Among the world leaders and politicians at the inauguration of Argentine President Javier Milei, one stood out as the lone attendee from the U.S. Congress who was personally invited by the new government: Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Fla. Dubbed Milei’s “friend in Washington,” Salazar has made it clear that the new president’s extreme libertarian policies should be the new governing model for the entire Western Hemisphere.
“We need to help Argentina because they are going to be the trailblazers,” she said last week after Milei’s inauguration. “That country is going to set the course and point of reference for the rest of Latin America as to the way that a country should be governed. Free market economy, small government, individual liberties, freedom, private sector, no corruption — that’s what we’re trying to do.”
Simply labeling support for Milei as classic MAGA ideology completely misses a deeper reality about American politics and Latin America.
The Florida Republican of Cuban American descent also made Spanish-language media appearances in Argentina and said she would ask Milei to help “uproot Castroism in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.” Those comments followed her endorsement of Milei before his election, when Salazar praised Argentina as a country with “only one culture, only one religion and only one race, completely homogenous.” (As a former news anchor, including nearly 20 years at the NBCUniversal subsidiary Telemundo, Salazar almost certainly knew that her words erased millions of nonwhite Argentines.)
At first glance, Salazar’s unwavering support is just another example of the American right fawning over Milei. In a September interview with Tucker Carlson, Milei praised Donald Trump for continuing “his fight against socialism, because he’s one of the few who fully understood that the battle is against socialism, that the battle is against the statists.” In his inaugural address, Milei prepped Argentines for a…
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