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TAKING
THE PESO
Last December, the people of Argentina rose up in fury against
the economic disaster wrought on them by their government, hand
in hand with big business, banks and the International Monetary
Fund (IMF). The world watched on TV as pictures of supermarkets
and food shops being looted showed a country at breaking point.
On the evening of the 19th of December President De la Rúa
appeared on Argentinean TV, refusing to resign and instead imposing
a state of emergency. Within minutes of his broadcast, the people
took to the streets. In Buenos Aires, an estimated million people
left their homes and headed for the main Plaza de Mayo, banging
pots and pans, chanting ‘El estado de sitio, que se lo meten
en el culo’ (the state of emergency, they can stick it up their
arse), and demanding the resignation of De la Rúa and the
whole government. ‘Que se vayan todos!’ (out with them
all!) quickly became the main slogan, and after two days of protest
and repression which left some 35 people dead, President De la Rúa
duly obliged and fled.
Since then, Argentina has been through an astonishing time.TV news
has become a surreal portrait of a country turned upside down –
a Congresswoman’s house is set on fire by a mob outside after
her son shoots a protestor from inside; a group of artists hold
a ‘mierdazo’ – a shit-throwing demo – on the
steps of Congress under the slogan ‘Putting the shit where
it belongs’; farmers bring hundreds of chicks they can’t
afford to feed to the steps of a provincial government house –
when another march, of piqueteros, arrives, they scoop up the chicks
and take them away to eat. Popular assemblies have sprung up in
barrios (neighbourhoods) all over the country, and the unemployed
workers’ movement, the piqueteros (picketers), have stepped
up their road-blocking activities. As these two currents of protest
form tentative links, the loan sharks of the IMF, despised by the
people, are in town again to impose their will on a government desperate
for more ‘assistance’ and still willing to go to any lengths
to get it.
 
Eyewitness
Account...
An eye-witness account of the uprising of the 19th December,
posted on indymedia
“ I was watching television, seeing the lootings and the uprisings
in the country’s interior. Suddenly the president appeared
on the screen, he was talking about differentiating between criminals
and the needy. He spoke quietly, almost elegantly, trying to sound
in charge. He said he had announced today the state of emergency.
I knew that it is unconstitutional in Argentina for the president
to declare a state of emergency, only the congress can do that.
I was disgusted and I turned off the TV.
I started hearing a sound…a very quiet sound, but growing.
I went to the balcony of my apartment and looked out - people on
every balcony banging pots and pans. The sound got louder and louder…
it was a roar, and it wasn’t going to stop. I saw some people
on the corner of the street I live, no more than 10. I put on a
shirt and went down. On every corner I could see people gathering
in small groups. This is a comfortable middle class neighbourhood,
but everybody’s been fucked by what’s going on, and it’s
been going on for far too long. On the corner of the next street
people had started gathering on the middle of the streets. Banging
spoons against pans, waving flags…in a few minutes we were
something like 150 people.
We started walking. Nobody seemed to know where we were going or
what was gonna happen…an hour had gone by since the banging
started and the noise wasn’t stopping, coming from every corner
of the city. As we walked, people were joining us, it was exciting,
almost manic. The feeling of regaining your own power. I looked
back and suddenly this spontaneous demonstration was a couple of
blocks long. I could see people in suits and people in working uniforms.
I could see young girls in nice clothes and senior citizens in old
clothes. I could see the small businessman who is suffering from
higher and higher taxes and it’s about to lose his house from
his bank loans and the young man who has been excluded by the system
and couldn’t get a job for 4 years. Everybody was represented.
It was amazing. People cheered from the balconies, small pieces
of shredded paper falling slowly to the streets…singing, banging,
marching.
When I got to Congress, a couple of thousand people were already
there and I could see more people coming in from every corner. It
felt like a party. The flags waving, the chants, the clapping. A
guy at the top of the steps lit some sort of smoke-flare - pink
smoke all over the place. I looked around, I don’t know why
but I started feeling tense. People kept on coming and we started
marching to the Casa Rosada. Things didn’t feel exciting anymore,
it felt tenser and tenser. I could see some fire on the street ahead
- a small trashcan on fire. I kept on walking. Some people were
quietly singing and clapping but I saw other small fires. I had
entered a column that came from a tougher neighbourhood than mine.
I don’t blame them - they’ve been fucked way harder than
anybody else and hunger breeds anger. A young guy was banging a
stick against a street sign, and this thirtyish guy, skinny and
dressed in really old jeans and shirt, holding a young girl in his
arms, said something to him. The young man looked back, he saw the
columns of people. I could catch this phrase from the skinny guy
“Look at how many we are”. I looked back. I saw and felt
what I felt at the beginning. Everybody was there, everybody was
represented, we were so many.
When I got to Plaza de Mayo a couple of thousand were there and
they kept on coming. People started coming in on cars as well as
marching. Young people, old people, families - the people. I walked
around. Amazed. I was thinking that not many days you go to the
balcony to check the noises coming from the streets and you end
up being a witness to a presidential deposal by social uprising.
Suddenly I was pushed in the back by somebody. When I regained balance
I saw people running away. Somebody was yelling “Sons of bitches”
right next to me. Out of instinct I started running with them. I
ran half a block, stopped and looked back. I saw thousands of people
running.
Somebody passing me said something about the police. I couldn’t
quite understand…my nose started itching. I looked back - in
the plaza, 500 metres back, I could see smoke. People’s eyes,
they were reddening. My throat hurt. I ran. People were going off
in all directions away from the plaza. The smoke got higher and
higher, I took off my shirt and covered my nose and mouth. My eyes
itched. I got pretty far and looked around. This guy in a Miami
Florida T-shirt, absolutely middle class, said he now understood
what the piqueteros felt. I suddenly realized I was crying. I didn’t
know if it was from the tear gases or from impotence and anger.
* Serious street fighting followed, that night and the next day,
and 35 people were killed during the two-day insurrection; 5 were
shot dead by police in and near the Plaza de Mayo, and many others
were killed by police and shop-keepers during lootings.
REBEL ALLIANCE - Wed 17th April @ Hobgoblin, Brighton 7PM
Que Se Vayan Todos (out with all politicians)
The following is a condensed version of eye-witness reports
sent to Schnews from Buenos Aires in January.
Fri, 18 Jan 2002
The streets are emptier in Buenos Aires at night, than I have ever
seen them. In the centre of the city in the daytime it’s as
crowded as ever. Queues for exchange bureaux stretch around blocks.
There’s a feeling in the air of anxiety and barely-surpressed
anger. Walking down the main pedestrian avenue, Florida, I heard
a woman laugh too loud, and everyone jumped and shot her alarmed
stares. ‘Ladrones usureros’ - usurers, thieves is scratched
onto the marble plaque outside the Bank of Boston. The Lloyds and
HSBC banks have put up enormous metal panels over their windows;
in the provinces, banks are being ransacked every day. The TV news
shows protest after protest; today in Santiago del Estero, in the
North, there are barricades in the streets and brutal police repression
of the mostly middle-aged working men who are demanding ‘Dignidad
para el obrero’ - dignity for the workers. In La Quiaca, ,
people are crucifying themselves every day, 5 hours each in the
hot sun, while the children hold signs saying ‘pan y trabajo’
(bread and work) and ‘luchamos contra el hambre’ (our
struggle is against hunger). Yesterday, after a cacerolazo outside
the Supreme Court to demand the resignation of its 9 judges, the
people went to the home of one of the judges and continued there.
Politicians and judges can’t walk the streets in case they
are recognized - a friend was queuing at a bank the other day when
a judge drew up in a car and tried to go in. Everyone started abusing
him - ‘ratta!’ (rat), ‘corrupto’, ‘hijo
de mil putas’ (son of a thousand whores), until he took refuge
in his car and left.
Peoples’ fury at their inability to access their savings, due
to banking restrictions, is worsened by news of 386 trucks stuffed
with cash, which ferried an estimated 26 billion dollars to the
airport after banking restrictions had been imposed, for transfer
to Uruguay and beyond. Given the numerous stories of massive ‘capital
flight’ over the early days of this crisis, and of businesses
and banks which mysteriously took out fortunes before and during
the strict new measures, people think most of their money will never
be seen again. There are many for whom the corralito means nothing
– they have nothing in the bank. Unemployment is over 20%,
and there is hunger in many areas. Pensioners are badly affected.
They have had no pensions since November - millions of workers are
going unpaid. The state medical system, PAMI, has collapsed due
to lack of funds. There is an extreme shortage of insulin and other
common drugs, because they are imported and because many drugs were
withdrawn from the shelves by pharmaceutical companies, to protect
prices. In the outlying, poorest barrios people have arms and use
them, but actual robberies are outstripped by paranoia and vigillanteeism,
born of government disinformation about supposed widespread looting
of homes. Many people are trying to leave the country, reluctantly
but seeing no future in Argentina - when it was reported this week
that Poland was to join the EU, a queue formed immediately at the
Polish embassy. Thousands of the large Chilean population of Mendoza
have gone home, as have many of the Bolivian, Peruvian and Paraguayan
migrant workers. People talk bitterly of institutional corruption
from top to bottom. Now, as well as blaming the IMF, the free market
economy forced on them by Menem (the whole-sale selling off and
privatisation), and the constant flight of capital abroad, people
are beginning to blame themselves. It’s bitter and humiliating.
Mon, 21 Jan 2002
Yesterday we went to the general assembly, the ‘Interbarrial’,
of the almost 100 neighbourhood (‘barrio’) assemblies
of Bs. As. in Parque Centenario, and attended by about 2,000 people.
There were speeches from each barrio, telling of their experiences,
listing actions they planned and putting forward proposals. There
was a lot of talk about the Supreme Court and continuing the protests
against it until all the judges resigned - or to go in and boot
them out themselves. The media was denounced by many speakers for
its lies and distortion; meanwhile, the news that there were TV
crews from Japan, Spain, UK and Finland present at the assembly
was greeted with cheers, while the mention of a US TV crew met with
angry whistles and boos. There were no Argentinian TV crews present
at all. Speakers suggested that anyone who had held a political
post in the last 30 years should be disqualified from ever doing
so again. They denounced the new budget and banking reforms due
to be announced this week as measures that were bound to suit the
‘yanquis’ (USA) - the new economy minister is a veteran
of 20 years’ service to the IMF. It was agreed that the visitors
from the IMF due here on Tuesday should be greeted with a ‘cacerolazo’.
A speaker proposed that ‘we stay in the streets till they have
all gone’ and commented on the importance of showing that it’s
not just the corralito they are against; that they want to change
it all. There was a minute’s applause for those who died during
the repression which followed the first cacerolazos of the 19th
and 20th of December and chants of ‘Policía Federál,
la verguenza nacionál’ - the Federal Police, a national
disgrace. Barrio after barrio made its proposals, and when the voting
through of the main proposals went ahead they were:
- Que se vayan todos (that all politicians should go)
- No to payment of the external debt
- Justice and punishment for the murderers and repressors
- Nationalisation of the bank and the privatised companies
- The Supreme Court - out!
- Return the money to depositors.
Tue, 29 Jan 2002
On Friday night, the 25th January, a national ‘cacerolazo’,
agreed at the assembly, began at 8pm with the sound of pans clanging
from balconies and in the streets and parks of the capital. By 10pm,
the enormous Plaza de Mayo was starting to fill and the noise was
already deafening,. Along the Av. de Mayo a steady stream of people
was pouring into the square; ‘asambleas barriales’ (neighbourhood
assemblies) arriving from the barrios, hundreds of families and
thousands of old people. The rain was coming on and off in the heat,
but everyone acted like they hadn’t noticed as the square filled
with banging, chanting people. Over the rhythm of beaten pans, chants
were constantly breaking out; the favourite chant, sung by nearly
20,000, football-style: ‘Que se vayan todos, que no quede ni
uno solo’ (that they all go, that not a single one remains).
And, jumping and pointing at the President’s Casa Rosada, cut
off from the square by fencing and lines of stony-faced cops, ‘A
minute’s silence for Duhalde, who is dead’. I look at
the faces of the police behind the fence and I think I see fear
and shame; later, I reconsider.
By 11:30pm the rain is pouring down in buckets, but the crowd only
bangs the pots harder and jumps faster, chanting louder, ‘Que
llueve, que llueve, que el pueblo ne se mueve’ (let it rain,
let it rain, the people are staying here). And suddenly, unexpectedly,
almost on the stroke of midnight, the ‘represión’
begins. Motorcycle police appear and begin to fire teargas and rubber
bullets, causing panicked running here and there; as people on their
way home along the Avenida de Mayo approach the wide Avenida 9 de
Julio, a line of cops appears and fires teargas and rubber bullets
from the front and from side-streets. In the Plaza, people taking
shelter from the rain in front of the cathedral are fired upon with
gas and rubber bullets. The demonstration had been noisy but entirely
peaceful - on TV reports, there is just a single image of a youth
throwing a molotov cocktail at lines of police who have already
emptied the square. It is an incomprehensible response in already
volatile times. I hear a report on the radio of a woman of 70, on
the ground badly wounded, her legs full of rubber bullets, and a
young man with two in his head. Back home, we watch on TV as 20
people, under arrest, are forced to lie face down in the rain with
their hands above their heads - ‘It’s just like during
the dictatorship’, someone says. There are still 300 demonstrators
at Congress, completely surrounded by police. They are chanting
and jumping - ‘El que no salta es policía’ (whoever’s
not jumping is police). We see three young men with their arms over
their heads being thrust towards a police bus. Their t-shirts are
pulled over their heads from the back by police and at least one
is bleeding heavily from the head. A policeman in soaked t-shirt
and shorts is directing uniformed officers as they hustle the lads
onto the bus. In the bar someone says - ‘These sons-of-bitches
haven’t even been paid’ (thousands of people have gone
unpaid, some for months). ‘No importa’, says someone else
‘- lo hacen de onda’. (They don’t mind - they do
it for fun).
PS. This morning, tho’ some of the press made the point that
the demo had been entirely peaceful and the police action unprovoked,
most of the TV news, as always, reverted to type and lied. As graffiti
here in the barrio where we are staying says, ‘Nos mean y la
prensa dice q’ llueve’ (they piss on us and the press
says it’s raining).
Payback
Time
Last year, as the country slipped into total crisis and it looked
likely it was going to default on its eternal (sic) debt, IMF conditions
dictated that the government should make massive cuts in public
spending. State workers’ salaries were cut by 13%, as were
state pensions, in yet another round of austerity measures which
helped to push people’s patience right to its limit. Argentina
has paid and paid for its addiction to IMF ‘assistance’,
and it looks as if it will be paying for years, in ways it never
thought possible. The deployment of Argentinean troops to the Gulf
War and to Bosnia are examples of favours called in by the USA,
as is the training of Colombian airforce pilots in Argentina. US
and Latin American troops, commanded and financed in Washington,
have carried out exercises in Argentina without Congress’s
approval, and despite this being in violation of Argentina’s
constitution.
Argentina is about to vote, for the third time, against Cuba’s
human rights record at the UN, this time as a proposer of the motion.
It has promised Washington to ‘work for the liberty of the
Cuban people,’ to the disgust of the Argentinean people and
Fidel Castro, who has yet again called the government ‘yankee
boot-lickers’. Another member of the Cuban government expressed
sympathy for Argentina, locked in to ‘carnal relations’
with the USA, for the way the USA is ‘humiliating and pressurizing’
Argentina while denying it the funds to resolve the situation imposed
by ‘the dogmatic imposition of the neo-liberal model’.
And there’s more to come for Argentina. On January 12th, the
New York Times reported US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld,
as saying the US might be willing to financially assist the Argentinean
government, if they were permitted to install military bases in
Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost tip of the Americas. The governor
of the province has secretly authorised bases, where the US will
be allowed to detonate underground atomic bombs – but only
for ‘peaceful ends’. So that’s alright then.
Silver
Tongued
Buneos Aires - once known as ‘the Paris of Latin America’
has now sunk - along with the rest of Argentina, into what has been
called Latin Americanisation. “It used to be the jewel in the
crown, but now has all the same problems of poverty as the rest
of the continent.” So who’s made us cry for Argentina?
International Monetary Fund, come on down.
Argentina has for the past two and a half decades been the IMF’s
star pupil. It sold off everything, down to its “grandma’s
jewels,” with foreign firms taking over key sectors of the
economy and the utilities. Companies like French multinational Vivendi
Universal, which in 1995 bought most of the water system before
sacking staff and raising prices, up 400 % in some areas. Or the
Spanish oil company Repsol, which snapped up the state-owned YPF,
sacked thousands of workers and turned the only oil company in the
world not making a profit, into a money-spinner estimated to have
taken $60 billion out of the country. Or the Spanish Telefónica,
which bought up most of the privatised telephone system for a bargain
basement price, then whacked up the prices to way above those paid
anywhere else in the world and made a tidy profit of $2 billion
in its first year.
Argentina obediently deregulated its markets and tried to make
its workforce more ‘flexible’ (meaning you work longer
for less pay.) It has jumped through all the IMF hoops, with promises
of prosperity at the end of them, yet now finds itself with a $150
billion dollar foreign debt, with 30% of its GDP going every year
to pay off interest payments alone before December, and is still
paying part of it despite having defaulted.
Loan
Sharks
The first IMF loans were to the military junta in 1976 and since
then, this ‘debt’ has been paid off by the Argentinean
people many times over – and not just in pesos. Argentineans
used to call their country the bread-basket of the world, and say
that in a country bursting with natural resources and a huge agricultural
sector, nobody ever went hungry. But now 40% of the people live
below the poverty line and up to a hundred die every day from poverty-related
illness, with food parcels and medicines now arriving from Spain
and neighbouring Brazil.
In a ruling two years, ago a federal judge summed it up. “Since
1976 our country has been put under the rule of foreign creditors
and under the supervision of the IMF by means of a vulgar and offensive
economic policy that forced Argentina down on its knees in order
to benefit national and foreign private firms.”
Despite the economy being in free-fall, two documents leaked to
investigative journalist Greg Palast show that, for the deluded
economists at the IMF, what the country really needed to get it
back on its feet was even more structural adjustment! So it’s
more cuts for state pensions, salaries, unemployment benefits, education
and health, all of this ensuring that the burden of this so called
‘adjustment’ falls, as ever, on those who can least afford
it.
Anoop Singh, leader of the IMF delegation currently in the country,
admitted it was “the worst economic crisis any country has
had.” Then promptly listed a new set of demands Argentina must
implement immediately before they even get to see how much ‘aid’
they’ll receive. In a veiled threat he commented, “without
an IMF agreement, it will be very difficult for Argentina to recover.”
Since 1983 there have been nine IMF stabilisation plans in Argentina,
‘helping’ the country out.
But it’s not just the IMF that wants more adjustment. Other
financial institutions are still licking their loan shark lips,
saying Argentina’s crisis should not be seen as an obstacle
but as an opportunity because, the reasoning goes, the country is
so desperate for cash it will do whatever the IMF wants. “During
a crisis is when . . . Congress is most receptive,” explained
Winston Fritsch, chairman of Dresdner Bank AG’s Brazil. Meanwhile,
a couple of Massachusetts Institute of Technology economists writing
in the Financial Times, go even further. “It’s time to
get radical…(Argentina) must temporarily surrender its sovereignty
on all financial issues . . . and give up much of its monetary,
fiscal, regulatory and asset-management sovereignty for an extended
period, say five years.”
When Greg Palast interviewed the former chief economist, Joe Stiglitz
- fired by the World Bank for questioning its economic wisdom –
Stiglitz told him about ‘IMF riots’ “Everywhere we
go, every country we end up meddling in, we destroy their economy
and they end up in flames.” He went on to tell Palast that
the IMF even plan for riots, because as the people revolt, capital
drains out of the country (helped by IMF inspired abolition of currency
controls) and whoever’s left in charge has to go begging back
to the IMF for more money. They don’t mind handing some out,
as long as the country agrees to even more demands, and they turn
a blind eye as politicians fill their pockets in return for their
compliance.
On Tuesday the IMF did just that, agreeing to give Argentina $5
billion of its promised, frozen $22 billion loan programme. And
where will that money go? To where it’s really needed –
paying the interest on the debt. The debt gets bigger, the cuts
get harsher – and the money doesn’t even have to leave
Washington. The people of Argentina know the IMF aren’t there
to help them. The only people the IMF dish out their dollars to
are those who in their view really need it; the banks and big business,
the rich and the powerful. For them, the Argentina experiment has
been a stunning success – Shame about the people though, eh?
* Greg Palast’s ‘The Best Democracy Money Can Buy’
(Pluto Press, 2002) www.gregpalast.com
* www.corpwatch.org
* www.50years.org
Money For Sale
The banking restrictions, known as the corralito (meaning the corralling
or ring-fencing of bank deposits), was imposed at the beginning
of December, when nervous savers, feeling disaster approach, started
to withdraw their money from the banks. Since then, its rules have
changed almost daily, allowing a certain amount to be withdrawn
each month, but also forcibly converting most savings, 80% of which
had been deposited in dollars for security (!) into pesos at extremely
unfavourable rates. Those who insisted on keeping their deposits
- which exist on paper only now as the money is no longer in the
country - in dollars, have been forced to accept bonds which may
or may not be repaid in the next year or so, and almost certainly
not in dollars. And those with pesos can only watch as the peso
falls from one-to-one with the dollar, where it had been artificially
pegged for eleven years, to a low of 4 a few weeks ago. The hated
Supreme Court, in a manoeuvre calculated to save its own skin from
moves in Congress to impeach them and from the angry threats of
the people to go in and kick them out, decreed the corralito unconstitutional
on the 1st of February. Some savers laid down their pots and pans
to queue at the court for individual court orders to their banks
to return their deposits, but banks have generally ignored these.
Those with a lot of money or influence routinely skip out of the
corralito with their money, either on the nod from their banks or
through clever dealings with shares in Argentinean companies on
the New York stock exchange.
It’s a different story for businesses, which have been generously
compensated by the (bankrupt) state for the peso-fication of their
debts in dollars. Plans for the peso-fication, at one-to-one despite
the plummeting peso, of debts contracted in dollars was intended
to help individuals with debts like mortgages, who could never dream
of repaying them in the devalued peso, and was going to apply only
to debts of less than $100,000. But an investigation by reporters
on the TV news show ‘Telenoche Investiga’, who were all
sacked and their programme never broadcast, uncovered the truth
about how the debts of big business came to be included in the rescue
plan. On the 12th January, heads of large Argentinean corporations
held a secret meeting with President Duhalde and three other members
of the cabinet. They were told by the president that it might be
possible for their massive debts to also benefit from conversion
at one to one, if they were willing to make a ‘contribution’.
Even the millionaire CEOs were taken aback at the size of the bribe
he was soliciting – it was to be $500 million dollars, in dollars
and in cash. The reporter was told that the money was to be divided
between members of Congress and the Senate ($200 million) who would
have to approve it, $175 million for Mendiguren, Lenicov and Capitanich,
the cabinet members present that day, and a tidy $125 million for
Duhalde. One empresario refused and is now under investigation by
the DGI (General Tax Direcorate). The overall saving to businesses
is estimated to be in the region of $20-30 billion dollars (YPF-Repsol
oil, for example, has been able to halve its $310 million debt);
the money will have to come from more cuts in public spending.
Bourgeois
Block
An email to Schnews describes bizarre scenes as the ‘bourgeois
block’, gangs of enraged savers denied access to their money,
strikes again:
“Tearing off the metal cladding, they invaded the bank lobbies
and in full sight of the police, without a mask or black hoody to
be seen, proceeded to destroy the cash machines. Women with perms,
golden bracelets and high heels kicked at the windows, lipstick
grins spreading as they watched the glass shatter. Every armoured
security van the mob of 300 people came across was surrounded. Men
in business suits proceeded to unscrew the wheel-nuts, while others
prised open the bonnets, tearing out wires from the engines. Soccer
mums jumped up and down on top of vans, smashing anything that could
be broken, wing-mirrors, lights, number plates...”
The former middle class are 'avit it on the street - pissed off
with the banks cos they've lost their money.
PIQUETE
Y CACEROLA, LA LUCHA ES UNA SOLA
The two biggest types of organised resistance in Argentina are
the popular assemblies and the piqueteros, the unemployed workers’
movement which takes its name (picketers) from their trademark tactic
of blocking roads.
The
Piqueteros
Rising unemployment in Argentina over the last few years has created
the world’s largest concentration of unemployed industrial
workers. Many piqueteros are experienced workplace and union activists.
They use the tactic of blocking roads as a way of disrupting production,
setting up camp right on the asphalt, putting up tents and cooking
food. Women and children are a fundamental part of the movement,
and always present. The piqueteros have stepped up their activities
in the last few months, paralysing the capital a number of times,
most recently when the latest IMF delegation arrived to ‘negotiate’.
In February they blockaded oil refineries and depots throughout
the country, demanding 50,000 jobs; new, shorter shifts to employ
more workers; no petrol price rises and the re-nationalisation of
the oil industry and all the privatised companies. They also usually
demand food packages, the release of political prisoners, unemployment
benefits and ‘work plans’ – a type of workfare scheme
worth a meagre 120 pesos a month. An email which arrived at Schnews
last week from a British activist in Buenos Aires:
“There’s loads of different piquetero organisations,
and a lot of divisions, partly caused by old left parties. The CCC
is the largest, and the most reformist [despite the name –
Classist and Combative Current] - they are the ones who concentrate
on demands for proper social security payments. Far more militant
are independent organisations such as CTA Anibal Verón, and
Movimiento Teresa Rodrigues (both named after piqueteros murdered
by cops during blockades), and the MTD (Unemployed Workers Movement).
They see their struggle as a Latin American one, and identify with
the anti-capitalist movement. They are active, highly politicised
people, and probably number 10,000.”
Highway blockaded by the 'piqueteros' on outskirts of Buenos
Aires
Repression
Despite the unprecedented changes happening at street level, there’s
little new in mainstream politics and government. President Duhalde
is an old political hand, and well known for corruption during his
previous years in office. In his nine years as governor of Buenos
Aires, he amassed support, contacts and experience that now stand
him in good stead, including the use of violent thugs (‘patoteros’),
both paid and party political. At his swearing-in as president,
hundreds of his supporters, said to have been paid to come, battled
outside and inside Congress with protestors, and there are even
rumours that some of the looters who precipitated the downfall of
President De la Rúa were paid by the Peronist party. Duhalde
has ordered the repression of at least one cacerolazo, on the 25th
January, since taking power, and is now making use of the thugs
of his party apparatus (officially called the Justicialist Party,
aka Peronism) to intimidate a population which still clearly remembers
the fearsome repression, torture and murder of the military dictatorship
(1976-1983), when 30,000 people ‘disappeared’. In the
Buenos Aires barrio of Merlo a few weeks ago, the assembly was attacked
one assembly has even been shot at. In the barrio of Avellaneda
last Sunday the assembly, gathered to protest at corruption in the
local administration, was prevented from reaching their destination
by a gang of 300 thugs sent by the local municipal leader. Last
Tuesday during one of the regular savers’ protests at the Bank
of Boston, a woman was beaten to the ground, kicked and handcuffed
and had teargas sprayed in her eyes by police, and many of the other
protestors were beaten and arrested.
Popular
Assemblies
Popular assemblies, also known as neighbourhood (barrio) assemblies,
have mushroomed in Argentina since December. A recent survey by
the newspaper Página 12 found that 33% of those questioned
in the capital had participated in them. Assemblies are held on
street corners or public spaces, and operate in the most transparent
way, with what they call a ‘horizontal’ structure and
no leaders or representatives. Born of the first cacerolazos, and
the fertile coming together of neighbours on the streets in protest,
the assemblies discuss and vote on issues ranging from non-payment
of the external debt to the defence of local families in danger
of eviction for non-payment of rent. They have organised collective
food-buying, soup kitchens, support for local hospitals and schools
and even alternative forms of healthcare. Every Sunday, all the
Buenos Aires assemblies meet in Parque Centenario for the Interbarrial
– the inter-neighbourhood mass assembly. Certain sections of
mainstream politics are attempting to participate in or co-opt the
assemblies - like one proposal made in Congress that the assemblies
be given their own space and resources at the Congress building
- but these proposals were vehemently rejected. Pressure from left-wing
parties such as the Partido Obrero (workers’ party), has been
harder to resist. At an Interbarrial in Centenario, a motion was
put that “the party militants stop coming along to assemblies
to lay down party lines - that they take the assembly’s position
back to their parties instead.” The sovereignty of each local
assembly has been reiterated again and again at the Interbarrial
and motions voted there, based on proposals from each assembly,
are taken back to local assemblies to be ratified. Despite this,
a controversial proposal for a Constituent Assembly – an assembly
of delegates - which many felt was an unacceptable move back towards
representative politics, was voted through at the Interbarrial of
March 17th.
Despite their differences, an important similarity is that both
organise outside the sphere of work. The assemblies’ refusal
to negotiate with the government, under the slogan ‘Que se
vayan todos’ – out with all politicians – clashed
with some sections of the piqueteros. Since the economy collapsed
at the end of last year, the total of Argentineans living in poverty
has risen to some 14 million (pop. 36 million), and the middle class
has been destroyed. The piqueteros’ struggle has been going
on for years with little support from the wider public; those who
participate in the cacerolazos and at bank protests are accused
of having acted only when their own pockets were finally rifled.
Despite these contradictions everyone sees the need to link their
struggles together; and many of the piqueteros’ demands, which
seemed radical just a few months ago (non-payment of the national
debt, for example) have become the battle cries of the newly-impoverished
middle class too. On the 27th February, a march of some 5,000 piqueteros
from the poor Buenos Aires suburb of La Matanza was met by a number
of local assemblies, who provided breakfasts and then joined the
march to the Plaza de Mayo. The piqueteros were also cheered along
the route by the people of Buenos Aires, who gave out food and drink
with some even banging their pots and pans. A new slogan was born
– ‘Piquete y cacerola, la lucha es una sola’ (pickets
and pot-bangers, the struggle is one). Piquetero demands include
things like the return of savers’ deposits, while motions at
popular assemblies almost always include support for the piqueteros,
and for occupied factories under workers’ control.
A proposal is voted through at the 'interbarrial' assembly in
[Parque Centenario] Buenos Aires.
Check
Out...
www.argentinaarde.org.ar
(should be online soon)
www.buenosairesherald.com
(English language daily newspaper)
http://.argentina.linefeed.org
(indymedia Argentina, almost all in Spanish)
www.rebelion.org (in Spanish)
http://usuarios.lycos.es/pimientanegra/index.htm
(Mexican site, in Spanish)
www.data54.com (excellent Argentinean
current affairs magazine, in Spanish)
www.zmag.org/argentina_watch.htm
And
Finally...
From the first night of the uprising, the Argentinian people have
shown utter contempt for politicians, summed up in the slogan ‘Que
se vayan todos’ – out with all politicians. Not that this
disillusionment with representative politics is new. In last Octobers
general elections, more than 40% of the (compulsory) votes were
blank or spoiled - the majority going to a cartoon character, Clemente
the cat politician, who has no hands so he cannot steal! So while
politicians in the West denounce their own demonstrators as either
foolish, indulgent or violent for having the cheek to fight for
a better world, the mass media focuses on protests in Seattle and
Genoa, while burying news of general strikes and mass protests in
countries like Argentina. But we know that it will only be people
around the world working together and linking up with international
struggles, that can defeat capitalism. As one of the speakers at
last year’s National Assembly of piqueteros, put it, “Argentina
is part of a world-wide crisis – all over the world piqueteros
are arising. And last week, 300,000 piqueteros invaded the city
of Genoa to say ‘no’ to world-wide imperialism.”
Others have taken up the slogan ‘Todos Somos Argentinos’
– ‘We Are All Argentineans’ –because people
know that what is happening now in Argentina will be happening in
a country near you soon if the IMF and their big business mates
carry on destroying the planet in their never ending search for
profit. Unless of course, we stop ‘em.
Disclaimer
SchNEWS warns all readers we’re ‘avin’ a week
off then back again with more beefy stories - unless we break our
little toe. Honest.
Cor-blimley-they’re-practically-giving-them-away
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