Stories that caught our eye: October 24 to 31

MONDINO OUT, WERTHEIN IN

President Javier Milei last Wednesday demanded the resignation of Foreign Minister Diana Mondino soon after Argentina’s United Nations representation voted in favour of a Cuban resolution demanding an end to the United States embargoes against the island (approved by a 187-2 vote but since the two nays were the United States and Israel, the presidential wrath was aroused). Mondino, who will be replaced by Argentine Ambassador to Washington Gerardo Werthein, will not be the only one to go – Milei further announced that the diplomatic corps would be purged of “the enemies of liberty.” Throughout her 10 months in office Mondino had been dogged by rumours of her dismissal.

MADRID NAMES ENVOY

After a five-month hiatus, Spain’s socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez last Tuesday named Joaquín María de Arístegui (until now Madrid’s man in Bogotá) to head the Spanish Embassy in Argentina, a conciliatory gesture hailed by the Foreign Ministry, which said: “We commit ourselves to always seeking points of connection in pursuit of our common objective, which is the welfare of our citizens,” while Diana Mondino in almost her last words as minister welcomed the move by saying: “Argentina and Spain are sister peoples united by profound human and social links. Our common language and culture, the important economic and commercial interchange and investment should always act as the guide to the relations between our two countries.” There had been open tension between Sánchez and President Javier Milei since early this year, leading the former to recall his ambassador María Jesús Alonso Jiménez in May.

BACK ON THE BUSES

The week was set to be crippled by the double whammy of consecutive public transport strikes on Wednesday and Thursday but although the CATT (Confederación Argentina de Trabajadores del Transporte) confederation of transport workers brought trains, planes, the subway and shipping to a halt on Wednesday (preceded by disruptive strikes at airports on Monday), that same evening the bus-drivers of UTA trade union called off their Thursday strike, thus restoring public transport to normal. The contrasting approaches to strike action were attributed to the differences between hawks and doves in organised labour with veteran UTA leader Roberto Fernández at loggerheads with the Moyano clan. The bus-drivers had been pushing for a wage increase of 24.7 percent retroactive to August on basic wages just over a million pesos but bus companies argued that subsidy shortfalls made it impossible to meet these demands.

YP(ETROL)F(OCUS)

YPF president Horacio Marín announced on Tuesday that the state company had decided to sell its majority shareholding (70 percent) in MetroGAS, Argentina’s main gas distributor supplying over two million households in the Buenos Aires metropolitana rea, in order to focus more closely on the petroleum sector, especially Vaca Muerta shale requiring massive investments. The initiative was presented as a move away from monopoly towards a more competitive market.

MILEI INSULTS ALFONSÍN

President Javier Milei chose the 41st anniversary of Raúl Alfonsín’s election victory last Wednesday to criticise the Radical president restoring Argentina to democracy, saying: “They show him up as the father of democracy and he was party to a coup” in reference to Alfonsín’s alleged role in the downfall of fellow-Radical president Fernando de la Rúa in 2001. The National Committee of the Unión Cívica Radical (UCR) headed by Senator Martín Lousteau reacted by accusing Milei of “lying over the democratic commitment of Raúl Alfonsín … as an affront to the Argentine people,” pointing out that Milei had been elected first deputy and then president thanks to Alfonsín.

BEACH HOTEL TRAGEDY

Rescue workers had retrieved two bodies by midweek from the rubble of a Villa Gesell hotel which collapsed early on Tuesday with seven other people reported missing, including María Rosa Stefanic, owner of the Hotel Dubrovnik from its foundation in 1986 to early this year. The first fatal victim was a man aged 89 in a neighbouring building although his injured wife of 79 could be rescued. The Municipality of Villa Gesell declared three days of mourning while Buenos Aires Province Governor Axel Kicillof rushed to the scene on Wednesday to follow the efforts of 200 firemen and three of Argentina’s four élite rescue squads. Villa Gesell town hall had banned all further construction work on the hotel last August with four arrests for “aggravated culpable damage” made in consequence.

PRESIDENT BACK IN THE DOCK?

Appeals court judge Eduardo Farah last Thursday quashed the court decision acquitting President Javier Milei in the case where he accused Editorial Perfil co-founder Jorge Fontevecchia of being “on the take,” also taking federal judge Sebastián Ramos off the case. Ramos had acquitted Milei on the grounds of the inexistence of any crime and Milei’s defence lawyers had argued that the presidential accusations were in the “public interest.” But Editorial Perfil’s lawyer Marcelino Cornejo deemed it probable that the case would end in a trial unless Milei “retracted,” which he considered to be unlikely, adding that the “public interest” argument was not concrete enough.

STOP THE (MONEY-PRINTING) PRESS

The Central Bank unilaterally rescinded last Monday its contract with the Mint to print banknotes of 1,000 and 2,000 pesos, taking effect as from 10pm that same evening. All directly involved in the production of the bills were urged to take all the holidays owed to them. Just before last weekend, Central Bank directors held a meeting in which they concluded that printing the banknotes was too costly.

UBA UNDER SCRUTINY

SIGEN (Sindicatura General de la Nación) comptrollers on Monday notified the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) that they would be the first to be subject to its audit. UBA had been regularly audited by SIGEN until 2013 when the Cristina Fernández de Kirchner presidency interrupted the monitoring as violating university autonomy, a criterion upheld by then Treasury Prosecutor Carlos Zannini in 2022 but now overruled by the Javier Milei administration.

HALF A TON OF COKE – BUT NO CRIMINALS

The government reported last Thursday that the Armed Forces had intercepted a Bolivian plane carrying almost 500 kilos of cocaine in Rosario in a joint operation, which was also a joint announcement made by Ministers Patricia Bullrich (Security) and Luis Petri (Defence) along with presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni, defining the seizure as “the most important in Argentine history” after months of intelligence work. But the operation failed to grab the drug-traffickers along with the drugs by a matter of minutes with no arrests made, despite the haul.

‘DIBU’ REPEATS AS TOP GOALIE

Argentine national team and Aston Villa goalkeeper Emiliano ‘Dibu’ Martínez was awarded the Yashin Prize for the second consecutive year as the world’s best goalie at the Ballon d’Or ceremony in Paris last Monday, receiving the trophy from his teammate and namesake Lautaro Martínez. In his acceptance speech Dibu underlined that his individual achievements were the consequence of collective effort with the team always the priority. All smiles at the Ballon d’Or ceremony but Dibu was booed on arrival in Paris by some French fans who recalled the 2022 Qatar World Cup final.

TURKISH TOAST