BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Norma Villarreal, 56, struggling to support her family after losing her job as a cleaner earlier this year, went to church in the impoverished suburbs of Buenos Aires on Wednesday and waited in the pre-dawn darkness for more than an hour to deliver a petition to St. Cayetano, the patron saint of bread and work.
“We are hungry and tired. Since the government never does anything for us, I went to ask the saint for help,” Villarreal said of the Roman Catholic priest who was canonized in 1671 for using his family fortune to help the poor of Naples.
Throughout decades of political change in Argentina, the annual August 7 pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Cayetano has served as a stark and stark reminder that in Argentina, economic despair remains a constant. But this year may be unique in one thing: The despair over rising unemployment that drives Argentines to visit St. Cayetano has been matched by anger over the libertarian president’s painful austerity program Javier Milei.
The government’s shocking economic measures, aimed at cutting annual government spending by about 3% of the country’s gross domestic product, have caused a painful recession, boosting economic growth. unemployment up to almost 8%.
The elderly crowd of pilgrims making the sign of the cross and holding rosaries outside the shrine has dwindled in recent years, a reflection, observers say, of the declining relevance of Roman Catholicism in Argentina rather than an improvement in the unemployment rate, which has risen by two percentage points in the past five months.
After the pilgrimage on Wednesday, the country’s unions and left-wing opposition parties mobilized thousands of people to protest outside the presidential palace in downtown Buenos Aires, chanting against Milei and deploring his mass layoffs of government workers.
“We don’t have breakfast, just a little tea in the morning, but he doesn’t see that… he says we are the cause of the problems,” said Ana Maria Muñoz, 60, who was laid off from a municipal job five months ago in a wave of layoffs triggered by Milei’s budget cuts. She hasn’t been able to find work since.
“They fired me, I’m not sure if it was because of my age or what, but many of us were fired,” she said as she carried the flag of her state union in the city’s central square.
While Milei has prioritized combating the country’s staggering inflation — which fell to 4.2% monthly inflation in June, the lowest since January 2022 — annual inflation still exceeds 270%, one of the highest rates in the world, outpacing salaries. Unemployment has become a growing concern as Milei’s government freezes public works projects and closes ministries in its campaign to shrink the state.
“There is no humanity or even attention to quality in the decisions that are made,” said Orlando Ortega, a 58-year-old state employee whose former employer, the National Secretariat for Children, was recently dissolved and absorbed along with other government agencies into the Ministry of Human Capital.
He said the government has cut the budget so much that those who escaped the latest round of layoffs can barely do their jobs.
“For seven months we have had no resources, we can’t travel, we can provide some basic logistical support, but we don’t even implement policies,” he said, shouting to be heard over the roar of sonic grenades and the thunderous chants of his fellow union members in the square. “When you think about it, it seems like firing a few hundred has cost the government more than it has saved.”
At his daily press conference, Milei’s spokesman dismissed Wednesday’s unemployment protests as a political maneuver by the opposition.
“This government has come to eradicate the ills that have plagued Argentines for decades,” said spokesman Manuel Adorni, who accused protest organizers of being “responsible for the economic disaster that this government has inherited.”
Union leaders resisted, seeing their march as a natural expression of anger and sadness over job losses.
“We demand that Milei give us back the jobs he took from us and the money he stole from us,” said Rodolfo Aguiar, head of the State Workers Association. “The fiscal surplus is built on suffering.”
