Buenos Aires Herald 
National deputy for Buenos Aires province Carolina Píparo announced last night that she will be leaving the libertarian bloc Avanza Libertad. She cited “incompatible political visions that have arisen recently” and created the Buenos Aires Libre (Free Buenos Aires) bloc, of which she is the sole member.
Avanza Libertad is led by liberal economist and national deputy for Buenos Aires Province José Luis Espert, who announced yesterday that he is hoping to join forces with the opposition coalition Juntos por el Cambio (JxC).
“I make this decision taking coherence as a guiding norm to continue defending the interests of the thousands of Buenos Aires citizens who have elected me,” Píparo said in a statement shared on social media.
The Píparo-Espert rift was an “open secret” given her increasing political affiliation with Javier Milei, a libertarian presidential pre-candidate who founded the far-right coalition La Libertad Avanza. Píparo accompanied Milei on his summer tour of the Atlantic coast and other districts across Buenos Aires province.
For his part, Espert announced talks with JxC and called for Avanza Libertad to join the coalition (which includes parties like the PRO, the Radical Civic Union, and the Civic Coalition). He made clear that he would only accept the alliance if the new coalition changed its name to include the word “freedom,” a key word for the liberal party’s economic views.
Espert believes that JxC “need our liberal input” after what he described as their “economic failure” during Macri’s 2015-2019 presidency.
Píparo has been a deputy for the province of Buenos Aires since 2021 and became known to the Argentine public in 2010 when she was robbed and shot outside a bank in La Plata. She was 9 months pregnant at the time and was able to give birth to her son, but he only lived for a week — five men were sentenced to life in prison in 2013 for homicide, attempted homicide, and aggravated theft.
In 2021, she was once again robbed at gunpoint and her husband, Juan Ignacio Buzali, pursued people whom he assumed were the attackers and ran over two innocent motorcyclists. Píparo was later accused of attempting to bribe one of the motorcyclists involved. Buzali was placed under house arrest, charged with attempted manslaughter, and is awaiting trial.
-with information from Télam
