1.
The contracts of thousands of civil servants with fixed-term appointments haven’t been renewed. The rented accommodation market has been deregulated and now the law of the jungle prevails. The private healthcare providers are being allowed to charge what they want. The cost of utilities is going through the roof. The private sector is stalled and laying people off. Inflation is slightly down but still insanely high. Relations between the national and most provincial governments are very poor. There are mosquitos everywhere, a plague of dengue and no insect repellent to be found anywhere.
That’s Argentina four months into Milei’s administration. Yet social peace has largely been maintained. How come?
2.
Milei is still getting the benefit of the doubt because of the absolute exhaustion and disgust engendered in the much of the public by the previous administration. My guess is that the birthday party for the previous president’s girlfriend in the presidential residence in Olivos during the pandemic lockdown, and that friends and family of those in power were the first to receive the Covid vaccine were key events that permanently distanced many voters from the government and the repulsion thus generated continues to echo. And Argentina’s eternal lockdown, sometimes enforced with extraordinary levels of violence may still be having a positive effect on Milei’s message that the mere existence of the state is Argentina’s principal problem
A related factor is that that government was weak. Alberto Fernández was President but he was not fully in power, Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner watched over everything he did and as his term wore on became increasingly and openly critical of him. This led to a sense of drift with individual ministers going on solo runs.
There is no sense of drift now, people realise Milei is more than a little nuts but they can also see that he’s a leader. The question of where he’s leading the country to and how long it’ll take to get there isn’t at the front of many of their minds right now, they’re not exactly happy but are still glad to be shot of the Kirchner regime.
3.
Unless you’ve lived it, it's hard to imagine the negative psychological effects of watching the value of the currency you’re paid in, the peso, drift daily downwards against the currency in which most Argentines calculate the real value of things, the US dollar. Milei has stopped that. Economists of impeccably orthodox and conservative pedigree think this has been achieved by sleight of hand and will come unstuck in due course. That doesn’t matter, it’s to Milei’s benefit for the moment. Those lucky enough to have formal employment are not seeing the value of their earnings collapse in US dollar terms.
4.
The government of Buenos Aires City is taking a hard line on crime. Whether filling police station holding cells with petty criminals is going to do much in the long run to reduce crime rates is doubtful but it certainly chimes with a public sentiment that street thugs have had it easy for far too long. They may be petty criminals but when you’ve had your phone stolen at knife point that doesn’t feel like a petty experience.
Yes, Buenos Aires isn’t Argentina but what goes on there has a profound effect on the national mood and perceptions of the competence or otherwise of the government. It’s not by chance that there’s a popular saying that goes, Dios está en todas partes, pero atiende en Buenos Aires
5.
The trade unions and social movement organisations, the people you’d expect to be leading the fight against Milei and his policies burned a lot of their social capital under the four kirchnerista administrations, especially the last one. They’re regarded not as civil society actors but rather as an integral part of the kirchnerista political machine that led the country to its present lamentable condition.
Much the same goes for the human rights organisations: becoming a key branch of kirchnernismo brought jobs, funding and emotional satisfactions but also a loss of moral authority. Now that a different kind of government is in power they’re in the wilderness, more people listen to them abroad than in Argentina.
Intellectuals in the humanities and social sciences, actors, musicians, cinema and theatre people are for the most part in the same boat; they’re widely seen as having sold their souls to kirchnerismo and to now be getting the dose they deserve.
6.
How long will Milei’s honeymoon last?
Citizens with some dollars in reserve are spending them to pay for massively more expensive utilities and healthcare. Everything in the shops now costs as much in Europe. How long will their patience last when they’ve no savings left and have to make hard choices about their spending; “Which do I keep, health insurance or the kids in a fee-paying school?”, that sort of thing.
It’s anyone’s guess; rioting is regarded as unlikely until it happens and then it’s seen as having been inevitable.