Milei faces fresh protest from football club fans over austerity

A weekly protest against President Javier Milei’s austerity took an aggressive turn when unruly fans from more than a dozen Argentina football clubs joined the demonstration Wednesday.

Retirees have been protesting against low pension levels for months, but this week the usual union protesters drew in added support from backers of the country’s biggest football clubs, including Boca Juniors and River Plate. The government wrote off the demonstration as yet another politically motivated stunt, driven by the opposition.

“The protest by the hooligans is nothing more than that. It’s a protest by Kirchnerite and leftist hooligans with very low participation from actual retirees,” Presidential Spokesperson Manuel Adorni said Wednesday during his regular press conference, referring to the militant wing of the Peronist opposition loyal to former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

Even before it was slated to start at 5pm, the gathering quickly devolved into violence. Television coverage showed demonstrators throwing bricks and setting fire to trash containers. Security forces cracked down with tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons. Videos circulated on social media of an elderly woman who was knocked to the ground by police. 

At least 150 people have been detained, while more than 1,000 police carried out the security operation, according to newspaper La Nación. Across the city, neighbuors joined in through the evening by banging pots and pans in the streets and honking their car horns in solidarity.

Organised groups of die-hards from the Chacarita Juniors football club joined a chorus of retirees in an aggressive protest a week ago, sparking a wave of support from more than a dozen other clubs on social media for this week’s demonstration. While many turned out on their own, the barras bravas, as the groups of fans are known, typically have ties to Peronism and are known to stir up trouble. Some wore t-shirts honouring soccer great Diego Maradona, who was famous for saying, “You have to be a real coward not to defend retirees.”

During the protest, the government announced that it would spend around US$190 million to repair damage from floods in the port city of Bahía Blanca that killed 16 people over the weekend.

In the announcement, Milei credited the rescue package to his government’s fiscal discipline and reiterated his commitment to austerity, which has been the driving force behind the dramatic slowdown in inflation.

Reduced pension outlays accounted for the largest chunk of Milei’s budget cuts in 2024 that produced Argentina’s first fiscal surplus since 2009. 

Pensions hit their lowest point in decades just before Milei took office in December 2023, and then kept falling during his first months in office as payouts were set using a formula devised by the previous government. 

Since then, Milei adjusted the formula, allowing the purchasing power of pensioners to slowly recover. The minimum pension payment plus a bonus comes to roughly US$327.

“Pensions have been deteriorating for decades,” said Nuria Susmel, senior economist at FIEL, a research foundation in Buenos Aires. “Purchasing power has been improving under Milei, but the question is whether to maintain it pensions at their lowest levels in history.”