When political journalist Juan Luis González began working on El loco, his goal was to make an "X-ray of the new Argentine right" that today has Javier Milei as its leader. But when he began to investigate the economist, presidential candidate for the La Libertad Avanza party, González stumbled upon the "mystical secrets of Milei", which forced him to abruptly change the course of his book until it reached its final form. "Over the months, the interviews, the off-the-record meetings, following invoices, seals and paperwork, the work went from being a field job with almost academic overtones to a tragicomic thriller, halfway between the noir novels of Raymond Chandler and A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole," the journalist writes in the prologue. El loco, published by Planeta, is a public and private biography of one of the most striking characters in new Argentine politics. In this investigation, González exposes Milei’s best-kept secrets, such as the three times he claims to have seen the resurrection of Christ, the death of his "dog son" Conan —hidden for years—, the expensive clones of the dog that he had made in the United States, his talks with the dead animal through a medium and his telepathic sister, and the conversations with dead beings and with "number one", as he calls God, who entrusted him with "the mission" of being president. But, in addition to revealing the "mystical secrets" of the presidential candidate, the journalist came across "the forbidden plot of a movement that sells its positions, that established relations with soccer hooligans involved in murder cases, that filled its ranks with long-standing members within the State and with corruption convictions, that received technical, logistical and monetary help from the Peronism it claims to fight and that, moreover, began when one of the wealthiest people in the country decided to create and finance, to protect his own interests, a media phenomenon that later called itself Milei." In the prologue, which can be read in full below, the author leaves a question hanging: "What happens if in an unstable country an unstable leader appears? The answer will surprise you." This is how "El loco" begins.

El loco, by Juan Luis González, published by Planeta.

Javier Milei stopped listening. For fifty minutes he talked nonstop about his project to dollarize the Argentine economy and about how "nefarious" "the political caste" is, but now he is silent and stares blankly at a screen. Esteban Trebucq, the journalist who rose to fame for his baldness and his tough-guy pose, tries to get the interview back on track. He doesn't succeed. "There's Conan, it's Conan, that's Conan," the deputy repeats when he opens his mouth again. The production put up, without warning, an old photo of his English Mastiff, and he can't take his eyes off the television. The segment stalls and the "Pelado" tries out some question to get out of the moment, but it's no use. Milei is not seeing his pet, but rather his "true and greatest love", whom he considers his own son. He brought the dog back from a work trip, when he went to present a paper in Córdoba, at the end of 2004. Back then he was just a puppy, but the image they project on the A24 screen must be from ten years later. Conan is already old, has gray hair all over his face, calluses on his elbows, and in the photo he appears lying down with his jaw wide open, as if gasping for air. "How old is he?" asks the journalist, who at this point has resigned himself to playing along with his guest. The deputy thinks for a few seconds, and answers somewhat confused. "Ugh, I can't figure it out, he's a few years old," he says, and begins to repeat what he says every time he is asked about the animal: that he is the most important thing in his life, that when he was at "his worst moment" the dog was the only one who accompanied him, that he came to sacrifice his own food to take care of Conan's and that's why he ended up eating badly and came to weigh 120 kilos, that with him and only with him he spent a dozen Christmases and New Years, that one day his apartment caught fire and that he did not leave until he made sure that his "four-legged little son" was following him and that's why he almost died. And that for Conan he is willing to die. But there are many things about the dog, and especially about himself, that he does not say in that interview at the beginning of the year. They are his most guarded secrets. And it's not just the true age of the pet. Milei does not say, for example, that Conan is dead. That he died on a Sunday in October 2017 in his arms, in the apartment he had in Abasto, after fighting for a while against spinal cancer. Nor does he say that he went through that process with a parapsychologist and a telepath who read the dog's mind and "communicated" him with his owner. That is just the tip of the iceberg. After the death of the dog/son, his most faithful friend, the man changed completely. It was a blow that even the clones of the animal he had made in the United States —US$50,000 plus taxes—, and which he now presents as his "grandchildren," could not cushion. Karina, his sister, as indispensable to him as Conan, tried to help him. She studied to become a medium, and began to be herself who communicated the recently deceased Conan with his owner, an activity that to this day is central in the life of the younger Milei, who says she can talk to living and dead animals and that based on that she makes important decisions. But that was not enough. To those who wanted to listen, Milei began to tell increasingly striking stories: that Conan had not really died —"it was his physical disappearance"—, but that he had gone to sit next to "number 1" to protect him, and that thanks to that he had begun to have talks with God himself. "I saw the resurrection of Christ three times, but I can't tell it. They would say I'm crazy," he told a friend of those years, in a chat that this person still keeps. Until one day the unexpected happened. Something that would change Milei's life forever, but also Argentina's. It is that in one of his conversations with "number 1", He revealed the reason why they had so much contact. God, as he had done before with Moses, told him that he had a "mission" for him. He had to get into politics. And he told him something else: that he should not stop until he became President.

This book was born from a crisis. It starts from an idea that was not, that could not be. The book had begun wanting to be something else: an X-ray of the new right, a quest to understand who they are, what they think, how they move, how they are educated, how they organize themselves, what international connections they have, and what the leaders of this great Argentine family, which today has Javier Milei as its leader, want to do. The plan was to put together something similar to what Mundo PRO was —the work of Alejandro Belloti, Sergio Morresi and Gabriel Vommaro, in which they dissected the architecture and composition of that party— or Los Herederos de Alfonsín —by José Antonio Díaz and Alfredo Leuco, in which in 1987 they undertook a similar search but with the members of the radical youth— but of this new space, which had burst into politics in 2021 and ended up obtaining a surprising 17% of the votes in the Federal Capital. But that book fell by the wayside. Over the months, the interviews, the off-the-record meetings, following invoices, seals and paperwork, the work went from being a field job with almost academic overtones to a tragicomic thriller, halfway between the noir novels of Raymond Chandler and A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. The mystical secrets of Milei were the first but not the only revelation that forced the plans to change. The investigation came across the forbidden plot of a movement that sells its positions, that established relations with soccer hooligans involved in murder cases, that filled its ranks with long-standing members within the State and with corruption convictions, that let in neo-Nazis and apologists for the last dictatorship, that allowed itself to be financed by provincial governments, that received technical, logistical and monetary help from the Peronism it claims to fight, that threatened everyone who wanted to open their mouths, as happened to one of its own legislators who had to live for half a year with police protection, and that, mounted on the illusion of a "new politics" that gave hope to young people who had lost hope, hides the oldest way of making money and business in Argentina. And that, moreover, began when one of the wealthiest people in the country decided to create and finance, to protect his own interests, a media phenomenon that later called itself Milei. And the book, without meaning to, transformed into a question. What happens if in an Argentina corroded by more than a decade of economic and political crisis, battered by a pandemic that left 130,000 dead, exhausted by years of inflation and insecurity, angry at always living with a noose around its neck, someone begins to say that the fault for everything lies with those who run it and have run it? What if that incendiary speech, which is also burning other latitudes, catches on? /Infobae