------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Nov. 28, 2002 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
ARGENTINA CAN'T PAY IMPERIALIST BANKS: CHILDREN STARVE AS GOV'T DEFAULTS ON DEBT By G. Dunkel During the first week of November, four children died of starvation in the northern Argentinean province of Tucuman. This preventable tragedy in what was once a prosperous country sheds light on why rage against capitalism is spreading throughout Latin America. Tucuman was not an isolated case. UNICEF, the UN's fund for children, estimates that 260,000 Argentinean children suffer from malnutrition. During the second week of November, Argentina defaulted on a payment of $805 million due to the World Bank. A survey of the major capitalist newspapers in the English- speaking world--the Washington Post, New York Times, Financial Times of London, the Toronto Globe & Mail--shows that they covered the financial part of the economic catastrophe currently strangling Argentina, but ignored its impact on working and poor people, other than to note that consumption was down because unemployment was up. Some countries in the world have trouble feeding their people because they can't produce enough food. That's not Argentina's problem. It can produce enough to feed eight times its population of 37 million people. Even in the area including the capital of Buenos Aires, where a third of all Argentineans live, conditions are desperate. Silvia Almazan, a representative of a Buenos Aires teachers' union, told the London Observer, "Children are getting weak and hungry. Some are fainting in class and others vomit because they eat too fast on an empty stomach." Staff members at School No. 12 say many children rely on the school for a good meal and appear famished on Mondays after being at home for the weekend. They increasingly are missing school to beg or help their parents hunt for food. Maria del Carmen Morasso, a nutrition adviser for UNICEF Argentina, pointed out that even if children get enough food to survive, they face other problems from food shortages. "We are concerned that children will not recover from this shock," she said, which can produce permanently stunted growth and reduced mental capacity. Argentina's main problem, the root cause of the default and the starvation facing its people, is that it is a developing country within a world capitalist system in which a few imperialist countries with super-banks and giant corporations, including agribusinesses, dominate the world market. Under these circumstances, and at a time when productivity has increased rapidly all over the globe, the Argentines suddenly find that they can no longer sell their products at a profit. HOW U.S. AND EU MONOPOLIZE AGRICULTURE The two main tools governments use to protect their agricultural sector are subsidies and tariffs, which are allowed under the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The WTO, like all the presumably international organizations today, is actually dominated by the major imperialist countries. Because of this, tariffs protect the internal markets of developed areas like the European Union and the U.S. Subsidies allow their producers to sell at prices that countries like Argentina can't match. The sums involved are immense. The U.S., for instance, has said it is pledged to eliminate subsidies, but is actually increasing them, especially to huge corporations like Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill. These "farmers" will receive a $190 billion handout, an 80 percent increase, in subsidies over the next decade. While a comparable estimate for the EU is not available because it has just been expanded and its Common Agricultural Policy is under review, one study showed that each cow in the EU gets a subsidy of $3 a day. Hundreds of millions of people in poor countries live on less than $1 a day. Bhagirath Lal, India's former ambassador to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the predecessor to the WTO, told the New Straits Times of Malaysia on Nov. 15: "The developed countries have retained prohibitively high tariffs, high domestic support (sometimes even enhancing them) and high export subsidy in various forms." Developing countries like Argentina cannot overcome the burden of high tariffs and the high level of support to domestic producers in developed countries. Even if they are allowed under WTO rules to provide subsidies to their producers, they don't have the financial resources needed to overcome the huge sums the U.S. and EU lay out each year. In fact, domestic farmers in developing countries face severe competition from the highly subsidized products of the imperialist countries. ROLE OF IMF AND WORLD BANK Explaining why Argentina defaulted, Cabinet chief Alfredo Atanasof told reporters, "Argentina was not going to accept the policy of savage budget adjustments as a strategy for getting over its problems." Actually, the politicians currently running the country would have accepted the dictates of the IMF if they thought that the people would let them get away with that. They are in office only because a popular eruption last December drove the previous government out of office. They are well aware that a very popular solution to the crisis afflicting Argentina starts with getting rid of all politicians. After it defaulted on somewhere between $90 billion and $141 billion owed to commercial banks, bondholders and other private creditors early this year, Argentina had to rely on the World Bank, which insists that countries follow the strictures of the IMF. The IMF's prescription for Argentina, as with so many other developing countries, was austerity: cut social services, medical care, education and government jobs, along with wholesale privatization, and totally open up the economy to foreign investors; put the peso on a dollar standard and raise interest rates. The government, in going along with this, even confiscated a large chunk of bank deposits last December. And what was all this pain supposed to accomplish? It was supposed to get capitalist exploitation going again. But instead the economy contracted by 12 percent over the past year. Wages dropped by 44 percent, showing which social class is expected to pay for the capitalist crisis. Some 5 million people are now classified as "extremely poor," meaning they regularly do not get enough to eat. Some 14 million are just "poor," meaning they do not make enough to pay their bills--rent, electricity, phone, car loans-- regularly. Close to 200,000 people were dropped from the telephone system in the first three months of 2002. Probably Argentina could have paid the World Bank its $805 million, especially since imports have fallen drastically-- nobody has money to buy anything but the essentials, if that- -but it was politically impossible. In the fiscal year ended June 30, Argentina paid out to the World Bank $786 million more than it received in loans, including $613 million in interest and charges, according to the bank's own figures. With yet another payment due now, and facing its worst economic collapse since the Great Depression, the government decided it couldn't risk the mass anger that would follow another blood-letting. Argentina is the second-largest economy in Latin America, after Brazil. Its people are increasingly taking to the streets out of hunger and anger. The growing turmoil there and elsewhere in Latin America illustrates why U.S. imperialism, despite its determined efforts to use military power to dominate the world, cannot establish a stable Pax Americana on any continent. - 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]>
