Hundreds of demonstrators swarmed round Buenos Aires's historic Obelisk monument to champion the man they call El Peluca - the Wig. "You can feel it! You can feel it! Peluca presidente!" the marchers chanted of their wild-thatched leader, the far-right populist Javier Milei.
Among the crowd was Esteban Elías Lozupone, a 48-year-old taxi driver who had brought his daughter to the rally on the eve of one of Argentina's most crucial presidential elections in decades.
"We're trying to change things Otherwise this country won't progress," said Lozupone, whose 11-year-old wore a Gadsden flag its coiled rattlesnake a symbol of Milei's movement and the US far right round her neck.
Like millions of Argentinians, Lozupone is electrified by the prospect of Milei winning tomorrow's election - believing the anti-establishment economist can haul the South American country out of years of financial misery with radical measures including abolishing the central bank and dollarising the economy. Polls suggest Milei enjoys a slender advantage over his opponent, the centrist finance minister, Sergio Massa, whose Peronist administration is widely blamed for plunging Argentina into its worst economic crisis in two decades.
But as election day nears, Lozupone is also worried, having embraced conspiracy theories fanned by Milei's campaign that October's first round was rigged and tomorrow's may be too.
"I think there was a lot of fraud," he claimed, without evidence, of last month's contest, which Milei unexpectedly lost to Massa by nearly 2m votes.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der November 18, 2023-Ausgabe von The Guardian.
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