In complete defiance of a state-of-siege order and in the face of police and army repression, millions of Argentinian workers struck last week against the attempt of the Government led by Senora Isabel Peron to limit all pay rises to 50 per cent.
The strike is all the more spectacular in that the Peronist-dominated five million strong General Confederation of Labour (CGT), previously the staunchest supporter of the Government, was forced to call a 48-hour General Strike from Sunday 6 July. This is the first time in Argentina's history that the official trade union leaders have called such action against a Peronist Government.
The crisis has caused the resignation of the entire cabinet and the evaporation of all parliamentary support for Isabel Peron - and the Peronists won 60 per cent of the vote at the last election. One old senator has even challenged Peron's private secretary and Social Welfare Secretary, Jose Lopez Rega, to a duel! Isabel Peron's last remaining supporters, the army, are moving close to the centre of the political stage.
The reasons for these dramatic events are not hard to find. Argentina is in the throes of an economic crisis which makes Britain's look positively insignificant by comparison. In mid-March inflation was running at 80 per cent, the Budget deficit stood at £2,700 millions, the foreign debt at £4,100 millions. There is not even enough cash in reserve to service the foreign debt. InWEEKLY tirely. dustrial investment was down 20 per cent in 1973 over 1972, and down another 30 per cent in 1974.
It was in this situation that Celestino Rodrigo was brought into the cabinet in early June. He immediately devalued the peso by 50 per cent and put up all retail prices - including gas, electricity, water, bus and rail fares by 80 per cent, and flour, bread and water by 40 to 100 per cent. This accelerated the annual rate of inflation to over 100 per cent, and most of the unions promptly negotiated increases of between 100 and 130 per cent of keep pace with inflation.
Then on 29 June Isabel Peron announced that all wage increases would be frozen at 50 per cent, and the previously agreed wage settlements were overturned. Public sector workers immediately went out on indefinite strike followed by metal workers. All the main provincial centres including the industrial outskirts of Buenos Aires were swept into the strike wave.
On 4 July columns of up to 5,000 striking workers gathered in the suburbs of Buenos Aires in an attempt to march into the city, only to be dispersed by police. At the same time in La Plata an hour-long armed confrontation took place with the police when they tried to disperse a 3,000-strong demonstration. The CGT was forced to call a General Strike or lose control enSince the death of Peron last July, the Argentin ian regime has only been able to keep the masses in replaced.
in Tucuman province. ment onstrating workers of La Plata. Repression under the Peronist Government is now as great as under the military dictatorship it replaced check through repression. The number of workers killed by the state forces and the unofficial murder gangs like the AAA (Argentinian Anti-Communist Alliance) is as great as under the military dictatorship that Peron The number of political prisoners increases daily. At the same time the armed forces are engaged in a semi-civil war with the guerilla fighters of the ERP But working class struggles still develop. For two months earlier this year the steel-making town of Villa Constitucion was the scene of a defiant struggle by metal workers against Government attempts to victimise their leaders. The militancy shown here, and the solidarity it inspired among other groups of workers, played an im portant part in the development of the present move.
It was in the context of being allegedly 'soft' in the internal war and unwilling to use troops to break the Villa Constitucion strike that General Leandro Anaya was replaced by the hard-line General Alberto Laplane. The army is fast becoming the last prop of Isabel Peron's No matter how the generals eventually come into the Government and step up the repression of the masses, the workers' movement will have to be ready with the reflex response of armed self-defence shown by the dem And we too must prepare to launch a campaign in solidarity with them.
ment-run hospitals for more than three weeks. the dictatorship has sacked 1,800 of the strikers. But so far the doctors have refused to