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Eyewitness Accounts

The Presidential Palace - The Casa Rosada - on the central Plaza de Mayo, 20th December

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.

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).