ARGENTINA: Civil Society Questions Joint Military Exercises

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Sep 13 2001 (IPS) - Joint military exercises sponsored by the United States and conducted by nine countries of the Americas in Argentina have drawn criticism from the opposition and non- governmental organisations, who charge that the troops were training in the repression of internal social protests.

The “Cabañas 2001” joint multinational peacekeeping exercise authorised by the government of Fernando de la Rúa without congressional approval lasted nearly a month in the northern province of Salta and ended Tuesday, while the world’s attention was riveted on the brutal terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.

The news of the attacks found Washington’s ambassador in Buenos Aires, James Walsh, attending the closing ceremony of the military exercises, along with U.S. Army Southern Command deputy commander in chief Gary Speer, a former director of counter-terrorism operations at the State Department.

Forces from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, the United States and Uruguay took part in Cabañas 2001, in which they were trained to deal with “a hypothetical battleground made up of civilians, NGOs and potential assailants,” according to critics.

The hypothesis for the exercises was a struggle for control over an imaginary territory in which armed conflicts had broken out over ethno-religious strife.

Congress refused to approve the entry into Argentina of foreign troops, as requested by the De la Rúa administration, until the president provided more details and explained the objectives of the joint exercises.

Given the government’s failure to respond, and with the exercises already underway, eight lawmakers denounced the government, and the president in particular, for “permitting the illegal entry of U.S. marines and special troops from other countries.”

The legislators expressed their concern over the army’s broad definition of “likely enemies, which potentially involves any Argentine citizen or resident protesting wage cuts or the loss of social gains,” labour rights and benefits.

They also said the suppositions of military strategists “spread a mantle of suspicion over hundreds of NGOs working for the public good.”

Nobel Peace Prize-winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel told IPS that he was observing “a re-militarisation of Latin America by the United States, based on the projected heating up of social conflicts caused by the deepening of free trade accords in the continent.”

Pérez Esquivel, the head of the Peace and Justice Service (Serpaj), said the new U.S. strategy could be seen in support for the multi-billion dollar Plan Colombia anti-drug strategy, the use of the military base in Mantas, Ecuador, and joint military exercises like Cabañas 2001, as well as a series of interventions in Central America.

The United States “intervenes everywhere [in this region], with the exception of Cuba and Venezuela,” added the activist, who received the Nobel Prize in 1982 for his fight for human rights during Argentina’s 1976-83 military dictatorship.

Pérez Esquivel turned to the courts to challenge Cabañas 2001, arguing that the government of De la Rúa had violated the constitution by authorising the joint military exercises without the legislature’s permission. The lawsuit, which was rejected by the court of first instance, is now in the process of appeal.

Hypothetical conflict scenarios must not depict internal protests, as seen in the exercises staged in Salta, he said, while complaining that “NGOs were envisioned as part of the battleground” there.

The Nobel laureate said he had sent a letter to U.S. President George W. Bush stating Serpaj’s “total rejection” of any form of terrorism, in reference to Tuesday’s attacks on the Department of Defence in Washington and the World Trade Center in New York.

But in the letter, he also cautioned Bush to avoid responses that would lead to a spiralling of the violence.

In Salta, many were disturbed by the presence of some 1,300 military personnel from nine countries of the Americas.

“Why do these gringos come here if not to train our military personnel in repression techniques?” an indignant Gladys Gómez, a lawyer from Salta, wondered aloud before IPS at a national congress recently held by the movement of unemployed workers.

In the past few months, Salta has been the scene of several harsh crackdowns by Argentina’s security forces against protesters blocking roads to demand jobs or public works programmes in the face of soaring poverty and unemployment in the region, against a backdrop of economic crisis in Argentina.

The latest episode of violence took place in June, when two people were killed by bullets fired into the crowd at a road barricade, and 50 were injured.

The Cabañas 2001 maneuvres were to be held in the province of Misiones, on the border with Brazil, but the government decided to host them in Salta instead due to staunch opposition put up by local Protestant pastors in Misiones.

The Defence Ministry said the criticism arose from a lack of knowledge on the peacekeeping exercises. But humanitarian groups blamed the government for the lack of clear explanations, and expressed doubt that the hypothetical conflict scenarios really had nothing to do with the ongoing nationwide wave of protests, strikes and roadblocks.

The head of operations of Argentina’s joint chiefs-of-staff, General Evaristo de Vergara, said the exercises were part of a new tendency in the training of United Nations peacekeeping forces, although no representative of the global forum attended the maneuvres.

According to the U.S. Department of Defence, the exercises were the largest joint service maneuvres held in the region, and focused on a variety of UN peacekeeping tasks such as tactical troop movements, food distribution, identification and marking of mines, and civil-military, security and police operations.

Cabañas 2001 was sponsored by the U.S. Southern Command headquarters in Miami, Florida.