Next March 24th it is a new anniversary of the National Reorganization Process, the genocidal military dictatorship imposed to defeat the thousands of popular activists and workers and implement a new economic plan in favor of the multinationals, the banks and the big bosses.
Today, forty years later, the workers and the people are suffering a new attack, this time by an elected government, which serves the same interests. A few months after taking office, Macri’s government is hardly attacking us, with layoffs, inflation, price hike, devaluation, etc. Meanwhile, we are also seeing an increase of repression to mobilizations, to workers and popular struggles, aiming to impose fear and paralyzation to the society as a whole, as to impose the pro-companies policies this government has already taken.
Obama’s arrival: a clear message of support to the multinationals’ government.
This is why, like every year since we defeated the military regime, this March 24th cannot be just a holiday.
Because the military coup of 1976 was part of the Condor Plan, an initiative orchestrated at international level by the United States’ embassy, in order to submit the country to a financial dependence of the US and the IMF. It was through this bloody dictatorship, led by the Military Boards, that imperialism was able to impose what Isabel Perón’s government and the Triple A[1] could not do. It was since then we started suffering the great scum of the fraudulent external debt, when 80% of the major companies in the country passed to multinational hands.
And today, forty years later, the very same businessmen and parties are the ones currently implementing and/or letting the government’s plan pass. Macri, whose family was one of the military’s main partners, and whose government in filled with managers of those multinationals who were favored under dictatorship.
It is the same US government, with a different image and a more democratic speech, who comes after visiting Cuba to provide full support to the government that will grant the US$6.500 millions to pay The Vultures this illegitimate and unaffordable external debt, contracted by the dictatorship and accepted by all the subsequent governments.
Nestor and Cristina before, granted over 200.000 million dollars to the IMF, to the Vultures who accepted the debt exchange, to the Paris’ Club Powers, etc. They also approved the Antiterrorism Bill by request of the US government. Today, President Obama arrives to Argentina to give an accolade to the government that wants to “normalize” the country, by implementing the Anti-Picket Protocol, to hit whoever resists the adjustment.
Unity to struggle
The high price we paid with 30.000 “Desaparecidos”, most of them from the industrial working class, together with Macri’s rule’s offensive in all fronts, are forcing us to respond in unity to organize the workers and popular resistance. Though it is still not enough, the step forward of past February 24th shows us the way to stop Macri and the bosses.
In this regard, next March 24th we have a great opportunity to let the government, the entrepreneurs and the US imperialism know that the working class and the Argentinian people will not forget what happened forty years ago. And we are not willing to pay their economic crisis with layoffs, unemployment and misery.
It is necessary to fill the squares and streets nationwide, to repudiate the give-away and repression of past and present. We have to organize a unitary action of all workers’, social and political organizations, building it in every school, factory, sector or neighborhood, in order to stop the adjustment, and the outrage of this new government.
We make a special call to the Kirchnerist organizations currently calling to resist the adjustment, like La Cámpora, Movement Evita, Miles, etc. to not accept the governability pact which is being prepared from the Congress of the Justicialist Party, and firmly encourage the mobilization against the adjustment, the give-away, and the repression.
We also call all other left-winged, HR and social organizations participating together with us of the Memory, Truth and Justice Encounter, to pronounce likewise.
This is not the time to divide the struggle, in front of the unified attacks of the bosses, and in front of the explicit support of imperialism to the new government’s plan. We need to construct the widest unity of action to face both of them. The still current debates on the role of last government must develop in the frame of a common struggle, where each one can defend their positions with full liberty, without this compromising the unitary response to the bosses and government’s attack.
Basically, we propose a unitary in struggle March 24th, with these demands:
Repudiate the repression of yesterday and today. Common, effective prison to all genocides. Open all the dictatorship files. Prosecution and condemnation to all civil accomplices of the dictatorship.
Definitive annulment of the Anti-Picket Protocol, the Anti-terrorist Bill and the entire repressive legislation. Against Project X and all kind of espionage and persecution to activists.
Against the criminalization of social protests. For Milagro Salas’s release and the annulment of condemnations and prosecutions to all workers and popular activists, like the oil workers from Las Heras.
Dismantle the repressive apparatus still intact today, which they are trying to strengthen through the excuse of fighting drug trafficking.
Common jail to Pedraza, and prosecution to all those responsible of the disappearance of Julio Lopez.
Obama out of Argentina. British out of Malvinas. US out of Latin America. Down with the holdouts’ agreement. Not a single peso for the Vultures. Money for salary, education, housing and employment, not for the external debt!
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Notes:
[1] Argentine Anticommunist Alliance , know as “Triple A”, was a paramilitary group of extreme right-wing Peronism. It was responsible for the disappearance and death of at least 700 people.
Translation: Guillermo Zuñiga
