Argentina’s bishops have accused President Javier Milei of “enormous insensitivity” towards thousands of people rendered jobless by the government’s drastic austerity policy.
More than 60,000 jobs have vanished due to spending cuts introduced since he assumed office last December, they said. Queues at soup kitchens are rising “while the tax benefits of large companies remain intact”.
Milei, a self-described “anarcho-capitalist”, won Argentina’s general election on 21 November for the party Libertad Avanza (Liberty Progresses), following a career as a television pundit, during which he dubbed Pope Francis “a communist” among other slurs.
On his election, Milei announced a radical plan to slash social welfare which alarmed “slum priests” working in the poorest suburbs of Buenos Aires.
In a review of Milei’s first 100 days in office published last week, the bishops said: “Every day we receive worrying reports from those involved in the financial, political and social life of our nation.”
The construction, automobile and farming sectors have been severely hit by the cuts. “The immediate future of 1,400 companies and 200,000 jobs could also be at risk,” warned the bishops.
They said the spending cuts also threatened access to education, healthcare and food. Nearly five million Argentineans depend on free soup kitchens.
“The situation in the soup kitchens is desperate because the number of people using them has increased but provisions are lacking,” the bishops said.
Milei’s government has suspended food deliveries to soup kitchens until the organisation which run them have had their accounts audited.
According to the Spanish daily El País, Milei favours a welfare model based on giving benefits directly to impoverished individuals, instead of financing Argentina’s vast network of popular, free soup kitchens.
The bishops acknowledged that some low-income sectors of Argentinean society support Milei’s radical changes, “even those directly affected by inflation and recession”. Their report warned of a “huge social fracture” and a climate of “polarisation” whereby harsh sackings prompt “repeated joyful reactions” from social media users.
“The authorities appear to be enormously insensitive regarding the social impact of their fiscal policy,” observe the bishops. “But more worrying is the culture of hate and extreme individualism [this] has caused.”
On Sunday slum priests in Buenos Aires gather at a “missionary tent” erected in Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires to commemorate the “new martyrs”, victims of Argentina’s military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983 remembered each year on 24 March.
They marked the approaching fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of Fr Carlos Mugica, one of the first Argentine priests to join the Movement of Priests for the Third World and who embraced the “option for the poor”.
Mothers whose children were “disappeared” by the dictatorship still march weekly in the Plaza de Mayo demanding to know their fate.
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