Juan Domingo Perón died on July 1, 1974. On that day, which changed history forever, there were seven million registered formal workers in the country. Fifty years later, despite the fact that the population almost doubled, the number not only did not grow but is a little lower. How do you explain the Argentine drama, the constant crisis of a nation that finds no way out between massive indebtedness and uncontrolled inflation? There is hardly a single correct answer, but it could well be the lack of job creation. And from that wound festers a gigantic mass of citizens who depend on social plans to try the miracle of making ends meet, a new category of proletarians dispossessed of everything that Karl Marx did not even imagine and that have increased fivefold in the last seven years. On top of this sad reality, the tug-of-war of local politics appear, in days when the President, devoid of any territorial power, relies on the convening social movements to fight internally. Everything looks like a bomb about to explode.
Rating. The numbers say that in the country there are eight million people who work in the informal economy, that gigantic world of activities that are invisible to the State or the formal market and that it is a relatively new phenomenon within the system. In other words, “popular” workers represent between 35% and 45% of the total, depending on who is measuring it.
Among these there are today 1,200,000 who receive a social plan, a worrying number to which the State allocates 54 billion pesos per month: half finances the “Potenciar Trabajo”, a plan that gives 50% of the minimum wage to those who he charges it (today $19,470), and the other to the “Food Card”, an instrument that goes from 9 thousand to 18 thousand pesos to buy food according to the number of children in each family. The cost for the public treasury became so high that, in agreement with the IMF, the Ministry of Social Development decided to end the registration of new users in March. It is not only a bomb about to explode: it is a bomb that, says the Government, cannot grow any more.
There is a necessary clarification here. What is discussed when speaking of the Argentina of the plans is not only numbers, it is not only mathematics or macroeconomics. It is nothing more than a debate on how to incorporate all that mass of “excluded” – as Pope Francis, international patron of social movements, would say – into the system. It is, at least in its most superficial layer, a juicy political arm wrestling, a media ring in which the left, the right and the center rise to co-opt this mass of dispossessed and, above all, tell their public what wants to listen.
“There are four Argentinas”, explains Daniel Arroyo, former Minister of Social Development, “there are the poorest, the vulnerable, the middle class and the upper class. Except for the last one, which is 5%, all the rest are having a hard time. The problem is that the three Argentines from above understand that the problem is the one from below”. It is this economic crisis that reaches almost the entire country, as Arroyo says, which means that today there is no political story that does not include a position on state assistance at its core.
That is why some assure that when they come to power they will end all kinds of assistance, others inaugurate for the umpteenth time a program to turn plans into “dignified work” that never arrives, and the rest put themselves in charge of the dispossessed with the intention to wear to capitalism. In fact, the term “planero” became a word that is used for everything on a day-to-day basis, whether it is to criticize those who receive it or, in an ironic key, to talk about each one’s free time.
This popularization is not accidental. Every time Mauricio Macri opens his mouth he talks about the subject: “Kirchnerism sought to subjugate the whole world through a plan,” said Tuesday the 24th in TN, the same man who in his government doubled the amount of these assistances. And Alberto Fernández does the same: “We are going to turn them into formal work,” he assures in each interview, a project in which not all the social movements that support him today believe. And that just to name two examples. “Talking about this is part of political marketing, telling people what they want to hear. And everyone knows it,” Juan Grabois, a social leader whose growth has much to do with the growth of the country without formal employment, tells NOTICIAS. Every social plan is political.
Danger. The plans were born together with democracy. Argentina emerged from the military dictatorship enveloped in debt and with a serious growth – for the first time in its history – of poverty. In May 1984, the Alfonsín government created the “Bread Box”, a food aid that was delivered to low-income families that reached five and a half million people, almost 17% of the population at that time. . When Carlos Menem came to power he changed that program for the “Bono Solidario”, a check that the CGT distributed and that could be exchanged for food and clothing.
However, the real turning point was during the mandate of Eduardo Duhalde. To cover the fire of 2001, that ruling party created the “Bosses and Heads of unemployed household” plan, a benefit of $150 that, for the first time, demanded in exchange a consideration of four hours of work and that reached 20% of the population. When Cristina Kirchner left power – her government created the Universal Child Allowance, a universal coverage that is often confused with a social plan – the beneficiaries of social programs were 200,708, between “Argentina Works” and “They Make ”. Only seven years passed, but that number increased fivefold.
Of course, in the middle there was not only a pandemic that brought the world economy to its knees, but the macrismo also passed. That government ended with 500,000 plans, more than double what CFK had left, in what was and continues to be an interesting exercise in political rhetoric: Macri appears today as the main critic of the plans despite the numbers that left his mandate. In fact, when criticism from that sector grows, it reaches even the person who was its Minister of Social Development, Carolina Stanley. She knew how to establish a working relationship with the main social movements, which, together with a part of Peronism that had a majority in both chambers -and the wink of priests of that government, such as Mario Quintana-, managed to approve at the end of 2016 the law Social Emergency.
That project, which sought to contain the economic crisis that characterized the macrismo, was the one that doubled the number of plans and the one that brought to the center of the scene movements such as Evita, Barrios de Pie and the Grabois MTE, the main interlocutors of Stanley. That approach earned him reproaches to everyone and from all sectors. “It was a purchase of social peace that left out all those who were not those movements,” says the Trotskyist piquetero leader Eduardo Belliboni, a criticism of an alleged monopoly of the plans that many repeat, but that both Stanley and the targeted movements deny. . Not only the left contested this striking alliance. “Carolina Movement”, journalist Horacio Verbitsky, close to CFK and his son, calls Evita, while the Cambiemos hawks complain about what they consider a too close relationship between their former minister and these groups.
“We put a twine cake on them and not a single one voted for us, it’s unusual,” says a hard-core macrista. In the last days that she was in charge of her, the then minister shared this reflection with her team: “The problem is not the plans, but attacking informality. Without economic growth and job creation there is no way. The same everyone criticizes them but also everyone wants to manage them, they think that it is much more powerful than it really is at the time of the elections, ”she said. Two years later, when under the current government the plans were multiplied by five and despite that they lost the elections by a lot, Stanley felt that time had proved him right.
In front. But with this ruling party a new phenomenon happened: the social movements jumped to the other side of the counter. The Ministry of Development led by Juan Zabaleta has as secretaries Emilio Pérsico, leader of Evita -whose second in the portfolio is Daniel Menéndez, from Barrios de Pie-, and Fernanda Miño, who answers to Grabois, and there is also Fernando Navarro, another pope del Evita, inside the Chief of Staff. This incorporation also has a political correlate: Alberto, internally with Christianity, leans more and more on these movements, some, such as Navarro and Pérsico, historically at odds with La Cámpora. It is a strategic approach that can be transformed into something more: several of the priests of the social movements related to the Government swear that they were eyewitnesses to meetings with the President in which he promised to create a Ministry of the Popular Economy, in what would be a serious advance in the political power of these groups. So far the promise has not been fulfilled.
Most of these politicians believe that the way to reduce the number of plans is through the creation of formal work. That is why the Ministry of Development has as its flag the program “Ingreso Protegido al Empleo”, through which they promote companies to hire workers assisted by the plans in exchange for the State covering part of that salary (the amount is the same as a “Promote Works”). For now, the numbers are not very encouraging: only 50,000 people out of the more than one million who receive plans managed to find work. “It is that there are no conditions to incorporate so many workers. We have to consolidate the popular economy, create a complementary social salary and get rid of the productive monotributo”, says Daniel Menéndez, about the great claim of these social movements: “institutionalize” the popular economy, create a new category of monotributistas whose cost would be assumed by the State. -thus giving them access to the retirement contribution system or to the possibility of taking a loan- and add these movements to the CGT.
It is a vision that challenges both sides of the crack. Ramiro Marra, a legislator from Milei who became famous by running as the great enemy of the picketers, says that this does not work. “The plan tends to disappear when the private sector economy grows, and that is balanced by the market itself. It is not overnight, but you have to remove the obstacles to the private sector”. From the left they also cross this idea. Gabriel Solano, legislator of the Partido Obrero, criticizes the concept of the popular economy. “It is a precarious economy, legalizing informality and job insecurity”, he says, and proposes that the change be radical, of the system. Grabois also joins in the objections. “The claim that all informal workers are going to be employed is demagogic and ignorant.” In addition to the fact that this program has not started yet, the ministry stopped the plans for new beneficiaries. This had a clear correlation: the Polo Obrero went from being in eight provinces to 22, and they were the ones who led the Federal March at the beginning of May, which came from various parts of the country and ended up taking over the streets.
In the middle of the debates there are more than a million Argentines who barely make ends meet, and who also walk with the stigma of the “planero” as a kind of lazy person, despite the fact that statistics show that they all work but changas, outside the formal economy. It is the sad reality of Argentina without a job.
