As protesters' ranks swell, Argentine's middle class turns on poor

[Rose Siding]

CIUDAD EVITA, Argentina - On a superhighway leading to Argentina's main international airport last week, poor women breastfed their babies as 21 brawny and tattooed men with wooden clubs forced all traffic to an exit ramp. International travelers were out of luck.

The demonstrators were one of many groups of piqueteros, or picketers, who've been left out of Argentina's recent economic rebound. In recent months these poor picketers from the outskirts of Buenos Aires have trashed McDonald's restaurants, attacked the city legislature and brought chaos during the visit of the International Monetary Fund's managing director on Aug. 31.

It's been nearly three years since Argentina's economic collapse, and the middle class has bounced back, no longer banging on pots and pans in street rallies. And as the picketer groups representing the disenfranchised poor grow in size and boldness, the middle class has turned against them.
.................
Today's picketer groups have a 10-year history, after Argentina privatized its oil and gas industry in the mid-1990's, leading to massive layoffs in the rural provinces of Salta and Neuquen. Fired workers there organized aggressive roadblocks and protests, setting an example for the working poor in the capital region.

Many of those tossed out of work in Argentina's 2002 economic collapse are the rank and file of today's picketer groups.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/9707317.htm

[Blecht]

1. Picture the US in 10 years

The is the future we face if Bush is elected (or steals office again).

[w4rma]

2. Hmm, this article smells fishy.

I wonder how large the percentage of Argentina's population that this source considers the "middle class".

[bemildred]

3. Argentina's Kirchner Rebuffs Investor Demands to Quell Violence

Aug. 27 (Bloomberg) -- When more than 200
telephone-union workers forced their way into
Telefonica SA's call center in Buenos Aires on
Aug. 9, manager Humberto Pato Vinuesa stopped
work and sent the 1,700 employees home.

Local police didn't respond to requests to oust the
intruders, who stayed for 30 hours, says Pato
Vinuesa, 38.

``The police had no interest in dealing with the
problem,'' he says. The two-day shutdown cost
Atento SA, a unit of Madrid- based Telefonica,
$100,000 in lost revenue and may lead the company
to cancel plans to hire 650 new employees,
according to Pato Vinuesa.

Argentine President Nestor Kirchner, 54, says he
won't use police to control demonstrations that clog
the capital's streets most weekdays or order them
to employ force to quell violent protests against
international companies such as McDonald's Corp.
and Repsol-YPF SA. The violence is deterring
investment in Latin America's third-largest
economy, says Boris Segura, a fund manager at
Standish Mellon Asset Management in Boston.

Bloomberg

[AP]

4. First impression: Kirchner is a good guy. He's not going to use the police

to be a private pinkerton service for capital.

He's not a fascist.

Thus, articles like the one above which try to make it sound like a mess.

Workers have the right to strike. That's not messy. That's labour engaging with capital on a level playing field.

Kirchner knows that these workers need to get paid better wages if Argentina's economy is going to improve. He's not going use the police to guarantee low wages for capital.

[bemildred]

6. Kirchner follows a long list of Argentine PMs that obeyed

the money boys and were thrown out. He does not wish to join
them, and he knows that they are not his friends, whatever they may
say or pretend to do. What little progress Argentina has made
of late has come from ignoring those self-centered pricks. I
understand he was unhelpful with the IMF bozos on their latest
visit too. He has cut a deal with Chavez for fuel and not doubt
the results of the election in Venezuela and the progress that
is being made there have helped stiffen his spine, if it needed
any stiffening. There are some other bilateral or trilateral
negotiations going on with other LA nations, the MERCOSUR talks,
etc. that one hopes lead to further cooperation, independence, and
economic and social improvements.

[HuckleB]

10. Kirchner's got far more support than the original thread starting article

indicates. And this notion that there's somehow a massive split between the "poor" and "middle class" doesn't match my experience in Argentina, nor the experience of friends and family who've been there, as recently as Labor Day weekend.

Of course folks get PO'd when they're the ones stuck in a blockade. That's human nature. It doesn't mean what the article of the original piece tries to make it mean, however.

Thanks for the piece on Kirchner's reaction.

[bemildred]

11. Original piece is clearly "divide and rule" propaganda BS.

But the details are interesting; and the choices are limited
if you want English language news as to what is going on down
there. You get a piece here, a bit there ...

Thank you for your information.

[schultzee]

5. What Karl Marx had to say made sense, the Communists just

created an obscenity out of his ideas. But the working class is being oppressed here also. Arnould the PIG vetoed raising the minimum wage in California. They are oppressing the working class.

[UpInArms]

7. the Bushes, Enron and Argentina

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2000/03/argentina.html

excerpt:

A few weeks after the U.S. presidential election in 1988, Terragno received a phone call from a failed Texas oilman named George W. Bush, who happened to be the son of the president-elect. "He told me he had recently returned from a campaign tour with his father," the Argentine minister recalls. The purpose of the call was clear: to push Terragno to accept the bid from Enron.

"He was taking a moment to call me because he knew that I was dealing with this," says Terragno, adding that Bush told him that he "viewed with some concern the slow pace of the Enron project." According to Terragno, the president-elect's son noted that a deal with Enron "would be very favorable for Argentina and its relations with the United States."

When a brief report on the attempt to influence the Argentine deal appeared in The Nation and the Texas Observer years later, the Bush team reacted angrily. His staff produced a copy of his day planner to show that Bush never placed the phone call, and a top-level adviser personally called reporters to dismiss the story as a fantasy by "some guy in Argentina." Bush's staff continues to deny his involvement, and no other media outlet ever reported on the episode, despite the high-ranking source.

More than a decade later, Terragno still recalls details of the phone call clearly -- as well as his outrage. "It looked bad and it surprised me," he says. "There was this political endorsement, apparently from the White House. I don't know if George Bush the father was aware of it, or if it was only a business contact by his son, who hoped that his family name would have some influence."

...more...

http://www.zmag.org/content/GlobalEconomics/enron_argentina.cfm

Do a quick search of the Web on the terms Enron and Argentina and you mostly get either references comparing the two, or a recent satire in which Kenneth Lay claims immunity by claiming Enron IS Argentina. You might even stumble on the Mother Jones article detailing Dubya's lobbying of the Argentinian government on behalf of Enron when he was governor of Texas.

Yesterday in New York anti-WEF protesters made the link between the plight of Enron's workers and those in Argentina. But I don't know if even these protestors realize how closely these two issues are linked.

It turns out (not surprisingly given the extent of Enron's global interests) that Enron is very deeply involved in Argentina. Its holdings there are in Transportadora de Gas del Sur (TGS), whose website describes the company as “the leading gas transportation company in Argentina, operating the most extensive gas pipeline system in the country and in Latin America.” Enron's own website says “The company serves 4.3 million customers, 3.1 million of which reside in the greater Buenos Aires area.”

To understand the significance of these figures its worth noting that in 1998, 48% of energy use in Argentina came from natural gas (as quoted in a report posted by the Brazilian Embassy in DC, which tracks such things because of the international pipelines being laid across countries in the region.)

...more...

http://www.enron.com/corp/investors/annuals/annual98/wholesale.html

Enron's Annual Report 1998

excerpt:

Building strong regional positions

Enron's strategy in the Southern Cone exemplifies its ability to be an integrated energy company in international markets. Enron is acquiring and constructing key assets that create an integrated regional gas and electricity business in Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia. Enron owns interests in the 4,104-mile Transportadora de Gas del Sur (TGS) pipeline system in Argentina, the 3,093-mile Transredes pipeline system in Bolivia and the 1,864-mile Bolivia-to-Brazil pipeline. These systems link huge gas supplies with highly populated demand areas. Enron is using this supply access to create competitive advantages for other asset development projects, including the 480-megawatt Cuiaba power plant and pipeline, which began the first phase of commercial operation in early 1999. Enron's strong asset infrastructure in the Southern Cone also enables the company to participate in significant demand-side opportunities for both gas and electricity. When Argentina became the first country in the region to liberalize its energy market, Enron moved quickly to establish its presence there. The company began trading gas in Argentina in 1997 and was the first non-national company to receive a power marketing license in that country. In addition, Enron owns interests in five local distribution companies (LDCs) in northeastern Brazil and two in the southeastern part of the country. Enron also holds interests in the CEG/Rio LDCs along the coastal states of Brazil and in Elektro, one of Brazil's most efficient utilities and the electricity service provider for the huge Sao Paulo market. With this large energy franchise in place, Enron is pursuing additional opportunities to leverage its physical presence in the Southern Cone.

...more...

[bemildred]

8. Argentine central bank chiefs to go.

Argentina's centre-left government is to
replace Alfonso Prat-Gay, central bank
president, as part of a wide-ranging shake-up of
the country's highest monetary authority.

The changes, which will
affect more than half the
number of top jobs at the
bank, come at a crucial
moment for Argentina.
President Néstor
Kirchner's leftwing
administration is about to
launch an offer to
restructure more than $100bn (£55bn, ?82bn) in
debt following the country's sovereign default in
December 2001. It was still unclear on Friday
what triggered Mr Prat-Gay's surprise departure.
His term officially expires next Thursday but it
had been assumed his mandate would be renewed
automatically. But Mr Prat-Gay had been
lobbying the government for months to allow him
to pick at least one of the replacements for four
bank directors whose mandates also end next
week.

http://www.falkland-malvinas.com/Detalle.asp?NUM=4274

[bemildred]

9. IMF lets Argentina defer $1.1 billion in debt.

The International Monetary Fund on Friday
granted an Argentine government request to
defer $1.1 billion in debt repayments that
Buenos Aires was scheduled to make between
now and January.

Argentina will have to make
those payments one year after
their original due date, according
to an IMF communique.

The Fund said its "policy on
repayment expectations allow for
such extension where the member's external
position is not sufficiently strong for it to repay
early without undue hardship or risk." "Because a
decision to approve an extension of repayment
expectations is a technical one, it is not based on
an assessment of the authorities' economic
program," the statement said, noting that
Argentina will still face obligations to the Fund
of roughly $1.46 billion over the next four
months.

In its statement, the IMF said Argentine
President Nestor Kirchner's government has
committed itself to making those payments.
Thanks to the IMF's extension, Argentina will
not have to pay $290 million that would have
become due on Monday.
The other deferred payments had been scheduled
for Oct. 15, Nov. 22, Dec. 9 and 20, and Jan. 17.
Although the statement explained that the IMF
did not base its decision on an analysis of the
country's economic performance, it did mention
government policies.

http://www.falkland-malvinas.com/Detalle.asp?NUM=4269

[CHIMO]

12. Occupy, Resist, Produce: New Documentary "The Take" Takes on Globalization

We spotlight a new documentary by Canadian journalists Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein called "The Take" which looks at how workers in Argentina took back their factory after the country's spectacular economic collapse in 2001.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/20/144215