"Let's wait a while, some months or weeks yet. Argentine times are prolific, rapid, and perhaps somewhat hopefully see a procession passing before our eyes. But do not ask me, reader, what kind of courtship is that or what direction it will take, because that does not know. " These words concluded an article titled long Hesiod and the present Argentine - Pandora was the gift that God offers to all men, for their misfortune , and some English-language media published in the spring of 2001.
Indeed, times are prolific Argentine
Eduardo Dermardirossian
only three months ago Argentine institutional gears rotating in the direction of clockwise. Morosely, but rotated in the ordinary sense. Averaged a president his term, corporations painfully traveled the path that led it to their respective targets, producers of goods and services transiting the territory with mixed fortunes of the economy and public finances and lived their homes more or less adequate, more or less carecientes. Just three months ago was not envisioned this scenario in Argentina. Last spring, Argentina was overwhelmed by the recession, unemployment, indebtedness, growing poverty. The economic misery and social deprivation visited more and more homes. The company felt that his condition was becoming increasingly precarious, it was hard to trace the slope that led to rising levels of poverty and despair. But I knew Argentina society in the final days of last year would rush to the abyss in freefall. The imagination and expectations of the people were outpaced from 3 December.
Excuse
In these lines I will not refer to the presidential resignations, the money captives, forced to the banking of people, of the floating exchange rate, the dollarization of assets and liabilities, to the liquidation of debts, the action of lobbies or pressure IMF. These issues have been dealt with comfortably at home and abroad. I'll take care of the people of Argentina that society, angry, has shaken off his lethargy and resignation of former to take to the streets and demonstrate in different ways. Of new forms of social protest and the goals inherent in them: for this I will on this day.
Piqueteros, jumbo, neighborhood assemblies, electronics and other specimens harangued
see daily in the streets and squares of cities groups more or less numerous, more or less angry people expressing their dissatisfaction with the economic measures adopted by the national government, the decisions taken by provincial and municipal governments, for deprivation of a different kind that will overwhelm and become uninhabitable their days. The reproach to the men of politics and their parties are also of the protest which extends to financial institutions and corporations, especially financial ones, without looking at whether national or foreign, public or private.
waiver is requested of all members of the highest court country severely questioned both houses of the legislature, whose total turnover is also intended without waiting for the end of their terms, many criticisms are made to the executive who now heads a national senator, whose resignation is also claimed.
You push the protesters every day cut the country's roads, the jumbo beating their pots through the streets of cities and in front of government buildings and federal legislative and local residents in autoconvocados permanent assemblies to deliberate on national issues and then take their views to confederal assemblies, which decisions are intended to legitimate and binding. Also pressed the unions to say aggrieved by the outrages of government or corporations, and so they go out lawyers to force the resignation or to accelerate the action of the impeachment committee of Chamber of Deputies doctors in this or that public hospital fighting for their budget or the provision of medicines and supplies to enable them to care for their patients, teachers, since the budget for 2002 does not include sufficient funds for payment of their wages, depositors to demand that banks return their money or to refrain from undermining pesified value. Go out the debtors to ask for your rights and interests, but also leaving their creditors to demand for rights and interests, of course, are not the same, and a hundred yards of each other, angrily demanding . Sticks, stones, eggs and vegetables were thrown at the glass fronts of bank premises, and most recently threw stools beef, pork and even human.
Another species of protesters also runs the streets in Argentina: is the escraches, which sometimes come to the homes of officials and other political leaders to to express their rejection. They also have computer criers broadcasting in real time and email all kinds of texts: one is carrying news, more or less true, more or less plausible, others are biting, ironic and witty, the need to pretend, with varying tino, examining issues of Argentines blame behaviors and to propose solutions. I hereby also been summoned to marches and other kinds of demonstrations. Often also physical attacks on political leaders now seek to show not only by the mass media.
And more ... and more populated areas in these times rebellious cities and roads in Argentina.
Bible and water heater
Of the various things that matter to consider at this point I will address only two: the uneven and even contradictory interests of different actors of the protest and the viability of these forms of action and claim. Regarding the first issue, there quickly noted that the interests that mobilize different sectors are often conflicting. The picketers, who have adopted as method of control and claim the cutting of roads and access to major urban centers, are the oldest of these sectors protesters and has an operational structure capable of allowing more or less effectively its claim. Composed of unemployed, underemployed, people lacking the minimum necessary for subsistence, have managed to arouse the attachment of some union and social organizations and inserted into the political arena, not to candidates, but their active participation in the mass media, and also because they often have visited government offices to put on the desks of ministers and secretaries of state claims of their clients.
The jumbo, for its part, faithful to its origins in Chile in 1973, are middle-class sectors of the population, hit hard with the imprisonment of their savings. Accustomed to the slow and insidious impairment of concentration and bias policies implemented since 1975, which imperceptibly pushed them down the social scale, could not withstand the fierce simbronazo, if not precipitous drop has meant to them corralito. From one day to the other had to adjust drastically their accounts, adopt austere habits that do not correspond with your lifestyle and see how they are obscured the horizon yesterday was more or less promising. And then out into the street like that fat ladies almost thirty years heralded the fall of Salvador Allende in the trans-Andean country, no matter what the other is the political tendency of their leaders now in Buenos Aires. Then, against all expectations, quickly the streets and near government offices saw the birth of the phenomenon of pots and pans, sometimes peaceful and sometimes not so, the headquarters of banks should be fenced so as not to suffer daily breaks their glass fronts or the invasion of this new class of demonstrators who stormed noisily inside the premises once sacrosanct. It was at the request of these people that the judges extended their mandates to the law enforcement officers could transit corridors leading to the treasures which lie the monies that are to be free of any taint.
Places neighborhood saw the birth of a phenomenon that is believed buried under the rubble of history: the neighborhood claim to exercise direct democracy, unmediated and without the protection of old political leaders. Even more, they claim the will of the citizens on the sidelines and to the detriment of the democratic and republican institutions. And in this scenario before exercising his first speeches unknown and wielding their first steps to drive candidates now on the country's destiny, nothing less. The replacement of the entire political class, as intended, leaving a vacant space to be occupied by locals who still populate the streets of urban neighborhoods, haranguing his fellow members and carrying their representation here and there, saying their discontent Noter as the generosity of approach you have a microphone.
The size of the discontent is such that, today, it fit disparate areas of conflicting interests. Some have little regard for reality and likely to raise anger with anger, claim that a new Argentine time coming, in which an alliance of anti-politics will take over Argentina's policy in the future. Reason of unreason.
What should you do, then, the Argentine man?
That is the question. Because these lines do not mean to say about which trails will lead to the Argentina to economic recovery, creation of jobs, a fairer distribution of national income, reconstruction the social fabric, the consolidation of its institutions. I look at the social landscape, I suspect some time to come with difficulties and shortcomings, I regret a world indifferent to our misery and yet, ready to thrive on it, and no doubt will not come out of the hands of a redeemer who descend from from politics or business or financial corporations. The solution, that history always has, will be the result of settling the current state of things. You can not build a future floor for the men who inhabit this land, but from today and from this misfortune.
It is my opinion that picketers, pots and escraches, neighborhood assemblies, all of them and all people should see a good time is watching the multilateral lending agencies raffle our difficulties. Because, well regarded, have agreed when the interests of the creditor with the debtor unable to pay its debts? Why should we believe that the solution to the crisis in Argentina will be achieved through increased borrowing, which in turn means better fit, greater transfer of money and resources abroad? Who is able to write the tale of pious banker?
In understanding these and other issues, find the areas that today protesting the driving signal to the output of the impasse. Has no need for class alliances that tomorrow we will discover illusory, it is not wise to seek the abolition of the policy or the ouster of the current politics of a single stroke. Democracy has its flaws, yes, but also provides remedies. Are these remedies we seek. Argentine man the picket and pots & pans, Assemblyman escrachar neighborhood and the speeches and the reflexive, political, intellectual, with only her arms to procure bread, still suffering the misfortune of unemployment, all have to be keen observers of reality, activists in the service of their causes and interests, devoted guardians of democracy and social peace.
Because if we pause a moment to look at the nations more or less quietly pass their respective realities, we see that in them is always unresolved social conflict, but in balance. Unstable equilibrium is well known managing democracy.
H 97 - April 5, 2002
A different approach to the issue of social protest is what gives this journalist and professor of constitutional law . Product of another conception of man, society and state, his opinion was published in the newspaper La Nacion of Buenos Aires, Argentina, on March 24, 2001.
Instead of institutions, the "direct action"
Mariano Grondona
Political action can be of two kinds: institutional and direct . In a well ordered society, political action is channeled through the institutions. The major institutions of our democracy are five: Presidency and its ministries, Congress, the judiciary, the Central Bank, the armed forces and security.
But political action can be derived through courses not covered by the organization's constitutional democracy. In this case, groups of people in the most diverse nature gravitate seeking shortcuts to power or even to take by assault. This opens the haunting landscape of the "direct action." Actions such as improvised street demonstrations and violent, revolutionary general strikes, guerrilla warfare, terrorism and military coups are political. But there are institutional.
When institutional channels are blocked or overflowing, direct action floods the system. To the extent that direct action pervades society, threatening the democratic order. Instead of rushing through the arteries, the blood of a people in such a case runs along the tracks abnormal peripheral circulation. When a person invades the peripheral circulation, doctors know that that person is "heart" and that unless they do something soon, he will suffer an attack. Argentina The institutional tamponade and direct action is today, a nation on the verge of heart attack.
The new landscape
If we go through our list of institutional channels is visible its precariousness. The presidency is weak not come from the popular vote but the Legislature that elected Eduardo Duhalde on January 1, after four unsuccessful presidents in twelve days. But Congress is also devoted to the weakened because the October 14, when the people renewed their representatives, four of every ten Argentines refused to vote for them. The Supreme Court, the pinnacle of the judiciary, is in brackets until acquitted or convicted by Congress.
The Central Bank lost the autonomy they enjoyed in times of Pedro Pou, as we saw yesterday, no longer has to defend the currency. The armed forces, reduced to a minimum by severe budgetary constraints, still licking their wounds after a catastrophic military regime born 26 years ago today, violating human rights as none and lost War of the Falklands. The security forces are "shrinking" not only because the current government imposes a passive role compared with to avoid further unrest but also because both the Security secretary as the chief of police of the former government are prisoners by the repression of December 20th without any violent agitator has suffered a similar fate.
Against this background of institutional atrophy, can you wonder that direct action has come to dominate the scene? The demonstrations that were themselves during the seventies, however, conspicuous by their absence. Neither the guerrilla and terrorism or military coups have been present.
The two great enemies of the seventies were both extremely violent minority. During the civil war of the seventies, some thousands fought to the death between them without affecting the millions who were unaware of the terrible details of their confrontation.
Today, the situation is less dangerous in terms of the degree of violence of the protagonists of the current scenario is incomparably lower. But it is also more dangerous as the protagonists of the anxiety and not a few thousand but millions of Argentines to disqualify politicians in charge of the institutions.
Conversely the turmoil of the past, they always found a military term, events December 20 configured, for the first time in our history, a blow entirely civil (up May Week included Cornelio Saavedra and his regiment of Patricians). But De la Rua not quit by the thousands of people, not French or Beruti, roamed the Plaza de Mayo. He did so because he perceived that millions of people supported at home.
The Argentine collective malaise has led to innovative direct-action expressions as "pot-banging" and "escraches." The former are by definition peaceful. Its novelty is that no follow up new slogans and new leaders, merely to say a loud "no" to the current occupants of the institutions. In the "escraches", however, beat the seeds of violence. Verbal, for one, when slander or libel of public figures aloud. Physical violence is passed from words to action as in the case of Jorge Roberto Alemann and Assisi. This can not surprise: violence does not begin in the hands but in the language.
note are the two definitions offered by the dictionary of the English Language escrachar verb: "1. Romper, destroy, crush, 2. Photographing a person. "Both definitions are linked: the escrache" snapshot "of a person. Why? To break it, destroy it, crush it real or symbolic. The word" escrachar ", according to the dictionary, is an Argentine.
Magic and democracy
The French anarchist Georges Sorel in 1908 published Reflections on Violence . It stressed the importance of myth in political life. In analyzing the myth of the revolutionary strike, for example, noted that although she would never be enough to defeat the State under any rational analysis, if people thought otherwise because he had risen to the status of a myth, that would eventually topple misconception indeed the state. "When everyone else is wrong," said general resigned Mitre ever to the fury of the crowds, everyone ends up being right. " But it's another reason: the force.
The myth is, in Sorel's conception, the recess where the irrationality enters political life. Analyzed from the reason, no cacerolazos sense. What practical significance is screaming "throw them all?" As for the escraches it is clear that, when passing the limit of being a nuisance to some people and become truly violent, that same middle class who looked with sympathy be scared.
If by "rational" means that action which seeks an achievable goal through the best means to achieve it, the pot-banging and escraches are irrational. Sorel, however, would reject because they express the force of a new myth: that if we shout and scream, the Argentina miraculously change. To the extent that millions of people mistake this way, "will eventually be right, but not the reason for the rationality but the logic of force, a hurricane, when it passes and runs, leaving behind the ruins of what was once the proud Argentina, will force us to reconstruct laboriously, again, the civilization of the institutions.
H 97 - April 5 2002
The main hope of harmony lies not in uniformity but in mutual enrichment. To try to impose our civilization to other nations is an assault on the plurality to perpetuate situations of power.
The right to difference
José Carlos García Fajardo *
Amartya Sen, Nobel laureate in economics in 1998 and professor at Trinity College Cambridge, complains in an article published in The New York Times , abuse in the expression "shock civilizations "popularized by American Professor Huntington.
For Amartya Sen, born in India, it is absurd to categorize and to the people because to deny the plurality of identity within each society. Any civilization can contain up to several different societies and cultures. In a civilization there are different peoples, languages \u200b\u200band religions, plural and even conflicting political and economic systems.
Without constitute a civilization but an empire that lasted no more than two centuries, the British had neither territorial unit as it spread across four continents, unity of language, they spoke to several dozen, religious unity ranging from Protestantism to Buddhism, Islam or Hinduism, unit of currency, even the gold standard, nor a single political form, was from monarchies to republics to the rulers, military dictatorships and theocracies, or racial unity, since between its borders Eurasian could find, black, Chinese, Mongolians, Malays or Polynesians. They held together the submission to political authority as a link to British sovereignty would be effective.
Therefore, neither the Company
Amartya Sen part of a world he knows well and to which Westerners express an arrogant and dangerous ignorance. To say that India's
is impossible to understand the cultural richness of India without taking into account the profound interactions in art, music, literature and cuisine through religious views Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, Parsis, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, atheists and agnostics.
same oversimplification categorization is in the "Islamic world." The Hindu Nobel prize gives the examples of two Muslim emperors of the Mughal dynasty: Aurangzeb and Akbar who ruled India. The first was a Muslim so intransigent that sought to convert to Islam to Hindus and taxing all non-Muslims. On the other hand, Akbar was a model of understanding and pluralism. His court was multiethnic and had proclaimed that "no one could be persecuted for religious reasons" and that in the religious and cultural variety, lay the vitality and richness of the Empire.
same could be said of "Western civilization" with its intended spirit of tolerance and individual freedoms. Right in the reign of Emperor Akbar, when he defended religious freedom Agra, about 1590, in Europe, the Inquisition
In 1600, Giordano Bruno was burned alive in the Campo dei Fiori in
The main hope of harmony lies not in uniformity but in mutual enrichment. To try to impose our civilization to other nations is an assault on the plurality to perpetuate situations of power.
and impoverishing saddest thing is that some invoke the deity in an imaginary decision "chosen people" (Israel) or "favorite daughter of
Where there is no freedom can not flourish in justice and dignity a life worth living.
H 97 - April 5, 2002
