From: "Stasi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Peoples War] Argentina: The People Roared A Warning - PCR
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Revolutionary Communist Party Of Argentina
http://www.pcr-arg.com.ar/
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The people roared a warning.
====================
Argentinazo
by Ricardo Fierro
-- translation by D. Stitt ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
A gigantic national peoples uprising, a new 17th of
October, an Argentinazo [nationwide uprising] , shook
Argentina to its foundations, roaring out a warning to
the government of hunger, surrender and murder of De
la R�a and Cavallo, opening up a new political
situation .
Immense masses, from Jujuy to Tierra del Fuego, in
the capitals of the provinces, in the Porte�azo
[capital district?], in thousands of towns, in the
countryside, erupted in battle in a national peoples
uprising carried out by millions of people.
The Argentinazo will color everything that is to
come. As happened in our country after each great
popular storm: nothing will be the same as it was
before. Like an immense earthquake, it leaves
fractures, fissures and cracks in all the structures
of the Argentine society. It opens, consequently, a
period of hard, aggravated fighting between the
popular forces that will struggle to complete their
work, doing away with those structures of dependency
and oppression, giving birth to a new Argentina; and
the dominant classes that will not hold back on
efforts to recycle and to prop up the old rotted
edifice of hunger, handing over the keys [to
foreigners] and national humiliation.
A Long Time and a Lot of Blood
In 1996, in an act made in the trade union Luz y
Fuerza [Light and Power] of C�rdoba, Otto Vargas,
Secretary General of the PCR, raised the slogan of
"Argenti-na-zo". It raised the idea that a single
great national peoples uprising could end not only the
government of Menem but also the policy of hunger and
surrender.
When Menem tried his re-re-election he advanced down
that road along with the Federal Protest March and
strike activists, who came to be satisfied with a
coordinating center, the Mesa de Enlace [Liason
Roundtable], integrating the rebellious CGT, the CTA
and CCC (to which other social organizations were
integrated). He said to us, then, that that was the
way he was going to cover the people with blood, to
advance by the electoral way, and most of those forces
rolled over for Duhalde, towards the Alliance, or to
left electoral fronts, in a process that ended with
the triumph of De la R�a.
The reformist forces made a truce during long
periods. A situation was created in which the
Argentinazo was possible when Lopez Murphy returned,
but as soon as the "bulldog" fell those forces
returned to their truce. As a result of those truces,
in those four years, hundreds of thousands of jobs
were lost, poverty overflowed in the homes of the
workers and bankruptcy in those of the middle classes
in the cities and the countryside. A lot of time and
many lives were lost among the impoverished people,
mainly the young and the elderly.
Ripe plums
It was said that a Argentinazo without a
"coordinating center" was not possible and without a
political force (or a "leader") that organized it and
directed it. An "alternative" force some said, a
"national" one said others, and a "workers" [force]
for some sectors. But it did not happen like that. The
Argentinazo took place without waiting for them, just
as it had occurred in innumerable previous peoples
uprisings.
When the economic crisis worsened, the De la Rua
government took to its heart the poltics of [creating]
hunger and paying the external debt. It opened itself
then, again, to the possibility of an Argentinazo.
The political process followed the logic of the
facts, not the logic of those who do not think that a
single politico-social outbreak can take place by
rising up from below. Those who think thus despise to
the masses as "slow", and consider that the fights of
the masses against the policy of the government are
merely "social". They despise the spontaneity of the
masses, not knowing that that spontaneity is paid for
by many decades of social and political struggle. They
accuse the masses of being "slow" to justify their
reformist policy, electioneering in many cases; and to
maintain the thesis of a long ebb tide of the movement
that, at the most, could "resist" the policies of its
enemies.
Ten days
The unemployed people detonated the Argentinazo on
the 13th of December, summoned by the piquetera
[strike picket?] Assembly. Soon the labor movement
occupied the center of the politics with active
strikes on Thursday the 14th. From those days the
fight did not pause. Very ample sectors erupted into
combat, from the small and medium industralists of the
footwear industry to the nationalistic military,
passing through the pensioners and the middle classes
expropriated by the bank freeze. From Jujuy to
Patagonia, from Buenos Aires to Mendoza, the country
boiled in blockades of streets and roads, and
demonstrations.
The Congress, with a Peronist majority, convened
itself. It countermanded the law of "superpowers" and
the restrictions on pension funds. For the poorest
hunger broke out again when the government closed the
scholastic dining rooms and cut funds for food and
work plans. Those masses went to ask for food at the
supermarkets - which had gained fortunes in these
years - and when denied it, the lootings began.
The government worked to isolate to the poor masses
from the middle sectors. To do it, they unified the
means of information in agreement with the owners.
They began to operate, in addition, the groups of
provocation organized by Coti Nosiglia and Becerra
(whose actions were transmitted by those means). De la
R�a, in addition, even accepted the resignation of
Cavallo (whom he supported until the end, hiding him
in the Courthouse of the Casa Rosada [presidential
palace], from where they fled together in a
helicopter).
De la R�a summoned the military leaders. In two
meetings, he requested that they send out the troops
to repress the uprising. The Army was against it, and
the leaders of the three forces demanded, as a
condition to act, a law be signed by the president,
ministers, deputies and senators. In the units [of the
armed forces] deliberation became general, and among
the absolute majority the decision was not to support
the repression, which had to be reflected in the
position of the military leaders.
De la R�a pronounced his last speech, declaring the
state of siege. They supported Menem, Duhalde and
Ruckauf. The answer was immediate: hundreds of
thousands of people, across the width and breadth of
the country, erupted in "cacerolazo" [pot-banging or
'uprising of the pots and pans'] . The Federal Capital
exploded in a Porte�azo [uprising of the Port, the
capital]. Those immense masses repudiated the state of
siege and detonated the democratic question; and they,
without factions, expressing all their disgust with
the bourgeois policy and politicians, joined with
those rejecting hunger to deliver a gigantic
Argentinazo.
De la R�a ordered the head of the Federal Police to
evacuate the center of the Capital at any cost.
Ruckauf and Reutemann, among others, also ordered use
of the "iron fist ". The repression ordered by Ruckauf
was savage and facist, in La Matanza and other zones
of Greater Buenos Aires. The murderous repression
brought thirty victims. The people saw the televised
images of the most ferocious repression. Thousands and
thousands of young people turned out, then, to the
combat, showing an enormous anger and will. The
students, especially those of the CEPA and the MUS,
and the organized motoqueros [? motorbikers], played a
great role in the battle of Plaza de Mayo.
Only when the bullets and gas of the police were done
did De laR�a sign his resignation. Nevertheless, still
the "banditas" [bandits] of Nosiglia and Becerra went
around in trucks, scattering rumors that "the 'ordas'
are coming to sack our houses". But they got kicked in
the butt: the people organized themselves in groups
for armed self-defense in numerous districts, vowing
in many assemblies not to call to the police, whom
they considered a threat equal to or worse than the
"ordas".
From Puerta to "Adolfo"
Assuming the presidency temporarily was Ramon Puerta,
first vice-president of the Senate. A man of Peronism,
closely bound to the Banco Macro, that is to say, to
the same financial group with which Colombo, Nosiglia,
Santib��ez and other personages of the De la Rua-ist
group work.
There was no demonstration of joy by the people.
Puerta (it is good to remember this) returned to
impose the state of siege and he did not do anything
to stop the handover to him of the murderous
repression; he requested that Colombo "help him", and
he maintained ministers like Jaunarena and Rodriguez
Giavarini. He confessed that it had been requested of
him by De la R�a to not resign. The fight followed.
With that image of continuity, Puerta was at the
Legislative Assembly for a minimal amount of time.
Menem and Duhalde were practically out of play.
In a meeting in San Luis, the Peronist governors
reached an agreement: Adolph Rodriguez Saa is
president for 90 days, presidential elections on the
3rd of March, with the system of the ley de lemas [?
law of slogans] that allows them to dissolve the
internal structures of the PJ [Partido Justiciala, the
Peronist party]. This position prevailed, by 30
votes, with the support of the cavallismo [Cavallo
supporters?] and the busismo [?], in the Legislative
Assembly.
Rodriguez Saa announced suspension of payment on the
external debt during a period and the maintenance of
convertibility until to the issuance of a bond. With
this, he said, one would finance a food plan, the
creation million jobs and the maintenance of social
[security] plans.
With the country robbed by De la R�a and Cavallo
(they left little more than 3,000 million [pesos] in
the reserves), with explosion of the economic and
social crises, with the imperialistic centers and the
local dominant classes tightening their grip, the key
is in the continuity of the popular struggle to
guarantee the plan of emergency with measures like
those raised by the PCR; and in the advancement of
popular unity in the peoples assemblies, open and
multisectorial town halls that are the base of popular
power.
The limits
The Argentinazo opened up a new situation. If more
could not be more advanced, that is for several
reasons.
In the first place, because the labor movement
arrived divided, and mainly directed by forces that in
the decisive days of 19 and 20, such as the rebellious
CGT as the CTA, demobilized their organizations. Soon,
"the rebellious" CGT and the one of Daer, called for a
delay in the strike on the 21st, when it had already
left to go to the Legislative Assembly. They acted
like the directors of the CGT of 1945, that called a
strike... for the 18th, when the people had already
carried out an uprising on the 17th. This new
experience reframes the necessity to recover para el
clasismo [? the class essence of?] the unions,
particularly the Bodies of Delegates, who are
fundamental instruments to unite, to mobilize and to
direct the working class.
Secondly, there was no coordinating center. How could
it exist if the majority of the leaders of the popular
forces, even some of whom say they are of the left,
rejected the way of the Argentinazo, deluded by one of
the elections. They did not even wake up after being
slapped in the face during the previous elections,
when the majority of the masses, half of the voting
register, voted null, blank or abstained; and then
they were "surprised" when those masses erupted in the
Argentinazo and expressed in the streets all thier
accumulated hatred of the political regime. Patricio
Etchegaray was hoisted on his own petard on Thursday
20th, at 10 in the morning, when he was booed in Plaza
de Mayo for the second time (it had already happened
to him in the Congress) to the shouts of: "Send them
all away, so not a single one is left!."
Thirdly, as we anticipated, the Argentinazo impacted
the situation in the Armed Forces. The fact that they
remained neutralized (in which the resurgence of the
nationalistic current played a role), rejecting the
pressures of the government to add their foces to the
repression, allowed the masses to advance to point
that they did. And the fact that the patriotic sectors
-- by the correlation of forces -- did not join in
with the people, marked the limits of where this one
could advance.
In fourth place, it showed the necessity of the
fortification of the combative class forces, of the
anti-imperialist currents and anti-landowners, the
patriotic and democratic sectors, the unique front of
the popular forces, and the growth of the vanguard
party of the working class, the PCR. The Argentinazo,
in which these forces have played a great role, and
for whom we have been fighting since 1996, is what
creates the extraordinary conditions for these
advances.
Lessons
The Argentinazo opened a new situation. In this
sense, the ten days from the 13th to the 22nd of
December were the first round. Now, the second round
has begun.
There is a new government to whom the masses have not
given any blank check. As several listeners have said
who communicated with radios: "We still have the pots
and pan, we have them in our hands.".
Facilitated by the "law of slogans", two great fronts
for the elections of the 3rd of March are prepared.
One around Peronism, to which they will try to bring
closer "rightist" and "leftist" sectors that really
(except for changes impossible to anticipate today)
will serve the game as the "starring governors":
Ruckauf, De la Sota and Reutemann.
Another one is a new attempt at a "cross-sectional
front", for the candidacy of Elisa Carri�, to which
will go probably part of the Polo Social [Social
Pole],
sectors of radicalism [Radical Civic Union party]
(Storani, Terragno) and the rest of the Frepaso led by
Ibarra. What will Izquierda Unida do?
But the Argentinazo has left everything all scrambled
up. Again, as already happened with the previous
elections, there are some that think that the
derailment by the Argentinazo of electoral campaigns
can be put back on a track even though most of the
candidates cannot step foot in a popular district;
they are "media-made" candidates in a country in which
the mass media are in the hands of the same groups
that handled the country with Menem and De la R�a.
The ten days of battle, the two heroic days of the
19th and 20th, have taught the working class and the
people, who have warmed up to their vanguard, more
than in many years reformist and electoral struggle.
--Cover story from Hoy: Servir al Pueblo ,
semanario del Comunismo Revolucionario de Argentina,
edicion extra (Today: Serve the People, weekly
magazine of Argentine Revolutionary Communism, special
edition) December, 2001
-- Picture of magazine cover:
http://www.pcr-arg.com.ar/Imagenes/Tapa.jpg
-- Original text (in Spanish):
http://www.pcr-arg.com.ar/hoy/Argentinazo.htm
-- PCR website: http://www.pcr-arg.com.ar/
=====
What's Left in the USA:
http://people.ne.mediaone.net/lexdave/WhatsLeft.html
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