Ibero-American News Digest
Mass Marches in Mexico Against Wall Street's Fox Government
Mexican labor unions joined with a wide range of political and social organizations in marches across Mexico on Aug. 31, as "the first phase" of a nationwide campaign against the Fox government's efforts to gut the public sector and destroy workers' rights. Marches ranging from the hundreds in small towns, to an estimated 100,000 in Mexico City, were held in dozens of cities across the country, all in defense of the Social Security Institute (IMSS) workers, and against President Vicente Fox's (IMF-decreed) economic and social policies.
One of the five speakers who addressed 10,000 marchers in Monterrey that day, was LaRouche associate Benjamin Castro, who drew applause from the crowd when he briefed them on Helga Zepp LaRouche's role in organizing the fast-spreading "Monday demos" in Germany and beyond. "We must join forces with all of them, and with the government of President Kirchner in Argentina, who has decided to raise pensions and also wants to raise salaries in disobedience to the IMF," he said, provoking a wave of applause and foot-stomping. Castro called on the protesters to join forces with those in Germany and elsewhere, to go on the offensive, "turning a fight of resistance into a fight for a program of reconstruction of the economy based on state credit, to generate jobs and great infrastructure projects, to reorganize the international financial system.... Either we get rid of the financial parasites, or they will destroy us!"
The next day, Sept. 1, the IMSS, electrical workers', and telephone workers' unions in Mexico City joined with farmer organizations, unions of university workers and students, debtor and human rights organizations, and activists from various opposition political forcesthe PRD and PT parties, LaRouche's Labor Committees and LaRouche Youth Movement, and numerous othersto deliver Fox a personal message that "Your reforms will not pass!" Hundreds of thousands of trade unionists and supporters marched for several hours into Mexico City's center, to surround the Chamber of Deputies where Fox was giving his State of the Nation address. The IMSS, electrical, telephone, and other unions simultaneously ordered a nationwide work stoppage for the several hours of Fox's speecha stoppage carefully orchestrated to hit primarily administrative and non-urgent telephone, electricity, and medical/health services.
Although the majority of the speeches by national protest leaders were narrowly focussed, the consensus was that this was but the "first phase" of the mobilization, and that a second phase, possibly leading to a national strike against the Fox government and other "tougher actions," was now beginning.
Fox State of the Nation Speech Met With Boos
Mexican President Vicente Fox was, in turn, booed, denounced, shouted at, and ignored during his fourth annual State of the Nation address to the Chamber of Deputies Sept. 1. In what is being described as "the most hostile reception in recent memory," Fox's speech on "democracy" and "turning the corner on the economy" was interrupted by whistles, boos, and chants of "Another Lie!" and "Pinocchio," more than a score of times during his speech. Toward the end of the speech, over 200 Congressmen deliberately stood up and turned their backs on the President, chatting among themselves and lighting up cigarettes in the chamber, where smoking is banned.
Fox, who defended his takedown of the Social Security Institute while bailing out the banks, asked the opposition for a "truce" to unite forces in "furthering democracy," and at one point urged legislators to "abide by society's mandate." This was particularly ironic in view of the tens of thousands of trade unionists and others surrounding the Chamber to protest his policies.
Lessa: South American Integration at Historic Crossroads
"Now is the time to practice friendly geopolitics. We always boast of doing that, but we have to distance ourselves from any attempt to become a little empire," Carlos Lessa, head of Brazil's National Economic and Social Development Bank (BNDES), told the magazine Carta Capital on Aug. 28. Looking around the globe, Lessa remarked, the "peripheral parts of the world are increasingly becoming more peripheral." Take sub-Saharan Africa, he said. It has been thrown into "nothingness," devastated by AIDS and malaria. South America "holds a certain importance on the great world chessboard," but events are increasingly moving along lines "extending from the United States, Europe, and Asia toward Central Asia," he said. Therefore, continental integration, stemming from an axis formed by Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela, could provide South America with a certain type of "emancipation. I see a potential in concrete developments which are moving forward quickly today."
Warning of Coup Plot vs. Argentina's Kirchner Government
Argentina's former President Raul Alfonsin, who governed from 1983 to 1989, issued a communiqué Aug. 31 warning that "the right wing has decided to remove [current President Nestor] Kirchner and has set a deadline: March of next year." The release pointed to the "neoliberal right wing"an undisguised reference to Mont Pelerinite Ricardo Lopez Murphyas well as "speculative groups and some foreign investors," as backing these efforts.
EIR has repeatedly warned that local financial interests linked to Dick Cheney's synarchist faction internationally are out to topple Kirchner, because of the Argentine President's refusal to bend to the demands of the financial vultures behind the IMF. Wall Street has aggressively promoted Lopez Murphy as an acceptable alternative to Kirchner.
Alfonsin went after "left-wing" forces playing into the hands of the right-wing neoliberals, naming Elisa Carrio of the ARI Party, who has been loudly attacking Kirchner for months as "corrupt" and unprincipled. "Both Lilita Carrio, with her constant charges that everyone [in the government] is bad and should leave, and the piqueteros [unemployed groups] who attack the government with their often illegal protests, play right into the hands of the right wing that wants to remove the President," Alfonsin said.
Lopez Murphy responded indignantly to Alfonsin's warning, blustering that there couldn't possibly be "an institutional destabilization in March." He claimed he had no idea what "the neoliberal right wing" even was. But Alfonsin's ally in the Radical Civic Union (UCR), Deputy Leopoldo Moreau, stated that Alfonsin undoubtedly possesses "precise information," adding that the issues of crime and lack of security "will be used" by the right wing to destabilize the government.
IMF's Rato Rebuffed in Argentina
IMF chief Rodrigo Rato's demand, during a quick visit to Buenos Aires on Aug. 31, that Argentina increase the primary budget surplus and pay more debt, was met with a blunt rejection from President Kirchner: "Don't even dream" of a bigger surplus, Kirchner said.
Originally, Rato wasn't scheduled to visit Argentina at all during his first tour of South America's Southern Cone as head of the IMF. But he condescended to spend 10 hours in the country, during which time he ordered Kirchner to increase the primary budget surplus from the current level of 3% of GDP, to 4% or 5%. In a one-hour meeting with the Argentine President, Rato also demanded "an increase in public savings," implementation of "pending reforms," and "tightening up" of the budget. Rato insisted that Argentina must quickly complete its negotiations with foreign financial predators"creditors," he called themso as to "normalize its financial situation with international markets."
Kirchner would have none of this. On the debt-restructuring offer, he warned that "within the percentages already proposed" (i.e., a 75% write-down), "we'll seek the best agreement." As for a larger primary budget surplus, "don't even think about it; don't even dream it," he told Rato. The country is already making a big sacrifice to pay the foreign debt, he said.
As of July 31, the government had exceeded the 10-billion-peso primary budget surplus which the IMF had set for all of 2004, which fact had foreign vultures salivating, in hopes of getting more debt payment. But on Aug. 25, Economics Minister Roberto Lavagna, speaking at the Finance Ministry, reported that additional surplus funds would be allocated to "promoting productive activity, education, science, and technology," and said that further details would be made available in the next 30 days. Two days later, his spokesman, Armando Torres, categorically denied media reports that the government was considering a cash payment to creditors.
IMF Orders Even Chile To Deepen 'Reforms'
After his disgusting performance in Argentina (see above), IMF Managing Director Rodrigo Rato travelled on to Chile, where the free market supposedly reigns. But he informed the Lagos government that there were "too many rigidities" in the country's labor laws, and that further "flexibilization" is necessary to "improve the employment situation."
"Flexibilization" is the IMF's term for the policy it has already imposed on many developing-sector nations, ripping up trade-union benefits and living standards to "lower labor costs."
Why demand this in Chile? Even in this alleged free-market paradise, where an economic recovery is supposedly underway, the unemployment rate registered a very high 9.7% at the end of the second quarter of this year. El Mercurio pointed out on Sept. 2 that in recent years, unemployment has, on average, been a good 30% higher than it was just prior to the Asia crisis of 1997-98. Although protection for workers was largely eliminated under the "Chicago Boys" who made policy under the Pinochet regime, starting in 1973, there have been some regulatory changes in recent years that, according to the Chilean daily, have made it more difficult to fire workers or shorten the workday. Rato warned that "it is the IMF's opinion" that labor reform to resolve such "rigidities" as job protection, "must figure on Chile's agenda in the coming period."
World Bank: Ibero-America's Labor Force Must Be 'Flexibilized'
The World Bank has just issued a report, "Doing Business in 2005: Eliminating Obstacles to Growth," which asserts that existing labor protection legislation is the reason that Ibero-American workers are poor. The former development bank, now the financiers' collection agency, lied that labor and union protection has only benefitted the middle and "comfortable" classes.
The Malthusians at the World Bank complain that Ibero-American workers are the most protected in the world; labor laws are "too rigid," making it difficult to fire anyone, thus leading to the creation of a parallel, or informal (underground) economy, whose employees have no benefits. According to their perverse logic, the way to create more jobs is to "reform" (i.e., eliminate) legislation protecting workers, and share the poverty. Ibero-America has to catch up to the industrialized sector, the report demands, where there has been greater progress in "simplifying" labor legislation. Chile's La Tercera remarks Sept. 8 that "it's easier to do business in Botswana, Thailand, and Slovakia than in any Latin American country," where labor costs are too high. The World Bank laments that only six Ibero-American nations have implemented "flexibilization" reform, in order to improve the business climate.
|