Bourgeois rule in Argentina is undergoing a deep crisis. This is linked to similar situations in many other countries in South America, namely Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru. Since the end of military dictatorship a bi-partisan bourgeois democratic rule set up. As the military defeated the revolutionary rehearsal of the 1970s and imposed hard conditions on the working class, bourgeois democracy has continued in dropping labour conquests. For instance, one of these defeats was the privatisation of almost the whole of the state-run companies and public services from 1991 on, under the Menem government. The current situation has a lot to do with this. Argentine Airlines, the official state-run airline, was sold off ten years ago to the SEPI, a Spanish partnership that runs companies owned by the Spanish state worldwide. Ten years later, the airline is on the brink of bankruptcy. Spanish imperialists and servile Argentine government accuse the workers of looting the airline. The conflict has had dramatic developments and is still going on. It began nearly a month ago, and it has become a sort of "national cause" developing an embryonic but increasing anti-imperialist sensibility, as the bourgeois rule, its politicians and its institutions appear more and more as puppets before the eyes of the masses. As list-members know, I have posted on the airline conflict before so I won't go further with this. All along this week, the other main conflict in Argentina is the government's class war against the unemployed workers movement in Salta, in the North. As I'm posting this, the armed forces have killed at least two people -official numbers. Bourgeois democracy in backward countries such as those from Latin America is even much more formal than in imperialist countries. Therefore, "democracy for the rich" in Argentina has increasing bonapartist features. Recovering the methodology of the military dictatorship, the government is currently kidnapping the leaders of the movement. Nearly 40 people are still "missing" -officially they are neither dead, nor imprisoned, and nobody knows where they are. This not by chance, since the unmemployed workers' movement from Salta is the best organised and the most advanced among the various movements of that kind currently found here. Highly-organised and militant unemployed workers' movements are a special characeristic of class struggle in Argentina. They are fighting for recovering their jobs in the former state-run oil company YPF, currently owned by Spanish REPSOL. They have developed pickets and road blockages, even integrating them as a part of an effective military strategy which has defeated the gendarmerie many times, with full support and participation of the population. In November 2000, as police repressed pickets and murdered a striking transport worker, the population enraged. They looted and set on fire the town halls in Salta, then they took police stations and the gendarmerie headquarters, keeping policemen as hostages, looting all their guns and then setting the buildings on fire. The government and the bourgeoisie want to destroy the movement. They have a lot of reasons to be afraid of. Employed workers and the majority of the middle layers are more and more sympathetic to the unemployed and their actions. Besides, together with the Airline workers, employed workers are facing and will have to face a full-scale attack on their conquests, since the anti-labour act -which was scandalously enacted last year by means of briberies funded by companies- has to be carried out. Nevertheless, it's not that easy to do so, as the workers have made five massive general strikes -the last one just a couple of weeks ago- increasingly exercising their muscles in political fight -as Lenin conceived general strikes- during a highly instable electoral -parliamentary- year. In a few hours, a massive demo called by the trade union leadership will take place, repudiating the government and repression-murder in Salta and in solidarity with Airline workers.
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