Social Struggles in Present Day Argentina
Bulletin of Latin American Research, (2003)Abstract
Since the mid 1970s, Argentine society has gone through a period characterised as counterrevolutionary. The conservative social forces, led by the financial oligarchy, seized power and government by means of the coup d'etat of 1976, and imposed an economic and social policy towards the working class, based on wage cuts and a lengthening of the working day. When the military governments were replaced by civilian ones, physical coercion was replaced by economic coercion, through market laws with unemployment and wage cuts reaching unprecedented levels. Although the popular forces were weakened by the unfavourable development of social struggles since the mid-1970s, during the 1990s government policies were confronted by the people through different forms of struggle. This article presents the results of research on the different forms of social struggle carried out by the working class and other popular classes since the end of the 1980s until today. It aims to conceptualise the forms of rebellion (foot riot, riot, strikes and roadblocks), to determine the different moments of social struggle and the likely trends of its development.