The line, due to its length, seemed like an important demonstration of force.
After Minister Sandra Pettovello
's invitation
to listen "one by one" to the picketers who were "hungry," the social organizations set up a line that exceeded 20 blocks.
The official did not attend to them.
She wasn't even in her office, at that time, in the charming Recoleta neighborhood.
But the snub, perhaps, was not the worst news for the groups that
for many years and different cycles
(two K variants and one of Cambiemos)
did not stop growing
and strengthening.
The reiteration of the protest, rather, would hide a
weakness
.
"The picketers see that they are losing their power, their plans, the possibility of managing the management units, the cooperatives, and they
try to conserve something
," one of the leaders who knows the most about this world of social needs and management
analyzes before
Clarín
. political.
Only one account is enough to size the cash they are fighting for: there are nearly
1,200,000 Empower Work plans
, each one equivalent to half the minimum wage per month (78,000 pesos per head).
They represent close to
100 billion every 30 days
, which pass through the filter of the picketing organizations.
They, their bosses, define who gets paid and, according to several of their beneficiaries, they often also decide how much to leave for the organization.
Another number:
Clarín
said this Sunday that, after keeping transfers underfoot throughout January, 243,000 million pesos were transferred over the weekend.
When Boosting, the Feed Card is added.
And in that account there are no other attached plans or the bags of food that are distributed to the picnic areas and that swell the box.
With a detail.
During the Kirchner administrations, not only was there fluid treatment with the picketers who demanded from the streets, but
those who decided on these shipments
, as state officials, were also
representatives of the same organizations.
Emilio Pérsico, from the Evita Movement, is perhaps the best (or worst) example of the system: he was one of the most powerful officials in the Ministry of Social Development and his organization was the main beneficiary. He is, of course, one of the powerful powerful leaders that Milei wants to empty.
The other two references mentioned are
Juan Grabois and Eduardo Belliboni
.
The first, with greater political intentions, has under its wing the
UTEP
that promoted several of the main current protests, such as the "hunger row."
Belliboni
is the head of the
Polo Obrero
.
Politically he responds to the hardest left, and during the Fernández government he presented himself as the "opposition" piquetero branch.
For those who watched TV these days, he was
the leader who appeared lying on the asphalt, as if fainted
.
A former official warns about the risk of "taking the fake" about his "true role."
How would it be?
"It was always the armed wing of Pérsico
. Belliboni did quilombo in the street, camped on 9 de Julio, and then the ministry expanded the plans. One part went to the Polo Obrero and another to the Evita."
Evita, it is remembered, responded to the official Persico
.
Benefits of having acquaintances on both sides of the counter.
Do you record interlocutor?
"Pérsico only wants the money and more plans, and
Belliboni is his armed wing
.
Pettovello would have to take Grabois as an interlocutor
," the former official repeats and continues with his theory. Juan (for Grabois) passed the popular neighborhood law with Pepín Rodríguez Simón, who was a Macrista, and had a broad agreement with Rodríguez Larreta. Beyond what he says in the media, you can agree with him."
The Government, for now, preferred another path, without channels of dialogue with these three references.
At one point, they recognize in K Peronism,
Pettovello is advancing with measures that his predecessors Juan Zabaleta and Victoria Tolosa Paz had announced
.
Among others, end the intermediation of the picketers in the granting of the plans, audit the dining rooms and change the sending of bags of food for money loaded on cards.
One of the questions about the new management has more to do with the forms and times than with the substance.
The mistreatment of the picketers, says a source who swears he witnessed it, includes loud insults from the minister inside the Recoleta building.
Also, official sources admit,
there are delays in the implementation of the changes
, which caused delays in sending food to snack bars, for example.
Within a very broad ministry, milleists coexist with macristas, peronists and even kirchnerists.
Different from the one the Fernándezes implemented, but lotto at last.
That would replicate
management problems
.
Especially in a new administration.
"To put together the Christmas boxes, you start the process in August. Now, no matter how much you want to hurry with the purchase of food or the implementation of the cards itself, which is fine, it will take you a couple of months," says one fountain.
And although a part of the beneficiaries supports these measures against the picketing organizations, any delay occurs in a
context of extreme social sensitivity
, with a cut that covered the bulk of the population.
Even the IMF warned in its latest document on Argentina that the size of the Milei adjustment, with which the agency's officials are delighted,
requires help (money) for the most neglected sectors.
Clarín
revealed on Sunday a national survey in which
40%
of those interviewed admitted that
they had cut spending on "food in general"
to deal with rising prices.
The basics.
The key, politicians, economists and analysts agree, has a date (
"March"
) and title (
"the start of classes"
).
By then, if inflation has not decreased, this arm wrestling match will begin to be played on another court and with other rules.