ARGENTINA: Massive Uprising against Gov’t Economic Policies

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, May 29 2002 (IPS) - Industrial and rural workers, public employees, teachers, doctors, the unemployed, small business owners, retirees and students staged hundreds of demonstrations throughout Argentina Wednesday to protest against the Eduardo Duhalde government’s economic policies.

“This is a true popular uprising,” stated Víctor de Gennaro, secretary-general of the Congress of Argentine Workers (CTA), the trade union of public and private employees that convened the protests.

The CTA left it to the initiative of each group participating to determine the form their protests would take. The slogan of the day was “They must be stopped!” – referring to the government officials and their economic policies.

The Duhalde administration has devalued the Argentine peso amidst a profound four-year recession, while more than 23 percent of the economically active population is unemployed and over half the country’s population of 37 million lives in poverty, with several million falling below the poverty line only in recent months.

The government is staking its bets on obtaining support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in order to avoid default on debt to multilateral credit organisations.

To convince the IMF to disburse funds, the government must meet a series of requirements, one of which is a 60-percent cut in expenditures by the provinces. Duhalde is doing his best to comply with the IMF conditions.

“I don’t know if the political leaders and their accomplices are going to change, but I do know that we have changed and that we no longer want to delegate to others the construction of our future or that of our children,” labour leader De Gennaro said at the close of an assembly of aeronautical workers.

He explained that the CTA was not satisfied with organising a traditional labour strike this time, but rather sought to involve all sectors of the population that oppose the government’s economic policies, to demonstrate “the territorial extent and the diversity” of the groups of society that are being affected by them.

Demonstrators blocked national roadways, including access to the capital, and city streets. Schools and hospitals went on strike. Residents gathered for neighbourhood assemblies. Radio stations opened up their airwaves to callers. Protesters took over buildings. And, there were the “traditional” protest marches and rallies.

The CTA issued the call to protest with the backing of the Corriente Clasista Combativa, a group aligned with the movement of workers and the unemployed, and whose protest method of choice in the last six years has been to block highways and set up camp alongside the roads – sometimes for an indefinite period.

Taking part in Wednesday’s protests were opposition lawmakers, artists, students, teachers, scientists, religious leaders and human rights groups.

Also present were labour unionists opposed to the hierarchy controlling the two union groups resulting from the split of the General Confederation of Labour (CGT).

The Argentine Agrarian Federation, which encompasses small and medium-sized farming operations, decided that its protest would consist of a strike that began Monday and ended this Wednesday.

The Federation farmers coordinated their protest with truck drivers, who have been hard hit by the fact that fuel prices have risen 70 percent since the beginning of the year.

De Gennaro highlighted the massive turnout for protests in the cities of the Argentine interior.

The day of protest also drew the Assembly of Small and Medium-sized Entrepreneurs, and even the cooperative banking system, whose leader, Carlos Heller, was recently elected president of the Argentine Association of Public and Private Banks.

Hundreds of stage actors supported the movement, cancelling the theatre performances scheduled for Wednesday in the publicly run theatre houses. And an unprecedented number of taxi drivers, a group that is normally hesitant to take part in protests, joined the movement by blocking streets in downtown Buenos Aires.

“We Argentines must build our own force, made up of all of us who oppose this economic model of accumulation that allowed the financial sectors to get rich at the expense of hunger, unemployment and poverty” for the population, said De Gennaro.

The CTA, at different events on Wednesday, stated that mere “resistance” against the official economic policies is not enough, but that society must come up with a way to overcome the country’s profound social and economic crisis.

“This is a different type of social, political and cultural project, one that does not have a candidate at the head, but rather one that calls upon all sectors to take part in real change,” De Gennaro said.

The CTA is Argentina’s third largest trade union, after the two factions of the CGT, which have lost their ability to mobilise large portions of the population.

The CTA leadership says high unemployment and the economic crisis have transformed the trade union landscape and that the leaders of the CGT have lost touch with the real problems confronting workers today. The CTA further criticises the CGT for its tendency to work closely with the business community and with government officials.

Three years ago, the CTA proposed creating an employment insurance system that would include training for unemployed heads of household, 380 pesos a month (110 dollars at the current exchange rate), plus 60 pesos (17 dollars) for each school-aged child.

These subsidies, according to the original plan, would be financed by taxes and a portion of the additional government revenues arising from the increased purchasing power of the beneficiaries.

Implementation of that proposal is the focus of efforts by the National Front against Poverty, an alliance of unionists, economists, journalists, legislators and humanitarian organisations, all of whom took part in Wednesday’s protests.