Argentina’s Feminist Movement Is at a Crossroads

The far-right libertarian Javier Milei has been in power in Argentina for a little less than three months. In this short time, he has bombarded the country with a wide range of highly impactful measures: a misnamed “Decree of Necessity and Urgency” consisting of 366 articles eliminating central social guarantees and protection and reformulating the role of the state as a whole, an omnibus law of similar scope which included the transfer of legislative powers to the president, and, finally, an extension of police powers to repress any sort of protest against these measures.

In this context, the country’s feminist movement — the main enemy, as claimed by the president himself — is mobilizing for another round of “8M” protests on International Women’s Day. Naira Estevez spoke for the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation with Lucí Cavallero about the new government’s “shock therapy” and feminist strategies against it.

How can we interpret the current political situation in Argentina?

The government of the self-proclaimed anarcho-capitalist Milei is one of the cruellest offensives in Argentinian history, with a combination of ultra neo-liberal measures, authoritarianism, and disregard for the constitutional order. A number of measures are being applied: a plan of rapid plundering, which aims to pulverize and liquefy salaries with the maximum objective of dollarization.

For this purpose, a devaluation of the national currency of more than 120 percent was carried out, together with the liberalization of the prices of the main goods and services of the economy — at the same time that wages were frozen. All this led to an increase in poverty never seen before in our history in such a short period of time and a strategy of destruction and planned chaos.

What vision of society is Milei trying to impose?

The kind of society that Milei is establishing is a society where the state is totally absent and begins to withdraw from all its functions as guarantor of social reproduction. He is freezing all financing for food, health, education, the scientific sector, as well as pulverizing salaries and implementing a very fast, cruel, and very intense neoliberal austerity programme. The government does not even try to form consensus with other political forces nor within society, but all the measures attack the purchasing power of the popular classes and are at the same time destroying the middle class.

Who is being most affected, and how, by these governmental actions?

There is an attack on several levels. The first and most urgent is an accelerated impoverishment of the living conditions of the population, even putting survival at risk.

The unprecedented increase in poverty, caused by the aforementioned measures, affects women and sexual minorities much more, as they are the ones who generally have irregular salaries or who are in the popular economy, meaning the informal sector. It is also generating a higher level of indebtedness in the population and an increase in violence, because the precariousness of life affects and increases violence between people.

The feminist movement is at a crossroads, because this food crisis also affects the possibility of mobilizing and participating, not to mention the repressive policies that present us with a challenge in terms of the self-care that we have to develop.

Therefore, we are facing a great challenge. There is another level of confrontation at the legislative level with the presentation of projects advancing the deregulation of the economy and the sale of the public patrimony such as the Omnibus Law, which was overturned thanks to grassroots mobilization. The Decree of Necessity and Urgency, which is in force, deregulates very important aspects of prices and access to food, education and medicine, which have a very concrete effect on the daily life of the people, at the same time that it applies a repressive policy against social protest.

How is the feminist movement responding and how can it respond to government strategies in general?

We have been promoting the concept of economic violence to account for what is implied in daily life by the high prices of basic goods and services in the domestic economy, which end up resulting in the over-indebtedness of women, of the popular sectors, and also of the middle class, and in all kinds of deprivations on the reproduction of life.

We know that anarcho-capitalism brands us as enemies because we have been revealing very deep structures of inequality in our society. That is why they attack us. They idealize us as enemies because of our capacity for transversal articulation that has highlighted unpaid work, that has confronted indebtedness, and that has also fought for access to land. The feminist movement is organizing in assemblies, but it is also organizing in a transversal way in different spheres. There are meetings of the trade unions, of the social movements in the face of the food crisis and they are coming together in a space of assembly in preparation for 8 March, where our focus is on the food crisis, on the income devaluations, and on the worsening of living conditions.

The feminist movement is at a crossroads, because this food crisis also affects the possibility of mobilizing and participating, not to mention the repressive policies that present us with a challenge in terms of the self-care that we have to develop. The strategy continues to be a strategy of convening the greatest number of sectors, because we know that one of the forms of self-defence against repression is the massiveness and the transversal participation of society.

What would be an economic feminist response, since the right wing is attacking us economically?

Our major demands that we have been sustaining for years have to do with the fight against private indebtedness as well as state indebtedness to the International Monetary Fund. We have raised those banners since 2018, asking successive governments to disown the illegitimate debt and to investigate and advance measures of redistribution recognizing care work and community work, and favouring economic autonomy.

8M can contribute to the process that began with the general strike of 24 January, in terms of massive demonstrations, which begin to put a limit to the programme of anarcho-capitalism.

A feminist programme would be a programme that makes and proposes that salaries and social subsidies beat inflation, that we recover what was lost after the devaluation. That progress is made in the recognition of community work and care, that progress is made in forms of access to housing such as public rentals, the provision of land by the state, and measures that tend to reduce gender inequalities.

What do you think: how much strength will or can the next 8M have for the feminist movement, for Argentinian society in general, and against the right-wing forces?

We believe that the feminist movement will produce a massive and transversal 8M. This has already been seen in the first assemblies that were mobilized with a broad appeal. This time, I believe that there will be a great response from many sectors that are affected and that find in the feminist movement a space of articulation, capable of integrating the different forms of impact on daily life that women and sexual minorities are suffering.

We hope that it will be a massive 8M, that we will occupy the streets and that we will be able to avoid the repressive provocations that the government might make. We believe that 8M can also contribute to the process that began with the general strike of 24 January, in terms of massive demonstrations, which begin to put a limit to the programme of anarcho-capitalism and show a force of confrontation — to show the government that there is a feminist movement that is willing and able to defend its rights.