Argentines at odds with debt renegotiation with IMF

(Buenos Aires) Tens of thousands of Argentines demonstrated on Saturday against the renegotiation of the debt that their government is trying to obtain from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a prospect that awakens the fear of social destruction associated with plans to adjustment of the past.

“No to an agreement with the IMF”, “the debt is to the people, not the IMF”, “paying the debt IS an adjustment”. At the end of the day on Saturday, banners, slogans and songs from radical left organizations, students, unions, invaded the Plaza de Mayo, historic theater of the joys and anger of the country, at the foot of the Casa Rosada, the presidential palace.

Between brass bands, smoke, deafening firecrackers, smoke from the “parillas” (grills) installed in the street, the IMF was targeted, but also the center-left government, accused of agreeing to reorganize its debt of 44 billion dollars due by 2024. And as a corollary, lend themselves to increased budgetary rigor, in a country which already has 40% of poor people.

“It is horrible to see children in hospitals with small bellies swollen with hunger. It exists today in Argentina! “, Launches in a contained anger Aña Cristina Jaime, 70 years old,” without party, but heart on the left “. “Every 8-9 years, it starts again, we are ‘sold’ to the IMF […] the only option I see is not to pay, but to hunt down capital fleeing abroad. Let those pay! ”

Throughout the week, an Argentinian delegation (government and central bank) held meetings in Washington with an IMF team. By the end of the year, the executive must present to parliament a “multi-year economic program” that would be endorsed by the Fund.

Result of the round of talks: “further discussions” are necessary before an agreement, the IMF announced in a press release on Friday.

On Friday evening, an even larger crowd had already gathered in the Plaza de Mayo, this time made up of sectors close to the Peronist government, to celebrate in music the 38^e anniversary of the return to democracy in Argentina after the dictatorship (1976-1983).

Black beast

Alongside President Alberto Fernandez, former Brazilian heads of state Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (likely presidential candidate in 2022) and Uruguayan José “Pépé” Mujica. Evening theme: nostalgia for, according to Lula, “the best time for democracy” in South America, when center-left, socialist or “Bolivarian” executives ruled from Santiago to Caracas, in the first decade of the 21st century.^e century.

But there again, no mystery about the bête noire, guest obliged to all the speeches: the IMF. Ovation assured when Alberto Fernandez launched that “Argentina adjustments [structurels] belongs to history ”and that a reimbursement“ will not come at the expense of health, public education, salaries, pensions ”. Even if, he was careful to state, “we will assume the obligations taken by others”, namely the loan taken out by his predecessor Mauricio Macri (2018).

Even stronger ovation, when the always popular Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, head of state from 2007 to 2015 and current vice-president, denounced an IMF “which has long conditioned life in Argentina”. And almost intimated to Fernandez “that the IMF helps us to recover billions of dollars which Argentina does not lack, no, but [que des Argentins ont] taken to tax havens! Let this be a point of negotiation with the Fund. ”

The calendar sees these negotiations converge with the anniversary of the “Great Crisis” of December 2001: the social explosion of Argentina then stuck between capital flight and liquidity crisis, after years of austerity plans at the request of the government. IMF, resulted in riots, looting, violence, around 40 deaths and lasting trauma.

“I remember 2001 well, the looting of a supermarket on the corner of my street, it was people without work, it was hunger”, said on Saturday in the demonstration Juan Soto, a 30-year-old market gardener. “History repeats itself, you know. If there is agreement [avec le FMI]is that there is an adjustment. But who is adjusting? The workers, the poor. Those coming out of a pandemic where there have already been so many jobs lost? ”