March 18, 202 (EIRNS)—The government of Argentine President Javier Milei is in panic and disarray, reeling from the repercussions of its brutal repression of a March 12 protest of retirees in front of the national Congress, which it attacked with overwhelming police force. Security Minister Patricia “Bullshit” Bullrich has lost control of the narrative that protesters were all leftists and “Kirchneristas”—followers of former Peronist President Cristina Kirchner—as graphic video documentation reveals the deployment of police provocateurs and infiltrators operating in small groups to unleash violence. Charges that retirees and their backers were guilty of “sedition” and an attempted coup aren’t holding.
There is indisputable evidence of police targeting protesters, including forensic evidence of one policeman deliberately shooting a tear gas canister directly at the head of a young cameraman, Pablo Grillo, who is now in the hospital in critical condition. Milei and his backers are frantically trying to defend their Congressional agenda—obtaining the vote to ram through a new IMF agreement via decree, stopping a bicameral commission from investigating Milei’s “cryptogate” scandal, and preventing top officials, including Bullrich, from being hauled before Congress to be questioned for ordering such brutal repression against retirees protesting the gutting of their pensions.
There is a sense on the street that the situation has shifted, including commentary that this is the worst violence since December 2001, when ten days of violent nationwide protest against the freezing of bank deposits culminated in the President fleeing in a helicopter from the roof of the presidential palace and subsequent declaration of a debt moratorium. Thirty-nine people died in that upheaval. Now all eyes are on the next retiree protest tomorrow, which will be much larger, with the participation of trade unions, social organizations of unemployed and poor, also to be joined by judges and prosecutors who want to witness the police response. Bullrich warns she’s ready to deploy her same stormtroopers against the “thug retirees,” while rumors abound that the desperate government might go as far as declaring a state of siege.