Argentine police kill protesters
As crisis deepens, so does repression
By Alicia Jrapko
It was no coincidence. Two "piqueteros" from the
Coordinadora of Unemployed Workers Aníbal Verón
were brutally gunned down by police in a train station in
Buenos Aires on June 26. At the same time, the Argentine
minister of the economy, Roberto Lavagna, landed in the United
States to meet with International Monetary Fund Director Horst
Koehler and U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill.
The desperate mission of this new official was to beg for an
emergency loan so Argentina could continue to pay its rising
debt to many international financial institutions, including
the IMF itself.
The Argentine peso has continued to slide in relation to the
dollar. One dollar now buys 3.95 pesos, the highest since
January, when the decade of pegging the peso to the dollar
ended. International banking experts still believe that the
Argentine government has not fulfilled all the requirements
imposed by the IMF and the World Bank.
People resist international banks
One of the main reasons the Argentine government has been
unable to implement the neoliberal policies imposed by powerful
foreign financial institutions is that the people of this South
American country have been in motion since last December.
On June 26 the ruling class of Argentina unleashed brutal
repression against them, demonstrating a change in tactics on
the part of the unelected Duhalde regime and the sharpening of
the class struggle.
Like the corporate media in the United States, the Argentine
mainstream media has been demonizing the victims for fighting
back and ignoring the root causes of the crisis. Most bourgeois
journalists, for example, ignore the fact that since the
economic crisis began, more than 100 children have died every
day in Argentina's cities, or that 30 percent of the population
is unemployed, or that people in the poorest neighborhoods have
resorted to eating horses, rats and frogs.
This time the media is blaming the piquetero movement. In a
country of closed factories and economic depression, it is
important to point out that this new movement has escalated the
union tactic of the strike by cutting off highways and bridges
to stop the transportation of goods and products. This growing
movement has become one of the most militant forms of
organization in Argentina.
The piquetero movement had called for a day of coordinated
actions on June 26. Activities took place in Rosario, Misiones,
Tucumán, Salta, Córdoba, Neuquén, Mar del
Plata and many other cities.
In Buenos Aires, four organizations of unemployed
workers--including the Coordinadora of Unemployed Workers
Aníbal Verón, the Piquetero Bloc, Barrios de Pie
and the Movement of Retired and Unemployed of Raúl
Castells--participated in the action.
Their requests included salary increases for employed and
unemployed workers, food for the unemployed, opening of
people's and school kitchens, self-administration of subsidies
going to the unemployed, health care and education for all, and
an end to hunger and repression.
Police shoot protesters
In Buenos Aires the protesters were brutally attacked by a
combined force of infantry, federal and provincial police, the
naval prefecture, dogs, assault vehicles and helicopters. As a
result, two piqueteros died--Darío Santillán and
Maximiliano Costeki, both members of the Coordinadora of
Unemployed Workers Aníbal Verón. Another 90
people were wounded, many by shotguns, and more than 150 were
detained.
The state repression did not end there. It spilled into the
locality of Avellaneda, on the other side of the
Pueyrredón Bridge, including inside the Fiorito
Hospital, where many of the wounded had been taken. Police
attacked the headquarters of the Communist Party in the same
zone.
"The ugly face of capitalism is surfacing as never before.
Hunger and repression, two faces of the same coin," said one
activist with the Association of Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo
in Buenos Aires. "The lack of response by this bourgeois
government to the current crisis has pushed them to show their
real monstrous, ugly and bloody face."
Referring to the repression, she added, "We are not the
violent ones. Our struggle is for life; they represent death.
We will continue the struggle and Dario and Maximiliano and the
30,000 disappeared [during the military coup of 1976] will
guide us and will give us the necessary strength until the
final victory."
The following day, on June 27, thousands of people
participated in mass solidarity demonstrations in Buenos Aires.
Participants included the National Piquetero Bloc and numerous
leftist organizations, students and the neighborhood assemblies
born during the struggle last December, which was the catalyst
for the fall of then-President Fernando de la Rúa.
The real causes of the violence in Argentina are the
neoliberal policies dictated by the IMF and the World Bank.
These policies of exploitation and slavery have generated a new
dynamic movement in Argentina that is looking for fundamental
solutions to the problems of the workers. While the state
terror is armed to the teeth, the workers--employed and
unemployed-- and the mass organizations have responded with
sticks, stones and cooking pots.
President Duhalde has blood on his hands, and Darío
and Maximiliano are his first victims.
Compañeros Darío Santillán and
Maximiliano Costeki, presente!
Jrapko was in Argentina in March and witnessed a popular
assembly of the Coordinadora of Unemployed Workers
Aníbal Verón.
Reprinted from the July 11, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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