Re: [A-List] Argentine spontaneous insurrection

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 23 Dec 2001 10:11:28 +0000, Chris Burford wrote:
>A national revolt, with many national flags and
>singing of the national  anthem as described by
>Pablo, is heroic and resouceful, but the
>politics  are national.

What shocking nonsense and a willful distortion of reality. This is
not a celebration over a World Cup victory, it is a spontaneous
uprising against a regime of imperialist austerity.

>And in fact the fall of de la Rua was what the
>US and the IMF had already  factored in, and
>actually were waiting for:
>
>FT Dec 21
>
>"No bailout without reform plan, says US"

Factored in? You mean like I factored in the possibility of being
shot by the Ku Klux Klan while doing socialist organizing in Houston,
Texas in the early 1970s? I guess so.

>If marxists cannot discuss what reforms are
>revolutionary and what reforms  are reformist
>they isolate themselves from lists where the
>ideological  battle should indeed be joined.

Your misuse of the word reform is as egregious an assault on the
English language as a Hell's Angel gang rape is on the female sex.

>I hope Nestor will therefore provide references
>for a specifically marxist  strategy for
>Argentina now.

What for? You wouldn't like them.

[Below is a translation of the statement of the Party of the National
Left posted earlier today on the Marxism list on the wake of the
overthrow of the Citibank-De La Ruá-Cavallo administration in
Argentina.

[With two days of spontaneous but decisive actions, the Argentine
masses have dealt a formidable blow -- and let us hope it is a death
blow -- to the neo-liberal social and economic policies imposed on
that country first by the clique of generals that overthrew the
government in 1976, and then by their continuators, most notably
Alfonsín, Menem, De La Ruá and the man once hailed as Argentina's
Allan Greenspan, Domingo Cavallo.

[The translation is by me. I have tried to make it more accessible by
injecting some explanatory material in brackets throughout, and by
often choosing language in English that more closely reflects the
spirit of the original, even when dictionaries might offer other
choices for certain terms. Jaquero.]

*  *  *

Statement by the Party of the National Left on the events of December
19 and 20, 2001

On the December 19 and 20, an energetic popular mobilization demanded
in the streets of all our cities, and especially in Buenos Aires, and
end to a presidency that was politically illegitimate and servile to
imperialism. This administration took power with two deaths, and
continued to accumulate more deaths during its brief time in office,
and now withdraws with twenty-one corpses. That's the bottom line on
a government that placed itself completely at the service of big
capital.

We Argentines have risen to resist the beatings, the tear gas and the
bullets with which Dr. Fernando de la Rúa, copying the model of
[Gral.] Videla and [head of the bosses' association and then
minister] Martínez de la Hoz, tried to maintain what was virtually a
dictatorship against the spontaneous and unanimous rejection of that
regime by society as a whole.

We are saying "Enough!" to an entire historic cycle. These events
mark a break with the continuity of the regime installed on March 24,
1976 [by a military coup]. We are repudiating a quarter century of
sell-outs, of destroying the State and of general pauperization. We
are repudiating the Process [military dictaroship] and its
continuators ([civilian presidents] Alfonsín, Menem and De la Ruá).
We are willing, in sum, to take back control of our own country and
our own lives.

[Currency] Convertibility ended today in the only possible way: it
produced a general conflagration which will end by burning everyone
who, through their actions, agreements or inaction, permitted
Argentina to be transformed into a financial colony.

It is necessary to return to the course of the national, popular and
democratic revolution which was cut off in 1955 and 1976. To that
end, the Party of the National Left demands:

Immediate lifting of the unjustified and unconstitutional State of
Siege. Repression must stop, and those responsible for it should
resign. Specifically, Dr. Ramón Mestre and Dr. Enrique Mathov should
accept the legal and judicial consequences for their actions. These
functionaries are the only ones responsible for the deaths that have
taken place over the past two days and should pay for them.

Fernando de la Ruá's resignation is not enough. People like Drs.
Duhalde and Ruckhauf should also be repudiated, since through their
silence or agreement they allowed the continuation of an economic
policy of hunger, looting and sellout, and culminated their
complicity by validating the state of siege.

The Supreme Court has demonstrated its complete subjection to the
power of the great economic and financial groups by recently granting
liberty to the person most responsible for the covertibility policy
[former President] Carlos Menem. It should be impeached and removed.

The Armed Forces should stick by their refusal to repress their
compatriots, and should place at the disposal of a new justice system
those responsible for having turned it into a weapon of coercion at
the service of anti-national economic powers.

All of the leaders, civilian and military, who looted the country
should be brought to trial on charges of treason.

The payment of interests on the foreign debt should stop right now,
and its legitimacy should be investigated by  the nation's courts by
reopening the case initiated by Alejandro Olmos. All payment of debt
service in foreign currencies should stop immediately.

All the companies that were privatized should be renationalized as
state property. The exports of profits by these companies should
immediately cease; their financial operations should be intervened.

The banking system and foreign trade should be immediately
nationalized, with no exceptions. The AFJP must be nationalized
without delay, and the pension system reconfigured on the basis of a
distribution regime [this undoubtedly has a very specific meaning in
the Argentine context, but I don' t know what it is].

It is imperative to restore salaries and pensions to a level in
keeping with the cost of a market family basket [i.e., to cover the
basic necessities], recovering what has been taken away since March
24, 1976.

On this basis it will be possible to establish a redistribution of
wealth towards the mostly dispossessed, relaunch Argentina's
industries, and free the country from the international financial and
mercantile dictatorship. To that end, finally, the laws on financial
entities (Martínez de Hoz), on the Reform of the State, and on  the
economic emergency should be immediately abrogated.




--
Louis Proyect, lnp3@xxxxxxxxx on 12/23/2001

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