ARGENTINA
Mass mobilizations hit IMF austerity
By Andy
McInerney
What began as determined picketing
against unemployment has become a tidal wave of protest across
Latin America’s second biggest country, Argentina.
Protests against President Fernando de la Rua’s
International-Monetary-Fund-backed “zero-deficit”
policy culminated in a three-day campaign of strikes and
protest that opened Aug. 15.
Argentina has
been hit hard by the government’s neoliberal economic
policies of austerity and “dollarization.” Official
unemployment rates are running at over 16 percent. Incomes have
fallen by 12 percent in the last three years, and de la
Rua’s “zero-deficit” plan is expected to mean
an additional 13 percent cut for state workers.
One-third of
Argentina’s 39 million people live in poverty. Some 4
million workers earn less than $150 a month.
“Foreign firms have taken over key sectors of the
economy and the foreign debt has snowballed out of control,
reaching about $220 billion,” Argentinean economist
Daniel Muchnik told the British Guardian on Aug. 13. Other
reports put the foreign debt figure at $128 billion.
The
Argentinean peso is pegged to the U.S. dollar, leaving major
financial controls in the hands of the U.S.
treasury.
“It’s the workers and the jobless who are
paying for these measures that only serve the rich,”
unemployed worker Antonio Blasio told the Agence France Presse
news agency on Aug. 14.
This
spiraling economic crisis is provoking new forms of
resistance.
‘Piqueteros’ block roads
One new form
of organization is the
“piquetero”—picketers—movement that is
at the center of the new wave of resistance. These groups of
unemployed workers have launched roadblocks around the country.
They have become a pole of struggle for the workers’ and
students’ movement in Argentina.
The
government staged a brutal attack against the piqueteros in
June, killing one and arresting dozens. That attack provoked
solidarity demonstrations and pickets, including a massive July
19 general strike, around the country.
Since then,
there have been three national mobilizations of unions and
students in solidarity with the piqueteros and against the
government’s pro-IMF economic policies. The first, on
Aug. 1, was a 24-hour display of pickets around the
country.
The
Brazilian-based Mercosur Trade Union Post (Correo Sindical
Mercosur, Aug. 2) called that mobilization “the first
protest at a national level carried out outside the structures
of the main trade union federations and
parties.”
The next
week, the same forces took to the streets for a 48-hour show of
strikes and protests. Hundreds of thousands of workers took
part in those actions. They included civil servants, teachers,
and unemployed.
The three-day
mobilization that began on Aug. 15 was the third week of
continuous mobilizations. Scores of major highways were blocked
around the country.
Tens of
thousands of people rallied in the capital city of Buenos
Aires.
The growing
movement’s main demand is to cancel the payments for
Argentina’s foreign debt. This demand has generated
concern in imperialist banks around the world.
Wider
repercussions
The struggle
between the workers and the IMF has implications far beyond
Argentina’s borders.
Argentina was
among the first of the Latin American countries to embark on
the IMF’s neoliberal policies in the early 1990s. Those
policies soon spread across the continent. So workers around
Latin America are looking anxiously to the growing movement in
Argentina as an example of struggle.
But the eyes
of Wall Street are also fixed on the new mobilizations.
Instability in Argentine markets has sent ripples through the
profit margins of major U.S. banks. Talk of inability to make
payments on Argentina’s foreign debt is felt in stock
markets around the world.
Now de la
Rua’s government is pinning its hopes on yet another
bailout by the IMF. But the international bankers’ club
has threatened that it will not release any new money without
strict controls on spending.
That means
the social crisis that is sweeping Argentina has little chance
of subsiding.
As the
bankers sweat, the masses are still organizing. The piqueteros
are planning for a 10-day mobilization in September. They are
organizing seven columns to march in regions across the
country.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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