Leaders of labor unions and various socialist political groups launched demonstrations in Argentina to protest the newly-introduced “austerity” reforms of libertarian President Javier Milei.
Thousands of activists raising banners of Che Guevara and signs critical of Elon Musk and other capitalists clashed with riot police in the streets of Buenos Aires on Thursday. Various people interviewed cited Milei’s cuts to government spending, especially his executive decree that introduced 300 reforms to regulate the economy, as their reason for demonstrating. Milei also recently announced that he will be firing 5,000 government employees who had been hired in 2023.
Milei has introduced a proposal to declare a state of emergency that will last until Dec. 31st, 2025, with the option to extend it by two years, so that his administration can pass bills without getting blocked by the legislature.
Impresionante la concentración de hoy, es evidente que superó los 8000 que la CGT quería. Imaginen un paro general con movilización y, con un plan de lucha, DNU afuera, que la crisis la paguen los que la generaron. pic.twitter.com/TznFE6DWgg
— Andrea Robles (@RoblesAndrea) December 27, 2023
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The more than 300 reforms will significantly scale back the amount of state intervention in the Argentine economy by privatizing companies, ending price controls, and freeing up rules on imports and exports. This package was announced only a week after Milei’s Economic Minister Luis Caputo announced massive cuts to the state budget and a whopping 54 percent devaluation of the national currency, which is designed to cure the country’s hyperinflation (set to reach 200 percent by the end of the year) with a kind of “shock therapy” treatment. Milei has also paused all new public construction projects and introduced a year-long ban on state advertising.
The market has warmly received the changes, catapulting Argentine bond prices to the highest in two years and steadying the peso’s exchange rate. Stocks for oil company YPF SA, currently still owned by the Argentine government, rose by more than 2 percent following the announcement of the reform package.
But the country’s labor movement and socialist political coalitions are not happy. Unions immediately appealed in court a part of the ruling that rescinded certain labor protections, but were rejected by a judge since it had not yet gone into effect.
“This decree is invalid, completely invalid,” said Secretary General of the Judicial Union Julio Piumato. “It’s not because it rules out 300 laws, but because it does not comply with the Constitution’s requirements for the necessity and emergency decrees. It violates the Constitution because it destroys the labor and social rights of most Argentines.”
Eduardo Belliboni, a leader of the Argentine socialist political group Polo Obrero, told Global News: “There is a violation of workers’ fundamental rights in Argentina. They are attacking our wages. People are being denied to protest against brutal measures against the poor. Workers are suffering decreases to their wages that favors the interests of the big business owners.”
“I think it is very important to stop this,” Workers’ Socialist Movement leader Alejandro Bodart told Agence France-Presse (AFP), “because considering our democratic rights we have to be able to have a debate about this. After all, this is not a democracy in the literal sense because under the new measures you cannot protest, you cannot express yourself, you cannot strike and you cannot hold an assembly in the workplace.”
While Milei’s administration has said it will permit protests, it threatened to slash government aid to anyone that blocks roadways. In another decree, Milei threatened anyone who blocks roads or the impedes public services with up to six-year prison sentences. It also mandates that all organizers tell authorities about their protest plans and who their leaders are in advance, and grants powers to the Ministry of Security to modify protest plans or oppose them outright.
The administration has also banned protestors from covering their faces, bringing children to the protests, and carrying sticks. At least six demonstrators have been detained by police.
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