Donne senza confini

ARGENTINA, BETWEEN ECONOMY AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Fernando Solanas is a famous inspiring Argentinian director of the whole militant cinema of south america during years '60 and '70. In the month of October he came in Italy to introduce his last work, "Memory of the looting", a documentary report on the dramatic economic crisis of his Country.

(Argentina, december 2001)
The touching images of extreme poverty of some Argentinian provinces, the 2001 social tensions, serve as background to an only anxious question: why the barn of the world doesn't have the resources for satisfie its small population? Has the country of the 30.000 desaparesidos faced its past to build a different future?

The economist Schumpeter affirmed that the economy is subject to cyclical phases, recession followed by economic resumption. Also the Argentinian political history has not escaped to this law. Governs democratically chosens they have been alternated to military regimes. The 2001 economic crisis, the worse one that Argentina has ever lived, has it marked a real changment?
To understand where today's Argentina is, I have wanted to reconstruct the facts with the help of the famous Argentinian writer Horacio Verbitsky (author of the best seller "the flight") and of the ex Italian consul to Buenos Aires during the military dictatorship, Enrico Calamai.
Before the coup d'état of the general Videla on 24th march 1976, the economic-social situation was very tense. High inflation, revolts, strikes, student revolts, actions of terrorism, made the uncontrollable situation for Isabelita Peron (third wife of Domingo Peron). In such context the military coup d'état was the "logic" conclusion of an escalation out control.
Obviously the military regimes in soth america don't install themselves without the "consent of Washington". The tried smut in Venezuela from the leader of the Venezuelan entrepreneurs, has been supported only two years ago from the United States interested to make stable the oil production not to depend from the politics not lined up of the actual President Hugo Chavez.
Equally for the south america of the years '70, a plan was anticipated, the notorious one "Plain Condor". The American administration of the President Ford, was interested to avoid to be repeated Cuban events and to oppose the communist strengths that had already taken root with success in Chile with the ascent of Allende. To succeed in the intent every mean was considered licit.
The director of the Plain Condor was the secretary of state Henry Kissinger. One year ago in Washington, the principal NGO specialized to publish north american secret documents, the National Security Archives, has divulged information that document the meeting held October 7 th 1976 in New York among Kissinger and the Argentinian Chancellor Cesar Guzzetti. Kissinger appears worried for the violation of the human rights in Argentina that is arousing the attention of the international public opinion. "Our attitude leading" says Kissinger, "it is that we want that you are successful. I am a man to the ancient one, I am convinced that we must help our friends……we want a stable situation in Argentina, we don't want to cause you difficulties. If you will succeed in completing the thing before takes back the sessions of the Congress, better". It won't be this way. The national commission on the disappearance of people has established that halves the prisoners desaparesidos was seized after that meeting.
In Argentina the terror reigned because whoever could become a "desaparesidos". Eloquent a sentence of a general, "first we will kill all the subversives, then their collaborators, then their sympathizers, then the indifferent ones and at the end the timid ones."
It was so that at the end of the dictatorship, Argentina counted over 30.000 disappeared, desaparesidos. The procedure was always the same one: the break-ins effected at night. The residence was surrounded by cars without plate, the door thrown down to kicks, men without uniform with weapons in fist beating up whoever opposed resistance. Once picked the person (generally young people), he was brought away and they said to the family if they wanted to see their darling again, they had to keep silent on what happened. For this reason to the beginning nobody spoke but when disappears didn't return, the family went to the police and they given always the same answer, "nobody result stopped with that name. Maybe he will have departed for a vacation to the foreign countries". The Argentinian regime adopted a different strategy, more deceitful in comparison to the dictatorship of Pinochet in Chile where people disappeared under the eyes of everybody, during the day, without too many problems. In Argentina apparently it was everything "normal" and in the normality was held world championship of soccer in 1978. Instead at the end of the dictatorship we counted over 30.000 desaparesidoses and many of them were italians’ sons. Enrico Calamai, italian consul in Buenos Aires during the terrible years of the dictatorship, has been one of the few voices out of the choir. The Italian Government preferred not to create problems to the regime. Despite the indifference of our State Department in front of the tragedy that it was consuming, Calamai succeeded in hiding Chileans persecuted inside the Italian embassy, he got passports to make to run away whole families through bordering Uruguay. Calamai paid this behavior with the block of the career. As he tells in the pages of his book "any political asylum", italian polititians knew well but they preferred not to act.
The resistance to the Argentinian regime was nonexistent because practically impossible, only a group of women protested, they were the famous ones "mothers of Plaza de Mayo". Á. proper risk and danger, beginning from 1977 they began to protest in Plaza de Mayo asking for the truth on the fate of their disappeared children. To 28 year-old distance the mothers are always in that plaza.

(mothers of Plaza de Mayo)
The envoy Rai of that years in Argentina, Italo Moretti, remembers the insensibility of the Italian people and for reflex of the Government, in front of the events that were consumed in Argentina. Without international pressure, the soldiers could act unmolested with their plans of death and terror.
They will be again economic problems and the resounding military defeat to the Islands Falklands, that the same soldiers of the regime will bring to make aside themselves to leave space to free elections won by the radical Raul Alfonsin.
From that moment Argentina has never succeeded in making the accounts with its past.
The only attempt of national pacification was in 1995 when the President Carlos Menem emanated the law of the due obedience that sheltered the military apparatus from their own responsibilities. A serious error because nobody would have paid for their own guilts. We have reached therefore the economic crisis of December 2001, a social revolution never sight before. I ask to Horacio Verbitsky if the 2001 events has marked a point of changment for Argentina under the aspect of the human rights and the economy with the era of the actual President Nestor Kirchner. "The decision of the Government Kirchner to abolish the horrendous laws of the due obedience and the end point, mark one it covers fundamental in the run toward the justice. Now 115 general and officers are under trial or to the domiciliary arrests". Calamai says "the impotence to pursue the worse crimes against the humanity is not able whether to get used to bear whatever type of looting or corruption". Argentina has borne in silence for so much time and all the opinions, including the Argentinian director Fernando Solanas, they converge on the fact that the 2001 crisis has really marked a turn and that Kirchner has the only and final occasion to represent a changment both as it regards the human rights that for the economy.
The facts are with him. The sense of injustice has been removed with some choices decided by Kirchner. He has removed all the heads of police accused of corruption and founded a system of popular nomination because common people had lost trust in the police.
As it regards the changes in the economic sector, it is better first to reconstruct the events that have caused the 2001 revolt.
We are in 1989, the inflation has reached 5000%. Economic theory teaches that to fight inflation we need to fight against expectations of inflation and to make this Menem chose the fastest road, of immediate political return (so much to be re-elected for a second time) but in the long term it has been a bad solution. The Minister of the economy, Domingo Cavallo, decided of "pesificare" the national coin anchoring it to the dollar, 1 pesos = 1 dollar. To sustain such monetary choice was necessary to appreciate the pesos. To succeed in the intent the Central Bank needed liquidity. They were the years of the "logics" privatizations , pure sale of the public patrimony. Public enterprises in good financial health were sold to derisive prices. The debt kept on climbing but a strong currency allowed the Argentinians to buy to the foreign countries and to maintain a good way of life. The problems began when Mexico devalued its own currency and the capitals they flowed out from Argentina toward Mexico and Brazil. To obviate to the lack of capitals, Argentina lifted the rates of interest (what they reached 20%). The Country in 2001 is by now to the collapse, a nonexistent productive system almost, a big debt, unemployment, lack of liquidity (in odor of crisis the international banks decided "to evacuate" whole containers of money). President De La Rua's choice is forced, to impose the "corralito" (literally "fences in"). All the Argentinian citizens can't use their money that are in the bank. Argentina is in revolt. In the documentary of Solanas are proposed that days of violence, brutal repression, desperation.
How has been possible to reach this point? In first place it has been an error to want to insist to maintain for too much time a ridiculous parity with the dollar, besides the International Monetary Fund continuous still today to impose to Argentina, plain of austerity and reduction of the expense. The containment of the debt hardly should give trust in brief times, instead in brief times it is important to resolve the problem of the unemployment and with these choices it will be very difficult. The new deal of Roosvelt diametrically stirred in opposite sense to resolve similar problem list. But today Argentina must give answers not only to their people but also to the international investors, also the italian savers that have invested in Argentina.
In 2002 it has been definite to devalue the pesos bringing itself to "normal" level and this will serve for increasing the competitiveness of the Argentinian firms even if the power of purchase of the citizens has been notably reduced. Horacio Verbitsky affirms "the negotiation with the International Monetary Fund of the public debt is made in terms of national dignity". Jorge Lanata, the argentinean Michael Moore and founder of the daily Page 12, he has recently realized a documentary on the Argentinian foreign debt ("Deuda"). "We have the money not to make to starve the children of Tucuman. There is a public debt of 12 million pesos the year and the same money to pay the interests. We have the money but we decides not to use them to fight the hunger."
The President Kirchner is found to manage a difficult situation, to mediate among conflicting affairs, on one side the international financial , from the other the necessities of his people.
In a survey of the Argentinian magazine Noticias, Kirchner results to be the most believable person of the Country, to the second place the writer Ernesto Sabato.
Despite the problems is alive as the unemployment, the President seems coop trying a different economic road from his predecessors.
In November of 2004 in Santiago of Chile the meeting of the Apec is held. The United States pushes for making to go into effect the Alca, the area of free exchange for whole south america where the advantages for the Usa will be insured, not insured the benefits for south america countries if we take as example what has happened with the accord NAFTA with Mexico. The miracle has not happened and the clandestine Mexicans keep on trying to reach the United States.
Kirchner, Lula and Chavez don't seem to be in a hurry to make to go into effect the Alca and rather it seem, wants to strengthen the Mercosur, to create an unique currency for the south america and to depend less economically on the United States. To the vertex Apec in fact, China has concluded multimillion contracts with Argentina and Brazil. The President Kirchner has already declared to want to renegotiate some of the villainous privatizations of the past as that of the oil company YPF and to buy again some privatized firms for public interest.
If on one side Kirchner has accepted to pay a part of the interests on the debt and to renegotiate the payment of the Argentinian bonds, from the other one he is using political and economic choices that don't have precedents in the Argentinian history.

(Kirchner and Lula)
The future of Argentina appears less dark than in the past with a people and a President decided to turn page.

Federico Bastiani