The thumping electoral defeat of neoliberal president Mauricio Macri is a major political event that marks the opening of a whole new situation in Argentina.

By voting overwhelmingly for the Peronist candidate Alberto Fernández in the August primaries, the country’s popular classes discovered a way to censure the governing right-wing coalition and express their wholesale rejection of austerity politics. The outcome also carries strong implications for the rest of the region, hopefully foreshadowing the defeat of Trump, Bolsonaro, and the wider Latin American right, whose continental plans are now partially destabilized by the loss of a strategically vital associate in Macri.

The tentative victory (October’s general elections will confirm what is already a near-irreversible numerical advantage) is also a popular triumph insofar as it injects the working class with a greater sense of confidence, lifts up social expectations previously trampled under Macri’s administration, and, looking ahead, may very well provide the spark needed for a renewed struggle for social conquests lost in the intervening period.