LABOUR-ARGENTINA: Nationwide Roadblocks Against Austerity Measures

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Jul 31 2001 (IPS) - The unemployed and other groups like students and public employees staged roadblocks Tuesday in the capital and every province of Argentina to protest cutbacks in public sector wages and pensions.

A congress of the unemployed decided last week to organise simultaneous 24-hour roadblocks countrywide, and on Tuesday they were joined by students, farmers, pensioners, doctors, teachers and public employees.

The demonstrators announced that next week they would hold 48- hour blockades in other locations, and 72-hour roadblocks the week after.

The protesters are demanding that the government revoke its recently approved cuts in public spending and that it continue public works programmes that pay a small monthly stipend to the unemployed.

A monthly average of 11 roadblocks were staged in 1997, when that form of protest began to be widely used in this Southern Cone country of 37 million. Blockages of traffic, known locally as “piquetes” or picket lines, then began to multiply, especially after recession broke out in 1998. In 1999 the monthly average stood at 21, in 2000 at 42, and in the first half of this year at 71.

In the past, blockades have been held in heavily populated suburbs of Buenos Aires, the northwestern provinces of Jujuy and Salta, Neuquen and Ushuaia in the south, and Santa Fe, a province near Buenos Aires.

Since the growing wave of roadblocks began, the death toll among the protesters, or “piqueteros”, has climbed to seven.

“Today is the first time we’ve held a national ‘piquete’,” said town councillor Luis D’Elía, one of the leaders of the protest movement. “We are organising civil resistance throughout the country, and although we had foreseen around 50 roadblocks, we know that more than 100 have been set up.”

Traffic was cut off Tuesday on roads in and around the capital as well as in every province, and in some districts more than one blockade was organised.

Women comprised a majority of the demonstrators, as speakers, organisers and even cooks. A number of children also took part, in an attempt to ensure that the protests remained peaceful, said D’Elía.

The roadblocks included arts festivals, silent marches and original forms of protest like teachers swapping their traditional white coats for black clothing as a sign of mourning.

Tuesday’s central event was held in the Buenos Aires suburb of La Matanza, D’Elía’s area of influence. The demonstrators gathered in front of the Paroissien Hospital, and doctors and nurses joined in the protest, several of them as speakers. “From now on we will protest together,” Dr. Diego Saccone told the crowd.

“They told us it was impossible to organise the unemployed together with workers, but we demonstrated that if the will is there, it is possible,” D’Elía, the head of the Congreso de los Trabajadores Argentinos, a central trade union, said Tuesday as he met with legislators, town councillors, doctors and teachers who expressed their support for those opposed to the government’s austerity measures.

While roadblocks have been mainly used in recent years to demand subsidies for the unemployed, this time the list of grievances was longer. The protesters demanded, for example, the release of some 2,800 members of their movement who were taken into custody for their involvement in blocking traffic.

They also yrged that public works programmes and subsidies for the unemployed be continued despite the severe fiscal crisis that led the government to adopt the stringent pension and public salary cuts.

Meanwhile, a group of unemployed peacefully occupied a branch of the Bank of the Province of Buenos Aires Tuesday, after they were summoned for the fifth time to pick up their June stipends and turned away once again with empty hands.

The demonstrators demanded the repeal of the new law that will cut pensions and public sector wages, which was approved by Congress in the early hours of Monday morning.

Critics charge that the spending cuts will only deepen the recession and reduce tax revenues, which will lead the government to further expand the cutbacks.

The latest package of austerity measures is the sixth adopted by the government of Fernando de la Rúa since it took office 18 months ago. The Economy Ministry, headed by Domingo Cavallo, the architect of Argentina’s currency board scheme, claims there is no other way to generate confidence among investors and creditors than to drastically reduce the imbalance in the public accounts.

With that argument, and in order to stave off a cessation of payments, the government announced its plan to spend only what it collects in tax revenues. The salaries of public employees will be cut 13 percent this month, as will all pensions above 500 dollars a month.

Approval of the adjustment measures coincided with widespread fears of a currency devaluation, triggered by the flight of six percent of bank deposits.

But analysts and traders warn that the heavy popular resistance to the measures could frustrate their implementation.