The tale of hunger clashes with reality

Politics needs symbols because symbols simplify what reality makes complex. A face can represent hope, anger, or frustration; a phrase lasting a few seconds can become the explanation for an entire country. But symbols have a drawback for those who try to manage them: when context appears, some stories begin to tell exactly the opposite of what they seemed destined for.

Two scenes that occurred in recent days show this tension with extraordinary clarity.

The first took place in Bahía Blanca. Javier Milei met again with the young man who had approached him during the 2023 presidential campaign to ask, “Please, save this country.” Three years later, the same young man took his hand again and expressed that he continued to support him. There was no demand for personal benefit or the expectation of an exception granted from power. There was continuity in a political demand: to change the course.

The scene also took on particular significance due to the place and moment in which it occurred. Milei had arrived in Bahía Blanca to tour massive private projects. Mega Company is developing an expansion related to an investment of approximately USD 365.4 million, while Louis Dreyfus Company is planning a new milling plant for USD 400 million, with a processing capacity of up to 4,000 tons per day.

The image, of course, does not alone demonstrate the success of an economic program. Investments have timelines, risks, and results that must be evaluated. But politically it contains something difficult to ignore: the same young man who in 2023 asked for Argentina to stop sinking reappeared while projects aimed at producing, exporting, and investing hundreds of millions of dollars were being discussed around him.

More than a thousand kilometers away, a very different scene emerged.

During a tour by national deputy Gerardo Huesen in Graneros, Tucumán, incidents and confrontations occurred with a group of people. Among those appearing in the videos was Franco Ibán Jerez, who criticized the national government and linked his situation to “hunger.” Later, information began to emerge that changed the initial image of the neighbor completely alien to politics.

Jerez had been publicly presented in 2022 as secretary of government of the Municipality of Graneros and in the Tucumán elections of 2023, he placed second on a list as a candidate for councilor. The municipality claims that he currently does not belong to its staff, so it would be incorrect to present him as a current municipal employee. His previous political career, however, is documented.

That detail matters.

Not because having held a political position prevents experiencing economic difficulties. It would be absurd to claim that. Nor because anyone who has been politically active loses the right to protest. The point is different: when a scene is publicly presented as the spontaneous expression of an ordinary citizen, knowing that its protagonist had responsibilities within the local political structure necessarily changes the context.

And hunger is too serious to accept incomplete contexts.

When a family truly cannot eat, there is a drama that no partisan dispute should trivialize. Precisely for that reason, it should be unsettling that poverty becomes a narrative resource whose political value increases the less we know about the person appearing in front of the camera.

Argentina knows all too well that relationship between need and power. For decades, municipalities, governorships, and territorial structures have developed mechanisms of intermediation through which the leader distributes resources, organizes demands, and becomes an interlocutor between the citizen and what they need. The risk arises when resolving dependency also threatens to make the intermediary unnecessary.

That is why Bahía Blanca and Graneros allow us to look at something deeper than two viral videos.

In one scene, a young man asked for a change of course, and three years later he returns to demand continuity in that transformation. Around him are private projects that promise to expand productive and export capacity. In the other, a complaint initially presented as a spontaneous expression of discontent turns out to be led by someone who had been part of the municipal power and had competed electorally for a position.

The stories are not equivalent, and neither of them alone is enough to explain Argentina.

But together they raise an uncomfortable question about politics: what happens when a structure that has held power for years by representing poverty begins to confront a society that wants to stop needing intermediaries?

Perhaps therein lies one of the deepest conflicts of this stage.

Not between those who suffer and those who do not suffer. Not between good and bad Argentines. But between two different relationships with the State: the expectation that the country generates opportunities for each person to depend less and less on power, and a political model whose relevance increases precisely when the citizen continues to depend on it.

In Bahía Blanca, that young man again asked that the change not stop.

In Graneros, the context showed that behind an image of spontaneous indignation there was also a political history.

And that difference matters because poverty should be a problem that politics seeks to eliminate, never the argument it needs to maintain to justify its own existence.