A protest that has been on Wednesdays at the Argentine congress for at least 30 years has gained new participants and more repression on Wednesday (12). To the retirees, the protagonists of these marches, added the organized football fans.
Already before 17h, the scheduled time for the usual act was confronted between protesters and federal police. To disperse the group throughout the region, agents used gunfire with rubber bullets, jets of water that came out of armored and tear gas pumps. At least eight people were arrested.
The marches have been fuller since Javier Milei reached the presidency, and the repression of them also climbed the new public security line protocols of the current government. Confrontation and violence are no longer uncommon.
This Wednesday the differential was the participation of members of the organized fans, who summoned the protest alongside the retirees. Club fans such as Rosario Central, Chacarita and others participated in the demonstration.
Already in the morning the Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich, mother of the rigid government protocols for protests, said that it will prevent from entering the stadiums any fan who has been ran out by events of public disorders. The surroundings of the congress were surrounded with black grids, and a broad police effective was sent.
University students and traditional groups of the Argentine left also participated, among them La Carampora, grouping the political force of Cristina Kirchner. Some protesters advanced on the police and fired stones at them, settled at least one police car and public plastic dumpsters and made barricades.
There was also hostility against press professionals, verbally surrounded and harassed as they reported on the protest.
Scenes recorded by participants showed a retired retirement being beaten by a police officer. She is pushed, gets a blow to the head and falls to the floor. The woman was identified as Beatriz Bianco, 87, by the newspaper La Nacion, and taken to the hospital.
The demonstration of retirees who since the presidency of Carlos Menem (1989-1999) occurs in Argentina gained more weight with Milei. They were one of the slices of the local society that lost the most purchasing power with the arrival of the new government.
The most recent survey of the CP consultancy, which monitors the theme, shows that the minimum retirement is in the lowest real value of the last 20 years. The pension decreased 0.3% in January. In the annual comparison, it was the first improvement in 15 months, but it also represents a 20% lower amount compared to that of 2020.
This month, pensions, now directly related to inflation, were 279,000 pesos (R $ 1,525). Along with a kind of bonus of 70 thousand pesos given by the government, the value reaches 349 thousand pesos (R $ 1,900). According to Argentine measurement, in January (latest available data), a citizen who earns less than 334.5 thousand pesos (R $ 1,827) is below the poverty line.
Thus, the retirees now ask: the recomposition of the values of their pensions, the coverage of medicines and also that the social security moratorium is resumed that comes to an end this month by Milei’s decision. The plan allows those who have not met 30 years of contribution to social insurance yet to retire and was adopted by the previous government in 2023.
Inside the congress surrounded by tension, the deputies had an afternoon of debates with the potential to affect the Milei government. The opposition was able to approve that special commissions of the house evaluate a possible government investigation by the case of cryptogate, the scandal involving the dissemination of the $ Libra cryptocurrency, regarded as the protagonist of a possible fraud process by Milei. They try the president and his sister, Karina, arrive called to witness in the enclosure. The theme can be voted on next week.
