By Guillermo Pacagnini

Perhaps as never before, the past and the present are confused in concerning images of continuity: the new attempt at a reactionary reset of the economy, the anti-rights strategy, the cultural battle of the ultra-right government that shows permeability in sectors of the population, and then a powerful democratic reserve moving from below that summarizes the accumulated capital that overthrew the dictatorship. 50 years of struggle against impunity, for Memory, Truth and Justice. On the 24th, in the streets, we are working for a great united mobilization that will make history. For the Nunca Más (Never again), against Milei and his plan, to accumulate energy and turn everything around.

The dictatorship features its own prelude with para-state gangs of the Triple A (Anti-Communist Argentine Alliance), the CNU (National University Concentration), the CDO and others that targeted class activism, which headed a glorious combative generation that kicked the bureaucracy out of large sectors of the workers’ movement. It was also seen in Operativo Independencia and in the reactionary coup in the student movement. The dictatorship that followed leaped in quality, that’s for sure, but this preparatory phase that has tried to remain hidden under impunity was born from the entrails of that third government of the PJ. Memory must be comprehensive.

The dictatorship advanced in the genocide of a fighting generation at the service of planned misery and resetting the country. Something similar to what Milei is currently trying to do. It was not only the military that was involved, there was complicity that must be marked with fire. Not only were the employers and corporations, their beneficiaries and the church (that blessed murders, kidnappings and appropriations) involved, but there were also parties of the regime that facilitated the coup and provided officials and logistic assistance. The same parties that shamefully exhibited their democratic face, but sold the blood not only of the left but even of members of their own forces. The fall of the dictatorship was an enormous popular triumph which recovered democratic freedoms and plenty social conquests.

However, throughout these decades a new fight was waged: to preserve the memory, to know the truth and to achieve justice. Successive governments tried to forget and guarantee impunity, to turn the page and recompose the armed and security forces, marked by the stigma of genocide. Restriction of trials, impunity laws, pardons. That’s how they try to recover the repressive tool that allows them to resume their unfinished strategy.

The struggle of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and then Grandmothers, the human rights movement, the left, the workers and the youth achieved tremendous triumphs by sweeping away laws of impunity, judging and punishing genocide, bringing to light detention centers, recovering children and grandchildren.

Today Milei is back on track, supported by the failure of the radical and Peronist governments, with their more progressive or more conservative masks, and the coalitions with which they reassembled their puzzles. Those who disappointed once and a thousand times and betrayed the illusions that with this democracy for the rich “one could eat, heal and educate”.

Their ideological battle includes not only denialism; if we allow it, it is the vindication of genocide. It is not only rhetorical, it is functional to their plan. So it is not just a reminder of the 50 years, which of course is necessary to counter and defeat his campaign, but it is part of the fight to tear down his whole plan and, in perspective, dislodge him from power.

There are reserves below

Last year the Plaza on the 24th was huge and massive. We built a unitary pole of convocation, with all the human rights organizations, both those of the EMVJ (Remembrance, Justice and Truth Encounter) and the historical ones, which vindicated yesterday’s struggle and channeled the current anger against Milei. This was not a coincidence or spontaneous, it was the product of a political orientation and a very hard dispute to make it possible. This year we have accumulated more strength to achieve another massive and unitary mobilization in all the squares of the country. We need to stoke those accumulated democratic reserves that were expressed last year and build a stronger demonstration against Milei’s ultra-reactionary project, to put a barricade to his cultural and ideological battle that intends to gain support to move forward in annulling the conquests achieved, freeing those responsible for genocide and even daring to talk about pardons.

We also need this massiveness and power to give energy to the accumulation process, to the pole that defends rights, to those who fight, such as FATE and Garrahan, to the will to fight of the activists who resist.

Last March’s united day invigorated the human rights movement and the activism of all the struggling fronts against Milei and his plan. The organizations of the EMVJ, the Mesa de Organismos de Derechos Humanos and all of us who built the massive and historic action of 2025 have an accumulated capital that is the basis to repeat this year’s action in an increased and improved version.

A solid foundation for raising our bet

Almost twenty years ago, the human rights movement, a united front of diverse organizations, split in the face of the cooptation policies that had been taking place and the national government’s attempt to nationalize it. The EMVJ (which we, MST, are part of), emerged as a necessary and positive regrouping to defend the independent character of the mobilization and organization, the historical banners and the claims of justice to the State.

The division was not a positive fact, it was a wedge of the regime at the service of dividing and weakening the human rights vanguard and the mobilization, and advancing in its “reconciliation” policies. Precisely because of this, to have achieved in 2025 a huge and diverse Plaza, respecting the plurality of identities in the format, where the agreements were fully complied with and at the same time there was a common and correct message, was a leap in quality, interpreting the need, in the face of the change in reality that meant the assumption of Milei and his anti-rights plan, to deploy the greatest unity in action.

The text that was worked on and read in common included fundamental programmatic points: that Milei and Bullrich leave; the opening of archives since 1974; the denunciation of the IMF and the debt; the demand for Julio López; the rejection of DNU 70, the RIGI and the extractivist model; the demand for a strike and a plan of struggle of all the central organizations; solidarity with the Palestinian people, among others. All banners that we have been raising since the Encounter. From the MST and the CADHU, with the majority of organizations and organizations of the Meeting, we fought for this program and we got the majority components of the Table of Organizations to also act in unity. The result was an act independent of the PJ, of the union bureaucracy and with a clearly combative profile and against the government.

On this programmatic basis and on the basis of unity in diversity, there are conditions to achieve a new mass demonstration.

Stumbling over the same stone

Last year a minority sector of the Encuentro refused to explore unity and preferred to turn its back on the people who mobilized, carrying out a marginal act separately. Unfortunately, together with other groups, the PTS and the PO were the promoters of this very mistaken policy and, as a result, prevented the FIT-Unity from intervening as a whole in the united Plaza. We have argued at length with these forces and their conceptions, which are on the one hand sectarian because they aim at weakening the Encuentro and dividing the mobilization, and at the same time opportunist because they do not dispute the PJ. We did it within the Encounter itself and in the face of the activism, which welcomed with joy the unitary act, not because of the debate itself, but because of the need to call them to reflection and that this year they join with us and the majority of the Encounter to achieve an act that surpasses last year.

Unfortunately, not only did they refuse to discuss it at the IFUW table, but also, in the first debates held at the Meeting, they ratified their mistaken policy, even in the face of the evidence of being more isolated, since IS this time pronounced itself in favor of the act of unity.

They did not even know that this year there is more reason for it. Because the greatest unity is needed in the action against the ultra-right in the government. Because the 50th anniversary is being commemorated in the midst of a denialist deployment and it is necessary to reaffirm the historical banners and appeal to the popular reserve. Because we start from a force accumulated in the streets last year and there are conditions to overcome it. And from a political, programmatic and organizational “floor” of agreements that guarantee independence and unity in diversity.

There is one more reason, which has a particular force: in the face of the biggest crisis of Peronism and the attacks of the government, we need more than ever to strengthen an anti-capitalist and socialist left pole, and the FITU with its banners and as a whole must run for it. We insist on calling them to change and join.

For a great Plaza of unity in diversity

We are taking firm steps together with a clear majority of the organizations of the EMVJ, based on the political, programmatic and organizational agreements of last year, to achieve the unitary, diverse and independent act with the Table of Human Rights Organizations and all the sectors that join us. We are betting on a greater massiveness. From the MST in the FIT Unity we are working for it. For the memory of the 120 comrades of the PST murdered by the Triple A and the dictatorship. For the 30,400. To defeat Milei without going back to the past.