Met Vincente a few months ago. A Marxist of the Old School.
Which I mean respectfully!
Michael Pugliee
Vicente Balvanera <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Add to People Section
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],
laborpartypraxis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Arg_Solid] Re: [BRC-DISC] Argentina off the hook
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Let me add to the brother's excellent piece on Argentina, an
excerpt from a
letter from a comrade (cadre of the Partido Obrero) participating
in the s
truggle at this very moment [Spanish first, then English translation]:
Lo que paso aca lo caracterizamos de revolucionario.Estoy completamente
asombrada e impactada. Muchos muertos, mas de 28 por ahora( mas
que en el
cordobazo!, me parece)pero un crecimiento en la conciencia de
las masas
inigualable. Las asambleas barriales( por ahora) siguen.Hoy hay
un plenario
de las organizaciones piqueteras combativas, las que estuvieron
en las
calles en el derrocamiento del gobierno, para impulsar mas que
nunca la
tercer Asamblea Nacional, para convertirla en EL organo de doble
poder, de
una vez por todas.Digo combativas, porque la CCC ya no tiene
ningun sentido
..
En las calles estos dias no se vio ni un cartel, ni bandera,
ni consigna ,
ni gente de esa organizacion. Ellos que se la pasaban pidiendo
el
argentinazo, no fueron a la marcha conjunta de la izquierda y
los piquetero
s
el dia jueves pasado, porque habia estado de sitio!!!!Los luchadores
se
quedan en casa porque el gobierno mas debil que se recuerde decreta
estado
de sitio!!!!!
Y la CTA directamente se liquido con la consulta popular dos
dias antes de
esta revolucion. Derrocamos al gobierno. Queda expuesta la division
de la
burguesia en tanta les ha costado un monton designar sucesor.
Finalmente es
Rodriguez Saa, de San Luis, figura de segunda linea, no presidenciable,
con
su escandalo a cuestas. No se si te acordas de una vez que lo
habian
secuestrado y que habia sido unescandalo sexual. Seguramente
mafias de
prostitucion y drogas.Elecciones en marzo.
Podes creer que el PC pide en una asamblea anteayer, en el barrio,
votar po
r
elecciones anticipadas? Ya es directamente para escupirlos.
Es la primera vez que un gobierno cae por la mvilizacion y no
por decision
de la burguesia. Ese punto es central.Ya los medios de comunicacion
estan
desvirtuando todo pero la experiencia de los que salieron la
madrugada del
miercoles y vieron la represion y la respiraron, y sintieron
la violencia
del regimen, que De La Rua no era " solo lento y aburrido", como
se lo
presentaba, eso no se pierde. Y siguio el jueves, con mucha mas
represion,
se gastaron un arsenal entero.Mataron 8 en Capital, en las manifestaciones
de todo el dia.
We characterize what is happening here as revolutionary. I am
completely ov
erwhelmed and impacted. Many deaths, more than 28 as of now (more
than in t
he [1968] Cordobazo [uprising] I believe) but an unsurpassed
leap in consci
ousness of the masses.
The barrio assemblies (for now) continue. Today there is a plenary
of the c
ombative piquetero organizations, those which were in the streets
and which
overthrew the government, to impulse more than ever the third
National Ass
embly [of Piqueteros, organization of potential dual power],
to convert it
into THE organ of dual power, once and for all.
I say combative, since the CCC [reformist, "maoist" stalinist
mass movement
of unemployed supported by dispersed morenoists] has collapsed.
In the streets these days, not one sign, not one flag, not one
slogan, or p
eople of that organization. Those who have been calling for the
"argentinaz
o" refused to go to the march of the left and the piqueteros
[this sparked
off the rebellion on Thursday] because there was a state of siege!!!
The great strugglers stayed at home because the weakest government
of which
there is memory decreed the state of siege!!!
And the CTA directly liquidated itself with the so-called "popular
referend
um" [reformist, bureacratic attempt to lead the people down the
garden path
with a democratizing attempt to hold a referendum, asking the
people wheth
er they like to be poor or not] two days before this revolution!
We overthrew the government. The division of the bourgeoisie
is exposed thr
ough the difficulties it has had to designate a successor.
Finally, the choice is Rodriguez Saa, of San Luis, a second-rate
figure, no
n-presidential, with a sex scandal under his belt.
I don't know if you remember once they had kidnapped him, and
at the heart
of it was a sex scandal. Surely having to do with mafias of prostitution
an
d drugs. Elections in March.
Can you believe that the [Stalinist] Communist Party, in an assembly
in the
barrio the other day, called for anticipated elections??? Really,
the only
thing you can do is spit in their face.
It is the first time that a government has fallen through mobilization
and
not through decision of the bourgeoisie.
That is the central point. The media is already trying to disvirtue
everything, but the experience of all who came out at dawn on
Wednesday and
saw the repression and breathed it, and felt the violence of
the regime, t
hat De la Rua was not "just slow and boring", as they present
him in the me
dia, that they can never take away, is never lost. And it continued
Thursda
y, with much more repression, they used up a whole arsenal on
us. They murd
ered 8 in the Capital, in the demonstrations, all during the
day.
Posted by Vicente Balvanera
please re-distribute
meeting of Argentina Solidarity Committee
Sunday, December 23
Wilshire 1324, Suite 202
Phone: (323) 219-5152
----- Original Message -----
From: John A Imani
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: laborpartypraxis
Sent: Friday, December 21, 2001 21:00
Subject: Re: [BRC-DISC] Argentina off the hook
Comrades,
<>
I don't know who the brother, Jaquero, is that Comrade Charles
Brown forw
arded the posting from below. I do know that I am in complete
agreement wi
th that assessment. Capitalism, suffering from a precipitous
world-wide de
cline in the rate (and now amount) of profit can ill-afford an
Argentine de
fault.
The potential revolutionary situation there, engendered by
a class-consci
ous workforce rebelling against an attempted IMF imposed structural
'reform
' (i.e. an attempt to make workers pay for capitalism's failings),
carried
out by their lackeys, headed by the ousted De la Rua and Cavallo,
now faces
assault from national bourgeois would-be saviors, the Peronistas.
And yet
, the comrade is correct when he says that
<<...reformists of various stripes have become increasingly
identified wi
th and pliant tools of neoliberal imperialist policies.>>
and
<>
Yet, the lesson is that unless the workers move towards total
embrace of
arming themselves then the 'Chilean solution' awaits and there
will be a sl
aughter beginning with the 'Left' and the imposition of a blatantly
facist
regime.
In a posting previously forwarded (Argentina: Call for working
class revo
lutionary organs of power)
The "Proposal from the Revolutionary Socialist League to the
Coordinatinn
g Committee of Left organizations" reads:
"We wish to help and support the Assembly process which brings
together:
employed and unemployed workers and their combat organizations...".
Comrade Jaquero continues:
<>
Right on. In terms of promise and in terms of danger.
Oppose any US intervention in Argentina.
Imani
From: Charles Brown
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: 12/21/01 1:52:27 PM
Subject: Re: [BRC-DISC] Argentina off the hook
***********************************************************************
****
This Message Is From: "Charles Brown"
***********************************************************************
****
The spontaneous popular uprisings in Argentina mark a qualitiative
chan
ge in
the political situation in that country with potentially
historic
importance, not just for Argentina, but the world.
That because the country has a large and fairly well organized
labor
movement, in which a left wing that is more combative than
the traditio
nal
union bureacrats has already emerged, as well as a living
tradition of
a
powerful national movement through which the working class
expressed ma
ny of
its aspirations and achieved significant conquests.
The central immediate issues at stake -- first and foremost
the payment
of
the foreign debt, and then the whole panoply of neoliberal
economic tre
ason,
from privatization to convertibility at a one-to-one parity
-- are deci
sive
for the Third World.
Argentina has one of the largest debts of any third world
country. An
Argentine moratorium of debt service payments, which is impossible
to a
void,
should be immediately followed by similar moratoriums by
all the other
countries of the Third World. But even if it is not immediately
support
ed by
similar actions by other countries, Argentina's default itself
will lea
d to
the country risk premium shooting sky high, and making thereby
the debt
burden on other Third World countries impossible to bear.
In the Latin American context, for several years it has been
evident th
at
there is a growing crisis of legitimacy of the existing bourgeois
regim
es.
Even with billions of American dollars and hundreds of American
mercena
ries,
the local Colombian administration (such a servile puppet
of imperialis
m
does not deserve to be referred to as a "government") has
been unable t
o
quash the guerrilla insurgencies. The mass movement that
erupted in Ecu
ador
a year or two ago was temporarily stymied, but it has not
been dealt a
crushing, decisive defeat. In Venezuela the old corrupt two-party
regim
e has
wound up in the trash can of history with a vigorous sweep
of the Boliv
arian
revolution's broom, and it looks like many big landlords
will soon join
their class brethren from the political parties in the museums
of
antiquity. In M?xico, the U.S.-supported one party regime
of the PRI ha
s
been broken, and some of the crimes of the PRI governments,
such as the
Tlatelolco massacre and the campaign of disappearances of
student
activists-- are beginning to be exposed.
The gusano, which used to be a distinctively Cuban social
type, is beco
ming
transformed into a Latin American-wide phenomenon. In Miami
you can now
find
Venezuelan gusanos, Colombian gusanos, Ecuadorean gusanos,
Mexican gusa
nos,
and it will be interesting to see whether the Argentine gusanos
are goi
ng to
wind up in Miami or, following their anglofile tradition,
if they wind
up in
Britain instead.
There is one factor in Latin America which is of special
importance to
this
region, although, of course, it is not without significance
to the Thir
d
World as a whole.
And that is the existence and survival of the Cuban revolution,
which,
despite all the imperialist slanders and attacks, remains
a powerful ex
ample
that is especially immediate for the toiling masses throughout
the
continent.
Cuba's existence is proof irrefutable that the revolution
is possible,
that
the people can make it, that no force on this earth is capable
of stopp
ing a
people determined to win its national and social liberation.
And that o
ne
can not just survive quite well without becoming a colonial
subject of
Citibank.
This is not, of course, the first time that promising revolutionary
developments have been seen in Latin America since 1959.
But things are
different now. Reformism in the workers movement is much
weaker
strategically than it has been before. This for a couple
of reasons. On
e is
the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in the USSR. Another
is the post-
Cold
War mode of imperialist exploitation, which is materially
destroying th
e
relatively privileged layers of the working class and pettite
bourgeois
ie in
the semicolonial countries. And a third is that reformists
of various
stripes have become increasingly identified with and pliant
tools of
neoliberal imperialist policies.
Nothing is fore-ordained, nothing is "inevitable", everything
will be
decided in the course of the actual struggle. But while the
imperialist
bourgeoisie was distracted marvelling at the murder machine
they were a
ble
to deploy to Afghanistan, Argentina blew up, and it isn't
the kind of
problem that can be solved with stealth bombers and anglo-imperialist
coalitions.
This is the real deal -- as real as it gets.
Jaquero
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BRC-DISCUSS: Black Radical Congress - General Discussion/Debate
