By Mercedes Trimarchi, deputy for the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires elected by the Workers’ and Left Front – Unity (FIT-U), and member of the Socialist Left (IS), IWU-FI section in Argentina
This Wednesday, June 4th, on the 10th anniversary of Ni Una Menos (Not One Woman Less – a fourth-wave grassroots feminist movement which started in Argentina and spread across several Latin American countries. The protest was organized following the murder of 14-year-old Chiara Paez, beaten to death and buried underneath her boyfriend’s house. She was several weeks pregnant and wanted to keep the baby, whilst he did not) protests, we achieved a massive united rally in front of the National Congress in repudiation of the far-right measures of Milei and the IMF. We brought together several different fighting sectors, among them Garrahan (A pediatric public hospital in Buenos Aires that, in 2024, saw its federal funding frozen), and we call on all to continue coordinating the demands. The CGT (General Confederation of Labour) must abandon its pact with the government, and call for a new 36-hour strike and a national plan of protest.
It was a great success to commemorate the ten years of that collective cry with the unity of all the sectors in struggle. This is how we defined it in the feminist assemblies in preparation for the day. We set ourselves an objective, that the feminist movement should embrace the pensioners who mobilise every Wednesday, as well as the confluence of all the struggles, and we achieved just that.
We mobilised women and the LGBTQIA+ community, of different ages, with the youth in particular standing out, and no wonder either. There continues to be a femicide every 31 hours, a figure that Milei denies, whilst wanting to remove femicide from the Penal Code, as he simultaneously dismants programmes that combat gender violence. We also mention the struggle of the doctors, residents, nurses, technicians and administrative staff of Garrahan hospital. Tomorrow there will be a doctors strike, along with other workers of the hospital, with a march to Plaza de Mayo. Families and professionals that have been protesting in front of congress against the cuts in disability benefits will also came together, along with teachers, non-teaching staff and students from the universities demanding an increase in the budget, workers being laid off from different sectors, the unemployed, social and political organisations, with a strong presence from the Workers’ and Left Front (FIT-U).
The united document, read by Liliana Daunes, was a powerful one. In one of its parts it states: “We are not interested in celebrating an anniversary, we are called to task of confronting the starvation and impoverishment plan of Javier Milei and the IMF, and their business and looting schemes. It is the struggles from below that today feel the urgency of a call for unity, linking all the conflicts that are facing the adjustment plan and cruelty“. 10 noteworthy points were presented, among them the repudiation of the IMF, and the non-payment of the debt. The genocide in Gaza, that takes the life of a woman every hour and a child every ten minutes, was also denouned.
The same Milei who governs for the IMF, attacks journalism, applies dictatorial decrees, vetoes laws that do not suit him, and represses pensioners every Wednesday, called those of us who mobilised “coup plotters and anti-democratic“. All this achieved for himself was to add even more sectors to the struggle. It has been proven that, when the marches are massive and united, they are not able to implement the anti-picketing protocol (signed in 2023, the protocol prevents pickets, in which demonstrators blockade city roads and highways. It also empowers police at train and bus stations to seize face masks, sticks or other elements they consider could be used in a demonstration, and protesting individuals and organizations will be identified with “video, digital or manual means” and then billed for the cost of “sending security forces to police the demonstrations“. It should be noted that Milei himself and Security Minister Bullrich have participated in previous pickets before), much to their disappointment, as happened with today’s march.
Today we showed how to confront the far-right government of Milei and the IMF. We call on all to continue to support the ongoing struggles, especially that of Garrahan Hospital, to continue to unite and coordinate all of these fights. In this sense it is important that the CGT abandons its pact with the government, seeing that following the 10th of April general strike they have not set out any other measures of struggle. The document read in Congress correctly pointed out: “It is urgent to call for a new national strike that unites all the struggles until Javier Milei’s plan is defeated! A strike that we must continue to demand from every assembly, delegate body and mobilisation“.
From the Socialist Left and FIT-U, we will continue to promote this path, for the broadest unity to defeat Milei’s sinister chainsaw, along with that of the governors and the IMF; money must go to our salaries, to pensions, to Garrahan Hospital, to the universities, to culture, to CONICET (National Scientific and Technical Research Council), to guarantee all disability benefits and to the other sectors in need, not to the usurious foreign debt. We put all our militancy and our seats at the service of achieving this.
