The high cost of fuel, food, medicine, fertilizer and basic services as a result of global financial breakdown and the repercussions of the Ukrainian conflict is unleashing protests across Ibero-America. Populations hard hit by the COVID pandemic, and suffering from poverty and unemployment, are taking to the streets to demand their needs be met. Governments in Chile, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico are scrambling to deal with record-high monthly inflation rates—Chile’s rate for March was the highest in 30 years; Brazil’s the highest since 2003, and Mexico’s the highest in 20 years, Bloomberg reports. Central bankers are raising interest rates in most countries. A few highlights:
In Peru: Protests that began more than a week ago in the agricultural province of Junin have spread throughout the nation, as farmers and truck drivers demand relief from the high cost of food, fuel and fertilizer. Striking workers from the national transport workers federation are blockading roads and clashing with police in the southern coastal province of Pisco, and now the national trade union federation, the CGTP, is calling for people to take to the streets nationwide to demand immediate action from President Pedro Castillo, whose hold on power is increasingly tenuous.
In Chile: New President Gabriel Boric is struggling to deal with rising inflation and how to respond to the needs of the nation’s large impoverished population—the legacy of the “Chicago Boys” looting model. He just announced a $3.7 billion economic development package to aid poorer sectors, which freezes public transportation rates and proposes creating half a million new jobs; but opinion polls indicate the population is pessimistic about anything improving. Boric is also challenged by a surge in violence in southern Chile among the impoverished indigenous Mapuche population, a longstanding and complicated problem exacerbated by involvement of foreign NGOs, large foreign corporations that own large tracts of land, and local radical groups of the left and right. What Boric sees as a human rights problem were only best resolved by a global development program.
In Brazil: The Center for Popular Movements (CMP) has called for a mass mobilization tomorrow, in at least 42 cities, to occur under the heading “Bolsonaro Never Again, against increases in fuel, gas and no to hunger!” Brazil’s Landless Movement (MST) reports that as a result of President Jair Bolsonaro’s dismembering the economy, 60% of the population don’t have enough to eat; 12 million are unemployed, 125 million suffer from food insecurity and 200,000 homeless live on the streets, Resumen Latinoamericano reports, based on MST stats. CMP leader Raimundo Bonfim warns that people can no longer tolerate the constant increases in the cost of electricity, gas for cooking, fuel, medicine and food.
