By IWU-FI Media
11 July 2022. On Saturday, 9 July (Independence Day), Socialist Left and the Left Front – Unity, together with other political, human rights and social organisations and the Autoconvocatoria por el No Pago de la Deuda Externa (a social organisation) carried out activities all over the country to repudiate the austerity measures of the government of the All’s Front and the IMF.
Socialist Left demands the second and final independence, one that ends the chains that tie us to US imperialism and the IMF. [https://izquierdasocialista.org.ar/2020/index.php/blog/elsocialista/item/20757-contra-los-yanquis-y-el-fmi-por-que-hay-que-lograr-una-segunda-independencia].
Joint statement by the organisations and read in Mayo Square (opposite the government palace):
“On 9 July let’s win the streets all over the country against the pact of the government and the IMF.
“No to the payment of the foreign debt! Annulment of the government’s agreement with the IMF! Guzman (ministry of the economy) is gone and the IMF is next!
“Enough of austerity, plunder, extractivist mining and dependence! The debt is with the people and the environment!
“Let the resources be used to meet the needs of the people: wages, jobs, pensions, health, education, housing, care and environmental protection.
“The austerity is also through inflation. Minimum wage to match the family basket. Monthly updating of wages, pensions and social programmes.
“For the triumph of all workers and popular struggles.
“For a national strike and a plan of struggle against the austerity measures.
“Down with the criminalisation of protest
“Solidarity with the struggle of the Latin American peoples against the IMF.
“This 9 July, the undersigned organisations, social, human rights, environmental, the militant unemployed movement, the militant trade union movement and all the organisations of the left, we demonstrate to say no to the government’s pact with the IMF and its plan of austerity, surrender and criminalisation of protest.
“While the government and the right-wing opposition hypocritically commemorate Independence Day, they make a pact with the IMF and deepen all military, economic and political ties with imperialism.
“During the huge united mobilisations against the pact between the government and the IMF that we led in December and February together with dozens of organisations, we denounced that this policy would aggravate the situation of the working class and other popular sectors.
“Today, we have an annualised inflation rate that will reach 75/80%, loss of wages, pensions and the purchasing power of social plans, more tariffs and a licence to plunder oil, gas, mining and agribusiness. The recent resignation of the Minister of Economy Martín Guzman detonated a deepening of the political and economic crisis of the government, which is taking place in the midst of growing hunger and poverty, popular struggles and political crisis among its different sectors. And mainly for applying the austerity measures agreed with the IMF. The appointment of Silvina Batakis will not mean a change of course. On the contrary, the new minister has already announced her alignment with the IMF programme.
“In the immediate future, a further devaluation of the peso and a worsening of the inflationary process that will continue to eat away at salaries and pensions are on the cards. Batakis, who has a past of attacks on teachers and state employees in the province of Buenos Aires, is preparing for a new attack on the wage bargaining process and a free hand for tariff hikes.
“With (ministry of the economy) Guzman, the government tried to hold on to the IMF to define the fiscal deficit, increase tariffs and reform taxes. Not satisfied with these macroeconomic variables, it also offered the IMF to change the methodology of public tenders, redesign social policy, and money laundering legislation, and kneel before local banks and investment funds to obtain financing in pesos.
“These measures, committed to by Guzman and now ratified by Batakis, barely defined the basis of impositions to be accepted. At any time, especially in the event of defaults, the IMF can impose new demands. In the recent first review of the targets for the first quarter, announced last week, the IMF accepted what had been done but set the tone: it demanded that in the second half of the year public spending should fall by 7.8 per cent after deducting inflation, new pension reform and even lower wages.
“Thus, in the midst of a wave of repricing of between 20 and 30 per cent, an increase in the blue (unofficial) dollar and financial dollars at record prices, speculation by big businessmen and financiers, the latest conversation of the new minister Batakis with the head of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, with the aim of “reassuring the markets”, ratifies a course of brutal austerity measures on the workers to meet the targets set. The head of the IMF advises taking “painful” measures.
But these blows to the people are giving rise to big struggles. The piquetero movement in huge mobilisations and encampments confronts hunger and poverty. This Thursday, July 14, we call to support the mobilisation of the Unidad Piquetera. The tyre workers with their union (SUTNA) at the head have been carrying out a big plan of struggle with general strikes and mobilisations in defence of wages and working conditions. Arcor Bagley (food industry) is in a plan of struggle against job insecurity. In Tierra del Fuego, the metalworkers of Rio Grande went on strike, demanding a wage increase above inflation. The health workers of Rio Negro, the teachers of San Juan, La Rioja and the university teachers of the whole country are fighting against the salary cuts against education. Bus drivers in Buenos Aires went on strike against dismissals. On the America tv channel, workers are on strike for the payment of the Christmas bonus. The peoples, communities and territories are resisting mega-mining and oil companies’ pollution in the Argentinian Sea. Fumigated peoples and organisations continue the historic struggle against the agribusiness of deforestation, animal industrialisation, transgenic soya and its lethal agro-toxins, to which is added the recent HB4 transgenic wheat which, in the hands of agribusiness companies, could dump millions of litres of new agro-toxins into our soil.
While the popular struggles are developing, the government, the judiciary and the provincial governments are advancing in the criminalisation of protest. This is the situation in Jujuy, Misiones, Neuquen, Mendoza, Chubut, Catamarca, Santa Cruz and all over the country with legal cases against those who organise to confront hunger, misery and plunder. Cases that seek to deepen the course of criminalisation that was expressed in the convictions against Cesar Arakaki and Daniel Ruiz for joining in the demo against Macri’s pension reform. Or the criminal sentence of extradition of Facundo Molares, against which we continue to fight. And more recently, the imprisonment of Julian Lazarte, Jaru Rodriguez Carrero and Oscar Santillan after the mobilisation in front of Congress against the agreement with the IMF, a case for which they are still being prosecuted today.
“A key part of this offensive is the attack against the independent piquetero movement, which unites Cristina Kirchner in her attempt to transfer the control of the plans to the punteros (political operators) of the municipalities and governors, with Prosecutor Marijuan. We reject this persecution, the raids on popular organisations like the Dario Santillan Popular Front, MTE, Dignity, Evita Movement, CCC, FOL, Barrios de Pie and MTR 12 de Abril in Jujuy and Buenos Aires, and the persecution against comrades all over the country and the cases against leaders of the Partido and the Polo Obrero (Workers Party and their unemployed comrades’ movement).
“This offensive against the piquetero (unemployed people) movement has a woman’s face on both sides of the issue: on one side, the vice-president and the now brand new minister of the economy; on the other, the thousands and thousands of women and dissidents who make up the bulk of the social organisations. The criminalising statements towards the sector seem not to take into account that the austerity policies reinforce the processes of feminisation of poverty that have been worsening in recent years. Indeed, in the face of the deepening health and economic crisis, it has become clear that in capitalism the costs of social reproduction are being downloaded onto those who guarantee unpaid care work (in a general sense women and feminised identities) and due to necessity and lack of possibilities, we fall into much more precarious jobs. In this context, the policies of the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity are in line with the austerity that implies more overburdening of unpaid work and violent control of our bodies without comprehensive care mechanisms within our reach. The situation of children and young people deserves special mention, as they are in a context of total exclusion, with over 50 per cent of them living below the poverty line, without access to quality food and education, without assistance in mental health and drug addiction, among other deficiencies of public policies emptied by the current austerity plan. To criminalise the piquetero movement is to attack poor women, plain and simple.
“The agreement with the IMF already included the prospect of a greater targeting of the social aid plans, under the responsibility of the World Bank. The universal basic wage programme put forward by some lawmakers and leaders of the Frente de Todos (All’s Front) would be an insufficient $14,000. A serious debate should include the whole piquetero movement and the working class, covering the unemployment problem with the distribution of working hours between the employed and the unemployed, and with social coverage such as insurance for the unemployed equal to the basic family basket.
The integration of the trade union bureaucracy into the ruling front is a central point of support for the government to push through this policy of austerity. That is why we demand that the CGT (General Central Union) and the CTA (Autonomous Central Union) break with the government and call for a plan of the struggle of the workers as a whole against this sell-out pact and in support of all the struggles. A national strike is necessary as the beginning of a plan of the struggle of the whole workers’ movement, in unity between the employed and unemployed in support of the workers’ and popular demands and against the capitalist austerity of the government and the Monetary Fund.
Peronism won the elections promising to “fight right-wing” austerity and “to provide with food for all”. But its priority was to pay back to the IMF Macri’s debt (and its subsequent flight to tax havens). The government now downloads this debt on the working people. A debt that enlarges the one the genocidal military dictatorship took, which the subsequent “democratic” governments recognised and paid with more austerity over almost 40 years despite the fact that it was a clear swindle. A debt that brings about an unacceptable subordination to the dictates of the IMF and limits the possibilities of economic and social policies in favour of the working class. We say this debt is a fraud and we mustn’t pay it.
The pact with the IMF has the backing of big business, multinationals, the Rural Society, the Church, the employers’ opposition in Juntos por el Cambio (Together for Change – Macri and the Radicalismo Party)) and the bureaucratic and treacherous trade union leaderships like the CGT. In addition, the agreement includes a commitment to pay special attention to the demands of investment funds and local bankers so that they can continue to multiply their profits with state securities. It was blessed by the head of US imperialism, Joe Biden.
The government uses inflation not only to swell capitalist profits but also to liquefy wages and pensions, which allows the Frente de Todos to collect more money for the IMF. At the same time, the concentrated “price-makers” raise food prices with impunity, real robber barons whom the government sets free.
The pact was voted in Congress with the approval of Juntos por el Cambio. The far-right “libertarians” Milei and Espert did not vote for it because they demanded more severe austerity measures. The Kirchnerist sector of the Frente de Todos voted against and criticises this agreement, but not only did it not call to write off the debt, but they also enabled its treatment in the committees and in the Senate. Maximo Kirchner and La Campora spoke of a “more beneficial agreement” (wishful thinking) while they have been supporting the austerity measures and voted for pension mobility, a real robbery of retirees in the best Macri style to comply with the IMF. Now Cristina Fernandez directly sent a bill to collect and pay the IMF with the discourse that “the debt should be paid by those who fled it”, a position that we reject. Because in the event of recovering that money, it should go into the pockets of the working people, in favour of a workers’ and popular policy of national productive development, and not to the usurers.
The big bosses have a clear programme to intensify this attack against the working people with measures such as labour laws to deepen job insecurity. The IMF, in its review of the agreement, has already questioned the extension of the pension moratorium that the Senate approved, it has raised the impossibility of giving additional increases to pensions. It has demanded that an analysis of pension reform is initiated, which we already know what it implies: raising the retirement age, eliminating special regime retirement systems, pensions that are further and further away from 82 per cent mobile, deepening the reforms of Macri and Fernandez.
These measures especially affect women and dissidents who have worked in unpaid, precarious and bread-line jobs for most of their lives. In addition, the consequences of these measures will fall on us, especially on the popular sectors, which bear the burden of domestic and care work. Spending restrictions will further limit the necessary care policies, feminist policies, policies against male violence and policies for comprehensive sex education.
Young people are condemned to increasingly precarious and low-paid jobs. The government and the IMF are accomplices in the increase of labour outsourcing, junk contracts, informal work and the lack of labour recognition suffered by thousands of young people all over the country. Enough outsourcing and precariousness! Labour recognition for all the precarious workers! Recognition of their struggle organisations!
The student youth have been suffering the consequences of the educational neglect that the governments carried out during the pandemic, and the budget cuts ordered by the government and the IMF. This is aggravating all the problems in public schools and universities: lack of heating in winter, building problems, lack of vacancies, restriction of timetables, and lack of basic supplies for the educational process.
Faced with this, we propose an alternative programme of struggle by the workers, so that the crisis is paid for by those who caused it and not by the working people.
We call on the working people and all their organisations to reject this pact that reproduces poverty and dependence and to unite and mobilise. Alberto Fernandez’s speech at the Summit of the Americas calling to “work together and united” with US imperialism symbolizes in full-body the subjugation of our country as a semi-colony to raise money for the interests of the multinationals and imperialist banks.
The only debt to be paid is to the working people. There is another way! That no one should earn less than the bread line ($164,000 according to ATE-public servants’ union) and that all salaries, retirement benefits and social plans be updated monthly according to the inflation index. Disregard the Macri-IMF agreement as all previous agreements, usurious and fraudulent of the various governments that have been subjugating the working class, and use these and other national resources for the priorities of the working people. For wages, pensions, jobs, health, education, care, science, and restoration and protection of the environment.
For the sharing of working hours without affecting wages, 6-hour working day. Unrestricted opening and universalisation of social programmes in the way of insurance for the unemployed equal to the minimum living and mobile wage and a public works plan to generate proper jobs. Tripling of the education and health budgets. These measures must be part of an alternative and comprehensive programme of social, economic and political reorganisation by the working class, such as the nationalisation of the entire banking system to prevent capital flight and put national savings at the service of the working and popular sectors; end the private oligopoly and establish a state monopoly of foreign trade under workers’ control; Nationalise all privatised companies, oil and gas, under workers’ and users’ control, against plunder and pollution and with an environmental and sustainable perspective, among other basic measures, as part of a workers’ and popular political, economic and social plan led by the workers. In the struggle for a workers’ government that breaks with imperialism and confronts capitalism.
Last 11 December, with over 200 organisations, we were thousands on Mayo Square and all over the country against the IMF and the debt payments. We did the same on 8 February, days before the IMF pact was signed, and then with the marches of repudiation in front of Congress when the law was passed with the backs of the workers as a whole turned. Today we take to the streets again, to repudiate the pact with the IMF, to reject the subordination to its officials and the dictates of the imperial countries, to fight on a daily basis its terrible consequences against the working people and the ecosystems, and to show there is an alternative, working-class and popular solution. This 9 July, we mobilised again to Mayo Square and to many cities in the country. Because there is no independence and there is no way out with the IMF; we mustn’t pay fraudulent debts; the debt is with the working people and the environment.
We call on all organisations that want to confront this pact and its consequences to take to the streets to defeat this policy of austerity and surrender.
Militant meeting Cachito Fuckman
Association of Professionals in Struggle (APEL)
Centre of Lawyers for Human Rights (CADHU)
Centre of Professionals for Human Rights (Centro de Profesionales por los Derechos Humanos)
Ademys
AGD UBA
ATE Defensoría del Pueblo PBA
ATE Garrahan Hospital
ATE INCAA
ATE INDEC
ATE INTA
ATE Ministry of Economy
ATE SENASA
ATE Subsecretaría Subsecretaría Trabajo CABA
Internal Commission Anselmo Morvillo
Internal Commission APUBA Faculty of Social Sciences
Fernet Branca Internal Commission
Internal Commission GPS
Internal Committee Hospital Italiano
Textilana Internal Commission
Sarmiento Railway Delegates’ Body
Madygraf under workers’ management
SiTraCP (Union of domestic workers)
SITRAREPA
SUTEBA Bahía Blanca
Suteba Matanza – Multicolor
SUTEBA Tigre
Unión Ferroviaria Oeste (Western Railway Union)
Plenario del Sindicalismo Combativo
Agrupación Nacional Clasista Antiburocrática (ANCLA) (National Classist Antibureaucratic Group)
Classist Trade Union Coordinating Committee (CSC)
December 18 Trade Union Current (Corriente Sindical 18 de diciembre)
Movement of Classist Groupings (MAC)
Multicolour List of the Autonomous CTA (CTA Autónoma)
CEAVI (UNA)
CEDAM (UBA)
Centre of Students of Science and Technology (UNSAM)
Pharmacy and Biochemistry Students’ Centre (UBA)
Student Centre of Veterinary Medicine (UBA)
Student Centre of Tertiary 39 (Vicente López)
Student Centre of Tertiary 51 of Pilar (Pilar)
Student Centre Cecilia Grierson School of Nursing (UBA)
Internal Commission Lustramax
Centro de Estudiantes Visuales UNA
Centro de Estudiantes Instituto Superior Formation Docente y Técnica Nrp 9 La Plata
Centro de Estudiantes Instituto de Formación Docente Nrp 35
Acción Ecológica Anticapitalista
Agrupación ambiental anticapitalista Alerta Roja (Anti-capitalist environmental group)
Environment in Struggle
Coordinadora Basta de Falsas Soluciones
Ecosocialist Network
Environmental Tribune
Isadora, women in the struggle
Together and to the Left
The Reds
Free Diversity
Mumalá
Bread and Roses
Plenary of women workers
Autoconvocatoria por la suspensión del pago e investigación de la deuda (Dialogo 2000, ATTAC – CADTM Argentina, CPI, EDI Economistas de Izquierda, PRML, Cuba-MTR, TUN 29 de Mayo, JR Che, Opinión Socialista, FeTERA, LyF La Pampa y Desde el Pie – La Pampa, Mesa Coordinadora de Jubilades y Pensionades, Asamblea de Villa Pueyrredón, Emancipación Sur, Propuesta Sur Rosario, Hilo Rojo Colectivx Militante, Partido de la Liberación, Agrupación 29 de Mayo – Presidencia del CEJVG, Frente Popular Dario Santillan, Colectivo Reagrupando, Coordinadora por el Cambio Social: Frente de Organizaciones en Lucha / Movimiento de los Pueblos, Por un Socialismo feminista desde abajo: Frente Popular Darío Santillán – Corriente Plurinacional, MULCS Movimiento por la Unidad Latinoamericana y el Cambio Social, Movimiento 8 de Abril / FAR y COPA en Marabunta Corriente Social y Política / FOB Autónoma / OLP Resistir y Luchar / Igualdad Social)
Barrios de Pie
December Militant Collective
Socialist Democracy
Frente de Izquierda Unidad : Izquierda Socialista (IS) – Movimiento to Socialista de los Trabajadores (MST) – Partido de Trabajadores Socialistas (PTS) – Partido Obrero (PO)
Darío Santillán Popular Front (Frente Popular Darío Santillán)
Libres of the South
Marabunta, Corriente social y política (Marabunta, Social and political current)
Movimiento Sin Trabajo Teresa Vive (Teresa Lives Without Work Movement)
Southern Movement
MTR 12 de Abril
New MAS
Revolutionary Organisation Guevaristas
Polo Obrero
Venceremos Workers’ Party
