On Thursday, hundreds of thousands in Argentina joined a national strike, bringing industry, transit, and other services to a standstill. The country’s working class is showing the way to fight the Far Right.
In Argentina, the anger built up for months against austerity and authoritarianism imposed by far-right president Javier Milei was met with a spectacular national strike on Thursday. The strike was widely observed across sectors and the country, despite pressure from the government and the bosses that were trying to intimidate workers.
The Argentinian mainstream media are now trying to downplay the impact of the strike. Despite the fact that the leadership of the union federation CGT did not organize the action from below, the strike shut down trains, subways, schools, hospitals, and industrial sectors across the country, and more than 300 flights were canceled. It was much stronger than many imagined, and expressed the anger of millions of workers. The action would have been even stronger if the driver’s union, the UTA, hadn’t effectively boycotted the strike.
For months now, every Wednesday, pensioners and the Left, in particular the PTS-FIT, have been tenaciously mobilizing in front of the national congress against Milei’s austerity. For many weeks, the pensioners have resisted violent police repression with the support of family members, neighbors and PTS-FIT congressmen such as Myryam Bregman, Christian Castillo, Nicolás del Caño, and Andrea D’Atri. As the national deputy from the PTS-FIT Chistian Castillo said from the march in solidarity with the retired on Wednesday: “We, the Left, are with the retired, while this government is on the side of the International Monetary Fund.”