ARGENTINA
Capitalist crisis spurs left organizations
By Alicia Jrapko
Excerpts from a talk at the Sept. 21-22 Workers
World Party Conference.
Last March, while in Buenos Aires, I saw a young girl
begging for money. The container she was holding was a
McDonald's cup. This hated chain throws their leftovers mostly
to children.
While growing up in Argentina, I was taught that it was
different from the rest of Latin America; that Argentina was
more like a European country. My country was once the most
prosperous country in Latin America, with an abundance of
natural resources and an educated and skilled work force, many
of them immigrants from Europe.
After World War II, Juan Domingo Perón, a bourgeois
nationalist, was elected president and Argentina went through a
period of rapid industrial expansion and increased social
benefits. Significant increases in union membership
consolidated the power of the General Confederation of
Labor.
The Perón regime nationalized large parts of the
economy and put up protective trade barriers. Steel and iron
industries were built; the manufacture of farm and industrial
machinery was subsidized. Argentina made airplanes and ships
for its merchant marine.
The government bought 70 percent of the nation's railways
and the entire trolley system, which had been British-owned.
Perón nationalized the U.S.-owned International
Telephone and Telegraph. He put limits on the amount of
foreign-owned firms' profits, resulting in a dramatic drop in
foreign investment.
Even though Perón provided working-class reforms,
including women's right to vote, he was a loyal defender of
capitalism. This was the basis of the myth of Argentina being
part of and separated from Latin America, helping to shape its
national identity.
After Perón's ten ure, years of civilian and military
governments followed. By the end of the 1960s, the United
States prepared a continental plan of neo-liberal policies that
changed Argentina's social landscape.
During the 1970s, many Latin American leftist organizations,
including those in Argentina, followed the example of Cuba and
joined the revolutionary currents developing in Africa and
Asia. These movements threatened imperialism's plans in Latin
America, which the United States was not willing to concede.
The United States began covert operations causing economic
destabilization.
First there was the overthrow of President Salvador Allende
in Chile in 1973, followed by bloody military coups in Uruguay
in 1975 and in Argentina in 1976.
While the U.S.-backed military were torturing and murdering
students, workers and cadres of leftist political
organizations, imperialist economists implemented free-market
policies that devastated domestic industries but rewarded
financial speculation.
Thirty thousand people paid with their lives. I left
Argentina during that time, and many of my college friends
disappeared and were killed.
Beginning in 1983, civilian governments followed the
austerity measures imposed by the International Monetary Fund
and World Bank. Argentina's foreign debt grew to $164 billion.
It faced a devalued peso, a shrinking middle class and
third-world status. Argentina was forced to sell off everything
and every sector of the economy became privatized.
Probably the most graphic example of this was the highway
between Córdoba and Buenos Aires. A French firm bought
the right to collect the tolls.
One of the schemes by which Argentina plans to pay loans on
which it continues to default is to give away huge areas of
land in Patagonia as payment. This concession to foreign banks
weakens sovereignty.
Last December massive resistance began in response to
unemployment over 20 percent, 18 million people living below
the poverty line and children dying every day. Huge
demonstrations have caused five imperialist-backed presidents
to resign.
An outgrowth of privatization has been the formation of
unemployed workers' organizations known as Piqueteros, whose
social program is geared towards workers' control.
Part of this movement has dismissed the notion that more IMF
loans are a good thing. A significant part of this current
shows no confidence in the national bourgeoisie and is willing
to struggle on every issue against them. I was able to see a
meeting of the Piqueteros, and it was working-class democracy
in action.
If the Piqueteros and the unions can merge, it will be a
pivotal ingredient to the overthrow of the national bourgeoisie
and freeing Argentina from imperialist domination.
A mass movement is reawakening and reorganizing. There are
positive signs of a recovery of the revolutionary movement that
could be even greater than the 1970s and could eventually seize
state power. This potential is why the IMF and the World Bank
have not been able to complete their plans of recolonizing
Argentina.
Reprinted from the Oct. 17, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
under a Creative
Commons License.
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