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Argentina General Strike Demands End to Milei's 'Chainsaw' Austerity Policies
"The Milei government has picked a fight with workers and pensioners, and now they will feel the full force of organized labor," said one union leader.
Apr 10, 2025
Increasingly fed up with economic policies under which poverty and inflation have soared while vital social services, wages, and the peso have taken huge hits, disaffected Argentinians took to the streets of cities across the South American nation Wednesday for the third general strike of right-wing President Javier Milei's tumultuous 16-month presidency.
Led by the General Confederation of Labor (CGT)—an umbrella group of Argentinian unions—the "paro general," or general stoppage, drew workers, the unemployed, pensioners, educators, students, and others affected by Milei's severe austerity measures and his administration's plans for more deep cuts. Demonstrations continued throughout Thursday.
"In the face of intolerable social inequality and a government that ignores calls for better wages and a dignified standard of living for all, the workers are going on strike," CGT explained ahead of the action.
Airlines canceled hundreds of flights as air traffic controllers and other airport workers joined the strike; many schools, banks, and other offices shut down; and ports, some public transport, and other services ground to a halt.
"The only thing the administration has brought is a wave of layoffs across state agencies, higher poverty rates, and international debts, which are the biggest scam in Argentina's history," the Association of Airline Pilots (APA) said.
Rodolfo Aguiar, secretary general of the Association of State Workers (ATE), said Wednesday that "after this strike, they have to turn off the chainsaw; there's no room for more cuts," a reference to both Milei's ubiquitous campaign prop and his gutting of public programs upon which millions of Argentinians rely.
"Right now, the crisis Argentina is facing is worsening," Aguiar added, warning about government talks with the International Monetary Fund. "The rise in the dollar will quickly translate into food prices, and the new deal with the IMF is nothing more than more debt and more austerity measures."
Milei's government is nearing agreement on a $20 million IMF bailout, a deeply unpopular proposition in a country left reeling by the U.S.-dominated institution's missteps and intentional policies that benefit foreign investors while causing acute suffering for millions of everyday Argentinians. Argentina already owes $44 billion to the IMF.
"We already have experience as Argentinians that no agreement has been beneficial for the people," retiree and striker Rezo Mossetti told Agence France-Press in Buenos Aires Thursday, lamenting that his country keeps getting into "worse and worse" debt.
CGT decided to launch the general strike during a March 20 meeting that followed a pensioner-led March 12 protest outside the National Congress in Buenos Aires. After fringe elements including rowdy soccer fans known as "barrabravas" joined the protests and committed acts of violence and vandalism, police responded by attacking demonstrators with "less-lethal" weapons including water cannons and tear gas. A gas canister struck freelance photojournalist Pablo Grillo in the head, causing a severe brain injury that required urgent surgery.
This, after Argentinian Security Minister Patricia Bullrich invoked controversial measure empowering more aggressive use of force against protesters and rescinding a ban on police use of tear gas canisters. The Security Ministry also filed a criminal complaint dubiously accusing organizers of the March 12 protest of sedition.
Milei and his supporters have portrayed the general strike as a treasonous assault on the fragile Argentinian economy and those taking part in the day of action as lazy and jobless.
When Clarín, the country's largest newspaper, cited a study by the Argentine University of Enterprise claiming that the general strike would cost the national economy around $185 million per day, University of Buenos Aires professor Sergio Wischñevsky retorted: "Very revealing. It means that's the magnitude of the wealth workers produce every day. It's the best argument to stop ignoring workers."
As he has done with past protests against his rule, Milei has also framed the general strike as "an attack against the republic" and repeated his threat that police would "crack down" on demonstrators.
Orwellian use of state infrastructure by Milei's "anarcho-capitalist" gvmnt. in Argentina. As the 36 hr. general strike begins, signs & loudspeakers at train stations across Buenos Aires read: "Attack against the republic! The syndicalist caste punishes millions of Argentines who want to work."
[image or embed]
— Batallon Bakunin ( @batallonbakunin.bsky.social) April 10, 2025 at 4:11 AM
General strikers largely shrugged off the threats of police violence and state repression.
"The right to strike is a worker right and I think there has to be more strikes because the situation with this government is unsustainable," Hugo Velazuez, a 62-year-old worker striking in Buenos Aires, toldReuters.
While the Argentinian mainstream media's coverage of the general strike was largely muted, images posted by independent progressive media showed parts of central Buenos Aires appearing practically empty.
Workers around the world showed solidarity with striking Argentinians.
"The Milei government has picked a fight with workers and pensioners, and now they will feel the full force of organized labor," said Paddy Crumlin, president of the London-based International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF), which boasts nearly 20 million members in 677 unions in 149 nations. "The international trade union movement stands ready to fight back with our Argentine comrades. We will not rest until these attacks on workers' rights are defeated."
ITF noted that various sectors of Argentina's transportation sector "are under direct threat of privatization," including the national commercial airline, Aerolíneas Argentinas, the National Highway Board, and the Argentinian Merchant Marine.
Milei—a self-described anarcho-capitalist who was elected in November 2023 on a wave of populist revulsion at the status quo—campaigned on a platform of repairing the moribund economy, tackling inflation, reducing poverty, and dismantling the state. He made wild promises including dollarizing Argentina's economy and abolishing the central bank.
However, the realities of leading South America's second-largest economy have forced Milei's administration to abandon or significantly curtail key agenda items, leading to accusations of neoliberalism and betrayal from the right and hypocrisy and rank incompetence from the left. According to most polling, Milei's approval rating has fallen from net positive to negative in just a few months.
Particularly galling to many left-of-center Argentinians is Milei's cozying up to far-right figures around the world, especially U.S. President Donald Trump.
Andrew Kennis, a Rutgers University media studies professor specializing in Latin America, noted similarities between the protests in Argentina and anti-Trump demonstrations in the United States.
"It's no coincidence that 5.2 million people were in the streets in all 50 states just this past Saturday and that the U.S. is now catching up with the mass resistance that's long been going on in Argentina," Kennis told Common Dreams Thursday.
Kennis—who this week published a deep dive on Milei's "destructive chainsaw theory" in Common Dreams—added that in the cases of both Milei and Trump, "there was no real honeymoon period, as there almost always is" for most new presidencies.
"In both countries, people were in the streets pretty damned fast and furiously," he added.
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'Chaos': Peru Declares Environmental Emergency Over Oil Spill
"So far, we have not had any response from the oil company," said one fisherman whose livelihood has been threatened by the accident.
Dec 27, 2024
At least seven beaches and the safety of local wildlife have been impacted by an oil spill in northern Peru, said the South American country's Environmental Assessment and Oversight Agency on Thursday as the government declared an environmental emergency.
The environmental watchdog, known as OEFA locally, said in a preliminary report that about 10,000 square meters of surface seawater have been contaminated by the crude oil, which spilled from a vessel at a terminal of the Talara refinery.
Petroperu, the state-owned oil company, was preparing to load the oil onto a tanker when the spill was detected at Las Capullanas beach.
The company has not disclosed exactly how much oil spilled, but OEFA said it has extended over an area of 116-566 acres. Petroperu has also not stated the cause of the accident.
Petroperu told Reuters it has coordinated with the fishermen's union, but fisherman Martin Pasos told the local radio station RPP that he has heard little from the company about when he will be able to resume his work.
"We have not been able to go out for six days now," Pasos said. "It is chaos, what happened in Lobitos. So far, we have not had any response from the oil company."
Petroperu said Wednesday it had deployed clean-up crews as soon as the spill was detected earlier this week and that the cleaning of six beaches in Talara province was almost done.
Authorities were directed under the environmental emergency to carry out recovery and remediation work over the next 90 days.
Infobaereported that Petroperu was "minimizing" the damage as local authorities expressed concern over the safety of "turtles, crabs, octopuses, and fish [that] have been seriously harmed by contact with the spilled oil."
On Sunday, shortly after the spill, the public prosecutor's office launched an investigation into Petroperu's alleged criminal environmental contamination.
Rocío Silva-Santisteban, a poet, activist, and former member of Peru's Congress, noted that "it is not the first time that Petroperu has polluted."
"Since 2014 in Cuninico, Loreto, oil spills have been occurring, affecting the health of animals and people," said Silva-Santisteban. "This has been an ecocide!"
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The Panama Canal and the Mistreated Treaties
On December 22, 2024, the elected president of the United States, Donald Trump, announced that he would demand that Panama "give him back the canal."
Dec 23, 2024
Washington, D.C. January 22, 1903—Secretary of State John Hay and the Colombian commercial attaché in the United States, Tomás Herrán, signed the treaty that would give the United States the right to resume construction of the Panama Canal that the French had abandoned when they were almost halfway done. Colombia would agree to cede a strip of land on its isthmus to the United States for 100 years in exchange for ten million in a single payment and $250,000 per year. A few miles off the coast of Panama, the warship Wisconsin remains stranded to provide moral support for the negotiations.
Congress in Washington immediately approved the treaty, but it was rejected in Bogotá. There were doubts about sovereignty and about the benefits derived from this agreement. Mathematics, also practiced in that country, said that it would take the Colombian people 120 years to receive the same compensation that had been offered to be paid in one lump sum to the New Panama Canal Co.
On April 15, the United States envoy, Mr. Beaupre, sent a telegram to the secretary of state about the mood of the Colombian people: “There is at least one clear fact. If the treaty were put to the free consideration of the people, it would not be approved.” The Colombian Senate voted unanimously against its ratification.
Without ever having set foot outside his country, on August 27, President Theo Roosevelt wrote three letters describing the Colombians as “ignorant,” “greedy,” “despicable little men,” and “corrupting idiots and murderers.” Also, “I could never respect a country full of that kind of people… Trying to deal with Colombia as one deals with Switzerland, Belgium, or Holland is simply absurd.” Days later, he sends some packages with dollars to organize a revolt that will be called Revolution.
Problem solved. On November 18, the Hay-Bunau-Varilla treaty was signed in Washington, by which “the United States guarantees the freedom of Panama” in exchange for Panama ceding authority and all rights over the canal, free of any tax. As usual, the Panamanians were not invited to sign the new treaty. The $250,000 annually previously offered to Colombia would not be paid until a decade after the canal’s opening. There is nothing like having a powerful navy to do good business. The previous Treaty of Peace and Commerce signed by Colombia and the United States in 1846 was also violated. As in Cuba, as in Puerto Rico, article, now article 136 assured Washington the power to intervene in any inconvenient situation. Still, rebellions are symbolic. Washington has decreed that citizens of that country cannot acquire weapons. Imperial practice is old: Treaties are signed so the weak will comply.
In the United States, voices are raised against what several congressmen call dishonesty and imperialism. Sen. Edward Carmack protests, “The idea of a revolution in Panama is a crude lie; the only man who took up arms was our president.” Sen. George Frisbie Hoar, a member of the commission investigating the war crimes that will go unpunished in the Philippines, rejects the versions about the Revolution in Panama and adds, “I hope not to live long enough to see the day when the interests of my country are put above its honor.”
Of course, this matter of honor can be fixed. The president resorts to the old resource of “we were attacked first.” As President James Polk did to justify the invasion of Mexico in 1846 or President William McKinley to occupy Cuba in 1898, Roosevelt invents a story about threats to the security of certain American citizens in the area. Like Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, when he denied in front of television cameras any involvement in the military coup in Chile in 1973, Roosevelt assured Congress and the public that Washington was not involved in the Revolution in Panama. On December 6, 1904, he gave a speech before Congress on the need to once again expand the Monroe Doctrine “to see our neighbors stable, orderly, and prosperous.” Otherwise, “intervention by a civilized nation will be necessary… The United States must, whether it wants to or not, intervene to solve any serious problem by exercising the power of international police.”
In 1906, Roosevelt visited the construction sites in Panama. He would be the first American president to dare to leave his country. On board, the USS Louisiana, Roosevelt wrote to his son Kermit, “With admirable energy, men, and machines work together; the whites supervise the construction sites and operate the machines while tens of thousands of blacks do the hard work where it is not worth the trouble to use machines.”
Despite the hard work of Panamanians, they are portrayed as lazy. Journalist Richard Harding Davis had already echoed the sentiment of the time: “[Panama] has fertile lands, iron, and gold, but it has been cursed by God with lazy people and corrupt men who govern it… These people are a menace and an insult to civilization.”
In 1909, the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, based on Roosevelt’s boastful statements to a class at a California university, investigated “the unilateral decision of a former president to take Panama from the Republic of Colombia without consulting Congress.” Considering Colombia’s requests to The Hague, the commission will question different protagonists. On November 6, 1903, three days after the revolution in Panama, the State Department sent a cable to its consul in Colombia informing that “the people of Panama, apparently unanimously, have resolved to dissolve their ties with the Republic of Colombia.”
Congressman Henry Thomas Rainey reads the cable from Washington in Congress. Rainey clarifies: “I do not believe any of this is true… When the Revolution occurred, only 10 or 12 rebels knew of the plans, apart from the Panama Railroad and Steamship Co. managers.”
It would be necessary to wait until 1977 when President Jimmy Carter’s government signed an agreement that the United States would return the canal to Central American country on the last day of 1999, three years before the mandatory rental period expired. A year earlier, at an event in Texas, the former governor of California and future president, Ronald Reagan, would declare: “It does not matter which ram dictator is in power in Panama. We built it! We paid for the canal! It’s ours, and we’re going to keep it.”
Omar Torrijos will be the dictator Reagan alluded to. Torrijos will claim sovereignty over the canal and will die, like other rebel leaders from the south, in a plane crash.
Imperialism is a disease that not only kills those who resist it but also does not let those who carry it inside live.
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