The resounding victory of the Frente de Todos (FdT – Front for All) in the Open, Simultaneous, Obligatory Primaries (PASO, for its Spanish acronym) of last August 11 in Argentina, is a very important and decisive event for the political life of the Argentine people.  This is also the case from the perspective of Our America in the historic moment in which we are living, marked by a weakened US imperialism which, seeking unsuccessfully to restore its lost global hegemony, does not cease to attack its present and future adversaries by all means at hand, including in particular the monopoly that it exercises over the monetary system that dominates global trade and finance.

The Uruguayan analyst Aram Aharoniam (1) stresses the importance of this electoral triumph because it means “the defeat of the model of neoliberal restauration of the International Monetary Fund and of US policies, led in Argentina by the government of Mauricio Macri”, and because this “opens the possibility of new paths in a region where there were attempts to impose the collective imaginary of a supposed failure of progressive governments.”

Like other observers, Aharonian points out that “neo-liberalism trembles in the face of the next elections in Uruguay and Bolivia, which could put an end to the fiesta programmed from Washington. (…) The favorable analyses of the hegemonic transnational press became sad farewells after the electoral debacle. The specialized journal Forbes, the Financial Times, the Bloomberg Agency coincided in that the “investors” know that Marci’s time is exhausted and there is a growing risk of default (nonpayment of the external debt).”

He also points out that this “is not the first failure of the right in the region. A right that repeats the neoliberal dogma as the only argument, governing for ‘the markets’ and not for their peoples. The enormous defeat was not only of the Macri government, it was that of his patrons and scriptwriters, especially the International Monetary Fund and its head, who is still Christine Lagarde.”

The rapid, bold and intelligent social response

Clearly the extent of the triumph of the ticket Alberto Fernández - Cristina Fernández of the FdT surpassed expectations, but the change of government will be decided in the general elections next October, and given the initial brutal reaction of the financial market centred in the United States and of the present President Mauricio Macri and his close associates, it is evident that Argentine politics will go through a dangerous two-month interregnum, under constant threats and pressures of the voracious foreign creditors, the local oligarchy and the US Government, as well as the legitimate claims of the popular sectors for immediate adjustments against the inflationary explosion due to the devaluation of the peso.

As in other moments of Argentina’s relatively recent history, marked by neo-liberal policies, the class struggle manifests itself in all its amplitude, and given the repressive history of the Macri government, one cannot rule out the possibility that they will attempt to utilize all possible means to change the result of the August PASO, in October. But at the same time, we should recall the levels of resistance that the political and social struggles reached in Argentina, in terms of unity, massiveness and fighting spirit during the critical moments generated by neoliberal policies, and which led to the formation of the political movement that ensured the electoral victories of Nestor and Cristina Kirchner.

That is why it is important to highlight what the General Secretary of the Central de Trabajadores Argentinas (CTA – Argentine Workers’ Central) and deputy for the province of Buenos Aires of the Frente para la Victoria, Hugo Yasky, said during the meeting of the CTA’s National Table, analyzing the gravity of the situation of abject poverty that affects working people, warning of the need to impede the foreseeable attempts of the Macri government to change the electoral result in its favor in October.

After stressing the urgent need for trade union and people’s mobilization in order to immediately compensate for the brutal depreciation of the peso and its inflationary impact on all products and services, Yasky addressed the strategy to follow in the coming months, with respect to which “we have decided to declare the CTA in a state of permanent session. We believe that we have the capacity to be present in the places in which our people are currently suffering; the CTA has to be able to make demands and be present in such a difficult time. We realize the election unleashed a kind of speculative torment of those who have money against those who only want to work in peace” (2).

Yasky added that “we are going to make a call to try coordinate with union organizations, with the CGT, with the different union bodies, to be at this time in permanent contact with all our regions of the country. We workers must be aware that on Sunday there was an overwhelming popular pronouncement, rejecting adjustment, dollarization, financial speculation, claiming a return to an Argentina of work and a living wage. This overwhelming pronouncement is at the halfway mark. There remains the October election. We cannot allow anything to stand in the way. The solution to Argentina’s economic and social crisis is political. There was a popular epic on Sunday that made the people speak out massively.”

He also emphasized that “the trade union movement and the social movement should safeguard this triumph in order to be able to complete it in October, by definitively removing the rich who govern for the rich and to have a government that is for all Argentines, not only for the rich, not only for financial speculators, for those who engage in capital flight. And in this decision, the role of the union movement is key. We must be insightful, able to avoid every kind of provocation. The savage way in which companions of ATE were repressed yesterday is the kind of response the government wants to give. The trolls that call for pots-and-pans demonstrations and that work for the government are not doing the country any good at this time. We must be able to reach the month of December by giving the popular vote greater weight than the reprisals and the economic damage from speculators and those who want a government of the rich for the rich” (2).

This call is already reflected in the mobilizations that began this Thursday August 15^th with the “National Day of Struggle” in the City of Buenos Aires and other parts of the country, and in the decisions of the Confederation of Workers of the Popular Economy, which has called to “define a plan of struggle with respect to the policies they are demanding for the sector of the Popular Economy” and also in the declaration of a “state of alert and mobilization” launched by the Popular Movements.

As Abraham Nuncio wisely points out in La Jornada (3), “the owners of the fleeing capitals (the notorious markets) have already voted against the forces that swept away Macri's policies, giving rise to a severe crisis in Argentina. They are the allies of US imperialism. They must be fought in order to neutralize them, and not only in one country or during an electoral period.”

The next few months will be extremely important not only for the Argentines, but also for the countries of Our America that suffer under governments that sell out, have surrendered to imperialism, and that are being weakened by the growing popular mobilization, as in Brazil and Ecuador, for example. And for our peoples, the experience and results that emerge from the strategy of the joint struggle of the unions and popular movements, as expressed by Hugo Yasky, could be vital.

(Translated for ALAI by Jordan Bishop)

Notas

1.- Aram Aharonian http://www.resumenlatinoamericano.org/2019/08/15/argentina-la-derrota-no-fue-solo-de-macri-sino-del-neoliberalismo-y-del-fmi-como-salir-de-este-atolladero/

2.- CTA: http://www.resumenlatinoamericano.org/2019/08/14/argentina-resumen-gremial-y-social-la-cta-autonoma-se-declara-en-estado-de-asamblea-permanente-contra-el-golpe-economico-en-forma-urgente-se-debe-dar-la-posibilidad-de-rediscutir-las-paritarias/