Every July 9, we remember that extraordinary decision made by the delegates gathered in Tucumán in 1816. In the midst of an unfavorable military scenario, with patriotic forces retreating on various fronts and the Spanish power determined to reclaim its colonies, those men did exactly the opposite of what fear advised; they declared independence.
They did not choose the path of comfort or political prudence. They chose freedom.
The Act of Independence proclaimed the will to break "the violent ties" that bound the “United Provinces of South America” to the Spanish Crown and to recover the rights that had been stripped away. On the 19th, Congress would add a phrase that remains highly relevant, independence must be "from Spain and from any other foreign domination."
However, the greatness of those men did not consist solely in breaking with an empire. They also understood that political freedom had to transform into permanent institutions. That is why, while some proposed establishing a monarchy, the historic intervention of Fray Justo Santa María de Oro definitively tilted the national destiny. His famous "¡Republic or nothing!" encapsulated the conviction that no people can be truly free if they exchange one master for another.
Thirty-seven years later, the Constitution of 1853, inspired by Juan Bautista Alberdi, completed that work. There were born the guarantees that made Argentina great, the defense of private property, freedom of commerce, work, press, worship, and the limitation of political power through the division of powers.
But Alberdi left a warning; we could free ourselves from the fiscal machines of the metropolis only to end up becoming colonists of our own governments. And that is exactly what happened when we strayed from liberal ideas.
For decades, Argentina stopped trusting in freedom to increasingly rely on the State. Politics replaced the citizen. Public spending replaced private effort. Taxes ceased to finance essential functions and became the fuel for a state structure that grew without limits. Ministries, agencies, deficit-ridden public companies, absurd regulations, and privileges for a political class increasingly distant from those who sustained the entire system with their work multiplied.
In the name of sovereignty, isolation was justified. In the name of social justice, the culture of merit was destroyed. In the name of the present State, an omnipresent State was built.
The citizen ceased to be a protagonist to become a managed individual. The entrepreneur became suspect. The producer was treated as an inexhaustible source of fiscal resources. Inflation ceased to be an exception and became a permanent form of confiscation of the savings of Argentinians.
For years, we were told that it was impossible to reduce public spending, achieve fiscal balance, lower inflation without price controls, deregulate an economy suffocated by thousands of regulations, reduce the size of the State without causing chaos.
The facts began to demonstrate exactly the opposite
Since December 2023, Argentina has begun a process of transformation that seemed unthinkable a few years earlier. Fiscal balance ceased to be a promise and became a concrete objective. Unnecessary agencies were eliminated, the weight of the State was reduced, regulations that had hindered production and commerce for decades began to be dismantled, and an idea that seemed forgotten was reinstated, the State exists to guarantee rights, not to replace the initiative of citizens.
This does not mean that all problems are solved. Decades of decline do not disappear in a few years. But it does demonstrate something very important, the ideas of freedom have ceased to be academic theory to become possible public policies.
