Argentina leader faces 2nd general strike in 5 months

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AFP) — Argentina’s President Javier Milei faced his second general strike Thursday in just five months in office, as workers angered by austerity cuts brought the capital to a standstill.

Public transport in Buenos Aires was reduced to a trickle for some three million daily commuters, while schools, banks and service stations remained closed, and garbage was left uncollected.

The 24-hour protest was called by labor unions in support of “a dignified wage” for Argentines battling a severe economic crisis, with annual inflation nearing 300 percent and poverty affecting one in two people.

Some 400 flights had to be canceled, affecting about 70,000 passengers, according to the ALTA Latin American air transport association.

The port of Rosario, which exports 80 percent of Argentina’s agro-industrial production, was all but paralyzed in the midst of its busiest season.

The CGT union, part of Thursday’s strike call, accuses Milei of imposing “a brutal adjustment suffered especially by the lower-income sectors, the wage-earning middle class and pensioners.”

The government has claimed some successes: monthly inflation has decelerated from 25 percent in December to a forecasted nine percent for April.

In April, Milei boasted about Argentina’s first quarterly budget surplus in 16 years.

He insists his “plan is working” and has said the protests go “against what people voted five months ago.”

But critics say Milei’s few wins have come at the cost of the poor and working classes, and were unlikely to last.