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NEWS January 15 2002
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| Argentina Uprising - comment The recent popular uprising in Argentina has sent the government into turmoil and created odd scenes with politicians jostling to get away from being named the next president. While tens of thousands took to the streets, facing teargas and police batons to eventually storm the parliament, the international press focussed, predictably, on the violence, mostly forgetting to mention that most of the deaths were at the hands of the police, and completely failing to wonder why people were looting food shops – could it be because they were hungry, having been deprived of their livelihoods by yet another neo-liberal experiment gone wrong? Thousands of people, mainly local government employees and the unemployed, have been demonstrating in the provinces over the non-payment of wages (which in some cases are four months overdue) and the government’s total neglect of the unemployed. The uprising, while initially directed at the government of Fernando de la Rua, quickly took on the character of a rejection of all politicians and the corporations that support them, as evidenced by the continuing protests against moves by the new centre-right president Eduardo Duhalde. In the aftermath of the change of government, the rich world’s press has portrayed the crisis almost solely in terms of the problems devaluation of the Argentine currency (the peso) will cause for international banks. Sympathy for the victims of years of ‘fiscal austerity’ – social services cuts and pay cuts for public employees – and ‘liberalisation’ – letting foreign banks and investors run off with the money – has been hard to spot. Even more disconcertingly, the rich world’s press has made little or no attempt to point the finger of blame for the crisis at the true culprits – the IMF – instead speaking vaguely of ‘corruption and mismanagement’ by successive Argentine governments. Corruption and mismanagement there has certainly been, but the economic mess which has led to the uprisings is largely the result of the economic policy straitjacket imposed by the IMF, which continued to push balanced budgets and a tight monetary policy even when Argentina was clearly in recession. Most recently, last August the IMF forced cuts of up to 13% in state employees’ salaries and cuts in state health insurance, provoking a wave of strikes and demonstrations. The IMF has a stranglehold on Argentine economic policy, as it does on so many countries, as a result of Argentina’s chronic debt crisis – the August cuts were made in exchange for $26bn in further loans, most of which will go straight into the pockets of the foreign banks holding the debt. So surely it is the IMF’s responsibility to get Argentina out of the current crisis, perhaps by negotiating with the creditors for permanent relief on some of the loans? Only in cloud-cuckoo-land – last week the IMF managing director Horst Kohler washed his organisation’s hands of the whole business – apparently the crisis ‘can be discussed and solved only by Argentina alone’, though the IMF might be willing to talk to them about, yes, more loans, if the budget is balanced and current attempts by the new government to protect small savers at the cost in international banks are abandoned. It seems Argentina is the new sacrifice on the altar of neo-liberal orthodoxy. Occupation of Argentine Embassy in London in solidarity with demonstrators: http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=20088&group=webcast |