Latin Analysis: Anti-Covid-19 “Banderazos” in Argentina
Ronaldo SCHEMIDT / AFP
Protests of civil societies challenging the government’s COVID-19 restrictions have undoubtedly grown increasingly popular throughout the globe during the last few months. Some of the most popular ones arose in the US, followed by European countries, and now are continuously gaining strength in Latin American states.
One of the South American nations in which the anti-COVID-19 protests have been particularly intense is Argentina. This country has been popularized for having one of the longest periods of quarantine which, alongside Colombia, Peru, and Chile, started implementing the strictest lockdown measures since the 20th of March and have not eased the restrictions to-date. Recently, Argentinian authorities announced that the stringent COVID-19 measures should continue to be applied at least until the 30th of August. Therefore, meaning that the population would have endured roughly more than 5 months of the severest confinement regulations.
It is understood that said restrictions have been implemented to try to reduce the level of contagions throughout the country; nevertheless, Argentinians have been strongly criticizing the government for following a “lockdown model” based on how the European countries have dealt with the pandemic. Citizens argue that such a model was not to be replicated when Argentina is fairly different from these states in terms of economy and social dynamics.
One of the strongest arguments is that, given that this nation relies deeply on the informal economy – according to the OECD, informal economy contributed almost 25% to the annual GDP in 2015 and informal employment constituted almost 37% of total national employment in 2017 – the fact that people are forbidden to perform their daily activities, is aggravating the acute economic situation of the Argentinians and is gravely harming the citizens’ household finances.
The several anti-COVID-19 protests, named “banderazos”, also include reproaches to the administration of the current president, Alberto Fernandez, in which Argentinians demand a better economic plan to be ideated as soon as possible so that the country – which had already been facing a severe economic recession during the last years – and its people will not plunge further into extreme poverty.
In addition, banderazos protestors also stress Fernandez’s government to work to strengthen national institutions, to reduce corruption levels, and to reduce criminal impunity (particularly that which occurs amongst the high government levels). Protestors also show a strong rejection to the president’s recently-announced “Judicial Reform” which aims to increase the number of federal judges in the Argentinian judicial system without them having to prove previous experience in the legal field. Due to this, civil groups, including societies formed by business owners in Argentina, have joined the protests against Fernandez’s governmental decisions.
Moreover, citizens argue that more people die yearly of pneumonia and regular cold than of COVID-19, and thus, in their view, this further strengthens the argument that the economy must be re-activated for the sake of Argentina’s financial stability (as well as for the people’s mental health) and that industries as tourism should re-initiate business as usual.
Governmental authorities, however, do not agree with any of the demands made by the society, as they insist that the most stringent measures should still be applied to try to control the spread of coronavirus, as sick people keep increasing such that hospital and health centers are continuously overwhelmed, as well as the toll of dead people dying due to the virus continues to peak.
Therefore, owners of small and medium businesses in Argentina plea the government grant fiscal support to help them overcome the crisis. Most demand a reduction of corporate taxes considering that, for most of the year, the majority of companies have had close to cero sales in this 2020. Yet, the government is to implement any mechanism to aid these domestic companies and the people whose income depend on them.
Truth is, the management of the COVID-19 crisis in Latin America has highlighted other economic, political, and social issues which are not unknown to Latino people. This has made the pandemic ever more difficult for politicians to deal with, and Argentina is a reflection of a persistently rising disconformity of the citizens of this continent towards their governments and domestic institutions. Additionally, during this crisis, there has been an ever-growing defiance of Argentinians (and Latin Americans overall) regarding governments following a crisis-management model (and developmental scheme) based on that of the Western European countries.
All in all, protests are expected to continue to grow and become even more intense not only in Argentina, but in the rest of the continent. Parallelly, governments (particularly Argentina, Peru, and Colombia) are not showing significant willingness to change the current strategy for fighting the pandemic or being willing to relax the lockdown restrictions. However, it is yet to be unveiled if these protests will indeed have an impact on political decisions, as well as if the current strategy will remain unaltered given the already-shattered economic situation Argentina has been trying to overcome for several years now.
