The most dangerous woman in Argentina is likely to be the next President
With the right likely to return in 2023, most worried observers have focused on a return of Mauricio Macri or the hard right 'libertarian' Javier Milei. Patricia Bullrich may be the worst of all.
The failed assassination attempt against polarizing Vice President and former President Cristina Fernandez Kirchner by a neo-nazi has lead to quick condemnation from across the political spectrum, including by the people who created the conditions that lead to this - from the media to former president Mauricio Macri, even some of Cristina’s harshest critics condemned the attack even if they did it opportunistically. While the weeks after the attack the initial condemnations were weakened by attempts to downplay the would be assassin as a deranged lone wolf and not part of a larger conspiracy, not to mention outright accusations by the Macri aligned media that the assassination was a false flag, at least the first response from the “center” right was condemnation of political violence, which considering the history of the Argentine right, is better than nothing.
Not everyone did even the minimum however, and a spectrum of the most extreme elements of the right wing opposition had immediately focused on blaming the victim and implying their may be a conspiracy, consistent with their habits of radicalizing the anti-Peronist right and underlying democracy in Argentina.
Among the people who refused to condemn the attempted assassination were a few obvious characters - “libertarian” Presidential candidate Javier Milei was never going to break character, neither were the hard right wing of the mainstream Republican Proposal (PRO) party of Macri, including cartoonish conservative figures such a Francisco Sanchez and Amelia Granata whose main role is to appeal to a hard right with offensive statements. Perhaps least surprising of all was the response by another Presidential candidate, Macri’s former Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich, who tweeted condemnation towards the national government for responding to this incident, implying there was a cover-up while providing no condemnation of the act itself, this all after spending the week attacking Cristina’s supporters for protesting in support of her against the dubious criminal trial targeting her for corruption allegations.
Bullrich’s hardline obsession with firm hand law and order politics are at the core of her Presidential campaign, and are nothing new for the former Minister who made a big show of fighting crime with mixed results, warping the Security Ministry into a more explicitly pro-police political role when it had historically been in the Argentine context as much about providing oversight and reform of the security forces. This has been an interesting transformation for a figure whose political career started as a left wing guerilla, but Bullrich has now spent half a century as one of the most interesting - but insidious - figures in the country.
Patricia Bullrich comes from an old money political family - on her maternal side she is a Pueyrredón, one of the blue blooded families of the country who have ruled Argentina since the country’s independence as the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata. Patricia claims her grandmother on this side told her she would be President someday, and this has been her goal since. In University Patricia, along with her sister Julieta, became involved in the Peronist Youth which would form the foundation of the left wing of Peronism. She would join the idealistic young Peronists in advocating for the poor and was at the airport when Juan Peron returned to the country, which resulted in the Ezeiza massacre and the President’s betrayal of the Peronist left.
This drove both Patricia (known as “La Piba”) and Julieta Bullrich into the Montoneros, the left wing Peronist guerilla group which would take up arms against the government. The Bullrich sisters were involved in the Juventudes Argentinas para la Emancipación Nacional (JAEN) organization that rolled into the Montoneros, lead by Julieta’s boyfriend Rodolfo Galimberti, Peron’s personal liaison with the Peronist youth. This group would kidnap agricultural businessmen Juan and Jorge Born for ransom, and one alleged to be involved in multiple bombings before being wiped out after the military coup in 1976.
Among the survivors were the Bullrich sisters, Galimberti, and Patricia’s boyfriend and later husband Marcelo "Pancho" Langieri. This coincidence would lead allegations that the older Bullrich and Galimberti were collaborators with the dictatorship (if not CIA), a fairly common allegation when the Montoneros were plagued with government plants, but one that is not too bizarre when you consider the career trajectory of both Pato Bullrich and Galimberti.
First, the story of Rodolfo Galimberti, who died of a heart attack in 2002, is worth noting to better understand how Patricia Bullrich became what she is. Galimberti, along with his partner Julieta Bullrich, went into exile, first in Brazil, then Mexico, before finally settling in Paris until the return of democracy in Argentina (the younger Bullrich sister would die in a car accident in 1983). Galimberti would return to Argentina during the neoliberal Menem presidency, where his contacts among ex-guerillas, the military, the Argentine business elite, and the CIA would make him an advisor the the Argentine intelligence agency SIDE - and also a very wealthy man. He befriended and later worked with his former hostage Jorge Born, former military official later convicted of crimes against humanity Jorge Radice, as well as numerous ex-CIA agents who he would form a security firm with. At the time of his death he was a businessman with ties across the elite, plagued by allegations of fraud and of being a CIA asset.
Patricia Bullrich would follow Galimberti and her sister in exile following a brief period of prison. Her and her then husband Langieri would briefly return to Argentina before returning to Brazil - she would return for good alone in 1982 as the dictatorship started to collapse following the War in the Malvinas. She immediately got involved in Peronist politics again, briefly supporting the policies of Menem and Buenos Aires Governor Eduardo Duhalde before abandoning Peronism and joining the Alianza para el Trabajo, la Justicia y la Educación (or “La Alianza”), a center-right current of the Radical Civic Union which would lead the opposition to Menem, leading to the election of conservative radical Fernando de la Rúa as President in 1999. She would be rewarded with a role in the De La Rua cabinet, her integration into La Alianza was notably facilities by De La Rua’s son and Fernando de Santibanes, a businessman who would later be appointed head of SIDE (until he resigned as part of a bribery scandal.
Bullrich’s conversion to the conservative flank of anti-Peronist Radicalism would come with a full ideological transformation - although she had by this point embraced the neoliberal Peronism dominant at the time, by 1999 she had become a full fledged free market evangelical and developed her interest in criminal justice and policing, the subject of the PhD she would pursue at the National University of General San Martín over this time. De La Rua made her the first woman to occupy the Secretariat of Criminal Policy and Penitentiary Affairs of the Ministry of Justice and then in 2000 the Minister of Labor, Employment and Social Security.
Bullrich spent her year as minister focused on enforcing the “zero deficit” policy of the administration that resulted from the economic crisis that exploded at the end of the Menem administration. She modified the Labor Reform Law to eliminate family allowances for workers, obliged union leaders to submit sworn income statements, and most infamously decreed a 13% reduction in the salaries of public sector workers. In the face of public resistance and a deteriorating economic and social situation, she resigned in 2001 - De La Rua would soon follow in December after state security forces killed 39 protestors in the face of social instability, after economic minister Domingo Cavallo implemented the infamous “corral” freeze that restricted the ability of individual’s to withdraw their savings from the bank.
Like many De La Rua administration alumni forced to resign in disgrace, Bullrich has never shown any sort of self-reflection for the government’s failures, blaming the economic crisis that threw millions into poverty on Peronism (while she’s not wrong that Menem created the conditions that lead to the 2001 crisis, De La Rua and Bullrich supported these economic policies, even bringing back Menem’s economic minister Cavallo. Instead Bullrich doubled down, retreating into the anti-Peronist stronghold of Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires where she lead the classical liberal party Unión por la Libertad, an ally of ultra liberal Ricardo Lopez Murphy, another De La Rua exile suddenly back in the political limelight these days. Bullrich used this position to become elected to the Chamber of Deputies representing the City of Buenos Aires, where she used her platform during the left leaning Kirchner administrations to criticize the government for being soft on crime, financially irresponsible, and corrupt - the latter became especially valuable to her, as it made her an ally of the the politically erratic anti-corruption crusader Elisa Carrió, a favorite of “progressive” anti-Peronist porteños. Bullrich became an outspoken advocate of lawfare and has been one of the architects of corruption investigations against Cristina Kirchner for both real and imagined crimes.
Speaking of lawfare, Bullrich was one of the original peddlers of conspiracies around the suicide of prosecutor Albert Nisman, one of the investigators of the 1994 AMIA bombing who accused Cristina Kirchner and foreign minister Hector Timerman of working with the Iranian government to cover up the bombing (which occurred when CFK was a deputy representing the southern province of Santa Cruz and a relatively minor national figure). Nisman’s investigations, promoted heavily by Bullrich, resulted in ongoing trials against both CFK and Timerman - the later would die of cancer after being denied by judges an opportunity to travel to the United States to continue his treatment, and would only be absolved of accusations of treason after his death.
Bullrich lead the crusade alongside her second husband, Guillermo Yanco, the former president of Bullrich’s UpL, vice-president of the Holocaust Museum, and a figure with ties to both the Israeli and US governments. Yaco has long been a political advisor of his wife, and the couple is famous for being guests of honor at the annual 4th of July celebration at the US Embassy.
When Macri was elected in 2015 as part of the explicitly center-right Cambiemos Coalition, one of his first appointments was Bullrich as Minister of Security - she would go on to become arguably his most high profile minister and mouthpiece for a heavy handed war on crime, a dramatic shift from a cabinet position that had only become independent when Cristina Kirchner separated the office from the Ministry of Justice in 2010. Historically, matters of domestic security and crime were matters of the Departments of Interior and Justice. Security became a separate ministry in part because of rising crime rates during CFK’s presidency but also to provide civilian oversight over the federal police for reform and community outreach - the first Security Minister was Nilda Garré, a leftist dissident Peronist and human rights attorney (who ironically was also affiliated with the Montoneros during early 1970s).
Patricia Bullrich, as Security Minister, instead of providing reform and oversight over the police, served as their fiercest advocate to give them as much power as possible. Among her first actions was overseeing the transfer of police authority within the metropolitan city of Buenos Aires from the federal police to the metropolitan police (therefore effectively handing security oversight of the capital from the federal government to the autonomous city government, coincidentally also the political stronghold of Macri and Bullrich’s right wing Propuesta Republicana (PRO) party). Another priority was a “social protest protocol” which would give the security forces greater discretionary power in response to protests, enabling greater use of rubber bullets and tear gas, limiting journalist coverage to “certain areas”, and to criminalize road blockages. Another protocol gave security forces greater discretion in firearm use, effectively legalizing discharge under the open ended concept of “imminent danger”, Bullrich concurrently advocated for civilian firearm use against perceived criminals, championing US-style vigilante justice and the right to bear arms after a few high profile attacks on robbers. One of the most symbolic moments of the Macri administration was the so-called “Chocobar Doctrine” - in December 2017, Buenos Aires provincial police officer Luis Chocobar shot and killed an assailant who mugged an American tourist. After an investigation it became apparent that Chocobar shot the suspect in the back while he was attempting to run away. Although Chocobar was ultimately convicted for aggravated homicide in the line of duty, his actions were championed by both Macri and Bullrich who advocated for the right of security forces to fire at escaping suspects.
One of Bullrich’s main priorities with one eye to her own career ambitions was a heavy handed war on drug trafficking, frequently advertising seizures of marijuana, cocaine, and methamphetamines, and signing agreements with the United States which allowed the DEA to operate out of Misiones near the triple border with Brazil and Paraguay. This has also been an opportunity to engage in xenophobia, frequently blaming the drug trade on Paraguayan and Peruvian immigrants. Supporters of the minister point out her prolific seizures and arrests of potential traffickers, including record seizures of marijuana in 2019 (while the Security Ministry concurrently organized the limited authorization of legal medical cannabis under the oversight of Jujuy governor - and Macri/Bullrich ally - Gerardo Morales).
Meanwhile, a preliminary report by police oversight organization CORREPI in 2019 estimated that in under 3 years of the Macri/Cambiemos government, the state repressive apparatus killed 1,206 people, the greatest increase in state repression since 1983, with an average of more than 400 state murders per year. CORREPI pointed to liberal gun usage, murder before detention, forced disappearances, repression of protests and social conflicts as some of the many issues with Bullrich’s security forces. They also identified the increased politicization of the National Gendarmerie (the federal security forces) including incidents where they prevented opposition legislators from entering National Congress.
Although supporters point out Bullrich’s actions as necessary in the face of rising crime, there was definitely significant oversights in her heavy handed approach - an interest in fighting human trafficking for one, especially in rescuing the victims of sex trafficking, as rescues dropped 70% between 2015 and 2016 and continued to decline during Cambiemos’ 4 years in government.
Perhaps the darkest element of Bullrich’s Ministry was her heavy handed approach on combating Mapuche dissidents in Patagonia. The Mapuche, the indigenous people of northern Patagonia, have long been in conflict with the governments of both Argentina and Chile, their protests and land seizures have resulted in state oppression on both sides of the border. On the Argentine side, heavy handed responses to protests (along with language accusing them of being foreign invaders that harkens back to the genocidal Conquest of the Desert) became a hallmark Bullrich’s Gendarmerie, leading to a few high profile casualties and disappearances, the most high profile being those of Santiago Maldonado and Rafael Nahuel.
Santiago Maldonado was an activist who moved to the Patagonian province of Chubut to work with indigenous people. He disappeared on August 1, 2017 after joining local Mapuche activists to protest the land holdings of the multinational Benetton Group after the Gendarmerie used force to disperse protesters. His body was discovered 77 days later - according to the autopsy, he drowned with zero evidence of bruises or any other evidence of police involvement. As a result, the investigating judge closed the case, however there was never an adequate answer over why the police attempted to cover up the investigation and to this day Bullrich continues to attack the Maldonado family for wanting to know more.
In November 2017 Rafael Nahuel, a 22-year-old member of the Lafken Winkul Mapu Mapuche community, was shot in the back and killed by the Argentine Naval Prefecture under the command of the Ministry of Security. This occured during a few days of violence between the Mapuche and security forces near Lake Mascardi in the province of Río Negro , from where they had been violently evicted, along with two other indigenous people from the community, two days earlier. A 20 year old girl was also shot by security forces. During a press conference, Minister Bullrich, accompanied by Justice Minister Germán Garavano. maintained that Nahuel's death was the consequence of legitimate acts carried out by the security forces of the Naval Prefecture, because the victims were part of a "group that is outside the law that tries to become a de facto power to take over a territory", armed with "high-caliber weapons", with which they attacked the security forces.
The governments of multiple provinces, as well as the national opposition, expressed concern with the activity of the security forces in this instance. Following criminal investigation of five security officials and a few Mapuche leaders, the Federal Chamber of General Roca, after appeals, ordered the arrest of Prefect Francisco Pintos for aggravated homicide, rejecting the defense and specifically calling out the version of events provided by the Ministry of Security as inconsistent with the facts at hand.
Increasingly it also appears that Bullrich and the Ministry of Security may have been the architect of Macri’s spy ring - it has come out that the former President had illegally spied on and tapped the phone of political enemies and allies alike, another curious case of “Republican values” from the authoritarian minister.
After Macri lost his reelection bid in 2019 to Alberto Fernandez and the Peronist lead Frente de Todos coalition orchestrated by Cristina Kirchner, Bullrich took up the position a President of PRO and was elected as a national deputy for the City of Buenos Aires, where she remains popular. Bullrich has since thrived in an obstructionist role that anyone familiar with Republican tactics in the United States would recognize - she has gone scorched earth against the governing coalition, as leader of the “hawks” faction of Cambiemos, resisting any attempts for good faith dialogue with the government. During the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic she was one of the most outspoken opponents of restrictions as well as a vaccine skeptic, joining protests in the capital as well as the north. Since then she has mostly attacked the government on economic and security issues, denying her government’s role in the economic situation while offering no proposals of her own besides a catch all call to completely open up the economy and for “labor flexibility” that would allow the private sector to fire workers at will - in reality she’s calling for effectively the same economic program as libertarians Milei and Espert.
In matters of security, she continues to take aim against the Mapuche and anyone who “threatens private property”. Just this week, Bullrich alongside Miguel Pichetto. called for an amendment of the national defense law that would allow the Armed Forces to be sent to the Mapuche territory around Villa Mascardi to pacify unrest. Under the umbrella of a promotional tour for her latest book, the ominously titled War without quarter: Ending insecurity in Argentina, she has toured the country to advocate her hard-right positions, often accompanied by Gendarmerie forces who seem to still look to her as their leader instead of the Frente de Todos ministry. As the government escalated conflicts with the agricultural sector who is refusing to liquidate grain exports to avoid paying taxes without a currency devaluation which would further increase the value of their position as one of the few sectors with access to US Dollars, Bullrich has also appeared as their champion (a return to her Pueyrredón old money roots), seen during rural society rallies dressed as a cowboy. Overall, despite her relative personal social liberalism compared to other hard right factors, Bullrich has continued to present herself as a macho, uncompromising heavy handed figure who is willing to do the dirty work needed to “free” Argentina of criminals and lazy unworking parasites who the Peronists continue to support.
Her hardline approach is politically advantageous on two fronts. As an opposition deputy with a safe seat and nothing to lose for not actually governing at this time, Bullrich is the Cambiemos figure most willing and able to dive as deep into the Bolsonarista mud as “outsider” Milei. Bullrich has the luxury of both advocating for an alliance with the extreme “libertarians” while also cannibalizing their votes. Macri is attempting this too, however he is tainted by his own administration whereas Bullrich was allowed to play the role as the hardliner as minister the way that would never be possible as President - he also seems slightly more squeamish of what the backlash to shock therapy he would face would mean. Recent comments from Macri support that he would be more likely to back Bullrich than his former protege Horacio Rodriguez Larreta.
Speaking of the Mayor of Buenos Aires, on the other side of Cambiemos, the so called “doves” include Larreta and Jujuy Governor Morales, who differ less over ideology and more over strategy - as actual heads of government with responsibility, the two need to maintain constructive dialogue with the federal government. The presence of the “libertarians”, as well as the position of some of their supposed allies including Macri and Bullrich to support them, has forced the “doves” to take increasingly extreme, confrontational positions that are impacting their jobs, to the advantage of Bullrich.
Larreta is Bullrich’s biggest rival for the presidency, and by looking for alliances in the center along with his own (mostly PR-driven) image of technocratic competence harkens back to what made Macri electable in the first place, and the capital’s mayor is probably Cambiemos strongest candidate for the general election as well as for actually governing (and achieving the shock therapy the market is demanding). However many PRO partisans do not trust him because of his superficial veneer of moderation and positive working relationship with Frente de Todos figures including Sergio Massa (often described as one of his few friends inn politics) and Alberto Fernandez himself, and so Bullrich continues to undercut him both among partisans and deeper in the provinces - Cambiemos has become a national force but the party’s brain trust continues to be perceived as Porteño-centric, a headache that is harder for the Mayor to shake than the Deputy who has the free time to tour the country. Larreta has political machine support among the Radical Civic Union in Buenos Aires city and province, but he lacks friends in the Radical machine provincial strongholds of Mendoza, Jujuy, and Corrientes, as well as the hard-right PRO footholds growing in Cordoba and Patagonia.
While polling in Argentina is notoriously unreliable and in general over represents the right - both because of who finances the polling firms and because the nature of polling favors the affluent, including the old (landlines) and very online (online polling), it is concerning but also not surprising that Bullrich is increasingly the frontrunner among Cambiemos primary candidates. Polarization has generally favored the right wing of the party, benefitting Pato over Larreta or prospective moderate “crypto-socialists”, and although Bullrich is still competing for a lane with the former president who still maintains a loyal following among party insiders, Macri’s own failings as president make him politically toxic in a general election - while it is very obvious he wants the job back, he still will not openly say as much and is more afraid of failure than his ally who would do anything for the job. And Bullrich may be polarizing but her favorabilities remain much higher than Macri. The former President has regained ground thanks to the failures of the Alberto Fernandez administration and the inability of the current government to curb inflation, but he’s still very unpopular in parts of the country and would be the best case scenario for the ruling coalition whose only strategy right now for holding onto power appears to be the dangerous game of trying to win by one vote in a field of bad options.
And unfortunately this means Patricia Bullrich, despite her extreme views, disastrous terms as Security and Labor Minister, and history of betraying political allies for her own benefit, just may be the front runner for 2023. Argentina is limping through yet another economic crisis, and voters are willing to vote for whoever promises change - the media has been using recent polling that shows the majority of respondents supporting “shock therapy” to get the economy on track to celebrate the rightward shift of the electorate. This may or may not be true - these same polls show that most voters oppose the erosion of labor rights or the cutting of social spending, and it’s likely many people are just desperate for any proposal to stop inflation - but either way it plays into the hands of the right. Larreta may be the favorite of the establishment and neutral voters, but Bullrich has the advantage of right wing voters in the primary, without the toxicity of Macri or Milei (who still remains a risk of cannibalizing Cambiemos voters as the party continues to damage itself with friendly fire). And she just might be the most dangerous candidate of all, smarter or at least more savvy than the other heirs for the “Argentine Bolsonaro” crown, and a complete sociopath willing to work with anyone for power. And possibly also a CIA asset, certainly an Americanophile who would gladly destabilize the region for Braden over Peron.