This year in Argentina, the annual mobilizations for the Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice on March 24, will see widespread participation of broad sectors of society as the fight against Milei’s government policies intensifies. A week ahead of the day of action, human rights organizations held a meeting with union leaders at the headquarters of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) in Buenos Aires to plan for the massive mobilization.
March 24 marks the day a US-backed military coup was carried out in Argentina that installed the bloodiest civic-military dictatorship in the history of the country. In 2002, the Argentine Congress declared that this tragic day would be remembered as the National Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice.
Since then, millions have marched each year to mark the day to remember the dictatorship and the 30,000 Argentinians the regime killed or disappeared.
Argentine human rights activist from the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, Taty Almeida said, this year’s slogan will be “30,000 reasons to defend the homeland, never again to planned misery.”
“It will be a historic march, with the three workers’ centers united, to show that a united people will never be defeated,” said Almeida, mother of one of the 30,000 killed and disappeared during the Argentine dictatorship.
Human rights organizations have estimated that over 30,000 students, activists, trade unionists, writers, journalists, artists and any citizens suspected of being left-wing activists were kidnapped, tortured and disappeared. However, the recently elected far-right President Javier Milei has denied this fact on different occasions, which has been widely rejected by different progressive groups in the country.
“Liberals value the vision of Memory, Truth and Justice, but we start with the truth. It was not 30,000 people who disappeared, but 8,753,” stated Javier Milei during a presidential debate last year.
After taking office on December 10, Milei’s government has proven disastrous for the working class of Argentina. His administration has shut down the national news agency Télam, as well as the national National Institute against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism (Inadi). The President’s anti-abortion rhetoric has imperiled the right to abortion nationwide.
Milei’s neoliberal economic policies, including the devaluing of the peso, caused poverty to skyrocket to 57.4% in January, the highest percentage in 20 years.
As a result of Milei’s policies, Argentinians have ignited a mass movement which has included a national general strike and mobilizations of tens of thousands in the streets. Argentine trade unions in particular have been at the forefront of this movement, due to Milei’s attacks on workers’ rights, and the country’s three largest trade union centers, CGT, and the two Argentine Workers’ Central Unions (CTA-A and CTA-T), have united in a front.
Estela de Carlotto of Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo said, “We have to shake hands, even if in some things we think differently. The Argentine people are good, but they are asleep, walking in total resignation. We all have the right to eat, to have a home, to not be cold at night, to feel love for each other. That is why, this March 24, we are going to revive the homeland, to revive our heroes, and say ‘Never Again.’”
LA CGT RECIBIÓ A LOS ORGANISMOS DE DDHH
De cara a un nuevo aniversario del golpe de Esrado del 24 de marzo de 1976, la CGT recibió en el Salón Felipe Vallese a las Madres y Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, a los organismos de Derechos Humanos y a las dos CTA
La misma fue para convocar… pic.twitter.com/ZKrFzEu7HF
— cgtoficial (@cgtoficialok) March 18, 2024
Human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel also participated in the meeting and reflected that the March 24 mobilization “is more than a march, it is to lay a foundation of resistance in the country, in defense of food sovereignty and the fight against hunger, because it is impossible and immoral that in this rich country there are children and pensioners who go hungry.”
“We do not all think alike but we do have to have common objectives, having human rights and democracy as indivisible values,” said Esquivel.
Meanwhile, the General Secretary of the CGT, Héctor Daer, said that “this 24th summons us, because it is the same call we made during the dictatorship to return to democracy.”
Daer continues, “And now, it is the same call for Aerolíneas Argentinas, Télam, Banco Nación, and everything they want to destroy from our State.”
He reiterated the “commitment to Memory, Truth and Justice,” and called to “refresh” what the social consequences of this economic plan already implemented by the dictatorship mean.
For this reason, Daer called on “all unions, delegate bodies and everyone to make the necessary efforts to attend a mobilization that will vindicate the 30,000 disappeared and say ‘the homeland is not for sale.'”
With reports from ARG Medios.
