News of provinces

Literacy crisis: Less than half of kids under nine meet reading standards

07-05-2025 11:00 Argentina’s Education Secretariat publishes first results from Aprender assessment under Milei administration. Provinces of Formosa and Córdoba achieved strongest results, Chaco at bottom of ranking.

POLITICS

Chaco and Milei’s electoral strategy for October

15-03-2025 07:36 Chaco shows that Milei is willing to seal alliances with the local political establishment — a.k.a. “the caste” — as it best suits them. And the Casa Rosada has leverage in this negotiation with the governors: cash.

by Marcelo J. García

NEW DEBT ISSUANCE

Provinces eye debt sales as economic optimism mounts

19-02-2025 15:30 Buenos Aires City— which oversaw a failed debt tender offer toward the end of 2024 — and Córdoba Province are each mulling the sale of around US$500 million of bonds between March and May

ENVIRONMENT

Hundreds of homes evacuated as Patagonia fires spread

16-01-2025 14:49 Forest fires in Patagonia force evacuation of 200 families, destroying some 2,000 hectares of terrain in the town of Epuyén.

DEBT WOES

La Rioja creditors win US$40 million in NY court over bond spat

12-09-2024 16:29 US judge orders La Rioja Province to pay creditors nearly US$40 million in damages.

ECONOMIC INDICATORS

Report: Argentina has lost 142,000 jobs since last October

31-08-2024 06:06 While some regions manage to stay afloat thanks to investment in key sectors, others are in a deep crisis due to the fall of consumption.

POLITICS & ECONOMY

Milei talks unity but shows up division with ‘symbolic’ pact

09-07-2024 15:52 President Javier Milei hails “symbolic of a change in era” as he inks his ‘Pacto de Mayo’ with 18 regional leaders at midnight ceremony in Tucumán. But amid a patriotic show of unity, his tone and absences highlight division.

by James Grainger

ANALYSING ARGENTINA

Gulliver Milei needs to engage with the Lilliputians

25-05-2024 06:23 Even the Lilliputians in Jonathan Swift’s 'Gulliver’s Travels' were clever enough to feed their giant alien visitor before using him for their own advantage.

by Marcelo J. García

STATE NEWS AGENCY

Milei government shutters Télam's provincial outposts

05-05-2024 16:27 Government moves ahead with "operational closure of correspondents" in 11 of the 23 provinces nationwideand the capital where the state news agency operates.

POLITICS & CONGRESS

Government pushes ahead with bill, ramps up 'Pacto de Mayo' prep

03-05-2024 18:03 Optimism reigns in the libertarian administration; President Milei says only "supporters" and those who back the new bill will be eligible to sign his 'Pacto de 25 de Mayo' in Córdoba next month.

POLITICS & ECONOMY

Juntos por el Cambio governors to back ‘omnibus’ bill, fiscal package

04-04-2024 21:35 Interior Minister Guillermo Francos and Cabinet Chief Nicolás Posse lead talks over the so-called ‘Ley de Bases,’ potentially brokering a deal to see its passage through Congress.

EDITORIAL

Pouring oil on the flames

02-03-2024 05:57 If the spark that lit the fire was the threat of Chubut’s PRO Governor Ignacio Torres to cut off all oil and gas unless the cutbacks were reversed, this might appear a wild outburst – but it was less random and accidental than it might seem.

POLITICS

Milei’s bold decree teeters as Argentina's provinces resist

27-02-2024 19:21 Growing opposition to President Javier Milei’s sweeping decree in the Senate puts it at risk of being overturned as regular sessions get underway next week.

CAMPAIGN COMMENTS

Method in his madness?

25-11-2023 14:16 Javier Milei’s solitary rise to the top from almost nowhere in a couple of years is more apparent than real. The key to this success is more like the solution to Agatha Christie’s 'Murder on the Orient Express' – they all did it.

by Michael Soltys

POLITICS

The new political configuration for 2024

07-11-2023 13:53 Horacio Rodríguez Larreta will seek refuge in a new foundation after the implosion of Juntos por el Cambio. Opposition governors, observing as the opposition implodes, are strengthening their regional power bases in time for negotiations with the next president.

by Rodis Recalt

CAMPAIGN COMMENTS

Crouching tiger, hidden lion

28-10-2023 04:18 Fear of the unknown is such a conservative emotion that instead people ended up clinging to the status quo, inflation and scandals included.

by Michael Soltys

ELECTIONS 2023 – ANALYSIS

National map: Where Massa recovered the presidential race

23-10-2023 10:54 Argentina’s provincial map now looks significantly different to purple-dominated results of primaries; Massa managed to record comeback wins in 8 provinces to rise to 13 overall, compared to Milei’s 10, down from 16 in the PASOs.

ELECTIONS 2023: PREVIEW

Election 2023: Not just a presidential vote

21-10-2023 05:57 No less than 18 of the 23 provinces have already voted with Corrientes and Santiago del Estero not renewing their governors until 2025. But the few remaining contests are far from minor – almost half the national electorate (or 48.39 percent, to be exact) between Buenos Aires City and Province, Catamarca and Entre Ríos.

by Michael Soltys

Campaign comments

Expecting every voter to do their duty

21-10-2023 05:51 While tomorrow’s election is widely seen as a three-cornered affair (like the hats in the times of Trafalgar), all three of its fleets tend to believe that there are only two sides. Could tomorrow’s election echo the battle by ultimately leading to a breakdown of existing alliances with a new Argentina eventually resulting?

by Michael Soltys

ELECTIONS 2023

Opposition looks inland, boosted by triumph in Santa Fe

11-09-2023 15:48 Juntos por el Cambio’s electoral hopes given boost as Maximiliano Pullaro wins race to be next governor of Santa Fe Province; Patricia Bullrich looks to regain ground against Javier Milei in inland provinces.

CAMPAIGN COMMENTS

Do you know the way to Santa Fe?

09-09-2023 05:32 The three-way split with half the electorate potentially up for grabs opens up infinite mathematical possibilities.

by Michael Soltys

POLITICS

Provincial pushback: City Hall and 13 provinces refuse to pay bonus

01-09-2023 15:43 Economy Minister Sergio Massa faces strong pushback to new measures; As many as 14 regions, including Peronist-governed provinces, vow not to adhere to one-off payments to public-sector workers; Businesses also express unease.

PASO PRIMARIES 2023 – ANALYSIS

Libertarian shift – the 16 provinces where Javier Milei triumphed

14-08-2023 13:24 Economist and national deputy scored surprising wins in 16 of the 24 districts across national territory; Stronger than expected performance outside of the capital and Buenos Aires Province.

CAMPAIGN COMMENTS

Santa Fe not so holy or faithful

15-07-2023 06:56 Turning to tomorrow’s PASO primary in Santa Fe, the mutual backstabbing within Juntos por el Cambio mentioned above is far from absent there – indeed nowhere else is the internal warfare more open.

by Michael Soltys

CAMPAIGN COMMENTS

The elections according to Saint John

08-07-2023 06:59 San Juan is not an especially attractive city for tourists but it does have an uncanny knack for being a venue for key turning-points in Argentine political history.

by Michael Soltys

CAMPAIGN COMMENTS

The men in the middle

01-07-2023 08:46 Hard not to read this as an unmitigated defeat for Cristina Fernández de Kirchner but those who see her as the ultimate political genius view this as a cunning move to leave Massa holding the baby for an inevitable national defeat while tightening her own grip on pivotal Buenos Aires Province.

by Michael Soltys

ELECTION 2023

Election 2023 calendar – what comes next?

29-06-2023 14:44 Campaigning, electoral rolls, political propaganda and curfews…. What’s still to come in the next few weeks before the PASO primaries on August 13.

CAMPAIGN COMMENTS

Northwest by northeast

24-06-2023 01:22 We will have to await Chaco’s final provincial elections on September 17 to see how many degrees last Sunday’s political earthquake rated on the Richter scale.

by Michael Soltys

CAMPAIGN COMMENTS

Toward zero

17-06-2023 06:10 This is an election in which anything could happen – and also nothing, as is occurring in province after province. Pseudo-change in San Luis and a rock-solid majority in Tucumán attest to an underlying provincial continuity at all odds with a volatile national scenario.

by Michael Soltys

AND THAT REMINDS ME…

Of infighting and inland voting

10-06-2023 06:27 The deadline for defining electoral alliances nationwide expires in only four days’ time but tomorrow’s provincial elections are even more immediate … Tucumán is looking safe for the Frente de Todos government while San Luis could be close.

by Michael Soltys

ELECTION 2023

Peronist governors oppose Frente de Todos PASO, calling for a ‘unity list’

08-06-2023 17:31 Peronist governors come together for Federal Investment Council meeting and demand an explicit "government plan" with a “federal” presidential ticket.

Campaign comments

Umpteen candidates in search of an author

03-06-2023 06:08 If Horacio Rodríguez Larreta had again thwarted Mauricio Macri plans by imposing Fernán Quirós over Jorge Macri, this would have been three strikes and out in the PRO founder’s esteem – a hostility potentially fatal to the outgoing City mayor’s presidential ambitions.

CAMPAIGN COMMENTS

A no-win election

27-05-2023 06:45 The fact remains that the last three people to run Argentina have all opted to sit this election out. The only question here is what lies behind their “fear to tread.”

by Michael Soltys

CAMPAIGN COMMENTS

Under the volcano

20-05-2023 07:00 If three-quarters of the disenchanted in Tierra del Fuego preferred to vote blank than for an explicitly libertarian candidate, who is to say this might not be replicated nationwide?

by Michael Soltys

CAMPAIGN COMMENTS

To vote or not to vote

13-05-2023 08:45 However cavalier the strongmen of these two inland provinces have been with constitutional limits in seeking multiple consecutive terms, the last-minute timing of the Supreme Court’s interruption of the electoral process is extremely unfortunate, lending itself easily to government outrage.

by Michael Soltys