Today, March 24, is the 42nd anniversary of the coup d’êtat in Argentina. After overthrowing Isabel Perón, the militaries took power and implemented a systematic plan of persecution, abductions, tortures and murders that left more than 30 thousand disappeared. A brutal genocide led by the US, serving the great multinationals and banks.
By PSTU Arg.
The militaries came to end the struggles and organization of the working class from the Cordobazo.[1] Neither Perón nor Isabel and López Rega with the AAA[2] could defeat the working class and a people that arose to fight for what belongs to them.
The militaries gave a harsh blow on the workers, but a few years later the working class arose again and went onto the streets chanting “it will end, it will end, the military dictatorship will end.”
And so it was. The recently deceased genocide Reynaldo Bignone had to call elections, ending the darkest period in Argentine History.
Struggles grow all over the country
We are not under a dictatorship in the present, but just like it, the rich’s democracy with the businessman Macri on the lead and following the United States, is trying to defeat the workers and people to fill the pockets of the multinationals, foreign banks, and their national partners.
But the government and his labor and regional accomplices face a major resistance to their plan. D14 and D18 are examples of this, as well as the massive demonstrations on March 8, when thousands and thousands of women mobilized against femicides and for free, legal abortion, taking the struggle against oppression to the streets.
The outrage gave birth to the hit of the season, MMLPQTP[3] – soundtrack of football [soccer] stadiums, recitals, and even towns and puebladas, like Azul, Río Turbio and Jujuy.
Macri’s got to go
From the PSTU, we are convinced that we cannot wait until the 2019 election, like the Kirchnerismo, Peronism and –sadly- several left parties claim. We need to overthrow Macri as we did with De La Rua in 2001, not for Peronism or any businessman to take office in his place but for workers and the people to govern once and for all – as it was the dream of our 100 PST comrades disappeared, our comrade Ana María Martínez, and thousands of other disappeared comrades and activists.
The best tribute we can offer to them is to keep on fighting for socialism, against all bosses’ governments and their accomplices.
To unify the struggles
Thus, the PSTU, together with most organizations from the Encuentro Memoria, Verdad y Justicia are making and constructing a call with nearly all human rights organizations and social and political organizations willing to mobilize to May Square [Plaza de Mayo] and across the country against repression, impunity, and Macri’s adjustment.
We think that the possibility of a common mobilization is a step forward and a victory before the refusal by some Kirchnerist organizations (that don’t want to act together with the left) and before the incorrect proposal made by the FIT [Frente de Izquierda y de los Trabajadores] and other organizations that prioritize to differentiate themselves from Kirchnerism over anything else – like this, making any unity of action impossible, posing an electoral logic over the necessity of giving a harsh blow on the government and its accomplices.
We have deep differences with Kirchnerism. We remember Julio López, the 7000 workers prosecuted, the Project X, the Anti-terrorist bill, the sentenced workers in Las Heras and the designation of Milani, among many other things.[4] And we confront its policy of sustaining this government until the next election. But we are convinced that unity of action on the streets against Mauricio Macri is vital.
Let’s occupy the streets across the country
In this frame of confrontation with the government and his plans, March 24 has to be a day of struggle.
Workers and the people have an obligatory appointment all over the country. To fight against yesterday’s genocide and today’s repression and adjustment. To repudiate the indult attempt by the government to the genocides, to reject the repressive escalade, and to reinforce the necessity of a general strike and plan of action that leads to an Argentinazo[5] to defeat the government.
We have to be millions on the streets crying that we do not accept a new dictatorship ever again – that we do not forget or forgive, we do not bend, and each one of the 30,000 disappeared are present in each struggle.
We need to occupy the streets to end house arrest for genocides. They should all be in jail, in regular prisons and with life sentences.
We need to carry out assemblies and meetings at our work and study places, to debate our participation in the demonstrations; to take to the streets, in an organized way, the outrage we feel for the murder of Facundo Ferreira, 12 y-o, shot in the back by the police in Tucumán, still unpunished. To cry “Down with the Chocobar doctrine”. We do not want any more kids killed by happy-trigger. We want justice for Santiago Maldonado and Rafael Nahuel, and we want the freedom of Milagros Salas, Jones Huala, and those detained on D14 for confronting the Social Security reform.
We want the end of the persecution of workers and activists, like our comrade Sebastián Romero, as well as with César Arakaki and Dimas Ponce.
We do not want more layoffs or misery. No matter what party we organize in, we need to march together on March 24 to fight this essential round against Macri and his accomplices.
***
Notes:
[1] Uprising of workers and students in the province of Corboda, in May of 1969, against the dictatorship led by Onganía.
[2] The AAA, or Triple A, was the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance, a paramilitary group founded in 1973 and associated to right-wing Peronism.
[3] MMLPQTP are the initials for Mauricio Macri, La Puta Que Te Parió (Mauricio Macri, son of a bitch,) which is a slogan of repudiation to Macri and his administration. It became massive, having versions recorded by several artists, being sung at almost every collective event of all areas (sports, music, culture, political, etc.), and even with T-shirts and merchandising.
[4] Kirchnerismo, a Popular Front government, was the administration with the highest number of activists and workers imprisoned and criminalized under a democracy. It also implemented and several measures favoring the militaries, aiming to recompose the relationship with the military forces and so setting the bases for some of the current measures taken by Macri.
[5] Argentinazo is the name given to the 2001 revolution that overthrew 5 presidents in 10 days and destroyed the bourgeois regime.
