Argentina: Resistance to Milei and his Chainsaw on International Women’s Day

By Dolores Curia on March 9, 2024

Yesterday I had the good fortune of attending this massive protest that filled the plaza in front of the Argentinian Congress; it was too packed to count. With the setbacks in the standard of living, erosion of rights and growing poverty, since the election of right wing Javier Milei, this  action was a statement to show that a determined fight is on and it is led by women. The demonstration was at least 95% women and LGBTQ people of all ages. It was clear to me that the long struggle to get abortion rights into Argentine law in December 2020 was not about to go backwards just because of the arrival of this reactionary, anti abortion, anti human president. It is a lesson to the people of the US, who recently lost federal protection to abortion rights by a medieval Supreme Court, that a united struggle that stays in the streets and disallows business as usual is essential.– Editor, Resumen in English from Buenos Aires

A climate of resistance filled the Plaza Congreso on International Womens Day (8M). It was a demonstration of political force with massive numbers in attendance from the most diverse social sectors, movements and political parties. The demands revolved around denouncing the State’s shift and the cruelty stamped on it by libertarianism.

“Milei, clown, the gap is in the data” reads one of the posters. The reference alludes to all the times the President, in campaign or in office, flaunted his denialism (of the wage gap, of the existence of femicides, in short, of violence as a systemic problem and structural inequality between genders. That phrase and others “We are not afraid of Milei”, “Our freedom is not managed by the market”, “Resistance to the chainsaw”, “Legal abortion in the hospital”, “No to the DNU”, “We are not muses, we are artists”) become a chant to the rhythm of the batucada. They improvise on the drums: little girls on their mothers’ shoulders, students, women cab drivers, airline workers who came, as the banner says, in defense of Aerolineas Argentinas, photographers standing on cars to get better shots. A circle forms around a woman in a wheelchair, then another around a transvestite who came dressed as a comparsa. From the balcony of a building at the intersection of Solis and Hipolito Yrigoyen, a group of four older women and a man accompany, sing and dance, waving a green handkerchief.

In spite of Patricia Bullrich’s protocol, the large police presence, the fences that prevented people from approaching the Congress (and which snarled the traffic on Callao Avenue for almost the whole afternoon) and the official prohibition of any public communication about the International Working Women’s Day, the first in the Milei era, the mobilization took over the Congress Square in the city of Buenos Aires and it was replicated in different parts of the country.

The attendance in Buenos Aires was massive and multisectoral. Feminisms once again demonstrated their capacity to summon people from all walks of life: banners of all colors and sectors were seen. Never Again slogans, anti-speciesist activism, sexual diversities (sexual, functional), anti-racist struggles, the slum movement, union sectors such as the CGT, the CTA, ATE, SUTEBA, CONADU, among others, and social movements such as La Poderosa, the MTE, the Frente Patria Grande, among many others.

Scattered among the crowd, there were signs for the legalization of cannabis use, the orange flag advocating for the separation of the Church from the State, posters in defense of public education, for autism awareness.

It is hard to find in Argentine history another case of a president who explicitly singles out the women’s movement as a direct enemy. It is also difficult to find any other precedent such as the provocation announced on Friday morning by the spokesman Manuel Adorni, who chose March 8 to announce that the Women’s Hall of the Casa Rosada would be renamed the Hall of the Heroes.

It was in this climate that 8M began to be activated. And in this sense, the assemblies in which the demonstration was organized throughout the month of February -with the presence of artistic collectives, trade unions, neighborhood assemblies, social organizations and political parties-, due to their massiveness, already functioned as a thermometer of the crowds that accompanied this Friday in the Plaza Congreso. Many of these sectors gathered in the square from 4:00 p.m. onwards. And in addition to the concentration, different columns converged towards the same point in a march that started from Avenida de Mayo and 9 de Julio.

“We are in a historic 8M against the ultra-right that today is embodied in the government of Javier Milei and Victoria Villarruel”, read the journalist and emblematic voice of the struggles for human rights Liliana Daunes, after the presentation in charge of Taty Almeida, who called to resist the ultra-liberal and anti-rights policies of La Libertad Avanza, and was applauded when she arrived, in a car surrounded by a human cordon, and then, again, on the stage.

“We are facing an authoritarian government that represents the patriarchal reaction, that talks about the chainsaw to celebrate a systematic plan of looting and hunger and to destroy the rights of the working class and the people, because it is at the service of international capital that comes for our common goods and our lives, and to be able to do so it needs a people with hunger, without work, without housing, without public education and health. We repudiate the dismantling of the state: the deregulation, privatization and emptying of public policies”, read Daunes.

The precariousness of daily life increasingly encloses women in circles of violence. It is even more difficult to get out of them if programs such as Acompañar, which operated under the dismantled Ministry of Women, Genders and Diversity and had the objective of economically strengthening women and lgbti people in situations of gender violence, are destroyed, as they were.

Clarisa Gamberra of ATE referred to this in the middle of the march: “Milei comes to adjust, reduce, deregulate and privatize the State and this is very serious for us because there is no way to promote a less violent, more egalitarian society without the intervention of the State, without public policies”.

Graciela Morgade, vice-dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the UBA in conversation with Pagina 12 referred to the attack on feminisms and public education and the investment in science that is a constant of the libertarian government. “This scientific research in the educational field is precisely what has been expanding the horizon of policies and actions for inclusion in a pedagogy of equality. The academic community and the educational community in general is not only concerned, but also organizing itself to defend that which cannot be renounced. That which, in case of disappearing, such as public schools, national universities and the scientific and technological system, would produce irreparable damage in the short and medium term and would put our country at a 19th century level of development”, analyzed Morgade, from the column of university teachers of CONADU.

For her part, Claudia Albornoz, referent of La Poderosa, highlighted the place in the march and in this political context of popular feminisms, and in particular, the place of slum feminism, which today has a role of resistance. “We resist to survive, to survive. Because at stake are food, education, work, which are basic rights, and from there we also put into discussion what freedom is. The national government shouts ‘freedom’ a lot, while we are losing more and more rights”.

In addition to resisting, said Albornoz in a dialogue with Página12, movements such as La Poderosa have the objective of dismantling the stereotypes that “this government fosters” about popular neighborhoods and about women from those sectors. “They demonize us… As if we were the prices! We are not the ones who influence the price of the dollar. We, with our cooks at the head of the canteens in the neighborhoods, which have now stopped receiving basic supplies, are the ones who sustain and with a triple workday (paid, domestic and community work) we juggle so that there is a plate of food in the territories”, says Albornoz.

She added: “We don’t appoint the ministers of the economy. We don’t make the kind of political decisions that influence the country. We did not generate this food inflation. Nor did we leave 6 million new poor in two months”. Albornoz refers to the fact that the devaluation and the inflationary spike of Javier Milei’s government took the poverty level to 57.4 percent in just two months, against 44.7 percent reached in the third quarter of 2023. According to the analysis of the Social Observatory of the Catholic University, 27 million people are poor. Poverty rose 12.7 percent in the two months that Milei has been in office.

This Friday, almost all the demands revolved around denouncing the shift of the State and the cruelty stamped on it by libertarianism. All the sectors that called to march agree that the feminization of poverty is accelerating “How can a female worker in charge of her home sustain that expense with wages that are liquefied?”, asks Clarisa Gamberra of ATE.

“That is why this 8M is so important because we are not willing to go backwards in rights and we have to organize the necessary strength it is time to generate processes of encounter, to re-weave networks, community and feminisms know about that. In the face of cruelty, we take care of ourselves, we have patience, we recognize ourselves and we create the conditions to resist and also to imagine the time to come”.

Source: Pagina 12, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English