The passage of politicians of all stripes through Expoagro continues to be a phenomenon that many find difficult to decipher. There are even those who believe it they shouldn’t step on the mega champion. The argument is that the 200,000 million dollars That the State has charged campaigns in withholding taxes, only in the last two decades, is a stain that should exclude those who have managed the public accounts from the paradigmatic open-field meeting in Argentina.
And in this context of severe droughtwhich is leaving many farmers bankrupt or with the “rational” desire to devote themselves to something else, the philosophical split becomes more polarized among the interventionist positions with those who work and invest at private risk. However, there is another possible look, which allows us to see things in a cinematographic key, beyond the photo.
The Minister of the Interior, Wado de Pedro, was the protagonist of the ribbon cutting that opened the exhibition and of the institutional dinner, where he intervened “as a producer” and stated that “the challenge that awaits us is to unite Peronism with the campaign again because it is the political force that promotes the production model”.
He also stated that “there is no federalism or rootedness if the agricultural sector does not do well, because in the interior of Argentina a large part of the population lives from the agricultural sector”.
Beyond the fact that those sentences sounded controversial to the ears of the farmers, they can be read as a possible self-criticism.
It is clear that De Pedro is closely related to Cristina Kirchner, the politician considered in the field as the head of the tax burden (and other measures) which led to the disappearance of thousands of small producers, who could not bear the taxes, restrictions and constant changes in the rules of the game, even though those in charge say they defend them… The Presidents of Juntos were also there: Gerardo Morales, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, Patricia Bullrich and Facundo Manes, who received questions at Expoagro on what they will do with the withholding taxes and exchange rate gaps in case of ruling the country from December.
The background is that, in view of the next elections, no one “of political weight” wants to come face to face with the camp. There seems to be less scope for unfiltered firecrackers, because their voices against the “concentrated oligarchy” fade as soon as the 6-hectare producers show up at the crossroads, asking to be allowed to work… This is the case of Carlos Achetoni , president of the Argentine Agrarian Federation, who in the last demonstration, on February 28, at Villa Constitución, set a deadline for the Government: this Monday the 13 solutions must emerge. In this sense, the self-convened producers have taken the date as a reference and tomorrow, from 8, they will demonstrate in Guerrico, north of Buenos Aires, at the intersection of state road 188 with the road to La Violeta.
It will also be a way to remember the 15th anniversary of the protest against resolution 125, which established mobile withholding taxes on 11 March 2008: in the case of soybeans, it entailed an increase in import duties from 35% to levels close to 50%, depending on the trend in international prices. That “war” lasted 4 months and ended with one of the most sensational defeats of Kirchnerism.
However, the camp’s problems still apply. And the “diplomatic” improvements have not cleared up the disagreements. The young mayor of San Nicolás, Manuel Passaglia, 35, raised skepticism about politicians’ praise for the camp. He recalled having heard “countless times that agribusiness is Argentina’s engine… and at the same time I also saw how the countryside was harassed by a state more concerned with squeezing it than exploiting its potential.”
All in all, the municipal leader who hosts the Expo, who comes from Peronism and is now a member of Juntos, has no doubts that “the countryside continues to be the hope of sustenance to which we Argentines cling to believe in a solution to the problems more complex”.
It is worth remembering that in almost all countries of the world, starting with Europe, but also in the United States, rural workers are subsidised. And the neighbors in Latin America have grown economically and socially hand in hand with the policies to stimulate agro-industrial exports. Argentina is a “rare case, you don’t understand why people are shot in the foot”, said former Uruguayan president José Mujica.
Source: Clarin
