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March 31, 2003
The collapse in Argentina
How the IMF's misguided economic policies are wreaking havoc on Argentina:
...the piqueteros are the collateral damage of neoliberalism--a fluke explosion that happened when rapid-fire privatization was mixed with "shock" austerity. In the mid-1990s, hundreds of thousands of Argentines suddenly found themselves without paychecks, welfare checks or pensions. Rather than disappearing quietly into the scavenged shantytowns that surround Buenos Aires, they organized themselves into militant neighborhood-based unions. Highways and bridges were blocked until the government coughed up unemployment benefits; abandoned land was squatted on to build homes, farms and soup kitchens; a hundred closed factories were taken over by their employees and put back to work. Direct action became the alternative to theft and death.But that's not why Vespignani describes life in Argentina as a war. The war is what happens next, after she and her neighbors dare to survive: the visits by armed thugs, the brutal evictions from squatted land and occupied factories, the assassinations of activists by police, the portrayal of piqueteros as menacing terrorists. Last month Buenos Aires police used tear gas and rubber bullets to clear sixty families out of an abandoned building near the trendy Plaza Dorrego.
Posted by Tyrone at March 31, 2003 11:36 PM