Argentina elected the first self-identified libertarian president in history. Is he a madman? Or a savior? 

Can his libertarian ideas transform Argentina into a beacon of prosperity? Reason visited Argentina to find out if Javier Milei's reforms are working. 

On the ground in Buenos Aires six months after Milei took office, a massive protest filled the public squares and streets outside the national legislature and presidential palace. Congress was voting on a reform package that would deliver on part of his agenda. 

Nearly one in three Argentinian workers belong to a union, and organized labor holds tremendous political power and the ability to mobilize large protests like the one we witnessed opposing Milei's reform package. Participants say Milei's agenda helps the rich and handicaps the poor. 

"None of what's happening [with the law] serves the interests of the people," says Sylvia Saravia, national coordinator for a left-wing populist political party present at the protest called Free Movement of the South, which opposed Milei. "For example, fiscal reforms that benefit the rich and hurt the poor."

If Milei gets his way, unions will be crippled by the time he leaves office. He wants to privatize sectors like the airline industry, which is dominated by organized labor, and to end the mandatory deduction of union dues. That would mean workers would have to actively choose to hand over part of their salaries to these groups.

"What [Milei] is doing is destroying science, destroying technology, destroying public education," says Saravia.

Protesters waved Marxist hammer-and-sickle flags and pictures of Che Guevara, the communist icon. Che was the ideological brains behind the Cuban revolution—but he was born here in Argentina.