Argentina: Late night news and comments

["Nestor Gorojovsky" <nestorgoro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sorry for delay in sending this, my fault. Resending now, at 8:47 AM
B.A. time.
------- Forwarded message follows -------
Subject:                Argentina: Late night news and comments
Date sent:              Thu, 27 Jun 2002 01:17:45 -0300

Dear cdes.,

I have ended a very long day's work. Before I go to have some rest
(tomorrow
the routine will be a couple of hours at the office, later on we
shall see what
happens on the streets), I would like to send you my last
impressions of this day.

It is only fair that I take some minutes of my sleep to carry
you some word of tranquility.

First of all: what seems to have actually happened.

During the whole week before June 26th, the govm"t had been warning
that it
would not accept road blocks any more. This was, of course, somehow a

provocation, but what else could be expected from a govm"t which did
not know
what to do in order to regain some "normalcy" in social relations
while
"striving to find a way out of the disaster". Moreover, a month or so
ago, the
IMF had begun to press on the govm"t the new imposition that the wave
of unrest
had to be curtailed and finished for good.

As stupidly as if advised by some loyal disciple of Radcliffe Brown,
the govm"t
tried then to foster the conservative feelings of the petty
bourgeoisie and the
"established" -working- workers against the constant mood of
mobilization and
unrest by the piqueteros and the jobless. Most of these understood
that it was the time to slow down and to resort to different methods.
Some did not. Among them the cdes. in the Coordinadora Aníbal Verón.
Of course, this is hardly the moment and place to debate tactics.
There are two more dead now, and whatever differences within the
people's camp, these dead are _ours_.

The govm"t tried to combine the big stick with some alluring promises
of "reasonable" wage rises: Strong repression had been attempted (but
with no wounded or dead) in the towns of Salta and Tucumán during the
last days. A very small wage rise -Argentine $100, something around
US$ 25 at today's exchange rate- for the formal workers in the
private sector was announced (as an agreement between the bosses and
the workers, _with no intervention from the state_, something that
the Min. of Economy had praised). State employees might expect to be
returned the last 13% wage cut that was imposed by Cavallo months
ago, at some moment in the near future. The commercial press began to
bang heavily the drum of "social unrest", while the banging of
another, still stronger drum, spoke through various mouthpieces,
including many of the heads of the Cabinet, informing the population
that unrest would begin to meet an answer from above.

As a beautiful touch of humanity in this whole circus, some Police
officials
began to explain that the only way to solve the problems of
insecurity lay in
turning the shantytowns into enclosed enclaves (preferably with
barbed wire, I
suppose), while others -the topmost cherry of the cake- explained
that civil
divorce (which began in Argentina only in 1983, though there was a
time during
the early 50s when Peronism imposed a law of divorce which lasted
until 1955)
was the origin of all this social sickness.

The stage was set for a provocation. The provocation took place
today. As I stated above,  this isnot the moment nor the place to
debate the responsibilities of the organizers of today's blocking of
Pueyrredón bridge (which acts in Buenos Aires as some kind of Hudson
Tunnels in New York), but the fact is that they swallowed hook and
line. The policemen answered to a very angry mass of demonstrators
with ruber bullets, tear gas and the usual clubbing, but from
some still unidentified point in a railway station where a portion of
the demonstrators had chosen to take refuge against brutality, two
very precise shots (with metal bullets, not rubber bullets) hit two
young demonstrators (one of them straight in the head, the other one -
Darío Santillán- was leaning to help a wounded boy and was caught by
the bullet at the bottom of his spine) and killed them instantly.

Four more demonstrators were seriously wounded, around 90 injured or
wounded, and more than 100 imprisoned. Later on, during the
afternoon, the visitors who went to Fiorito Hospital to ask about
their relatives were either dispersed or also imprisoned. A bus
driver denounced on the TV news that during the events a man with an
Ithaka gun
boarded the bus and forced everybody down. Afterwards, the bus was
put to fire.
As you all may guess, it is not the unemployed who can afford to own
a brand
new anti-mutiny gun in Argentina...

My impression, at first, is that it might have been somebody else,
not the
Police, who shot the two boys (Darío a much beloved friend of cdes.
of a
brother group to mine). Maybe our own "intelligence", maybe the CIA?
Although his declarations should be taken with some skepticism, the
fact is that the chief of the local police, who was at command of the
troops, insisted in that his people had rubber ammo and that by no
means could they have shot the two boys so precisely, something I
tend to believe since he did not say anything to dismiss the
accusation that those same troops had invaded private homes and a
local Communist Party branch in search of road blockers. So that who
knows.

It would be silly to blame Duhalde for this. Of course, the political
course he
adopted, particularly after the 14 Points Agreement, takes to the
road of
repression and bloodshed. But this time he also is, in a sense, the
first
political victim of the whole drama. His responsibility stems from
his idiotic
cowardice, but the fact is that a few hours after the events, all
those who were
in prison were immediately released, and the Minister of Government
of the
Province of Buenos Aires (it was PBA policemen who "enforced order"
in such a
sympathetic way) was summoned to the National House of Government.
Raúl
Castells, the piquetero leader, delivered a speech at a press
conference from
his home (where he is living under arrest) where he said that this
"has been
the political death of Duhalde", which sounds very reasonable to my
ears.

Tomorrow we shall have a demonstration which I guess that will be
peaceful and
will not be harassed. The wave of indignation that flowed all around
the city
(and most probably the country over) demonstrates that if Duhalde
decides to follow
the road which takes to another December 20th, his future may be even
bleaker
than the future of De La Rúa. Duhalde will probably think it twice
before he
tries to divide the popular camp around the piquetero (road blockers)
issue
again.

Who is to benefit, then? Lou Pr., quoting the NYT on the Marxmail
list, has
offered an explanation: those who support the model , Duhalde
included. It is
not _exactly_ so. In fact, Duhalde's Minister of Economy, Lavagna, is
waging
some kind of distorted but actual struggle with the monetarist gang,
particularly entrenched in the Central Bank. This is the reason why
Blejer left
(tomorrow, a request will be presented by A. Rodríguez Saá at court,
requesting
that Blejer be not allowed to leave the country and to put him to
trial for
treason: he simply allowed 15 billion dollars of the Argentinean
reserves to
evaporate, keeping with IMF orders, which brought Arg. reserves from
25 bn to
10 bn in a few weeks).

Lavagna is trying to put reins on the Central Bank by means of
Piganelli (the
new President of the Bank) and of Camarassa, a bourgeois economist
who is
frontally against monetarists, whose appointment at the Bank's board
of
directors came through direct pressure from Lavagna. He is trying to
negotiate with
the
IMF, but trying to have some control of at least the main financial
institution
of Argentina.

So that, who would win most with chaos? The IMF, of course, and
behind the IMF
that arch-son-of-a-bitch Menem. Duhalde is the great loser today, but
he has
killed himself long ago, so that it is not his death which I will
mourn. We
have more dignified deaths to mourn here today...

Well, I am so tired that I really need a good night's sleep.


------- End of forwarded message -------
Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
nestorgoro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

**********************************************************************
*

Compañeros del exercito de los Andes.

...La guerra se la tenemos de hacer del modo que podamos:
sino tenemos dinero, carne y un pedazo de tabaco no nos
tiene de faltar: cuando se acaben los vestuarios, nos
vestiremos con la bayetilla que nos trabajen nuestras mugeres,
y sino andaremos en pelota como nuestros paisanos los indios:
seamos libres, y lo demás no importa nada...

Jose de San Martín, 27 de julio de 1819.

**********************************************************************
*
******


~~~~~~~
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.