Argentina's Milei Trades Barbs with Mexican and Colombian Leaders, Ratcheting Up Tensions
Argentina's Milei Trades Barbs with Mexican and Colombian Leaders, Ratcheting Up Tensions
"Latin America has a long tradition of these food fights between leaders on the left and the right," says AS/COA's Brian Winter to The Associated Press.
Mudslinging between Latin American populist leaders dragged on Thursday, after days of Argentina’s President Javier Milei needling his leftist counterparts in Mexico and Colombia — coming to a head with a diplomatic blow the night before.
Since right-wing Milei stepped into the political spotlight last year, he has regularly traded barbs with Colombian President Gustavo Petro and Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. But in recent days the political rivalry descended into long winded insults launched over social media.
It heated up after Milei lashed out at Petro in an interview with CNN, excerpts of which aired Wednesday night, prompting his Colombian counterpart to order Argentine diplomats out of his country.
“Not much can be expected from someone who was a terrorist murderer,” Milei said in one excerpt, a reference to Petro’s past as a member of a guerrilla group. CNN’s full interview is scheduled to air Sunday.
Milei and Petro harbor opposite political and economic ideologies. Petro won the presidency with pledges to create social programs to aid Colombia’s long-neglected poor, while Milei — a self-described anarcho-capitalist — promised to slash government spending while eliminating ministries and costly programs as a means to rein in triple-digit inflation. He even toted a chainsaw on the campaign trail to illustrate just how aggressive were his intended cuts. [...]
Brian Winter, vice president of the New York-based Council of the Americas, said the back-and-forth between Latin American leaders could have longer-term repercussions on regional relations. “Latin America has a long tradition of these food fights between leaders on the left and the right,” said Winter, noting historic rifts between Jair Bolsonaro and Alberto Fernández, former presidents of Brazil and Argentina that are the biggest nations in the Mercosur trade bloc but who still refused to speak.
“If we could see better cooperation between countries in Latin America, there would be a better payoff for the region’s people, but this ideological divide runs deep. It reflects polarization not just within countries, but among them,” Winter said.
