From “Indio” Solari’s Funeral to the Land Law: The Libertarian Government Unnecessarily Shoots Itself in the Foot
By Lucas Malaspina
A chapter that would amend Law 26,737, which since 2011 has limited foreign ownership of rural land to 15%, changed the political landscape: the government offered more than fifteen changes in an effort to secure its passage, but ultimately withdrew it on August 5 to avoid losing the rest of the legislative package. The Land Law’s “foreign-ownership” chapter did not fall because a group of celebrities discovered a cause on Instagram, although as a digital political consultant it would be convenient for me to claim that it did: “social media voted against the government” (I neither confirm nor deny ever having used a title like that in my life).
But the ruling party was already struggling to secure the necessary votes; allied governors and senators had made their objections known; a social majority supported some form of limit on foreign land purchases. Social media didn’t create those conditions. What it did was make them visible—and politically usable—through an image the government could no longer challenge without placing itself outside the nation it claims to represent. I’d say that a certain feeling runs through the president’s veins (and everyone’s, in a way). More than two weeks have passed… and the blessed-cursed World Cup just won’t end. At least in Argentina, where the echoes of the alleged “anti-Argentina campaign” have become the subject of almost constant discussion (so far).
Two national surveys, both carried out after the match against England and before the withdrawal of the chapter, painted a grim picture for the ruling party: Alaska/Trespuntozero found a 64.8% negative rating for the government (field: July 24-29, 1,290 cases, ±2.7 pp); AtlasIntel/Bloomberg recorded 62.4% presidential disapproval (field: July 30 to August 3, 1,120 cases, ±3 pp). Different surveys, different polling firms, different methodologies, converging figures: around two out of every three Argentines disapproved of the government when the banner began moving from soccer pitches to walls.
Among certain elitist circles (whether on the left or the right, as the case may be), a mantra is repeated every four years: the World Cup “distracts people from the real problems” and, therefore, favors the ruling party. The bad news for the ruling party not only coincided with the tournament but also began on the soccer field—though it was exponentially amplified by dichotomous thinking. The World Cup did not numb political debate: it sparked it against Milei, and this was largely due to overreactions and unforced errors by La Libertad Avanza.
It’s obvious that the defining image was a hotel sheet spray-painted with the slogan “The Falklands are Argentine,” which Giovani Lo Celso, Cristian Romero, and Lisandro Martínez unfurled after the national team defeated England in the World Cup semifinal. Less than 24 hours later, the Senate was set to debate a reform that would eliminate limits on the “foreign ownership” of rural land. The contrast was immediate. The ruling party wanted to discuss investment and private property; the banner had forced the country to talk about sovereignty—an issue that President Milei failed to handle, whether out of whim or incompetence. Reality laughed in the face of simplistic thinkers of every stripe: Lionel Messi, the man in the “controversial” photo with Donald Trump, ended up upsetting his ally Javier Milei. And Donald Trump, defending the freedom of speech of the “anti-imperialists” on the Argentine national team against the president who criticized the players.
But that scene didn’t begin in Atlanta either. A month earlier, following the death of “Indio” Solari, the government had rejected Congress as the venue for his funeral and had not opened the Casa Rosada, forcing the crowd to create its own ceremony: Plaza de Mayo, a flag-waving rally at the Obelisk, a procession in the rain, and a wake in Villa Domínico. The state kept its buildings spotless, but the “ricotera” religion (the rock-loving masses) carried out the national mourning outside them. Readers from other countries, please forgive us: in Argentina, the band with the greatest drawing power in history decided never to appear on MTV, which gives this sequence a certain ineffable quality.
Between these two events, something more persistent than a hashtag circulated. The trapo circulated: a rudimentary technology of belonging capable of transforming a scattered community into a visible we. The shift from the Ricotera flags to the Malvinas banner, and from there to “Argentina is not for sale,” helps explain why the reform became politically unfeasible. It was not a victory of social media over Congress. It was a dispute over who had the authority to define what Argentina meant, fought at a time when the government lacked the credibility to win it. After the “Maradonian” victory, incidentally, the celebration of a horde of Argentine fans—the wealthiest segment of our nation—went viral; they danced to the tune of “JiJiJi” (the signature anthem of Solari’s band) while stomping on and spitting on a flag of England.
The mourning outside the palace
Carlos “Indio” Solari died on June 5, 2026. He was 77 years old and had spent decades without needing an institution to validate his place in Argentine culture. Los Redondos had built a unique, massive following: outside the major labels, through “word of mouth,” with few interviews, without the promotional circuit that usually turns a musician into a celebrity, and with an audience that didn’t just consume songs. The “misa ricotera” was a way of coming together, a repertoire of gestures, and a network capable of traveling across the country in pursuit of a concert date; in its own way, it gave rise to “anti-globalism” long before it became trendy.
The debate over where to hold the funeral brought two conceptions of legitimacy to the fore. Opposition lawmakers proposed Congress. The president of that chamber, Martín Menem, ruled it out for security reasons. The Casa Rosada was not offered either. The government later maintained that it had tried to contact the family and had proposed Tecnópolis because of its capacity and accessibility; the musician’s inner circle rejected that alternative. Ultimately, the wake was held at the José María Gatica Micro-Stadium in Villa Domínico, organized by authorities in Buenos Aires Province. According to Minister Alejandra Monteoliva, the procession drew nearly half a million people. According to the governor of Buenos Aires Province, one million. In any case, Milei and Peronism agreed: Solari’s death brought the world’s largest anti-establishment religion—that is, the “ricoteros,” as we call fans of Patricio Rey y los Redonditos de Ricota in Argentina—out onto the streets.
The libertarian government’s logistical objection was not absurd. A crowd of that size could overwhelm Congress and turn a farewell into a security crisis, but government buildings are not merely containers. They decide which sorrows are admitted into the state’s memory and which must find another home; consequently, the refusal was interpreted by many supporters not as an assessment of capacity, but as a moral boundary: those people and that dead man did not belong within the ruling nation’s ceremonial order. As pollster Shila Vilker put it: that weekend turned into a “national broadcast” of burgeoning social disillusionment.
The response did not consist of endlessly demanding the key to the palace. It consisted of rendering the palace unnecessary through a Ricotero “dual power” (to use an expression from Bolshevik aesthetics to which that band paid homage). The self-organized gathering began in Plaza de Mayo, continued with a flag-waving rally at the Obelisk, and culminated in Villa Domínico. The crowd set its own schedule, route, and symbols. The event brought to light a cultural and political community that existed before it was counted. The attendance figure matters, but taken solely as a number, it is misleading: neither the full million nor the half million represented support for a political party. It was the ability of a community without unified leadership to create a national ritual without waiting for authorization. A magma of souls from Buenos Aires and its suburbs (momentarily united) who did not ask Peronism-Kirchnerism for permission to express themselves—just as the national soccer team players and the protesters against the Land Law do not need to.
Vilker, director of Trespuntozero, described the funeral as “a central chapter in the culture war” (the one so often touted by the Argentine president) and suggested that the “government was a little afraid” regarding the “farewell to a mythical leader of the suburban middle classes.” Her interpretation went further: although the demonstration was intergenerational, it particularly reflected “the generation of parents who are regaining a political voice—those who face the problem of having to financially support both the generation below them and the one above them.” This observation brilliantly illuminates the picture, but national polls do not allow it to be turned into a definitive demographic description. In fact, a study by Trespuntozero and Alaska (led by political strategist Juan Courel) finds the highest negative rating among people aged 30 to 49 (75.1%), while Atlas Intel records an extraordinarily high disapproval rating among those under 34. The surveys agree on the breadth of the rejection, though they differ on where it is most intense by age group. In any case, the government’s vulnerability is both national and federal: Trespuntozero/Alaska measured strong rejection in the AMBA (69.5% negative rating), and Atlas Intel recorded its highest figures in the Norte Grande (80.4%) and Nuevo Cuyo (74.9%). The Buenos Aires suburbs are a decisive cultural arena, but they do not fully account for the phenomenon as a whole.
That is why the funeral was more than just a chronological precursor to the Land Law. It revived an Argentine way of doing politics without presenting itself as politics: gathering around a piece of fabric, a phrase, and a shared memory. The government saw a crowd it had to manage. The crowd saw itself, alone, and Milei’s self-fulfilling prophecy came true: the “ricoteros” turned against him and made him pay every time a camera and microphone were pointed at them.
A Sheet Against the Apparatus
On July 15, Argentina faced England in the World Cup semifinal. In this incident alone, the government shot itself in the foot three times.
The Minister of Security had warned that messages related to the Falkland Islands would not be allowed into the stadium due to FIFA’s ban on political demonstrations. A group of fans staying in Atlanta took a sheet from their hotel, bought black spray paint, and wrote the phrase that security was trying to block. They waited until the end of the match, made their way to the Argentine section, and managed to get the sheet onto the field. It has a touch of DIY comedy: an international security policy defeated by the technology of a single hotel room. The government was angry with the Minister of Security: she tried in vain to take credit for the decision to ban “the little map” of the Falkland Islands (it sounds like a joke, but that was the expression she used), because it was a decision made by FIFA and the United States, not Argentina—but it was already too late because the opposition used it to attack Milei. First shot in the foot.
Argentina won 2 to 1. Lo Celso unfurled the banner; Cristian “Cuti” Romero and Lisandro “Licha” Martínez joined. The image brought together too many layers to be confined to sport. It was a claim to sovereignty after defeating England; an act of defiance against a rule that had classified that demand as a political message; an improvised piece of cloth, without logo or visible author, raised by players who were not born during the war. Lisandro “Licha” Martínez later said that they would never leave the veterans “stranded.” The verb did its job: a song, a territory, a generation, and a flag were bound together in the same commitment. It was not “just a game”, as they admitted after the football victory against the excellent team of Jude Bellingham and Harry Kane.
As soon as the match ended, Milei declared that “we must not fall for cheap, populist, nationalist, and stale slogans” and that “the Falklands will be recovered through wise diplomacy, not through cheap, tacky displays of jingoism.” The next day, he doubled down in another media appearance: he called the players “reckless” for displaying the flag and warned that Argentina could face economic sanctions. The government could have let the incident slide, celebrated the victory, and reserved its position on the Falklands for diplomatic channels, but it chose the opposite—something not even the most junior political communications staffer would have recommended: criticizing the most beloved group of people in the entire country. A second shot in the foot.
Lionel Messi, speaking with TyC Sports and in his characteristic (seemingly) innocent tone, dedicated the victory to those who “are having a hard time, don’t have jobs, can’t make ends meet, or are constantly struggling.” The new presidential spokesperson, Adrián Ravier, came out to contradict him: “We in the government do not agree with this idea that people can’t make ends meet.” My grandmother used to say, “Don’t jump—there’s no puddle.” Third shot in the foot: Who in their right mind would think of distancing themselves politically from Lionel Messi in Argentina, for heaven’s sake… what a lack of tact.
In three moves (four if we count the ill-fated handling of Solari’s funeral), the administration had placed itself on the opposite side of public sentiment in a society where—as polls would show in the following days—96.4% proudly celebrated the gesture, according to the polling firm Vozna, led by Marcos Doudtchitzky. This self-flagellation was no accident; it was a repeated decision. If the political tone of the 2022 World Cup was set by “Kun” Agüero, who embodied the Scaloneta’s most libertarian and anti-state instincts, in 2026 it was set by “Kuka” Martínez, who—not coincidentally—celebrated his goal on the one-month anniversary of Solari’s death with a tribute to his idol.
A hegemonic moment occurs when an image ceases to compete as one interpretation among others and begins to organize the field within which others must position themselves. After the semifinal, it wasn’t necessary to share a foreign policy, an interpretation of the war, or a partisan identity to celebrate the flag. Anyone who wanted to discuss sovereignty, England, or the nation had to do so within the context that Martínez, Lo Celso, and Romero had brought to light. Milei chose not to do so and insisted on shooting himself in the foot, further heating things up when “tensions were already running high.” During the weeks between the semifinal and the withdrawal of the chapter, the dominant symbolic narrative was not the government’s. The government tried to capitalize on the alleged “anti-Argentina campaign” by putting the issue of foreigners from neighboring countries on the agenda, but it was short-lived: society was (strangely) more bothered by those potential foreign buyers of beautiful, sparsely populated territories.
A team may lose the cup but gain the image that shapes the memory, and that’s exactly what happened when the banner was passed among thousands of people, many of whom downloaded “Malvinas Sans”—a typeface modeled after the irregular letters of the spray-painted graffiti—to design T-shirts, tattoos, sneakers, murals, bars, and subway stations. This fact does not indicate political agreement or an intention to mobilize. It demonstrates something that came before: the image had ceased to belong to the match and had become a reproducible language. The national team later lost the final to Spain. However, the image that survived the World Cup was neither the defeat nor a play by Messi, but the banner raised after the semifinal. This is where the first meaning of “defeated victors” emerges—to use a “Ricotera” metaphor that illustrates how (cultural, social, and political) effectiveness transcends the outcome of the game.
The “trapo” Reached Mainland Argentina
Here, data from Atlas Intel on the image of the United States adds another layer. 48.5% of Argentines had a negative view of the United States; 47.8% preferred more distant relations; 66.3% perceived that Trump exerted a great deal of influence over Milei, and when combined with those who perceived moderate influence, the figure rose to 81.8%. These data do not address the Falkland Islands, rural lands, or sovereignty. They cannot be used as evidence of support for the current Land Law. However, they allow for a limited inference: the “foreign-ownership” framing finds receptivity in a society where distrust of Washington and the perception of presidential subordination predominated. The government was particularly vulnerable to having a discussion about investments reinterpreted as capitulation.
The subsequent involvement of artists and creators expanded the process, but did not initiate it. Lali Espósito shared “Argentina is not for sale” and called for a mobilization at Congress on August 6. Martina “Tini” Stoessel, Emilia Mernes, Joaquinha Lerena de la Riva “La Joaqui” (RKT star), Martín Cirio (YouTuber, alias “La Faraona”), Gerónimo “Momo” Benavides (streamer and the AFA’s official voice during the Qatar World Cup), and other figures brought the issue to audiences who do not follow the legislative process—even the country’s de facto “first lady,” Antonella Roccuzzo (Messi’s wife), weighed in with a like. Labor, social, environmental, and religious organizations contributed meetings, logistics, and a common date for something that was not a ritual but was nevertheless acceptable, because the frame became easy to repeat once it had already been prepared by another image: if the Falkland Islands were a land that would not be surrendered, then the mainland should not be “for sale” either. A singer is unlikely to convert an ideological opponent; she can, however, encourage a passive supporter to speak out and bring the issue to communities that specialized activism cannot reach.
The impact of this cultural cascade was quantitatively greater than what a focus on the trapo would suggest. According to digital monitoring by QSOCIAL, seven figures from the music and entertainment industries generated nearly a quarter of the total interactions in the conversation about the law. A single Futurock segment (featuring feminist comedian Malena Pichot) garnered more interaction than the next three top contributors in the ranking combined. Instagram served as the engine of reach—more than half of the interactions, three-quarters of the video views—while Facebook acted as a community amplifier—more than 80% of the shares—and X as the bulletin board for political insider maneuvering: the highest number of posts, but the least mass traction. The prevailing sentiment on X (where the conversation reflected extreme negative sentiment toward the law) was far more hostile than that on radio and television broadcasts, which were practically tied. The digital backlash was considerably greater than the media backlash. Each platform played a distinct role in the chain.
The intensity surrounding a symbol can dissipate without leading to lasting organization. And, as polls show, Milei retains a significant core of support—he is the individual leader who inspires the most trust, with 26.4% according to Trespuntozero/Alaska, and maintains a 37.1% approval rating in Atlas—while no single opposition leader alone embodies the discontent. The symbol temporarily filled a representational void that party politics (at least for now) has failed to fill; that is what makes it both powerful and precarious at the same time. Between June and August, a popular culture accustomed to building community around flags found a symbol capable of cutting across rock music, soccer, and institutional politics. And that’s not good for Milei’s reelection, even though there’s still plenty of time ahead.
