The pressure came as the U.S.-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF) closed in on a pact for Argentina to roll over interest payments on its $141 billion debt. Getting wind of the move, the Association of Argentine Banks, which represents the local subsidiaries of international banking groups such as Citibank, and the largest banks in the United Kingdom and Spain, went into action, meeting with ambassadors from major imperialist countries and notifying the IMF about their profit concerns.

Last December the government of Fernando de la Rúa defaulted on some $100 billion in bonds and loans, as the effects of a three-year recession gripped the country. Working-class protests exploded in cities across Argentina in the face of unprecedented unemployment, plunging living standards, and moves by the government to take even more out of the hides of working people in order to pay U.S. banks and other international creditors.

De la Rúa’s administration had carried out an austerity drive at the behest of the IMF, slashing the pensions and wages of state employees, raising taxes, imposing a partial freeze on bank withdrawals, and sending in the riot police when workers protested. The president was swept from office following massive protests by workers and peasants, who blocked roads and organized street mobilizations against rising unemployment and the deepening attacks on their living standards.

Since then the U.S. ruling class and the IMF have refused to grant Argentina a single penny in new loans. Instead, they have used the crisis to press demands for widespread cuts in state and provincial budgets, as well as for the removal of laws that in any way cut across the interests of the imperialist corporations.

In an attempt to garner some popular support, the new Argentine president, Eduardo Duhalde, announced measures to force foreign banks and investors to shoulder some of the losses from the currency devaluation and debt default.

His government "transformed dollar assets and liabilities of the banking system into devalued pesos at different rates--making many banks insolvent at a stroke," complained the Financial Times. "It also enacted a new bankruptcy law that made it hard for banks to collect on bad debts."

Over the past several months, the IMF convinced the Argentine government to scrap the bankruptcy bill, but a number of its provisions have been reintroduced in Congress. Among the measures up for consideration is the reinstatement of a 2 percent tax on interest payments or bank commissions for a bankrupt union-run health scheme scrapped several years ago; a retroactive 10 percent tax on anyone who withdrew more than $100,000 from the banking system last year; and a measure to make the foreign owners of Argentine banks liable for new deposits. Congress has already approved a 90-day extension of a ban on mortgage foreclosures or the repossessions of cars and business-related items.

"This is pure populism," an unnamed senior bank official told a Times reporter. "We’re back to the bad old days of January."

Meanwhile, some individual foreign investors, primarily from Europe, who hold some $26 billion in bonds and loans on which the Argentine government has defaulted, have begun filing suits. The legal actions seek the seizure of Argentine bank accounts in Switzerland or even assets in Argentina in lieu of payment. Last month an Italian court ruled in favor of one such group of bondholders, ordering the freezing of $2.3 million of Argentine assets in Italy.  
 
Protests demand jobs, benefit payments
Pickets blocked roads leading into Buenos Aires, the capital city, and a section of the Pan American highway August 26 to demand jobs and payment of the unemployment funds owed to them. More than 100,000 workers around the country have not received these benefit payments. Néstor Pitrola, a leader of the Workers Party, one of the organizations sponsoring the action, said that the pickets also demanded the doubling of the unemployment subsidy, which stands at only 150 pesos a week (1 Argentine peso = US 28 cents).

The protest also commemorated the two-month anniversary of the police killing of two young workers. The two were involved in a similar protest blocking a bridge connecting Buenos Aires with the southern industrial suburb of Avellenada.

Today, as a depression takes hold, more than 40 percent of the working-age population is unemployed or underemployed, while the government admits that more than half the population of 36 million lives below the official poverty line.

Under pressure from ongoing protests against attacks on the social wage, the Argentine Supreme Court ruled August 22 that the 13 percent cut in state wages and pensions ordered by former Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo was unconstitutional and must be paid back to the workers. While 540,000 pensioners saw their payments cut, only 90,000 are covered by the Supreme Court’s ruling.

Meanwhile, some previously secret documents were released by the U.S. government August 19 after a several-year fight. The papers shed some further light on Washington’s support for the Argentine military junta in the 1970s. The 4,677 pages of documents released by the State Department dating from 1975 to 1984 show that after a top meeting with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Vice President Nelson Rockefeller in 1976, Argentine officials came away with the clear message that the junta’s tactics in suppressing opposition would meet no objections from Washington. More than 9,000 people were killed by the regime over the course of its seven-year war against youth and working-class fighters.

In one October 1976 cable, U.S. ambassador Robert Hill told his superiors that the Argentine foreign minister, Adm. Carlos Guzzetti, had expected officials of the Ford administration to at least deliver some verbal warnings about Argentina’s dirty war against working people. Instead, Hill reported, Guzetti returned "in a state of jubilation, convinced that there is no real problem with the USG [U.S. government] over the issue." He was right.  
 
 
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