During her first full day under house arrest in June, former Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner stood on her balcony and addressed hundreds of supporters below, at one point wondering half-jokingly whether doing so violated the prohibition on leaving her apartment; a judge later ruled that she can use her balcony but needs to be prudent and respectful of the neighborhood, due to her tendency to draw large crowds below. The following day, thousands of Fernandez’s supporters took to the streets of Buenos Aires and marched to the capital’s main plaza, where they watched a prerecorded message from her.
Fernandez served as Argentina’s president from 2007 to 2015 and as its vice president from 2019 through 2023. In between she was elected to the Senate. Though she had been targeted with several legal prosecutions for various corruption schemes from her time as president, she had largely maintained legal immunity due to her various elected offices since then. But her luck ran out when she left the vice presidency after current President Javier Milei won the country’s 2023 presidential election.
Fernandez had been convicted in 2022 for her role in a fraudulent public works scheme in Patagonia known as the “Vialidad” case. Her appeal worked its way to the Supreme Court, which upheld the verdict in 2025. The former president was nevertheless allowed to serve her six-year sentence from home due to her age as well as concerns for her safety; back in 2018, a would-be assassin tried to kill her and only failed when his gun misfired. Fernandez is also banned from running for office, but as her speech from her balcony and the subsequent protests by her supporters demonstrate, she remains one of the country’s most influential politicians.