Avellaneda Protests: The Battle Over Social Programs and Political Pressure

The Argentine government has been betting on maintaining a policy of order on public roads. Although the economic crisis opens the door to protest, a broad segment of society no longer tolerates the normalization of bridge, avenue, and access blockades as if they were a legitimate form of democratic deliberation. The tension in Avellaneda once again exposed this deeper dispute. This precisely explains the virulence of the protest: at stake is not only a social income but also the loss of a lever of territorial and political control that the left and social movements knew how to manage for years. It is no coincidence, then, that the demand has reappeared in its classic format. The novelty is that this time the government arrived with an additional tool: the anti-picket protocol, which has just received new judicial backing and was activated again to prevent the access points from being controlled by the groups. The background of the conflict is clear. Capital Human decided to phase out the 'Return to Work' program and replace it with training vouchers, arguing the need to dismantle a social assistance circuit that for years functioned as an extension of the power of the picketer movements. The scene was concentrated on Pavón Avenue, at the height of the Pueyrredón Bridge, where traffic towards the City of Buenos Aires was interrupted in both directions amid a federal forces operation, tire burnings, scuffles, and the deployment of pepper spray and a water truck to prevent the blockade from becoming fully consolidated. The protest brought together Polo Obrero, the Teresa Rodríguez Movement, the Socialist Workers' Movement, Libres del Sur, the Revolutionary Communist Organization, UTEP, and the Evita Movement, among other structures that decided to return to the streets as soon as the government moved forward with the definitive closure of the scheme inherited from the old 'Potenciar Trabajo'. It was, once again, the reappearance of an old form of political extortion that Argentina knows all too well and that a part of the system tries to resurrect whenever it feels its power of pressure is threatened. On the other side, left-wing structures and social movements seek to demonstrate that they can still condition the agenda with blockades, smoke, and chaos. The scene was not just a protest over a social program. Leaders of the radical left, such as Gabriel Solano, Néstor Pitrola, and Laura Carboni, were also present, showing that the picketer and university network is trying to rebuild its capacity for territorial pressure on an administration that had made the reduction of blockades one of its main public order assets. The dynamics of the demand were well-known, almost ritualistic. When their central device is cut, the blockades, soup kitchens, and the logic of pressure on the rest of society reappear. When left-wing leaders lose their capacity for mediation, they return to the streets. On one side, the officialism is trying to close the chapter of programs administered by organizations and prevent the streets from becoming a liberated territory for picketer pressure. The picture that President Javier Milei's government had managed to drastically reduce returned this Tuesday to the southern conurbation: picketer organizations, leftist groups, and social movements resumed the method of total blockades, pressure on thousands of workers, and street extortion to protest the cut of the 'Return to Work' program, which reached about 900,000 beneficiaries with a monthly stipend of 78,000 pesos. There was no innocent search for visibility here, but rather the recovery of a method that for years turned Argentines who work, circulate, or produce into hostages of intermediary organizations. Blockade of access, burning of tires, threat of chaos, and the use of public space as a lever for political pressure. The outgoing scheme paid 78,000 pesos monthly to a universe of approximately 900,000 beneficiaries and had been presented by the government as a transition from the old 'Potenciar Trabajo' towards employment insertion mechanisms less dependent on organizations. The problem for them is that the context is no longer the same as in previous years.