Pyrotechnics shot into the air, atomic bombs blew up on the screen, and then the president of Argentina began to sing.
“Give me fire, give me the fire of your love,” belted Javier Milei in his rendition of the Sandro de América classic, before his deep raspy voice took on a beloved Charly García anthem: “I, who fought for freedom, but I could never have it.”
This was the president’s book launch-turned-rock concert. This being Milei, it was staged before a crowd of 15,000 of his diehard supporters.
The book itself is a 573-page doorstop made up of speeches and social media posts from the first year of his presidency. Milei has given it a characteristically bashful title: The Construction of the Miracle.
But the real showstopper wasn’t the book – it was Milei himself, basking in the spotlight as rock star and president rolled into one.
Wearing a black leather jacket, he swapped his trademark chainsaw for a microphone and sang a full hour of rock classics. His venue was the Movistar Arena in the Villa Crespo neighbourhood of Buenos Aires – a stadium that has also hosted the likes of Liam Gallagher, Katy Perry and more recently Pulp (who, for the record, were excellent).
It was just the latest display of Milei’s long-held dream to be a musician; before turning to economics, he fronted a Rolling Stones cover band. And the far right leader had certainly dialled things up in the time since the campaign event I sat through at the same stadium nearly two years ago. The music and bombing imagery were present in both, but this time, the crowd was treated to a full set.
The spectacle – which was broadcast live on state TV – comes at a pivotal moment for the president, as his administration is engulfed in an escalating political and economic crisis.
In August, protesters pelted the president with stones amid outrage over corruption allegations swirling around his sister Karina, one of the most powerful figures in his inner circle.
The scandal dented public trust and rattled his government. In September his La Libertad Avanza party suffered a bruising defeat at the ballot box in Buenos Aires province, home to nearly 40% of Argentines.
On top of this, the day before his performance, José Luis Espert – one of Milei’s top congressional candidates in the upcoming October 26 midterm elections – resigned after allegations emerged that he had received a $200,000 payment from an alleged drug trafficker. Espert has insisted the payment was for legitimate consulting work.
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Vanessa, a 36-year-old teacher from Buenos Aires, told me that it was like “living in a Black Mirror episode”. She asked: “Why is the president of my country doing a concert as everything crumbles?”
Uncertainty over Milei’s political future has indeed rattled markets, sparking a sharp sell-off of Argentina’s peso and forcing the government to draw down its already limited foreign reserves to stem the decline.
Milei’s brutal austerity drive has reduced the rampant inflation that once crippled the country, but consumption has collapsed, unemployment has spiked, and cutting subsidies has made housing, healthcare and education increasingly unaffordable.
The crisis has become so bad that US president Donald Trump swooped in with an emergency bailout worth up to $20bn, proclaiming: “We’re backing him 100% – we think he’s doing a fantastic job.” Last week the US finalised the deal, with treasury secretary Scott Bessent also making an unprecedented move by purchasing Argentine pesos.
Milei tried to divert his bad press at the concert by taking aim at his political rivals, urging the crowd to chant “Cristina tobillera” – a jibe at former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who has been convicted of corruption and sentenced to house arrest with an ankle tag. Yet still, outside the concert, people were protesting. One banner read: “Milei, the miracle is that anyone is still buying.”
Opposition leaders were equally scathing of the event. Buenos Aires governor Axel Kicillof said Milei was “living in another reality,” while Ricardo López Murphy, a member of the Chamber of Deputies, quipped: “Come back to planet Earth, president.”
Harriet Barber is a freelance journalist covering politics in South America
