The following is a translation of a statement by Marea Socialista (Socialist Tide) on the recent presidential election in Venezuela. Amid widespread protests and accusations of fraud across the political spectrum, the country’s National Election Council declared current President Nicolás Maduro the winner with a little over 51 percent of the vote. 
A member of the International Socialist League grouping of revolutionary organisations, Marea Socialista opposes Maduro’s government and the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela. The statement appeared on the leftist <a href="https://www.aporrea.org/actualidad/a332950.html">Venezuelan news site Aporrea</a> on 30 July. It has been translated by the International Socialist Project.
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Although we continue to argue that the working class had no candidates in this presidential election, we defend the people’s democratic right to know what the real result was. We demand that the National Electoral Council (CNE) audit the vote and report on all polling places and electoral data.
Sectors of the Venezuelan people in Caracas and throughout the country have taken to the streets to protest what they feel is the government’s disregard for the great majority of voters. There is a generalised popular demand in the country that large mobilisations from the neighbourhoods express. We defend their right to demonstrate and denounce the repression of a false “revolutionary” government that acts like the repressors who massacred the Venezuelan people on 27 February 1989.
Marea Socialista also does not believe that the results the CNE reported are true. We say this because, in the first place, what is clearly seen and felt on the streets is mostly discontent with the Maduro government and the overwhelming desire to get out of the terrible situation in which it has plunged the Venezuelan people. The CNE has not presented official results and has instead rushed to proclaim Nicolás Maduro the winner, without any transparency in the data tabulation process and with the CNE’s website offline.
Irregularities and arbitrary rulings have plagued the process and the electoral system itself from start to finish. Although they insist that the machines and their data management are “invulnerable”, we all know that the government has engineered a system shot through with manipulation and favouritism, disqualifications, roadblocks to legalising opposition parties, seizure of the assets of civil society organisations, the government’s corrupt use of public resources, censorship and blockading the media, persecutions and imprisonments ...
These measures aren’t solely confined to the conflict between the ruling right wing (Maduro, PSUV, the military and the corrupt bureaucracy) and the traditional right wing, but they are also applied to sectors of the working class and organisations on the left that adopt critical positions or oppose government policies. Added to this are the obstacles to campaigning, retaliations, extortion and threats to voters, especially if they are public sector workers or have some kind of dependence on the state-government.
In addition, there is the curtailment of the right to vote for millions of forced migrants, Venezuelans who are abroad and who have left because of the government’s policies, and who remain angry with it. And to cap it off on election day, the government seized boxes of ballots cast, grabbed official totals from polling stations and engaged in multiple irregularities that would take too long to name. In the end, they give us shoddy and unreliable reports that constitute an outrage and an insult to the voters. That is why people cannot square what they saw at the polling stations and polling centres with what the CNE reported later.
The people have the constitutional right to know how their votes were treated and to have them respected. Let us demand transparency: we must defend the right of the people to have their real votes known and respected. We do not say this to defend votes in favour of a right wing that we know we oppose, but in favour of the people having access to reliable electoral information and to be fully able to exercise their vote, as an elementary matter of democratic freedoms. That is why we demand a thorough electoral audit with citizen participation to verify the results, which is also a constitutional right.
At the same time, we reiterate that, for us, the working class had no candidates in these elections. No candidate faithfully represented its interests. Both leading candidates are right wing, anti-worker and capitalist. The government candidate is the destroyer of the best conquests and rights achieved from the Bolivarian revolution. He stands for anti-worker, right-wing, authoritarian politics that have nothing to do with socialism. What’s more, he is not genuinely anti-imperialist, but is aligned with other capitalist powers that are in competition with the US (Russia, China, etc.). 
Maduro expresses the interests of a new “lumpen bourgeoisie” that lives off the embezzlement of the state. Meanwhile, María Corina Machado [the leading opposition candidate, whom the government disqualified from the election] represents the traditional bourgeoisie and the big private employers. This capitalist sector opposes the political power of Maduro’s “Chavismo” but benefits from its policies with the exploitation of an ultra-cheap or practically semi-slave labour force that has been deprived of its salary. Despite vague and opportunistic promises to address this situation, they have no intention of solving it. 
We are with the people in the streets to defend their vote. We are on the side of their democratic demands. But at the same time, we mark distance with the political leaderships that are trying to manipulate them or use them as “cannon fodder”. We have seen how the message of Edmundo Gonzalez [the right-wing opposition candidate who ran in Corina Machado’s place] and Maria Corina looks first to the military, as if seeking a decree from the armed forces. The popular response is slipping through their hands.
Whether one or the other [Maduro or the traditional right] governs, from Marea we insist on the autonomous organisation of the people without bosses, without bureaucrats and without corruption. We have said that it is an illusion to think that the “way out” or solution to Maduro’s authoritarian government will come from the opposition of the traditional right wing, whose background we know. Although they fight Maduro for power, they support his policies that have offloaded the economic crisis onto the workers. Maduro accomplished what they always wanted to do. The real solutions that the working class needs will not come from there. If we do not have organisation, political consciousness and strength as a class, we do not have a chance. That is why we cannot follow the politics of those who would subjugate us to the government or exploit us in the factories and workplaces.
Starting with the demand for democratic freedoms and respect for their vote, which is mobilising people onto the streets today, let’s accumulate forces in the struggle for our rights—with unity, consciousness and class independence.
Marea Socialista has called for a united stand of working-class forces, trade unions, activists in defence of civil rights and political organisations that we have convened under the Conference for the Defence of the People’s Rights (PPT-APR, PSL, LTS, PCV-Dignidad). In the election, we and other members of this group campaigned on the slogan of “The Working Class Has No Candidate—Spoil Your Ballot”. 
With the Conference for the Rights of the People, we presented common proposals on several points and organised united protests for wages, for the freedom of workers imprisoned for fighting against corruption or in solidarity with the Palestinian people. We aim to sustain and to develop these alliances for unity in action for labour rights, social rights and democratic rights for the Venezuelan people.
We trust only in the mobilisation of the workers and the exploited, and we urge the struggle to recover rights taken away, without believing in bureaucrats, bosses or corrupt people.
Let us build our own political vehicle without selling our conscience to either of the two anti-worker rightists fighting for power and resources.
Let us democratically raise our plan of struggle for our demands, rights and liberties.
The working class and the popular sectors need their own strength both against the authoritarian starvation government of Maduro and the parties and leaders of the capitalist right who are also hangmen disguised as “saviours”.

Oppose both the government and the opposition in Venezuela

The Argentine working class is not backing down from its struggle against conservative President Javier Milei. A general strike called by the major union confederations on 9 May, the second since Milei came to office in December, paralysed the economy and major cities. Urban transportation came to a standstill, nearly 300 flights were cancelled, banks and shops were closed, and government operations were massively reduced. One study found that the lost economic activity was equal to 1.1 percent of annual GDP.
The second general strike took on Milei’s new austerity package, which has just been passed by the Senate and will now return to the lower house. After he withdrew his first one (known as the Omnibus Bill)—which aimed to slash public spending, privatise state-owned firms and pass anti-labour legislation—he introduced a new, watered-down, version, colloquially referred to as the “Omnibus Bill XS”. Despite only containing around a third of the provisions of the original bill, the new one still includes significant anti-labour legislation and privatisations.
Milei has faced significant difficulty in passing any of this through Congress because he lacks even a sizeable minority parliamentary bloc—his party was founded only in 2021. Unlike other far-right figures, like former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro or Donald Trump, Milei does not have a cohered and loyal base. He was backed by the Argentine ruling class in the second round of the election and won 56 percent of the vote. However, this was considered to be a vote against the incumbents—it’s unclear how loyal this base will remain.
“The government is very determined to move forward, but this also generates significant resistance”, Cesar Latorre, a union delegate at a major hospital in Buenos Aires and member of the Socialist Workers’ Movement (MST), said to Red Flag. “The government has not given up and, where another government might have backed down, it tries to keep pushing forward.”
 This was clear when a journalist recently said to Milei, “The people can’t make ends meet, Mr President”, to which he responded, “If people couldn’t make ends meet, they’d already be dead”.
Milei’s intransigence reflects that, despite decades of economic turbulence, Argentina’s rulers have not succeeded in smashing the organised working class and the welfare state as fully as elsewhere in Latin America. Large sections of the economy are nationalised, and the unionisation rate remains around 40 percent. Milei’s whole political project is about fighting on behalf of the bosses. His labour measures would weaken workers’ ability to fight for better wages, his budget cuts would remove subsidies to households, his privatisations would hand public companies to private bosses, and his tax proposal would make workers’ pay a greater share of the state’s finances. 
But after Milei faced stiff opposition in parliament for the last six months, it now looks like some of his opponents are willing to negotiate and approve sections of his agenda. This includes the main parliamentary opposition, the Peronists, a number of whom voted in favour of the second Omnibus Bill. 
Peronism is a political current unique to Argentina. It has a strong base in the unions. Its origins lie in a coup led by Colonel Juan Perón in 1943. Perón sought a base in the organised workers’ movement but was no working-class hero; he worked to control and restrain the rising working-class militancy of the time. Perón severely attacked the left, jailing and murdering hundreds of leftists and unionists. More recently, the Peronists were the first to try to implement neoliberalism in the 1990s and, while in power for the four years prior to Milei, oversaw the deaths of more than 100,000 people during the pandemic. Outside of the various periods of military rule, the Peronists have governed Argentina most of the time since the 1940s.
The union bureaucracy consistently subordinates the interests of the workers it’s supposed to represent to the electoral interests of Peronism. Currently, while the Peronists are out of power and there’s a significant attack on the unions themselves, the unions have been pressured to organise protests and strikes. 
 “Peronism has a division of labour. On one hand, they make speeches in parliament, complain and denounce the law”, says Latorre, referring to the austerity package. “On the other hand, they discuss with La Libertad Avanza [Milei’s party], as is the case with the CGT [General Confederation of Workers], which is trying not to mobilise seriously to avoid destabilising the parliamentary session.” 
The union bureaucracy and Peronists have negotiated with Milei to protect, among other things, union funding sources, such as automatic union membership at workplaces. Whilst it is right to defend this measure, the bureaucracy has been far more interested in negotiating with the government over it than sustaining protests and strikes to defeat the brutal attacks on workers. 
The Peronist parliamentary leaders want to wait out Milei’s four-year term in a way that causes minimal disruption to Argentinian capitalism, whilst contrasting themselves as the steady hand against Milei’s chaos. 
The second general strike was not due to any enthusiasm from the bureaucracy and Peronist leaders for a prolonged battle against Milei. Rather, it was called in response to pressure they are under from their own members and seen as a bargaining chip in negotiations to protect the unions’ structures. 
Nonetheless, the strike was an opportunity to reunite the full force of the working class after many unions had ceased their industrial action while they returned to negotiations following the first general strike. However, its impact was contradictory. Whilst it had very strong participation, its political impact was not fully realised because the union leaders refused to call a centralised protest.
Despite the lacklustre efforts of the CGT leadership, Milei has so far failed to make workers pay for the crisis. Instead, resistance remains strong. Since the second general strike, teachers have held a national strike, healthcare workers have taken industrial action, train drivers organised a 24-hour national strike just a week after a national transport strike, and even judges struck for 24 hours. And on the day the second austerity package was being voted on in the Senate, public sector workers held a national 24-hour strike, the university sector began a 48-hour strike, and other unionists struck and joined protests outside the Congress.
On 24 May, a textile company fired hundreds of workers in two of its factories. When it attempted to remove the machinery, workers occupied both factories, one of which continued functioning for more than a fortnight.
Students have also joined the fight. On 24 April, around 1 million people marched across the country to defend higher education from Milei’s cuts. A few days later, he caved and increased the budget. 
The rising social tensions reached even greater heights in the province of Misiones, an underdeveloped region in the north-east with a small but important agricultural sector. There, teachers, healthcare and other workers have been protesting and striking for months. In recent weeks, the protests have become more aggressive, marching on the provincial congress and clashing with security forces. Students and workers have blockaded roads across the province. Even the local police went on strike for a pay increase and set up an encampment outside their headquarters. The federal government, for the thirteen days of the police strike, had to call in other state security forces.
The police temporarily breaking ranks and joining the protests is a clear sign of how deep the crisis is. Combined with the increased levels of industrial action, it shows that Milei’s approach is a risky one. Previous conservative presidents have failed in similar attempts to implement austerity. For example, during Mauricio Macri’s term from 2015 to 2019, the unions thwarted his anti-worker changes with five general strikes. The other risk for Milei is that the Argentinian ruling class grows tired of the social conflict and returns to the Peronists. After all, they can offer something Milei cannot: social peace. A recent opinion piece in the Argentinian paper La Nación expressed this sentiment:
“The growing labour unrest, combined with social organisations joining the protests, threatens to reach record levels during Milei’s short presidency ... Curiously, many of the unions that today have adopted a belligerent stance ... remained silent during the last four years [when the Peronists were in government].”
The situation in Argentina is unstable. Even if Milei passes his watered-down austerity package, the mass mobilisations will likely continue. Union leaders are under serious pressure to continue mobilising, Peronism is highly discredited, and workers are eager to fight. 
If Milei wins, his victory may embolden other far-right leaders. But if Argentine workers manage to defeat him, they will send an important message to workers facing similar attacks in Europe and elsewhere: that it is still possible to defeat a ruling-class offensive with a mobilised and combative workers’ movement.

Tom Sullivan

Another general strike in Argentina challenges Milei

The struggle of the Argentine working class against ultra-conservative President Javier Milei continues to evolve. Public sector workers are one of the key groups leading the resistance. Through strikes, protests and occupations of government buildings, state workers have pushed back against Milei’s plan to sack up to 70,000 people.
Milei took office in December and went straight on the offensive against the working class, moving to cut government spending, limit the right to strike and privatise state-owned industry. He also enacted draconian anti-protest laws that deemed any gathering of more than three people an illegal protest.
“They seek to destroy the public sector”, Leonardo Rando, a delegate in the State Workers’ Association (ATE) and a member of the Socialist Workers’ Movement (MST), told Red Flag. “They are not interested in continuing any public policy that improves the quality of life of the people.”
In many cases, management did not even tell workers they were sacked. Instead, they found out only when their access cards did not work one morning.
Fortunately, working-class resistance has thwarted major aspects of Milei’s plans. Argentina’s working class is strong, with a unionisation rate of around 40 percent in the formal economy and a large left. The resistance began almost immediately, with huge protests and strikes kicking off across the country. This culminated in a general strike on 24 January, in which half a million people joined the accompanying protest in the capital Buenos Aires.
Shortly after, Milei withdrew his proposal from congress when it became clear it did not have the votes to pass. The huge protests over the last five months have defied the anti-protest laws and rendered certain aspects of them a dead letter.
With his initial attempt to unleash a major attack on the entire working class defeated, Milei has changed tack. He is now targeting specific sections of workers, such as the public sector, while trying to pass a watered-down version of his original bill. 
The Argentine public sector has a proud history of resistance and remains well unionised. Over recent years it has won progressive reforms, such as minimum employment quotas for women and transgender and disabled people.
In response to the attacks, some public sector unions have gone on strike and taken direct action. During a national day of protest on 3 April, ATE workers pushed through police lines and occupied several government buildings in various cities, where they held open assemblies. Two days later, ATE followed up with a nationwide strike and a march on the Ministry of Economy.
State workers from the National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts (INCAA) have held large assemblies and protests for several months. Argentine cinema is world famous and plays an important cultural role in the country. Employing around 700,000 people, INCAA has long been in the firing line of conservatives for economic and ideological reasons.
“There is a tradition of independent cinema in our country that is also recognised and valued globally, which allows for storytelling from a diversity of perspectives, including critiques of the current political power”, wrote a group of INCAA delegates in a recent press release. “All of this is what they want to destroy in order to reduce Argentina to a cheap location for Hollywood productions.”
Inside the union movement, the socialist left has built itself into a considerable force. For instance, in Córdoba, the second most populous province, the left ran together in union elections last August and won the capital city section of the Union of Educators of the province, defeating two other campaigns. This section of the union has 16,000 members, and the whole union has 43,000 members out of around 80,000 teachers in the region.
But despite some victories for the left, the union movement is overwhelmingly dominated by Peronism, the political movement that occupies the space from centre left to centre right and has governed the country most of the time since the 1980s.
Socialist organisations, including the MST, are attempting to organise the unions’ rank-and-file members and encourage a more combative approach. Since Milei’s election, they have called public meetings, participated in large assemblies of workers and marched as a strong column independent of the union bureaucracy at the general strike in January.
“We believe that it is necessary to go to a large assembly of all state workers to define the necessary plan of action. There should be a new strike of 48 or 72 hours in the coming weeks. No action should be ruled out; we must continue to grow and think about the radicalisation of the struggle”, said Rando.
Public sector workers are not up against just Milei’s government. They face significant obstacles in the union bureaucracy, which is intimately tied to the Peronists. It has refused to call strikes in certain workplaces and industries, and even when it has called them, has not seriously organised and prepared workers. Instead, it routinely tries to channel workers’ anger and frustration into electoral campaigns for the Peronists, much as the Australian union movement does for the Labor Party.
The bureaucracy also overrides decisions made by the rank and file. For example, in the week prior to Milei taking office, delegates from ATE Capital (the Buenos Aires section) voted for a protest. But three days before it was to begin, the union’s general secretary announced that it would be replaced by a press conference in which union leaders simply requested a meeting with Milei.
 Despite this approach from the bureaucracy, the unrelenting attacks on key sections of workers have compelled it to call a second general strike for 9 May.
The political situation in Argentina remains open. Milei is determined to attack workers, the union bureaucracy refuses to organise a prolonged strike campaign, and the misery of mass poverty is a heavy burden on workers’ shoulders. But two general strikes in Milei’s first five months signal the willingness of the working class to resist his agenda.

Argentine public sector workers take on Milei

Haiti’s most powerful gangs launched an insurrection in the capital, Port-au-Prince, last month. More than 50,000 have been displaced from the capital as homes, schools, libraries and more have been destroyed by fire and bullets.
Gangs already controlled 80-90 percent of Port-au-Prince and various arterial roads across the country. The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime estimated in 2023 that “23 major gangs operate in Port-au-Prince ... and alongside these, another 70 smaller”. While usually at war with one another, many have united in a political front called Viv Ansanm.
Viv Ansanm raided and burnt police stations and prisons on 29 February, releasing thousands of prisoners. Gang members launched an ongoing siege of the Presidential National Palace. A week later, an attempted takeover of the Toussaint Louverture International Airport forced the resignation of de facto Prime Minister and acting President Ariel Henry.
Henry, a widely despised figure, travelled to Kenya in late February hoping to secure armed personnel for deployment in Haiti. Armed international support has been a long-term goal for Henry, whose power rested on police repression and diplomatic support from the West. The airport siege left Henry stranded in Puerto Rico. With no ability to govern and security forces overwhelmed, the USA and Caribbean regional organisation (CARICOM) dropped Henry in favour of a new Presidential Council (CP).
The CP is a national unity government including members from parties aligned with a recent anti-government movement, business representatives and politicians from the pro-Henry camp. As personalities from all sides have withdrawn multiple candidates and appealed various sections of its mandate—alongside delays by Henry himself in handing over official power—the CP has inspired little confidence that it will end the crisis.
Viv Ansanm is the main obstacle to the CP. Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier, the group’s leader, hasn’t ruled out taking part in the political transition with the CP, saying to Sky News that he “respects CARICOM a lot”.
Despite seeking a seat at the table with business leaders and the USA, Chérizier casts himself and Viv Ansanm as Guevarist revolutionaries fighting imperialism. But he has not pulled the mass of Haitians behind him—the gangs rule the working-class slums with an iron fist. Their power comes from controlling many borders, ports and roads across Haiti, as well as being allegedly contracted out by right-wing governments.
This is not a new situation for Haitian workers and the poor. Their poverty has long been enforced by imperialist domination and authoritarian regimes that rely on secret police or paramilitary forces. 
The dynamic can be traced all the way back to the revolution of the 1790s and Haitian independence in 1804. In one of history’s most heroic mass revolts, hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans overthrew the French plantation system. The French responded by sending “the largest expedition that had ever sailed from France ... 20,000 veteran troops, under ... Bonaparte’s ablest officers”, as Trinidadian activist and historian C.L.R. James described in The Black Jacobins.
The Haitian slaves defeated France, but the prospect of eternal French invasions eventually forced Haiti to agree to pay 150 million francs in compensation for property lost in the revolution (that property being the slaves). The debt “remained shackled” to cash crops, while “education, healthcare and infrastructure went practically unfunded”, wrote Anthony Phillips in an article for the Canada-Haiti Information Project. The resulting political instability left “a series of despotic presidents ... and assassination, foreign sponsored coup d’état or civil insurrection”.
This instability provided cover for the US to launch a military occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934. This began as an operation to ensure Haitian payment of France’s debt and, the US argued, to create stability. Yet Peter Hallward’s Damming the Flood describes how the US military “abolished an ‘undemocratic’ clause in the constitution that banned foreigners from owning property in Haiti, took over the National Bank ... expropriated land to create new plantations ... and forced labor that accompanied it”. 
All of this required murdering thousands of Haitians who rebelled against forced labour and the end of independence, and the establishment of forces that would keep the new, pro-US political system in place. That was primarily the Haitian military, which assumed “power for themselves ... following the election of a mildly progressive government in 1946”, as Hallward describes. 
Yet in 1957 the US found its most trustworthy strongman in François Duvalier, who took power when radical workers and students threatened the military regime. Duvalier, and his successor and son Jean-Claude, ended the instability through economic and military warfare.
The Duvalier dynasty was an anti-communist bulwark in Latin America and seen as an essential counterweight to Cuba. It was backed by the US, which sent warships to Haitian ports to ensure the smooth transfer of power from François to Jean-Claude in 1971.
The Duvaliers sold public industries to multinational sweatshops and abolished import controls to allow cheap US goods to flood the markets. Workers’ wages fell by 50 percent by the end of the 1980s. To maintain this system of extreme exploitation, the Duvalier dynasty established its most infamous institution of political repression, the Tonton Macoute.
Originally created as a personal paramilitary for Duvalier, the Macoute were drawn from the impoverished towns of Haiti with the promise of money and power. At times unofficially, but often openly, the Macoute acted as the nation’s secret police, brutalising and disappearing dissidents and murdering tens of thousands of students, workers, peasants and leftists.
Revolution eventually toppled the dictatorship in 1986. The strikes and popular organisations that smashed the Duvaliers terrified ruling-class interests in Haiti, and years of unsuccessful counter-revolution by the Haitian military forced the imperialist core to act.
In 2004, the United Nations sent a “stabilisation” mission to Haiti after, in its own words, “President Bertrand Aristide departed Haiti for exile in the aftermath of an armed conflict”. Aristide, Haiti’s first democratically elected president, who came to power through the mass movement against the Duvalier dynasty, “departed for exile” after a military coup that the UN defended by targeting those resisting it.
“After a demonstration of ten thousand people demanding the return of [Aristide] ... UN forces attacked the community and killed close to 30 people”, found a report by the North American Congress on Latin America and the Haiti Information Project in 2006. UN troops, led by Brazil and politically backed by Canada and the US, left behind death and disease (including a cholera outbreak caused by dumping sewage in drinking water), and not an ounce of democracy.
Since then, successive Haitian governments have implemented IMF austerity programs, stolen money allocated to public infrastructure and sold land to multinational companies. A telling example is the 2018 Digneron free-trade zone, which boasts of lacking corporate taxes and housing a golfing range. That same year, the government implemented IMF-advised cuts to fuel and food subsidies. The poverty resulting from these policies is “leading both girls and boys to join armed gangs, with 30-50 percent of gang members estimated to be underage recruits”, according to a Plan International report released last month.
These right-wing governments have brutally repressed the Haitian working class to secure their own rule. Assassinated ex-President Jovenel Moïse had police using live ammunition and tear gas against anti-government demonstrations and is alleged to have consistently used gangs as a personal paramilitary force, much like François Duvalier. A Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic study on the Moïse government’s ties to organised crime alleges that multiple government officials either “furnished weapons and vehicles” to the gangs or paid them “to put an end to anti-government protests”. 
The provision of public services and welfare has been handed to foreign aid missions and NGOs that provide little to those who need it. Following the 2010 Haitian earthquake, the largest recipient of US aid was the $300 million Caracol industrial park designed for sweatshops. The Red Cross, according to a 2015 NPR article, “says it has provided homes to more than 130,000 [Haitian] people, but the number of permanent homes the charity has built is six”.
The current crisis is linked to years of foreign powers underdeveloping Haiti and backing corrupt, authoritarian regimes that have fostered the growth of powerful gangs. All that has changed is that the gangs have outgrown their benefactors and asserted their role as power brokers. None of these forces want to improve the lives of regular Haitians or engage the mass popular movement that has been fighting for a more dignified life for the last six years.
Just as the crisis recalls Haiti’s colonial and imperial history, the solution will have to recall Haiti’s formidable revolutionary traditions.

Johnny Gerdes

Who’s to blame for the crisis in Haiti?

Amid extreme social and economic crisis and a brutal austerity package proposed by far-right President Javier Milei, the Argentine working class won an important victory last month: the government withdrew a bill that proposed sweeping privatisations of state-owned firms, budget cuts and attacks on labour rights, among other things. 
On the day of the vote in the lower chamber of the Congress, there were tense scenes in Buenos Aires. Thousands of protesters in front of the building, led by the left, resisted pepper spray and batons from police. Inside, Milei’s party, Liberty Advances (LLA), and its congressional allies, who lack a majority, tried to convince a centrist bloc to support the bill. Initially they were successful, with the bill passing “in general”. But when it came to a vote on each chapter, resulting in successive defeats, LLA withdrew the bill.
The bill was the centrepiece of Milei’s austerity package, which makes its defeat a significant setback. Further, to get the bill passed “in general”, he had to water it down and remove more than half of the articles in the original version.
But despite the government’s defeat, which was propelled by a huge general strike followed by mass protests around the country, Milei’s far-right agenda is by no means buried.
Annual inflation is running at nearly 250 percent, and the poverty rate has increased from 45 percent in December to 57 percent. Almost every day, there is a new attack on workers’ living standards. After the legislative setback, Milei announced cuts to public transport subsidies, which will result in bus and subway fares rising by more that 360 percent in coming months. He has also announced cuts to pensions. The most reactionary LLA legislators also introduced a bill to criminalise abortion. While Milei distanced himself from this, it gives an indication of the type of social policies his party wants to impose on Argentina.
The government retains the backing of a considerable section of the Argentine capitalist class and has strong support from the international capitalist class. For example, the International Monetary Fund has released billions of dollars in emergency loans and has praised Milei. Further, a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece was titled “America needs a Javier Milei”, while other articles talk of global investors’ enthusiasm at the prospects of getting their hands on Argentine public assets.
This is why they support Milei’s no-holds-barred austerity drive. But he faces obstacles. First, several of his proposed laws or aspects of them have been struck down by the courts as unconstitutional. Second, his lack of a congressional majority means he has to rely on a centrist bloc to pass legislation. This bloc has proved difficult to win over. Even members of the coalition allied to Milei voted against the bill. However, they largely criticise the means rather than the ends, seeing his approach as authoritarian by trying to assume legislative powers and govern under a state of emergency.
The biggest obstacle for Milei, however, is arguably the working class. But it is far from a unified opposition. Large sections of workers voted for Milei and accept the idea that he should be allowed to implement his proposals. Milei has made direct appeals to this group by claiming that a monthly inflation rate under 25 percent should be a cause for celebration and proof his plan is working. In January, this was achieved with monthly inflation at 20.6 percent.
However, there is a sizeable minority of the working class, not uncommonly under the influence of the socialist left, that views Milei’s plans for what they are—an attempt to make the working class pay for the crisis of Argentine capitalism and give public assets to international capitalists. A key group within this minority are cultural sector workers, who have held large, open assemblies in which debates are held about how to organise resistance to the government’s attacks. Similar processes are playing out among other groups of workers.
But the working class also faces obstacles—principally the trade union bureaucracy, which has so far refused to call a second general strike. Despite the left being strong enough independently to move into action a minority of the most combative workers, a full-scale general strike still requires a call from the major union confederations. Consequently, the slogans of the left continue to be demands on the bureaucracy (“General strike and plan of action”) and against Milei (“Until Milei’s defeat”).
Ultimately, the struggle to defeat Milei and his far-right agenda will not be won easily or quickly, nor through the withdrawal of any particular bill. It will be a drawn-out process involving partial victories and defeats, and lasting throughout his presidency.

The fight continues in Argentina

A general strike against Argentina’s far-right president, Javier Milei, rocked the country on 24 January, just 45 days into his new government’s term. By mid-morning, the plaza outside the National Congress building in Buenos Aires, the capital, was packed. More than half a million people turned up to protest—striking workers, the unemployed, representatives from neighbourhood assemblies, people mobilised by social justice organisations and left-wing political groups. 
Streets leading to the plaza were packed so tight with people that it was hard to move. Cheering and singing tyre factory workers, throwing water across each other, were half drowned out by drumming and chanting from all different directions of the mobilisation. Amid the chanting, smoke rose from barbecues, carrying the smell of choripán (a type of sausage), schnitzel, bacon and eggs. Vendors hawked Coke bottles carried atop platters balanced on their heads; workers crouched to pour maté, a staple Argentinian tea. 
The country is in crisis, inflation being in triple figures and the country now the largest debtor to the International Monetary Fund. In late December, Milei announced privatisations, closures of government departments, attacks on workers’ rights and crackdowns on civil liberties. He is supported by the Argentine capitalist class and the country’s creditors. 
Previous presidents have attempted to wind back economic, social and democratic rights, but have been stymied by mass opposition. Milei’s attacks are an attempt to settle everything—to do in Argentina what conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher did in Britain in the 1980s: destroy the confidence of the working class and defeat the unions so that the rich can shape the economy and society without opposition. 
On the day of the strike, nothing else was news. After the trains carried the stragglers home before grinding to a halt as the drivers finally got to participate in the shutdown, television screens across the country were filled with commentary. Security Minister Patricia Bullrich insisted that the demonstration was small and insignificant. But according to the main trade union federation, the General Confederation of Workers (CGT), more than 1.5 million participated in protests across the country. 
The strike was a show of force by the diverse social layers that have entered the struggle against the new president. For example, most of the plaza in Buenos Aires was filled by huge contingents of piqueteros—unemployed and precariously employed people who rely on subsidies, including food and social services, distributed through government schemes known as social plans. It’s possible there were equal numbers of piqueteros and organised workers at the strike demonstration in the capital.
Large parts of the country were paralysed by the strike. The nationalised airline, Aerolineas Argentinas, was <a href="https://www.semana.com/mundo/articulo/paro-nacional-en-argentina-vuelos-cancelados-bancos-cerrados-y-una-multitud-frente-al-congreso/202427/">forced to cancel</a> more than 300 flights and reschedule another 26. Banks closed their doors from noon. State department workers had a huge presence, and many teachers and health workers joined the strike. Ford, Toyota and Peugeot car factories were shut. 
Yet there were limitations. It was a huge show of force, but it was also considerably smaller than what the unions have been capable of mobilising in the past. 
The CGT announced the strike a month in advance, and other trade union federations announced that they would join it. But the CGT is highly bureaucratic and run by industrially conservative Peronists. “Peronism” takes its name from Juan Perón, a military officer who governed Argentina several times between 1946 and 1974. Ideologically, Peronism is associated with state intervention into the economy and “national independence”. Politically, it spans the spectrum from the centre right to the centre left. The more left-wing variants add social justice and human rights into the nationalist mix. 
When in government, Perón handed big concessions to the workers’ movement while forcibly taking over the unions, killing and kidnapping left-wing rivals. But two Peronist governments were overthrown by right-wing military dictatorships, which has given Peronism a democratic gloss. Photos of Perón’s wife Evita are everywhere in Argentina, especially in the homes of progressive women. 
Peronism is comparable to Laborism in Australia in that it maintains a tight hold over the union bureaucracy. But there are important differences. While the Labor Party and the European social democratic parties emerged from, or were part of founding, the workers’ movement, Peronism has always been dominated by members of the ruling class.
The Peronist union bureaucracy didn’t do the detailed organising work necessary to convince large sections of workers to participate in the strike. In many places, the CGT mobilised only union delegates rather than the entire workforce. The bureaucracy is afraid of its own working-class base and doesn’t call demonstrations that might get out of its control. It wanted the demonstration on the day of the strike to be weighted towards workplace delegates, who are more loyal to the leadership.
So while the strike and demonstration were big in absolute terms, in relative terms they were still modest—half a million out of a population of 15.6 million in Buenos Aires, for example. 
Argentina has various revolutionary socialist organisations. Their membership numbers are in the thousands, rather than tens or hundreds of thousands, making them substantially weaker than the Peronist machine. But when the groups work together, they have considerable influence and are capable of meaningfully intervening into mass politics. That the general strike was held at all was partially a result of the left’s pressure on the CGT leaders. 
The Socialist Workers’ Movement (MST) is a useful case study. The three main projects of its members before the strike were: convincing as many of their workmates as possible to join the strike, leading mass rank-and-file assemblies and protests of arts sector workers and building a coalition of diverse groups to provide ongoing political leadership in the struggle. 
Mobilising workers for the strike wasn’t straightforward. More than 50 percent of people, including large numbers of workers, voted for Milei in November. Because most of his attacks haven’t been implemented yet, and because the economic crisis long preceded him, many don’t view the new president as a threat to their wellbeing and haven’t broken from him. In the lead-up to 24 January, union delegates from the left put in long, detailed work to convince their workmates to attend. 
“As soon as the strike was announced, we began to hold meetings and tours through the workplace discussing the need to strike”, Cesar Latorre, an MST member and lead delegate at a private hospital, told Red Flag. “In the first weeks, the debates were minor, but as the date approached, the debates became highly politicised.”
Latorre and his delegate team spent hours in each hospital department responding to questions and explaining the purpose of the strike. 
“The first difficulty was the refusal of one sector to mobilise and stop work because the strike was being called by the CGT after a long time of the federation doing nothing. Then there were other workers who supported Milei’s government and said we had to let him govern”, Latorre said. 
Some sections of workers joined the independent contingents, or “columns”, led by the revolutionary socialist parties around the country. In Buenos Aires, many thousands of people joined the left-wing “multi-sectoral” column organised through meetings and assemblies prior to the strike. It was initiated by Syndicalismo Combativo, a forum of union delegates who are members of socialist organisations. It is normal for that group to march together, but at the general strike they were joined by an unusually large number of others. 
Syndicalismo Combativo planning meetings included representatives of social justice organisations, unaligned piqueteros, retirees, neighbourhood assemblies and human rights organisations. 
Days before the strike, a prominent rank-and-file group of arts sector workers, in a mass assembly of more than 600, voted to join the left contingent. Members of the MST led the argument in the assembly. This led to other organisations, including a prominent abortion rights group, announcing they would also join the contingent. Tyre workers voted in assemblies to join it, as did a section of railway workers. Around 3,000 people from various neighbourhood committees met early to join the left column, but couldn’t get through the packed crowd to reach it.
Claudio Mora, an MST member delegate in the National Directive Commission of the tyre factory union, explained to Red Flag during the strike: 
“The strike was voted on in assemblies in each of the factories. Our strike won’t end at the same time as the CGT’s action—we will stay out until tomorrow at six in the morning. We are in the independent column because there is a need for a continuity of the struggle until we defeat Milei’s plans.
“The tyre union is strong, so we have a safeguard in our contracts to protect us from inflation, which means that we don’t lose as much from our salaries as the other workers. But our fundamental task is to be present and to lead, and try to give confidence to all the other sections of workers. That’s partly in terms of economic outcomes, but also in terms of organisation. We want to help encourage other workers to overcome the situation that they are in today, where the union bureaucrats control their workplaces. Instead, we are encouraging new delegates, new internal commissions, a new body of fighters to emerge, who also dedicate themselves, in addition to the union, to politics.”
A new cycle of struggle has begun in Argentina. On 20-21 December, enormous and spontaneous night-long protests shocked the wealthy. After that, however, there were no mass mobilisations until the left and the unions called demonstrations. But neighbourhood assemblies emerged in scattered suburbs of Buenos Aires and other parts of the country. They were much smaller than during the radicalisation of 2001, but undeniably real. The 24 January general strike was led by the union bureaucracy, but it opened a space for rank-and-file assemblies and for debates in some workplaces, into which the socialist organisations intervened. 
Struggles have risen and fallen in the last twenty years all over the world. But without revolutionary parties, even the bravest militants have been confined to a role akin to foam on a raging ocean. In Argentina, the construction of revolutionary socialist organisations is under way. To beat the conservative mass political forces, they will need to grow significantly. But they are of a size that enables them to intervene meaningfully. This makes the situation in Argentina more dynamic and open than in many other parts of the world.

Jasmine Duff

The left in Argentina’s general strike

Preparing for the general strike in Argentina

In an old, rundown theatre in Córdoba, Argentina, a mass assembly of cultural sector workers and students met on the night of 3 January. Almost every seat inside was taken; many stood, packed next to the cinema screen and flooding the aisles. A stream of people ran to the front to get on the speaking list. Others assembled in the heat on the pavement outside trying to connect to Wi-Fi so they could listen to the discussion about resisting the attacks coming from the country’s newly elected far-right president, Javier Milei. 
University teachers were received with whoops and cheers. People interjected, argued and broke out in applause. It was organised independently of the union leaders, but led by workers with close relationships to the bureaucrats. The assembly will meet weekly now. Its immediate projects are building a nationwide night of mass protest on 10 January and bolstering a general strike on 24 January, initiated by the country’s main union federation, the General Confederation of Labour (CGT). 
Scenes like this have been playing out across Argentina since 20 December, when Milei announced the first of a series of massive attacks on workers, the poor and the middle classes. Each day brings a new price increase, a layoff of workers or a new anti-protest measure. It’s shock therapy. The government is trying to overwhelm the country with such frequent attacks that the population can’t respond. 
In an <a href="https://www.pagina12.com.ar/700553-no-trate-de-entender">opinion piece</a> titled “Don’t try to understand”, published in a mainstream publication, Pagina12, journalist Washington Urunga writes: 
“I suppose that you, like many, are trying to understand what is happening in the country at the moment ... If you want to take some advice from this simple chronicler: don’t waste your time, don’t keep trying. Because in reality all, absolutely all, the criteria and categories hitherto used to read politics and, in particular, the ways of relating to each other in society in Argentina, have been thrown into the rubbish bin.”
Milei’s key attacks are contained within two packages. The first is the Necessity and Urgency Decree (DNU), which was announced on 20 December and came into effect on 29 December. It includes privatisations of public assets and attacks on workers. Milei pushed the DNU through by executive decree, bypassing Argentina’s democratic institutions. 
Two days after Christmas, he presented his second package of attacks to the Congress. This second bill, known as the omnibus law, declares the country in a state of “public emergency”. It includes 664 attacks relating to almost every aspect of life. 
If passed, it will give the government special powers to circumvent Congress for two years and alter the electoral system in favour of the wealthiest political parties. It will eliminate the system of open primary elections of candidates, which currently selects candidates for national office, remove free advertising spaces for candidates and raise the ceiling of donations to political parties. 
The bill includes a crackdown on protests and strikes which could result in protest organisers being imprisoned for up to six years. Gatherings of more than three people that obstruct roads or industry will be subject to prison time. It makes 41 public enterprises “subject to privatisation”, including the country’s main airline, the railroads, the oil company YPF, the post office, the mint and the public media. 
Combined, the two packages of laws would usher in the biggest changes to Argentina’s economic and social makeup since the fall of the right-wing dictatorship that governed the country until the mid-1980s. 
Adding to this is a pre-existing inflation crisis. In early January, petrol prices rose by 27 percent. Milei is about to <a href="https://www.lapoliticaonline.com/economia/tarifazo-gas-500-electricidad-300-y-un-boleto-de-colectivo-a-400/">introduce tariffs</a> that will increase electricity prices for middle-income homes by 337 percent and by 129 percent for low-income households. The same set of tariffs will increase the price of bus tickets by about 500 percent and gas by up to 700 percent across much of the country. Milei has also sacked 1,500 state employees and hundreds of healthcare workers. 
The political situation has many moving parts. The capitalists are united behind the president’s attacks, which will restructure Argentine society in the interests of the rich. Sections of the courts and lawmakers are divided, mainly because Milei has bypassed the democratic institutions. For example, the section of the DNU package relating to workers’ rights has been temporarily blocked by the labour court. The casting vote was made by a hard-right judge who opposes Milei’s attempts to circumvent the judiciary. 
<img alt="Córdoba assembly" src="https://cms.redflag.org.au/sites/default/files/inline-images/Assembly.JPG" />
Workers’ assembly in Córdoba, 3 January. PHOTO: Jasmine Duff.
Among the oppressed, the situation is mixed. Huge numbers of the poor, the working class and the middle classes voted for Milei in the general elections in November. Milei won 56 percent of the vote in the second round. Yet assemblies to discuss resistance to the attacks have convened in many neighbourhoods. 
“People are divided. But little by little, the rising costs are making people realise they voted wrongly”, Tatiana, a participant in a Córdoba neighbourhood assembly, told Red Flag. “People will come out to fight when the food no longer reaches their tables. We will take to the streets without taking a step back. The whole of Argentina must come out. We need to make the protest [the general strike on 24 January] visible so that people know that it is possible to fight.”
Some sectors of workers, including state employees, healthcare and cultural workers, have held assemblies and marches. Some of these were initiated by union officials; others have been driven from below. Mass, spontaneous cacerolazo protests shook the country from 20 to 22 December, when the DNU package was first announced. Cacerolazo protests (literally “casserole dish” protests), traditionally are a form of middle-class demonstration in which people leave their homes banging pots and pans, urging others to join them in the streets. Since Christmas, there have been more cacerolazo protests across the country, but of a considerably smaller size. 
In the coming weeks, a series of united mass actions are planned. Cultural sector workers have called the nationwide cacerolazo on 10 January. The union representing public sector workers has called a day of action on 15 January. Then comes the general strike on 24 January—the first in five years and called in response to pressure by the base of the unions and the organised far left. It will be important in terms of giving a unified lead, so that workers and other sections of the population gain more confidence to fight the government. 
There’s a danger that the CGT will use it only to release some of the pressure it is under and then attempt to stymie future actions. The CGT leadership has been conducting semi-secret negotiations with the government since the announcement of the DNU. For now, the far-left groups are organising to build the general strike as much as possible and attempting to make sure there’s momentum after 24 January.

Shock therapy in Argentina

As midnight approached on 20 December, people streamed from their homes into streets across Argentina, banging pots and pans. As small, scattered groups marched, they grew and merged, forming cacerolazo demonstrations in neighbourhood after neighbourhood. (Cacerolazo is derived from “casserole dish”, which middle-class people traditionally bang with spoons in Argentinian protests.) Javier Milei, the newly elected far-right president had appeared on television just minutes before to announce a package of sweeping spending cuts and price increases. 
In one neighbourhood in central Buenos Aires, the capital, hundreds of protesters blocked the streets and marched towards the Congress building. Amid the cacerolazo cacophony, voices sang out: “La patria no se vende!” (“The homeland is not for sale!”). As they approached the Congress, many started to run, blocking intersections. The march grew and grew as protesters argued with onlookers to join the procession. 
Reaching the Congress, this cacerolazo converged with others from across the city. The area now a massive sea of people, a song began to echo: “Paro, paro, paro – paro generale!” (“Strike, strike, strike – general strike!”). The night was filled with anti-Milei chants, calls for workers’ unity and football songs attacking politicians. A popular chant highlighted the absence of the major trade union federation, the General Confederation of Labour: “Where is it, we can’t see it, the famous CGT?” 
Left politics in Argentina is shaped by the Trotskyists and the Peronists. Peronism is a mass political movement that has taken the place of traditional social democracy, the origins of which are in the governments of Juan Péron in the mid-twentieth century. Today, the main organisational expression of Peronism is the Justicialist Party, but it exists as a broader movement; most of the union bureaucracy is Peronist.
Young socialists from the Movement of Socialist Workers and the Workers’ Party held their groups’ newspapers like flags along the fence outside the Congress. Within hours, tens to hundreds of thousands of people were gathered. They stayed until the early hours of the morning. Similar protests took place around the country, from the provinces to the cities of Rosario, Mar del Plata and Córdoba.
Days later, everyone is talking about a general strike. Socialists, including the Movement of Socialist Workers, are pushing for one to be called, and workers are putting pressure on the union leaders. The CGT has partially conceded by calling an all-in union demonstration for Wednesday 27 December at noon. A general strike could be called the following week. On 21 December, hundreds of nurses marched through the capital and tyre workers gathered at Congress, both calling for a general strike. On 22 December, thousands of unemployed workers marched to the centre of the city with the same demand. Later the same day, thousands of state employees marched. Cacerolazo protests have continued across the country every night since, though in smaller numbers.
Argentinians are infuriated by Milei’s proposed economic shock therapy. The austerity package was passed by decree, flouting normal congressional procedures and making a mockery of the parliamentary democracy that was won just 40 years ago after the toppling of a right-wing dictatorship. The word “memory” is raised everywhere: the memory of the dictatorship; the memory of the mass movement against it; and the memory of mass mobilisations across the country in the early 2000s against economic mismanagement and austerity. The memories are seared into the political consciousness of older workers. They understand what an attack looks like and know how to fight.
And this is a serious attack. The privatisation of public companies, deregulation of the residential rental market, reductions in redundancy payments, giving bosses more power to fire employees, attacks on health care, education and pensions, and more. To pay down the country’s US$43 billion debt to the International Monetary Fund, Milei is taking a chainsaw to every pillar of support for working-class living standards. 
The attack comes in the context of mass poverty (the rate is 40 percent, according to the government’s statistics agency), low wages (the minimum is just $215 per month) and an inflation rate of 160 percent. Many workers here relate that most people, if they can get work, have to hold several jobs to make ends meet. And more than one-third of workers are in the so-called underground economy, according to official statistics. That is, they don’t receive pension contributions or health insurance. There is also a significant layer of permanently unemployed people who are forced to make do with the meagre supplements provided through the underfunded welfare system. 
Peronist and centre right-governments have forced through austerity in exchange for international loans to fund the government in recent years. 
But this new round of cuts is the worst so far. Prior to his announcement, Milei and Security Minister Patricia Bullrich established the so-called protocolo anti-piquete, an anti-picket law banning protesters from blocking streets. It was followed by threats of police repression, and a promise to make protesting organisations pay for the cost of policing. That is, to pay the wages of the people sent to arrest them.
Late on 20 December, Lu, a young member of the Movement of Socialist Workers, stood gripping the fence of Congress and grinning out at the crowd. “The people are in the streets against this new proposal”, she told Red Flag as she waved to the masses of people below. “We’re in the streets against anything that stops us from living a proper human life. It’s amazing. It’s just like 2001. We’re again in the streets singing, ‘The people united will never be defeated!’”
2001 was marked by severe economic crisis and a series of revolts and strikes that brought down successive governments, culminating in the so-called Argentinazo protests and riots in December. Many companies were also put under workers’ control in this period, as bosses fled the country or refused to allow production to continue.
“Milei’s election was the reaction to a very bad Peronist government and a very bad inflation crisis”, 24-year-old Elena said during the smaller cacerolazo march from the middle-class neighbourhoods to the Congress. “People didn’t know what they were voting for. He promised on the campaign trail that the political class would pay for the crisis. People didn’t know that their pensions would suffer, that the bus fare might triple and so on. But now they understand. We’re showing we’re not going to take it.”
Part of the significance of the spontaneous night march was that it broke the anti-picket law for the second time. The first occurred earlier the same day. Hours before Milei’s austerity announcement, the left held a mass demonstration to mark the anniversary of the Argentinazo and to stand against Milei’s policies.
In an attempt to generate support for the protest ban and hostility to the left, the government used billboards, and announcements in train stations, to warn people not to go to the rally and asking citizens to call a hotline if they were forced against their will to attend. The National Gendarmerie, a quasi-military force that guards border regions, was deployed the same day to help police cut off a similar demonstration in Neuquén, a small city in the west of the country. 
Yet, despite all the intimidation and propaganda, the afternoon protest at Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires was huge, bringing together the major socialist parties, militant union groups, piqueteros (the name given to groups who block streets during protests to highlight particular issues) and other social movements. Ámbito Financiero, an Argentine newspaper, reported that Security Minister Patricia Bullrich estimated the crowd at 20,000 and 50,000 people. It was likely bigger. Police made only feeble attempts to prevent the protesters from getting onto the road. So when Milei’s austerity announcement came later, people already knew that the protest ban could be challenged. 
The government has announced that it will charge fourteen organisations involved in the daytime demonstration $60,000 to pay for the police presence. This farcical attack on the left indicates that the government hasn’t totally backed down. But, unlike in smaller cities, it can’t prevent the mass demonstrations in Buenos Aires without risking a political crisis. 
There is a serious fight now on. On one side is the far-right government. On the other is the huge, diverse set of far-left organisations and institutions alongside masses of unorganised but very angry people. What will happen next? It’s impossible to say. But if the union leaders refuse to call a general strike, the government will have the advantage.

‘We’re not going to take it!’ – mass protests in Argentina

Panama’s President Laurentino Cortizo has announced the closure of an environmentally destructive copper mine after the country’s Supreme Court ruled on 28 November that legislation granting the mine a 20-year concession was unconstitutional. The decision was greeted with jubilation by masses of protesters who had fought for weeks for this result.
The protest movement was sparked by the government’s decision, signed into law on 20 October, to renew the contract under which Canadian mining company First Quantum Minerals (FQM) operates the Cobre Panamá copper mine.
The contract was very favourable to the company. It promised that Panama would receive a minimum of US$375 million in annual revenue from the mine, but this pales in comparison to FQM’s likely profits, which totalled $1.1 billion last year. It also allowed the company to call on the government to seize any land it needed if it couldn’t convince the existing owners to sell—removing one of the last remaining points of leverage ordinary Panamanians had over the mine’s operations.
The Cobre Panamá mine plays a significant role in Panama’s economy. It contributes up to 5 percent of the country’s GDP, and 75 percent of its exports. The mine produces roughly 1.5 percent of the global copper supply. It directly employs 7,000 workers, but an estimated 40,000 people are employed in work related to the mine’s operation—making up roughly 2 percent of the entire Panamanian working class.
The mine has had a disastrous impact on the environment. According to environmental news site Mongabay, around 5,900 hectares of rainforest have been negatively impacted. Talking to Mongabay about the major rivers in the mine’s vicinity, local resident Estelina Santana said, “We have been told that the river is polluted and we prefer not to use it”.
Immediately after the rushed backroom renewal of the mining concession, protesters took to the streets to oppose what they perceived as a sell-out by the government and to demand the contract be repealed. “Panamanians felt completely mocked”, one protester told the Washington Post.
Road blockades were established across the country, shutting down the movement of goods to the point that supermarkets began running out of stock. Ports were blockaded by small fishing boats. These actions were often led by the rural indigenous population. One fisher at a port near the mine explained to Reuters, “If this goes on a year, we will stay a year ... we know the area in which we are waging our war. We use ropes to make them back down and, well, threaten them”.
Indefinite strikes were called first by construction workers and teachers—members of the SUNTRACS and ASOPROF unions respectively. Their example was quickly followed by many other groups such as healthcare workers, nurses, doctors and social security workers. As the protest movement developed, the working class and the unions increasingly took on a leading role.
The strikes incorporated daily protests and mass marches, with videos posted online by SUNTRACS giving a good idea of why the workers joined the struggle. A construction worker in the Coclé region explained in a speech to his co-workers, “The fight we are waging in our country is not only against mining, it is with a system that is corrupted”.
It’s no coincidence that construction workers and teachers have led the way, or that they see the movement against Cobre Panamá as part of a wider struggle. Both sections of the working class have been at the forefront of battles against the Panamanian government in recent years, particularly since the election of President Cortizo in 2019.
Strikes by builders and teachers for better education funding, against lacklustre COVID-19 protections and for cost-of-living increases have drawn thousands into struggle alongside the unions. In particular, the battle over petrol prices in 2022 was a victory for the workers’ movement, with prices coming down by close to 50 percent by the end of a 27-day strike.
In taking up the anti-mining cause, workers helped to strengthen, cohere and drive the movement. As one teacher, in a video posted online by ASOPROF, put it at a march against the mine, “United we will win; the teachers are the people, and the people are with the teachers”.
The clearest indication of the power of this working-class-led movement was the response of the government, which quickly began to retreat. On 30 October, only ten days after the protests began, Cortizo announced a moratorium on all mining contracts and proposed to hold a referendum on the Cobre Panamá concession.
Unfortunately for Cortizo, this was rightly seen as a tactic to demobilise the workers, and the strikes continued. As one protester told Reuters, “People on the street have a very clear objective, which is to strike down the approved contract”. Having tried the stick, the government quickly learned that half a carrot wouldn’t work either.
Neither was simply waiting out the strikes and protests an option for Cortizo or FQM. The government faced the entire economy shutting down, with billions of dollars being lost due to delayed infrastructure projects and road and port blockades. FQM’s stock price plummeted nearly 50 percent. The port blockades made shipping copper from the Cobre Panamá mine nearly impossible, and the company announced a temporary suspension of all activities.
Under these conditions, on 28 November the Supreme Court made its ruling, and the government announced it would begin to close the mine. Rather than congratulating the government, however, SUNTRACS leader Saúl Méndez stated in a video made during protesters’ celebrations, “This is a popular triumph ... They did not give that ruling because they wanted it, they gave it because the people are in the street ... we have to finish facing down the whole agenda of the president, and we are going to with the same firmness, the same unity”.
This reflects the reality of a still unfolding situation in Panama—one in which the workers are on the front foot and could build on their victory. The teachers’ strike has only just concluded a week after the court’s ruling, with teachers winning back wages that had been withheld by the government during the protests in an attempt to break the strike. Construction workers have vowed to continue their protests until the mine is actually closed.
Additionally, the process of the mine’s closure raises new questions. FQM has launched a legal appeal to keep its mine open. At the same time, it has asked to have its obligations to contracted workers suspended. This would mean Cobre Panamá employees losing their jobs without pay or compensation—a move clearly aimed at raising tensions between mine workers and the anti-mine movement.
The largest mining union has opposed the protests and called for police repression. A significant minority of mine workers, however, have expressed solidarity with the movement. Building links between workers on a rank-and-file level and fighting for fair compensation and transition jobs for mining workers would significantly strengthen the workers’ position and keep the mining bosses and the government on the defensive.
Regardless of where the movement goes from here, what it has achieved so far should inspire all those fighting environmental destruction and the capitalist exploitation of nature and human labour alike. Solutions are often posed as coming from above. Movements are advised to be moderate and aim for compromise. In Panama, the opposite has been shown: intransigent struggle against capitalists and their representatives in government, particularly when based on the power of the working class, is the key to change.

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