Latin America | Latin America: “Cerimedo is now like a poison stain”

Right-wing mastermind: Fernando Cerimedo will take part in a forum in Brazil via video conference in 2022. Photo: Agência Senado/CC-BY-2.0 Fernando Cerimedo is considered a powerful mastermind in the background in Latin America who is said to have influenced the election campaigns of the political right in the region with disinformation and smear campaigns. His arrest in Bolivia in August shocked political Latin America: the Argentinian public prosecutor's office is investigating the Argentinian for attempted femicide, illicit enrichment and suspected connections to the drug trade - which he denies. Who is he and how did he become a digital strategist?

Cerimedo was a soldier of fortune: he posed as the manager of a taxi company, although in reality he was one of the drivers. He returned penniless from studying marketing in Puerto Rico - but suddenly had an office in Puerto Madero, one of the most expensive districts in Buenos Aires. There he founded Numen, a consulting firm for digital election campaigns, and became close to the current Argentine President Javier Milei, who was still a member of parliament at the time. Cerimedo ultimately managed Milei's entire 2023 digital presidential campaign. However, a large part of his resume cannot be verified: He claimed to have worked as an adviser in the White House under Barack Obama and to have trained with the Navy Seals. But one thing is certain: Cerimedo was the hub through which contacts, money, ideas and lobby structures flowed.

They call Cerimedo “the snake charmer of the new Latin American right.” He worked for Milei and is said to have later advised Bolivia's President Rodrigo Paz. He is also associated with the constitutional referendums in Chile, with Jair Bolsonaro's 2022 election campaign in Brazil and most recently with Keiko Fujimori's election in Peru. How did he work?

Cerimedo understood early on how algorithms work and how social networks have changed since the corona pandemic - something that traditional politics has not yet really understood. He founded the portal "La Derecha Diario", which spread false reports in the service of the right-wing and at the same time trained its junior staff. It is now copied in several Latin American countries and, since 2024, has had a Spanish partner, Javier Negre, who is closely linked to the Vox party. Cerimedo spread disinformation until audiences stopped fact-checking because they said to themselves, "I know it's a lie, but it fits what I think." He boasted of his troll networks - thousands of automated fake profiles on social media. In Brazil, Cerimedo claimed in a YouTube livestream in 2022 that Lula's election was fraudulent. More than producing his own ideas, he modulates them: he understands which message has reach.

Bolivia's Vice President Edmand Lara called Cerimedo "a Machiavellian guy who is capable of anything." How close was Cerimedo to power and what does his arrest mean?

Even Catalina Paz, the daughter of the Bolivian president, went through Academia Numen, the school for digital strategy founded by Cerimedo. As soon as he was arrested, right-wing leaders in several countries declared that they practically did not know him - including Milei, although official registers from the Argentine presidential palace Casa Rosada show that Cerimedo continued to come and go there until June 2024. Cerimedo is now like a poison spot, everyone is keeping their distance. It is also clear that his arrest does not end the system.

Soledad Vallejos is an Argentine journalist, lecturer and screenwriter. She is the author of the book “Los dueños de la libertad” (“The Owners of Freedom”) about the protagonists of libertarianism, a radical market right in Latin America.  

Which system are you talking about? How did these right-wing networks come about and how do they organize themselves?

These are not new networks, but rather the result of decades of organized preparatory work: In 1946, the first major libertarian think tank, the Foundation for Economic Education, was founded in the USA. As early as 1987, the liberal-libertarian Atlas Network explained how the emerging Internet could be used to spread its ideas. These networks are within Latin America and connected to the USA and Europe: They train cadres and continuously exchange knowledge. Cerimedo himself shows how close these worlds are to one another: He was also close to US President Donald Trump's entourage; the magazine "The Economist" called him "the MAGA man of Latin America."

Latin America has a brutal history of right-wing military dictatorships. Do the networks want to go back there or what are their goals?

These networks do not want to go back to the past, but rather build a different future. In Milei's speeches there is constant talk of "creative destruction" and tabula rasa, of the desire to erase everything that exists and start completely anew. What dominates is an extreme belief in what they call “spontaneous order”: the idea that the market alone can organize social life. They are less concerned with citizens than with consumers: it is the rules of the market that count, not the rights of citizens.

Her book is entitled “Los dueños de la libertad”, i.e. “The Owners of Freedom”. Where does the financial support for Cerimedo and the right-wing networks come from?

In the case of Cerimedo, this is unclear. In any case, it didn't come from his work: he didn't have a cent and suddenly he had money for all these structures. There is evidence of crypto wallets through which he transferred money. In the case of networks, some of the money comes openly from large companies whose owners are close to radical market ideas. In the USA there is also the Donors Trust, an anonymous fund. He forwards donations to organizations without making it public who gave the money - completely legally, because under US law he doesn't have to disclose this. The crypto world makes the flow of money even more opaque - and that is no coincidence: Libertarianism is very close to cryptocurrencies because of their ideological affinity.

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