CPAC Argentina Signals the Rise of a New Kind of Diplomacy, by Lucía Cholakian Herrera – 10 March 2025

From New Lines Magazine

On Dec. 4, 2024, the new and not-so-new leaders of the global far right gathered at the Hilton Hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina, for the foreign edition of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Amid handshakes, smiles and selfies, the event’s participants conjured the specter of an existential war.

The right-wing confab, which has gained more relevance in recent years — and recently hosted President Donald Trump and his senior adviser, Elon Musk, in a Lollapalooza-style event — was brought to Argentina, a nation of 47 million that has previously been a bastion of progressive politics but has recently made a sharp right turn, electing the “anarchocapitalist” economist Javier Milei as president in 2023.

CPAC started in the United States and remains based there, but has made international summits a regular feature. The first was held in Japan in 2017. Since then, the event has been exported to Hungary, South Korea, Mexico and Brazil. The Buenos Aires stage featured lawmakers, think tank leaders and former politicians from Latin America, Europe and the U.S., as well as Argentine podcast hosts, activists and social media personalities — all of whom spoke for a full day that followed a tight schedule. A notably enthusiastic audience, primarily young and male, cheered as these speakers took the stage. 

[READ THE REST]

Lucía Cholakian Herrera is a journalist covering Argentina and Latin America from Buenos Aires.

Except where noted otherwise, original writing and translations produced by the Left Renewal Blog Collective are published under a Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial–ShareAlike 4.0 licence. Republished and translated material remains subject to the licence and terms of its original publication.