As President Milei’s austerity hits hard, jobless Argentines appeal to the patron saint of work

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Struggling to feed her family after losing her job as a cleaner earlier this year, 56-year-old Norma Villarreal went to church Wednesday in the hardscrabble outskirts of Buenos Aires and waited in the pre-dawn darkness for over an hour to petition St. Cayetano, the patron saint of bread and work.

“We are very hungry and we’re tired and since the government never does anything for us, I went to ask the saint,” Villarreal said of the Roman Catholic priest canonized in 1671 for using his family fortune to help the poor of Naples.

Throughout decades of political change in Argentina, the annual Aug. 7 pilgrimage to St. Cayetano Sanctuary has served as a potent, and grim, reminder that in Argentina, economic despair remains a constant. But this year might be unique in one thing: The desperation over rising joblessness that drives Argentines to call on St. Cayetano has been matched by rage at the painful austerity program of libertarian President Javier Milei.

The government’s shock economic measures — aimed at slashing annual public spending by some 3% of the country’s gross domestic product — has created an excruciating recession, pushing up unemployment to nearly 8%.

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The aging crowds of pilgrims crossing themselves and clutching rosaries outside the sanctuary have dwindled in recent years — a reflection, observers say, more of the diminishing relevance of Roman Catholicism in Argentina than of any improvement in the unemployment rate, which jumped two whole percentage points in the last five months.

After the pilgrimage Wednesday, the country’s trade unions and leftist opposition parties marshaled thousands to protest outside the presidential palace in downtown Buenos Aires, where they chanted against Milei and lamented his mass lay-offs of government workers.

“We have no breakfast, just a bit of tea in the morning, but he doesn’t see that ... he says we’re the cause of the trouble,” said 60-year-old Ana Maria Muñoz, who was fired from a municipal job in a wave of dismissals five months ago prompted by Milei’s budget cuts. She hasn’t been able to find work since.

“They got rid of me, I’m not sure if it was my age or what, but so many of us have been fired,” she said, carrying the banner of her state workers’ union in the city’s main plaza.

While Milei has prioritized combating the country’s dizzying inflation rate — which fell in June to 4.2% month on month, the lowest since January 2022. But annual inflation still tops 270%, among the highest rates in the world, outpacing salaries. Unemployment has become a growing concern as Milei’s government freezes public works projects and shutters ministries in his campaign to cut down the state.

“There is no humanity or even attention to quality in the decisions being made,” said Orlando Ortega, a 58-year-old state worker whose former employer, the National Secretariat for Children, was recently dissolved and incorporated with other government agencies into the Ministry of Human Capital.

He said the government slashed their budget so much that those who escaped the latest round of layoffs can hardly do their jobs.

“For seven months, we’ve had no resources, we can’t travel, we can provide some basic logistical support but we’re not even carrying out policy,” he said, shouting to be heard over boom of sound grenades and thunderous chants of his fellow union members in the plaza. “When you think about it, firing some hundred seems to have cost the government more than it helped it save.”

In his daily press conference, Milei’s spokesperson dismissed Wednesday’s anti-unemployment protests as political maneuver by the opposition.

“This administration came to eradicate the evils that have plagued Argentines for decades,” spokesperson Manuel Adorni said, accusing the protest organizers of being “responsible for the economic disaster that this government inherited.”

Union leaders pushed back, portraying their march as a natural outpouring of anger and grief over lost jobs.

“We demand that Milei give us back the jobs that he took from us and the money that he stole from us,” said Rodolfo Aguiar, head of the State Workers Association. “The fiscal surplus is built on suffering.”