Menem's Dangerous Maneuvers
SHAPIRO, Arthur M.
REVISING PERONISM Menem's Dangerous Maneuvers BY ARTHUR M. SHAPIRO Buenos Aires Late in October there was a flurry of activity in the Chacarita Cemetery in western Buenos Aires. The...
...So it came as no surprise when, almost immediately after the election, Menemists in the CGT moved to get rid of him...
...On October 19, to the horror of many on the Left, Perdia and Vaca Narvaja visited Menem and pledged their support of his laissez-faire economic program...
...Among those pardoned were Generals Luciano Menéndez and Cristino Nicolaides, conspicuous figures in the deadly campaign against "subversion...
...The most common chant was, "There were no 'errors,' there were no 'excesses.' They' re all murderers, the military men of the Process" (the name the junta used for itself...
...Menem blamed the situation on "Left-wing agitators," but it was obvious to everyone that his pronouncement had little to do with reality...
...They claimed to be convinced of the merits of pluralistic democracy, denied ever having killed anyone themselves, and avoided discussion of the huge caches of arms and $30-60 million in ransom money they are said to have squirreled away a decade ago...
...The aim, he said, was to heal the wounds of the "dirty war" of the 1970s so the nation could move on to new, and happier, times...
...and 174 military men who participated in three mutinies against the constitutional order during the Alfonsin years, including their leaders, Colonels Aldo Rico and Muhammad Ali Seineldin...
...A week-long strike by the drivers began on November 6 with bus burnings and the blockage of roads and bridges, halting most surface pubhe transit throughout the country...
...To be as provocative as possible, Neustadt also invited Eugenio Aramburu, son of PresidentPedroAramburu, who was murdered by the Montoneros...
...A society without justice, where impunity is sanctified as a norm, is condemned to live in terror, blood and vengeance...
...a blow against democracy...
...For their part, the ex-guerrillas were polite, conciliatory—and evasive...
...Was his family murdered...
...The following night 50,000 people representing some 20 Left-wing organizations rallied in the Plaza de Mayo against the pardons of the military men...
...There was little hope that a pardon would be extended to them...
...Labor Minister Jorge Triaca asked for a two-year strike-free "honeymoon" and gotless than two months...
...One scenario has revenge-seeking Leftists hunting down the most detested of the pardoned officers, resulting in a cascade of official repression and guerrilla action...
...Even before the new President took office, there was grumbling that Ubaldini was out of touch with the times...
...Nestor Vicente, the 1989 Presidential candidate of the United Left, declared that "The pardon will not pacify, it will only open old wounds.' Nobel Prize-winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel called it "an immoral decision...
...CGT General Secretary Saul Ubaldini, clearly in a confrontational mood, was not about to be bought off with the offer of a cushy ambassadorship either...
...They promptly materialized on national TV, where they were interviewed by conservative commentator Bernardo Neustadt...
...He forced the resignation of Solicitor General Andres d'Alessio, who had sat on the tribunal judging the ex-commanders, and he put great pressure on several Supreme Court justices and on Buenos Aires District Attorney Luis Moreno Ocampo (who secured the extradition of General Carlos Suârez Mason from the United States) to resign...
...Members of the military, however, were not the only ones affected by the initial decree...
...A "second stage" of pardons has been promised soon...
...The logical, rational, responsible thing is to assume the Montoneros will go back to doing what their genes and hormones tell them to do," he asserted...
...Other unions have threatened strikes in the near future...
...The insurgents planned to hold a separate CGT congress last September 29 and vote Ubaldini out of office before he could get a vote of confidence at the regular meeting scheduled for October 17...
...Ironically, their pardon came just as 13 survivors of the bizarre and ill-fated assault on the La Tablada military base last January 23 were sentenced to life in prison...
...Instantly recognizable in his plebeian leather jacket, Ubaldini is considered "one of us" by hundreds of thousands of workers, but he has nonetheless squandered quite a bit of good will in recent years because of what is widely perceived as too fast a finger on the general-strike trigger...
...In the interest of "evenhandedness," Menem pardoned 64 Montonero terrorists whose acts of violence had sparked the 197 6 military takeover...
...Triaca, of course, quickly recognized the Andreoni faction as the "real" CGT...
...The younger Aramburu refused to speak directly to the Leftists, and expressed the sentiments of a great number of Argentines when he bitterly attacked the terrorists' pardons...
...Although the Montonero commander, Mario Firmenich, was not pardoned, two of his top lieutenants, Fernando Vaca Narvaja and Roberto Perdia, were...
...He would be aghast at the virtually complete betrayal of Peronist-populist ideals by the four-monthold "Peronist" government of Carlos Saul Menem...
...Cynics— and there are a great many of them in Argentina—see the move as a transparent attempt to secure the loyalty of the Armed Forces should it be necessary to put down labor unrest...
...And a spokesperson for the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, acknowledging that Menem himself was interned and restricted for five years by the military, asked pointedly, "Was he tortured with an electric cattle prod...
...If they fmd the hands," he said, "they'll have to tie the General down to reattach them.' Indeed, Perón must be spinning in his grave these days...
...The remarkable turnabout of Argentina's new President is discussed in cafés in terms of the "Nixonin-China theory": Just as Richard M. Nixon was able to open the door to China because of his impeccable anti-Communist credentials (any Democratic President who tried would have been crucified by the Republicans as "soft on Communism"), so too has Menem, elected by Peronist workers, been able to implement the very economic reforms blocked by Peronism throughout the six years of Raul Alfonsin's Presidency...
...ex-President Leopoldo Galtieri, who started and botched the Malvinas-Falklands war...
...Another has an alliance of the Left and militant labor confronting Menem's economic policies with mounting street violence, leading to a crackdown...
...But President Menem shows no signs of changing course...
...Sentenced to 20 years as an accomplice was the well-known Leftist priest, Father Antonio Puigjan...
...Arthur M. Shapiro, a previous NL contributor, is a professor of zoology at the University of California, Davis, who frequently visits Argentina...
...His conviction, on the flimsiest grounds, was widely perceived as a victory for the far Right-wing Argentine hierarchy...
...Menem's austerity measures can succeed only with the cooperation of firmly Peronist Big Labor...
...The protesters were especially angered by the President's attempt to purge the Federal judiciary of zealous humanrights defenders appointed by Alfonsin...
...The Menemist rump thereupon proceeded to elect Guerino Andreoni general secretary...
...Yet from the very start the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) has resisted wage controls and the privatization of state enterprises...
...In addition, Menem pushed through a law expanding the Supreme Court from five to nine members, allowing him to pack it with Peronists...
...A joint congress was accordingly held October 10-11, but, sensing an attempted putsch, Ubaldini and his followers walked out...
...Ubaldini, meanwhile, took with him some of the most powerful unions in the country—not only the metal workers, who have a lot of muscle, but the utility workers, bank employees, and bus drivers as well...
...Facing grave uncertainty on the labor front, Menem played his military card...
...In the wakeof these events, many Argentines fear an impending reprise of the wars of the'70s...
...His hope appears to be that the nation is simply too exhausted to go through all that again...
...The possibility of two rival, warring CGTs evidently disconcerted Menem, who pleaded for unity...
...The police had a tip that former President Juan Perón's hands, mysteriously severed and held for ransom over two years before, were hidden on the cemetery grounds near his tomb...
...The search, which proved unsuccessful, prompted a wry remark from a Peronist friend of mine...
...After months of coquettish innuendo, he officially announced that he would pardon 277 people convicted of " political" crimes...
...But has he...
...Ubaldini protested that the balloting was illegal, since the post was never declared vacant...
...This sort of trick is common in Peromst politics, and traditionally ends in some violence, marked by reluctance on the part of the Federal judiciary to intervene...
Vol. 72 • November 1989 • No. 17
