What does it mean when everyday debt is the most widespread reality for the population in Argentina? Well, a person goes into debt to buy food and medicine. They go into debt to pay rent, or to cover any emergency that pops up in daily life. They even take out lines of credit to pay off older debts.
Only by fully understanding the level of precariousness in Argentina — fostered by prolonged inflation and the fact that working-class people’s income is being eaten up by a slumping peso — can we understand how debt has entered people’s lives, becoming a veritable tool of survival. And, on a national level, the prevalence of debt has resulted in a new political mechanism: financial blackmail.
The fetishized notion of “financial freedom” — a promise of future business opportunities for a heavily-indebted population — has become a key element of the far-right’s government’s agenda. President Javier Milei’s administration has promoted new financial technologies (such as digital wallets), dollarization (as a hedge against inflation) and the elimination of all currency exchange controls. Of course, this has taken place within a new cycle of indebtedness, first with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and now directly with the U.S. Treasury.
The notion of “financial freedom” — despite its name — is organized in a restrictive, conservative manner. Such a policy is accompanied by state-sponsored anti-feminism, which allows authoritarian neoliberalism to intensify under fascist modalities. This manifests as a declaration of war — one supported by public resources — against women, ranging from the near-total dismantling of policies aimed at preventing gender-based violence, to President Milei’s verbal and digital attacks against female journalists and politicians.
It’s through state-led anti-feminism — which enables violence against women and LGBTQ+ communities — that the administration has intensified the authoritarian neoliberal project, organizing it according to the fascist logic of impoverishing and criminalizing certain populations. Retirees, people with disabilities and migrants are the latest targets.
Milei’s victory in the October midterm elections relaunched his image as the preferred politician of the U.S. advance into Latin America. That was the plan: Trump won him the election by offering the government a $20 billion bailout. His intervention wasn’t only financial, but also political. The statement that Trump made the day after the victory — published in all Argentine newspapers — served as a summary: Milei’s victory “made the U.S. a lot of money.”
The midterm elections — as a business transaction — encapsulated a political-financial operation: the promise of a U.S. Treasury disbursement as a “rescue package” for the Argentine economy, to keep it afloat amidst a new inflationary crisis.
Trump’s message was disseminated through both legacy and social media. He clearly stated that, if Milei’s party didn’t win the legislative elections, there would be no bailout for Argentina. This threat worked, as it was wielded against a precarious, heavily-indebted economy.
Is it possible for things to get even more chaotic than they already are, with prices fluctuating weekly, currency devaluations increasing monthly and multiple jobs becoming an everyday reality? The answer, in short, is yes: things can always get worse if inflation and the peso spiral out of control. Hence, Trump’s blackmail was highly-significant. And, to understand the reality in which this occurred, we must emphasize the strategic impact that financial matters have on daily life in Argentina.
This political chain of events culminated in November, with the signing of an agreement between the U.S. and Argentina. This deal includes incentives for the installation of U.S. data centers in the South American country. These facilities require enormous quantities of water to cool their systems.
Meanwhile, household debt is at a record high (a third of the population already owes more than they earn in three months), which is why the “financial stress” that seven out of 10 Argentinians report experiencing is now part of the media discourse. Added to this is the brutal deregulation of the economy: the price of rent, medicine and basic services are climbing month after month.
This economic fragility is existential fragility. The anarcho-libertarian project is an authoritarian form of capitalism, because it forces constant competition in the race against poverty.
The methods used to annihilate certain vulnerable populations have fueled so-called “economies of hate.” And the ways in which precariousness is managed can be key to the growth of authoritarian competitiveness — or, alternatively, they can result in people organizing themselves to insist on solidarity, cooperative and union-based forms of action.
The libertarian fantasies of Milei’s administration are based on the idea that it’s possible to live independently, without depending on anyone (protecting your home and your family, as a means of coping with a catastrophic future). But Milei’s platform cannot be understood without the element of fraud. That’s what the Argentine president has engaged in from his official social media account: he has promoted and encouraged investment in a memecoin — a cryptocurrency inspired by a meme — called $Libra
The president’s scam is part of an abstract idea of freedom that goes by the name of “financial freedom.” It’s based on the proliferation of financial tools, depicted as ways of aiding the population in the face of precariousness and currency devaluation — consequences of the IMF’s adjustment program, in place since 2018. Argentines are apparently supposed to fend for themselves as “permanent entrepreneurs,” to the point that they become speculators who bet on their own survival.
Meanwhile, the government buys time and provides stability to the financial sector, without managing to stabilize the actual economic crisis. The continued instability serves as an excuse to accelerate reforms (labor, pension and tax-related), implement decrees (for example, in the case of the mandatory collection of debts through electronic wallets) and hand over national territory to foreign companies (in favor of mining projects).
Globally, the rhetoric of “financial freedom” is linked to a propaganda strategy, with the goal of elites reaping rewards, as societies face declining wages and gutted pensions. In other words: as the elderly contend with uncertainty, social security suddenly becomes “financial freedom.”
In Argentina, the uncertainty is here and now. Hence, the ideology of individual responsibility — translated as “freedom” and “independence” — turns to financial language. This is done in order to displace issues such as impoverishment, inequality and, above all, uncertainty.
This uncertainty only intensifies as incomes decline. And this decline is orchestrated, like a veritable war being waged against the general population. The logic of cruelty becomes the status quo.
Organizing resistance against this cruelty — which uses finance as a weapon of mass colonization — is a difficult yet unavoidable task. It’s an attempt at true liberation, within a capitalist system that only bets on war.
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