool on the ducklings he sold. “Milei and Pato. The best fusion against caste”, he promoted them.
Hours later, Bullrich would be one of the most celebrated officials in the VIP. She sat next to the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Martin Menem. They were also Zulemita Menem, Daniel Scioli and Yuyito González. Such a revival of the 90s, with people who lived them intensely and close to power.
The show led by the President had an ending in keeping with how bizarre the rest of the night was. Milei, Adorni and Espert, hugging on stage as if they had just won an election, celebrated and greeted, while “It comes,” a very famous protest song that Bersuit Vergarabat composed in 1997 against Menemism, was played at full volume. political and economic situation. “The explosion is coming,” he says, and when the 2001 crisis exploded there were those who considered that it had been premonitory. Milei sang it oblivious to any parallelism. “If this is not a dictatorship, what is it, what is it,” the President jumped up very happy, haranguing those who remained of the audience, under an explosion of glittering silver pieces of paper.
