CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Argentina: The Streets Put a Stop to Milei’s Plundering

Photograph Source: Gage Skidmore – CC BY-SA 2.0

Javier Milei’s government recently suffered a double defeat. The first occurred in the streets, with massive protests against his plan to liberalize land purchases by foreigners. The second took place in the halls of the Argentine Congress, where he failed to secure enough votes to pass the bill as presented. Both defeats point to the same thing: a power project that is beginning to show the limits of its strength.

The bill that the ruling party sought to impose, under the name ‘Law on the Inviolability of Private Property,’ was neither an isolated initiative nor a simple regulatory adjustment. It was part of a broader series of attacks on national sovereignty: establishing mechanisms to accelerate the foreign ownership of land, facilitating external control over strategic resources, and clearing the way for Argentine territory, its common goods, and its decision-making authority over them to become increasingly subordinate to interests outside the country.

In the streets, thousands of people took to the streets to protest this advance. The government responded as it always does when the people organize: with tear gas and rubber bullets, leaving people injured and detained. The repression was not an isolated excess. It is a method. Every time austerity measures encounter resistance, the state reveals its most violent face in an attempt to discipline those it cannot convince.

Because that is what is beginning to crumble: hegemony, the ability to persuade. In the streets, one can........

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