Re: [A-List] A "color revolution" in Argentina

[Julio Fernández Baraibar <fernandezbaraibar@xxxxxxxxx>]

Excelent idea, Yoshie.

This statement of CGT expresses one of the most correct points of view in 
relation with this important political week in Argentina.

Hugo Moyano, the CGT´s general secretary was one of the men sitting back our 
president, Cristina Fernández, when she was giving her speech, yesterday at 
afternoon.


Julio Fernández Baraibar
fernandezbaraibar@xxxxxxxxxxxx
fernandezbaraibar@xxxxxxxxx
Skype: julio.fernandez.baraibar
Visite mis blogs: http://fernandezbaraibar.blogspot.com
http://jfernandezbaraibar.blogspot.com

emailStripper es un programa gratis para la limpieza de
los ">" y otros caracteres de sus emails y facilitar su lectura.
http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <critical.montages@xxxxxxxxx>
To: "The A-List" <a-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, March 28, 2008 3:53 PM
Subject: Re: [A-List] A "color revolution" in Argentina


On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 10:18 PM, Néstor Gorojovsky <nmgoro@xxxxxxxxx> 
wrote:
> Dear cdes., whatever you hear on what is taking place in Argentina
> right now, please believe me this is just a "color revolution".

FWIW, I just got this online at MRZine:

<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/cgt280308.html>
Argentina: Workers and the "Agrarian Strike":
The CGT against the Oligarchy and Its Proxies' Destabilization
by Julio Piumato and Hugo Moyano

Thirty-two years, one month, and ten days ago -- on 16 February 1976
to be exact -- bankers, industrialists, the Sociedad Rural, and other
leading organizations of rural sectors initiated a strike in support
of a coup d'état (known as the Bosses' Apegé Lockout), anticipating
the military revolt of 24 March, all with the approval of the United
States.  That oligarchic, military, and pro-imperialist alliance
overthrew a constitutional government which had already brought
forward the presidential elections date in October of that same year.
All with the complicity of the national press.  The headlines of
Clarín, La Nación, La Prensa, and La Razón exalted the overthrow of
the constitutional order, going along with genocide and the neoliberal
plan of Martinez de Hoz.

Then, while the genocidal dictatorship murdered and disappeared
thousands of men and women -- a majority of whom were workers who,
loyal to the National Constitution, resisted and lost their life,
liberty, and rights for that -- the organizations of the countryside
(which today uphold this "historic strike," which is the term used by
the same media that covered up the dictatorship) happily went along
with the mainstream press that did business like that of Papel Prensa.
The "countryside" neither struck nor protested against the
dictatorship despite what the country and its people suffered.

Nor were there strikes and protests of the Sociedad Rural and other
rural organizations when Menem and Cavallo plundered Argentina,
liquidating state enterprises, eliminating millions of jobs,
marginalizing millions of our countrymen and women, destroying the
national wealth. and completely pauperizing the people.  Not even when
convertibility devastated their farms, foreclosing all of them, was
there any "historic strike."  But they protested, side by side with
the same media, demanding an iron fist, when workers resisted or when
the excluded, villainous Blacks after all (as the "strikers" were
heard saying yesterday at the "package pickets"), blockaded roads,
begging for food or work.

And now, we have a government that is restoring the sense of dignity
and social justice for all Argentineans; a government with a clear
national and popular consciousness that, no longer a corrupt mistress
to the superpower in international affairs, unites with our brothers
and neighbors through the expanded MERCOSUR; a government that has
promoted a productive model that combines the strengthened domestic
market with the use of exports, having reestablished social dialogue
through the collective labor conventions, making important changes in
a very short time.

We are speaking of a government that did not forget about agrarian
producers but created a farm-rescue program so that those producers,
devastated by neoliberalism, would not lose their farms.  It
transformed them into profitable enterprises, modifying the exchange
rate (from which wage earners suffered until the economy recovered),
the exchange rate that -- added to international prices --  has
permitted astronomical profits for all those producers that they had
not seen in decades.

Nevertheless, when this government, in an orderly and sensible
fashion, employs the mechanism of export taxes to progressively
regulate a still regressive tax system, guaranteeing the supply of the
domestic market abandoned by the egoistic greed of the oligarchy, in
order to use those surpluses for fair social distribution and
harmonious development of neglected areas, the financial and
pro-imperialist oligarchic entente, devoid of a political leadership
that guarantees accumulation of power, launches this wild protest,
supported by the same media that favored the coup-plotters' strike in
February 1976.  We are talking about biased media coverage clearly
intended to destabilize the government.

And in that act of destabilization there exist many things that go 
unmentioned:

  * Since the taxes are on exports, why don't the protests target
the monopoly exporters who are the ones strangling small producers?

  * The romantic air that "the protests" affect hides the fact that
a little more than 900 oligarchs own 35 million hectares, whereas
137,000 producers cultivate only 2,000,000 hectares.

  * Those who reject the export taxes, safeguarding their fortunes
and egoistic interests, are trying to get domestic meat and food
prices to rise to international market values, which will make them
inaccessible to the people, allowing only select minorities to consume
them.

  * If the protest is genuine, why does it exhibit so much class
hatred against truck drivers and other workers?  Why so much violence
in the form of stone throwing, ostentatious displays of side arms
(with silver grips, of course), and menacing rifles in the hands of
the shock troops of the oligarchy destabilizing the nation and
plotting a coup?

  * It is not an agrarian strike, because, as is well known, the
typical "strikers," far away from cattle gates, are still doing all
the tasks of farming: crops are being harvested and cattle fed, that
is to say, their own assets are not at risk.  The protest does not
affect the protesters -- rather it's about screwing the rest of the
Argentinean people.  That is exemplified by the contempt that the
protesters show toward those who have suffered and are still suffering
from hunger, by squandering beef to build barricades, in an attempt to
stop a nation that is reconstructing its future.

So, we are not fooled.  The "countryside" is not on strike.  They are
working like never before, thanks to the policies that have been
implemented in Argentina for the last four years and a half.

Those who are blockading roads and the media that are supporting them
are doing so to defend the oligarchic-imperialist interests, the very
interests that plundered Argentina and killed -- by violence of
weapons or violence of hunger --  thousands of our countrymen and
women in the last decades.

In February 1976, everything began with a protest like this.  Let us
not be confused.  Let us be clear that the taxes are levied on
exports, so we shall not stop asking whether there is no other hidden
aim and why the protests are not directed against the monopoly
exporters that are strangling small producers.  Let us defend this
national project that includes us all, not just the oligarchs who
throughout history have frustrated our destiny as a sovereign nation.

Buenos Aires, 25 March 2008.

Julio Piumato
Secretary of Human Rights

Hugo Moyano
Secretary General

The original statement in Spanish by the Confederación General del
Trabajo de la República Argentina was circulated on the
Reconquista-Popular mailing list among other places.  Translation by
Yoshie Furuhashi.  Julio Piumato said to Página/12: "If the agrarian
strike, which we consider to be a provocation, continues, the national
mobilization of people will be quickly activated" (Martín Piqué, "La
CGT fijó su posición frente a la protesta: Contra la 'oligarquía' del
campo," 26 March 2008).
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>