UNREST IN ARGENTINA

 UNREST IN ARGENTINA

Return of the right wing causes problems for smallholders and unions

Unite Landworker magazine – Autumn 2024

The election of Javier Milei, a right wing talk show host, last year as Argentina’s President has seen him attack small farmholders, trade unions and workers. In response he has been met by strikes and protests across the second largest nation in South America.

Describing himself as an anarcho-capitalist, Milei, whose victory by 10% was the largest by the right since the end of miliary rule in 1983, is ripping apart the remnants of the welfare state and flogging off the family silver. He HHeHhhhh

 In February 2024, less than a month after the three main trade union federations took strike action with a 12-hour general strike against labour law reforms and the lack of an economic plan, smallholders protested at the lack of government support and funding for sustainable farming.

A fever linked with the damaging use of agrochemicals hit food production. Citing ‘cost-cutting,’ Milei dismantled the National Institute of Family Farming whilst according to the labour movement’s anti-poverty charity War on Want (WOW) kept “policies which benefit large commodity traders such as Dreyfus, biotech corporations such as Monsanto and the large plantation landowners and agricultural oligarchies.”

Local farmers’ problems have been further exacerbated by Milei, another populist leader whose pre-election rhetoric of attacking elites always turns out if elected to be substituted by attacks on the working class, agreeing to facilitate the undermining of domestic food production by permitting the import of cheap imported basic foodstuffs.

The actions of Argentinean smallholders were mirrored globally and followed protests last year. Farmers in over 63 countries held national demos at the start of 2024. Indian farmers held marches in protest of a legal minimum support price guarantee for their crops. Protests across Europe have highlighted the lack of EU support for small farmers at the expense of large farmers and agribusinesses only too keen to drive them off the land.

According to a WOW spokesperson “Argentina  demonstrates how ultra-liberal governments in the Global South ally with foreign capital and large corporations, prioritising corporate profit and the extraction of natural resources over people’s sovereignty. Milei….  will exacerbate poverty and inequality…. peasants and indigenous communities will bear the brunt of environmental and social destruction.

“Latin American peasant movements ……….have long advocated for an alternative vision…. based on the principles of food sovereignty. Their lives and livelihoods must no longer be treated as expendable in the pursuit of corporate profit.”

Of course, the linking of the struggles of the smallholders and trade unionists –40% of Argentina’s 13 million workers – will be essential in what could be a life-or-death struggle. Trade unionists can best support their comrades in Argentina through the ITUC, Uni Global Union and IndustriALL.