The warning issued in mid-2024 by Jerónimo Guerrero Iraola, the lawyer for the Center of Ex-Combatants of the Malvina Islands (CECIM) in La Plata, is no longer just a dubious hypothesis. The British newspaper Financial Times revealed in great detail—on August 7—the existence of Wamani ("guardian of the mountains" in Quechua), a 32,000-hectare private enclave in the San Carlos department of Mendoza province, designed as a self-sufficient refuge for a select group of billionaires in the event of a global nuclear war or ecological collapse.

What was denounced in court in June 2024 in the context of the injunction against the repeal of the Land Law as an opaque operation by "a magnate who was buying water, food and nuclear security" , today has a face: the Spanish-Argentine businessman Martín Varsavsky , supported by influential partners in the international establishment such as Dan Lubetzky (founder of the food company Kind) and Alec Oxenford , current Argentine ambassador to the United States and a key figure in the country's recent accession to the mining-technology initiative Pax Silica .

The Andean citadel: Airstrip, disconnected servers, and fresh water

Acquired at the end of 2023 for an initial sum close to one and a half million dollars and with an infrastructure injection that is already approaching 10 million dollars , the Wamani property is located in the foothills of the Andes Mountains, near the town of Eugenio Bustos .

The complex is no longer in the planning stages:

"We are already in World War III , " Varsavsky told the Financial Times to justify the fortifications. The businessman acknowledged that he and his family had agreed to relocate immediately to Mendoza in the event of invasions in Taiwan or the Baltic states. He is also promoting the creation of a "tranquility visa" to allow foreign fortunes to purchase Argentine land and secure territorial protection.

The Silicon Valley doctrine and the trickle-down foreignization

Wamani is not an isolated case . It replicates the model of Peter Thiel (founder of Palantir) in New Zealand or Mark Zuckerberg in Hawaii. However, in Argentina it takes on a dimension of extreme institutional gravity: while more than 13 million hectares of rural land are in foreign hands and the ruling party tried until the last minute to dismantle the Rural Land Law (26.737) in Congress through the "Inviolability of Private Property" law, large corporations are taking advantage of the State's fragility to consolidate feudal estates.

As the report from the Office of Administrative Investigations (PIA) warned in the case of the 60,000 hectares in Santa Cruz: the irregular or unregulated possession of land in mountainous areas is, in itself, a fatal blow to territorial integrity . In Mendoza, common resources—the watershed, the high peaks above 5,000 meters, and the productive soil—are subordinated to the right of admission granted to a handful of corporations.

National sovereignty or escape zone for the elites?

The contrast is ethically unacceptable and geopolitically alarming. While local communities face water stress, the loss of productive capacity, and scientific defunding, the national territory is offered as a mineral quarry and a luxury sanctuary for the elites who fuel global conflicts.

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