------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Oct. 17, 2002 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
ARGENTINA: CAPITALIST CRISIS SPURS LEFT ORGANIZATIONS By Alicia Jrapko [Excerpts from a talk at the Sept. 21-22 Workers World Party Conference.] Last March, while in Buenos Aires, I saw a young girl begging for money. The container she was holding was a McDonald's cup. This hated chain throws their leftovers mostly to children. While growing up in Argentina, I was taught that it was different from the rest of Latin America; that Argentina was more like a European country. My country was once the most prosperous country in Latin America, with an abundance of natural resources and an educated and skilled work force, many of them immigrants from Europe. After World War II, Juan Domingo Peron, a bourgeois nationalist, was elected president and Argentina went through a period of rapid industrial expansion and increased social benefits. Significant increases in union membership consolidated the power of the General Confederation of Labor. The Peron regime nationalized large parts of the economy and put up protective trade barriers. Steel and iron industries were built; the manufacture of farm and industrial machinery was subsidized. Argentina made airplanes and ships for its merchant marine. The government bought 70 percent of the nation's railways and the entire trolley system, which had been British-owned. Peron nationalized the U.S.-owned International Telephone and Telegraph. He put limits on the amount of foreign-owned firms' profits, resulting in a dramatic drop in foreign investment. Even though Peron provided working-class reforms, including women's right to vote, he was a loyal defender of capitalism. This was the basis of the myth of Argentina being part of and separated from Latin America, helping to shape its national identity. After Peron's tenure, years of civilian and military governments followed. By the end of the 1960s, the United States prepared a continental plan of neo-liberal policies that changed Argentina's social landscape. During the 1970s, many Latin American leftist organizations, including those in Argentina, followed the example of Cuba and joined the revolutionary currents developing in Africa and Asia. These movements threatened imperialism's plans in Latin America, which the United States was not willing to concede. The United States began covert operations causing economic destabilization. First there was the overthrow of President Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973, followed by bloody military coups in Uruguay in 1975 and in Argentina in 1976. While the U.S.-backed military were torturing and murdering students, workers and cadres of leftist political organizations, imperialist economists implemented free- market policies that devastated domestic industries but rewarded financial speculation. Thirty thousand people paid with their lives. I left Argentina during that time, and many of my college friends disappeared and were killed. Beginning in 1983, civilian governments followed the austerity measures imposed by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Argentina's foreign debt grew to $164 billion. It faced a devalued peso, a shrinking middle class and third-world status. Argentina was forced to sell off everything and every sector of the economy became privatized. Probably the most graphic example of this was the highway between Cordoba and Buenos Aires. A French firm bought the right to collect the tolls. One of the schemes by which Argentina plans to pay loans on which it continues to default is to give away huge areas of land in Patagonia as payment. This concession to foreign banks weakens sovereignty. Last December massive resistance began in response to unemployment over 20 percent, 18 million people living below the poverty line and children dying every day. Huge demonstrations have caused five imperialist-backed presidents to resign. An outgrowth of privatization has been the formation of unemployed workers' organizations known as Piqueteros, whose social program is geared towards workers' control. Part of this movement has dismissed the notion that more IMF loans are a good thing. A significant part of this current shows no confidence in the national bourgeoisie and is willing to struggle on every issue against them. I was able to see a meeting of the Piqueteros, and it was working-class democracy in action. If the Piqueteros and the unions can merge, it will be a pivotal ingredient to the overthrow of the national bourgeoisie and freeing Argentina from imperialist domination. A mass movement is reawakening and reorganizing. There are positive signs of a recovery of the revolutionary movement that could be even greater than the 1970s and could eventually seize state power. This potential is why the IMF and the World Bank have not been able to complete their plans of recolonizing Argentina. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Support the voice of resistance http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
