Thousands of Argentines demonstrated this Wednesday for the first time against the Government of Javier Milei and its harsh cuts in public spending in a climate of great tension. Buenos Aires woke up with a large police deployment at the entrances to the city and the train stations and this increased as the scheduled start of the demonstration approached, four in the afternoon. During the beginning of the march, some incidents occurred that ended with two detainees, according to the Clarín newspaper. The protesters – the organizers expected between 30,000 and 50,000 attendees – arrived, as planned, at the Plaza de Mayo, whose surroundings were armored with riot gear with a clear objective: to avoid blocking streets and guarantee free movement. “We are going to mobilize in the streets, where are we going to put 50,000 people?” asked Eduardo Belliboni, leader of the Polo Obrero, to the Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich.
The ban on picketing shows a 180-degree turn in the state response to one of the most common forms of protest in Argentina, which consists of blocking streets and highways for hours, sometimes even days. In recent decades, there has been great tolerance towards these demonstrations and even Milei himself and his Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich, participated in some of them.
However, the attitude of the far-right Government is not a surprise. Street control was one of his campaign promises and is the most popular, even among those who are not his voters. 65% of the population agrees that the Government guarantees free movement, according to a survey by the Applied Social Psychology Observatory of the University of Buenos Aires carried out last week. On the contrary, more than 50% oppose other promises such as dollarization, the privatization of the state oil company YPF, the deregulation of food and fuel prices, and the elimination of subsidies for energy and public transportation.
The march on December 20 was called weeks in advance. The original idea was to remember, like every year, the victims of the violent repression that marked the end of Fernando de la Rúa's Government in 2001. A total of 39 people died and nearly 500 were injured during two days of mass protests. . However, the economic adjustment plan announced by Milei also made it the first response to his administration.
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The Government did everything possible to dissuade the protesters. He asked to avoid the participation of children “so as not to expose them to heat and violence” and threatened to withdraw social assistance from those who blocked the street. The poorest population was thus trapped between two extremes: the social organizations, which encouraged them to demonstrate, and the Government, which warned them not to do so and set up a telephone line to report anonymously if they were forced to attend the march. According to official sources, more than 9,000 people called to report threats from social organizations.
“The problem of this country is not the mobilizations, the problem of this country is that Milei, from one day to the next, took away 50% of our purchasing power with a devaluation,” said Betina Sanchís, a septuagenarian retiree in the Once station, closely controlled by police throughout the day. This woman claims that she suffers from insomnia because she does not know if next year she will have a roof over her head or not, since she pays a third of her retirement in the room that she has rented for 20 years and Milei has put the update on hold. of retirements. Sanchís assures that Argentines are used to crises and getting out of them, but she regrets the growing division that she sees in society. “I don't like all this at all. It's the poor against the poor, instead of uniting us. It is going to end very badly,” she warns.
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