international landworker
n By Mark Metcalf UNREST IN ARGENTINA
Return of the right wing causes problems for smallholders and unions
The election of Javier Milei, a right wing talk show host, last year as Argentina’s President has seen him attack small farm holders, trade unions and workers. In response he has been met by strikes and protests across the second largest nation in South America.
Describing himself as an anarcho- capitalist, Milei, whose victory was the largest by the right since the end of miliary rule in 1983, is ripping apart the remnants of the welfare state and ‘flogging off the family silver’.
In February 2024, less than a month after the three main trade union federations took strike action with a 12-hour general strike against labour law reforms and the lack of an economic plan, smallholders protested at the lack of government
support and funding for sustainable farming.
A fever linked with the damaging use of agrochemicals, hit food production. Citing ‘cost-cutting,’ Milei dismantled the National Institute of Family Farming while according to anti-poverty charity War on Want (WOW) kept “policies which benefit large commodity traders such as Dreyfus, biotech corporations such as Monsanto and the large plantation landowners and agricultural oligarchies.”
Local farmers’ problems have been further exacerbated by Milei, another populist leader whose pre-election rhetoric of attacking elites always turns out if elected to be substituted by attacks on the working class,
agreeing to facilitate the undermining of domestic food production by permitting the import of cheap imported basic foodstuffs.
The actions of Argentinian smallholders were mirrored globally and followed protests last year. Farmers in over 63 countries held national demos at the start of 2024. Indian farmers held marches in protest of a legal minimum support price guarantee for their crops. Protests across Europe have highlighted the lack of EU support for small farmers at the expense of large farmers and agribusinesses only too keen to drive them off the land.
According to a WOW spokesperson, “Argentina demonstrates how ultra- liberal governments in the Global South ally with foreign capital and large corporations, prioritising corporate profit and the extraction of natural resources over people’s sovereignty. Milei…will exacerbate poverty and inequality…peasants and indigenous communities will bear the brunt of environmental and social destruction.
“Latin American peasant movements …have long advocated for an alternative vision... based on the principles of food sovereignty. Their lives and livelihoods must no longer be treated as expendable in the pursuit of corporate profit.”
Protest - trade unionists on the streets of Buenos Aires 36 uniteLANDWORKER Autumn 2024
Of course, the linking of the struggles of the smallholders and trade unionists – 40 per cent of Argentina’s 13m workers – will be essential in what could be a life-or-death struggle. Trade unionists can best support their comrades in Argentina through the ITUC, Uni Global Union, IndustriALL and the IUF.
Alamy
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