The tech-utopianism of the Latin American libertarian Right

Abstract

This article analyses Nayib Bukele's failed Bitcoin experiment in El Salvador and Javier Milei's AI governance agenda in Argentina as cases of tech-utopian authoritarianism. Despite libertarian rhetoric, both reinforce corporate-technocratic power through state-backed technological solutionism. Bukele's cryptocurrency push, collapsed, while Milei's Big Tech alliances seek to replace institutions with opaque artificial intelligence (AI) systems. We argue these are subaltern digital utopias—peripheral capitalism's attempts to buy modernity through deregulation and privatization. By exposing Bitcoin's failure and AI's risks, we show how libertarian discourse masks power transfers to unaccountable corporations. The conclusion urges democratizing technology and social justice in Latin America's digital future.

The decline of Latin America's Pink Tide has given way to a new wave of radical right-wing movements that fuse libertarian economics with authoritarian governance, epitomized by leaders such as Javier Milei in Argentina and Nayib Bukele in El Salvador. These leaders reflect a global shift toward governance models that blend market fundamentalism, technological utopianism, and a weakening of state capacities for democratic inclusion. Beneath their anti-establishment rhetoric lies a critical dimension: techno-political imaginaries reframe state authority through the lens of technological solutionism, portraying authoritarian reforms as inevitable digital progress.

Authoritarian techno-utopianism merges enthusiasm for digital innovation with a hierarchical, exclusionary, and technocratic vision of social order. Beyond imagining hyper-technologized futures, it actively promotes the depoliticization of public life—displacing conflict and democratic deliberation in favor of “neutral” technical administration. In this framework, democracy is instrumentalized to legitimize decisions that have already been made by a technocratic elite, which centralizes control through digital infrastructure.

This article focuses on peripheral countries that, while capable of generating technological innovation, lack control over global intellectual property and digital development. In these contexts, techno-utopianism takes the form of subaltern digital utopias: derivative versions of Northern models. Bukele's Bitcoin experiment and Milei's AI governance proposals illustrate how these imaginaries cloak new forms of authoritarian capitalism.

Crypto-imaginary

In El Salvador, the experiment of adopting Bitcoin as legal tender under Nayib Bukele's government was not merely a bold economic policy aimed at establishing a cashless society, but the realization of a techno-utopian vision that blended digital futurism, financial libertarianism, and political authoritarianism. Framed as a revolutionary tool for financial inclusion, this experiment ultimately exposed the deep contradictions of a techno-utopian project seeking to redefine the relationship between the state, the market, and society. Since its implementation as legal currency in 2021, Bukele has marketed Bitcoin as a vehicle for financial inclusion and technological modernization.

In a country historically marginalized from international development, this narrative tapped into a potent imaginary of national pride and progress in El Salvador. Bukele consistently invoked the language of innovation and the future, contrasting it with the “old guard” of traditional politics and banking systems. Like Argentina's Javier Milei, Bukele employed rhetoric centered on individual freedom: “Bitcoin empowers the people,” he declared, offering “the freedom to choose how and with what to transact” (Bergengruer, 2024). This rhetoric functioned as a myth of modernization.

Bitcoin was also pitched as a tool to “bank the unbanked” (Bukele, 2022) and streamline remittances (which account for over 20% of El Salvador's GDP) by cutting out intermediaries. To incentivize adoption, the government distributed the state-backed digital wallet “Chivo,” preloaded with $$30 worth of Bitcoin. This measure created the illusion of immediate access to consumption and savings, independent of traditional finance, while reinforcing the fantasy that cryptocurrencies are inherently “apolitical” (Rosales et al., 2024). Moreover, despite promises of decentralization, the system has recentralized power in the hands of a select few: Chivo's operators, foreign advisors, and Bukele's inner circle (Boos, 2024).

Bukele fueled hopes that Bitcoin would make citizens “rich” or at least significantly improve their material conditions. His digital charisma reinforced the image of a leader daring to do “what no other president has done.” In his narrative, Bitcoin symbolized “financial freedom,” ostensibly emancipating citizens from political institutions and bureaucracy. Yet this discourse obscured the state's indispensable role in regulating monetary systems—a critical oversight, given that currency functions not just as a medium of exchange but as a symbolic framework for organizing social life.

The proliferation of non-state currencies (e.g. cryptocurrencies) and dollarization fragments monetary sovereignty, weakening the state's ability to tax, regulate, or redistribute wealth. Far from unintended, this erosion is central to techno-libertarian projects, which respond not simply to an ideology of free markets, but more profoundly to an anti-democratic vision that seeks to insulate decision-making spaces from democratic contestation. Javier Milei's dollarization and Nayib Bukele's crypto-populism reflect this logic—both shield capital from popular sovereignty but diverge in method. Where Milei pushes anarcho-capitalist deregulation and state dismantling, Bukele leverages state power to enforce his Bitcoin agenda, cloaking it in “digital nationalism.” In this way, he frames cryptocurrency as a tool for sovereignty—one that reduces dependence on the U.S. dollar and international financial institutions while positioning El Salvador as a pioneer in technological innovation.

The authoritarian underpinnings of Bukele's experiment became glaringly apparent during its rollout: express legislative approval without debate, opacity in managing public funds (including $$425 million in unaudited expenditures), and the creation of parallel structures like the National Bitcoin Office—led by crypto-guru couple Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert—operating outside normal institutional channels (Meijering and Rosales, 2025). However, the results told a different story: 80% of Salvadorans never used Bitcoin, crypto remittances never exceeded 2%, and the Chivo Wallet served more as a propaganda tool and rent-seeking mechanism than a financial solution. After becoming the first nation to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, El Salvador made history again in January 2025 by becoming the first to abandon it. Under pressure from the IMF, which threatened to suspend loan disbursements, Bukele shelved his crypto dream after wasting over $$200 million on its failed implementation (Esquivel, 2025).

Ultimately, El Salvador's experiment demonstrates that the crypto utopia—with its faith in technology as a substitute for politics—collides with an enduring reality: money is a social institution deeply tied to state power and collective trust. The fantasy of a “politically free” monetary system is itself a political project—one that shifts control from imperfect but reformable democratic spaces to spheres dominated by actors with technical advantages and upfront capital: large crypto holders, foreign platforms, or opaque algorithms. Bukele's techno-utopianism did not reveal the “future of money” but rather the face of 21st-century clientelist capitalism: digital in form, authoritarian in method, and profoundly unequal in outcome.

Algorithmic anti-statism

The contemporary libertarian project, especially in its far-right variants, is built on a central axiom: the state is not a space for collective mediation or a guarantor of rights, but a parasitic machine that expropriates individual freedom and distorts markets. This core belief within libertarian thought views all state intervention—from price controls to labor regulations—as institutional violence against capital and personal autonomy. The ultimate goal is not to reform the state but to destroy it, as Javier Milei bluntly stated when describing his role as president: “I'm a mole destroying the state from within” ( infobae, 2024b ).

In Argentina, this project of state demolition fits within a broader process of depoliticization that began during Mauricio Macri's government (2015–2019), which, under the paradigm of “new public management,” sought to transform the state into a corporation (Botticelli, 2017). This model, imported from private-sector management, reduced public matters to efficiency metrics: citizens became “users,” rights became “services,” and justice became a matter of “operational optimization.” However, the current libertarian shift radicalizes this logic: it is no longer about managing the state better, but about replacing it entirely.

Artificial intelligence emerges here as the key tool of this reactionary utopia. It promises governance without politicians, where algorithms make “objective” decisions, eliminating bureaucracies and democratic conflicts. This fantasy of “technological solutionism” reduces political problems to design adjustments, pretending to resolve through algorithms what are, in fact, conflicts of power, inequality, and rights (Morozov, 2013). AI is presented not just as a tool for efficiency, but as the embodiment of an ideological ideal: a society self-regulated by digital markets and algorithms, where the state disappears as a political actor.

The Salvadoran experiment under Nayib Bukele offers a paradigmatic case of this trend. His alliance with Google—formalized through the Digital Modernization Law of 2023—has transferred sensitive areas like health and education to Google Cloud's corporate infrastructure. Far from being neutral, this outsourcing constitutes a form of digital colonialism: platforms like Google Health impose technological and epistemological standards that reinforce the Global South's dependency (Ricaurte, 2025). In this sense, algorithmic governance, presented as innovation, masks the hollowing out of the public sphere, replacing deliberative processes with opaque systems that reproduce structural biases.

During his last trip to the United States, Milei met with representatives from digital corporations to replicate this model in Argentina. However, although it has already begun to be implemented gradually, there are no studies or audited results guaranteeing its viability. This orientation can be characterized as anti-statist to the extent that the State abdicates central functions—regulation, data sovereignty, technology transfer, strategic planning, and democratic deliberation—placing Argentina in a subordinate position as a provider of energy and infrastructure for global technology corporations. This form of algorithmic anti-statism aligns with Milei's tech-utopian AI vision—spearheaded by his tech advisor Damián Reidel—to position Argentina as the “world's fourth AI hub” alongside the US, Europe, and China (infobae, 2024a). Libertarians argue that Argentina's competitive edge stems not from natural resources or human capital, but from radical deregulation.

Yet this grandiose ambition conceals deep contradictions between rhetoric of modernization and the systematic dismantling of the country's institutional foundations. In this vision, Argentina is cast as the promised land of a redemptive digital modernity, capable of overcoming its economic woes through extreme deregulation and technological acceleration. The country emerges as a libertarian paradise ripe for global tech capital investment—where libertarian utopianism coexists with the drastic erosion of the very scientific system and development infrastructure that made innovation possible in the first place and that could sustain it moving forward (Robles, 2025).

The paradox is evident: while proclaiming the “liberation” from the state, national sovereignty is being transferred to corporate actors who operate without democratic oversight. This contradiction exposes the true nature of the libertarian project: far from abolishing power, it reconcentrates it in even more opaque and authoritarian forms. The promise of algorithmic governance does not eliminate politics but instead privatizes it, threatening the very foundations of democracy in the digital age. The crucial question is no longer how to improve the state, but who controls the mechanisms that seek to replace it.

Final remarks

Bukele and Milei's techno-utopian projects reveal a core contradiction: their anti-state rhetoric masks forms of corporate-technocratic domination. Whether via Bitcoin's financial spectacle or algorithmic governance's democratic void, these experiments show how technological solutionism becomes a mechanism of control. These are not innovative development models but rather subaltern digital utopias of peripheral capitalism's ongoing modernity. Their true innovation lies not in technology, but in the ideological alchemy that rebrands the surrender of sovereignty as revolutionary progress.