Did I want a selfie? Javier Milei, the President of Argentina, was offering. So many of his supporters wanted them; the Internet is full of pictures of him with ecstatic fans, regional leaders, and such international fellow-travellers as Elon Musk. In his office, he adopted his customary pose, his face angled toward the good light, his lips pursed, two jaunty thumbs up. The stance seemed naggingly familiar, and then I realized that it recalled the psychotic character Alex from Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange." "Naranja Mecánica?" I asked. Milei's eyes sparkled, and he nodded, cackling, then obligingly resumed the pose.
For Milei, a self-described "anarchocapitalist" determined to remake his country, this punkish presentation is not incidental to his success. His supporters refer to him as the Madman and as the Wig a reference to his hairdo, an unkempt shag with disco sideburns. Milei has said that his hair is styled by the "invisible hand" of the market, but, during my visit, his stylist, Lilia Lemoine, stopped in to adjust it. "She wants me to look like a cross between Elvis and Wolverine," he said. (Lemoine, who had recently been elected as a legislator with Milei's party, was formerly a cosplayer, a special-effects producer, and, for a time, Milei's girlfriend.)
Milei, who is fifty-four, came late to politics. Before he won a seat in Congress, in 2021, he was a low-profile economist, and then a frequent guest on talk shows, famous for explosive denunciations of the government. Argentina, after a century of economic struggles, was in crisis. As Milei campaigned for President, the inflation rate climbed to more than two hundred per cent, and roughly forty per cent of the population was living in poverty. Milei earned a following by blaming the trouble on a corrupt caste la casta that included politicians, journalists, trade unionists, and academics.
Denne historien er fra December 09, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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Denne historien er fra December 09, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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NO WAY BACK
The resurgence, in the past decade, of Paul Schrader as one of the most accomplished and acclaimed contemporary movie directors is part of a bigger trend: the self-reinvention of Hollywood auteurs as independent filmmakers.
PRIMORDIAL SORROW
\"All Life Long,\" the title of the most recent album by the composer and organist Kali Malone, is taken from a poem by the British Symbolist author Arthur Symons: \"The heart shall be weary and wonder and cry like the sea,/ All life long crying without avail,/As the water all night long is crying to me.\"
CHOPPED AND STEWED
The other day, at a Nigerian restaurant called Safari, in Houston, Texas, I peeled back the plastic wrap on a ball of fufu, a staple across West Africa.
TOUCH WOOD
What do people do all day? My daughter loves to read Richard Scarry's book of that title, though she generally skips ahead to the hospital pages.
HELLO, HEARTBREAK
Heartbreak cures are as old as time, or at least as old as the Common Era.
ENEMY OF THE STATE
Javier Milei's plan to remake Argentina begins with waging war on the government.
THE CHOOSING ONES
The saga of my Jewish conversion began twenty-five years ago, when I got engaged to my first husband.
OBSCURE FAMILIAL RELATIONS, EXPLAINED FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Children who share only one parent are half siblings. Children who have been bisected via a tragic logging accident are also half siblings, but in a different way.
NOTE TO SELVES
The Sonoran Desert, which covers much of the southwestern United States, is a vast expanse of arid earth where cartoonish entities-roadrunners, tumbleweeds, telephone-pole-tall succulents make occasional appearances.
BADDIE ISSUES
\"Wicked\" and \"Gladiator II.\"
