Six Years of Military Rule in Argentina by Lars Palmgren
Over 10,000 people demonstrated for "peace, bread and work" in Argentina on March 30. This first public demonstration at such a scope since the military coup in 1976 was brutally broken up by police. Reports estimate that around 2,000 people were arrested and several were badly wounded. One demonstrator was killed.
This demonstration was the most significant sign yet that the hold of the military regime on the country is weakening. Whatever the outcome of the occupation of the Falkland Isles, clearly an attempt to mobilize national feeling in support of the regime, resistance to the economic and social policies of the military is growing.
BUENOS AIRES--With the exception of Peron, military officers have never been especially popular in Argentina.
Today, after six years of unrelieved military rule, they are even less so.
The contemptuous caricatures in the newspapers are only a pale reflection of the comments you hear in cafes, bus lines, and wherever people gather.
The reason is not hard to find: "Two months ago, I used to drink a couple of cups of coffee and read an afternoon paper before going home from work, " a civil service clerk said.
"Today, I can't afford either coffee or newspapers, and I have to spend all my free time looking for extra jobs. I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to pay the heating
In 1981, Argentina's GNP went down by 6% and industrial production dropped by over 16%. In industry, short time and three-
Joblessness, which was never very high before, is nearing 20%. Real wages are nosediving.
"We have never had it so bad, " he said. "My father says it is like the 1930s.
The military are blamed for the economic crisis in Argentina, although it did not begin with the military coup of March 24, 1976. In fact, the coup was the bourgeoisie's way of trying to solve the structural crisis that was already in evidence.
In March 1976, the bourgeoisie had al-
"We are going to let the market be the factor that decides the distribution of resources and income, and we are going to limit the intervention of the state in eco-
That was the economic recipe for solving the crisis offered by Martinez de Hoz, the military's first economics minister.
"social costs" of this, increased unemployment and lower wages, were "nec-
" Martinez de Hoz explained.
In order to apply this recipe over the opposition of the workers, what was necessary was about fifteen thousand "missing persons, " a similar number of known dead, and hundreds of thousands of people driven out of the country.
The free market policy moved on like a steamroller. Soon it rolled over other sections of the population besides the workers. This policy favored the already big, the already wealthy enterprises.
The big got bigger. The not-so-big quickly went to the wall. The large but outmoded Argentine industrial plants faced a mortal threat from the international mono-
The effect of the international economic crisis on the specifically Argentine one did not make things any better. Instead it helped to generate an open political crisis.
Factional struggles developed within the bourgeoisie and within the military itself. These conflicts came to the surface when the first chairman of the military junta, General Videla, was to be replaced by General Viola in 1980. Argentina had three different presidents in one day.
Viola tried to dampen down the conflicts by bringing representatives of various sections of the bourgeoisie into the govern-
But that did not bring a rebirth of unity. Instead, the clashes became sharp-
The bourgeois parties took the opportunity to form a "multiparty front. " Within the government, representatives of various factions of the bourgeoisie took advantage of their positions to apply various economic recipes--all at the same time. The government's economic policy became more and more chaotic and contradictory.
After less than a year, General Viola
I ban on films such as The Front and Norma Rae, and by letting the popular folk-andprotest singer Mercedes Sosa come back to
But after six years, the military are more unpopular than ever in Argentina. trade-union movement remains weak and split, but it is much stronger than it was in
The leaders who try to make deals with the junta are losing ground, and those who have refused to do that are gaining support. A number of regional union leaders decided in mid-March that "We have to wage a serious struggle now, not to throw out an economics minister but to throw out the military.... We need a program of our own that deals with both political and economic questions."
The growing rejection of any kind of agreement with the military poses a dilemma today for both the junta and the bour-
The military need a pact with the bourgeois opposition (and thereby an influence on the working class) in order to be able to pursue their economic policy without running into too many problems.
The bourgeois opposition wants to make a deal with the military so that the feeling against the junta will not continue to deepen and maybe turn against it as well.
As the present situation drags on, the bourgeois opposition is steadily losing its influence over the working class. And this is not only a result of the economic crisis.
Another factor is that the military has not been able to get the Argentine people to forget what its failed attempt to solve the economic crisis has cost. The "Mothers of the Plaza del Mayo" have made the struggle for the fifteen thousand "missing persons" a central political question for all groups in
For a long time, the military refused to talk about the "missing persons. " "These are people who have changed their names, emigrated, or else they are terrorists who were killed when they struck a blow against their country, " the generals maintained.
But now, only a week into the sixth year of the military regime, the new minister of the interior has said that he is thinking about proposing that the junta publish a was replaced by General Leopoldo Galtieri, White Paper to clear up the question of the ready exhausted all of the economic remedies available within the framework of parliamentary rule.
Everything they had in mind meant that the workers had to pay, through unemployment, lower wages, worse working conditions. But in 1976 and before, the working class was strong. The workers refused to accept the bourgeoisie's solutions, although their own union leaders tried to get them to do that. The working class showed that it was ready to challenge the whole existing social structure rather than give up the gains I it had made earlier.
who tried to present himself at the same time as a strongman and as the man who would lead Argentina back to democracy.
Galtieri's minister of economics followed in Martinez de Hoz's footsteps: The central thing in his economic recipe was privatization, partly of the many state-owned enterprises (In Argentina, the government's direct involvement in the economy is much greater than in Sweden), and partly of
Galtieri also tried to present himself as "open" and "democratic" by lifting the missing persons.
Words are one thing, actions are another.
The day after the minister of the interior made his promise, the police attacked a demonstration organized by the Mothers of the Plaza del Mayo and six other humanrights organizations.
Every action such as this outweighs a thousand promises, and a deal with the military seems more and more unlikely.
(ETC. Issue No. 4, 1982.)