FROM MENEM TO ARGENTINAZO

Osvaldo Coggiola(+)

Since the catastrophe of hyperinflation in 1988, which ended the radical government (UCR) of Raul Alfonsin, successor of the tragic and murderous military dictatorship from 1976-1983; Peronism returned to power in Argentina, in almost plebiscitary elections. "Menemism" opened a long decade of adapting Argentine policy to the international finance capital and the dictates of the IMF and the World Bank. The exercise of the political power by a lobby of felons and criminals (including murderers) headed by Menem must not make us disregard the complicity of the national and international capitalist establishments with its government, as well as most of the political parties.

The essence of Carlos Saúl Menem's "new" Argentine foreign policy was the concept known as "peripheral realism". It maintained that the peripheral countries like Argentina, due to the disparity of strength, only lost, and would continue losing, in case they continued to confront the US, in isolation or by means of participating in groups like the Non-Aligned Movement. The more advantageous international strategy for those countries would be to recognise their inferiority, to limitlessly align themselves with the American policies and to openly adopt the "neo-liberal economic model". This "strategy" (if it can be called so) would allow Argentina to avoid retaliation and to become a preferential ally of the US in the region, to recover its international credibility as a nation that can be called "European in fact" and even obtain sovereignty on the Falklands, subject of the war of 1982 that caused among other factors, the collapse of the military dictatorship.

The Argentine chancellor, Guido di Tella, became comically famous by a comment on the "sexual relations" of Argentina with the US. In that strategy, the relations with Brazil would have two faces: first, to influence Brazil to adhere to the vital American strategic demands and thus to cooperate with the American policy and, second, to take advantage of the opening of the Brazilian market caused by the Mercosur, without losing view of the objective of integrating itself to the American market, since it tried to do so through its isolated candidacy to the FTAA, and the American military system, where it managed to obtain the status of "non NATO ally", participating in the George Bush government's operation "Desert Storm" against Iraq.

The long Menemist period in Argentina, in the 1990s, highlighted not only privatisations and a hitherto unseen level of governmental corruption, that had tragic and folkloric features (including the money laundering involved in drug trafficking that came to be a recurrent theme for the composers of the Argentine Rock music, a cultural movement of masses in the country). It also highlighted a new period of class struggle and political radicalisation. The electoral victory of the Alliance (Radical Civic Union plus Peronist "left" and ex-Stalinist democratising left) headed by the radical De la Rua and his Peronist assistant, "Chacho" Alvarez, who became its expression in 2000. The increasing decomposition of the Menemist political regime, product of the gigantic national and global economic crisis, sowed not only the opportunity but also the objective necessity of the masses to actively take part in the class struggle.

The popular outbreaks that followed one another all over the country expressed the necessity of intervention to defend the rights and more elementary conquests of the workers. In this scenario, the question of power appeared in the fore. It is important to remember the assaults on the supermarkets during the hyperinflationary period of Alfonsin, to notice a qualitatively significant difference: from the Santiagueñazo of 1993 (in the province of Santiago del Estero) the popular rebellions spread directly to the different power centres of the state. This undoubtedly implied a politicisation of the conflicts and a progress in the class-consciousness of the masses. In 1993, during the peak of "Menemism", a provincial uprising in Santiago del Estero resulted in the siege and burning of three seats of power: Executive, Legislative and Provincial. In 1997 a similar kind of revolution took place in the province of Neuquén, putting into force a phenomenon that since then would spread to the point of becoming an emblem of the popular struggle, the roadblocks. Thereafter appeared a particular Argentine phenomenon the name of which spread throughout the world: the piquetero (*).

The course of action culminating in the Plaza de Mayo in December 2001 was delineated by the Santiagueñazo of 1993 and soon by the Cutralcazos, Tartagalazos, Jujeñazos, the provincial struggles of Tucumán, Jujuy and Corrientes, the successive uprisings in the north of Salta, the piquetazos of the La Mantanza and the greater Buenos Aires, the picketing National Assemblies and their programmes of struggle, the occupations of factories and the great mass mobilisations. It has been an entire decade of exceptional struggle of the Argentine people, of organisation, political debates and popular uprisings.

Santiagueñazo marked the dawn of a new era in Argentina, because it was the consequence of the failure of the Cavallo Plan (of convertibility), that could only survive by creating and producing new Santiagueñazos, and because it showed to the entire Argentine movement the road to general strike, street action, occupying buildings, popular assemblies and power. In June 1996, during one week, the picketers of Cutral Co and Huincul Square, who thwarted the police and forced the government to yield to numerous claims, cut off route 22. Organisations of unemployed people of the province set up the pueblada or people's movement of Cutral Co and the Huincul Square.

1997 May-July: Cutral Co, Tartagal, Jujuy, Cruz del Eje. In a matter of 45 days enormous puebladas exploded in the provinces of Neuquén, Salta, Jujuy and Córdoba, in which tens of thousands of picketers mobilised and fought. Primarily, their common characteristic was the political control of mass movement exerted by official and petit-bourgeois sectors through what is known as the "multi-sectorals" and the Menemist government's policy to encounter these; the unsuccessful repression combined with the offer of "Planes Trabajar"(unemployment programme) with the political manipulations of the "multi-sectorals" and the Church to disarm the movements.

The scope of these puebladas was one of the decisive factors for the birth of the Alliance, which took place with a conscientiously anti-piquetero objective. As Alfonsín said: "to canalise the protest" is to castrate the tendencies towards political independence. The systematic breach in the agreements took the picketers to new popular uprisings, for which a new political leadership had to emerge. The final stage of Menemism developed under the banner of enormous provincial struggles; Jujuy, Tucumán and, mainly, Corrientes, where the public servants and the entire town mobilised themselves against the ruin of their living conditions by the official lobby. The occupation of the bridges linking Corrientes with Chaco was the symbol of the Correntina pueblada. There it struck at the "progressive" Alliance government, which unleashed an extremely violent repression leaving several dead. The wild repression in Corrientes marked the complete collapse of "progressionism" as a reformist force or of affirmation of national independence, almost before it started.

This Alliance ended just as it had begun: by assassinating workers. Two exceptional puebladas took place in December 1999 and May 2000, in the entire north of Salta. By their enormous force, their determination to face the repression (which in the case of the pueblada of May 2000 led to driving out Police from Mosconi) and, principally, because a pro-class leadership was at the front, having politically overcome the "multi-sectorals" took political leadership jointly with the exploited masses of north Salta. In puebladas of north Salta the working-class, pro-class and piquetero character of the political opposition could be outlined and the Alliance government had to encounter it during the couple of years of its mandate.

In the middle of October 2000, the huge roadblocks of La Matanza began. They quickly spread to Buenos Aires. At the same time, a new pueblada exploded in the north of Salta. It was the first general expression of "Piquetera Argentina ". The movement of roadblocks spreading to all parts of Buenos Aires was "spontaneous": in which tens of piquetero organisations participated, arranged by assemblies and deliberations which had been constructed during the last three years.

The Alliance government reacted by granting several thousands of "employment programmes", whose effective implementation would later have to be forced in by new mobilisations. In the north of Salta, the popular reaction to the murder of worker Aníbal Verón was staggering; the town attacked the police and occupied the police station of Mosconi forcing the police to flee. The repressive attempt was a total failure: it could not break the pro-class piquetero leadership that had organised the last roadblocks. Shortly afterwards, this leadership summoned a piquetero Congress that established a complete programme of social reorganisation of the province and the nation.

Shortly afterwards the 1st National Piquetero Assembly met. It was a true Congress of employed and unemployed workers, which reunited the entire country's movements of struggles. It voted a plan of struggles through roadblocks and a mobilisation at the May Square that was exceptionally massive. After the Piquetero National Assembly, the roadblocks, mobilisations and occupations continued to make inroads throughout the entire country, including sectors of the middle-class (students and small retailers).

The piquetero struggle of the jobless, the workers and the average strata of the population (that resorted to the methods of struggles of the piqueteros) marked the last weeks of the Alliance government. The occupations of Zanón in Neuquén, of the Telecom and Telephone offices in the struggle against the dismissals of workers, of the Córdoban plants that sacked their workers and the great mass mobilisations, like those of Córdoba and Neuquén, were indicating a new phase in the rise of the popular struggle vis-à-vis the aggravating crisis. Cavallo and De La Rúa were crashed in this scenario. It was the experience of almost a decade long struggle that convinced the exploited masses about marching to the centres of political power and to mobilise themselves against the institutions of the "democratic State", to be worth of a popular sovereignty.

This last detail does not imply that all the workers were unanimous on the necessity to seize power. It means that the objective conditions of the capitalist landslide placed the question of power in the centre of the debate and every political party was obliged to participate in the conflicts with a programme aiming at the independent organisation of the working class and, strategically, at the seizure of power. The question of a correct anticipation or the incapacity to do so makes a lot of difference and, therefore the leadership of the class struggle can mark the difference between victory and defeat of the proletariat.

In January 2001, a scandal of bribes was exposed in the Argentine parliament. The bribes had a specific objective - a law of labour reform - openly rejected by the Argentine workers in two massive general strikes - was approved. And the bribe was not "too much", compared to what might have been paid when other laws were approved, like the privatisations under the "Menemist" period. Entel (telephones) had been privatised against 8,400 million dollars; Argentine airlines, 2,250, State Gas, 3,320 million; YPF (petroleum) 20,000 million dollars. Soon after the denunciations of the briberies to approve the anti-labour law, fresh accusations arose against kickbacks to approve the extension of the concession for the exploration of the country's richest oilfields, which would benefit Repsol.

The failure of the economic plans was the general cause of the entire process of political decomposition (in the first place, the landslide of the Cavallo Plan and the regime of convertibility, adopted at the start of 1990s), the unstoppable drop in production and the enormous social tension generated by the growth of the pauperisation of the masses. The evidences of the collapse of the Alliance government (chosen in 2000), and the disintegration of Peronism, were forerunners to the scandal. The experience of the last twenty years confirmed once more that the national bourgeoisie which hands over all assets to multinationals and the capitalist regime were incapable of making a true democratic regime viable.

The resignation of Vice-president Chacho Alvarez demonstrated that the Alliance could not hold the government together as a strategic plan. The pact between the representatives of the petit bourgeois "progressivism" and the old large masks of native capitalism was shipwrecked without a remedy. The Creole camouflage of the "third road" of Tony Blair and co. concluded in a fiasco more vertiginous than the original one. "Chacho" resigned without breaking the pact of government. He stepped aside to sort out the conflicts between the presidential lobby and the electoral base that had taken the Alliance to the government. The resignation of Alvarez was a last resource to avoid the government's collapse and an early general election.

The political decline of the Alliance government was linked to the abolition of Argentina's debt. In order to collect funds for the repayment of external debt, the Argentine government had to place bonds of national debt in the local banks and the AFJP (private pension funds) at 16% p.a. that is 10 % more than the 6% paid by the North American Treasury Bonds or in other words 170% more expensive. This position was seen as a prelude to the declaration of bankruptcy. The sum of national debt was more than 1, 60,000 million, with deadlines to pay back capital and interest in 2001 to the tune of nearly 30,000 million dollars. The private external debt, that was virtually nil in 1990 rose to 60,000 million dollars in 2001.

The banks contracted 65% of the private debt. The very fact that the banks were mainly from overseas did not mean that they financed with resources from their own pockets as was assumed at the time of borrowing from foreign hands since those banks were even more indebted in the global market. The denationalisation had harnessed, and not attenuated the possibility of a financial bankruptcy. These branches, by virtue of international banking regulations, were not qualified to obtain an external loan since the international consultants highlighted the risk factor of Argentina as a result of its high debt and the concentration of its payment in the short term.

The increase of the North American interest rate eliminated the possibilities of the policies of deflationary adjustment in Latin America. The Brazilian devaluation of 1999 and the Ecuadorian dollarisation were the acute manifestations of the complete crisis of the neo-liberal model. The precipitating cause of the Argentine crisis was the generalisation of the insolvency of important international monopolies, which paid their own debts at a higher rate of interest similar to that in the developing countries. At the international level, the cessation of payments of the great companies is sanctioned more and more and their debt/asset ratio surpassed the 100% mark. The Argentine debt represented between a fourth and a fifth of all the marketable debt of the developing countries.

Argentina's refusal to pay its debts could have eclipsed the financial panic produced by Russia's cessation of debt servicing in 1998. The connection of the Argentine bankruptcy with the tendency towards the generalised bankruptcy of "global" capitalism was obvious; in the first place with the most developed and parasitic north American Capitalism, and also the historical character of the crisis. This was not limited to other modalities of the capital and was not restricted to the particularities of any country or any specific political regime, but it was the result of the development of the set of social relations. The "investors" prepared themselves for the worse situation. According to Neil Dougall, economist of Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein: "the devaluation already seems to be a reality and also the complete cessation of debt servicing seems inevitable during a long period". Everybody understood that the devaluation was inevitable, just like the non-servicing of the debt.

It was necessary to resort to a "financial shield" organised by the IMF to contain the cessation of payments. But the international character of the Argentine bankruptcy was clearly indicating that a preventive financial rescue mission could not overcome it, because even in the best of the situations all the fundamental factors of the crisis still remained, especially the tendency towards the cessation of payments in numerous capitalist monopolies and other highly indebted nations. This explains the delay in the definition of the "shield".

The problem created by the capitalist exploiters was more serious and it went beyond a terminal financial crisis. This catalysed the emergence of the piquetero Argentina. The great protagonist of the general strike of 23rd and 24th November 2000 was the picket of the working-class. It was the main element of the strike, since it forced the withdrawal of the railway services and the closure of dozens of supermarkets in the entire country. There were the pickets and roadblocks by the unemployed people of La Matanza, the south of Buenos Aires, and the great picket in the pueblada of Tartagal and Mosconi, in the north (Salta) after the murder of the piquetero Aníbal Verón. These opened the floodgates of a general strike.

The picket gained ground and escalated to an unforeseen scale true to the historical method of the working class struggle and the tradition of the Argentine proletariat. The picket appeared in the roadblocks staged by the unemployed people but also in the great working-class conflicts, as the struggle of Atlántida or the struggle of the fishermen in Mar del Plata. The picket has the great quality of of infusing consciousness in the passive and almost dull nature of strikes. The difference is not negligible because it implies preparing the workers to put up their own government. A government of workers would mean participation without historical precedents of the worker in the public domain. The democrats rejected the pickets pretending to ignore the fact that these developed the true citizenship.

The central role of the pickets in the great mobilisations was to indicate the emergence of a new group of leaders and new directions. Resonant anti-bureaucratic conquests by unions demonstrated the political maturity of the process. November 2001 ended with the omen that a great pueblada was in course. The landslide of the Alliance in the October elections; the economic collapse and the confrontations in the bourgeoisie regarding the "way out" before the landslide; and the growth of the working-class, piquetero and popular mobilisations throughout the country put in evidence that a power crisis was underway in Argentina since the end of 2001.

Faced with a movement of growing popular struggle, the bourgeoisie and imperialism were divided on the issue of alternatives to face the cessation of payments and the bankruptcy. A pro-devaluation front took shape - including the "productive" bourgeoisie, the peronists, the moyanist union bureaucracy and even the North American Treasury itself. Its amplitude was in contrast to the impotence of its political instruments, the Congress and the governors, incapable to show a way out from the collapse of the Alliance regime. By the end of November, the Alliance government was politically a great zero, which subsisted thanks to the division of the capitalists on the questions of the default and the devaluation, and to the division within Peronism.

November ended with great mobilisations and marches in the interior - in Córdoba, Neuquén, Tucumán and Entre Ríos - where the chosen slogan was heard more and more, at the request of the Partido Obrero (PO) (111), the Piquetero National Assembly: "Get out De La Rúa, Cavallo and the governors of the IMF". At the beginning of December the Alliance government was finished. The IMF and the North American Treasury questioned its continuity. They refused to grant funds that would be in jeopardy; the pro-devaluation bourgeoisie conspired in the background to impose a political successor on their own terms; the PJ announced their intention to summon a Legislative Assembly.

The imposition of the "corralito" (freezing of the banking deposits) confirmed the complete economic bankruptcy and the landslide of the capitalist business houses. Argentina officially began a cessation of payments after the government failed to fulfil the servicing of a bond of 28 million dollars denominated in liras and with maturity in 2007. The economic collapse had to follow the political collapse of the regime. But the political conspirators of the bourgeoisie did not come out from the background because all the capitalist sectors feared a popular explosion.

The influence was seen in the march of 20,000 workers in Córdoba against De la Sota and the participation of thousands to encounter the repressive government of Sobisch in Neuquén, in the occupation of the Zanón factory in Neuquén, and the Costanera Building of Telephones (in Buenos Aires), in the workers and the mobilisations of Emfer and Aceros Bragado, in the mobilisation of the cultural workers, the college students and the workers of the Columbus Theatre and, mainly, in the mobilisation of five thousand piqueteros in the Capital, at the initiative of the Polo Obrero (affiliated to the PO) and the MTR (Teresa Rodriguez Movement) among other piquetero organisations.

The manifestations in the interior had a mass character: cordobazo or uprising in Córdoba against De la Sota (Peronist governor of Córdoba) and one prolonged cease-work of state employees that virtually ended up becoming an indefinite strike in Neuquén, were the highest points of the first weeks of December. Also to be noted is the piquetero mobilization of 5th December, summoned by the Polo and MTR under the slogan "For one hunger-free Christmas, Get out De la Rúa-Cavallo" having a national character. In addition to the most important mobilisations in the Capital, there were piquetero manifestations in Córdoba, Tartagal and Tucumán.

The PO, reunited on the weekend of the 8/9 of December, demonstrated that the power crisis facing Argentina was an expression of the decomposition of capitalist social relations that led to the bankruptcy of the existing political regimes and the State. It showed the impotence of the political alternatives, expressed in a Congress "incapable to convene themselves at the end of ordinary sessions" and in the commitment of the PJ, the Frepaso, the ARI and the Polo Social (representing the "opposition", including participants "from the left"), at the request of the Church, in the completion of the presidential mandate. And it emphasised the growth of the popular mobilisation and its perspective. A part of the masses was already carrying out mobilisations, which had the scope of being converted into cordobazo (112).

In its turn, the province of Neuquén took to a general strike that, by means of the intervention of the workers of Zanón, has made a foothold in the industry. The popular tendency was to occupy factories and the demand for the nationalisation of the closed or dismissed factories was becoming popular. The popular rebellion and the uprisings in the provinces were seen as the detonator for the next stage. The power crisis that resulted from the capitalist experiment started in 1989 with Menemism and the political process monopolised by Peronists, radicals and frepasists confirmed the necessity of a Constituent Assembly to politically and socially reorganise the country destroyed by the bourgeoisie.

The tendency towards the popular rebellion was discussed in all sectors of the society. A few days before the pueblada, CTA, one of the unions, summoned a "popular debate" that aroused the attention of two million people but it failed manifestly in Córdoba and Neuquén, the two provinces that were at the top of the popular rebellion. While the CTA planned that "the next step is the discussion of the budget", the workers marched in the streets and declared in front of the supermarkets and the power centres.

The CGT also summoned a strike. It only managed to have influence in places like Neuquén, Córdoba, and the telecom industry, and it joined the tendency of the ongoing struggle. The strikes by "CGT Moyano ", the other union, was politically impotent (by the division of the bureaucracy and the character of conciliation with the employer's association that had it stamped as Moyano and by its refusal to continue it). The fundamental result of the strike was that isolated general strikes, solved with interventions from higher ranks, had been exhausted as a partial or deformed instrument of struggle. They are unable to account for the situation of the masses, and even, they contradict the tendency towards the popular rebellion that had already begun.

Other forms of struggle like the political occupations of companies, mobilisations in the supermarkets, marches and indefinite and partial provincial strikes began to be emphasised. A conjunction of these movements (inevitable, since the economic decomposition and the destabilising policy of the government accentuated) had to stage the political strike of masses and a new mass organisation of the exploited lot. On the 20th December, the PO explained, "the task of the moment is to organise pickets - of workers, unemployed people, small retailers and professionals - and the popular assemblies that reunite all of them". In the middle of the gigantic mobilisation, a group of left parties jointly published an official declaration:

The under-signed organisations, faced with the aggravating political, economic and social crisis, call for mobilising independently on Wednesday the 12th and organising an active strike on Thursday the 13th, to confront this acute catastrophe weighing down on the workers and popular sectors and to find out an alternative, working-class and popular way out from the crisis.

Vis-à-vis the new flight of capitals the government responds by confiscating the wage of the working-class people and damaging the small savings. The generalised economic bankruptcy is brutally aggravating social misery. Dismissals and massive suspensions will aggravate, the provincial festival of Treasury bonds will worsen the payment of wages and new adjustments will be launched in the budget of 2002. Vis-à-vis the collapse of the convertibility, the pro-devaluation escape route as well as the Dollarisation variant proposed by the UIA and other sectors of officials, imply a new and ferocious attack on the workers and the people. The perpetrators of both variants are about to maintain the ominous Deficit Zero.

In spite of the truce offered by the unions to the government until this moment, the struggles of the working-class have grown. It is necessary to endorse them and to develop them until we foil the adjustment, this entire model, the crisis-ridden system and the government supporting it. And a different way out is necessary for a country incompatible with the present system, maintained by the Alliance and the PJ, with a transformation of funds.

We call for concretising the Convocation of the National Assembly of Employed and Unemployed Workers jointly with the popular sectors ransacked by the system.

For a working-class and popular alternative: Get Out De la Rua- Cavallo. No to the IMF - No to debt servicing - bank Nationalisation - Re-nationalisation of the AFJP - Support to all the workers' struggles - for a progressive and gradual plan of national struggle until we defeat this system - Freedom to Ali, Castells and other prisoners. No prosecution against the militants.

__Partido Obrero (Workers' Party), United Left (PC, MST), Independent Movement of the Retired and pensioners, MAS, PTS, FOS

At that peak of the political process, it was clear that the Rúa-Cavallo government would see its last days as a result of the popular rebellion. A change in the parliament would be a consequence of the events that they could not control. The final phase of the "pueblada" began on Wednesday, the 19th of December, at the same moment when De La Rúa announced the "state of emergency". Tens of thousands went out and advanced towards the Congress Hall and from there to the May Square. The media that described this mobilisation as "peaceful" and "middle class" overlooked the fact that the manifestation was more subversive than could be imagined: first because it ratified all the popular manifestations of that day and the previous one, against the supermarkets, the municipality of Córdoba, in the Provincial Bank and the government building of La Plata; second because it managed to crash the "state of emergency", that is the highest expression of the capitalist State's violence. Thus the people went all out to destroy their own government.

The "middle-class" had become piquetero, a shift that was the result of a long process of political experience that had already been pronounced previously, although partially, in the struggles of the Airlines, the roadblocks against the floods and in the overwhelming defeat of Franja Morada (affiliated to the group UCR) in the universities. There the slogan was already heard, the one which became the political programme of the mobilisation. The people in the street would have to shout it the next day: "Get rid of everyone"! (Que se vayan todos)

Thursday, the 20th: the work begun not only on Wednesday night but also on the previous days was completed. There was a continuity of political objectives and protagonists. "Violence" began in the dawn of Thursday itself, when the police sprayed tear-gas to the multitude filling the May Square, indeed because the "peaceful" multitude had marched to overthrow the government and it was not prepared to withdraw until being satisfied. In that dawn hundreds were arrested and the first murder occurred in the centre of the Capital. Gangsters of the Federal and the Secretariat of State Intelligence (SIDE) cracked down with the same spineless modality that hours later would be their "registered trade mark". De la Rúa began to resort to the same means, which he has assumed earlier: assassinating workers. The onslaught started with the murders in the bridge of Corriente and ended with the murders in the May Square and the Congress.

After the gases and the arrests, groups of demonstrators occupied the May Square, surrounded by the Infantry Guard and the Mounted Police. The resignation of Cavallo, minister of economy, did not pacify the temper: now the workers and the exploited people wanted more. In the first hours of Thursday, Mestre and Mathov, radical politicians affiliated to De La Rúa, conspired with the police chiefs: the order was "to clear the May Square ". They knew that the mobilisation was unstoppable. Yet, the "state of emergency" could not control the mobilisation: the illegal murders, infliction of wounds, detentions, tortures and the reappearance of the "task forces" were the entire political responsibility of these "terrified democrats".

But then the savagery of the repression convinced the town, even more, that it was necessary to throw them out, to fight until they left. The repression recommenced at 10 a.m.: people imprisoned, beaten, gassed. But already thousands were marching to the Square. In each corner, groups of demonstrators, with handkerchiefs in the face to lessen the effects of gases, throw stones and formed barricades around the Obelisco and the Columbus Theatre, where people grouped themselves in columns starting from the Congress hall. The cavalry charged against the Mothers in the May Square and struck at them with whips.

Since noon, the battle had become generalised: it was fought in the Avenue of May and the two diagonals that converge towards the May Square. Stones encountered gases, rubber bullets, the cavalry, the motorcycles and the water-canons. In a suffocating atmosphere created by gases, groups of people - young and not so young- advanced, struck, backed up, regrouped and re-advanced. In the middle of the police barbarism, the heroism and the solidarity of the people were unparalleled. The banks and other companies were attacked in the skirmishes; their list was a true index of the plunderers of the nation (Citibank, Fiat, HSBC Bank, Comafi Bank), of the corruption of the decision-making politicians (Provincial Bank) and the symbols of the capitalist exploitation, (like the McDonald's). Nothing was pillaged in any of these places; contrary to what the press says, it was not a question of "vandals" but of an explosion of the popular fury against the true plunderers of Argentina.

By early afternoon, the battle reached its zenith. The demonstrators tried to enter the May Square from the Avenue of May, the two diagonals, the streets of the micro-centre, from San Telmo and Bajo, neighbouring region of the Río de la Plata. They surrounded the Square, threw stones and formed barricades and countered gases with the smoke of bonfires and fires. The PO, after attacking the police in the Congress, marched towards the Square by the North Diagonal, along with other combative left-wing parties and unions. In front of the YPF building, the column of people resisted the attack of the mounted police and forced them to retreat under a bombardment of stones.

At around 5 p.m, a large group of motorcyclists entered once again through the North Diagonal. These demonstrators went directly towards the May Square. They were brutally repressed: two were murdered; others were injured. Since 6 p.m., after the resignation of De la Rúa was declared, most of the demonstrators reassembled. Since the police flocked the streets adjacent to the Square, new cold-blooded murders took place. By nightfall, the government had also fallen. There were more than 3,000 prisoners, hundreds of injured and 33 dead. But the people had prevailed: they had not only toppled a hated government; they had launched a new stage in Argentine history.

On Sunday, the 16th December, Jorge Altamira celebrated the beginning of the popular rebellion in a public declaration and put forward the policy of the PO in the week that would end with Argentinazo: "We are facing a historical crisis of capitalism. This started neither three months ago, nor yesterday. The solution lies neither with dollarisation, nor with devaluation, nor with default. The only solution is to nationalise the banks, to establish a working-class control, stop paying the external debt and let the workers in the government decide on the course of the Argentine Republic... The Argentine people have already reacted. Whoever knows the history of the last twenty years knows that whenever there is a crisis of such a nature, mobilisations such as the ones in Neuquén, the factory occupations in Neuquén, the mobilisations of Córdoba, the occupation of Telephone and Telecom, the cacerolazos* of the middle-class, the roadblocks by the unemployed people, etc will take place. They know that the popular uprising against this regime had already begun in the previous weeks and is going to be strengthened in the next few. The process of a people's struggle has already begun. The programme of the PO is necessary so that each popular movement- be it a cacerolazo, be it an occupation in protest against the dismissals- becomes the occasion for a Popular Assembly of the area, the district or the province. Let Commissions be formed, let delegates choose themselves, let the people who go out in the streets to protest form a Popular Assembly that concentrates the sovereignty of the town, let there be a place where the decisions are taken. Let a provincial or national Popular Assembly be constituted from the regional Popular Assemblies in each part of the country that would coordinate the movement of struggle of the Argentine people, against the exploiters and the plunderers."

The State applied its methodology of terrorism during the repression of Thursday, the 20th. While the uniformed police launched broadside attacks with gases and rubber bullets and the cavalry ran people over, the centre was filled with rowdy people in civil dress, mobilising themselves in cars without number-plates. They appeared unexpectedly, got down from the cars, shot with firearms and lead bullets and fled leaving some dead or wounded. Sometimes they dragged some demonstrators towards the car. Also there were civilian groups on foot, mingled with the crowd. They suddenly hurled blows at an isolated demonstrator. Several prisoners, as Eduardo de Pedro reported, were tortured in the May Square with "portable" electrical choppers; without exception, the prisoners were brutally beaten up.

"They have returned to the Square to kidnap people; they are the same kidnappers of the military regime ", wrote the Italian newspaper La Reppublica, on the 22nd of December. These "task forces" were responsible for the first murders of the afternoon, taking place quite far from the May Square. Two demonstrators were cold-bloodedly killed in Bernardine of Irigoyen and Rivadavia (ten blocks from the Square) at 3 p.m, one of them with two shots. The same people murdered demonstrators in front of the Mercado del Plata at around 7 p.m, when De La Rúa already had resigned and the demonstrators began to retreat. The politicians responsible for these murders are still roaming free.

(+)__Osvaldo Coggiola on Partido Obreron keskuskomitean jäsen ja historian professori Sao Paolon yliopistossa

(*) Translators' note: the movement of mainly unemployed workers through roadblocks and pickets.

(111) The PO, born in second half of 1960s, maintained their political activity during the entire 1976-1983 dictatorship. In 1990s, PO elected two deputies for the Constituent Assembly of Santa Cruz, the province more to the south, obtained 1,50,000 votes in the province of Buenos Aires, chose their main leader, Jorge Altamira, as Legislator of the Federal Capital, and obtained four elective positions (delegated and councillors) in the municipal and legislative elections of 2001. The electoral battle of the PO was to promote the revolutionary unit of the left, with the MST (one of the fractions of the MAS) the MAS and even the PC (that joined the MST in the so-called "United Left"), having obtained important results in diverse occasions. Most importantly it was the leadership role played by the PO in diverse sectors of the labour movement, for example, in graphs (PO led the most important occupation of factory of the decade of 1990, that is the Editorial Atlántida) and mainly in the movement made up of unemployed people (Argentina has the highest rate of unemployment of the planet) known as piqueteros. The events at the end of 2001 did not take the PO by surprise; on the contrary, it was the only left-wing organisation that anticipated, in the previous months, the probable fall of De La Rua-Cavallo, and the emergence of a revolutionary situation. From 1996, the PO proposed an international campaign by the re-foundation of the Fourth International. The PO raised this campaign to diverse international Trotskyist groups, including the LIT. The PO at no moment moved backwards in their internationalist persistence, participating independently in the Forum of San Pablo, summoned by the PT of Brazil and the Cuban PC, breaking away with it when it expelled one of the two parties that laid a siege and the persecution of union workers in Bolivia.

(112) A day of the working class people and the masses- a new political platform was opened on 29th May 1969 in Córdoba, characterised by the popular insurrections in diverse cities of the country, being the beginning of the end of the military dictatorship installed in 1966, and of the return of Peronism to power in 1973.

(*) Translators' note: the cacerolazo is a traditional form of protest, where pots and pans are banged along with chanting of slogans.

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