This content was published in 08 mayo 2025 – 14:21
“Why did Milei won?” Asks the title of a presentation at the Book Fair of Buenos Aires, which this year was populated by publications that seek to understand the phenomenon of the ultraliberal president who shakes Argentina since he assumed in December 2023.
In the more than 500 stands of the 49th edition of the Fair more than twenty books on Javier Milei are exhibited.
The number is multiplied if the publications that address issues such as the rise of the right at the global level and those of writers close to the government who seek to give their battle against the “Woke culture” and “the caste” are counted.
“There are many books about that because it sells,” says Victoria Gerz, a 32 -year -old entrepreneur who makes books for books: “He is the president, you are in favor or not, it is the issue of the moment,” he says to AFP before entering the presentation of one of the biographies about the president.
Most books expose a critical vision: «The Milei symptom. Notes for a failed Argentina »by the political scientist Hernán Brienza,” deranged “by anthropologist Alejandro Grimson or the anthology” The enjoyment of cruelty: Argentina in the time of Milei “, speak from their titles.
“There are books (about Milei) that can be journalistic or research, but there are also books that are closer to fiction and everyone has to do with trying to find explanations,” writer Claudia Piñeiro tells the AFP.
– Explanations –
For Piñeiro, Milei “is a character that everyone wants to understand and a way of understanding it is through the stories that are told.”
Piñeiro was one of the speakers in the presentation of the book «Milei. A story of the present », by the journalist Ernesto Tenenbaum, who travels through the life of the libertarian and his meteoric promotion to the presidency, and that he gave himself before about 1,000 people in the largest room in the fair.
In his book, Tenenbaum defines Milei as a “articulator of everyone’s wrath” that became “in just seven years in president and then a kind of world celebrity, perhaps one of the most successful careers in the history of humanity.”
Tenenbaum pointed out in the presentation against the “will to submit” by the Government of Milei and its repeated attacks on journalists and other dissidents, including the author of the book.
In the last week, the president has published again and again the message “people do not hate journalists enough”, accompanied in many cases of insults.
In the exhibition, the contrasts are noticed: meters from the stands of feminist editorials, light posters that advertise the book “Globalism”, of the ultraconservator Agustín Laje, one of the favorite writers of Milei, glow.
In the presentation of his book, he lashed out at the State and supranational organizations and called to “give the cultural battle” on social networks.
«Everyone has a moral and political responsibility to hear. But together with the cultural battle we must boost our electoral battles, ”he added, bathed in applause from government officials and libertarian influencers.
– Consumption –
The economy is also central in the debate: the opposition governor of Buenos Aires, the economist Axel Kicillof, will present the book “Back to Keynes”, almost an answer to one of Milei’s publications: “Unmasking the Keynesian lie.”
The fair, which ends on May 12, maintains the mass call of every year, with rows of several blocks to enter.
A good part of the visitors, however, leaves with few bags, in a country that has been dropped for consumption falling 16 months.
At the opening of the Fair on April 24, Christian Rainone, president of the El Book that organizes the event, said that although sales increased in the first two months of the year “the fall is not yet recovered (…) of 2024, which reached 30%.”
Minutes later, the minister of Culture Leonardo Cifelli celebrated in a speech the will of the authorities of the Fair to “leave behind the confrontational and politicized tone”, and at that time he received boos from a audience of writers, editors and booksellers.
The whistles multiplied when the minister appointed the president and his sister, the Secretary of the Presidency, Karina Milei.
Last year, the fair received about one million visitors. The organization awaits a similar number this year.
Tev/LM/NN/Mel/Mar
