Argentinians march at the National Flag Memorial in Rosario, Argentina, against President Milei's unconstitutional decree on the day of national strike, January 24. Photo: AFP.
By Stella Calloni – Jan 24, 2024
Argentina rose in a scenario like the current one, when authoritarianism is trying to impose itself with all its aspects behind the offer of a “freedom” that ceased to exist with the illegal imposition of the Decree of Necessity and Urgency (DNU) and an omnibus law, designed to suspend the Congress, install a de facto government, repeal constitutional norms that safeguard sovereignty and all the rights that protect us and that prevent the country from becoming a colony, which seems to be our destiny in the hands of the current government of a non-existent party, La Libertad Avanza (LLA), for which they need to disappear memory, history, culture, identity and everything that was achieved in Argentina with struggles that cost thousands of lives.
The DNU announced by the ultra-right-wing President Javier Milei on December 20, 2023 affects all sectors of society, and terminates sovereignty and proposes to surrender our territories and resources to the US empire.
And the question is, what is the leadership of the Radical Civic Union (UCR) willing to hand over, which among other points that have been modified, in all cases half-heartedly, would consent to hand over absolute power for one year to a president like Milei and his pals, the same Milei who caused “astonishment” among the big capitalist businesspeople in Davos, citing as his hero a caveman like Alberto Benegas Lynch, whose “doctrine” the president follows in his labyrinth of obvious emotional derangement.
If the UCR allows to rule on a DNU rejected by the majorities in the country and the Omnibus Law, the UCR must be considered as “traitors to the homeland.” This is stated in Article 29 of the National Constitution. Under no circumstances can we remain in the hands of a symbol of imperial decadence and its vassals, associated with what is left of [Macri’s] Juntos por el Cambio, the caste of castes that the current president said he was going to fight.
In fact, by joining as a partner in what was the Cambiemos alliance with Republican Proposal of former President Mauricio Macri, who in four years of government (2015-2019) left a devastated country with the largest foreign debt in Argentine history, the UCR left behind all the principles of its party and was an accomplice of the most degrading, accepting the financing of US foundations and others, who keep invading the country.
The UCR was an accomplice of the Lawfare, the psychological warfare that is part of the counterinsurgency Doctrine that Washington and its associates continue to apply as was done with the longest-lasting media, judicial and political persecution in history against the first Argentinian president elected twice consecutively by popular will, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and several of her officials, accused in false causes.
They had also destabilized former President RaĂşl AlfonsĂn (1983-1989), as it was evidenced when the Rural Society, eternal coup perpetrators, denigrated the president who inaugurated the democratic transition in 1983. The UCR has at this moment a significant presence, enough to recover the ideology of its origins, and return to be what it always was as the second largest party at national level, after Justicialism. This is the UCR’s historical recovery.
The Constitution was violated over and over again in the years of Macri, who with the US Embassy formed the “Judicial Party,” and got a Supreme Court of Justice which awarded itself the command of presidential power, resorting to anti-democratic resolutions in favor of the ruling right.
Until today, the “Judicial Party” deliberately complies by closing all the cases involving Macrismo, losing credibility among the people and even in international organizations. It even prevented justice against the assassination attempt, witnessed by the world, against the then Vice President and former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, a case that the “justice system” of Macrismo stopped the moment the intellectual and financial responsibility of the assassination attempt reached the door of the group closest to Macri, that is, the clan of the Caputo family.
That is why memory, truth and justice are what any truly democratic process needs. Macri and Milei, accompanied by the external hand that rocks that cradle, hurried the times and in less than a month the whole plan of this government was already concentrated precisely in the DNU and the Omnibus Law.
Milei set the time to do everything fast and furiously and there is nothing to wait for, because between December 20 and 27 the cabient delivered in writing the government’s plan which, as a number of economists denounced, is a “business plan.”
After reading the contents of the DNU and the Law that they claim is the basis for “freedom,” we learn that they are coming for grandma’s jewels and grandma too.
If this comes to pass, nothing will be left standing, and those who rushed the times thinking that the puppet was going to keep his chainsaw popularity should note that it started to crumble the day he announced his sinister decree.
The foreign policy is to hand over the homeland with its people and its natural and human resources. We cite the case of the Malvinas archipelago, colonized by Great Britain since 1833, which Argentina claims and will always claim until justice is done. The foreign policy was the subject of Milei’s meeting in Davos with the British Chancellor Jeremy Hunt who confirmed in London that this issue had been discussed.
Macri had said at one point during his presidency that recovering the Malvinas was adding “another problem” to the country and his former Minister of Security Patricia Bullrich, in a speech in 2020—when she was demonstrating in the streets against the measures adopted by the government of Alberto Fernández, demanding the purchase of Pfizer vaccines produced in the United States, today criticized for serious inefficiency—said then that they could use the Malvinas as a guarantee of payment.
This provides the guideline of the continued attempt to surrender the country, which now becomes a possibility in view of the surrender of Argentina’s sovereignty. They are also going for the South Atlantic and Antarctica where it is urgent to review the agreement signed in a hurry by Milei, in a trip of hours in the Argentinian Antarctic territory on January 7, where there is an attempt to place a foreign military base disguised as defense of the environment.
They are also coming for our skies, our airspace, and our fundamental right to definitive independence, which together with Latin America we must achieve in this 21st century. They are coming against social justice and are willing to fleece the people and retirees.
We must remember that without independence, sovereignty is limited, and democracies without power are extremely weak, which facilitates external interference, which manages even the electoral processes, as is happening now in the continent, where we continue imitating the elections of the powerful countries.
In four or five years of governing without power, it is impossible to begin a profound process of decolonization and to put an end to the structural poverty of our rich countries, whose inhabitants are mostly poor.
‘The Country Is Not for Sale’: General Strike In Argentina Against Milei
The rebellion
What surprised many was the rebellious power of citizens who began to take to the streets in Buenos Aires on the same December 20 when Milei announced the DNU, sounding their pots and pans and joining in spontaneous marches that warned the government that it would not be easy to impose its delirious measures that violate the Constitution and international agreements.
From historical memory came that woman’s voice in the middle of that demonstration “the homeland is not for sale,” which summed up everything that was happening. That phrase became a slogan of all the demonstrations that have never left the streets in the capital city and in all the provinces.
The marches and protests continue to defy Bullrich’s unconstitutional “Security Protocol” that no one should allow and even less so now that Milei is asking for authorization for the entry of foreign troops.
The reality is that no one in the world understands why a society like Argentina could have voted for Milei. This is what should concern us, besides the fact that he reached the place he occupies today through the external, open, never concealed interference of Israel, the United States, and Great Britain.
No one should accept an electoral process under such conditions, when we already know that millions of dollars was used to support the right-wing oppositions operating in our countries.
Returning to the current situation, nobody knows who really wrote the DNU destined to destroy everything, to hand over the country where there are unfathomable riches for us, as in Patagonia, a vast territory monitored for years by the imperial power that knows the secrets of that territory, of which we do not even have any record. Human mapping is also sinister.
They know how to create chaos, how to disconcert large masses of the population, which shows that disinformation and entertainment can trap and turn thousands of people into zoombies. We are living it today when everyone should read point by point the contents of the infamous DNU and the Omnibus Law.
We wonder why the media do not talk about the meaning of the Land Law, the privatizations, not only YPF but also 41 state-owned companies, which we cannot hand over without handing over the absolute sovereignty of lands, seas and rivers.
Something very serious is happening in the South Atlantic, from the moment when the governor of Chubut, Ignacio Torres of right-wing Juntos por el Cambio, after a meeting with the US ambassador in Argentina, Marc Stanley, talked about “possible investments” for which a strategic alliance was formed to jointly patrol the territorial waters.
Since December 25, US warships have been patrolling the coasts of the South Atlantic, an issue of enormous institutional gravity, which must have been authorized by the national government. The wolf guarding the sheep, can we allow this without feeling like traitors to the homeland?
Who is studying this illegal and unconstitutional situation that originates from the issue of illegal fishing in the place, who may well guard Argentinian ships in defense of our seas? Is this not handing over the Malvinas and Antarctica? This is under the control of the US Southern Command, whose head, General Laura Ricradson, boasts about this situation so favorable to her country’s recolonizing plans.
Under the headline “The United States sent a Coast Guard vessel to patrol the South Atlantic to counteract illegal fishing,” the extreme right-wing digital newspaper Infobae reported on December 29 that “within the framework of Operation Southern Cross, Washington deployed the USCGC Stone to guarantee that the western hemisphere is safe, free and prosperous.”
It goes on to note that the US Coast Guard vessel USCGC Stone was deployed to the South Atlantic on January 25 as part of an operation to “counter illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing,” US officials said. “The multi-month deployment marks the first Coast Guard patrol to South America in recent memory,” reported the US portal G Captain, quoted by Infobae.
This will be conducted “in conjunction with the US Southern Command, which is responsible for managing operations in Central and South America” to “ensure that the Western Hemisphere is safe, free and prosperous” in the face of increasing illicit activities in Atlantic waters. “The US Coast Guard is committed to the protection of living marine resources,” said Vice Admiral Steven Poulin, commandant of the US Coast Guard Atlantic Area.
In this situation, the Argentinian people are protected by Constitutional law of the right to defend the homeland. The government of Milei, a “libertarian” puppet and his Minister of Security Bullrich, who has been following foreign instructions for a long time, together with the Minister of Defense Luis Petri, are preparing to repress the massive mobilizations and the national strike called by the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) with the two Argentinian Workers’ Centers (CTA), to which other unions and the fronts of the Assemblies of Culture and an unprecedented number of social and political movements are associated, in addition to the Union for the Homeland (Peronism), which joined with a strong communiqué.
The most serious thing that is happening is the extortion, blackmail and pressure, as decried by the trade unions, which is being tried by all means, including secret meetings of Milei’s officials with deputies outside the precincts of the Congress headquarters, to achieve that they can reach an agreement that Milei demanded in principle on January 15 and that now, if it were possible, to reach that agreement.
This is open bribery, which is why every day more and more trade unions in European and Latin American countries support and defend the right to strike and mobilization.
The International Labor Organization (ILO) will also accompany the Argentinian unions intimidated to pay fines for marching and will resort to various international instances.
The Commission for Memory (COM) and the Center of Legal Studies (CELS) complained that “in the event that the ‘friendly’ opposition supports the government’s demands in a majority opinion and then votes for it in the Chamber of Deputies, it would be endorsing the whole scaffolding of legal modifications about which human rights organizations warned the legislators both in the debate and through analysis documents sent to the deputies.”
In this way, the modification of article 194 of the Penal Code and the incorporation of the modified 194 broadens the subjects of these illegal norms “which will no longer be only those who march. The organizers and coordinators of a march, the people who spread the call, those who transport people, those who provide logistical material, those who call the roll or register by any means the event, will also be subjected to criminal punishment,” warned the COM.
The approval and application of these amendments “would produce serious restrictions of fundamental rights in our country, since they would harm the right to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression, rights that are protected from any arbitrary interference by the State in the National Constitution.”
The CELS described as proposals of “totalitarian regimes” the modifications imposed in the Omnibus Law to ensure that “social protest is no longer understood as part of democratic life, and becomes a crime against public order to which the State responds with a criminal and punitive approach… What it seeks is to impose multiple restrictions that broaden the possibility of criminalizing demonstrators, leaders and organizations.” The conditions that the government is trying to impose on us with threats only compatible with a military dictatorship are extremely serious. It is a coup d’état by other means, for the same purpose, to bring the people to their knees and sell the homeland in the same act.
(Resumen Latinoamericano – English)
Stella Calloni
Argentina, journalist and writer. José Martà Latin American Journalism Award. Author of the Operation Condor book. She is an international correspondent and analyst.
