Two South American heads of state are headed to the CPAC convention in Washington, D.C. One is worth emulating, and the other is a train wreck waiting to happen.
The leader who has a solid record of accomplishment is President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador. He's done what blue cities in the U.S., from New York to LA and from Memphis to Kansas City, have failed to do: lock up the people shooting and killing people. He's done what the dysfunctional narco-state south of our border, Mexico, barely even attempts.
Using what is called a “Territorial Control Plan” and emergency powers from the legislature, he has locked up over 10,000 gang members in El Salvador. The age of arrest was lowered, ending catch and release. As in the United States, robbery gangs who steal everything from cars to electronics use minors to perpetrate crimes. Gang leaders then paid pennies on the dollar for the stolen goods. Even if the minors were caught, they couldn't be imprisoned. This made the cost of entry into a life of crime very low. Bukele ended that.
In his 2024 election, he received 83% of the vote. From having one of the highest murder rates in the Americas when he took office, El Salvador is now among the lowest in Latin America. There were 154 murders last year in a population of 6.5 million. Compare that to the 617 murders in Chicago last year, with a population of only 2.5 million. Bukele, the grandson of Palestinian immigrants, is only the second independent president of that country. He bypassed the parties of both the left and the right to win his elections.
While Argentina's new president, Javier Milei, made headlines with his campaign to take a chainsaw to the country's bloated bureaucracy, he is, to say the least, a bit of a nut. The week after his election, Milei headed to Queens, N.Y., to visit the tomb of the late Rebbe Menachem Schneerson to thank him for his win. There, he talked about converting to Judaism. He also bashed another famous Argentinian, Pope Francis. Fast forward to last week, when he spent over an hour in Rome in a tête-à-tête, talking about policy, religion, and a possible visit to Argentina with, well, Pope Francis. You might think, shades of Joe Biden, who claims the religion of whatever group he is with.
And then there are the dogs. After his primary victory, the first "people" Milei thanked were his "best strategists," Murray, Milton, Robert, and Lucas. He then called them his "four-legged children." As an economist, he dutifully named his dogs named after his favorite libertarian economists. (I'll let you fill in the blanks.)
Related: Anti-Socialist Javier Milei Is Elected President of Argentina
During his campaign, Milei talked about one of his closest friends and confidants, an English mastiff called Conan (yes, named after the barbarian). He paid $50,000 to clone Conan after the dog died in 2017. At this point, you might chalk Milei up as a potty sentimentalist worthy of some Agatha Christie character in an obscure English village. But when asked about why he jumped into the race for president in the first place, Milei said he enlisted the help of a medium to contact his trusted adviser, Conan. And from beyond doggie heaven (or is it the other place), Conan told him it was his calling to become president of Argentina. Witches of Endor, please call your office.
Milei apparently has the Jewish vote, the Catholic vote, and the Voodoo vote sewn up. If only dogs could vote, he'd be president for life. In the meantime, Latin America is famous for the inevitable socialist and labor boomerang that follows pure libertarian policies. At that point, the country might need an exorcism to keep Conan from doing more than the typical political damage Argentina is famous for.
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