Argentina: an overview

The Argentine Government announced its new austerity budget at the end of July 2001, in order to be able to continue to pay its foreign debt. Public workers and pensioners are to lose 13% of their salaries, in a plan proposed by President Fernando De la Rua and approved by the Argentine Senate
These measures came along with the tightening of the budget for the provinces, the shutting down of public offices and more severe control over tax collection. A general strike was held. Thousands of demonstrators have convened in Buenos Aires and throughout the country against these new "Zero Deficit" laws. Thirty thousand students, public workers, the unemployed and other people participated in the massive protest in front of the presidential office in Plaza de Mayo (Buenos Aires) on August 8.

On August 21, IMF Managing Director Horst Koehler agrees to recommend a £5.5bn increase in Argentina's £10bn stand-by loan agreement.

In september, the workers of the Zanon ceramics facory in the province of Neuquen went on strike
as the company tries to roll back benefits won by the workers in a bitter struggle just one year ago. The bosses stopped paying salaries and suspended medical care, hoping to starve the union back to work. The workers have responded by occupying the factory building and launching a fundraising drive to feed their families.

In October, the opposition Peronists take control of both houses of parliament in Congressional elections.

At the first of November De la Rua and Cavallo give details of new economic measures, including a debt swap that would comprise most of the £90bn public debt and offer boosts to consumer spending.

End november, after a two months strike, repression unleashed upon the ceramic workers, but also upon the unemployed, teachers and government employees of Neuquén. The workers were demonstrating in front of the Government House, demanding the reincorporation of the 380 workers layed off at the Zanón Ceramics plant and Cerámica del Valle. Union workers, the Unemployed Workers' Movement, teachers and a group of governemnet employees as well as human rights organizations formed part of the demonstration.
The repression, after several provocations, was carried out by the DESPO, a special police force of Neuquén, as well as several other police groups. Some workers were even shot in the face with rubber pellet guns: it was a veritable hunt for workers. Arrests were made, The workers were
chased and 'hunted down' within a 15-block radius. Rubber pellet guns were used against them, and once they were caught, they were beaten up and put into the police vans. Some workers entered a hospital, but the police followed them in and fired tear gas inside, where some workers were
receiving treatment.
Short after, a solidarity march to the House of Neuquén in Buenos
Aires found place.

In the beginning of december, Argentina edged close to bankruptcy as people queued at cashpoint machines and bank tellers' windows to withdraw money after a government decree restricting bank withdrawals and overseas transfers.
Passengers on planes and ships were frisked for illegal dollar stashes before leaving the country. The decree sparked fears of an imminent devaluation of the peso, wiping out savings overnight. The run on the banks was only the latest sign that the financial crisis that has rocked Latin America's third-largest economy for the past four years shows no signs of abating.
After analysts warned that the financial system might collapse within 10 days, the government capped cash withdrawals at $250 a week for the next three months.
In the face of a worsening economic crisis, Argentina's working and poor people were mobilizing for action. The newly-unemployed joined road blockades around a "Workers' Area" in La Matanza and the southern area of Buenos Aires. Teachers and government workers resisted plans for privitization, delayed salary, and payments in bonds. And mine workers in Río Turbio occupied their mine in solidarity with their fired co-workers.

On the 13th of december, much of Argentina grinds to a halt due to a 24-hour general strike by public workers protesting against new government curbs on bank withdrawals, a delay in pension payouts and other economic measures.

December 17: Government presents 2002 budget, which includes spending cuts of nearly 20%.

December 18: IMF says Argentina can delay payment on loan of about £650m due in January, but also says Argentina's economic policy is unsustainable.

Wednesday, december 19th began as a a fairly agitated day in Argentina. The counry's grandmothers and grandfathers protesting, almost in tears, outside banks because they were unable to get their retirement checks. Ten thousand fans of the Racing Club de Avellaneda, some having waited in line over 40 hours for a ticket to the game that could mean their first championship in 35 years, taking part in a near riot outside the stadium in the panic for tickets once they went on sale, and, those lucky (or unlucky) enough to have jobs, headed to work.
All this was well before noon. However, by the time the afternoon rolled around, it was rapidly becoming evident that this was not to be a day like the others. It was the beginning of the 48 hour revolt, the massive lootings, the battle of Buenos Aires, and the end of a President.
The first news was of sporadic looting in some provinces and in the outskirts of the city of Buenos Aires. Next, came word of heavy fighting in the city of La Plata, pitting leftist groups and municipal workers against the police after attempts to take over a municipal building. The rubber bullets and tear gas were flying, the barricades burning, and the bank windows crumbling.
Minutes later, news came of even more looting, and masses of people, sometimes dozens, sometimes hundreds, and sometimes thousands, gathering around supermarkets, begging for food, and if they were not given it, taking it. On the heels of this, news of fighting between municipal workers and police in the city of Cordoba after state workers partially set fire to the state house. News of police, evidently out of control and unnacountable (a constant reality in Argentina) shooting tear gas into a building belonging to the Luz y Fuerza union where young children were practicing ballet. Children, coughing and in tears, being rushed away in ambulances, amidst screams and the distant sound of rubber bullets.
In the meantime, the looting crept closer and closer to the capital. Sometimes, police watched helplessly, or chose not to intervene, others, it ended with bullets and gas. Sometimes, those watching the television, could cheer as the downtrodden and forgotten of Argentina took what they needed from the multinationals and large corporations in order to make their lives better, if only for a few days.
At this point, it was not yet even nightfall, and the worst, along with the best, was yet to come. Around 8 pm, a state of emergency was declared, limiting consitutional guarantees of individual freedoms, as well as forbidding public gatherings of more than 3 people.
At 10 pm, President De la Rua went on national television to give a four minute speech. It was here that it became abundantly clear that the nation was being led by a President who, not only lacked conviction and direction, but also was completely out of touch with the needs and demands of the Argentine people.
Faced with the unmistakable reality of a legion of unemployed and working poor taking to the streets in desperation to take what little they could in order to spend the holidays with less hunger in their stomachs, and a middle class that repeatedly took to the streets and blocked roads in order to protest what they saw as the robbing of their futures, the President responded only by saying that he "understood and felt" the suffering of the people, but that the "agitators" that were behind the violence and were fomenting it for political purposes would be stopped, and that was why the state of emergency had been declared.
This was the final mockery. The breaking point. Minutes later, in every neighborhood, on every street, from every balcony, and from every street corner, the pots and pans began to sound. People took to the streets. Several thousand converged on the presidential residence in Olivos, over four thousand converged outside the home of Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo in the upscale neighborhood of Palermo, tens of thousands converged in front of the Presidential palace (the Pink House) at the Plaza de Mayo, tens of thousands more converged in front of the congress, and innumerable thousands more on every streetcorner of every neighborhood in the nation.
Soon after 11 pm, the news came that Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo had resigned, and a resounding cheer rose from all those thousands that had spilled into the streets. But the people were not content, and wanted more. The looting continued, and the thousands upon thousands remained in the streets. It became clear that this was not a protest simply against one or another particular politician, it was a protest against the Argentine political class as a whole, be it of the Partido Justicialista, or the UCR. It was a protest against a ruling class that, for too long, has dedicated itself to looting the future and livelihood of Argentines. A ruling class that put the nation at the mercy of a neoliberal economic policy that could serve only the interests of a select few, at the expense of the many.
The chants said it, crudely and clearly. "Idiots, the State of Emerency, Shove it Up Your Asses, Menem and De la Rua are the Same Shit,Out With All of You" etc. This was a rebellion, and as always, a wounded government, when faced with imminent rebellion, bears its teeth and resorts to the only legitimacy it has. That of violence.
Some say that there was leftist provocateurs throwing rocks at the police. Others say it was mutual taunting. And others argue that it was a wholly unprovoked attack. What was shown on television, was a group of police officers cowering behind the columns of the congress, as they were besieged by demonstrators advancing up the steps. This was followed by what seemed an interminable string of shots, followed by a brutal repression of thousands via the bullet, the gas, and the baton. However, it is not sure how this began. But known is that, from the early hours of Thursday, December 20th the Buenos Aires police embarked on a 24 hour orgy of blood and violence that resulted in thousands of arrests, thousands of wounded, and 7 deaths.
At approximately 5 am, with quite a few wounded, quite a few arrests, some barricades, and some destroyed banks (8 and a McDonalds), Buenos Aires regained its calm. However, it was to be short lived, as the second day of the Battle of Buenos Aires was yet to begin. And while the political elite of Argentina thought that maybe, just maybe, the storm had passed, the people of Buenos Aires rested, thinking of how to regain control of its squares and traditional spaces of assembly and preparing for the day, that would topple a President, and maybe, with him, a system and an era.

In the calm that followed the police repression at the congress and the Plaza de Mayo, a calm that soon turned out to be the calm at the eye of the storm, a few brave souls, numbering very likely not more than one or two hundred, began during the course of the night installing themselves once again in front of the Presidential palace at the Plaza de Mayo. They held firmly to the belief that, as the day progressed and people awoke or went to work, they would join them once again and the mobilization would grow to be as large, or larger, than the day before.
Evidently, they were not the only ones of this opinion. A march was called by the alphabet soup of the Argentine left (United Left, Communist Party, Socialist Movement of the Workers, Socialist Workers Movement, Workers Party, Socialist Convergence, Workers Pole, Movement Towards Socialism, Revolutionary Communist Party, etc.) and several student and unemployed organizations (such as the Combative Classist Current) at 1 pm from the congress to the Plaza de Mayo, to call for the resignation of De la Rua and denounce the state of emergency.
At approximately 10 am, the police began slowly pushing people back from the Plaza, away from the Presidential palace. This was done with relative calm, despite several rather rough arrests.
Several hours later, with the couple of hundred demonstrators, from all walks of life, often joined by people coming and going from work, or on their lunch breaks, joined by the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (those brave mothers who defied both the military dictatorship and the bipartisan dictatorship to demand justice for their dissappeared sons and daughters, and punishment for their killers), the police announced via loudspeaker that they had orders to "clean the Plaza" and were thus giving people 15 minutes to disperse. Needless to say, the demonstrators went nowhere.
Soon enough, the mounted police were riding into the crowd, which resisted by any means it could. Some fought back, some sat down, others threw things. Every single car that drove by honked. People left their offices and joined on the side of the demonstrators. Cars that could interfere with the police did so. Despite this, the Plaza was cleared. However, every ten or fifteen minutes, dozens and hundreds of demonstrators, more numerous by the minute, returned up the diagonal streets that led to the Plaza de Mayo. The people knew their objective, and were thus impossible to disperse.
It was during these first battles of the day that the struggle for the Plaza de Mayo claimed its first victims. One via a rubber bullet to the neck, and the other via a bullet, very much real, to the chest.
Meanwhile, at the congress, there was a left wing demonstration with an energy and enthusiasm not seen for quite a while among the Argentine left. Well over two thousand people were in attendance, and the spirit of battle was in the air.
After marching little more than two blocks when already the gas was clearly visible from the front. Instantly, the t-shirts became hoods, the benches and trash cans became barricades, the slingshots emerged, the pavement became ammunition, and on occasion, the banks the target when cops were not to be found. However, after not long, it became clear that a long term resistance at the current location was unwise and tactically unsound, given the relatively small number of people present and the fact that the true battle was around the Plaza de Mayo, which was still quite a distance away.
Thus, they started out again along a different route. Surprisingly, the police were nowhere to be found and, aside from the occasional bank window, the march transpired in relative calm until arriving at the 9 de Julio avenue, location of the Obelisk, and only a four or five block distance away from the Plaza de Mayo.
The scene at the front of Diagonal Norte and Plaza de Mayo was truly incredible, inspiring, and unforgettable. Thousands upon thousands of people, men and women, of all social and economic backgrounds, young and old, thrusting themselves straight into the gas and the bullets, not knowing if the one they shot at you would be rubber or lead.
Like this, people advanced in any way they could, carrying forward desks, chairs, fences, and anything that could serve as barricade and shield as they advanced. Step by step, meter by meter, block by block, they moved forward, retreating only to regroup, take respite from the gas, and advance again, growing stronger with the sight of the Presidential palace in the distance.
Old men with rocks in their hands urging youths forward, the over 50 motorcycle delivery boys doing all they could to stop the police (and who paid for their efforts with two deaths), the people in suits and ties breaking parts of pavement to send to the front lines, the store owners providing water and a place to sit to fighters who needed a rest before returning to the front. The many youths, hooded and fighting in the front lines, assumed were young revolutionaries, who in fact were just youths who decided that the situation had reached an intolerable point and felt compelled to spring into action. Without parties and without leaders, only with conviction and courage.
Of course, this was not, as it was the night before, mainly the middle class, and neither was it a crowd willing to flee at the sight of police repression. It was a fighting crowd, and it is this that scares the corporate media, and it is this that compels it to lie about the events of Thursday.
But despite the usual lies, the unarguable truth is, and will always be, that this was the righteous anger of a people tired of lies, corruption, and injustice. It was the battle of thousands of people who truly thought they were giving birth to a new future and a new reality, and like all births, it would be painful and bloody.
But, the balance of power shifted against the people. Eventually, the water cannon tanks rolled in and pulverized the barricades. Soon, the people were pushed back. The advance was made as difficult as possible for the police. Banks and multinationals were destroyed and set fire to, their furniture dragged into the street and set alight to make barricades of fire.
At this point, De la Rua had resigned, and had been seen escaping in a helicopter from the roof of the presidential palace. Knowing this, hearing that the police had orders to keep the people out of the Presidential palace and the congress no matter what the costs, and seeing that the vacuum of power was to be filled, certainly not by a decentralized and self-managed system of community power and direct democracy, not even by the Argentine left, but once again by the rats that infest the halls of power in Argentina, the Partido Justicialista.
From this point on, approximately 8 pm, the people continued a gradual retreat. There were still many thousands, and the atmosphere was still combative, but it was gradually giving way to indiscriminate looting. Of course, banks, McDonalds, and assorted multinationals were always in bounds. However, as the hours passed, police began to slowly disperse, and people started taking what they wanted, from where they wanted, irrespective of the owners of the establishment. Once again, it began to look like a battle of poor versus poor, as some neighbors exited their apartments and began attacking looters, defending the shops that are the source of their meager wages.
And so it continued for several hours. While there was still the clear political content of a people long denied the pleasures of life taking what they wanted in order to have a bit merrier of a christmas, it was not as overt as it had been in the earlier hours. Music chain stores were looted, a men's clothing store, a sports store, etc. etc.
Although sporadic looting continued for several hours in the city center, until approximately midnight, this essentially marked the end of the popular mobilization.

Two days later, Saturday, the alphabet soup of the left called for a mobilization in front of the congress, where the discussions regarding who the next president would be, for how long he would rule, how the next elections would be carried out, etc. Approximately 500 were present outside, while inside the Partido Justicialista, despite stiff resistance from virtually every other party (particularly the left), was carrying out it's seizure of power, a shameless expropriation of the victory of the people. The parliamentary session began at approximately 9 pm. It finished, with the appointment of Adolfo Rodriguez Saa, governor of the Province of San Luis, as president of Argentina.

As Argentina recovered from two days of looting and street battles left a divided Peronist party to pick up the pieces, the country is closer than ever to financial collapse.
Meanwhile Adolfo Rodriguez Saa announced the suspension of all payments of foreign debt and employ the money saved towards rebuilding the economy.
At the same time, Mr Rodriguez Saa announced the creation of a new currency (the Argentino) that will co-exist alongside the dollar and the Argentine peso, which has been pegged to the US currency for a decade, helping to keep Argentine exports uncompetitive.
Fresh protests appeared, in anger over Rodriguez Saa's appointment of corrupt officials and his decision to maintain unpopular banking curbs.
According to the Buenos Aires Herald, censorship was applied to discourage the press and media from reporting any further episodes of looting once the Peronists assumed power

In the evening of the 29th december, blockades were put up again in the streets of Buenos Aires; and a spontaneous rally of thousands took place at the parliament. The people were shouted for minister Grosso to leave the administration, the resignation of the Supreme Court, the reimbursement of the deposits. But there was more that that. The slogan "everybody out, nobody must stay", against the new government, was still the favorite of everybody.
The rumor began spreading and then became a song: "the people go to
the Plaza, nobody will take us from there". A spontaneous demonstration of thousands towards the Plaza de Mayo advanced with persistence. With Argentina's flag up front, the mass kept increasing to enter the Plaza with thousands and thousands. People tried to get in the Palace to speak with the president. The fences gave in in short time, the police deployed towards a side and the people were facing the doors of the Pink House. They entered the arcade shouting everyone had to leave, both the peronists and the radicals, "without peronists, without radicals, we are going to live better", was also shouted. The answer was once again given by the police. They did it
in such a way as to later present it as an act of own defense: they sent two "policemen" to "persuade" the whole multitude. Obviously, they were not well received by the people and in abscense of any "persuasion" the gas and rubber bullets started. The two policemenwere the "sacrifice of the law enforcement" to start the repression. After police started using gasses, the people started running, splitting up in different groups. An important group remains in the Plaza and another group formed by a couple of thousands stays in Av. de Mayo. The
big majority of people left towards the Parliament. Barricades were put up, some let their anger out on the banks, billboards and bus stops; Meanwhile at the Plaza, the situation was becoming more tense. The majority of the people went to the parliament, where bonfires were made, people entered the building and started to throw furniture into the fire.
Minutes before, the infantry was overflowed, but then once again the gasses began, just as the bust went down. Now the cops were more and had a watercannon. When everyone retrieved, people shouted to go to the Supreme Court of Justice where also bonfires and barricades were put up. The people where soon surrounded by police. There was no possibility of hiding and organising a resistance was almost impossible. After a while most people could escape from the surrounding, and the streets became quiet again.

On the 30th of December, Rodriguez Saa resigned, officially because a lack of support within his own party.

On the 1st of January, the Congress elected Peronist Senator Eduardo Duhalde as president for the remaining two years of de la Rua's term.
Duhalde decided to devalue the peso, ending 10 years of parity with the US dollar.

arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)