Intense polemicist, Susan Sontag He traced the borders of photographic knowledge at its limits to narrate. “Only what it narrates can allow us to understand,” he noted. A fragment of the world rather than a statement, photography could stimulate consciousness without arriving at political or ethical knowledge. In times of reels, stories y carruselesfragmentation multiplies infinitely, pushing interpretive chaos. Even so, these “snippets of reality” offer an index to read the present and outline the future.
Thursday 4pm. Javier Milei and Susana Giménez on the balcony of the Casa Rosada. The exact time when Indec announces a number that destroys all stories: 52.9% poverty throughout the country. More clearly: 25 million people below the so-called poverty line.
Esa Menemist postcard on the presidential balcony is tied to another image, barely previous, in the Quinta de Olivos. Wine and roast to celebrate the presidential veto of the modest increase in retirements. Laughter and toasts in a country where millions are condemned to daily hunger. By plunging the knife into the meat, the caste celebrated taking bread from poor retirees.
This contempt for older adults seems to act as a breaking point in the sinuous political sympathy towards Milei. Thousands of kilometers from the country, the far-left Financial Times offers evidence, citing an Argentine consultant who sees in this veto the origin of “a particularly strong decline” among older adults. This declining presidential popularity emerges as a problem for large international financial capital. According to Marcelo Bonelli, this week, in New York, Luis Caputo faced the question: “Won’t Milei’s drop in the polls make the President soften and change?”
Distrust extends even to those who present themselves as friends of the president. This week Milei and Elon Musk They repeated the ritual of being photographed together. Thumbs up and smiles; of dollars not to mention. The North American magnate assured that his “companies are actively looking for ways to invest and support Argentina.” Ten months into the Libertarian Government, they still haven’t found them.
The strange world of Javier
The president continues to see himself as a prophet of a chimerical world of free capitalism. In his speech before the UN, he returned to the abstract globalist topics offered by his limited scheme. In a claim that is, at the same time, a diagnosis of this situation, The Economist recently stated that “with some notable exceptions, such as the initiatives of President Javier Milei in Argentina, world leaders are more interested in state control, industrial policy and protectionism. To a certain extent, the Argentine president distances himself from a substantial part of the international capitalist establishment. Lighting candles, he bets everything or almost everything on Donald Trump’s victory next November.
Like the Argentine president, the financial weekly yearns for a past world, in erosion after the outbreak of 2008. Since then, the neoliberalism drags a thorny declinewith opposing economic trends and permanent geopolitical frictions. In the background, like a powerful rumor, an ascendant spreads social unrestwhich sometimes finds channels in electoral fields and, other times, in popular outbreaks and rebellionslike those that recently shook Bangladesh or Kenya.
In that growing world disorderwar tensions are becoming more evident every day. Continuing the genocide carried out in Gaza, the State of Israel’s brutal offensive on Lebanon threatens to further destabilize the Middle East. The rejection, however, is globalized. This Friday, the room UN General Assembly was practically emptyin repudiation to the murderer’s speech Benjamin Netanyahu.
In rejection of the genocidal Netanyahu, UN member states lead a massive strike! The room was practically empty… Long live Free Palestine! pic.twitter.com/RmuLFgk1Qm
— DAViD.cu (@David_qva) September 27, 2024
In that world in tension, China has just “presented” its first intercontinental ballistic missile. The Guardian, a traditional British newspaper, defined it as “an action that will probably increase international concern about the country’s nuclear development.”
Javier’s strange world is almost nothing like the real world.
The end of the stories
Considering its own decline, the Government will bet on a new story. This is how Clarín states it. The slogan would be: “The adjustment is over.” What to say…
The official rhetoric lacks materiality. He data of 52.9% poverty He detonated an essential knot in his speech: the one that placed the conditions for economic growth in the free action of the market. Ten months into the liberal-libertarian government, the Milei’s Argentina has millions of new poor.
The Government’s economic program is condensed into one word “recession”. From this reactionary point of view, Milei approaches his objectives. Even so, it does not manage to tame the inflationary process. It is impossible for him to do it: fierce adjustment is accompanied by extended tariffswhich distribute the rise in prices throughout the thinned economy.
Social and economic collapse fuels social unrest. This is confirmed by surveys conducted by international financial capital. The anger jumps the crack: it grows between Massa and Milei voters. Creates the conditions for more powerful and widespread resistance to adjustment. The limit lies, once again, in the repudiated role played by the core of the bureaucratic leadership of the CGT.
The Cegetista leadership will go to Casa Rosada on Monday to meet with Guillermo Francos. comes from endorse the regulations of the labor reform. An intense thread is preparing to continue which, even though it forces the Government to negotiate, does not prevent the adjustment advance. In its own way, the CGT makes the “job update” program possible what Cristina Kirchner proposes in each public intervention. Even with internal disagreements, Peronism makes a joint contribution to the capitalist plan to make working-class life precarious.
This faction of the opposition is on the path to a structural crisis. Their numerous internal ones illuminate the lack of their own strategic project. Cristina, Kicillof, Grabois and the broad arc of pan-Peronism offer only one perspective: waiting for the milleist attrition to open an electoral opportunity; be it in 2027 or before. Anything that involves active and harsh resistance to the adjustment in progress remains off the radar.
An adjustment that allows unifying resistances
Faithful to its logic of filling the air with words, the Government reported that Milei will sign a decree to “advance the privatization” of Airlines. The ad is very much a campaign; of effect intended to show “determination.” In fact, it constitutes a legal formality, which the semi-allied blocs demanded in the Transportation Commission of Deputies.
It will be Congress is the one who actually decides. It is not a minor issue. For some time now, the president who came to “destroy the caste” has indulged in persistent give-and-take, which includes the direct purchase of votes. This is how the Base Law and the presidential veto of the pension increase were guaranteed. In that Congress that it questions in words, the ruling party finds allies – sometimes more stable, sometimes less – in the PRO, in the vast majority of the UCR, the bloc led by Pichetto and sectors of Peronism. We will have to put a magnifying glass on them when it comes to parliamentary treatment; observe them carefully, to see if they function again as Milei’s allies.
Trust that parliamentary mechanics to prevent the privatization of Airlines is a path of helplessness. The fragmentation and cooptation of the opposition has already given the Government important victories. The scene could repeat itself. The defeat of the privatization advance can only be achieved with a great national fight let him make a flag in defense of the -pardon the redundancy- flag line. The union leadership of the sector does not seem to be oriented in that direction yet; for the moment, the total transport strike on 17 of October does not transcend the character of a threat.
In the week ahead, the streets will be filled again. The framework will be the national university and educational march next Wednesday. It is announced numerous; The massiveness remains to be seen. Academic authorities, union directorates and bureaucratic student leaders They are not betting on achieving a call comparable to that of April 23. Rather, they are betting on the degraded situation with a Government that offers scarce resources while condemning retirees to hunger.
Synchronizing attacksthe Government pushes for unity. In the fight and in the streets. encourages a necessity: to respond unitarily to an offensive that sinks millions economically for the benefit of the IMF, international financial capital and big business. That convergence, however, demands to be built. It implies a conscious policy to prepare and deploy a joint fight against global adjustment. This path involves the preparation of the general strikethe only tool capable of defeat the entire savage plan that Milei and economic power impose.
Develop that orientation It means militant work in every workplace, in every popular neighborhood, in every faculty and place of study.; bet on the deployment of the democratic self-organization in every fight. These tasks must be part of the general perspective. In the Argentina of the savage right and complicit Peronism, the working class must advance in building a new political force, socialist and anti-capitalistwhich proposes another way out of the crisis.
Córdoba, a broken heart?
Let’s return to the power of photography. Sontag also wrote that “images that mobilize consciousness are always linked to a certain historical situation. The more general they are, the less likely they will be effective.”
This week, Córdoba sent painful images to the entire country. The fire and smoke unleashed crying and tears hundreds or thousands of kilometers from the mountains of Cordoba. In that dramatic painting, Milei contributed another photo; one that caused anger in the same province that voted for him massively last November.
Disregarding the firefighters who were waiting for him on the groundthe president earned Mediterranean fury. Jorge “Petete” Martínez, emblematic journalist of the province, destroyed Milei: “The question one asks is, why did he come?” Because it was a ghost visit, he did not get his feet dirty in Córdoba, he did not walk through the sooty land. “He didn’t thank the firefighters, who are the real heroes in this story.”
years ago, Córdoba Peronism created the slogan “Córdoba, heart of my country”. By supporting traditions, he aimed to strengthen that pseudo-chauvinism that would later find some expression in the so-called “Cordobesism.” Last November, embodying a rabid right that displayed anti-Kirchnerism, the Buenos Aires native Milei pierced that armor.
He contempt that the president showed before Córdoba in flamesWill it leave a broken heart?
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
