Georgetown Americas Institute

In the year 2007, a disrupting process began in the urban and political landscape of Buenos Aires with the election of Mauricio Macri as mayor. The third-largest metropolis in Latin America suffered from car congestion, messy public transportation, growing slums, and increasing migration to the suburbs. Moreover, the monumental crisis of 2001 widened the gap between rich and poor and submerged local governments into extreme financial and fiscal restrictions, causing local politicians to struggle to prioritize equitable projects. A businessman, president of Boca Juniors soccer team, and victim of a two-week kidnap, Macri founded with other colleagues the Propuesta Republicana party (“Pro”) and won seven elections in a row until 2019, becoming the first non-Peronist President to finish his term after reshaping the country’s economy and political system. 

Macri’s political career is marked by the persistent effort to reconcile reality with ideals without compromising his advocacy for politicians’ responsibility. His eight years as Mayor of Buenos Aires (2007-2015) offer a rich experience to local leaders who seek to implement real transformations and extend their influence to the national field. Macri was invited in April 2022 by the Georgetown Americas Institute to our Main Campus, and Eduardo Plasencia interviewed him to understand how international cooperation helped him challenge the status quo and change the future of Buenos Aires and Argentina. 

Plasencia: When you took office as mayor of the city of Buenos Aires, you implemented a series of projects and programs of a more realistic and equitable nature, such as the Metrobús, the Metropolitan Police, and the public bike system. The status quo was that the city needed more expressways and subways, constantly comparing the city with Madrid or Paris. When did this cultural shift to prioritize smaller but more realistic projects happen?

Macri: There’s a process of learning by doing. First, you had to combine the fiscal restriction. To undertake gargantuan projects, you need resources, and when you do not have resources, you need ingenuity. Then you realize that projects such as the Metrobús have a significantly smaller cost per mile in comparison to building a subway, and it solved the problem for hundreds of thousands of people. We did not resign to say, “oh, well, we don’t have money; there’s nothing we can do.” It was, in fact, true that the national government did not support us, didn’t let us engage with World Bank or IDB, and many other things, so we used our intelligence and creativity. We started making plans to the extent of everything that was pending and within the scope of our budget. The restrictions force you to be effective in helping people live better, such as improving their commute, making them feel safer in the streets, or safer at home in terms of flooding. Besides the Metrobús, one of the most relevant projects was the tunneling of the Maldonado Aqueduct to end once and for all the dramatic floodings in the city. All things that traditional politicians saw as useless because they did not drag votes, particularly those that were done in the underground.

Macri’s Minister of Transportation, Guillermo Dietrich, synthesized the method as “don’t romanticize a solution.” In a society in love with European subways and freeways, this seemed like a challenge.

Plasencia: I imagine that there were some of these projects that you felt they couldn’t be done if you didn’t have a second term. For instance, the Metrobús 9 de Julio, to do it in the first term would have been crazy.

Macri: No, we couldn’t. Besides, we had to learn how the first Metrobús worked. You have to go from small to big. And so, we said, “let’s build a Metrobús in a medium artery, let’s learn which things work and which don’t, and only then we’ll go for the big projects.” Clearly, a single period in the office is nothing because you need to build the runway from which you’re going to take off. When you build the runway, you lay the foundations on which you will build everything else.

The Metrobús 9 de Julio was one of the most challenging projects due to its exposure, impact, complexity, and deadlines –only seven months before the 2013 midterms, a crucial test before the presidential race.

Plasencia: Regarding your race for the national government, when you started campaigning for president and touring around the country, how did you feel the perception of the rest of the Argentineans changed towards the porteños?

Historically, there’s always been a confrontation between Buenos Aires and the rest of the country.

Macri: There was respect for what we had achieved in the city, but there was also an enormous prejudice and resentment accumulated after years of unsolved centralism in Argentina. It is a logical outcome when you have a large, developed metropolis such as Buenos Aires that contrasts with the reality of the rest of the country. Across the more than 200,000 miles that I traveled as president, I always put a lot of effort precisely into transmitting a federal sentiment of Argentina and in promoting each region’s development with its own riches and connections. I dream of multiple centralities in Argentina. When you visit the US, and you land in Atlanta, you see that the people of that city don’t read New York’s newspapers, nor do they watch Washington’s television –they have their own reality, their own airport, one of the largest airlines in the world, Coca-Cola, Bellsouth, CNN, and that’s precisely what we need to happen in the Argentinean provinces. This is how it will be in a truly federal Argentina. 

Plasencia: When you were in the national government, how much did the international connections that you made during your time as mayor help you to run the country?

Macri: Immensely. In government, everything has to do with your international connections. A country that needs to develop relies more than any other on having a good relationship with the world to obtain funds, attract investment, or incorporate technology. All of this I fostered when I was mayor of Buenos Aires and most of them were forged during my time in Boca Juniors. Soccer can be an amazing bridge to the world.

Eduardo Plasencia (G'23), is a student in the Master in Urban and Regional Planning at Georgetown University