EVERY March 24, Argentinians take to the streets to remember the victims of the last, and most vicious, dictatorship in the country’s turbulent history.

2026 marks the 50th anniversary of the coup and this year in Buenos Aires an estimated one million people thronged the approaches to the famous Plaza de Mayo, scene of so many demonstrations and protests, in addition to record numbers in other cities of the republic, not only to commemorate the death or disappearance of a loved one, but also to protest against the policies of President Javier Milei that have generated soaring levels of unemployment and poverty.

Prior to 1976, Argentina had already experienced five coups. What was different about the most recent was the deployment of a campaign of terror in parallel with the official repressive apparatus of the state.

Over 800 clandestine detention centres were established around the country where people considered to be “subversives” were imprisoned, tortured and killed in a concerted attempt to crush any opposition to the implementation of a profoundly corrupt economic order that heralded the birth of neoliberalism and laid the foundations for subsequent right-wing governments.

Deregulation, privatisation, liberalisation of capital flows, attacks on trade unions and external debt represented a concerted attack on the working class that is being replicated in the Argentina of today.

Thirty thousand people were “disappeared” by the regime though President Javier Milei refuses to accept that as an accurate figure and claims that the armed forces were engaged in a legitimate struggle against leftist insurgents seeking to overthrow the state.

This accords with his perverted world view that sees Argentina as part of a global struggle to save “Judeo-Christian” society, in line with the speech made by Marco Rubio in Germany where he bemoaned the end of the colonial era.

On March 7, Milei was in the US – his 16th visit since being elected – to participate in the launch of Donald Trump’s “Shield of the Americas” initiative, clearly aimed at sidelining the Organisation of American States (OAS) and analogous to his Board of Peace, created to undermine the legitimacy of the United Nations.

The event brought together all Latin America’s right-wing presidents so they could pledge support for the so-called war on “narco-terrorism” in conjunction with the US military who have covetous eyes on Ushuaia, Argentina’s southernmost city, where a naval base would give them access to Antarctica.

All the signage for the gathering was in English and Trump contemptuously informed his Spanish-speaking audience that he was too busy to learn their language, not that this bothered the starstruck Milei who made sure he obtained a picture of himself with his hero, for domestic consumption.

If anybody was in any doubt about Argentina’s direction of travel under Milei, he made his position crystal clear at the opening of the regular Congressional session (roughly equivalent to the state opening of parliament) the week prior to his trip to Miami.

During a 90-minute diatribe peppered with insults and threats aimed at his political opponents, he said that the world was in a new era marked by clear water between free countries and those that are subjugated.

Without any sense of irony, he stated that Argentina’s natural resources would be at the disposal of the former, under the leadership of the US, and that the country possessed all the natural resources to be a key participant in the West’s strategic value chain.

Milei’s slavish devotion to Trump has led him to follow the US lead and withdraw Argentina from the World Health Organisation, ignoring a considerable body of expert opinion demonstrating that the decision is prejudicial to Argentina’s interests.

Worse still, he instructed his ambassador to the UN to vote against a motion condemning the historic injustices of the slave trade, in tandem with the only other two objectors, the US and Israel, thus enraging and alienating a number of African countries that had hitherto always supported Argentina’s rights to the Malvinas/Falkland Islands.

Without obtaining Congressional approval, Milei announced that Argentina supported the US’s disgraceful and unprovoked attack on Iran. At an event to remember a 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, he said that his country would confront terrorism and described Israel as a “sister nation that shares the same values as ours.”

Although it has never been proven that Iran was responsible either for the embassy attack nor another assault on a Jewish community centre two years later, Milei is on record as saying that it was responsible for both and therefore was Argentina’s enemy.

Unsurprisingly, this has not gone down well in Tehran where government sources stated that Argentina had crossed an unpardonable red line.

Against a backdrop of 300,000 lost jobs since 1993 and 50 per cent of workers in the unregulated, informal sector, the euphemistically titled Labour Reform was duly passed by both the upper and lower houses of Congress, after a mix of arm-twisting, bribery and threats brought Milei’s LLA party the desired result.

Debates in both houses were accompanied by large protests outside Congress that, as has become the norm, were violently dispersed by the paramilitary police.

But the CGT (Argentina’s oldest and largest trade union confederation) did not support the demonstration outside Congress on the day the legislation was passed.

The lack of concerted congressional opposition to the draconian new law has aroused the ire of leftist leaders such as Myriam Bregman, a Buenos Aires deputy for the Left Workers’ Front [a four-party Trotskyist electoral alliance], who has highlighted the disproportionate effect it will have on women.

Saying that the reform is intended to leave workers totally unprotected, she asserts that the essence of the law is to replace collective agreements with weak individual rights that will leave them at the mercy of big corporations.

The elimination of the eight-hour working day and its replacement by a 12-hour limit; the introduction of banked hours (time in lieu) instead of overtime payments, the ability of employers to decide when holidays can be taken.

The introduction of payment by results or performance rather than hours worked and the end of sectoral collective bargaining will all contribute to making life extremely difficult for those who combine work with bringing up children, 76 per cent of whom, according to Bregman, are women.

Severance pay and sickness benefits are being reduced and the net effect of the measures will set labour rights back 100 years to what they were before the first Peron administrations.

However, at time of writing, the CGT had obtained an injunction from a federal court suspending the most contentious parts of the law on the grounds that they were unconstitutional.

The government immediately said that it would appeal the judgement.

As Milei reduces South America’s second largest economy to little more than a vassal state of Trump’s US, internal opposition is growing. Polls are showing that an increasing number of young people are opposed to his government and, anecdotally, commentators have noted how many of them participated in the March 24 events.

A million people on the streets said that Argentina will not forgive or forget what happened in 1976 and patience is wearing thin with the dictatorship’s disciple, notwithstanding the support of the monied establishment, corrupt politicians and the uncritical right-wing press.

Only time will tell if popular discontent translates into coherent opposition during the last two years of Milei’s disastrous regime.