INVEIGLING MORE FUNDS
Economy Minister Luis Caputo announced last Thursday at a regional insurance conference that Argentina was negotiating a remittance of US$20 billion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) with additional cash flows from the World Bank and the IDB/BID and CAF regional Banks set to bring Central Bank reserves up to US$50 billion, doubling the money supply and permitting a return to international capital markets. Naming the magic number (with no further details) followed a conversation with IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva the previous day while on Tuesday the IMF did not go beyond saying that the negotiations are “advanced.” Caputo admitted that it will take “several weeks” for the IMF agreement to materialise due to bureaucratic procedures and accused the opposition of trying to destabilise the government in the meantime. In a subsequent radio interview, President Javier Milei echoed his minister’s announcement, ruled out any devaluation and dismissed the debate over the exchange rate as “irrelevant,” also forecasting that inflation would not fall below a monthly one percent before May.
MACRON ENDORSES MILEI
President Javier Milei zoomed into conversation with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron last Tuesday, obtaining the confirmation of crucial support for Argentina in its negotiations with the IMF. Macron described Argentina as “a friend with whom we wish to construct the economy of the future,” pointedly referring to “an alliance in key sectors, such as critical metals.”
MASSIVE MEMORY MARCH
The 49th anniversary of the 1976 coup was marked last Monday by a truly massive march with human rights organisations, opposition parties and trade unions converging on Plaza de Mayo, exceeding the 2024 numbers, while the rally featured hostile speeches and chants against President Javier Milei and Security Minister Patricia Bullrich. The latter exempted the march from her anti-picket protocols (applied against the weekly pension protest outside Congress two days later with the use of tear gas) with no serious incidents as a result but the government found other ways of reacting ahead of the march – in the morning presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni announced the “total declassification” of all archives relating to the 1976-1983 military dictatorship while a video authored by new right guru Agustín Laje was released calling for a “complete memory” including guerrilla and Triple A crimes while denouncing the abuse of the human rights cause by Kirchnerism. The government is also pressing for the 1974 slaying of Captain Humberto Viola and his young daughter by the ERP guerrilla organisation to be defined as a crime against humanity. For their part speakers at the Plaza de Mayo rally accused the Milei Presidency of “genocide denial” (also repudiating the “genocide in Gaza”) while rejecting in advance the upcoming agreement with the International Monetary Fund. Finally, not only the military dictatorship archives are to be declassified but also those on Nazis fleeing to Argentina after World War II, Adorni announced on Monday, a move responding to a request made by United States Senator Steve Daines (Republican-Montana) when he met with Milei last month.
DICTATORSHIP TORTURER CONVICTED
In the week of the 1976 coup anniversary, the Federal Criminal Cassation Court last Wednesday unanimously sentenced former Federal Police intelligence officer Roberto Álvarez to 10 years in prison for the illegal arrest and torture of Montonero militant Edith Aixa Bona during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship. Six senior Army intelligence officers have already been sentenced to life imprisonment in similar cases by the San Martín courtroom.
BAYER MONUMENT DEMOLISHED
The monument to the writer Osvaldo Bayer (1927-2018) at the highway entrance to the Santa Cruz provincial capital of Río Gallegos with its inscription: “Welcome, you are entering the soil of Patagonia Rebelde” lasted just two years and one day, being demolished last Tuesday by the local Highway Board. Its destruction was massively repudiated by the social networks. Bayer was most famous for his saga La Patagonia rebelde, when an anarchist-led strike in Santa Cruz in 1921 was brutally repressed with over 1,500 executions, a book converted into a famous film with the same title.
ECONOMIC REBOUND
Economic activity rose 6.5 percent last January in comparison with first month of 2024 while up 0.6 percent from the previous month, INDEC statistics bureau reported on Thursday. A positive trend was posted for 10 of the 15 sectors with "financial intermediation” (25.7 percent interannually) the runaway leader while the other five sectors lost ground, headed by fisheries (down 3.8 percent year-on-year) and hotels and restaurants (down 2.8 percent interanually).
NO JAILHOUSE STUDENT CENTRES
The Security Ministry has banned student centres within federal penitentiaries, it was announced in the Official Gazette last Tuesday while at the same time assuring “full access to education in all its levels and forms” to convicts in federal prisons. The objection to student centres was that “they are not expressly recognised legally while distorting the aim of social rehabilitation,” further arguing that student centre tasks had become an excuse to dodge both classes and work, including prison maintenance which was the responsibility of all convicts.
HOOLIGAN SHOOTOUT
A clash between barra brava hooligan fans of the La Plata rival teams Gimnasia y Esgrima and Estudiantes at the Hospital San Roque in the Buenos Aires provincial capital’s suburb of Gonnet (near the República de Niños children’s theme park) resulted in four people injured. Underlying the hooligan violence was an internal conflict within UOCRA construction workers union. When Gimnasia hooligans attempted to sabotage a public works inauguration where local UOCRA secretary-general Iván Tobar (the suspected leader of the Estudiantes barra brava) was appearing alongside Buenos Aires Province Governor Axel Kicillof and La Plata Mayor Julio Alak, Estudiantes barras in retaliation stabbed ‘Lobo’ hooligan Francisco Sanconi, who was taken to the Hospital San Roque. A group of 30 Gimnasia fans visiting him in hospital were ambushed outside by Estudiantes supporters, which is when the main violence erupted, shocking everybody else in the hospital.
WOMAN OF PROPERTY
While the recently arrested businessman Elías Piccirillo, the latest husband of television personality Jesica Cirio, is the centre of scandal, the spotlight has also fallen on the impressive fortune of his wife, including the 42 apartments acquired via her various marriages, Evelyn Von Brocke revealed last Monday in the television programme Mujeres Argentinas with Cirio’s spokespersons attributing her fortune (surpassing such famous figures as Susan Giménez) to “a lifetime of work.” Piccirillo is under arrest for trying to avoid repaying a multi-million debt to the businessman Francisco Hauque by planting false evidence of cocaine possession to extort him. Cirio’s most famous ex-husband is the Peronist politician and former Lomas de Zamora mayor Martín Insaurralde, who has vanished from public view after the scandal of a lavish yachting trip in Marbella with the model Sofía Clerici in the spring of 2023.
SUPER BLOOPER
The wisecrack of chief presidential economic advisor Demián Reidel at the Latam Forum about Argentina’s main problem being inhabited by Argentines stirred controversy as from last weekend, including from government supporters with libertarian militant Daniel ‘Gordo Dan’ Parisi at the forefront. “Sometimes an apology is not enough. It was the Argentines who placed the best President in history in the Seat of Rivadavia. Never insult the Argentines again,” wrote the online influencer.
WORLD CUP, HERE WE COME!
A Ruby Tuesday for Lionel Scaloni´s football squad, qualifying for the 2026 World Cup in the most exhilarating form possible with a historic 4-1 thrashing of arch-rivals Brazil at the Monumental Stadium (with goals by Julián Alvarez, Enzo Fernández, Alexis MacAllister and substitute Giuliano Simeone). But strictly speaking, Argentina had already mathematically qualified for the World Cup hours beforehand with the goalless draw between Bolivia and Uruguay. Apart from the North American tournament hosts, only Japan has qualified for the World Cup faster.
Comments