Met Vincente a few months ago. A Marxist of the Old School. Which I mean respectfully! Michael Pugliee
Vicente Balvanera <v_balvanera at yahoo.com> Add to People Section To: brc-discuss at lists.tao.ca, jaimani at earthlink.net CC: Argentina_Solidarity at yahoogroups.com, S29 at yahoogroups.com, laborpartypraxis <laborpartypraxis at yahoogroups.com> Subject: [Arg_Solid] Re: [BRC-DISC] Argentina off the hook
MIME Ver: 1.0 Attachments:
Let me add to the brother's excellent piece on Argentina, an excerpt from a
letter from a comrade (cadre of the Partido Obrero) participating in the s truggle at this very moment [Spanish first, then English translation]:
Lo que paso aca lo caracterizamos de revolucionario.Estoy completamente
asombrada e impactada. Muchos muertos, mas de 28 por ahora( mas que en el cordobazo!, me parece)pero un crecimiento en la conciencia de las masas inigualable. Las asambleas barriales( por ahora) siguen.Hoy hay un plenario
de las organizaciones piqueteras combativas, las que estuvieron en las calles en el derrocamiento del gobierno, para impulsar mas que nunca la tercer Asamblea Nacional, para convertirla en EL organo de doble poder, de
una vez por todas.Digo combativas, porque la CCC ya no tiene ningun sentido .. En las calles estos dias no se vio ni un cartel, ni bandera, ni consigna ,
ni gente de esa organizacion. Ellos que se la pasaban pidiendo el argentinazo, no fueron a la marcha conjunta de la izquierda y los piquetero s el dia jueves pasado, porque habia estado de sitio!!!!Los luchadores se quedan en casa porque el gobierno mas debil que se recuerde decreta estado
de sitio!!!!! Y la CTA directamente se liquido con la consulta popular dos dias antes de
esta revolucion. Derrocamos al gobierno. Queda expuesta la division de la burguesia en tanta les ha costado un monton designar sucesor. Finalmente es
Rodriguez Saa, de San Luis, figura de segunda linea, no presidenciable, con
su escandalo a cuestas. No se si te acordas de una vez que lo habian secuestrado y que habia sido unescandalo sexual. Seguramente mafias de prostitucion y drogas.Elecciones en marzo. Podes creer que el PC pide en una asamblea anteayer, en el barrio, votar po r elecciones anticipadas? Ya es directamente para escupirlos. Es la primera vez que un gobierno cae por la mvilizacion y no por decision
de la burguesia. Ese punto es central.Ya los medios de comunicacion estan desvirtuando todo pero la experiencia de los que salieron la madrugada del
miercoles y vieron la represion y la respiraron, y sintieron la violencia del regimen, que De La Rua no era " solo lento y aburrido", como se lo presentaba, eso no se pierde. Y siguio el jueves, con mucha mas represion,
se gastaron un arsenal entero.Mataron 8 en Capital, en las manifestaciones
de todo el dia.
We characterize what is happening here as revolutionary. I am completely ov erwhelmed and impacted. Many deaths, more than 28 as of now (more than in t he [1968] Cordobazo [uprising] I believe) but an unsurpassed leap in consci ousness of the masses. The barrio assemblies (for now) continue. Today there is a plenary of the c ombative piquetero organizations, those which were in the streets and which
overthrew the government, to impulse more than ever the third National Ass embly [of Piqueteros, organization of potential dual power], to convert it into THE organ of dual power, once and for all. I say combative, since the CCC [reformist, "maoist" stalinist mass movement
of unemployed supported by dispersed morenoists] has collapsed. In the streets these days, not one sign, not one flag, not one slogan, or p eople of that organization. Those who have been calling for the "argentinaz o" refused to go to the march of the left and the piqueteros [this sparked off the rebellion on Thursday] because there was a state of siege!!! The great strugglers stayed at home because the weakest government of which
there is memory decreed the state of siege!!! And the CTA directly liquidated itself with the so-called "popular referend um" [reformist, bureacratic attempt to lead the people down the garden path
with a democratizing attempt to hold a referendum, asking the people wheth er they like to be poor or not] two days before this revolution! We overthrew the government. The division of the bourgeoisie is exposed thr ough the difficulties it has had to designate a successor. Finally, the choice is Rodriguez Saa, of San Luis, a second-rate figure, no n-presidential, with a sex scandal under his belt. I don't know if you remember once they had kidnapped him, and at the heart of it was a sex scandal. Surely having to do with mafias of prostitution an d drugs. Elections in March. Can you believe that the [Stalinist] Communist Party, in an assembly in the
barrio the other day, called for anticipated elections??? Really, the only
thing you can do is spit in their face. It is the first time that a government has fallen through mobilization and not through decision of the bourgeoisie. That is the central point. The media is already trying to disvirtue everything, but the experience of all who came out at dawn on Wednesday and
saw the repression and breathed it, and felt the violence of the regime, t hat De la Rua was not "just slow and boring", as they present him in the me dia, that they can never take away, is never lost. And it continued Thursda y, with much more repression, they used up a whole arsenal on us. They murd ered 8 in the Capital, in the demonstrations, all during the day.
Posted by Vicente Balvanera please re-distribute meeting of Argentina Solidarity Committee Sunday, December 23 Wilshire 1324, Suite 202 Phone: (323) 219-5152
----- Original Message -----
From: John A Imani
To: brc-discuss at lists.tao.ca
Cc: laborpartypraxis
Sent: Friday, December 21, 2001 21:00
Subject: Re: [BRC-DISC] Argentina off the hook
Comrades,
<>
I don't know who the brother, Jaquero, is that Comrade Charles Brown forw arded the posting from below. I do know that I am in complete agreement wi th that assessment. Capitalism, suffering from a precipitous world-wide de cline in the rate (and now amount) of profit can ill-afford an Argentine de fault.
The potential revolutionary situation there, engendered by a class-consci ous workforce rebelling against an attempted IMF imposed structural 'reform ' (i.e. an attempt to make workers pay for capitalism's failings), carried out by their lackeys, headed by the ousted De la Rua and Cavallo, now faces
assault from national bourgeois would-be saviors, the Peronistas.
And yet , the comrade is correct when he says that
<<...reformists of various stripes have become increasingly identified wi th and pliant tools of neoliberal imperialist policies.>>
and
<>
Yet, the lesson is that unless the workers move towards total embrace of arming themselves then the 'Chilean solution' awaits and there will be a sl aughter beginning with the 'Left' and the imposition of a blatantly facist regime.
In a posting previously forwarded (Argentina: Call for working class revo lutionary organs of power)
The "Proposal from the Revolutionary Socialist League to the Coordinatinn g Committee of Left organizations" reads:
"We wish to help and support the Assembly process which brings together:
employed and unemployed workers and their combat organizations...".
Comrade Jaquero continues:
<>
Right on. In terms of promise and in terms of danger.
Oppose any US intervention in Argentina.
Imani
From: Charles Brown
To: brc-discuss at lists.tao.ca
Sent: 12/21/01 1:52:27 PM
Subject: Re: [BRC-DISC] Argentina off the hook
*********************************************************************** ****
This Message Is From: "Charles Brown"
*********************************************************************** ****
The spontaneous popular uprisings in Argentina mark a qualitiative chan ge in
the political situation in that country with potentially historic
importance, not just for Argentina, but the world.
That because the country has a large and fairly well organized labor
movement, in which a left wing that is more combative than the traditio nal
union bureacrats has already emerged, as well as a living tradition of
a
powerful national movement through which the working class expressed ma ny of
its aspirations and achieved significant conquests.
The central immediate issues at stake -- first and foremost the payment
of
the foreign debt, and then the whole panoply of neoliberal economic tre ason,
from privatization to convertibility at a one-to-one parity -- are deci sive
for the Third World.
Argentina has one of the largest debts of any third world country. An
Argentine moratorium of debt service payments, which is impossible to a void,
should be immediately followed by similar moratoriums by all the other
countries of the Third World. But even if it is not immediately support ed by
similar actions by other countries, Argentina's default itself will lea d to
the country risk premium shooting sky high, and making thereby the debt
burden on other Third World countries impossible to bear.
In the Latin American context, for several years it has been evident th at
there is a growing crisis of legitimacy of the existing bourgeois regim es.
Even with billions of American dollars and hundreds of American mercena ries,
the local Colombian administration (such a servile puppet of imperialis m
does not deserve to be referred to as a "government") has been unable t o
quash the guerrilla insurgencies. The mass movement that erupted in Ecu ador
a year or two ago was temporarily stymied, but it has not been dealt a
crushing, decisive defeat. In Venezuela the old corrupt two-party regim e has
wound up in the trash can of history with a vigorous sweep of the Boliv arian
revolution's broom, and it looks like many big landlords will soon join
their class brethren from the political parties in the museums of
antiquity. In M?xico, the U.S.-supported one party regime of the PRI ha s
been broken, and some of the crimes of the PRI governments, such as the
Tlatelolco massacre and the campaign of disappearances of student
activists-- are beginning to be exposed.
The gusano, which used to be a distinctively Cuban social type, is beco ming
transformed into a Latin American-wide phenomenon. In Miami you can now
find
Venezuelan gusanos, Colombian gusanos, Ecuadorean gusanos, Mexican gusa nos,
and it will be interesting to see whether the Argentine gusanos are goi ng to
wind up in Miami or, following their anglofile tradition, if they wind up in
Britain instead.
There is one factor in Latin America which is of special importance to this
region, although, of course, it is not without significance to the Thir d
World as a whole.
And that is the existence and survival of the Cuban revolution, which,
despite all the imperialist slanders and attacks, remains a powerful ex ample
that is especially immediate for the toiling masses throughout the
continent.
Cuba's existence is proof irrefutable that the revolution is possible, that
the people can make it, that no force on this earth is capable of stopp ing a
people determined to win its national and social liberation. And that o ne
can not just survive quite well without becoming a colonial subject of
Citibank.
This is not, of course, the first time that promising revolutionary
developments have been seen in Latin America since 1959. But things are
different now. Reformism in the workers movement is much weaker
strategically than it has been before. This for a couple of reasons. On e is
the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in the USSR. Another is the post- Cold
War mode of imperialist exploitation, which is materially destroying th e
relatively privileged layers of the working class and pettite bourgeois ie in
the semicolonial countries. And a third is that reformists of various
stripes have become increasingly identified with and pliant tools of
neoliberal imperialist policies.
Nothing is fore-ordained, nothing is "inevitable", everything will be
decided in the course of the actual struggle. But while the imperialist
bourgeoisie was distracted marvelling at the murder machine they were a ble
to deploy to Afghanistan, Argentina blew up, and it isn't the kind of
problem that can be solved with stealth bombers and anglo-imperialist
coalitions.
This is the real deal -- as real as it gets.
Jaquero
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