An article from Workers World on Argentina and some comments

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Following is an article from the CubaNews list from a newspaper that seems
to be making an effort to get an accurate fix on what is happening in Latin
America today.
There are some important questions that they need to think more about.  One
of them is the great weight of the national and democratic issues that face
the workers  and peasants of Argentina today -- from the conquest or
reconquest of national sovereignty, pride, and independence to the land
question to aspects of racial-type discrimination and chauvinism.

The article refers to the "myth of Argentina being part of and separated
from Latin America, helping to shape its national identity.  In my opinion,
neither of these concepts is really a myth.  There is no single Latin
American nation today, although cultural, political and economic factors
provide a strong basis for unification and overcoming of national divisions
in struggle.  The different countries may have started out as simply lines
in the dust drawn by European conquerors but Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru,
Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, Chile, Argentina and others are a lot more than
that now.  It seems to me that historical development including lots of
struggles really have created different nations on the foundation of the
common cultural heritage.  And, just as importantly, there are the
indigenous peoples of  Peru, Mexico, Guatemala, Bolivia, Ecuador, and
elsewhere who are clearly not purely and simply "Latin Americans."  And then
there are special situations like Belize and the Atlantic Coast of
Nicaragua, where the designation "Latin American" is also incomplete.

The article describes Peron as a "bourgeois nationalist" who was "loyal to
capitalism."  This strikes me as an undeniable fact.  But it also strikes me
as an undeniable fact that Peronism has been a real, historical political
form of the Argentine workers movement for many years -- not just a
bourgeois nationalist movement. Its not necessary to have a  cosmic "stages"
theory of working class consciousness or working-class politics to recognize
that a stage has actually taken place.  The article also failed  to mention
that Peron didn't just fade away, but was overthrown by a reactionary
military coup backed by US imperialism.

A tendency to underestimate the national question in Latin America is part,
it seems to me, of the broader tendency to underestimate the potential for
national democratic revolutions as the opening of a revolutionary process
that has the potential to lead to worker-peasant revolutions against
capitalism.

Of course, I didn't come up with these ideas all by myself.  I have learned
quite a lot of them from reading Nestor Miguel Gorojovsky on this list (as I
understand him).   I hope that Nestor will soon enlighten us further about
these questions.  I thought about starting a broad, nonexclusive coalition
to get him to do so but I decided it wouldn't be prudent.
Fred Feldman

-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Oct. 17, 2002
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------

ARGENTINA: CAPITALIST CRISIS SPURS LEFT ORGANIZATIONS

By Alicia Jrapko

[Excerpts from a talk
at the Sept. 21-22 Workers World Party Conference.]

Last March, while in Buenos Aires, I saw a young girl
begging for money. The container she was holding was a
McDonald's cup. This hated chain throws their leftovers
mostly to children.

While growing up in Argentina, I was taught that it was
different from the rest of Latin America; that Argentina was
more like a European country. My country was once the most
prosperous country in Latin America, with an abundance of
natural resources and an educated and skilled work force,
many of them immigrants from Europe.

After World War II, Juan Domingo Peron, a bourgeois
nationalist, was elected president and Argentina went
through a period of rapid industrial expansion and increased
social benefits. Significant increases in union membership
consolidated the power of the General Confederation of
Labor.

The Peron regime nationalized large parts of the economy and
put up protective trade barriers. Steel and iron industries
were built; the manufacture of farm and industrial machinery
was subsidized. Argentina made airplanes and ships for its
merchant marine.

The government bought 70 percent of the nation's railways
and the entire trolley system, which had been British-owned.
Peron nationalized the U.S.-owned International Telephone
and Telegraph. He put limits on the amount of foreign-owned
firms' profits, resulting in a dramatic drop in foreign
investment.

Even though Peron provided working-class reforms, including
women's right to vote, he was a loyal defender of
capitalism. This was the basis of the myth of Argentina
being part of and separated from Latin America, helping to
shape its national identity.

After Peron's tenure, years of civilian and military
governments followed. By the end of the 1960s, the United
States prepared a continental plan of neo-liberal policies
that changed Argentina's social landscape.

During the 1970s, many Latin American leftist organizations,
including those in Argentina, followed the example of Cuba
and joined the revolutionary currents developing in Africa
and Asia. These movements threatened imperialism's plans in
Latin America, which the United States was not willing to
concede. The United States began covert operations causing
economic destabilization.

First there was the overthrow of President Salvador Allende
in Chile in 1973, followed by bloody military coups in
Uruguay in 1975 and in Argentina in 1976.

While the U.S.-backed military were torturing and murdering
students, workers and cadres of leftist political
organizations, imperialist economists implemented free-
market policies that devastated domestic industries but
rewarded financial speculation.

Thirty thousand people paid with their lives. I left
Argentina during that time, and many of my college friends
disappeared and were killed.

Beginning in 1983, civilian governments followed the
austerity measures imposed by the International Monetary
Fund and World Bank. Argentina's foreign debt grew to $164
billion. It faced a devalued peso, a shrinking middle class
and third-world status. Argentina was forced to sell off
everything and every sector of the economy became
privatized.

Probably the most graphic example of this was the highway
between Cordoba and Buenos Aires. A French firm bought the
right to collect the tolls.

One of the schemes by which Argentina plans to pay loans on
which it continues to default is to give away huge areas of
land in Patagonia as payment. This concession to foreign
banks weakens sovereignty.

Last December massive resistance began in response to
unemployment over 20 percent, 18 million people living below
the poverty line and children dying every day. Huge
demonstrations have caused five imperialist-backed
presidents to resign.

An outgrowth of privatization has been the formation of
unemployed workers' organizations known as Piqueteros, whose
social program is geared towards workers' control.

Part of this movement has dismissed the notion that more IMF
loans are a good thing. A significant part of this current
shows no confidence in the national bourgeoisie and is
willing to struggle on every issue against them. I was able
to see a meeting of the Piqueteros, and it was working-class
democracy in action.

If the Piqueteros and the unions can merge, it will be a
pivotal ingredient to the overthrow of the national
bourgeoisie and freeing Argentina from imperialist
domination.

A mass movement is reawakening and reorganizing. There are
positive signs of a recovery of the revolutionary movement
that could be even greater than the 1970s and could
eventually seize state power. This potential is why the IMF
and the World Bank have not been able to complete their
plans of recolonizing Argentina.

- END -





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