The vote of fear is an experience that in Mexico we have already suffered and it could even be said that we are seasoned on the subject. It is not necessary to delve very deeply into the archives of our history to realize this. Even at the Latin American level, which is the case that concerns us for now, the phenomenon is well known and, on many occasions, with truly tragic and bloody outcomes, in processes that developed before, during and after the violent seizure of power in various settings on the continent.
In that case one might well think of a sample not only of civil governments but also of military dictatorships that today some on the national left selectively condemn based on supposed – I would say distorted – ideological affinities.
It is true that during military dictatorships there were no democratic processes, which is why they have been called dictatorships; But there are more recent cases, let’s say “hybrid”, such as in Venezuela, where after a failed and more “domestic” military coup, led by Hugo Chávez in the early nineties, he gained fame as a leader and grew in popularity due to his imprisonment, but more so after his release. And then he won the elections.
Chavismo, installed in power for more than twenty years, has been operating falsely democratic elections in which, paradoxically, the foreign influence of the American empire has not been able to penetrate, as it did, brutally, in Chile in 1973, to give only the most notable recent example in South American history.
The case of Nicaragua is similar to that of Venezuela. But in that Central American country today the presidential “couple” Ortega-Murillo and their family clan govern in the name of an already disgraced revolution, but which serves as a pretext to extend their protective mantle, without the “Yankee influence”, at the point of authoritarianism, and hard blows to democratic life and the dignity of its citizens.
It should be said that today North American interventionism with the seal of Donald Trump in the Caribbean is also being presented in a brutal way and without significant objection from the countries that coexist in that region, beyond the simple inconvenience of the diplomatic posture, as could be the case of Mexico, with the exception of Colombia.
And it is precisely in this Trumpian paradox that the Argentine people find themselves today. The citizens of the Homeland of That Guevara and the Perón family know that they were wrong to elect the grotesque Javier Milei, an upstart in politics who, through virulent and futuristic rhetoric, managed to conquer the legitimate aspirations of the people for better economic living conditions, indebted as they are, but who know that a threat like the one prescribed to their President in the White House on October 14 can make things worse. Or at least that is the only alternative that, from his Manichean and terrifying manipulation, Trump sowed in the spirit of the suffering South American nation through his abject friend Javier Milei.
“Our approval depends on who wins the election. If he loses, we are not going to be generous with Argentina,” Trump told Milei in front of the press, referring to the call swap for 20 billion dollars that the United States approved days before the meeting to help the Argentine economy.
And swapaccording to economic terminology, is a “financial swap”, a contract by which two parties agree to “exchange a series of amounts of money at future dates” and its objective is to “reduce fluctuations in currencies and interest rates.” In the colloquial and interpretive language of empire, this can be translated as giving the United States a blank check for a country. Incidentally, Trump did not rule out supporting Milei’s original idea of dollarizing the Argentine economy, with all that this implies.
Just minutes after Trump’s announcement during his meeting with Milei, Argentine stocks listed on Wall Street and dollar bonds plummeted nearly 10 percent. It was the market’s first response to the condition that the President of the United States set at that time to continue supporting Argentina.
It was that vulnerability that Donald Trump and the President of the Argentines miserably took advantage of during his urgent visit to Washington, which occurred just before the midterm elections in which, what a coincidence!, the vote of fear was imposed on the electorate, which had also come out to protest and attack the president with stones and bottles – and to spit, even symbolically – on the president, among other reasons, for his erratic economic decisions.
Trump’s blackmail worked, as did Milei’s disloyalty: the Argentine president’s ultra-conservative party (founded in 2024, a year after his electoral victory, chaired by his sister Karina, who is also the general secretary of the Presidency), obtained 40.6 percent of the votes and 64 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. The historic Peronist coalition, Fuerza Patria, reached 31.7 percent and 44 seats. The left, blurred, barely reached 4.7 percent, which gave it three seats of representation.
The people who weeks before proclaimed themselves disappointed in Milei ended up helping him get a third of the Chamber, which means that he can use the presidential veto of the laws promoted by the opposition. And although he advanced, his party will have 93 seats of the 129 that marks the majority. In the Senate La Libertad Avanza increased to 20 legislators, but will also need the support of the other parties to obtain the 37 votes necessary to achieve the majority.
It is known that in Argentina whoever held power emerged weakened from the midterm elections; However, Milei managed to increase 13 points compared to the results of 2023, when he became President. Historically this had only happened once, when Mauricio Macri achieved seven points more in 2017 than in the elections at the beginning of his administration, two years before.
I insist, Trump’s blackmail worked. The vote of fear worked. But Milei’s own blackmail also worked when he was a candidate, when he promised to save the nation governed by “the corrupt of the past” from debacle. There occurred the first coercion of the Argentine electorate.
But Milei is not the only one. Many have engaged in the use and abuse of this extortion; civil, military or “hybrids”. Mexico is no exception. They have applied a dose of fear, of “here comes the wolf”, of “those from the past are the ones who committed this disaster, but I have the solution”, to advance or maintain their excessive ambitions for power. Fear is the raw material that many professional politicians induce in the electorate to show themselves as the enlightened ones, those called to be by who knows what thaumaturgic power as the path that everyone must follow. And the only one who can put an end to the evil that he designates in his own way.
It is worrying that from now on many do not see the ability of the Argentine people to face this new circumstance, especially due to their rudeness in the elections, and prefer to stick to the irremediable destiny that leads an entire people to misfortune due to the senseless premonition of a fatality that “something bad is going to happen”, as in the classic story by García Márquez.
It’s not that I give in to optimism, but the Argentine people have always overcome their ills. And that includes leaving behind, as soon as possible and without fear, the perverse traitor Javier Milei. Today, despite the distance, Buenos Aires is closer to Washington than Mexico.