Date: Wed, 16 Jul 1997 11:01:02 +0200
From: Hugh Rodwell <m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se>
Subject: M-G: Everyday life in a semi-colony


I'm forwarding a report from LabourNet on the situation in Jujuy province
in Argentina. What's special about it is that there's nothing special about
it. This is happening all over the country, as my earlier forwardings on
events in Tierra del Fuego/Neuquen showed, and similar confrontations are
happening or brewing all over the world.

It's a situation of workers' and popular mobilization. The report lacks an
account of the political organizations among the workers and the people,
their discussions and their programmes. What it does show however is the
enormous potential power of the workers and the people once they decide to
move, regardless of the deployment of the military police.

LabourNet is at

(http://www.labournet.org.uk)


Cheers,

Hugh

_______________________________________________



The Clouded Mirror

Special Report for La Red Obrera/LabourNet by Luis M. Casado Ledo, Buenos Aires

In May the two Argentinas - one upbeat because the macroeconomic indicators
indicate a
promising future and the IMF on their recent visit found that debt
repayment was going well; the
other ever less optimistic, as those who are on the other side of the macro
indicators live out
their present in exclusion and face a future of greater poverty.

The reality of the processes of globalisation resembles a mirror which has
clouded over, in
which everyone can use their imagination to find the result which suits
them best.

The Rich Argentina

In May firms (banks) were sold to foreign interests for $2,600 million at
an unprecedented
breadth and speed and more sales were announced. It also emerged that
multinational firms
based within the national territory - the traditional ones and those which
have arrived in the
last few years - made record profits of $2,300 million in 1997; a sum
equivalent to four months
of VAT collection, or to six months' worth of state employees' salaries,
which nevertheless will
be taken out by the group of foreign companies in the form of benefits and
dividends.

Meanwhile, during his visit to Germany President Carlos Saul Menem
described the protest of the
sugar mill workers in Jujuy (1,945 km from Buenos Aires) as a "minor
problem" and pledged that
the Government "at no time" considered the possibility of intervening in
the province. He also
predicted that 300,000 jobs would be created during 1997 and the
unemployment index would
fall two points.

The Poor Argentina

Saturday 31 May was the first day without road blockades in Jujuy, after
the provincial
government promised 12,000 jobs, subsidies and measures of a more
structural nature.
Nevertheless, the spirit of the town and the unemployed and desperate men
and women of all
ages whose pickets had guarded the roads, remained alert awaiting the next
moves of the
government which a few days earlier had confronted them with military police=2E

The Buenos Aires newspaper Clar=EDn published testimony to the brutal
government repression:
"Amongst the pickets was the legendary figure of Olga Arédez, the wife of
Luis Arédez, the
mayor of Libertador (a district in Jujuy province) before the 1976 military
coup who was
kidnapped and disappeared.

"Olga Arédez recalls various similarities between the repression after the
coup and that of 21
May. When her husband disappeared he had been taken to from his house in a
van of the Ledesma
mill, the firm which dominates the economic activity of the area and owns
the land throughout
the zone. Likewise it was the firm's vans which the military police used
this time around to
remove the detainees during confrontations with the villagers."

Origin of the Conflict

On 21 May a demonstration by the 4,000 workers sacked by the Ledesma sugar
mill began by
blocking Highway 34 demanding their jobs; during the afternoon the Military
Police charged
launching rubber bullets and tear gas grenades, respecting neither women
nor children.

When the combat began to flag in intensity and the road remained in the
hands of the villagers
who defended it with stones, the declarations of the Jujuy governor Carlos
=46erraro became
known, informing them that the repression had been ordered by his
administration "in full accord
with the national government" in particular with Interior Minister Carlos
Corach. But by this
time the toll of at least 80 wounded in the harsh confrontations was also
known.

Thus in a few hours the government, far from retaking the road, provoked
the rest of the
villagers who until then had kept their distance from the conflict, to
erupt in support. So the
unemployed and the Joint Union Committee were not left isolated in the
road; as night fell the
darkness was lit up with burning tyres, branches, logs, and whatever came
to hand to show that
things were getting serious, that the hunger was quickening.

In this way, the Buenos Aires newspaper P=E1gina/12 commented: "The military
police, some 450,
were billeted in the neighbouring village of Paulina in sites provided by
the Ledesma mill and
the paper mill, owned by the Blaquier family.

"Ledesma is the firm which contributed more than 4,000 people to the
unemployment index of
Libertador General San Mart=EDn - some 80 km from San Salvador de Jujuy - and
the smoking
chimneys of the sugar mill and the paper mill are the first landmarks to be
spotted from
Highway 34. The firm's interest in a rapid solution is to avoid this
discontent spreading through
the rest of the region, where discontent is common currency and would
destroy the start of the
approaching sugar harvest."

With things this way, the Bishop of Jujuy Monse=F1or Marcelo Palentini
shelved a government
proposal, which likewise was virtually rejected by the demonstrators. The
government only
proposed 300 temporary jobs, food and clothes, conditional on the lifting
of the road blockades,
this new form of social protest against the consequences of prevailing
neoliberal politics.

In reality, this is very far from the demands for 5000 jobs, more than 300
pesos subsidy and
social insurance for the unemployed - which in this city reach 45% of the
economically active
population. After the words of the Bishop Palentini had been heard, the
Multisectorial placed the
proposal for consideration by the mass assembly, which did not arouse the
interest hoped for by
the national and provincial authorities.

Meanwhile the Multisectorial, led by the legendary "Perro" Santill=E1n,
called for a general strike
with mobilisation from the Government Offices to the local Legislature.

In an AFP (Agence France Press) cable dated 23 May the contrasting
positions can be seen: "The
sacked mill workers met in spontaneous protest meetings expecting the
arrival of some
provincial or national authority, as per information from local radio and
TV. Meanwhile, in
Buenos Aires, President Carlos Menem once again termed the road blockades
as a 'criminal act'
which must 'be restrained, but not by repression itself, rather by
maintaining order' and obeying
the laws, as he stated in a press conference with German journalists today."

=46or his part, the Bishop of Jujuy Marcelo Palentini registered a clear
discrepancy with the
evaluation of the national and provincial government in maintaining that:
"whoever governs must
foresee the consequences of all this". And with "all this" he brought in
the "neoliberal" economic
model, "which tends to forget that man must be the centre of our
preocupations. The people are
asking for nothing more than to work, to earn their bread with their daily
effort, to work in
dignity so that their children have access to health, to education. It's
not enough to say that the
children can go to soup kitchens. This is fine, but the people seek
something more dignified to
fill the stomach. And that is the problem of the mill workers, just as of
the miners... these are
dramatic situations."

The Mills

The Ledesma and La Esperanza mills, situated in Libertor General San Mart=EDn
and San Pedro de
Jujuy respectively, were for a long time the economic pillars of the
province, so much so that
during the 1960's Ledesma took on 15,000 workers for the sugar harvest and
even provided a
hospital for its staff. But all this is history; new technology and the
lack of plans aimed at
retraining labour created out of yesterday's bonanza the desolation of today=2E

The desolation of today, naturally not for the Blaquier family, the Ledesma
owners who possess
250,000 hectares devoted almost entirely to sugar cane. Neither for La
Esperanza mill whose
majority shareholding is in the hands of the Jorge family, and brings
together 70,000 hectares
on the periphery of San Pedro. Both benefitted from various national and
provincial state
subsidies.

P=E1gina/12 tells us: "With the presumed intention of stimulating employment,
some years ago the
national State launched a plan to reduce labour costs, with greatest
benefits for the companies
furthest from the Federal Capital. Ledesma and La Esperanza had a reduction
of 75% in social
security costs. Moreover, Jujuy province exempted them from paying stamp
duty, which markedly
reduced the cost of frequent vehicle hirings, and for over a year they were
also exempted from
paying gross receipts on primary activities i.e. the production of cane,
but not of its derivatives.

"The savings, under these three headings combined, amounted to millions of
dollars. But the
hackneyed claim that unemployment falls as labour costs decrease was not
fulfilled here,
although it's fair to say that the State did not ask for anything in return
for these subsidies. The
money saved, in the best of these cases, was devoted to production
technology and, a paradox of
the model, this left more people unemployed. In Libertador the unemployment
index fluctuates
around 45% and in San Pedro 37%.

"Ledesma, in what could be termed a serious or modern capitalist posture,
reinvested this money
in the production of sugar and paper and diversified to produce methylated
spirit, also derived
from sugar cane, citrus and juice.

"La Esperanza mill, by contrast, only turned over a part of this money to
purchase combine
harvesters, but did not diversify or modernise the system of production.
Moreover, it maintained
a debt of millions to the province in the form of real-estate and
irrigation taxes. The Jujuy
unions suspect that the mill is in the process of decapitalisation. They
base this on the links of
the Jorge family, proprietors of La Esperanza, with the Figueroa Group, of
Tucum=E1n, in
connection with the decapitalisation of the Iguaz=FA Bank."

=46inally, the surname Blaquier also appeared on 1 June this year in a note
written by Horacio
Verbitsky, entitled: "Se=F1or Yabran, the bridge between the military
dictatorship and the Menem
government", which reaffirms just what class of people the Blaquiers are:
"A group of managers,
among whom are Ricardo and Luis Gotelli, Franco Macri, Carlos Pedro
Blaquier and Ricardo Zinn,
financed the transfer to Buenos Aires of fifty officials from the Armed
=46orces of Nicaragua,
Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. According to testimony of various of
them here they
received training in torture and kidnapping." The author locates these
events in 1979, the
moment of splendor of the military dictatorship which left as its legacy
30,000 disappeared and
economic and political ramifications which even now enjoy good health.

Luis M. Casado Ledo




     --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---