This May Day in Buenos Aires, the Ferro indoor stadium hosted a large rally organized by the PTS (Party of Socialist Workers), Left Voice’s sister organization in Argentina. With the presence of congressional deputies Myriam Bregman and Nicolás del Caño, the event brought together industrial workers, teachers, healthcare personnel, students, and retirees, along with guests from France, Brazil, and Chile representing the international organization Left Voice is part of, the Current for Permanent Revolution (CPR).

From early on, it was clear that Ferro was going to be overflowing. Hundreds of people were there even before the gates opened, full of anticipation. And so it was: the indoor stadium couldn’t hold everyone. Thousands packed the stands, and more than a thousand people were left outside as capacity was exceeded, yet they still watched the event on screens in the stadium’s vicinity.

Una multitud se concentró en Ferro en el acto del PTS por el 1° de Mayo, en donde Myriam Bregman hizo el cierre. pic.twitter.com/ruvF4G0aIS

— La Izquierda Diario (@izquierdadiario) May 2, 2026

The event also had significant media coverage on television channels, radio stations and newspapers, coming at the end of a week in which the “Myriam Bregman phenomenon” had dominated the national discussion in Argentina. The growing media attention comes from polls showing Bregman as the political leader with the most positive image in the country.

The event was also notable for the presence of prominent figures in human rights, culture, the arts, and, of course, the major social movements facing the country, many of whom addressed the gathering. Among those present were Sergio Maldonado, Patricia Walsh, Lili Mazea, Lidia Frank, Julieta Bandilari, Marta Ungaro, Karina Díaz, Sara Patorino, Nora Tolomeo, and Carlos Rodríguez. Messages of support were also sent by figures such as Osvaldo Barros of the Association of Former Detainees and Disappeared Persons and Carlos Sueco Lorkipanidse.

In the face of historic attacks on the country’s labor code which Milei’s far-right administration has carried out with the complicity of the union bureaucracies, workers stood defiant. A worker from FATE, the country’s largest tire factory where a powerful fight against layoffs has emerged, spoke about how workers have been occupying their factory for over two months.

We’ve become one big family during this struggle. We started by organizing the factory, cooking for everyone, raising money — we’ve collected over 40 million pesos in these past few days. This money was used to cover medicine and whatever our families needed. That’s what united us. It forged a great family, which is incredibly important, even though there are many who want to promote resignation and individualism. Let them come to the gates of FATE!

Members of other CPR groups spoke as well, including Bruno Gilga from Brazil who has organized as a coordinator of the Global Sumud Flotilla, youth Ariane Anemoyannis who represented Révolution Permanente in France, and Antonio Paez who leads the Starbucks workers’ union in Chile.

The event featured deeply moving moments that touched on the country’s major struggles, the causes of women, workers, and youth, as well as internationalist struggles such as that of the Global Sumud Flotilla, which was recently attacked by Israel. Gilga used his speech to express solidarity with the Palestinian cause and speak to how it’s the international working class that has the power to defeat imperialism.

The only way we can stop imperialist rearmament around the world, which is preparing for new great imperialist wars, is with the strength of the working class allied with all the oppressed, with total class independence, without any trust in any bourgeois government, in any strategy of alliance with the bourgeoisie from anywhere.

Christian Castillo, a leader of the PTS, highlighted to the crowd how the organization’s rise in popularity came out of its consistent commitment to revolutionary socialist principles and by being present in every single fight.

We served two years as members of parliament. The only voices against the genocide in Palestine came from our party and the Left Front. The only voices against imperialist aggression in Venezuela came from the Left Front. The only voices against the oil embargo on Cuba are those of the Left Front. Yankees out! Down with imperialism! And, comrades, this contrasts sharply with the passivity of Peronism1Peronism refers to the traditional center-left parties in Argentina, which have recently held power under President Alberto Fernandez and President Cristina Fernandez de Kirshner., which tells us to wait when they aren’t outright bought off and playing into Milei’s hands.

At the close of the event, Bregman presented conclusions and the collective challenge of transforming the political influence she and the PTS have gained in recent times into a force capable of influencing reality:

What we have to do is come together, we have to organize. Sympathy needs to be organized, shared ideas need to be organized, shared strength needs to be organized. We have to hold meetings, we have to form committees — call them what you will — but this cannot be scattered. All of this that is happening, which fills us with pride, which makes us happy, because it is the strength of two years of resisting this government, has to be organized. We have to organize and we have to leave here with that idea.

Each and every one of you has to redouble your efforts, has to go to workplaces, to places of study, to whatever neighborhood we are in, to spread this idea. Hey, how can we not get together? How can we not meet to discuss how to defeat Milei? Seriously, are we going to keep fighting separately, or are social media not enough? It’s not enough.

We need all of that to be transformed into material force, into physical strength. And for that, we have to come together and we also have to start discussing what political tools we need. But once we start coming together, once we start meeting, we have to promote coordinating bodies, neighborhood assemblies, popular assemblies in every place, everything necessary so that the unions, so that the student centers, become tools of struggle again.

In another key passage of her speech, she stated:

I want to leave you with one more idea. We don’t hide the fact that we want to transform this society from the ground up. Ending capitalism is the way to end genocide, and that’s why we’ve set ourselves the goal of building our own political tool. We wanted to bring this up for debate here so that all of you who support us, along with the other forces of the FIT-U2The FIT-U is a coalition of Trotskyist parties in Argentina which the PTS is part of., with the cultural sectors, with environmental activists, can understand: the time has come to build a new historical workers’ movement that organizes from the ground up, a party of the working class. A movement for a party of the new working class, that increasingly precarious, discriminated against, and feminized working class.

We have a program, the FIT-U’s program, a program of class independence. We’re not starting from scratch, but we have to strive for more. That’s the debate we want to raise, those are our proposals. If the engine of history is the class struggle, we want to fuel that engine. We’re very enthusiastic about this challenge; we’re going to be part of this fight. It’s time to… build a new working-class party.

This article was first published in Spanish in La Izquierda Diario Es and lightly adapted for Left Voice’s audience in the United States.

Notes[+]

Notes

The post Thousands Attend Massive May Day Rally in Argentina, Showing the Rising Popularity of the Trotskyist Left appeared first on Left Voice.

From Left Voice via This RSS Feed.