The president of Argentina, Javier Milei, with the then president-elect of the United States, Donald Trump, at the Gala of the America First Policy Institute held in Mar-a-Lago on November 14, 2024, in Palm Beach, Florida.
If with his first speech at Davos, days after assuming the presidency of Argentina in January 2024, Javier Milei launched his bet on a high international profile ― which he has maintained ever since ― with his second appearance at the World Economic Forum and now with Donald Trump in the White House, he doubled down.
Fresh from the United States, where he was one of the few world leaders invited to the inauguration, the Argentine dedicated his speech to attacking what he calls “woke ideology.”
Woke is a term that was initially used in the United States to refer to awareness of social and racial injustices, and over time it has evolved to include flags like feminism, climate change, or the defense of minorities. Today, it is often used disparagingly in public discourse to denote an exaggerated sensitivity or political correctness on these topics.
A woman with a headscarf participates in the eighth annual “Ni una Menos” march against gender-based violence in front of the National Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on June 3, 2023.
Javier Milei’s government seeks to eliminate the figure of femicide from the criminal code: what could happen if the project advances?
In Milei’s case, it has not always been a common expression in his vocabulary. However, in Davos, he used the word and its meanings 16 times, accusing feminism, diversity, inclusion and equity measures, immigration, abortion, and environmentalism of exploiting their causes to obtain money from the state.
But why did Milei focus his speech on the “woke agenda,” such an unusual term in Latin America, and include the migration crisis in his agenda, being a problem that sounds foreign to a country with a tradition of migrants? Is this his own agenda or a Milei who looks in Trump’s mirror?
“Today I come here to tell you that our battle is not won, that while hope has been reborn, it is our moral duty and historical responsibility to dismantle the ideological building of sick wokism,” he established in his speech.
Direct attack against feminism and the LGBTQ community
It is not new that Milei targets feminism and talks about “a radical agenda” that poses a “ridiculous and unnatural fight between men and women,” words he pronounced in Davos in 2024.
But if Milei’s speeches were mainly focused on the economy and the other agenda was more taken by his environment, in Davos he made it his own and structured his entire speech in this direction, with accusatory statements without support. An example was saying that “more extreme versions of gender ideology are simply child abuse.” This expression, among others even more controversial ― such as that the LGBTQ agenda seeks to impose that “women are men and men are women, only if they self-identify” ― earned him the repudiation of that group, which called for a march this Saturday in Buenos Aires, with rallies that were replicated in various provinces of the country and even in other cities in Europe and Latin America. In Argentina, it has also had support from social and political sectors.
These remarks occur in the context in which right-wing figures like Trump and magnate Elon Musk also center their discourse on the idea that there are only two sexes: male and female.
These expressions deny non-binary identities and add to other transphobic ones that also dismiss the medical consensus on people who do not identify with the gender assigned at birth. In 2018, the World Health Organization removed transgenderism from its list of mental disorders, as had happened in 2013 with the DSM-5 manual, considered the “psychiatric bible.”
Mobilization against gender-based violence in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Did Milei get emboldened with Trump’s rise to power?
José Natanson, an international analyst, says that Milei in Davos spoke to Argentine society but also, effectively, to Trump.
“Milei feels part of what the academic Juan Gabriel Tokatlian calls the reactionary international: a group of world leaders who have many differences, but share the cultural battle as a common agenda,” he explains. “He brings some of the global cultural battles to Argentina to see if they catch on. If they catch on, he uses them, and if not, he leaves them aside,” says Natanson.
In this line, just as Trump seeks to reverse inclusive policies implemented by his predecessor, Joe Biden, by issuing a decree that the federal government will only recognize two sexes (male and female) and the ban on transgender people serving in the Armed Forces, Milei’s government has also proposed a deepening of legislative measures related to gender inequality.
Last week, Argentina’s Minister of Justice, Mariano Cúneo Libarona, said that they would seek to eliminate the figure of femicide from the Criminal Code, an aggravating circumstance in the sentencing of crimes involving gender violence. The public debate has also been about whether they would advance other laws related to the feminist agenda, like the quota law, something that presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni denied, although he expressed opposition to that legislation, which establishes a minimum level of female and trans participation in various public areas, ensuring greater gender equity in political and labor representation.
A migration agenda more foreign than its own?
The migration agenda is perhaps the one that most drew attention in Milei’s presentation in Davos. Argentina has a history of immigration that constitutes national identity. At the beginning of the 20th century, a third of the country’s population was immigrant, according to official data of the time, and even the Constitution guarantees civil rights to foreigners within the territory.
The president of Argentina, Javier Milei, and his Minister of Justice, Mariano Cúneo Libarona, on March 1, 2024.
The Argentine government says it will seek to eliminate the figure of femicide from its Criminal Code
In Davos, Milei said: “(although) the free movement of goods and people is one of the foundations of liberalism trying to attract foreign talent to promote development, we have moved to mass immigration not motivated by national interest, but by guilt. Since the West is supposedly the cause of all the evils of history, it must redeem itself by opening its borders to everyone.” According to the president, this situation results in “reverse colonization.”
For Natanson, Argentine society does not perceive immigration as a problem. “I don’t think it will result in anything to speak against migrants,” he considered.
For example, Milei has the support of some migrant communities in the country. When the Venezuelan opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia met with him in Buenos Aires, the Venezuelan diaspora that gathered in Plaza de Mayo expressed support for the Argentine president with celebratory chants.
However, in December of last year, the government raised the need to charge non-resident foreigners for healthcare and education, an announcement that, on a national level, did not materialize into any measures, with only some provinces implementing payments in public hospitals. This sparked a debate in society with both supporting and opposing positions on the proposal.
In Argentina, there is no immigration crisis like the one at the southern border of the United States, where thousands of people have arrived trying to seek asylum or enter illegally into the country, overwhelming the authorities’ response capacity over the years and across governments of different political colors, involving many countries in the region.
A fence at the border with Bolivia and border tension with Brazil
Announced by the local government and supported by the national government, the announcement of the construction of a 200-meter fence in the town of Aguas Blancas, in the province of Salta, at the border with Bolivia, has recently strained bilateral relations.
The measure is part of the Güemes Plan, a program by the Ministry of Security that seeks to reinforce border protection against “drug trafficking, contract killings, deaths, and disorder,” the ministry’s press office stated in a release. This comes from Milei’s statements in Davos and when border control echoes, once again, with Trump’s agenda.
The president of Argentina, Javier Milei, speaks to the audience during the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos on January 23, 2025.
The announcement quickly prompted a reaction from the Bolivian government, which expressed concern in a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “Border issues must be addressed through bilateral dialogue mechanisms.”
In December, when this plan was announced, it was reported that more than 300 agents from the Argentine Naval Prefecture were being sent to reinforce security in the area, but nothing was said about a physical barrier. CNN consulted the Ministry of Security to see if the fence had been planned initially, but no response was received.
At the same time, Bullrich announced in a media interview that border controls with Brazil would also be reinforced. However, the minister said that no new fences would be built in that area, but that surveillance would involve advanced technology like drones, as well as increased Gendarmerie presence and permanent patrols.
From the Brazilian embassy in Buenos Aires, they told CNN that, since there had been no formal announcements of any specific measures yet, they had no comments.
Climate change, another key issue in the same direction
In his first days, Trump announced the U.S.’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and the World Health Organization (WHO), something that will not materialize immediately, but is already an effective decision.
Immediately, the pro-government newspaper “La derecha diario” published an article that was shared on X by Milei himself, titled “Javier Milei considers withdrawing Argentina from the WHO and the Climate Agreement.”
However, no official announcement was made, but once again, he repeats a gesture in mirror with the Republican.
Milei was clear in Davos: “I no longer feel so alone,” he said, and celebrated having now “partners” in his fight for “freedom ideas.” He included in the list Musk, the Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, the President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, and obviously Trump. He referred to all of them as members of an international alliance. “How much has changed in such a short time,” he reflected.