Argentine Defense Minister Luis Petri announced the new administration of President Javier Milei will ban leftist “inclusive” language in Argentina’s military.
Petri, who also claimed that Argentina’s defensive power is “as devastated as the country,” made the announcement on Sunday evening. December 17, during La Noche de Mirtha, an Argentine late-night show hosted by actress Mirtha Legrand.
“Some even spoke with inclusive language. We are going to prohibit the use, for example, of inclusive language within the armed forces — it cannot be,” Petri said.
When asked to elaborate by another guest, Petri explained, “There is a military language that has to be complied with and there have been advances in the rules of discipline and the normal language that clearly end up degrading and making the armed forces regress.”
“Because they are military forces, I mean, and to be forced to speak in a certain language is not appropriate for the military discipline that should exist, and this is without any kind of bias,” he continued.
Spanish is Argentina’s official language. Spanish, a Romance language, is a gendered language, and as such, nouns, pronouns, articles, and adjectives have a defined gender. Objects also have a set defined gender in Spanish — for example, chair would translate to Spanish as “silla,” a feminine word, while phone translates to “teléfono,” a masculine word.
Adjectives and articles should be modified to agree with the nouns they are modifying. With plural words in which some in the group are masculine and some feminine, the masculine form is used.
“Inclusive” language, as described by leftists and progressives, seeks to alter the core gender functionality of the Spanish language with alternate “neutral” versions, even though the masculine -o endings can also function as neutral. The most notable and widely known example in the United States is the term “Latinx,” which is a collection of letters that is not pronouncable according to Spanish language rules. Latinx is overwhelmingly rejected by Hispanics in America despite the massive push by international leftists to adopt it.
In Spanish-speaking countries, leftists have attempted to replace the “-o” and “-a” endings with the letter -e to denote “gender neutrality” and include “non-binary” people.
Such “inclusive” practices are frowned upon by the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), a Spain-based institution that has governed proper Spanish language rules since the early 18th century.
The announced prohibition of inclusive language in the Argentine armed forces is one of several planned reforms that the recently inaugurated defense minister is reportedly planning. Petri lamented that, under prior socialist governments, the armed forces “were discredited and mistreated.” Prior to the inauguration of President Javier Milei on December 10, Argentina had been ruled by leftist governments for 16 of the past 20 years.
On the late-night program, Petri explained that his objectives will be reordering the Argentine military and strengthening its discipline as, in its current state, it is not capable of combating potential threats that may arise against the country. Petri described the unprecedented October 7 terrorist attack against Israel by the genocidal jihadist group Hamas as an example of one such potential threat.
“We have to be prepared to combat terrorism and cyber-attacks. We have to give the Armed Forces a framework so they can act against those threats. Until recently, they could not honor their dead,” he said.
Prior to becoming Argentina’s defense minister, Petri made calls to prohibit the use of inclusive language in schools in 2022.
Lo que se define equivocadamente como lenguaje inclusivo debe ser prohibido en las escuelas de todo el país.
Es lisa y llanamente la destrucción del lenguaje con fines políticos.
La escuela tiene por finalidad enseñar y aprender, no adoctrinar.— Luis Petri (@luispetri) June 13, 2022
“What is wrongly defined as inclusive language should be banned in schools across the country,” Petri wrote on Twitter at the time. “It is simply the destruction of language for political purposes. The purpose of school is to teach and learn, not to indoctrinate.”
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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