Intro: Welcome to my rant/vent/informative post, something rather big happened in Argentina today and I want to share it with fellow comrades from all around the world. The text will be pretty large but I feel I must do it, I must get it out.

It's pretty common to look down south and see Argentina burning, right?... like it's been part of our tradition since, at least, the 70s. Near-permanent economic crisis, being in the global south, a relentless bourgeoisie that goes after everything and everyone without any significant opposition (other than the Left using what little political power they have to try to stop them), it's literal hellworld. It's a country slowly suffocating to death.

COVID certainly didn't help at all, the full impact on the economy and society is yet to be seen but we know it's going to be bad. COVID only added fuel to the fire, four years of unhinged Capitalism rendered Argentina, once again, a slave of the IMF. Former president Mauricio Macri expanded Argentina's national debt by the millions (or should we say, billions), by taking huge loans from the IMF and other financial entities. That "investment", which Macri promised was going to be directed into infrastructure and shit like that, never appeared, anywhere. Instead, what happened was a gigantic financial operation which is known as "Fuga de Capitales" or "Capital Flight", money goes in and out and only benefits a few people.

This is, of course, illegal. The debt itself is illegal, it was not voted by the people, the Government and their allies acted on their own. There were protests but never enough, the Peronist "opposition" made little to no attempts to stop this. You see, here in Argentina we live by the dollar, it is that damned fucking currency that dictates our very existence. Now, the price of the dollar (in local currency, Peso) skyrocketed. By the end of the four years of Macri's presidency, the situation was pretty damn shitty already. Then came the primaries for the 2019 elections in which Macri was absolutely crushed by centrist (which today I can call center-right) and Peronist Alberto Fernández. The very next day the dollar skyrocketed once again, the "markets have reacted" (who even are the Markets, anyways?), the country was collectively punished for not choosing the Neoliberal candidate. My very own salary literally vanished in literal hours, it went from being shit to being even shitter, I became poorer because some people did not vote for a specific candidate, global capitalism doing it's job.

In the end, Macri was defeated again during the elections, lost in first round. Alberto Fernandez took control as the head of a Coalition Government, with a Kirchnerist (a cursed center-left clique of Peronism, which today I can call center-right) icon as his VP (Cristina Fernández de Kirchner) and a huge collection of center/center-right Peronists, Catholics and yes, even the Communist Party of Argentina itself (supposedly Maoists, class traitors suits them better).

He assumed power as soon as COVID started to become a global phenomenom. When the Pandemic was hitting Italy, France and Spain, here we were talking about what to do with the national debt, the Government was in favor of "reestructuration", they acknowledged the debt was illegal but at the same time they were willing to negotiate it and pay it. Argentina is in NO WAY capable of paying it, it's impossible, so the "only way out" was to sit down and negotiate. However, we on the left demanded the government to renounce the national debt and release a statement that we will not pay it because it is illegal, it does not correspond to the nation of Argentina because it was not voted for, of course, or demands were shut down as "insane" because that would provoke an hostile international reaction, something along the lines of "Trump would blockade and then bomb us", which pretty much tells me how disconnected the Peronists are from reality considering that the US is clearly losing it's grip on global domination and China, their main competitor, has been developing strong commercial ties with Argentina, so no, there will be no Cuba-like blockade. They, being Peronists, complied with the IMF and other entities.

The Pandemic arrived somewhat "late" to Argentina and quarantine began fairly quickly, it was rather strict at first but then it started to loosen itself, with the quarantine now being literally imaginary, nearly meaningless, barely symbolic. So you know how to deal is with COVID, business close, industries close, people get Government assitance (gotta be honest, it is much better than Trump bucks) but it's not enough, the capitalists demand workers to go back to their jobs and the government, being the pieces of shit they are, of course comply.

So you get the picture; HUGE economic problems, insanely high inflation (not as bad as hyperinflation from the late 80s), high peso-to-dollar conversion, severe situation with COVID (large number of infected, 30.000 deaths so far), industries closed, lots of people lost their jobs and many were evicted, sounds familiar?

Some of these evicted people ended up rallying themselves in a empty lot of land in the outskirts of the City of Buenos Aires, Guernica. More than 1,000 families moved in, built their makeshift homes and awaited a response from the government. Well, the land isn't technically "empty", you see... it's "owned" by "someone" and that plot of land was going to be used for the construction of a private neighborhood, conflict arose quickly. The squatters lived there for some time, sometimes harassed by the police (Like on Mother's Day, a police helicopter flew at 5AM over the families to keep them awake) and being called "illegal settlers" by the media and right-wing orgs, among many other racist things as well. Today, on the 29th of October, the Government withdrew from the negotiations and the Riot Police moved in, they fired rubber bullets and tear gas against children, mothers and defenseless people, all of which commited the huge crime of fighting for their own right to have a fucking roof over their heads. The result is about 40 detained, many families fled before the police moved in out of sheer fear. The lot of land was "secured" by the police after they burned some of the makeshit homes, some of which still contained personal possessions (some as important as legal documents and such) of the people who lived there. It sickens me to read and hear people who celebrate this kind of acts, who just say "They should find a job and stop living from the State", or "They were committing a crime by being illegal settlers" or the libertarians suddenly celebrating the State attacking homeless people because "muh private property rights".

This shows many things, the role of the State, being the number one defender of "private property", the fact that the State is willing to ATTACK HOMELESS PEOPLE who have NOWHERE ELSE TO GO when the attack was absolutely NOT necessary yet they carried it out. And most important: We are at war, this IS class war. The rich are waging a relentless war of aggression against us, the working class. The debt, the austerity measures, the police attacking squatters, it's war, it's open warfare, they will show no mercy, they will never stop, they want you to stop challenging them, they want you to shut the fuck up and don't even think about challenging the system.

It's been a rough day, I've been through several emotions, I've been mad, sad and I felt defeated, I just can't believe how much of a piece of shit you have to be to order an attack on homeless people, let alone being the one who fires rubber bullets at them. The fact that Kirchnerists ordered the assault is very striking, they were often seen as people who were in favor of "Social Justice", boasted how Hugo Chávez, Rafael Correa, Evo Morales and Lula da Silva were "just like them", I feel so deeply disappointed by the "South American Left", if you can even call that a "Left" anymore.. I can't really speak for the others, but they betrayed us, they never fixed any fundamental problem of our society, they never fixed income inequality, they never went for any wealth redistribution measure, they never seriously challenged the Rural Oligarchy, they left us abandonned, left us a neoliberal piece of shit who destroyed what remains of this shitty country in four years and when they came back, they did so they could beat the living shit out of homeless people and to maintain this war against the poor. Insane.

I will give a small tribute to the Left here, these people know what militancy is, what organizing is despite being DESPISED by literally everyone else. They might be all Trots, sometimes insufferable, but they're genuine leftists, sometimes they might have bad takes but aren't we all entitled to being wrong sometimes? they're a bunch of good people with a good heart, in times like these.. differences be damned, they did a fucking great and honorable job protecting the Families of Guernica with what little they had, they deserve my eternal respect. They showed a great example of class solidarity and of mutual aid.

Comrades, the task before us is MONUMENTAL. I, a simple fucking nobody from Argentina, ask you to forget your differences with other leftists, it literally does not matter, get along with them, trots, anarchists, whoever is in danger of being devoured by the Capitalist monster, organize with them, work with them, help those in need. Remember our fight as leftists is not for us, it is for them, those who can't fight back, those who have no place to call home, be the voice of the voiceless, help those in need, we all hate the Capitalist system, so why not fight together against it? We cannot do it if we're all by ourselves dividing the left for petty issues, leave that in the past for once. Let's build a better world for them.

Thanks for reading :)