In Jujuy (Argentina) a very intense struggle is underway between the people of Jujuy and the provincial government of Gerardo Morales which, at the national level, is part of the coalition Juntos por el Cambio, the right-wing opposition to the Peronist government of Alberto Fernández and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner [1].
By IWL
Jujuy is a province located in the extreme northwest of Argentina in the Andes Mountains. On the one hand, an important sector of its population is direct descendants of the original indigenous peoples of the region. On the other hand, it has great mining wealth, the most important of which is lithium, an essential component of the batteries used in electric cars. Jujuy is part of the region known as the lithium triangle, together with Bolivia and Chile.
This process of struggle was initiated two weeks ago by teachers, together with state workers, demanding salary increases and improvements in working conditions, which have been permanently attacked in compliance with the budget adjustments demanded by the IMF. Morales’ response was a decree establishing fines for those who demonstrated publicly and authorizing the dismissal of the strikers [2].
On the other hand, he pushed through in the provincial Legislature a text of amendments to the provincial constitution (and had it approved in a secret session). There are two central themes in these amendments. The first is that it empowers the provincial government to give fiscal lands to private companies for exploitation (evident in mining). Many indigenous communities currently live on and practice agriculture on part of these fiscal lands. The other issue was the authorization for the government to use “mechanisms and fast ways” both for the eviction of “occupied lands” and in the face of urban demonstrations that cut off streets and avenues.
At this point, indigenous peasant communities and mining workers (many of them coming from these communities) began to join the mobilization en masse. Thus, the conditions were created for a gigantic demonstration against Morales and his constitutional reform to take place on June 20 (a national holiday in Argentina for Flag Day).
The response of the provincial government was to increase the repression against the demonstrators who were attacking the Legislature. The result was numerous injuries (including the elderly and children) and also a significant number of people illegally detained and transferred directly to prisons.
But the people of Jujuy did not back down: they fought the police with stones and whatever they had at hand. At the same time, “teachers and women called on the police to lower their weapons and side with the people. Retired policemen marched together with state employees to defend their miserable pensions.” In this way, a first triumph was achieved: Morales had to repeal his repressive decree and has deep difficulties in advancing with the article on fiscal lands included in the constitutional reform.
The struggle continues: there are 23 roadblocks throughout the province and international traffic has been cut off. At the same time, this struggle between the people of Jujuy and Morales has become the center of the political life of the country: the leaderships of CTERA and ATE (the national unions of teachers and state workers, linked to the national Peronist government), which until now “looked the other way,” have had to call a 48-hour strike in support of the workers of Jujuy. The UOM (national metallurgical union) has expressed its solidarity (for now only in words). In Buenos Aires and other cities, there have been important mobilizations in support of the struggle of the people of Jujuy against Morales.
In this framework, the PSTU (Argentine section of the IWL), besides promoting and actively intervening in these mobilizations, has presented proposals on how to continue the struggle and its objectives [3]. For Jujuy, it has been proposed that “the struggle be organized in a great coordinating body of all the sectors in struggle, until defeating the Constitutional Reform, throwing out Morales and imposing a workers’ and popular solution to this crisis, nationalizing all the minerals and wealth at the service of all the people.”
For Argentina as a whole, it has been proposed to immediately form a “National Committee of Solidarity with the people of Jujuy… to act in a unified way, and to set up a national plan of struggle until the people of Jujuy triumph,” on the road of national struggle “to confront the IMF adjustment, looting, and repression at the service of the payment of the debt and multinational interests”.
Government and opposition: in it together for the loot
Today, the Argentine people are suffering the double compressive action of a pincer. On the one hand, the brutal adjustment resulting from the need to accumulate dollars to pay the IMF. On the other hand, the plan is to increase the plundering of natural resources. In this case, through the handing over of mining wealth to international companies. In this surrender, the Argentine bourgeoisie also wants to “bite” a minority morsel in order to survive.
Without any intention of breaking this semi-colonial situation, both the Peronist government and the right-wing opposition of Juntos por el Cambio coincide in maintaining the two arms of this pincer (payment to the IMF and handing over the mining wealth). That is why they voted together in Parliament for the agreement with the IMF and that is why the Peronist bench of the Jujuy Legislature was key for Morales to be able to approve his constitutional reform. Finally, this policy cannot be carried out without repression, neither in Jujuy nor in Argentina as a whole. What Morales wants is to prevent any and all resistance to the plundering for the investment of the multinationals!
The battle for lithium
What is happening in Jujuy is taking place in the midst of an international process. We have said that lithium has become a key mineral for the functioning of the new batteries used in electric cars. For this reason, it has become increasingly coveted and its international price is on the rise.
An international battle has begun to secure lithium reserves and extraction, involving large international mining companies based in countries such as Canada, the US, and China. This extractivist struggle driven by imperialist sectors to appropriate the lithium of the American continent is a key piece for the so-called “green revolution,” that false solution to the serious environmental and ecological crisis proposed based on electric motor batteries. This technological revolution, far from solving the climate crisis and the depredation, makes it worse, since it produces more environmental destruction, and generates new underlying problems (destabilization of water systems and access to water), the economic exploitation of semi-colonial peoples and the oppression of indigenous communities.
This is the explanation for Morales’ “rush” to ensure the conditions for the handover (with the collaboration of the provincial Peronism) and thus obtain a good “slice” from the “highest bidder,” expropriating the lands of the communities, concentrating the water supply for the mining companies, and plundering the public budget.
A necessary unity
What happened in Jujuy is an excellent expression of the unity between the working class and the oppressed indigenous peoples (mostly peasants). It is an absolutely natural unity because both face the same enemy: imperialist capitalism and its national partners, Kichnerism, and the right-wing opposition.
And we can defeat them with the unity of the exploited and oppressed, it is an indispensable unity because it strengthens and empowers the struggle of each of the two sectors which, separately, are weaker against the enemy. For this reason, it is necessary to promote and make this alliance concrete in a permanent way, proposing the expropriation of the international mining companies, putting them under workers’ control and that of the local communities.
It is necessary to overcome the limits of the glorious struggle of the peoples of Peru against the government of Dina Boluarte, which has not been extended to the proletariat of Lima due to the negative action of the leadership of the CGTP (central trade union), and due to the policy of the Peruvian Communist Party.
In this struggle against plunder and against repression, it is in the interest of all Argentine workers and their Chilean and Bolivian brothers, since we are facing the same enemy which oppresses and exploits.
All our support to the people of Jujuy
We must surround the people of Jujuy with our solidarity. From the IWL we call on all the political organizations of the left, the trade unions, the social organizations, and the organizations of the native peoples of the whole continent to coordinate efforts to promote it.
The dispute over key natural resources for the green revolution, such as lithium, threatens several Latin American countries rich in such reserves such as Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and Mexico and Peru to a lesser extent. In many cases, lithium is found on lands belonging to the indigenous communities of these countries, which are being violently expropriated. These communities are at the forefront of the resistance against these ecocidal capitalist projects and are being violently repressed as the events in Jujuy show. In this struggle, it is key to actively support all these struggles in order to achieve victories. That implies raising a program that unites the interests of the indigenous communities and the workers’ organizations to achieve unity of mass action in a common struggle against these large multinationals and the national companies allied to this project, as well as the national governments that pave the way and facilitate the plundering.
The plundering of lithium has great consequences for the material living conditions of the whole population in these countries, since privatization and water scarcity are a great threat to the reproduction of the living conditions of the population. It also has economic consequences because it increases the plunder and subordination of these countries to imperialist projects and goes in the opposite direction of developing a national economy by and for the workers and indigenous communities. To be victorious, this struggle requires not only the unity of the unions and other organizations of the workers and youth with the indigenous communities, but also that this struggle be carried out with class independence, democratic methods, and above all that it be organized at the Latin American level.
Therefore, if the workers and the people of Jujuy win, all the Latin American workers and peoples win: our struggle will be strengthened and our enemies will be weaker.
LONG LIVE THE STRUGGLE OF THE WORKERS AND PEOPLE OF JUJUY!
International League of Workers – Fourth International
June 22, 2023
