Soon after Mr. Macri’s inauguration, the highest court in the capital, Buenos Aires, ruled that police officers could demand identification from citizens there without probable cause, a ruling that gives a green light to harassment based on prejudice. In an equally troubling move, the federal government recently unveiled a new protocol for policing protests that gives the authorities more power to put down and criminalize demonstrations; this in a country where people value the right of free assembly and often take to the streets to fight for their rights.

Argentina’s economic and political meltdown in 2001 conclusively demonstrated that the free market approach of the 1990s had not made life better for ordinary people. Yet, Mr. Macri and his team are reviving failed policies of the past. With commodity prices in decline, they want to attract foreign investment by cutting their way to competitiveness: reducing public spending and shrinking government.

At the same time, the administration has lifted controls on currency exchange, boosting inflation. Some analysts predict that it will exceed the official target for 2016 of 20 to 25 percent.

Despite campaign vows to strengthen democratic institutions, President Macri is governing in the other direction. In December, he tried to appoint two new Supreme Court justices by fiat, bypassing Senate approval. Facing an outcry, the president backpedaled and sent the nominations to the Senate.

In another highhanded move, Mr. Macri used executive orders to alter a cornerstone of media law that, while poorly enforced by the previous administration, had amplified freedom of expression by bolstering anti-monopoly regulations. Such a presidential intervention would be appalling in any circumstances, but in the context of Argentina’s political polarization and other repressive measures is cause for alarm.

The risk of militarizing public order, the weakening of institutional restraints on executive power, the criminalization of protest and a fixation on promoting free-market orthodoxies — none of this has good echoes in Latin America. The United States supported many of the region’s dictators in the 1970s and ’80s so that they would serve as local guarantors of free trade and security against Communism.