MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Uruguayan version of Milei's LLA launched

Uruguay is dying because of collectivist ideologies, Quintana argued

Little-known Uruguayan politician Nicolás Quintana Monday presided over the launch of the local version of La Libertad Avanza (LLA), Argentine President Javier Milei's party, which now has its own version across the River Plate.

Quintana, a former Cabildo Abierto militant and Partido Libertario member, said his party aims to counter socialism and collectivism, which are, in his view, destroying Uruguay. He also criticized former President Luis Lacalle Pou (2020-2025) for failing to dismantle leftist structures or enact promised reforms, such as ending pensions for former terrorists.

The event featured a video message from Argentina’s Security Minister Patricia Bullrich, endorsing the party’s registration with Uruguay’s Electoral Court. “I want to send a huge greeting to our Uruguayan brothers, who have just registered the party La Libertad Avanza in Uruguay, so the way has already been opened for freedom to arrive with all its strength to Uruguay,” Bullrich said.

Quintana described La Libertad Avanza as a coalition of liberals, libertarians, conservatives, and patriots, inspired by Milei’s success and Agustín Laje's ideas.

“We have a Uruguay without freedom, dead, and we are going to give it life,” Quintana insisted before a small crowd. Last year, Quintana got 2,614 votes in his Congressional bid. In 2012, he was a spokesman for the now-defunct Partido Uruguayo.

Quintana was also very critical of former Vice President Beatriz Argimón. “Now they are finding out who Beatriz Argimón is, but we already knew it before. We voted for her anyway, we supported her. And we were militants of that change, which was the Republican Coalition,” he stressed.

He then expressed his frustration after the coalition government failed to suppress the hereditary condition of the pensions that the [former] terrorists receive, “and that we all have to pay, with the most expensive taxes in the world,” only to see the return of the Frente Amplio “led by Tupamaros and communists.”

Quintana said he tried to “change things from within a system that is designed so that nothing changes,” so La Libertad Avanza “is a project with a patriotic mission.”

“Uruguay is a different country from Argentina, with other kinds of challenges, but we have the same problem: we are dying because of socialism, because of collectivist ideologies, and the medicine for that ailment is freedom. And in Uruguay, now, freedom is advancing,” he concluded.