Buenos Aires. Around 350,000 people in Argentina have fought against the rapid increase in hunger and poverty protested. The protesters see this as the consequences of the cuts in the social system made by Alberto Fernández’s government in order to meet the requirements of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Fernández signed an agreement with the IMF in 2022 to refinance the billions in debt left by his predecessor Mauricio Macri (2015-2018). Macri’s debt was equivalent to 127 times the country’s creditworthiness, according to the National Regulatory Authority recently stated.
The result of the debt policy is “a subdued and starving people”, said a spokesman for the Coordination for Social Change. Argentina currently has an annual inflation rate of 108.8 percent and food inflation is the second highest in the world at 115 percent. 18 million Argentines life below the poverty line, that is 39.2 percent. 60 percent of children and young people are poor. Around ten million people are on soup kitchens reliant.
But the Fernández government cut back on food aid programs in particular. “There is nothing left to eat in the soup kitchens”, complains Eduardo Belliboni from the union of unemployed organizations Unidad Piquetera (UP). While the Economy Minister Sergio Massa social and pension programs, food aid, training grants and electricity price subsidies shortened, rose interest payments on debt.
Pressure from the IMF to adjust public finances too accelerate, has grown steadily in recent months. “If the IMF helps govern Argentina, the result is misery,” outraged Oscar Isasi, head of the Association of Civil Servants of the Province of Buenos Aires (ATE-Buenos Aires).
“We believe this is a historic mobilization,” says one protester. “End hunger, end austerity measures” was the motto of the demonstration, which one of the participants called over a megaphone as the largest in decades designated.
In contrast to previous protests under the Fernández government involved this time not only the oppositional social movements like the UP. Grassroots organizations such as the Union of Workers in the Informal Economy (UTEP), which is close to the government coalition Alliance of All (Frente de Todos, FdT), also took part with a critical attitude towards the government.
“This is undoubtedly a very important milestone for the unity of social movements,” said Hugo Godoy, general secretary of the trade union confederation CTA Autónoma. “The unity of workers, formal and informal workers, is essential to put pressure on the government to stop ‘submitting’ to the IMF’s prescriptions.” Otherwise, Godoy said, poverty and hunger would continue to increase.
The large-scale demonstration was preceded by nationwide protest actions, including the federal march of the piqueteros (Marcha Federal Piquetera), which had taken place two days earlier as a star march from across the country to the Ministry of Development in Buenos Aires pulled was camping out in the Plaza de Mayo the night before the demonstration.