Fw: Argentina in Quandary as Protest by Jobless Gets Nasty

["Nello Margiotta" <animarg@tin.it>]

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Subject: Fwd: Argentina in Quandary as Protest by Jobless Gets Nasty





July 6, 2001

Argentina in Quandary as Protest by Jobless Gets Nasty

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS

GENERAL MOSCONI, Argentina, June 29 - The 200 unemployed workers occupying
the central plaza of this squalid oil town may look harmless in their
makeshift tents sipping an herbal beverage through metal straws to while
away the hours.

But after an exchange of gunfire with the federal border police two weeks
ago that left two bystanders dead and more than 40 protesters and police
officers wounded, they have been described in the nation's newspapers as a
threat to Argentina's political and social stability.

The government's intelligence agencies say that the protesters represent
the core of a potential guerrilla insurgency and that they are at least
loosely connected to Colombia's rebels or international narcotics
traffickers seeking to stir up trouble in this part of northwest Argentina.

President Fernando de la Rúa's cabinet is divided over whether to negotiate
with them or repress them, leading to an embarrassing public feud between
two ministers that has reinforced the impression that the government is
adrift in its handling of a three-year-old recession and rising
unemployment.

In this town of 20,000 people, where 40 percent of the adults are
unemployed, the protesters hardly appear more than a huddle of poverty,
akin to the impoverished masses who occupied the Hoovervilles of the
American Depression. They ridicule talk of their links to outside agitators
as mere excuses to repress them.

Demanding jobs, they spend their days crouched around fires where they cook
stews and heat their maté, the herbal beverage. They carry slingshots,
which they normally use to hunt birds, and say they will use them against
the police if they come to disperse them.

"We're not moving until Governor Romero meets with us, but he says we are
nothing but delinquents," said Rosa Elena Tórrez, 42, referring to Juan
Carlos Romero, the governor of Salta Province, as she prepared soup in the
plaza. "But he is the delinquent who killed two of our sons."

She showed the shell casing of a bullet and said border policemen fired
shots at several hundred protesters on June 17 to force them to remove
their blockade of a federal highway, which had been paralyzing the local
economy for three weeks.

In the so-called "Battle of Mosconi," two innocent bystanders were killed
by gunfire, 14 protesters were wounded and 39 were arrested. Hooded
marksmen began the firing, and there are conflicting reports whether they
were policemen, protesters or outsiders who mingled with the picketers.

But what has shaken the government most is that 27 policemen were also
wounded, not by slingshots but by bullets, indicating that at least some
protesters had guns.

After the confrontation - one of the nation's most violent in years - more
than 300 heavily armed border policemen took up positions around General
Mosconi, checking the papers and vehicles of all who enter and leave the
town as if it were enemy territory. The protesters dropped their highway
blockade and moved to the central plaza, where they demanded the release of
three of their leaders who were arrested in the confrontation.

Taking a cue from the General Mosconi protesters, other unemployed workers
have sporadically blocked roads around Buenos Aires. Another labor group
rallied in front of the presidential palace on June 21 in a protest that
grew violent when hooded men with gasoline bombs set the entrance of a
nearby bank on fire. Tobacco growers around the city of Salta are now
threatening to block roads to demand government subsidies.

"This is a problem the national government better resolve immediately
because it is getting out of hand," said Governor Carlos Ruckauf of Buenos
Aires Province. Interior Minister Ramón Mestre said the protesters were
beginning to resort to "urban guerrilla tactics."

With the national employment rate now hovering above 16 percent and several
provincial governments near bankruptcy, officials say they fear a rash of
roadblocks by the unemployed will only slow the weakened economy. Several
local protest groups with Trotskyist ideologies have sent delegates to
General Mosconi to offer support and learn tactics.

The unrest in General Mosconi is rooted in the selloff of YPF, the huge
state oil company, between 1991 and 1993. Hundreds of local oil and gas
workers were laid off with modest severance packages and little if any
retraining or loans for the difficult transition to new employment.

Several smaller oil and gas companies took over the YPF operations in this
company town, which takes its name from the founder of the company, but
they employed only a fraction of the workers. Meanwhile, the closing of
YPF's large headquarters here and the exodus of a large number of
executives reduced the demand for carpenters, gardeners and other workers.

Unemployed workers began to block local roads in 1997, and their protests
have become increasingly violent. Last November, a mob burned down the town
hall. More ominously, another mob attacked a police station in nearby
Tartagal and stole weapons, including several assault rifles. "If the
provincial government or national government don't begin a plan to convert
this region into a cattle or agricultural zone soon," said Juan Nieva, 49,
a former YPF employee who is now occupying the plaza, "these social
explosions will continue and more people will die in the streets."

Such statements and the provincial government's refusal to negotiate has
put Mr. de la Rúa's government in the awkward position of either rewarding
the protesters with concessions or allowing an unstable situation to fester.

When Social Development Minister Juan Pablo Cafiero visited General
Mosconi, Labor Minister Patricia Bullrich publicly criticized him for
"politically positioning himself at the cost of the government." She left
the impression that Mr. Cafiero had come to General Mosconi without
President de la Rúa's approval.

But Mr. de la Rúa sided with Mr. Cafiero, and a middle-ranking official has
been sent here to devise a plan to give forestry and other public works
jobs to the unemployed.

Aides to Mr. de la Rúa say they will not interfere in local judicial
decisions in order to free the three protest leaders, suggesting that if
they were too lenient with the General Mosconi protesters it would only
spur more violent protests.

Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company