Florida GOP rep praises Argentina for having 'one race' in endorsement of far-right leader

Days before Argentinians elected far-right candidate Javier Milei to the presidency, Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar (R-Florida) recorded a video endorsement of Milei in which she referred to Argentina as having "one race."

Salazar, a former Spanish language TV news anchor who is of Cuban descent, recorded the video endorsement in Spanish, saying "we want [Argentina] to be one of the best countries in the world, because it’s what they deserve. A country that has everything. It has soy, it has meat, it has minerals, it has land, it has water, and it has only one culture, only one religion and only one race, completely homogenous."

NBC News reported that Salazar's comments provoked condemnation from Democrats, who view Salazar's Miami-area district as a winnable target in the 2024 election.

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"María Elvira Salazar’s comments praising the notion of advancing a society with a single culture, religion, and race are antithetical to our American values," Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) spokesman José Muñoz said. "It is clear that Salazar is not interested in working to lower costs, provide jobs, or protect the fundamental rights of all diverse people who make up Florida’s 27th district."

Salazar's assertion that Argentina is a culturally homogenous nation is also not historically accurate, according to University of Georgia associate history professor Oscar Chamosa. Prof. Chamosa told NBC News that "if something represents the Argentine population, it is its diversity."

"Although the official censuses do not account for race, it is apparent that there are two major ancestral groups: one of predominantly European ancestry, the result of large migration waves at the turn of the 19th century, and the other, made of the Mestizos, that is individuals of mixed Indigenous, African and Spanish ancestry," he said.

Milei, who recently won Argentina's presidential runoff, has pledged to drastically slash budgets for social welfare programs, criminalize abortion (Argentina only legalized the procedure in 2021), and to replace Argentina's currency with the US dollar. While campaigning for the presidency, Milei often waved around a chainsaw to symbolize his proposed national spending cuts.

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