President Javier Milei has brought down inflation in Argentina, but economic pain is giving his Peronist opponents a new opening ahead of the 2027 election AVELLANEDA, Argentina -- Several nights a week, scores of supporters of Argentina’s divisive former president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, gather outside the French-style apartment building in Buenos Aires where she is under house arrest, beating drums, blaring trumpets and chanting, “Cristina for president!” After about an hour, Fernández gives them what they came for: She steps onto the third-floor balcony — as close as she can get to the crowds below while serving her six-year corruption sentence — and waves with both hands. I have certainty that Cristina will be freed and will return as president,” said Graciela Nadal, 66, who keeps daily vigil outside Fernández’s home with other members of the Cristina Libre, or Free Cristina, movement, an almost cult-like group demanding the release of the former leader. More than a year after the Supreme Court upheld her conviction for defrauding the state during her two terms as president, from 2007 to 2015, and banned her from holding office for life, Fernández remains among the most polarizing figures in Argentina and the most influential living leader of Peronism, the populist movement focused on labor rights that has dominated Argentine politics since the 1940s.
To some, she is a political prisoner, punished for standing up to powerful interests. To others, she personifies the corruption and economic mismanagement that have roiled Argentina for decades. But just over a year before libertarian President Javier Milei seeks reelection, Peronism's enduring obsession with the 73-year-old former president is taking a toll, undermining its attempt to shape a political alternative just as frustration with Milei's austerity program gives the movement an opening.
And they now have a big opportunity,” said Marcelo J. García, Americas director at the risk consultancy Horizon Engage. The opposition's efforts to regroup and respond to Milei, politicians say, could become a test case for progressive movements across Latin America reeling from a string of election losses and struggling under pressure from the Trump administration.
At a recent rally outside Fernández’s home marking the anniversary of the 2022 assassination attempt against her, Máximo Kirchner, her son and a Peronist lawmaker, spoke at length about the movement's past — just not its recent past. To thunderous applause, Kirchner praised the expansive welfare programs of his mother's presidency, which ended over a decade ago. But he said nothing about her subsequent term as vice president under Alberto Fernández (2019-2023), whose administration presided over the triple-digit inflation that helped vault Milei to power in 2023 on a pledge to shrink the government.
Through dramatic budget cuts, Milei has stabilized Argentina’s currency and brought annual inflation down from nearly 300% in 2024 to just over 30% this year. But many Argentines have yet to see the economic revival that he promised would follow the pain: Paychecks buy less, utilities cost more and jobs are disappearing as cheap imports pummel local industry. The Peronists won roughly a third of the vote in last year’s midterms and remain Milei’s likeliest challengers in a presidential runoff next year.
Even from her wrought-iron balcony, analysts say, Fernández has held back potential successors to pursue her own comeback. She recently took her case to the U.N. Human Rights Committee, challenging her conviction and disqualification from public office on the grounds of political persecution.
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