Outside Argentina’s Senate on June 12th riot police manned barricades as protesters surged forward. Some screamed at the police to take off their helmets and join them. One lawmaker staggered away after taking a blast of pepper spray to the face. Soon protesters were hurling Molotov cocktails. A journalist’s car was set alight. The government, prone to hyperbole, called the protests an attempted “coup”. Inside the Senate things were nearly as tense. Some senators demanded the session stop due to the violence outside but were slapped down. Insults flew. “Mentally ill” was the term Cristina López, an opposition senator, used to describe President Javier Milei; the combative libertarian economist, who recently shrieked out a set of rock songs to a packed stadium, calls himself “one of the two most important leaders in the world.” He has not named the other.
The chaos was prompted by voting on two reform bills with which Mr Milei hopes to turn around Argentina’s flailing economy. One delegates emergency powers to the president, privatises several state-owned firms and creates big incentives for would-be foreign investors (among much else). The other aims to raise desperately needed tax revenue. After more than 20 hours of deliberation which ran overnight the Senate passed them both. The vote on the first was so tight the vice-president had to break the tie. In the second the reinstatement of income tax, eliminated last year by the previous government in an effort to cling to power, was knocked back. The government celebrated wildly nonetheless. Mr Milei tweeted his catchphrase, “VIVA LA LIBERTAD CARAJO”, roughly “LONG LIVE FUCKING FREEDOM.”