No to the repression of popular struggles!
On March 12, the mobilization of the retired enjoyed growing popular support (which extended to solidarity with retired people from supporters of football clubs) and became the focal point of the growing intensity of social resistance to Milei’s austerity policies. Now, the workers’ struggles, which had been gradually growing in scale, are taking a leap forward, forcing the principal administrative body of the class struggle in Argentina (the General Confederation of Labor) to announce a general strike on April 10. The Association of State Workers (ATE) also called for a national strike on March 27, including a mobilization to the Ministry of Deregulation and Transformation of the State.
In Córdoba, the CGT Regional Córdoba, the CGT Histórica, the CTA, and the CTA Autónoma are protesting. The exact date of the strike will be set next Monday, March 17, during a coordination meeting at the same location. They are now calling not only to denounce the repression of March 12 and Milei’s justice policies, but also the complicity of the provincial governments, which, by yielding to Milei’s mafia-like extortion methods through their management of the budget and national treasury funds, have guaranteed Milei’s governability through a significant portion of the governors, through the influence of their provincial deputies and senators in Congress. They have been refusing to vote against the adjustment decrees or advancing the impeachment proceedings, as they did after the cryptogate scam.
The March 12 crackdown left more than 120 people arrested and at least 45 injured, including photojournalist Pablo Grillo, who suffered a skull fracture from the impact of a tear gas canister and underwent emergency surgery.
“In response to this incident, the Association of Photojournalists of the Argentine Republic (ARGRA) and other union, political, and social organizations organized rallies and marches in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, specifically on the corner where Grillo was attacked. There, a press conference was held with the participation of the Buenos Aires Press Union (SiPreBA), which has been supporting the photographer’s family. The general secretary of the Argentine Federation of Press Workers (FATPREN), Carla Gaudensi, was also present.” https://enfoquesindical.org/articulo/noticias/periodistas-de-todo-el-pais-se-movilizaron-en-apoyo-a-pablo-grillo-y-contra-la
The National University Trade Union Front will hold a strike next Monday and Tuesday demanding salary and budget increases.
Following the repression of the retired people’s march on Wednesday, March 12, there were pot-banging protests in various parts of the federal capital and greater Buenos Aires against the repression itself.
“The protest began with a cacerolazo in different parts of the country, but in the City of Buenos Aires it turned into a spontaneous mobilization, which covered several streets and reached the Government headquarters.” https://www.iprofesional.com/politica/424259-tras-el-cacerolazo-cientos-de-personas-marcharon-a-plaza-de-mayo
For the next retired people’s march on Wednesday, March 19, they are preparing to show solidarity and march alongside the retired themselves, unions, human rights organizations, etc.
The Milei government is seeking to arrive in the best possible conditions for the mid-term elections in October of this year. It must be said that for Milei (and in general for all the so-called libertarians who presented themselves as outsiders to the political system with a strong component of “virtuality” in “militancy” of the so-called social networks, etc.), being defeated in their first electoral test would mean a hard blow, much greater than what it would represent for a “traditional” type of bourgeois government.
It is in this context that we are facing the end of an economic cycle with growing losses of central bank reserves, flight of speculative capital, falls in the stock market, etc. Where inflation, and especially inflation relative to the basic food basket, is rising again, and Milei’s government is showing its desperation for a bailout from the International Monetary Fund as a survival measure. In a situation where Milei’s economic policy was reduced to exchange rate “stability,” which is now beginning to erode, as a measure to stem rampant inflation, it is in this situation of confusion within the Milei government that, within the ruling party, currently in power, the “La Libertad Avanza” government, the March 12 congressional session between the Libertarian deputies ended in internal clashes, even physical confrontations.
Faced with a context where class struggle is on the rise, Milei’s adjustment government and his party are confused, the economic cycle is tending to run out of steam, and Milei’s own accomplices outside the Libertarians (such as a whole group of provincial governments) are being questioned.
The task of vanguard workers is to take advantage of these growing contradictions within the capitalist class and the deepening of working-class struggles to guide workers themselves beyond the limits that bureaucratic leaderships are trying to impose on them.
