Early morning on April 9, Argentina’s Chamber of Deputies passed a reform to the nation’s Glacier Protection Law that would surrender strategic water reserves to multinational mining companies, with devastating environmental consequences.

A move backed by President Javier Milei’s far-right government, it has already faced fierce resistance from local communities, environmental movements, and broad sectors of the Left, as well as imminent legal challenges questioning its constitutionality. As the session unfolded, protests erupted in more than 40 cities across the country, and police repression was deployed outside the Congress building in downtown Buenos Aires.

The goal of the reform is clear: to push forward multinational, private-sector mining projects by redefining protected glacial and periglacial zones, which opens the door to contaminating mining practices. It shifts authority over the official inventory of protected areas away from the Argentinian Institute of Glaciology (IANIGLA) and into the hands of local provincial governments, giving them the power to decide which glaciers deserve protection and which can be sacrificed to extractive projects.

Devastating Consequences to Ecosystems and Human Health

The consequences are stark: opening up high-altitude areas blanketed with ice and snow — critical water reserves under threat from climate change — to large-scale mining operations. This reform is a key instrument in cementing Argentina’s role as a supplier of critical minerals. It has been championed by U.S. officials like US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who salivate at the prospect of carving up the Andes mountain range “like a piece of cake” in the global race for strategic resources between the United States and China.

The extraction process for minerals such as copper involves massive quantities of explosives and chemicals — over 100 tons, including cyanide, sulfuric acid, and xanthate, among others — contaminating water supplies in the process. Around 7 million people, roughly 16 percent of Argentina’s population, live in regions that depend on glaciers for their water, according to environmental organizations.

Scientists at IANIGLA warn that glaciers and periglacial environments are vital water reserves, providing up to half the available water during dry years. They also report that glacier and permanent snow cover has already decreased by 17 percent over the past decade, and any further intervention risks accelerating water loss.

Glaciers do more than feed rivers; they sustain entire ecosystems. The heavy water consumption and contamination risks associated with mining clash directly with downstream agricultural and livestock activities, threatening food production and human health.

The mining industry has lobbied governors, senators, and deputies across the country to undercut the Glacier Protection Law. During the session, discussions circulated in the halls of Congress about a trip to the United States paid for by the multinational mining company Glencore, involving several legislators. Glencore has a direct stake in the reform, as it seeks to advance the “El Pachón” copper mining project in San Juan province. A mining forum is also scheduled for April 14 at AmCham (American Chamber of Commerce), provocatively titled “Mining and Federalism: The Resource That Already Exists, the Decision That Is Missing.”

The Left Is Fighting This “New Colonial Offensive”

The only political forces to reject the reform were the Workers’ Left Front (of which Left Voice’s sister party PTS is a member) and the Civic Coalition. The outcome reflected the convergence of provincial mining interests and political bargaining, including financial incentives in the form of federal revenue-sharing advances and discretionary budget allocations from Milei’s administration.

Due to this reform and previous legislation approved under Milei’s administration, multinational mining corporations will not only enjoy easier repatriation of profits but also receive “priority in water use over the local communities,” as denounced by PTS deputy Nicolás del Caño.

“We are facing a new colonial offensive aimed at re-primarizing the economy, a true project of plunder,” said fellow PTS deputy Myriam Bregman. She added that “the power of mining companies has been around for a long time,” recalling former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s 2008 veto of the first Glaciers Law — widely dubbed “the Barrick Gold veto” due to the company’s intense lobbying.

Barrick Gold operates an open-pit gold and silver mine in Veladero, San Juan, and is responsible for the largest known mining spill in Argentina’s history: 4,680,000 liters of cyanide and mercury solution leaked into five rivers in 2015, an environmental crime that remains unpunished. The current Glaciers Law was finally enacted in 2010, becoming the first in Latin America to protect glaciers, and was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2019 after Barrick Gold’s legal challenge was dismissed.

The Movement Against Extractivism Grows

The passage of this regressive reform will not put an end to the environmental struggle; on the contrary, the movement against extractivism is gaining strength. Organizations such as the Foundation of Environment and Natural Resources (FARN), Environmental Lawyers, and Greenpeace are leading a class-action lawsuit that has already made history: within just 24 hours of the law’s approval, they gathered over 500,000 signatures.

There is growing organization from below to overturn this reform. But only by uniting this fight with the fights against Milei’s labor reform, and cuts to public universities, health care, and pensions — can the movement build the strength to win its demands.

“The people have a long memory and will remember this infamous surrender,” said Myriam Bregman. Her words stand as a warning to all the bourgeois political blocs complicit in the so-called “extractivist consensus” — a consensus of imperial plunder once again laid bare in Argentina’s Congress.

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