By Claudio Altamirano on February 15, 2025 from Buenos Aires.
police shut down progressive concert in Buenos Aires.
The cancellation of Milo J’s show at the former ESMA is not an isolated event: it is further proof that the government of Javier Milei is afraid of art. And it is logical, because art makes people uncomfortable, art denounces while opening ones mind, art is memory. And memory is everything that this libertarian administration wants to erase.
ESMA is the former mechanics school and a main site of where the dictatorship of the 1970’s tortured, disappeared and killed thousands of Argentinians. It is now a cultural and performance center
Let’s not fool ourselves, the shut down wasn’t a problem of permits or bureaucracy. It was plain and simple censorship. This was acknowledged by the Government’s own Director of Digital Communication, who, with the typical arrogance of the Twitter caste in power, said that now they are in charge and that the State’s spaces are only for those who think like them. In other words, if you don’t sing the praises of the market and the anarcho-capitalist messiah, your voice has no place.
But the worst thing was not the cancellation itself, but the way it was done. Milo J’s mother and manager, Aldana Ríos, was abused, intimidated and threatened with abuse of 15 to 17-year-olds who just wanted to listen to music. The image of water cannon trucks and police motorbikes deployed to stop a concert is a tremendous symbol and of literal violence. What kind of government needs the police to silence an 18-year-old artist? One that calls itself “libertarian”, but is actually authoritarian.
The cultural repression is part of a plan. First there was the constant mockery of Lali, then the attack on María Becerra for talking about El Bolsón, and now this. It’s no coincidence, it’s a clear message: if you’re an artist and you don’t applaud the Milei government we’re going to persecute you, we’re going to censor you. But what they don’t understand is that culture always finds a way to express itself. If they censored Charly García in the ’70s and he continued to sing, do they really believe they’re going to silence Milo J and a whole generation that grew up with memory, truth and justice?
As the greatest of us, Charly García, said to Milo J: “Don’t worry, you know how many times they censored me when I was in Sui Generis!” Because censorship may try to silence us, but art never stops ringing out.
What happened at the former ESMA is extremely serious. Not only because it threatens freedom of expression, but because it seeks to rewrite history. They don’t want young people to set foot in a place of memory, they don’t want the past to be talked about, they don’t want people to remember what happens when the State uses violence to silence them. But therein lies the trap: when those in power want to cover up the truth, the memory screams louder. And if history teaches us anything, it is that culture and struggle always wins. Milo J is not alone. They did not silence him yesterday, nor will they silence him tomorrow.
Source: Página 12 translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English