In recent weeks, Hospital Garrahan, an emblem of pediatric healthcare in Argentina, has once again been at the center of attention, mainly due to the political use that the opposition has begun to make of it.
There have been protests by doctors and workers over low salaries and working conditions, problems caused by the previous Kirchnerist government, which left the country on the verge of hyperinflation and destroyed the salaries of all Argentinians, including doctors.
In response to these protests, opposition sectors to the Government of Javier Milei are attempting to take advantage of this situation to hold the Argentine president responsible for something he is not to blame for.
However, the reality is more complex and deep, with a conflict that has historical roots and a political burden that has persisted for decades, especially linked to Kirchnerist management.
The Kirchnerist political scheme at Garrahan
Communicator Kalina Ann (@KalinaAnnGG) exposed the political scheme and the Kirchnerist operations behind the union protests at Hospital Garrahan: In 2021, the unions accepted raises below what the doctors were demanding.
However, the influencer recalled that now the same union is rejecting a 63% raise in a context of declining inflation.
A historical problem
El Hospital Garrahan.
To understand the current crisis, it is necessary to go back in time. Since 2006, campaigns such as the collection of plastic bottle caps became popular to help the hospital. That act of solidarity, which was created to address funding needs, already reflected a critical situation that was not solved by the successive governments.
During the administrations of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and later Alberto Fernández, Garrahan's medical staff led multiple demands for better salaries and working conditions. However, during that period, the unions representing the workers, many of them with strong ties to Kirchnerism, were more docile toward political power.
They accepted raises in installments and below inflation, without calling for mass mobilizations, leaving the doctors alone in the face of a system that silently made their employment precarious under the complicity of the unions.
La condenada por corrupción, Cristina Kirchner.
The contrast with what is happening today is striking. Those same unions that previously remained silent in the face of the destruction of healthcare now oppose raises of more than 60%, a percentage higher than what they initially demanded, and are demanding figures that only represent a political pressure strategy.
Instead of building solutions, many union sectors seem more interested in wearing down the new government, which seeks to genuinely defend the hospital's workers after decades of Kirchnerist populism that destroyed it.
To this is added another essential problem, which involves the structure of the staff at Garrahan, a consequence of years of appointments linked to Kirchnerism.
The massive incorporation of administrative and political staffwithout clear duties, that is, the "ñoquis," has diverted a significant portion of the budget. In this context, the resources that should be allocated to doctors and supplies end up financing a clientelist network that Milei's Government is trying to end.
