Where Did Argentina’s Firebrand New President Get His Political Ideas?

Javier Milei Has Changed the Meaning of Libertad From Collective Struggle to Libertarianism—With Help from the U.S. Right

Last month, Argentina swore in as president yet another right-wing populist with mutton chops and bad hair who built a political career out of screaming at people on television with threatening chutzpah.

Javier Milei’s signature campaign proposal was dollarizing Argentina’s economy, which both the Financial Times and the Economist criticized as a death blow to the country’s economic sovereignty. He has backed away from that proposal since being elected but has kept others, such as shutting down all public infrastructure work unless privately funded and slashing regulations and subsidies on everything …

Why Did Governments Compensate Slaveholders for Abolition?

Across the Americas, Emancipation Moved Slowly, and Profited Those Who Had Benefited from Slavery Most

The records are difficult to make out at first—blurred rows listing the names of slaveholders, enslaved individuals, and prices under the dim light of the microfilm reader. But once brought …

How Do Pandemics End? | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

How Do Pandemics End?

Argentina’s 19th-Century Cholera Outbreaks Show the Myth of a Single, Definitive Conclusion

The study of epidemics has routinely centered around what medical historian Charles Rosenberg calls a “dramaturgic structure”: a story of infection that builds to a climax of widespread illness and …

How Latin America’s Left Could Lose Their Scapegoat

Will Obama’s Trip to Cuba and Argentina Be the Nail in the Coffin for the Region’s Tired Anti-American Script?

Barack Obama took a deserved victory lap in Latin America last week.

Critics of the president’s opening to Cuba accuse Obama of appeasing the Castro regime, but they missed the historic …

Argentina Inches Closer to Wall Street

Voters Reluctantly Say Farewell to Peronism

Economic crises besiege Argentina with the regularity of earthquakes over a tectonic plate. These crises can be devastating, wiping out family savings, employment, and life plans. It seems we’re always …

Stop Making Argentina Your Morality Tale

After Years of Every Default and Inflation Scenario Imaginable, Arcane Financial Developments Are Now Dinner Table Conversation

I woke up a couple of weeks ago to an Argentina that had, against its will, defaulted on its sovereign debt. For those unversed in international finance terminology, that basically …