Jujuy Province, in NW Argentina, rises up against repression and regressive reforms
In Jujuy Province, in NW Argentina, communities and organizations have been mobilizing on the streets and highways to reject the constitutional reform that was pushed through by conservative Governor Gerardo Morales in the early morning of Friday June 16.
The massive protests in cities and towns across the province - which have seen participation from Indigenous communities, trade unions, and social movements - have been met with heavy repression from state forces.
The incidents, which appear to have calmed by Wednesday, resulted in at least 68 arrests and 170 wounded - including a journalist and one protester, 17-year-old Mijael Lamas, who lost an eye from a rubber bullet.
The National Secretary of Human Rights, Horacio Pietragalla, traveled to the province on Sunday to verify the situation on the ground and has called on the governor to sit down and dialogue with protesters, and insisted he abandon his “capricious” position.
The fast-track approval of Morales' reform takes place in the midst of a context of great social unrest in Jujuy, with teachers already on week two of a strike.
The mountainous province of 800,000, one of Argentina's poorest, is governed by the historically centrist - but currently right-wing - Radical Civic Union (UCR) party.
President Alberto Fernández noted that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the United Nations Human Rights Regional Office (OHCHR), Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch "have pronounced themselves clearly and forcefully calling immediately for the cessation of state violence and to guarantee the validity of human rights in the province of Jujuy."
The president instructed the Justice Ministry to analyze and suspend any articles that violate the Argentine Constitution.
At: https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/06/19/jujuy-rises-up-against-repression-and-regressive-reforms/
