ARGENTINA
Unemployed workers fight privatization, cops
By Gery
Armsby
For over two weeks some 200 unemployed workers have occupied
the main plaza of General Mosconi--an oil-producing town in the
Salta province of northeast Argentina.
They have set up improvised shelters, kitchens and
facilities and refuse to leave until their demands for an end
to repression and solution of economic problems gripping the
province are met. Mosconi's population of 20,000 faces a
crushing unemployment rate of 40 percent and rising.
Heightened repression has attempted to halt a series of
militant picket lines and roadblocks held since early June by
employees of an oil refinery. They lost their jobs when the
formerly state-owned facility was privatized and acquired by
Repsol, an oil company based in Spain. Repsol-YPF outsources
management of the Mosconi operations to a mishmash of small
firms. Other local people who are also out of work in
Argentina's devastating unemployment crisis joined the picket
lines, shutting down a major highway for prolonged periods.
The encampment was organized after an incident in which
federal border police fired rubber bullets, then live
ammunition into a crowd of protesters June 17, seriously
wounding dozens of people and killing one man. Another
teen-aged protester was so overcome by tear gas that he
collapsed and later died. Over 40 were arrested and nine are
still being held in jail.
Police reported switching to real bullets based on rumors
that some demonstrators were armed.
On June 19, police positioned snipers and riot-gear-clad
storm troopers along the route of a burial march honoring the
fallen comrades. Through threats, intimidation and unprovoked
attacks on the funeral procession, they tried to disrupt the
people's political memorial ceremony.
In response, a detachment from the march broke away to fight
off the cops with stones, slingshots and bottles. Some reports
tell of police casualties from gunfire. Subsequently, border
security forces sealed off and blockaded the town.
In the ensuing unrest, a building was set on fire and the
blaze spread precariously toward the refinery. A police
battalion was dispatched to "protect the refinery from the
protesters at all costs."
Unions, student groups and left organizations marched in
Buenos Aires June 21 in solidarity with the encampment in
central Mosconi. The march included participation from the
CTERA teachers' union and Congress of Argentine Workers (CTA).
They demanded the government end its brutality against the
protesters, pull out border police from the Salta province, and
hear the just demands of the unemployed workers there.
Inspired by protesters in the "Battle of Mosconi,"
unemployed workers elsewhere in Argentina have blocked roads
outside Buenos Aires, raising similar demands that Argentina's
President Fernando de la Rúa address the economic crisis
by halting privatization and reversing anti-work labor
reforms.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
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