With a few phrases alluding to her arrest for a corruption conviction, ratified in three instances, former President Cristina Kirchner told her followers, who were waiting for her word in the Plaza de Mayo, that she was"firm and calm" from her semi-apartment in the Constitución neighborhood, where she is serving house arrest.

He also called on Peronist militants to work" with more wisdom, more unity, with more strength" in this election year because, he estimated, "we will return."

The following is the full text of the speech recorded by Cristina Kirchner for broadcast at the event in the plaza.

Hello, how are you? How are you, my dear compatriots, in that wonderful, historic Plaza de Mayo? Well, I hope you're doing very well. Here I am, at San José 1111, standing firm and calm. Of course, I'm not allowed on the balcony. My God, what a mess they are.

I want to thank each and every one of you for the incredible displays of affection and kindness these past few days here, at my front door and in different parts of the country. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I've heard them chant slogans, march, and sing the national anthem with great passion. But I want to tell you that what I liked most was hearing them sing"we will return" again. We hadn't done that for a long time, perhaps too long. And I like that"we will return" because it reveals a will, the will to once again have a country where kids can eat four times a day and receive books and computers at school, where workers can make ends meet and save up to buy a car, a house, a piece of land—something that's theirs, earned through their hard work, truly Peronist.

Retirees had remedies. My God, that country was no utopia, no, no, no. We lived there for 12 and a half years, and we also left it debt-free, just like families and businesses. It's incredible what they've done and how much they've destroyed it.

But, just as that was a reality, I want to tell you that this model that Milei now embodies, which is no different from those of yesteryear, is falling apart. And it's falling apart not only because it's unjust and inequitable—no, no, no, not only because of that—but fundamentally because it's economically unsustainable. It expires like yogurt, and it's not new; we already saw it with Martínez de Hoz in '76 and with Cavallo in the '90s.

Because I wonder how an economic model is sustained where people have to pay for their daily food and then can't pay it off? How does a country survive where it's much better to buy food, travel, and clothes abroad because they're cheaper than they are here in the country? And while this is happening, the Minister of Economy, the disgraceful Caputo, rents dollars. He rents dollars to pretend he has reserves. Is there really anyone who can seriously and accurately believe that this is sustainable? My God, you can't get any more con artists.

And the worst part is that the real economic powers that be know this model has no future; they know it's collapsing, and that's why I'm in prison. But there's something everyone should understand, even them, those with concentrated economic power. They can lock me up, but they won't be able to lock up the entire Argentine people. It's not us who are scared, it's them.

Exactly a week ago I asked myself, and I said it publicly, why, if they say I was finished, that no one wanted me, why didn't they let me compete? Well, they've answered, they've answered, and the answer is this: here I am, imprisoned at San José 1111, not even being able to go out onto the balcony. Thank goodness I don't have any potted plants because I wouldn't even be able to water them, what do I know. Ridiculous people, if there ever were any. And you know why they won't let me compete? Because they know they'll lose.

That's why, at this stage, it's necessary to organize to clarify—I repeat, organize to clarify—what the real problem is with our country. It's nothing more or less than an economic model in which a few get rich and the rest are left with nothing. And this is sustained by a judicial framework that, while maintaining monstrosities like Decree 70, which directly amended the Constitution, also puts me in jail. Simple and straightforward, right? Easy to understand. Economic power plus judicial power, and the rest can go to hell.

Today is the time to show that we will defend democracy with the same tools we built it with: without violence, but with courage, without fear, but with absolute clarity about the historic moment that all Argentines are going through. With love, we will do it with much love as always, with profound love for this homeland that so many, many times they tried to bring to its knees, so many times it knew how to rise again and again. The Argentine people have already shown a thousand times that they know how to stand up, that they know how to resist, that they know how to organize, that they know how to fight, and that if they are expelled, they also know how to come back. They returned with Perón, they returned with Néstor.

I don't know exactly what the immediate future holds for me; I don't have a crystal ball, but I do know something. I've been through almost everything in this life. I lived through a dictatorship that made 30,000 Argentinians disappear, I lived through multiple attempts to loot the country and deprive the people of their rights, I lived through the example and the enormous and terrible sacrifice of Néstor, and everything it cost us to build that decade we won. Not only in political terms, but, I would say, even in personal and family terms. I also lived through an assassination attempt. The truth is that I haven't lacked anything in these years, and I've endured this infamous judicial process that has dragged on for years and that came to an end with the same judicial corruption with which it began.

Well, dear Argentines, we will return, and we will return with more wisdom, with more unity, with more strength. And from wherever I am, from whatever trench I may be, I will continue doing everything in my power to be there by your side, as you have always been by my side. But we will do it because we have something that they will never have, nor will they be able to buy, no matter how much money they have. We have people, we have memory, we have history, and we have a homeland.

We will return, Argentines, we will return to being a thousand times as we have been since the beginning of history. The people, the people, always return in the end.