Mass struggle topples Argentine government
By Andy McInerney
Argentina's government on Dec. 20 became the latest casualty
of the economic crisis sweeping Latin America. Caught between
the vise of the International Monetary Fund and the demands of
the Argentine masses, President Fernando De la Rúa and
his hated Finance Minister Domingo Cavallo resigned in
disgrace.
Ten days later, on Dec. 30, his successor Adolfo
Rodríguez Saá tendered his resignation.
The result is that the third-largest economy in Latin
America is in a free-for-all, and the traditional political
parties of the Argentine ruling class are proving themselves
bankrupt in the face of the crisis. More and more, two
possibilities are taking shape: a return to the military
government that ruled Argentina with an iron fist during the
"dirty war" of 1976-83, or a workers' government that breaks
the back of International Monetary Fund exploitation.
The resignations followed mass demonstrations on Dec. 19-20
by wide sectors of Argentina's workers and unemployed.
Supermarkets around the country were sacked. Riot police in the
capital city of Buenos Aires opened fire on the crowds, killing
at least 27. Over 2,000 people were arrested in what became
known as the "Argentinazo."
De la Rúa declared a state of siege hours before
stepping down. But the handwriting was on the wall. Urgent
requests to international bankers for emergency economic aid
went unanswered. The government of Argentina was left flapping
in the wind by Wall Street and the U.S. government.
The toppling of the Argentine government represents an
important victory for the millions of workers in that country
who have been waging strikes, blockading roads and staging mass
demonstrations against De la Rúa's and Cavallo's
IMF-dictated austerity measures. It provides them with a taste
of their social power when they act in a united way.
But the victory presents an even more vital question: Which
class can lead the country out of the economic depression it
has faced for the last four years?
A social tinderbox
Argentina has been a social tinderbox for years. Production
has declined for four straight years--falling 11 percent last
year alone. Unemployment is running at an official rate of more
than 20 percent, but unions and social organizations estimate
that figure is closer to 50 percent after factoring in the
underemployed and the marginal economy.
Some 15 million of the country's population of 36 million
live below the poverty line.
On top of this unstable situation, the IMF has been more and
more strident in demanding harsh austerity measures from
Argentine workers. In early December, the U.S.-dominated
banking outfit withheld a $1.3-billion loan disbursement until
the government cut back further on social services and
spending.
De la Rúa had already cut pension payments.
Institutions were privatized. But the financial vultures
demanded more.
The immediate trigger for the most recent protests was a run
on the banks beginning Nov. 30. Thousands of Argentines lined
up to withdraw their savings, fearing currency devaluation. Big
investors shifted million of dollars out of the country. Facing
a currency crisis, the government ordered a limit on
withdrawals to $1,000 per month.
Besides being a signal of the government's bankruptcy, the
move pushed wide sectors of small business owners and others in
the middle class into opposition. Those caught in the middle
between the basic social classes can be hard hit in an economic
crisis, quickly losing whatever property they had managed to
accumulate.
In the midst of this economic crisis, protests have been
steadily growing. Throughout the Dec. 19-20 "Argentinazo," the
working class was at the center of the movement.
There have been seven general strikes in Argentina since De
la Rúa took office in 1999, including a massive strike
on Dec. 13 that shut down the country. The "piquetero"
movement--organized groups of unemployed workers who have been
staging militant road blockades and other actions--is growing.
Reports are increasing of factory seizures by the workers.
These were the groups that formed the basis of the movement
that took to the streets in major cities around the country on
Dec. 19. Emboldened by the display of their own strength,
thousands of residents in the poorest neighborhoods of Buenos
Aires and Rosario expropriated dozens of stores and
supermarkets, filled with goods they had been unable to
buy.
Workers in Cordoba set the town hall ablaze to protest
government plans to cut wages.
Something had to give
The "Argentinazo" crossed the bounds of private property.
Something had to give. De la Rúa and Cavallo stepped
down so that the capitalist system would have a chance of
standing.
Despite the vast outpouring of the masses, no political
force was able to channel the social outburst into a battle for
state power. The result was that De la Rúa's resignation
was followed immediately by the re-emergence of the
Justicialist Party (PJ), the main opposition bourgeois
political party.
The PJ--itself divided into numerous factions--installed a
wealthy senator, Carlos Puerta, as acting president on Dec. 21.
The next day, the PJ-dominated Congress announced Adolfo
Rodríguez Saá as interim president, ostensibly
until elections could be held on March 3.
Rodríguez Saá announced a series of measures
reversing the economic course charted by De la Ruá and
his predecessor, PJ leader Carlos Menem. He announced a
moratorium on payments of Argentina's foreign debt. He
announced a job creation program aimed at putting 100,000
people to work within one week and a million more over a longer
period. And he announced a new currency that would not be
pegged to the dollar--essentially easing the move to currency
devaluation.
The PJ has a long tradition of populist demagogy. Gen. Juan
Perón created the party in the 1940s. Perón's
government was based on material concessions to the working
class but brutal defense of private property--a model of what
Marxists call a Bonapartist regime. Peronism stabilized
bourgeois rule while speaking the language of the masses.
Over the years, it moved further to the right, dropping much
of its anti-establishment rhetoric.
With Rodríguez Saá, a revival of traditional
Peronism appeared possible. But it proved short lived. While
the trade union mobilization stalled after De la Rúa's
resignation, undoubtedly impacted to some extent by
Rodríguez Saá's demagogy, the petty bourgeoisie
continued to mobilize.
Terrified by the prospect of the new currency and a
potential devaluation--and the corresponding loss of their
savings--middle-class elements took to the streets again on
Dec. 29. While many of the demands were the same--against
corruption, against devaluation--the class composition was
different. The poor and working classes were largely absent
from this second round of mobilizations.
Even though the Dec. 29 demonstrations were smaller and
restricted mainly to the capital city, they intersected with
political maneuvering within the PJ itself. Rodríguez
Saá resigned on Dec. 30, citing "an attitude of
pettiness and haggling." His ouster reflects the strength of
the "new" Peronists, the ones who have functioned as lackeys of
Washington and the IMF.
Openings for workers to
take reins
The traditional bourgeois parties face a fundamental and
ultimately insoluble problem. It is the same problem that faced
and destroyed the De la Rúa government. Any government
loyal to the capitalist system must be loyal first and foremost
to the IMF and U.S. imperialism.
The extent to which Argentina's crisis is linked to the
imperialist world is evident from the reactions following De la
Rúa's resignation.
U.S. President George Bush insisted on Dec. 22 that
Argentina's government must follow the IMF austerity measures.
"The IMF made some very tough but very realistic and very
necessary demands on the money, and that is that the government
of Argentina must restructure its fiscal policy and its tax
policy," he told the BBC.
Spain's two largest banks own about one-fifth of the
Argentine banking industry, according to a Dec. 27 Associated
Press report. Spanish corporate investment amounts to 10
percent of the Argentine gross domestic product and 3 percent
of Spain's. So the ruling class of Spain stands to take major
losses if Argentina's currency is devalued.
The role of the middle class--the small business owners and
managers--will depend primarily on the ability of the working
classes and their political leadership to point a way out of
the economic crisis. As the events of Dec. 19-20 show, if the
working class exerts a strong leadership, the middle classes
will follow.
But if the working class does not lead, the middle classes
will turn elsewhere. This was the tragic lesson of Germany in
the 1930s and Italy in the 1920s: the despairing middle classes
can form the social base of fascism. In Argentina, the main
force within the ruling class system that still has the
organization and political vision to enforce the IMF regime is
the military.
There are potential openings in the world political
situation for the workers to take the reins in Argentina. The
economic and political crisis in Argentina exposes a
fundamental contradiction in the world today.
The focus of attention for the world's biggest imperialist
powers is in the Middle East, where they have resumed their
endless competition for the world's oil reserves.
But the center of gravity for struggles against the
imperialist economic order is in Latin America. Mass
mobilizations have toppled two governments in Ecuador since
1998. Venezuela, under the presidency of Hugo Chávez, is
embarking on a course opposite the one dictated by the IMF and
Washington. The people of Colombia, facing a depression for the
past two years, are responding with mass strikes and armed
insurrection. Revolutionary Cuba still stands as a beacon of
resistance throughout the hemisphere.
Now the masses have awoken in industrialized Argentina.
Five socialist parties signed a joint statement on Dec. 21
pointing toward a different way out: "the Argentina of the
workers, the one that will expropriate those that have always
exploited us." The task of building that Argentina, of leading
the way, is the order of the day.
Reprinted from the Jan. 10, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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