ARGENTINA: A Massive Reform Package & more – 23rd Apr 2026

¡Buenos días from Greenway Parks! This is the Rorshok Argentina Update from the 23rd of April twenty twenty-six. A quick summary of what's going down in Argentina.

We start this week with a major move to overhaul how elections work in Argentina. President Milei just sent a massive reform package to Congress that he says will “end the party” for corrupt politicians. The headliner is the Ficha Limpia or Clean Slate bill. If it passes, anyone with a criminal conviction upheld by an appeals court for serious crimes won’t be allowed to run for office. This is a big deal because, under current rules, candidates can often keep running while their legal battles drag on for years.

But the President isn’t just stopping there. He also wants to scrap the PASO — the mandatory primary elections that take place before the main vote — and make it much harder to form new political parties. To get this through, Milei is using the Clean Slate law as a bit of a hook to win over the opposition, who generally like the idea of banning criminals from office but aren’t so sure about getting rid of the primaries.

Speaking of things that are getting harder to navigate, new data shows that bus ridership in the Buenos Aires metro area has plummeted by 21% this April compared to last year. That’s two million fewer users.

As to why this happens, it’s a combination of factors. Ticket prices have jumped nearly 40% in some areas, and with the local economy slowing down, many people simply can’t afford the commute or no longer have a job to go to. On top of that, we’re coming off of a series of strikes where many bus lines were operating with limited frequency.

On that note about the squeeze on wallets, President Milei admitted for the first time this week that not everyone is better off under his government. While he’s sticking firmly to his chainsaw budget cuts, the numbers are looking grim. Inflation has now accelerated for ten months straight, and real wages have dropped by 6% since November. The President says he’s tying himself to the ship’s mast and won’t change course, even though household debt has hit its highest level since two thousand and four.

Since we mentioned the President’s rigid stance on spending, the battle over university funding has moved to the Supreme Court. The government is asking the highest court to strike down a law Congress passed to raise salaries for professors. They argue that paying those raises would eat up 90% of the country’s available cash and effectively paralyze the rest of the government. They even asked three of the justices to step aside because they also happen to be university professors.

In other news, there’s a new plan for mental health and medicine. The Health Ministry wants to change the National Mental Health Law to make it easier to hospitalize people in crisis, specifically to prevent self-harm or violence. At the same time, they are launching a new system to buy cancer drugs directly from labs. They say cutting out the middlemen will help them handle the 27% increase in patients they expect to see this year.

On the topic of daily costs, the government is making it easier for the Ministry of Economy to tweak your gas bill. A new decree allows the ministry to adjust a specific surcharge on gas prices by up to 50% without needing a sign-off from the President. This fund helps pay for heating subsidies in colder parts of the country, but the change means your monthly bill could start moving up or down much more quickly based on the ministry’s goals.

Turning to security, schools in the City of Buenos Aires are on high alert. Jorge Macri, the mayor, launched a new protocol this week to handle a wave of shooting threats. Most of these seem to be starting as viral challenges on social media, but the city is taking them seriously. Just this week, a thirteen-year-old in the central province of La Pampa threatened to shoot up his school; when police raided his father’s house, they found a small arsenal of unregistered rifles and handguns.

Moving back to politics, Karina Milei, the president’s sister and Secretary General, made a very public show of support for Manuel Adorni, the Cabinet Chief, this week. As we’ve been tracking, Adorni is under investigation for how he bought a luxury apartment and took multiple expensive vacations in recent years. To show he’s still in the inner circle, Karina took him on a high-profile tour of the Vaca Muerta oil fields in the south. The government insists it’s business as usual, but Adorni still has to face a tough questioning session in Congress at the end of the month.

While we follow the money, a new study by the International Tax Observatory is making waves by suggesting a super-rich tax for Latin America. The proposal suggests that a 2% tax on the 3,000 wealthiest people in the region — those worth over 100 million dollars — could raise twenty-four billion dollars a year. While the idea has some support from Brazil, it’s facing huge pushback from business elites who argue it will just drive investment out of the region.

In a different effort to save money, the government is cracking down on disability benefits. There are 1.2 million people receiving these payments these days, up from less than 80,000 twenty years ago. The President says this points to massive fraud, so he’s introducing a bill that requires everyone receiving a benefit to re-register and pass a strict medical audit. Critics, however, say this demonizes people with disabilities and will leave the most vulnerable without support.

In fact, a new national survey shows just how many people are struggling. For the first time, the government counted people living on the streets across nineteen provinces and found nearly 10,000 homeless Argentines. Most are men over the age of eighteen, and about half of them actually have some form of informal work but still can’t afford a roof over their heads.

While people struggle, the industrial sector is changing shape. A new report shows that instead of manufacturing, many Argentine companies are firing workers and just importing finished goods from places like China. This includes big names in appliances, footwear and kitchenware. That said, even though the import costs are low, these companies are often selling the items at five or eight times that price in local stores.

In a twist on how people choose to live and work during these changing times, some are looking for a middle ground between being a tourist and a full-time expat. Writing for the Buenos Aires Herald in English, Antonia Balazs explores the rise of the midlife working trip. She shares her experience living and working in the region for a month, arguing that you don’t need to blow up your whole life to find freedom.

If you are thinking about trying the digital nomad life without the permanent commitment, make sure to check out the link to her full piece in the show notes.

In some sad news for the arts, Argentina is mourning two giants of culture. Luis Puenzo, the director who gave the country its first Oscar for La historia oficial or The Official Story, passed away at eighty. His film was the first to show the world the horror of the children stolen during the last dictatorship. Luis Brandoni, the iconic actor, also died this week at eighty-six. Brandoni was a fixture of Argentine life for sixty years, known for his roles in classics like Esperando la carroza, Waiting for the Hearse.

To close this edition on a lighter note, if you were in the Plaza de Mayo this weekend, you might have heard some unexpected techno. A Portuguese priest known as Padre Guilherme, or the DJ Priest, hosted a massive rave to honor Pope Francis on the first anniversary of his death. Tens of thousands of people danced to electronic remixes of the Pope’s speeches and Gregorian chants under a giant laser light show.

Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

Anything to tell us, info@rorshok.com.

¡Nos vemos la próxima semana!