Argentina announced on Tuesday that President Javier Milei ordered a ban on the use of leftist “inclusive” language across all public administration offices and documents.
The announcement was made on Tuesday during presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni’s press conference. Adorni added that “everything related to the gender-based perspective” will also be banned throughout the national public administration.
“They are going to proceed, to initiate, the proceedings to ban inclusive language and everything related to gender-based perspective throughout the national public administration,” Adorni said. “Of course, you already know all the details. You are not going to be able to use the letter ‘e’, the ‘@ symbol’, the ‘x’ and avoid the unnecessary use of the feminine in all documents of the public administration.”
Argentina’s official language is Spanish, a romance language that is gendered by nature, where nouns, pronouns, articles, adjectives, and even objects have a defined masculine or feminine gender. Masculine words tend to end in -o, while feminine words tend to end in -a. Leftist movements have attempted to replace the o and a with “inclusive” replacements such as -e or -x – for example, saying “Latine” or “Latinx” instead of “Latino” or “Latina” – which render the language incoherent.
In the United States, the most widespread known case of “inclusive” language is “Latinx,” a word that is not just unpronounceable in Spanish’s language rules, but is widely rejected and reviled by Hispanics. The “@” symbol, which is not a letter, has also been used by leftists to replace the letters “o” and “a” as well to denote “gender neutrality,” even if the word itself is rendered not pronounceable in Spanish as a result.
These “inclusive” leftist modifications to the Spanish language are widely frowned upon by organizations such as the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), a Spain-based institution founded in the 18th century that is dedicated to the preservation and correct use of the Spanish language.
“The language that contemplates all sectors is the one we use in the Castilian language; it is Spanish,” Adorni continued. “I don’t see why we have to have structures and we are not going to participate in a debate about that because we consider that gender-based perspectives were also used as a business of politics.”
In Argentina, the previous socialist administration of President Alberto Fernández (2019-2023) was at the forefront of introducing so-called “inclusive” language into official government business.
“Between the ideal and the possible, let’s go for the possible because we are closer to the ideal every day. We are little by little making possible what seemed impossible. The ideal will be when ‘todas’ is ‘todes’ and no one cares about the sex of the people,” Fernández said in 2021 after his government modified the rules of the Argentine national identity card to “include non-binary people.”
Throughout his career as a libertarian economist and television fixture, President Milei has insisted on waging a cultural war against leftist “political correctness” and Marxist indoctrination, which he accuses of pushing gender, ecological, and other agendas to inoculate the population with far-left ideas.
“What madness are we living in? The madness of stupid political correctness. Where basically it’s like saying: ‘Oh, if you don’t recite cool socialism or if you are not woke then you are violent, you are a danger to democracy. Come on guys!” Milei said in an interview during the 2023 presidential campaign.
In December, shortly after Milei began his presidential term, Defense Minister Luis Petri announced that the use of “inclusive” language was banned across Argentina’s military. The measure was officially formalized on Monday in a ministry decree that makes “the use of the Spanish language mandatory, in accordance with the rules of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) and the regulations and manuals in force in the Armed Forces.”
“The objective is to eliminate incorrect forms of language that can generate an erroneous interpretation of what is desired, affecting the execution of orders and the development of military operations,” the ministry said on a social media post.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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