Three Surprises For Argentina’s Presidential Election

In an election that is drowning in uncertainty, the murder of an 11-year-old girl who was on her way to school when she was attacked by petty thieves has forced the whole political ecosystem to hit the brakes and reassess what’s at stake. As the political discussion centered on who would take the primary in Juntos por el Cambio, whether Unión por la Patria would be competitive, and how many votes the far-right ultra-libertarians would get, a cold shower has forced everyone to wake up and acknowledge the deep socio-economic problems the country is immersed in, starting with the troubling levels of poverty and anomie that defines the Conurbano or urban-ring of municipalities skirting the more affluent neighbourhoods that make up the Buenos Aires Metropolitan region (AMBA). Ultimately, the rise of structural poverty and associated violence and drug-trafficking is everyone’s problem given the unitary nature of the country and the size of the Conurbano, which together with AMBA represents nearly 40 percent of the Argentine population. Morena Domínguez’s death occurred after she was assaulted while defending her cell phone from “motochorros” or “motorbike crooks” who flood Greater Buenos Aires who on their rundown scooters pillaging mainly their neighbors, in this case in the municipality of Lanús. They are part of a degraded urban landscape where the poor feed off the poor, public services are few and far between and criminality has become the norm. It happened in a district where Patricia Bullrich’s candidate for Buenos Aires Province governor Néstor Grindetti is on leave as mayor and in the region where Peronist Governor Axel Kicillof is seeking re-election, a neighborhood named Villa Diamante that sits on the border with Buenos Aires City. That what happens in the Conurbano impacts the whole country explains why every major candidate for the Presidency decided to cancel or tone down their end-of-campaign rally.

Dubbed, “a black swan in this campaign season that has paralyzed candidates on both sides” by Ariel Maciel in Perfil, the harrowing nature of the crime, the fact that it was caught on security cameras and broadcasted nationally almost in real time, and its proximity to the PASO primaries could have a lasting impact on the political field by modifying the expected outcome of the election. For this to happen, Morena’s death would have to drag the focus of the campaign from political infighting and the economic debate to one of insecurity and poverty. Would this benefit Bullrich, seen as a hardliner in her primary battle with coalition rival Horacio Rodríguz Larreta, and libertarian lawmakerJavier Milei? Could it lead to a further disillusionment with the political class that further tanks the participation rate?