Flags, colors and a unison cry in the historic Plaza de Mayo: Out, out, out, out with the IMF!
This July 9, the Frente de Izquierda Unidad together with other left, social and human rights organizations marched towards Plaza de Mayo, to demand the non-payment of the fraudulent foreign debt and the rupture with the IMF, among other political demands such as the nationalization of banks and foreign trade and an urgent increase in wages, pensions and social assistance.
The concentration involved thousands of comrades. It took place through the streets of downtown Buenos Aires until reaching the historic Plaza de Mayo, and marked the day for its strength and political orientation, contrasting with the reactionary call promoted by referents of the political right wing of Juntos por el Cambio, which had little participation, although media is trying to give it a much bigger dimension.
The march to Plaza de Mayo, promoted and led by the FITU and within this by a large column of the MST, clearly denounced the government and its plan of adjustment agreed with the Fund, criticizing the latest proposals made by Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who has been leaning towards dialogue with sectors of the economic power and the political opposition, and also expressed herself against the right wing of Juntos por el Cambio and the liberfachos. From the left we returned to fill the Plaza against austerity and to say goodbye to the IMF. That is the only way to be truly free and independent.
From the head of the unitary mobilization, where she gathered with other referents of the FIT-U, Cele Fierro, leader of the MST, stated: “The government talks about independence, while it submits us to the IMF. Yesterday 1,710 million dollars were paid, money that should go to education, health and genuine work. Changing the figurehead in the Ministry of Economy but not the economic project, the ‘unfinished dream’ of a sovereign country that Fernandez talked about today, only remains in discourse”.
“Another project of the country is conquered in the streets fighting against the Fund and we demonstrated it again today being thousands in Plaza de Mayo. Proposing the total rupture with the IMF, nationalizing the whole financial system and foreign trade. Let the money stay in the country to be used for the needs of the great majorities. A true independence cannot be achieved with the Frente de Todos or the right wing of Juntos por el Cambio and Milei, it can only be achieved with a socialist and anti-capitalist program, with the workers at the head, as we propose from the left”, he closed.
Upon arriving at Plaza de Mayo, and in the midst of new chants against the IMF, representatives of the different organizing spaces went up to the stage and the reading of the unitary document began, with which the act ended.
Below, we transcribe the complete document:
On July 9 let’s win the streets all over the country against the pact of the government and the IMF.
No to the payment of the foreign debt! Annulment of the government’s agreement with the IMF! Guzman is gone and the IMF is next!
Enough austerity, plunder, extractivism and dependence! The debt is with the peoples and nature!
Let the resources go to solve worker’s needs: wages, work, pensions, health, education, housing, care and environmental protection.
Austerity is also implemented through inflation. Minimum wage equal to the family basket. Monthly updating of wages, pensions and social programs.
For the triumph of all workers’ and popular struggles.
For a national strike and plan of struggle against the adjustment.
Down with the criminalization of protest.
Solidarity with the struggle of the Latin American peoples against the IMF.
This July 9, the undersigned organizations, social, human rights and environmental organizations, the militant picketers’ movement, militant trade unionism and all the organizations of the left, mobilize to say no to the government’s pact with the IMF and its plan of adjustment, surrender and criminalization of protest.
While the government and the right-wing opposition hypocritically commemorate Independence Day, they make a pact with the IMF and deepen all military, economic and political ties with imperialism.
In the big unitary mobilizations against the pact between the government and the IMF that we led in December and February together with dozens of organizations, we denounced that this policy would aggravate the situation of the working class and other popular sectors.
Today we have an annualized inflation that will reach between 75/80%, loss of wages, pensions and of the purchasing power of social plans, more tariffs and license for the plundering of oil, gas, mining and agribusiness companies. The recent resignation of the Minister of Economy, Martín Guzmán, detonated a deepening of the political and economic crisis of the government, which is taking place in the midst of growing hunger and poverty, popular struggles and political crisis among its different sectors. And mainly for applying the adjustment agreed with the IMF. The assumption of Silvina Batakis will not mean a change of course. On the contrary, the new minister has already announced her alignment with the IMF program. In the immediate future, a further devaluation of the peso and a worsening of the inflationary process that will continue to eat away at salaries and pensions are foreseen. Batakis, who has a past of attacks on teachers and state employees in the province of Buenos Aires, is preparing for a new attack on the bargaining process and to give free rein to the tariff hikes.
With Guzmán, the government tried to hold on to the IMF to define the fiscal deficit, increase tariffs and reform taxes. Not satisfied with these macroeconomic variables, it also offered the IMF to change the methodology of public tenders, redesign social policy, anti-money laundering legislation, and kneel before local banks and investment funds to obtain financing in pesos.
These measures, committed by Guzmán and now ratified by Batakis, barely defined the basis for the impositions to be accepted. At any time, especially in the event of non-compliance, the IMF may impose new demands. In the recent first review of the targets for the first quarter, known last week, the IMF accepted what had been done but set the tone: it demanded that in the second half of the year public spending be reduced by 7.8% after inflation, a new pension reform and even lower wages.
Thus, in the midst of a wave of remarking prices of between 20 and 30%, of an increase in the blue dollar and financial dollars at record prices, of speculation by big businessmen and financiers, the last conversation of the new Minister Batakis with the head of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, with the objective of “calming the markets”, ratifies a course of brutal adjustment on the workers to meet the goals set. The head of the Fund advises to take “painful” measures.
But these blows to the people are giving rise to big struggles. The piquetero movement in huge mobilizations and encampments confronts hunger and poverty. This Thursday, July 14, we call to support the mobilization of the Unidad Piquetera. The tire workers with their union (SUTNA) have been carrying out a great plan of struggle with general strikes and mobilizations in defense of wages and working conditions. Arcor Bagley is in a struggle against labor precariousness. In Tierra del Fuego, the metalworkers of Río Grande went on strike, demanding a wage increase over inflation. The health workers of Río Negro, the teachers of San Juan, La Rioja and the university teachers of the whole country have been carrying out big measures against the salary cuts against education. The workers of the 60 line buses went on strike against layoffs. And in the América channel for the payment of the Christmas bonus. The peoples, communities and territories struggle and resist the extractivist advance of mega-mining and oil companies in the Argentine Sea. Fumigated peoples and organizations continue the historic struggle against the agribusiness of deforestation, animal industrialization, transgenic soy and its lethal agro-toxins, to which is added the recent HB4 transgenic wheat which, in the hands of agribusiness companies, could dump new millions of liters of agro-toxins into our soil.
While the popular struggles develop, the government, the judiciary and the provincial governments advance in the criminalization of protest. Thus we face their offensive in Jujuy, Misiones, Neuquén, Mendoza, Chubut, Catamarca, Santa Cruz and the whole country with cases against those who organize to confront hunger, misery and plunder. Cases that seek to deepen the course of criminalization that was expressed in the convictions against Cesar Arakaki and Daniel Ruiz for their participation in the struggle against Macri’s pension reform. Or the criminal sentence of extradition of Facundo Molares, against which we continue to fight. And more recently, the imprisonment of Julián Lazarte, Jaru Rodriguez Carrero and Oscar Santillán after the mobilization in front of Congress against the agreement with the IMF, a case for which they are still being prosecuted today.
A central part of this offensive is the attack against the independent piquetero movement, which unites Cristina Kirchner in her attempt to transfer the control of the plans to the punteros of the municipalities and governors, with Prosecutor Marijuán. We reject this persecution, the raids on popular organizations such as the Frente Popular Dario Santillán, MTE, La Dignidad, Movimiento Evita, CCC, FOL, Barrios de Pie and MTR 12 de Abril in Jujuy and CABA, the persecution against comrades throughout the country and the cases against leaders of the Partido Obrero and the Polo Obrero.
This offensive against the piquetero movement affects women on two ways, on one side, the Vice President and the now brand new Minister of Economy; on the other, the thousands and thousands of women and dissidents who make up the bulk of the social organizations. The criminalizing statements towards the sector seem not to take into account that the adjustment policies reinforce the processes of feminization of poverty that have been worsening during the last years. Indeed, in the face of the deepening of the health and economic crisis, it has become more evident that in capitalism the costs of social reproduction are unloaded on those who guarantee the tasks of unpaid care (in a general sense women and feminized identities) and by necessity and lack of possibilities we fall into much more precarious jobs. In this context, the policies of the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity are in line with the consolidation of an adjustment that implies more overload to unpaid work and a violent control of our bodies without comprehensive care devices within our reach. The situation of children and youth, located in a context of total exclusion with more than half of them under the poverty line, without access to quality food and education, without assistance in mental health and problematic consumption, among other deficiencies of public policies emptied by the current adjustment, deserves a special mention. To criminalize the piquetero movement is to attack poor women, plain and simple.
The agreement with the Fund already included the prospect of a greater targeting of the AUH, the Food Card and the Progresar scholarships, in charge of the World Bank. The adjustment on the “Potenciar Trabajo” is the continuity of this policy. The universal basic salary proposed by some sectors of the Frente de Todos would be a miserable amount of $14,000. A serious debate should include the deliberations of the entire piquetero movement and the working class, covering the need to overcome unemployment with the distribution of working hours between the employed and the unemployed, and with social coverage such as insurance for the unemployed equal to the basic family basket.
The integration of the union bureaucracy to the ruling front is a central point of support for the government to pass this policy of adjustment. That is why we demand that the CGT and the CTA break with the government and call for a plan of struggle of the workers as a whole against this sell-out pact and in support of all the struggles. A national strike is necessary as the beginning of a plan of struggle of the whole workers’ movement, in unity between the employed and unemployed in support of the workers’ and popular demands and against the capitalist adjustment of the government and the Monetary Fund.
Peronism won the elections with the promise of fighting the right wing and filling up refrigerators. But its priority was the recognition of Macri’s indebtedness with the Monetary Fund and the millionaire payments of a debt that were used for the financial bicycle, which he now unloads on the working people. Debt that is added to the payment of the whole indebtedness that comes from the genocidal military dictatorship, recognized and paid by all the capitalist governments with more adjustment throughout almost 40 years despite the fact that it was a clear swindle. A debt that also implies an unacceptable subordination to the dictates of the IMF and limits the possibilities of economic and social policies in favor of the working class. That is why we say that swindles cannot be paid.
The pact with the IMF has the endorsement of the big businessmen, multinationals, the Rural Society, the Church, the employers’ opposition of Juntos por el Cambio and the bureaucratic and treacherous trade union leaderships such as the CGT. In addition, the agreement includes the commitment to attend especially to the demands of investment funds and local bankers so that they may continue multiplying their profits with government securities. It was blessed by the head of US imperialism, Joe Biden.
The government lets inflation run not only swelling capitalist profits, but also to liquefy wages and pensions, which allows the Frente de Todos to collect more to comply with the IMF. At the same time, the monopolies “price makers” continue to raise food prices with impunity, true white-collar criminals who even confess that they “live by remarking every day” without the government touching them.
The pact was voted in Congress with the approval of Macrismo and the radicalism of Juntos. And although the liberfachos Milei and Espert did not vote for it, they did so from the right, saying that they were demanding a greater adjustment. For its part, the Kirchnerist sector of the Frente de Todos voted against and criticizes this agreement, but not only did it not propose to break with the IMF, much less to stop paying the debt, which is illegitimate and fraudulent, but it enabled its treatment in the commissions and in the Senate. Máximo Kirchner and La Cámpora talked about a “more beneficial agreement” (as if there were a good IMF) while they have been supporting the adjustment and voted for the pension mobility, a real robbery to the retirees in the best Macri style in order to comply with the IMF. Now Cristina Fernandez has directly sent a bill to collect and pay the IMF with the discourse that “the debt should be paid by those who have fled it”, a position that we reject. Because in the event that the escaped capitals were really recovered, they should go to the pockets of the working people, in favor of a workers’ and popular policy of national productive development, and not to the usurers.
The big bosses have a clear program to intensify this attack against the working people with measures such as labor flexibilization laws. The IMF in its review of the agreement has already questioned the extension of the pension moratorium that was approved by the Senate, raised the impossibility of giving additional increases to retirements and pensions and demanded the initiation of an analysis of a pension reform that we already know what it aims at: raising the retirement age, elimination of the special retirement regimes, pensions increasingly farther from 82% mobile, deepening the reforms of Macri and Fernandez himself.
These measures especially affect women and dissidents who have worked in unpaid, precarious and subsistence work for most of our lives. In addition, the consequences of spending cuts and devaluations will fall on us, especially on the popular sectors, who bear the burden of domestic and care work. Spending restrictions will further limit the necessary policies of care, feminist, against male violence and for Comprehensive Sex Education.
Youth are condemned to increasingly precarious jobs with lower wages. The government and the IMF are accomplices of the increase of labor outsourcing, junk contracts, informal work and the lack of labor recognition suffered by thousands of young people all over the country. Enough of outsourcing and precariousness! Labor recognition of all the precarious workers! Recognition of their struggle organizations!
The student youth has been suffering the consequences of the educational abandonment that the governments carried out during the pandemic, and the budget cuts ordered by the government and the IMF. Thus, all the problems in public schools and universities are worsening: lack of heating in winter, building problems, lack of vacancies, restriction of time bands, lack of basic supplies for the educational process.
Faced with this, we propose an alternative program of struggle of the workers so that the crisis will be paid for by those who provoked it and not by the working people.
We continue to call on the working people and all their organizations to reject this pact that reproduces poverty and dependence and to mobilize in unity. The message of Alberto Fernandez at the Summit of the Americas calling to “work together and united” with U.S. imperialism symbolizes in full body the submission of our country as a tax semi-colony to the interests of the multinationals and imperialist banks.
For this reason we say: The only debt to be paid is with the working people. There is another way! That no one earn less than the cost of a basic family basket ($164,000 according to ATE Indec) and that all salaries, retirement benefits and social plans be updated monthly according to the inflation index. Disregard the Macri-IMF agreement as all previous agreements, usurious and fraudulent of the different governments that have been subjecting the working class, and use those and other national resources for the priorities of the working people. For wages, pensions, labor, health, education, care, science, and restoration and protection of the environment.
For the distribution of working hours without affecting wages, 6-hour workday. Unrestricted opening and universalization of social programs in the way of an insurance for the unemployed equal to the minimum living and mobile wage and public works plan to generate genuine work. Tripling of the education and health budgets. These measures should be part of an alternative and integral program of social, economic and political reorganization by the working class, such as the nationalization of the entire banking system to avoid capital flight and put national savings at the service of the working and popular sectors; end the private oligopoly and establish the state monopoly of foreign trade under workers’ control; Nationalize all privatized companies, oil and gas, under workers’ and users’ control, against plunder and pollution and with an environmental and sustainable perspective, among other basic measures, as part of a workers’ and popular political, economic and social plan led by the workers. In struggle for a workers’ government that breaks with imperialism and confronts capitalism.
In this sense we call to continue in the streets. Last December 11, with more than 200 organizations, we filled the Plaza de Mayo and all over the country against the IMF and the debt payments. We did the same on February 8, days before the signing of the pact with the IMF, and then with the marches of repudiation in front of Congress when the law was passed with the backs of the workers as a whole turned. Today we return to the streets, to repudiate the pact with the IMF, to reject the subordination to its officials and the dictates of the central countries, to fight on a daily basis its terrible consequences against the working people and the ecosystems, and to continue marking that there is an alternative, working class and popular solution. This July 9 we mobilized again to Plaza de Mayo and in many cities of the country. Because there is neither independence nor a way out with the IMF; the swindles are not paid; the debt is with the working people and nature. We call on all the organizations that want to confront this pact and its consequences to win the streets to defeat this policy of adjustment and surrender.
Encuentro militante Cachito Fuckman
Asociación de Profesionales en lucha (APEL)
Centro de Abogados por los Derechos Humanos (CADHU)
Centro de Profesionales por los Derechos Humanos
Ademys
AGD UBA
ATE Defensoría del Pueblo PBA
ATE Hospital Garrahan
ATE INCAA
ATE INDEC
ATE INTA
ATE Ministerio Economía
ATE SENASA
ATE Subsecretaría Trabajo CABA
Comisión Interna Anselmo Morvillo
Comisión Interna de APUBA Facultad de Ciencias Sociales
Comisión Interna Fernet Branca
Comisión Interna GPS
Comisión Interna Hospital Italiano
Comisión Interna Textilana
Cuerpo de Delegados Ferrocarril Sarmiento
Madygraf bajo gestión obrera
SiTraCP (Sindicato de trabajadoras de casas particulares)
SITRAREPA
SUTEBA Bahía Blanca
Suteba Matanza – Multicolor
SUTEBA Tigre
Unión Ferroviaria Oeste
Plenario del Sindicalismo Combativo
Agrupación Nacional Clasista Antiburocrática (ANCLA)
Coordinadora Sindical Clasista (CSC)
Corriente Sindical 18 de diciembre
Movimiento de Agrupaciones Clasistas (MAC)
Lista Multicolor de la CTA Autónoma
CEAVI (UNA)
CEDAM (UBA)
Centro de Estudiantes de ciencia y tecnología (UNSAM)
Centro de Estudiantes de Farmacia y Bioquímica (UBA)
Centro de Estudiantes de Veterinaria (UBA)
Centro de estudiantes del Terciario 39 de Vicente López
Centro de estudiantes del Terciario 51 de Pilar
Centro de Estudiantes Escuela de Enfermería Cecilia Grierson
Comisión interna Lustramax
Centro de Estudiantes Visuales UNA
Centro de Estudiantes Instituto Superior Form Docente y Técnica Nrp 9 La Plata
Centro de Estudiantes Instituto Formación Docente Nro 35
Acción Ecológica Anticapitalista
Agrupación ambiental anticapitalista Alerta Roja
Ambiente en Lucha
Coordinadora Basta de Falsas Soluciones
Red Ecosocialista
Tribuna Ambiental
Isadora, mujeres en lucha
Juntas y a la Izquierda
Las Rojas
Libre Diversidad
Mumalá
Pan y Rosas
Plenario de trabajadoras
Autoconvocatoria por la suspensión del pago e investigación de la deuda (Dialogo 2000, ATTAC – CADTM Argentina, CPI, EDI Economistas de Izquierda, PRML, Cuba-MTR, TUN 29 de Mayo, JR Che, Opinión Socialista, FeTERA, LyF La Pampa y Desde el Pie – La Pampa, Mesa Coordinadora de Jubilades y Pensionades, Asamblea de Villa Pueyrredón, Emancipación Sur, Propuesta Sur Rosario, Hilo Rojo Colectivx Militante, Partido de la Liberación, Agrupación 29 de Mayo – Presidencia del CEJVG, Frente Popular Dario Santillan, Colectivo Reagrupando, Coordinadora por el Cambio Social: Frente de Organizaciones en Lucha / Movimiento de los Pueblos, Por un Socialismo feminista desde abajo: Frente Popular Darío Santillán – Corriente Plurinacional, MULCS Movimiento por la Unidad Latinoamericana y el Cambio Social, Movimiento 8 de Abril / FAR y COPA en Marabunta Corriente Social y Política / FOB Autónoma / OLP Resistir y Luchar / Igualdad Social)
Barrios de Pie
Colectivo militante diciembre
Democracia Socialista
Frente de Izquierda Unidad : Izquierda Socialista (IS) – Movimiento to Socialista de los Trabajadores (MST) – Partido de Trabajadores Socialistas (PTS) – Partido Obrero (PO)
Frente Popular Darío Santillán
Libres del Sur
Marabunta, Corriente social y política
Movimiento Sin Trabajo Teresa Vive
Movimiento Sur
MTR 12 de Abril
Nuevo MAS
Organización Revolucionaria Guevaristas
Polo Obrero
Venceremos Partido de Trabajadores
- First published on Periodismo de Izquierda