Argentina Update – Former Vice-President’s Speech & more –1st June 2023

st of June: 2023

The 25th of May didn’t just mark the anniversary of the May Revolution, but also two decades since the late Néstor Kirchner was inaugurated as president. Which is why on Thursday, his widow, Vice-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, took the stage at a rally in Plaza de Mayo.

In her hour-long speech, CFK mainly spoke of her own achievements, as well as those of her late husband. Aside from that, she expressed her opinion on the need to link private and public sectors, the importance of sovereignty over resources like Vaca Muerta and lithium, as well as the need to revise Argentina’s foreign debt. More specifically, she urged the country to ditch the debt repayment agreement with the IMF.

Meanwhile, many were waiting for her to shed some light on the potential candidates for the upcoming elections, but she didn’t address that topic. We will know soon enough, though, as the deadline for parties and coalitions to present their list of candidates is the 24th of June.

President Alberto Fernández did not attend the rally. Instead, he was seen in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral for the traditional Te Deum mass. On Monday the 29th, he welcomed Paraguay’s President-Elect Santiago Peña, and then departed from Argentina for Brasília. Both President Fernández and his Brazilian counterpart are focused on the development and rebooting of Unasur, an intergovernmental regional organization looking to defend Latin America’s interests and counteract the influence of other countries in the region.

Back to the topic of the VP for a minute, a federal prosecutor has requested that three defendants be brought to trial for the attempted assassination of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. The prosecutor, Carlos Rívolo, argues that the evidence shows the defendants acted on their own account without outside help. However, the VP opposes the trial because she considers there needs to be a deeper investigation to identify the alleged masterminds and financiers of the attack. She believes the attack is linked to sectors of the opposition and claims to be a victim of political and judicial persecution.

In other news, the Cabinet Chief Agustín Rossi officially launched his presidential candidacy this week.

Rossi has always defined himself as a Kirchnerite and Peronist, and he led the Defence Ministry for the first year and a half of the Fernández administration. In his campaign spot, he speaks of three main problems Argentina is facing: inflation, insecurity and uncertainty, vowing that he can lead the country into growth.

In Buenos Aires City, Mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta confirmed that Jorge Macri will be the PRO’s solo candidate. The former leader of Vicente López, a municipality on the outskirts of the capital in Greater Buenos Aires, is outperforming Fernán Quirós in polling, which is why he will be the only one running from his party.

The PRO party has ruled the capital for the past sixteen years, so the goal is to maintain control over it. Limiting its ticket to one candidate will give them the chance of emerging with the most voted-for slate in the primaries.

Let’s go back to the topic of foreign affairs for a minute. This week, the Economy Minister Sergio Massa and Deputy Máximo Kirchner, together with other officials, embarked on a trip to China to hold some key meetings. The team spent their days in Beijing and Shanghai meeting with Chinese businesspeople and high-profile politicians, always with a focus on settling cooperation agreements around energy, exports and potential investments and infrastructure works in Argentina.

Massa sealed a deal for one billion dollars from two firms: the Ghezouba Group, a construction and engineering company that will build water treatment plants in Buenos Aires, and State Grid, a state-owned electric utility corporation and will finance a project to distribute electricity in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area for 330 million dollars.

On top of that, the Economy Minister is looking to strengthen the Argentine monetary reserves with BRICS banks. The acronym BRICS refers to the economic alliance between Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Argentina has been trying to join for a while, and the New BRICS Bank President, Dilma Rousseff, is a key actor in Argentina’s pursuit.

Speaking of dollars, a new resolution imposes a fifteen-day holding period for dollars from MEP and CCL operations. Market participants will no longer be able to use dollars obtained through MEP or CCL operations to buy bonds for fifteen days, a way to arbitrage deals that involve trading sovereign bonds and bills back and forth between the dollar and the peso.

The MEP dollar rate, which stands for “electronic payment market,” is the result of acquiring bonds in pesos and then selling them in dollars. The CCL rate, which stands for something like “spot with settlement” is obtained by investors buying shares or bonds in pesos and selling them in dollars on the international market.

Basically, people were buying bonds in pesos, selling them for dollars, and either buying a LEDE bond in dollars and selling it back into pesos at a higher rate, or simply selling the dollars in the informal market for the blue dollar exchange rates.

LEDE stands for “discounted treasury notes” in Spanish. These are debt securities issued by the national government, primarily through the Treasury, and they are offered through a bidding process and a public offering.

With changing rules and countless exchange rates, you need to become a math expert. But you know who’s the real expert? Luis Caffarelli, the Argentine mathematician who was awarded the Abel Prize. Worth around 730,000 dollars, the award ceremony took place in Oslo, where Caffarelli was recognized for his contributions in differential equations by King Harald himself. The equations can explain phenomena ranging from how water flows to population growth.

Speaking of influential figures, the Argentine producer and DJ Bizarrap was included in Time Magazine’s Next Generation Leaders list. The twenty-four-year-old artist has broken all sorts of music and video records, amassing more than 7 billion views on YouTube and 40 million monthly listeners on Spotify without releasing a single album.

Also on that note about video, if you want to travel back in time to the last World Cup, the BBC released an hour-long documentary that goes inside Argentina's World Cup win. With input from some of those involved — including Emiliano Martínez, Alexis Mac Allister, Julian Alvarez and manager Lionel Scaloni — the film is titled Lionel Messi: Destiny and it tells the inside story of how the star finally won the tournament.

Unfortunately, not everything is glory and joy in football. This week, the CONMEBOL, the governing body of South American football, opened a probe into alleged racist chanting against the Colombian player Hugo Rodallega. This happened during a Copa Sudamericana match and those responsible were the fans of the Gimnasia y Esgrima football club. CONMEBOL can fine or suspend players, officials or clubs if found guilty of discriminatory language.

Moving on, The New York Times published a guide titled “36 hours in Buenos Aires.” The guide includes key recommendations, an itinerary for what to do during a weekend in the city, and a curated list of where to stay, where to eat and which museums to visit.

If you want to check it out, follow the link in the show notes.

We have another recommended read for you and that is an interview published by the Buenos Aires Herald. The interview features Daniel Benmergui, an independent video game designer who developed Storyteller, a project that won prestigious awards and made him an instant celebrity, yet it never lived up to its promise.

abandonment of the project in: 2014

Follow the link in the show notes to read the full interview.

Aaaaaand that's it for this week! You may not know it but we do updates for some other countries too. If you know anybody who might be interested, let them know. Ready? Here they are, West to East: Venezuela, Spain, Nigeria, Poland, Serbia, Turkey, Malawi, Ethiopia, Georgia, Japan. Think of anybody?

¡Nos vemos la próxima semana!