Tens of thousands of people marched across Argentina on March 24, the 50th anniversary of the military coup that launched the brutal dictatorship responsible for the disappearance and murder of over 30,000 people. The massive demonstrations in Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Rosario, and other major cities loudly rejected far-right president Javier Milei, whose government gives cover to the state's crimes during the dictatorship and whose policies echo the political and economic legacy of that reactionary regime. Milei has targeted workers' rights, reproductive rights, pensions, health care, education, and other social services, exacerbating a social and economic crisis that has made life more precarious for millions of people. His government represses dissent in the streets while politicians — including much of the so-called opposition from the center-Left and Right — facilitate these vicious attacks against the working class and the poor.
But the crowds that descended on the capital — joining las Madres de Plaza de Mayo, who have fought for the return of the disappeared for decades — along with thousands of people across the country, signify a growing resistance against Milei and the political establishment. Workers fighting plant closures, teachers and healthcare workers opposing austerity, retirees demanding dignified pensions, activists demanding an end to the government's support for Israel's genocide in Palestine, and students advocating for the right to education — all marched together, alongside human rights and left organizations.
Myriam Bregman and Nicolás del Caño — congresspeople representing the Partido de Trabajadores Socialistas (PTS), Left Voice's sister organization — played a leading role in mobilizing support for Tuesday's marches, linking the fight for memory and justice with the struggle against Milei's austerity agenda. Bregman, a human rights lawyer, led the contingent representing the Center for Professionals for Human Rights (CeProDH). She marched alongside Nicolás del Caño, Christian Castillo, Andrea D'Atri, Alejandrina Barry, Raúl Godoy, and other leaders of the PTS/FIT-U.
In the historic Plaza de Mayo, Del Caño emphasized the importance of upholding the banners once carried by those who fought in the Cordobazo, a massive student-worker uprising against the dictatorship in 1969 — those “who fought for a society free of exploitation and oppression.†Christian Castillo, also a PTS congressperson, declared that “this is a massive mobilization repudiating the government's historical revisionism and its economic plan — a plan that bears striking similarities to that of [José Alfredo] MartÃnez de Hoz from those years,†noting that Argentina's dictators had similarly imposed harsh austerity plans on working people.
Both in the city of Buenos Aires and across the country, the PTS/FIT-U organized large contingents of thousands, including fellow workers, students, members of the feminist movement, environmental activists, and advocates from other sectors. It was, without a doubt, the left-wing political force that mobilized the largest numbers nationwide. The PTS has consistently organized against Milei's agenda since his election, asserting that Milei represents continuity, not a break, with the parties of capital that have impoverished large swaths of the population and further solidified the crushing weight of imperialist debt imposed by the IMF. It is one of the few voices condemning Milei's support for Israel's genocide in Palestine and Donald Trump's acts of imperialist aggression in Latin America, from the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro to threats against Cuba to the war in Iran.
Speaking at the end of the march, Bregman said,
Today, as we bring this day to a close, I believe we must leave with a profound reflection in mind. We are missing a piece — we need to reclaim from that generation of the '70s the understanding that we have the right to rebel against oppression, that ours is a legitimate right to resistance.
Furthermore, she added,
we must reclaim those banners, and we must devise the necessary strategy. So that, once and for all, we can go on the offensive ourselves. For we have the right to fight to put an end to this capitalist system — a system that brings about wars, imperialist aggression, and exploitation — and to build socialism.
As our comrades wrote about the march for La Izquierda Diario,
In the face of the brutal offensive by the Right and big capital — and amid the deep crisis of Peronism — militancy aimed at building a new political force for the working class has become essential. It must be a force that offers a way out of the ongoing national crisis. The PTS/FIT-U is committed to playing a part in this construction. Consequently, the active involvement of every worker and every young person is fundamental: of all those who wish to fight for a socialist perspective as the solution to the ever-deepening decay of capitalism.
Madeleine Freeman
Madeleine is a writer and video collaborator for Left Voice. She lives in New York.
