In the United States, we aren’t politically active. We are passive, we like to sit, make angry Facebook posts about problems (slactivism), whine about how bad the government is and then not vote…the list goes on. When the U.S. government shut down in October, I had the hardest time explaining the shutdown to Argentines. “Why is there no government?” they’d ask. “What does this mean?” One of the coordinators of our study abroad group asked why there was not “fire and riots in the streets.”
When Argentines strike, they go big. So on April 10, they shut down the entire country. The strike was announced a few weeks ahead of time, to allow for preparations. Here is a list, by no means exhaustive, of what was shut down:
· Subways
· Trains
· Buses
· Gas stations
· Truck drivers (which meant no deliveries to restaurants, grocery stores, cafes…)
· Unionized restaurants
· ATM restockers (banks were open, but when they ran out of money, they were done)
· Free public bicycles
· Flights within Argentina
· International flights going out of Argentina (anything flying in was allowed to land)
· Schools (technically open but not taking attendance)
· Universities (University of Buenos Aires closed, Catholic Private University open but not taking attendance)
· Trash collection
· Ports
· Courts
· Butchers/stores that only sell red meat…
…And so on. One of the news stations had a segment where people could tweet in their questions about the strike and what was going to be open. (You used the hashtag #quierosaberdelparo, or I want to know about the strike.) All day on Wednesday, the day before the strike, the news was constantly updating this list, adding in the groups that decided to participate.
The question that was most difficult for me to figure out was what the strike was about. My understanding of strikes is that you shut down something as a negotiating tactic – we stop working at the auto plant until you raise our wages, for example. After asking almost every Argentine I know to explain the strike, I finally got at least a small grasp of it.
Screenshot from TV - on the left is Avenida 9 de Julio, allegedly the world's widest street, on a normal day, and on the right is the street the day of the strike.
To understand the strike, you have to understand the labor dynamics of Argentina and their relationship with the government and the economic reality of the country now. Almost everything in the country is unionized and sub-unionized—there’s a union of bus drivers, but each bus line is its own union as well. Each union wants to be the biggest to gain the most sway with the government to guarantee better pensions, more subsidies to their industry, and more influence with legislation. They do this by fighting over groups of people; for example, there was a fight a few years back about whether people who deliver food to restaurants are part of the restaurant union or truck driver’s union (they went with the truck union). There are different dynamics between leaders of different unions, too. In economic terms, the Argentine peso devalued significantly at the beginning of the year, but workers’ wages did not increase accordingly. The inflation in the country is incredibly high, preceded in the region by only Venezuela.
The essence of the strike was for a wage increase to ARS $9000 a month (about $900 a month using the black market pesos conversion rate), better guarantees of pensions, and the abolition of labor taxes (an income tax just on what you make working—remember Argentines hate taxes). However, between the date the strike was announced and the strike, more demands started to be added. I saw signs that said the strike was against “low minimum wage, inflation, and insecurity” and another sign how the strike was against “hunger.” There was even a commercial on television a few days before the strike proclaiming the workers’ demands.
It became clear to me that these demands are not something that the Argentine government, even if it were the best and most capable government in the world, would be able to fix quickly. The strikers were upset about structural problems in the Argentine economy and daily realities of life. The strike served to flex the political muscles of everyone involved—the union leaders were able to show their power to shut down the government, and the government threatened to cut off subsidies to the industries that participated in the strike. Everyone wins?
In terms of what I did on this Thursday, my day was not drastically changed. The gym was open, my favorite ice cream place was open, and I did homework in the park. To me, it felt like a Sunday minus all the noise from traffic. The woman I live with, Delfi, works at an international school and they cancelled classes as a precaution. My boyfriend skateboarded to work because he didn’t want to “let the strikers win.” His employer made lunch for all the employees who came and let them leave early.
It’s too soon to tell what, if anything, has been achieved from the strike. There’s still insecurity, hunger, and inflation for a great percentage of the Argentine population. But in the nation’s political theater, maybe, just maybe, the tectonic plates of control have shifted, showing the new power in Argentina may lie with those working to keep it running.