After arguing with Gustavo Pedro, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Pedro Sánchez, the Argentine far-right Javier Milei decided to rhetorically cross the Andes mountain range and attack his Chilean colleague Gabriel Boric, who called him to “have a little more humility.”
The controversy was not started by capitalist anarcho but by its Minister of Economy, Luis Caputo. The maker of Milei’s economic adjustment has the Chilean as his second Jose Luis Daza Narbona, an expert in the global financial universe, completely aligned with the Chilean extreme right. To Chile, Caputo said, borrowing words from Daza, “They are practically governed by a communist who is about to sink them.”
Chile’s left-wing government formally protested the interference in internal affairs. The ambassador in Santiago, Jorge Faurie, received a note rejecting “the inappropriate and inaccurate statements by the Minister of Economy of Argentina, Luis Caputo”.
During his election campaign, Milei spoke of “impoverishing socialism” in Chile. Despite the insult, Boric traveled to the anarcho-capitalist takeover on December 10. Bilateral relations remained at the lowest level of formality. Weeks ago, Buenos Aires decided to withdraw its chancellor, Gerardo Werthein, from an event before Pope Francis in the Vatican to commemorate the border treaty that 40 years ago stopped a war between dictatorships for control of the Beagle Channel, in Tierra del Fuego. . The mediation of John Paul II prevented the armed confrontation at the end of 1978.
In this context, the Argentine president came out to support Caputo through his The author of The cultural battle a kind of television talk show guru, described Boric as a follower of Antonio Gramsci, “the greatest thinker of the Italian Communist Party.”
Boric’s response
The Chilean president then spoke again. “We presidents pass, but the institutions and the people remain,” he said. “We have to send a small message to the other side of the mountain range. I want to tell President Javier Milei that I am president of Chile, and Argentina for me and for all our compatriots is a brother country. That the mountain range that founded us, that the 5000 kilometers of border that we share will still be there when you and I leave. I am not going to refer to the president of Argentina with adjectives or insults, as he is accustomed to doing. “I prefer to speak positively.”
The stinging phrase nevertheless remained in the mouth of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Alberto Van Kavleren. Argentina, he noted, can learn from Chile in terms of the fight against poverty. Several decades ago, the situation was reversed. Currently, Chile has a poverty rate of 6% and the neighboring country 50%.
As expected, the Chilean and Argentine oppositions also took sides. “Caputo didn’t tell any lies, “We are governed by a left-wing government, it is almost (communist), it just lacks military,” said the leader of the Republicans, Pinochet’s José Antonio Kast.
