Representative Salazar: Milei’s Rise in Argentina Could Mark the Beginning of a New Era

A member of U.S. Congress who attended the inauguration of Argentina’s President Javier Milei Sunday predicted that the libertarian president “could mean the dawn of a generation of new Latin American trailblazers.”

Rep. Maria Salazar, R.-Fla., who represents a Miami-area district in the Sunshine State, was among three Republican House Members who watched Milei — nicknamed “El Lion” and “El Loco” (“The Crazy One”) — receive the presidential sash of the financially strained Argentina.

“I liked his inaugural address very much,” Salazar told Newsmax on Sunday. “He told the people of Argentina things were going to get tougher before they got better. He was honest with them.”

Salazar added that she met newly minted Foreign Minister Diana Mondino, an economist who “will be one of the best in what looks like a top-notch cabinet.”

“I hope she and Milei can guide Argentina the way Chile went in the 1980s when they brought in the ‘Chicago boys’ and saved their country’s Social Security system,” Salazar added in reference to the University of Chicago economists who followed in the footsteps of conservative icon Milton Friedman, one of Milei’s heroes.

Salazar has a long history of experience with Latin America. As a TV reporter in 1998, she interviewed former Chilean President Augusto Pinochet after the onetime strongman was held under house arrest in London. She also became the last journalist to get an interview with Pinochet before he died in Chile in 2006.

The Floridian also responded to a report in The New York Times Sunday that Milei was backing away from some of his promises to roll back big government and replace the Argentine peso with the U.S. dollar as the national currency.

“I don’t see it,” she told Newsmax. “He’s already starting on cutting the number of ministries and that looks like a kept promise to me.”

In his first executive order Sunday, the new Argentinian president reduced the number of cabinet ministries and other agencies from 21 to 9.

John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.