Argentine Citizens Protest Against Ongoing IMF Involvement

Earlier this month, many Argentinians protested against a new IMF agreement, denouncing it as illegitimate and harmful. Argentina has had a long and tumultuous relationship with the International Monetary Fund, from whom the Argentine government has received loans (and therefore has been impacted by IMF conditionalities) since 1958. The relationship between these two has become increasingly dire since Argentina’s 2001 debt crisis, when Argentina defaulted on its debt. While relationships between the IMF and member states are often looked at as an interaction between the government and the organization, IMF programs have serious and potentially harmful impacts on citizens. Argentinians are most recently concerned about the implications of the Argentine Senate’s agreement with the IMF to restructure their $45 billion debt, which could specifically hurt poorer citizens. 

When a government defaults (or fails to repay debt) many times, it should be no surprise that citizens would be wary about who the government is making deals with, especially when those have tangible consequences on their daily lives. Gisela Lazcano, one of many critics of this recent agreement and a member of Frente de Organizaciones en Lucha, said to Al Jazeera reporters, “We’re asking them not to sign this deal because it means more hunger, because they’re going to tighten spending in all directions, and that affects the earnings of workers, who are the ones who always end up losing out.” IMF programs, broadly speaking, tend to cut public spending (which harms poorer and marginalized groups) and increase privatization, which is referenced here as well. In fact, the Bretton Woods Project recently wrote that there is an Argentine movement for the suspension and investigation of the debt, which reports on protests and argues that Argentina’s most recent IMF debt should not be paid because it is illegitimate. 

In 1958, Argentina sought out its first loan from the IMF, due to increased inflation rates and a 50% higher cost of living, according to The Economist. Sixty years later, in 2018, Argentina reached its 21st agreement with the IMF for loans: some IMF economists have argued that policies and conditionalities for programs have been too ‘lax’ and have thereby given way to these defaults and failures. However, many Argentine economists clearly oppose the IMF’s call for stricter conditions: by contrast, they would like to break Argentina’s dependence on the IMF for a stake in the global economy. Thus, it can be damaging for the IMF to place blame on Argentina by saying that the country must be accountable for its crises: this ignores other macroeconomic factors, as well as (and perhaps most importantly), the IMF’s role in these crises. In any case, the difficult relationship between Argentina and the IMF is evident, but it has become an increasingly tough cycle of dependence to break. 

Although there are many proponents of IMF aid internationally, specifically in the Global Northwest, it is important that the international community recognizes the toll of IMF loans and conditionalities on semi-peripheral and peripheral states. The idea of loans and aid to developing countries is not far-fetched, or even necessarily unwanted or out of line, but the way IMF aid exists now imposes economic strategies and values from the Global Northwest on member states to filter them into the global capitalist system. To focus international attention on the harmful sides of IMF loans, it can be helpful to bring light to the way citizens respond to and feel about these programs, since they are such a threat to the sovereignty felt by the population. This means that they have lost much of the ability to choose for themselves what is the most suitable economic system and also have basically lost control over their currency and how it functions. 

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