A blog of the Argentina Project
What Recession? Argentina's Tough-on-Crime Minister Changes the Pre-Election Debate
To outside observers, Argentina’s hardline security minister, Patricia Bullrich, is a lightning rod. Over the past three years she has tangled repeatedly with human rights groups, infuriating not only local activists aligned with the country’s former leftist president, but also international heavyweights such as Amnesty International.
But at home Bullrich’s influence is growing. Though President Mauricio Macri sees himself as the region’s liberal stalwart, she has arguably become his most powerful minister. This is especially true following her smooth handling of the G-20 summit in Buenos Aires late last year. Given Argentina’s protest culture, expectations for the summit were low: “Everybody expected it to be a fiasco,” Christine Lagarde, the International Monetary Fund’s managing director, said. By the end, Lagarde was hailing the gathering as “one of the best” ever held...
