Noam Chomsky Danny Glover Sign Letter Against Argentina's Macri

The U.S. linguist Noam Chomsky and actor Danny Glover joined more than 100 academics, artists and activists to protest against “the neoliberal policies” of Argentine President Mauricio Macri and the corruption scandals that have affected him and his administration.

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The letter, titled “Against Macri's Abuses: The World with Argentina,” was also signed by the Italian philosopher Domenico Losurdo, Brazilian sociologist Emir Sader, Argentine political analyst Atilio Boron, British philosopher Istvan Meszaros and Colombian activist and former Senator Piedad Cordoba.

“There have been 1.5 million more poor people in Argentina since the beginning of Macri's term because of policies implemented in only 15 months,” read the document. “He triggered thousands of layoffs in the public and the private sectors, devalued the currency, stripped workers of labor rights,” among others, stated the document.

Argentina’s poverty has become so evident under Macri that he was forced to admit last September that one in three Argentines lives in poverty. Ironically and hypocritically, Macri's presidential campaign slogan was “zero poverty.”

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Macri’s neoliberal economic reforms have also seen the price of goods and services skyrocket in the South American country. In October 2015, two months prior to Macri taking office, Argentina’s inflation rate was 14.3 percent, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Census of Argentina. By April 2016, it reached 40.5 percent.

The signatories also criticized Macri for his involvement in corruption scandals such as the Panama Papers, the Odebrecht scandal, as well as with Avianca airline and Argentine mail company Correo Argentino.

They condemned the illegal detention of Indigenous leader Milagro Sala and expressed their solidarity with former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who “suffers from an attack from the justice system and the media that gets worse and worse, turning into a serious attack against democracy.”