The President of Argentina, Javier Milei, maintained the anti-system style and used the word “carajo” in the message he decided to leave written in the book of honor of the Chamber of Deputies, during his inauguration in the National Congress as the new head of the state from the country.
Swearing is one of the most negatively charged words in countries like Portugal and Brazil. In Argentina, however, it is not so pejorative. In the Latin American country, it will be closer to “caramba” in Portuguese.
“Viva la libertad, man.” The sentence signed by Javier Milei illustrates the style of Argentina’s new president who took office this weekend. In fact, “carajo” appears several times in their battle cries.
Heloisa Pezza Cintrão, professor of Spanish-Portuguese translations in the literature course at the University of São Paulo, explained on Globo’s G1 website that “carajo” is a word associated with the male sexual organ.
Yet, according to the teacher, some words remain empty in terms of their meaning because they are said so often. “I doubt they (the Argentinians) have lost sight of what ‘carajo’ means, but the word no longer carries the weight of obscenity,” the expert opined.
It is as if the use of swear words was a means to amplify the message and put more emphasis on the message that was meant to be conveyed in a single sentence, which in Milei’s case became a rallying cry, a slogan.
For Romilda Mochiuti, a professor at Unicamp, “carajo” is a marker of speech in the Spanish language spoken in Argentina. “Discourse markers establish a relationship with the use of words, and the semantic load is diluted over time, the negative pejorative weight is lost and begins to have only an emphatic weight. This is the function of ‘carajo’: a emphasize expression,” says the teacher in the same publication.
And he gives similar examples in the Spanish language. Similar to “carajo” in Argentina, in Spain the word “coño”, which originally refers to the female sexual organ, is also used as a discourse marker, to emphasize something. “Que coño es eso?”, which means something like “what is this thing”,” he illustrates.
Despite not having the same negative connotation, the two experts believe that the expression used by Milei does not fit into a political, institutional discourse, and that this is the way used by the new President of Argentina to get closer to the people .
With the above-mentioned word, Milei wants to show that he is anti-system, that he defies protocol and that he belongs to the people. And this is the brand image of the new president of the Latin American country, who promises “a new era in Argentina, of peace and prosperity, of growth and development, an era of freedom and progress.” This in a country that is struggling with a serious economic crisis.
“No government has received a worse inheritance than the one we receive,” he declared at his inauguration.
Milei therefore vowed that there will be no “half measures” as he faces decades of excessive spending and debt. “I swear by God and country… that I will exercise the role of President of the Argentine nation with loyalty and patriotism,” he declared.
The new Argentine president warned that it will be necessary to implement a strong fiscal adjustment, emphasizing that although “in the short term the situation will worsen,” the fruits of these efforts will be visible later. “There is no money, there is no alternative to adjustment, there is no alternative to shock,” he shouted before thousands of supporters heading to Congress, waving the country’s blue and white flag and chanting Milei’s rallying cry of “freedom! ” repeated.
“We will be able to work and strive to achieve our dreams without the weight of suffocating taxes, inflation and the pressure of a monetary system that is crippling our nation.”
Source: DN
