Cousin Jonas
There is an old tradition in the retirees’ movement in Buenos Aires: the Wednesday march, which gathers at the National Congress building. There are different versions, but it is a tradition that dates back at least to its peak in the 1990s, perhaps with other modalities, days of the week and times, but the meeting point and the call are undoubtedly historical and do not belong to a particular group.
However, it is notable that, since last year, one group in particular has been gaining many members: the Jubilados Insurgentes , which was founded by a small group of anarchist retirees and today brings together retirees of different ideological orientations, but all aligned with the movement’s most combative stances and practices. Former members of parties as disparate in their time as the PRT (of Trotskyist origins and later turning to “national Marxism” with armed struggle), the PC and the Peronist Resistance, have united under the banner of an insurgency against the current order of things. And one of the main orders they have come to disrupt is the corporatism of the retirees’ movement and the “groupings” of retirees from the main Argentine Trotskyist parties (each with its own “retirees’ struggle front”). Meeting one of its members, it was impressive to see the process of rejuvenation of comrades who had long been away from any type of activism, and how they became the vanguard of the social struggle against the Milei government.
Since last year, the Jubilados Insurgentes and other more combative sectors of the movement (not to romanticise their exclusive protagonism, of course) have been forcing, in a very disciplined manner, every Wednesday, the “hand-to-hand” with the police, who were trying to prevent the old men and women from occupying the streets around Congress, going around the building. For many weeks, it was almost a game; such is the strength of reconnecting with youth. The comrades created small tricks to deceive the police cordon, which avoided repressing the old men in a noticeable way and giving the opposition the photo that they were waiting for, and ended up returning to the block victorious, occupying the streets despite the “anti-picketing” protocol of the Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich.
Last year, there were usually no more than a hundred people at these marches, always at 3:00 p.m., the time for retirees. The first major change was the time. Due to the harsh summer, and to avoid the deaths of some of the more fragile members, it was decided to change the call to 5:00 p.m. At the beginning of this year, the marches slowly began to fill up with other audiences. The reason was logical: the Jubilados Insurgentes — but not only them — spent the last few months going from struggle to struggle, from assembly to assembly, showing their solidarity and asking for that of those present. It is a dynamic that is only natural for a group that knew how to theorise about “intergenerational exchange”, a Marxist reading of the pension system.
This interpretation was developed by them out of a need to fight against the common sense that is deeply rooted in Argentina, which understands that each worker is individually responsible for his or her social security contributions. It is said that a worker has the right to retirement “if he or she has made his or her contributions,” as if it were the worker’s obligation and not the employer’s. And, as if the theft of the contributions that end up in the employer’s pocket were not enough, when the working age ends, the worker is then punished by the State, which does not recognise his or her right to retirement. The Jubilados Insurgentes remind us that, in all human societies, the active sector of the population produces a surplus to support the inactive sector (children, the elderly, people with disabilities, etc.). The social security system is not an individual “savings bank” where, upon retirement, one receives what one has saved, but rather the economically active population supports the economically inactive population as a matter of human solidarity, an inexorable part of the cycle of life to which we are all destined.
One of the retirees who always attends the demonstrations is a fan of the small neighbourhood team Chacarita. After being pushed, pepper sprayed and hit with shields so many times, his friends from the fans decided to organise themselves to accompany the retirees on their Wednesday march. The event generated interest and a football sentiment was touched on a much larger scale than the usual Wednesday call. Calls began to appear for fans of several small teams, mainly, to which some union opposition groups also joined.
To understand this dynamic, it might be interesting to compare it with the protests against the Macri government’s pension reform in 2017. At that time, there were much larger demonstrations and much more intense popular violence. What was the context? The economic and political foundations of the Kirchnerist government were frayed, which paved the way for Mauricio Macri’s victory as president, but at a time when Kirchnerism was still an important and well-organised political force. In those demonstrations, what was most visible were large columns of political parties and unions. It was still an “old-fashioned” demonstration. Today, the left in general is in decline, but Kirchnerism in particular. It’s not just that the Kirchnerists “disguised themselves” as soccer fans, as one journalist suggested, not without a certain amount of truth. But more than that, the Kirchnerist grammar is no longer effective, and its organisations are either in crisis or fighting among themselves for the crumbs of the movement. Footballism ended up functioning as a “left-wing populist” identity, with the obligatory reference to Maradona when he said that “you have to be really scared not to defend retirees”.
It is not clear what will happen next Wednesday. The only thing we know is that many retirees cannot jump the turnstile alone. They will need to be accompanied.
