Letters
Argentine Election Results T he July/August issue of the magazine contains a "newsbrief' from Notisur on the May 1995 Argentine elections that uncritically describes the...
...It is difficult to see how Menem could have "reined in the once-powerful armed forces by signing a blanket pardon for human rights abuses committed during the 1970s...
...The style and substance of Menem's policies hardly represent a clear departure from the authoritarian and anti-popular agenda of the military during its rule from 1976 to 1983...
...North American support for grassroots agrarian-reform initiatives such as the Lima Congress can help roll back the devastating impact of neoliberal economic policies...
...Organizations participating in the Congress produced a document entitled "The Final Declaration of the Lima Congress," which was a powerful indictment of neoliberalism and North American imperialism...
...Readers are invited to address letters to The Editors, NACLA Report on the Americas, 475 Riverside Drive, Suite 454, New York, NY 10115...
...To learn more about the grassroots struggle for land reform in Brazil, contact: O Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, Rua Ministro Godoy 1484, CEP 95915-900 Sdio Paulo-SP, Brazil...
...It is also worth mentioning that the struggle for land reform in Latin America is now being waged on an international level...
...His focus on social movements such as the Movement of Landless Rural Workers gives insight into the main grassroots players in the agrarian debate...
...Not only was Menem's success in ramming through a pro-capital economic reform package underpinned by the military's prior repression of the popular sectors, especially orga- nized labor, but these reforms themselves go a long way towards (Continued on page 46) Erratum The picture of the anti-Castro rally in Miami on page 38 of the previous issue should have contained the following credit: Jack Kurtzllmpact Visuals...
...Just three months after the election-when the official unemployment rate had risen to a record 18%-the Menem government admitted there was no funding available for the investment scheme...
...In the 1995 campaign, Menem postponed an increased value-added tax until after the voting, and announced a massive new investment program to "pulverize" unemployment...
...Argentine Election Results T he July/August issue of the magazine contains a "newsbrief' from Notisur on the May 1995 Argentine elections that uncritically describes the first-round victory of Carlos Satil Menem...
...Marcelo Iraja de Araujo Hoffman Richmond, Indiana...
...consolidating the neoliberal policy regime whose foundations were laid by the dictatorship...
...This account does nothing to dispute the standard neoliberal interpretation of Menem's re-election as a democratic mandate for IMF-style economic stabilization and reform policies...
...Paul Burkett and Donald G. Richards Department of Economics Indiana State University Terre Haute, Indiana Brazilian Land Reform Ricardo Tavares' "Land and Democracy: Reconsidering the Agrarian Question" [May/June, 1995] is a brilliant overview of the agrarian-reform debate in Brazil...
...The most tragicomic element of the newsbrief is the claim that "voters also credited Menem with reducing the power of the military...
...Unfortunately, responsibility for financing the investment program was thrust upon provincial governments already experiencing fiscal crises largely due to the Menem Administration's "fiscal decentralization" efforts...
...This pre-election rescue temporarily preempted the need for a currency devaluation and other Draconian austerity measures that the IMF would have demanded as a condition for further debt-service rescheduling...
...Letters can be sent by e-mail to: NACLA @igc.apc.org...
...Since a record 20% of the electorate cast implicit protest ballots by not fulfilling their legal obligation to vote, only 38% of eligible voters cast ballots for Menem...
...Despite outspending the center-left coalition FREPASO by 50-to-1, Menem found it necessary to reprise his stealth campaigning tactics from 1989, when he ran as a nationalistpopulist and then became a servile functionary of international finance capital after the election...
...It is surprising to see NACLA inadequately contesting such an interpretation...
...Menem has praised the military's efforts to "defeat subversion," issued veiled threats to student protesters while Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo were publicly beaten by the police, and recommended the promotion of a known murderer/ torturer, Naval Officer Alfredo Astiz...
...Meanwhile, domestic and foreign capital teamed up to float the increasingly fragile Argentine banking system past the election with bail-out packages totaling $6.7 billion...
...As in other recent elections in the region (such as Mexico and Brazil), voters who had racked up consumer debts were repeatedly warned of the consequences of failing to return to power a regime that continued to abide by the neoliberal agenda...
...Menem's 49% of the vote hardly translates into a popular groundswell for neoliberal austerity...
...In February, 1994, Latin American peasant organizations held the first Congress of Latin American Rural Workers' Organizations in Lima, Peru...
Vol. 29 • November 1995 • No. 3
