Out of the debt trap
ARGENTINA
DOCUMENT businesspeople but the big industial and financial monopolies. It is against the latter that popular and governmental supervision must be exercised.
If this fundamental problem is not resolved, then human rights,
IN RESPONSE to the question put by Nobel Peace Prize winner
Adolfo Perez Esquivel, the following document issues an appeal to
"discuss the paths of popular unity for democracy and liberation."
This document, entitled, "The Foreign Debt, Human Rights, and the Democracy that we want," has been signed by many personalities in the democratic rights movement, by artists, trade-union leaders, and lawyers.
to the disturbing economic situation created by the foreign debt problem, Nobel Peace
Prize winner
Adolfo Perez Esquivel has called on "all social organizations and political parties to engage in an open discussion on what paths, what projects, what alternatives we want
(Entre Todos,
The deepest crisis in this century has engulfed the Argentines, and we are anxiously seeking a way out of it. And this cannot be found only
Millions of men and women in the popular camp must also participate in this quest. It is worth repeating argued as follows:
"Either we face this historic challenge, or we will miss this very special moment not only in the history of Argentina but also of Latin America as a whole.
Argentina today is in the best position on the continent to set in motion a real historic revolutionary process of achieving economic independence.
The main obstacle facing democracy is the foreign debt. The International Monetary
Fund
(IMF)
imposing on us the payment of the and the repressive interest usurous economic measures that have been accepted by the government. In its practical effects, this means a growing impoverishment of the popular sectors destruction of the national and the industry that survived by dictatorship's economic plan applied by Jose
Alfredo Martinez de Hoz.
facts. For a
Let us consider the
50 debt of billion dollars, the country has to pay nearly 6 billion dollars in interest annually.
The surplus of income from exports over the costs of imports is 4 billion dollars.
This means that even if we pay out these 4 billion dollars, at the price of starving the majority of the population, this will still not be enough, and we will continue to sink deeper into debt. What the country earns in a year is not even enough to pay the usurous interest that the big international banks are imposing on us. So, paying the debt is impossible. Our survival as a nation is at stake.
alternative? If we chose a solution in line with the dollars in trade surplus could be used, for example, to finance the construction of forty big factories, creating 80,000 new jobs a year or their equivalent; or 800,000 new low-income units, with the effect that would have in reactivating the econ-
The situation that we are going through has its origins in our historic dependence, but it has been dramatically aggravated by the seven years of military dictatorship that ravaged the country. We will to pay for its effects as long as we fail to adopt a policy designed to achieve our economic independence. "War against the IMF"
We Argentines can face up to "war economy, "" if the war is against the IMF and to lift the country up, and not a war against the people and it has paid the foreign debt and not dismantled the mechanisms of the national capitalists, our country is again controllable inflation. The government is basing its present economic plan on the need to eliminate this plague. Broad sections of the population also see this as needful and are looking forward to its accomplishment. But what stands in the way of achieving this objective is that this plan has been worked out down its most minute details in collaboration with the IMF, whose policy has never benefitted any people. The same thing applies to their determination to continue to pay the interest debt at the specific times when it falls due.
Those responsible for inflation and the economic crisis are not the small in the broader sense, have no meaning, that is the right to a job, to health, to a place to live, to eat, to education, to a decent life.
However, at the same time, it is necessary to continue to fight for the human rights that were crushed by the dictatorship's repression. In this regard, the report of the National Commission on the Missing Persons (CONADEP) and the trial of the military juntas have revealed a part of the atrocities committed by the military dictatorship. But the case on the crimes cannot be closed until all the "missing persons" being held prisoner are produced alive, until the children involved have been restored to their respective families, until all those responsible for this mass murder are tried and punished, until the political prisoners are released, and until the illegal repressive apparatus is dismantled.
Even with limits and imperfections, the democracy that we have won has to be defended against any authoritarian threat. But at the same time, we have to look for ways to deepen it, to make it a democracy in which the people participate, so that all social and economic sectors in the national and people's camp can play a more active role in solving the problems of the people, so that democracy is exercised in all organizations in the country, such as the trade unions, for example, many of which are still led by bureaucrats who were silent accomplices of the dictatorship and today want to hitch the working class to destabilization projects or sectarian inter-! ests.
This is the sort of discussion that is necessary today. It is urgent that all political and religious sectors, people's and youth organizations meet to discuss these questions.
It is only through popular unity arising out of a broad debate that we will be able to find ways for deepening democracy and for advancing toward national and social liberation, by building a political alternative that is beyond the capacities of each specific structure and which can only be carried through by all those who seek such liberation working together.
We signers support this appeal and invite you to participate in this project so that together we can build people's unity for democracy and liberation.
Published in Izquierda Unida, No. 1, August 1, 1985. Buenos Aires.