Export Tax Protests

Despite the fact that I live in Buenos Aires, I still find myself scanning the New York Times in hopes of finding an article to explain what is going here. I could read El Clarín or La Nación to get the details—in fact I have—but what I need isn’t the details, it’s the background story. Right now, the country is in a gridlock. Angry farmers from the provinces are blocking the roads into Buenos Aires to prevent food from entering the city. They hope to persuade the government to get rid of the increased export taxes instated several weeks ago. President Kirchner refuses, arguing that the tax only affects wealthy farmers. However, if that is the case, what are thousands of angry small farmers doing on the highways? And why are so many residents of Buenos Aires standing in the streets or on their balconies banging pots and pans in support of the campo.

Today, the Times had a short blurb on a large rally held yesterday in the Plaza de Mayo, showing support for President Kirchner’s government. It is only one paragraph, which says that a huge rally held yesterday was “a show of strength for Mrs. Kirchner.” That is one way to interpret the rally, but it isn’t an interpretation I have heard from the people I talk to in the streets. Several of my students told me that most of the people at the rally for the government were paid 50 pesos to be there. Don’t go to the plaza, they told me, you don’t know what will happen. I asked my roommate what she thought, and she agreed with my students. She was only a block away from rally when it started yesterday afternoon and she said she could hear them yelling in her office building. She said they were from the “lower classes,” people who probably supported the provinces but were happy to shout and cheer for good money. She didn’t feel safe there, she said.

The export taxes on grain products are not new. They were put in place to try to prevent dairy farmers and cattle ranchers from changing their land into soybean plantations, a far more lucrative industry. Argentina is the third largest exporter of soybeans in the world and the largest exporter of soybean oil. Obviously, exporting soy beans for dollars and euros produces more profits than selling milk for pesos. Already high, export taxes on soy beans were raised from 35 to 44 percent and other taxes went up as well. According to one article, these raises affect small farmers (who account for 85 percent of all farmers) most drastically. The big farms can afford the tax.

April second is the anniversary of the war for the Malvinas and no one has to go to work. The city is calm and quite, shops are closed; it is almost like Christmas or Easter. On the news, I see women in the provinces screaming at the cameras that they cannot feed their children and listen to union leaders who say that while the government isn’t changing its position yet, they will once the supermarkets get emptier and the people get angry. People are already angry. And today feels like a quiet before a storm, even if it is a storm that may not come or that I, as an outsider, may never really feel or understand.