Privatizing Argentina
SHAPIRO, Arthur M.
BIG GOVERNMENT AND THE FREE MARKET Privatizing Argentina BY ARTHUR M. SHAPIRO This is the second installment in a three-part series onArgentinaasit prepares for presidential elections next...
...Many would say, "It's about time...
...And it is no secret that the UCD would grow still faster if it were only able to dispel the popular perception that it is anti-democratic...
...the words he used are nonrandom holdovers from the "dirty war...
...The Argentine polity may have a notoriously short memory, but not that short...
...Argentina's third significant party, the Union of the Democratic Center (UCD), has grown very rapidly in the last few years and is firmly grounded in the notion of the free market...
...The leader of the protest, Buenos Aires' Governor Antonio Cafiero, graciously accepted this position: "Since we are a democratic and not a Stalinist party, we respect his [judgment...
...They also threatened to resign if these were not met...
...ortoincreaseby40 per cent the number of public employees, as happened in [Peronist presidential candidate Carlos Menem's home province of] La Rioja...
...After all, Cafiero had a more powerful ally present to make up for the lack of gubernatorial unity, the Peronist General Confederation of Labor (CGT), led by Saul Ubaldini...
...So it is that "big government" and "big spending" have become a major campaign issue in Argentina, albeit in an odd sense: The incumbents at the Federal level are wrapping themselves in austerity and accusing their challengers of extravagance...
...One could go on and on about Alsogaray...
...Bishop Hesayne, an advocate of liberation theology, is in fact far to the Left of the very conservative Argentine hierarchy...
...He was referring to Radical charges that, if the Peronist governors are broke, it's their own fault...
...The same week as the governors' march, the Government delivered to the Senate a 220-page report on the projected sale of 40 per cent of the national airline, Aerolineas Argentinas, to the Scandinavian Airlines System...
...Alsogaray is a lying fascist bastard," a friend told me the other day...
...Angeloz' Cordoba, for example, is a model of efficient provincial government and is not hurting at all, and neither it nor the other Radical-run provinces is getting any special treatment...
...The Peronist governors have a partly legitimate and partly weak case on revenue sharing...
...Now that the tanks are no longer rumbling through suburban Buenos Aires, those who govern (or would govern) Argentina once again must confront such mundane intractabilities as the Federal and provincial budgets...
...There is another factor operating here as well...
...for eight more years of Augusto Pinochet...
...It's a disgrace," he declared, "to increase by 80 per cent the cost of government in just four years, as happened in [the province of] Tucumân...
...Bariloche When Colonel Muhammad Ali Seineldin carried out his "act of insubordination" on December 1 in yet another attempt to gain the military absolution for its role in Argentina's "dirty war," he did civilian politicians a favor: He diverted public attention from-the real world, where their performance has been dismal...
...In reality, both the Radicals and the Peronists represent "big government" as we usually understand the term...
...He isn't the only one to think so...
...And the UCD cannot be trusted to serve as the vehicle to implement it so long as its entirely reasonable position is tainted with the foul smell of political repression—which is why the UCD will come in third in the May election...
...Cordoba Governor Eduardo Angeloz, the Radical Party candidate to succeed President Raul Alfonsin in next May's election, has been getting more outspoken daily, and when it came to the "March of theGovernors" he was nothing short of caustic...
...Arthur M. Shapiro, a professor of zoology at the University of California, Davis, has traveled extensively in Latin America over the last decade...
...Of the trials of former military leaders on charges of murder, torture and kidnapping he said, "They want to know if society considers them murderers or if they are combatants who won the war against subversion, making it possible for the nation to live in democracy...
...This was in response to the bishop's having acknowledged the right of President Alfonsin to criticize as an essentially political document a recent declaration by the Catholic bishops of Argentina concerning the "moral decline" of the nation...
...Given the increasing militancy and populist appeals of the Peronists, however, the Radicals are more and more proclaiming themselves fiscal conservatives, and attempting various initiatives to privatize elements of the economy that have long been under partial or complete state control...
...This march could have been avoided, simply if these very governors had acted responsibly and with austerity...
...The CGT kindly took a day off from its campaign of strikes to demonstrate that "we consider [the governors'] claims are the same as those made by the workers against an economic policy that affects the national interest"—in other words, the Radical government's "Spring Plan...
...The Argentine bishops, though, collaborated and fraternized with the vicious military regimes that preceded the Alfonsin government, and have seemingly had little patience for democracy or human rights...
...They're not resigning from anything," he remarked...
...While it seems they are entitled to more than they are receiving, the same is true of the non-Peronist governors, who are not complaining...
...Radical Congressman Ricardo Arganaraz called the event "the March of the Bottomless Barrel...
...If the government's "Spring Plan" has indeed checked inflation at the cost of some real hardship, it is not difficult to see why the Peronists have made it their principal target...
...A journalist named Carlos Alberto Brocado recently likened him to Archbishop Aneiros of Buenos Aires, who, while a member of the national Congress in 1874, advocated the establishment of a monarchy as the best answer to the decline of moral values in Argentine civilization...
...Like everything else that happens in Argentina, this was a blatantly political act...
...Perhaps during their demonstration they'll form a Union of Governors [in the CGT sense], with Cafiero as General Secretary...
...The governors presented their claims to the Supreme Court the day before they descended upon the Palace of Congress...
...Last November 11 the governors of 15 provinces, or their deputies, made an unprecedented march on the national Congress in Buenos Aires to demand that the Federal government pay up their just portions of revenue-sharing funds...
...A retired military engineer himself, Alsogaray is the darling of the most Right-wing elements in the press, and moves in the same social circles as the former military leaders did...
...Nor is it difficult to see why the Radicals have stepped up their denunciation of Peronist fiscal irresponsibility...
...This has even happened in the provinces, where public employees have been paid with so-called "bonds" that are merely scrip and unusable beyond the provincial border...
...It insists on the privatization of state industries, and its consistency in such matters stands in stark contrast to the failed corporatism and interventionism that flow through both the Peronist and Radical records...
...Alsogaray knows very well, too, that in the '70s, to denounce a public figure as an "ideological subversive" was to request that the paramilitary goons whisk him off into oblivion one night in an unmarked Ford Falcon...
...Of the recent plebiscite in Chile he observed, "I would vote yes, beyond any doubt" (i.e...
...Real privatization might be exactly what Argentina needs, but it is too politically dangerous to be undertaken by the Radicals and absolutely unthinkable for the Peronists...
...The laity here knows that...
...The Peronists immediately found nationalistic rhetoric with which to denounce the sale...
...The first article, "Argentina After Villa Martelli," appeared in The New Leader of January 9,1989...
...But to do that it would have to find a spokesman other than its presidential candidate, Alvaro Alsogaray...
...all the provinces represented are headed by Peronists...
...BIG GOVERNMENT AND THE FREE MARKET Privatizing Argentina BY ARTHUR M. SHAPIRO This is the second installment in a three-part series onArgentinaasit prepares for presidential elections next May...
...When access to the mint is available, it has been a Peronist tactic to pay the workers with printing-press money...
...Not long before, Alsogaray—founder and overall grand potentate of the UCD—made news by calling the bishop of Viedma, Miguel Hesayne, an "ideological subversive...
...Indeed, José Bordón of Mendoza was the only Perorasi governor who declined to participate...
...He has been severely criticized by human-rights advocates and in the media for serving in the Congress, and running for president, in a democratic system whose legitimacy he seems unwilling to recognize...
...The comparison seems singularly apt...
...By excluding non-Peronist provinces, he argued, the event would unjustifiably politicize a nationwide legitimate grievance...
Vol. 72 • January 1989 • No. 2
