As others mentioned, the police are not removing these road blocks because "it's their right to protest" by blocking the roads.
Some 6-7 years ago I was driving back with my wife from Asuncion in Paraguay, the year after the farmer's big blockade of the city, during the smaller blockade the next year ( the previous year was when they burned the fields outside the city and the prevailing winds covered the city with smoke so thick for a week or two tht you often couldn't see a half a block in front of you! It was hot, you had to open windows and smoke got in the apartment, etc I have pictures somewhere of a couple of shots of the city during that time). This smaller blockade the following year actually let cars through, but the previous year they had forced dairy trucks, for example, to sit on the side of the road for days until the dairy products spoiled...what a year that was!
Anyway, while we were in Asuncion they declared this smaller "strike" that year and I knew it was going to be a pain, but I saw on the news in Asuncion before we left that this year they were opening the blockades every so often, so at least I knew we wouldn't be stuck in Asuncion an extra week or two. When we got to the first blockade on our way back, I had no idea how much time they were taking to open the blockades to let people pass. We were stuck behind a number of trucks heading towards Buenos Aires. I saw, at one point, the blockade open a little and let pass a small pickup truck, so I thought things were going to open up. Apparently the guy driving the truck was a friend of the blockaders. We didn't move at all and they closed up the blockade.
I was really pissed at the time - I didn't understand nearly as much about Argentina as I do now (not that that's a lot, still!) and I had just lived through the previous year in smoke during a blockade that not only had included a smoked-out city, but also I had been watching the shelves in the super market becoming very empty. It was kind of scary at the time. I didn't know really what to expect at this blockade in the northern provinces near the border of Paraguay.
As someone in this thread mentioned with the airport blockade, to the right of the highway was some flat land under some trees, almost a park, quite nice. Families are playing football, talking, sipping mate, cooking on the parilla, and so on, having a great ol' time. Parked across the road itself are two harvesters (this was one of the farmer's protests against the government's taxing situation with exports) nose-to-nose with a gap large enough for one car, blocked by another small pickup that they were using as a "gate" to open the blockade when "necessary".
And here, I look over at 5 cops sitting by the left side of the road, on the other side of a drainage ditch, sitting on the grass in front of their motorcycles under some shade trees and taking mate. Not a care in the world.
So I get out of my car (my poor wife was almost frantic - she was afraid someone was going to kill "the stupid gringo") and walked up past the trucks in front of us and asked one of the guys who was standing at the blockade what was happening, when they were going to let us go, etc. They all looked at me and laughed! Didn't say a word, literally turned their backs on me.
I walked over to the cops (actually had to jump the damned ditch and one foot landed in water, drawing more laughs from the bozos at the blockade), walked up to them and asked what was going on, telling them I was a foreigner who lived in BA but didn't understand how this worked and just wanted to know how I would get back to BA considering that there is only one freaking road from the north to the south, unless I wanted to backtrack and go through Entre Rios! Most of the cops didn't even respond, just looked away.
There was one woman cop who seemed to take pity on me and explained that these guys were within their rights to block the road - the only reason they, the cops, were there was to make sure no one killed anyone in anger with the situation.
We hit a number of blockades over the 1000 kilometers or so getting back to BA. It delayed us about an extra 5 hours...
That's when I started thinking to myself, and more often as the years with Cristina rolled on, "bienvenido a la Argentina."
So, a rather long-winded story perhaps about why people here can block roads with impunity: because they are allowed to as a "right". the cops are there to make sure no one kills them over their "right".
As someone else mentioned, that's hardly democracy, but too many people don't understand democracy. Here, and in too many places around the world, people seem to think democracy means "I'm going to make my problem yours whether you like it or not, whether actually just or not, whether reasonable or not."
I hope Macri and his administration can help the lawmakers decide to change this situation.
