Jaime Durán Barba: ‘If we don’t attract people’s attention, we lose it completely’

Jaime Durán Barba, the top political advisor of former president Mauricio Macri and the entire political structure behind PRO and the Cambiemos coalition, analyses the communication strategy of the Javier Milei government in an interview.

“He’s a Macri 2.0,” says the Ecuadorean analyst.

In an interview, Durán Barba offers praise for presidential advisor Santiago Caputo, who he previously employed, from a technical viewpoint.

Do you note the peculiarities of the new language spoken by Milei, where he emphasises things in vulgar terms, using foul language? That’s something we’re not accustomed to hearing in the political world.

Milei’s language is something new going beyond words and having more to do with images. A language also deployed by Donald Trump in the United States.

Milei also uses the language with which Gabriel Boric won the elections in Chile, with which Daniel Noboa won in Ecuador, and [previous Ecuador president] Guillermo Lasso before him, and with which Trump has returned to power. These are all different people who, quite independently of their ideology, have in common a new form of communication.

So you consider that Milei is not exactly a precursor of this language…

No. It has been coming for quite a while. In Argentina there was already something similar with Mauricio Macri as from 2005, passing  through his mayoral elections to the end of his Presidency, which was the first time he lost. What he was seeking with that language was communication with the people. And when Macri stopped speaking that language, he went the way he did.

So just as you worked on that aspect with Macri, today it’s Santiago Caputo whom we understand to be heading up the communication strategy, somebody with whom you have worked and know well. How do you see him in that task?

I’ve known Santiago since 2007, when he was very young. He was always very intelligent and very bent on studying. We worked closely together for a good many years and well… he has his points of view. From the technical viewpoint, he’s a great consultant. 

But Caputo is a very particular case because he doesn’t give interviews, and is very little-known by the public. He just has a post as advisor but yet we all know his weight and role in this government. Many people even lumber him with running a para-state machine of trolls, SIDE intelligence, etc…

Each person structures their own space within power and his lies in not being a public personality. But creating an image of the power behind the throne has been useful. I’m sure that he’s behind many of these issues and with some very competent people. 

And in his work as presidential speechwriter, does he also think up such details as when Milei plays up ‘underwater flatulence’ to picture the state of the economy or, when asked about his [Economy] Minister Luis Caputo, directly says: ‘Nobody is going to touch up his ass’ – completely unfiltered?

There is a line here, which is attracting attention. I go into that a bit in El arte de ganar (“The Art of Winning”), one of my books. If we don’t attract people’s attention, we lose it completely. Nobody reads government platforms nor whole pages of newspapers. The great mass of readers communicates via short messages, using TikTok, Instagram, etc. With images, music and jokes. Today memes are more important than political manifestos. I’m not saying that this is the kind of world I like, but it’s the world in which we live.

Communication is fleeting, rapid and massive. We receive hundreds of messages every day. The world has become horizontal with the relations between ordinary people calling the shots. For example, a student consults me to help him with a biography, a barrier impossible to break down in my time. Now it is possible, something I find funny, and of course I helped him.

I understand those changes and feel them in the way you describe, but yet there is an important sector of social networks which does not cease showing its surprise at the insults, the vulgar vocabulary and beyond…

Communication has to be fun but then there are different styles. Boric, for example, does not use bad language and neither does the Uruguayan ex-candidate [Andrés] Ojeda. Something more up Milei’s street but these are modalities of a brand of communication which seeks to reach people.

You must bear in mind that Argentina has more foul language than the other countries of the region. Thus Mexicans do not tolerate the language used by Argentines because they are very well-bred, but instead they kill each other in their elections – quite literally, 53 people died in their last elections. Argentina’s ‘tana’ [Italian] culture has more yelling but they never kill each other. It’s a rowdy culture.

This has been submitted to much study. Milei’s communication is a Macri 2.0. And it should be understood that the pandemic resulted in a more acute hyperconnectivity which Milei knew how to express. He’s the boss with the aid of [Santiago] Caputo and also Karina [Milei], for sure, he has very brilliant people like [Deregulation & State Transformation Minister Federico] Sturzenegger, a highly trained person. Milei has shown that he knows how to run things.

Do the recent government stances in United Nations voting fall into this same logic of ‘drawing attention,’ voting against the rights of the indigenous and of women or in favour of the blockade against Cuba, with Argentina the only country among over 170 to vote that way?

That already has to do with ideology. Milei has an ideology way to the right which is very much rooted in the last century. The last vote of [former Foreign Minister Diana] Mondino is debatable for strategic reasons, saying that Cuba does not respect human rights would seem more reasonable to me. But voting against the indigenous and women … There is a flat earth deputy in the government precisely when they keep discovering amazing things about the universe. Trump also has some leftovers from the past century which surprise one. It’s a troglodyte ideology.

Human beings are evolving in a phenomenal form. What was thought to be a human being has changed. Animals also are not what they seemed to be 20 years ago. There is now a more Buddhist perspective that animals are like us, less literate but on a par.

This administration has its own dynamics whereby every day they install an issue on the agenda, with the media almost always touching on the issues which the government wants them to take on and press conferences almost every day. Does this affect other issues which matter to society being discussed?

How should an efficient government control the media agenda without economic problems? By provoking scandals and creating news, that is something which has always been studied technically. The [Bill] Clinton communication people studied that and this explains how they took the heat off the [Monica] Lewinsky scandal by bombing a village in Iraq. That is how they manipulated the media, dedicating themselves to discussing things which did not matter to the great mass of people.

That goes with the ephemeral society of the Internet. AMLO [former Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador] was a president with excellent popularity who gave a daily press conference for six years. What did he do there? He placed the focus of debate wherever he wanted. [Presidential spokesman Manuel] Adorni does it well, which does not mean that I agree with what he says.

Does the government do this so that other and more serious problems are not discussed?

One of the things which this government has done very well technically is the issue of (1983-1989 Radical president Raúl] Alfonsín. I lived here in the 1980s and Alfonsín’s attitude was excellent, I admire him. It bugs me a lot that they said what they did about Alfonsín. 

But I recognise that it was almost 50 years ago and few of us alive then have survived. It does not change anything but when they attack Alfonsín, it serves as a distraction using an issue of no importance. That’s a technique of manipulation. 

I once told AMLO that as long as he smiled, it did not matter whether he said anything brilliant or not since debates are not read, they are seen. He had all the numbers at his fingertips and had studied a lot for that debate. On the day of the debate there was a girl with a spectacular figure, an Argentine model, whom everybody looked at each time she entered. The debate centred on everybody staring at her and ended up discussing whether the skirts of presidential aides should be regulated. 

Superficial issues crush the fundamental ones.