Protests greet Argentinean president

Protests greet Argentinean president

By Roque Grillo

SYDNEY — On March 30, six days after the 22nd anniversary of the 1976 military coup in Argentina, members and supporters of the Australian support groups for Argentina's Mothers of Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of the Disappeared) protested against Argentinean President Carlos Menem.

Menem is in Australia to drum up business. He has been inviting companies to invest in the Argentinean "economic miracle", promising a large pool of cheap labour and a well-oiled repressive apparatus to ensure no labour disputes.

Although trade between the two countries is relatively small, Australian companies are showing increasing interest in Argentina.

Mount Isa Mines and North Ltd are involved in the billion dollar mining project Bajo la Alumbrera in the province of Catamarca, while Prime Television has recently become a major shareholder in a Buenos Aires television station. Village Roadshow, another Australian company, has recently begun operations in Argentina.

Menem has been in power since mid-1989. He began his term by pardoning the ringleaders of the 1976-1983 military dictatorship, which resulted in the disappearance of more than 30,000 political and social activists. Since then, he has maintained impunity for those responsible, and continued and deepened the dictatorship's neo-liberal economic project with a massive program of privatisation and social service spending cuts.

Menem's government is riddled with corrupt members and is linked to key people who participated in the so-called "process of national reorganisation", the pompous and inaccurate title given by the military junta to their de facto government.

The armed forces and the police include criminals from the period of the dictatorship who regularly put down social protests.

Human rights and other progressive organisations are regularly attacked, and those in the media who attempt to shed some light on the government's shady deals and connections are attacked. Just over a year ago, press photographer Jose Luis Cabezas was killed while carrying out an investigation.

The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo are continually persecuted, and endure regular death threats and the periodic ransacking of their Buenos Aires headquarters.

From GLW issue 313