Tag: South America

A Verdict Against Chiquita’s Impunity in Colombia / by Carlos Cruz Mosquera

Bananas from Chiquita lie on a supermarket shelf. (Sven Hoppe / picture alliance via Getty Images)

The recent ruling against the Chiquita fruit company for its ties to a terrorist death squad is a victory for workers and peasants in a country where violent repression has long been the norm

Reposted from Jacobin

Chiquita, one of the United States’ and the world’s biggest fruit companies, has finally been charged in a Florida court for its links to a terrorist organization. In 2007, following a similar trial in New York, the company admitted to financing one of Colombia’s most notorious right-wing death squads, the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), resulting in a $25 million fine. In the latest case brought against them by representatives of thousands of Colombian victims, Chiquita’s lawyers, like in the New York trial, argued that the company had been a victim of the AUC — that the company was extorted into making financial contributions.

This time around, witnesses included former AUC commanders who stated that Chiquita’s nearly $2 million funding to the terror group between 1997 and 2004, filed under “services for security,” was part of a partnership rather than extortion. One of the witnesses, Ever Veloza García, stated that they had “received orders to control the banana zones, prohibit worker strikes, and persecute trade union members to protect the multinationals,” adding that those involved should do time in prison.

Welcome as this victory is for the victims, Chiquita’s links to the most extreme forms of violence suffered by Colombians are symptomatic of a wider conflict shaped by social structures rooted in colonial hierarchies and a particular form of capitalist development.

That Chiquita would associate with a terrorist organization in recent decades should come as no surprise given their long history of violence in Colombia and the wider region. Their power to dictate the political and economic destiny of entire countries in Central and South America in their previous incarnation as the United Fruit Company inspired the now widely used expression “banana republic.”

A noteworthy illustration of their belligerency in the region is their role in the coup d’etat against Guatemala’s former president Jacobo Árbenz, a progressive pushing for relatively moderate land reforms in the early 1950s. The multinational forked out half a million dollars (worth approximately $6.5 million today) in a lobbying campaign to turn US lawmakers against Árbenz — not that they needed much convincing. Guatemala’s first progressive leader was ousted in a CIA-backed operation codenamed Operation PBSuccess in 1953, the first of many deployed to overthrow and defeat a plethora of progressive leaders, governments, and movements in the region.

In Colombia, the multinational provoked the killing of between a thousand and three thousand banana workers (the exact figure is still disputed) on the country’s northern coast. The “Banana Massacre” occurred in 1928 after a strike organized by United Fruit’s employees, peasants whose working conditions had become intolerable: contract insecurity, meager salaries, and dangerous working conditions. Pressured by the multinational and the US government, the Colombian government agreed to deploy the military to put down the strike. Thousands of striking workers were fired upon by three hundred soldiers under the command of General Carlos Cortés Vargas on December 5, 1928. Immortalized in Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, the massacre is an open wound that has not yet healed and that set the pace for the extreme violence suffered by Colombians and Latin Americans generally through the twentieth century and into the present.

Historically, the Magdalena Medio region, where Chiquita has been found guilty of financing right-wing terror groups, is one of Colombia’s principal sites for the country’s capitalist development, centered on primary commodities exports. It was the first region in the country to develop industrial coffee plantations and the first enclave for US multinationals that were awarded oil concessions in the early 1920s. Suspended in history and defying the laws of mainstream economists, the region’s market continues to be dominated by primary commodities exports, from agricultural and agro-industrial exports such as banana and palm oil to energy and mineral industries such as crude oil and gold.

The particularly acute exploitation that this form of development requires has produced social conditions that have breathed life into vehement resistance, from the oil and port workers that have struggled against the local elites and international capital since 1922 (notably the Oil Industry Workers Union) to becoming one of the cradles of the insurgent armed resistance since the 1950s. Magdalena Medio is one of the country’s and the wider region’s most important contested sites of capitalist development.

The social structures and conditions in regions like Magdalena Medio are born from the convergence of rigid social hierarchies going back to the colonial period. An economic system in which the region and country’s markets are subordinated to those of more powerful nations, allowing the local elites to reproduce themselves without having to revolutionize the economy, created suitable conditions for the harshest exploitation and the reproduction of extreme social and ecological violence.

Reminiscent of the violence meted out upon the resisting communities during the colonial period, the AUC, the terrorist group that Chiquita helped to finance between 1997 and 2004, was known to torture, maim, and murder their victims — except rather than swords, the signature instrument was the chainsaw, leaving behind severed heads and body parts in public spaces as a message to others. According to a recent report by Colombia’s Truth Commission, Magdalena Medio is the region that has produced the third-largest number of victims of the Colombia’s civil war between 1985 and 2018, with almost 200,000 assassinations and around 450,000 displaced people.

The victory against Chiquita is worth much more than the $38 million the company has been ordered to compensate the victims for. It will galvanize other victims with similar accusations against the company and other multinationals in Colombia and worldwide. And the case will impact the many other pending cases that have attempted to demonstrate the links between Colombia’s Western-backed ruling class and paramilitary groups, often going unresolved due to witness tampering — such as the notable case of former president Álvaro Uribe.

Finally, the ruling should be seen as part of a larger process of Colombians forcing a reckoning with the decades of brutality they have experienced, reflected nationally in the election of the country’s first leftist president, Gustavo Petro. This fight on all fronts, from survivors and their families taking on multinationals to the new progressive government’s attempts to challenge the most destructive aspects of the capitalist system, are an example to emulate in trying times.

Carlos Cruz Mosquera is a PhD candidate and teaching associate at Queen Mary University of London.

Daniel Jadue, the acclaimed mayor of Recoleta in Chile, is victim of lawfare / by W.T. Whitney Jr.

Recoleta Mayor Daniel Jadue, at a 2022 May Day march in Chile. | People’s World

South Paris, Maine

Reposted from Peoples World

“After more than 10 years of corruption, crimes, and destroying the Rocoleta commune, finally the justice system begins to act and will make arrangements for the Communist mayor Daniel Jadue. I hope he goes to jail soon.” That was Richard Kast, speaking in April. Kast was the right-wing presidential candidate defeated by Chile’s President Gabriel Boric in December 2021. The food- manufacturing magnate is the son of a World War II German Army officer.

On June 3 Judge Paulina Moya ruled that Jadue would be imprisoned “preventively” on charges of bribery, mal-administration, tax fraud, and bankruptcy. Moya declared that “for Jadue to go free would endanger the safety of society.” The police in April had prevented him from boarding a flight to Caracas. She decreed “120 days of investigation” prior to Jadue’s appearance before an appeals court.  

Jadue, a former professor of architecture and urban sociology, has been mayor of Recoleta municipality in the northern part of Santiago since 2012. Responding on social media, he insisted that, “They are judging me for our transformative government. I don’t have a peso in my pocket, but they are handing out the maximum restriction.”  

The court’s decision had to do with the “people’s pharmacy” that Jadue devised for Recoleta in 2015. It also involves the spread of people’s pharmacies throughout Chile.Jadue is a national figure. His legal troubles take on added significance on that account.

Jadue is renowned for the reforms he inspired in Recoleta. In addition to the consumer-cooperative pharmacy project, Recoleta offers an “optician program,” a people’s dentistry program, an “open university,” and a “people’s bookstore.” The municipality invests $500,000 a year in 10 public libraries. It recruited physicians and constructed two medical office buildings. It builds architecturally-sophisticated apartment buildings with low-cost rentals. 

Jadue is the unusual Communist Party leader who participated in national elections at the highest level.  As presidential candidate of a left-leaning coalition in 2021, he almost defeated current president Gabriel Boric, head of a center-left coalition competing in the primary elections.

Jadue provokes the wrath of apologists of Israel.  He has participated  in pro-Palestine demonstrations outside Israel’s embassy and made public  statements interpreted by some as antisemitic. The grandson of Palestinian immigrants, he was president of Chile’s General Union of Palestinian Students and a top organizer for Latin America’s Palestinian Youth Organization.

Jadue’s book, Palestine: Chronicle of a Siege, appeared in 2013. HispanTV recently presented his 12-part documentary presentation “Window on Palestine.” Chile is home to half a million Palestinians, the largest concentration outside of the Middle East.

The prosecutor announced criminal charges against Jadue in November 2023.The people’s pharmacies, on which the prosecution of Jadue is based, are a phenomenon. Now there are 212 of them in 170 localities. Average savings on individuals’ drug purchases are between “64% and 68%.”

Recoleta and the other municipalities together formed a purchasing cooperative known as Chilean Association of Municipalities with People’s Pharmacies (Spanish initials are ACHIFARP). Jadue has been its head. At the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, ACHIFARP was under pressure to distribute healthcare supplies reliably and inexpensively.

In 2021 the Best Quality supply company complained to national g authorities that it was approaching bankruptcy, also that ACHIFARP had neither used or paid for large quantities of supplies it had ordered. A Best Quality salesman reported that Jadue had solicited a bribe. The terms were: donate to the Communist Party headquarters in Recoleta and ACHIFARP would give assurances that Best Quality would be called upon to restock the people’s supermarkets, initiated by the government.

Barbara Figueroa, secretary general of the Communist Party released a statement saying merely that, “the precautionary measure against comrade Daniel Jadue is regrettable and disproportionate, and we believe that it should be appealed. … we respect the Courts of Justice and we hope that this public stage of the investigation and trial will end up proving Daniel’s innocence”.

Some 1000 Chileans signed a letter of support for Jadue. They were “national prize winners, legislators, trade unions leaders, heads of social organizations, academics, human rights leaders, political party leaders, city councilors, jurists, and cultural personalities.” According to the letter, “This case represents not only a political and judicial persecution of a public figure, but also a potential threat to the fundamental principles of the rule of law in Chile.” 

As explained by analyst Ricardo Candia Cares,“The people’s pharmacies represent a real contribution to the health of the dispossessed who now have an alternative to the infamous pharmacy chains that collude in gouging the people … … [They] have caused the big pharmacies, or really the powerful forces powerful behind these deals, to lose huge amounts of money.”

Latin American political leaders, Daniel Jadue among them, discovered they can be removed from office or barred from electoral participation through judicial processes. In that regard, he joins presidents Fernando Lugo in Paraguay (2012), Lula da Silva in Brasil (2017), Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in Argentina (2022), Rafael Correa in Ecuador (2018), Evo Morales in Bolivia (2019), and Peru’s President Pedro Castillo (2022).  

They are victims of lawfare, described by Le Monde diplomatique in Spanish as “a new format of persecution and repression, but executed through the perverted use of the norm, mainly by using judges and prosecutors against opponents.”

We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!

W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.

Reactionaries and US Military Backers Prevail in Latin America – for Now / By W. T. Whitney

The commander of U.S. Southern Command, Army Gen. Laura Richardson, and Argentine Armed Forces Joint Command Chief Lt. Gen. Juan Martín Paleo, arrive at the Argentine Ministry of Defense. During her visit April 25-27, Richardson met with leaders, including Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Richardson is a repeat visitor to Argentina since the election of right-wing President Milei. | Photo via U.S. Embassy Argentina

South Paris, Maine

U.S. Southern Command Chief Laura Richardson was visiting Argentina for the third time. On April 4 in Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego – the world’s southernmost city – she and U. S. Ambassador Marc Stanley were received by President Javier Milei, his chief-of-staff, his cabinet chief, the defense minister, the interior minister, a military band, and an honor guard – at midnight.

Richardson announced her government would build an “integrated naval base” in Ushuaia that, close to the Strait of Magellan, looks to Antarctica. Both are strategically important. She “warned about China’s intention to build a multi-purpose port in Rio Grande, [Tierra del Fuego’s capitol city].”

Richardson, the U.S. military’s top leader for the region, had previously noted its attractions. She explained to the House Armed Services Committee in 2022 that Latin American and Caribbean area “accounts for $740 billion in annual trade with the U.S.; contains 60% of the world’s lithium and 31% of the world’s fresh water; has the world’s largest oil reserves” She insisted later that, “This region matters. It has a lot to do with national security, and we have to step up our game.”  

Testifying before a congressional committee on March 14, she remarked that, “The PRC (People’s Republic of China) is America’s pacing threat; countering their aggression and malign influence requires a whole-of-society approach.”

Information from an alleged leak from the U.S. Embassy in Bolivia suggests the U.S. government seeks to isolate non-aligned countries like Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela and collaborate with “three bastions of U.S. support,” namely Peru, Ecuador and Argentina.

Analyst Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein claims U.S. “policies [in the region] are in the hands of the Pentagon … with the  State Department playing a secondary role…. The emphasis is on penetrating extreme rightwing governments.” 

U.S. troops and military advisors collaborate with regional military forces to confront narco-trafficking and other transnational crimes. Stories of good works have propaganda use in gaining support for their presence and for partnership with governments pushing back against popular protests. The survey below shows that U.S. military activities in the region are far-reaching and that long-term objectives and short-term needs are served.

Moving parts

The stated mission of the U.S. military installation in Argentina’s Neuquén province is to respond to humanitarian crises. That a Chinese satellite launch and tracking facility is nearby is no coincidence. The area has immense oil deposits.

U.S. troops based in Misiones, near Argentina’s borders with Brazil and Uruguay, ostensibly deals with narco-trafficking and other cross-border crimes. The U.S. government recently provided credit for Argentina to buy 24 F-16 fighter planes from Denmark.  

The largest U.S. bases in the region are the Guantanamo base in Cuba, with 6100 military and civilian personnel, and the one at Soto Cano in Honduras, with 500 U.S. troops and 500 civilian employees.TheU.S. Naval Medical Research Unit, active in several locations in Peru and overseen by the Southern Command, conducts “health science research” with Peruvian partners. It also serves to “build the capacity of special forces to survive in tropical forests.”

The U.S. Navy patrols South Atlantic waters and conducts joint training exercises with Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Uruguay. The U.S. Coast Guard confronts illegal – read Chinese – fishing off South America’s Pacific coast.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers operates in 17 countries, fulltime in eight of them. It advises on river and estuary projects, notably on maintaining commercial flow from the Río de la Platabasin to the Atlantic.  

Ecuador and Peru each agreed recently to accept U.S. troop deployments. Colombia (2009) enabled the U.S. Air Force to utilize seven of its bases. Brazil and the United States (2019) cooperate in launching rockets, spacecraft, and satellites at Brazil’s Alcántara space center. The U.S. military cooperates with Brazil and Chile in conducting defense-related research.

The Southern Command annually holds CENTAM exercises with participation by U.S. National Guard troops and those of several Central American nations. They prepare for humanitarian crises and natural disasters.  The National Guards of 18 U.S. states carry out joint training exercises with the troops of 24 Latin American nations.

The United States supplies 94.9% of Argentina’s weapons, 93.4% of Colombia’s, 90.7% of México’s, and 82.7% of Brazil’s. Bolivia is the outlier, obtaining 66.2 % of its weapons from China.

The U.S. government authorized arms sales to Mexico in 2018 worth $1.3 million, to Argentina in 2022 worth $73 million, to Chile in 2020 worth $634 million, and to Brazil in 2022 worth $4 million.

The Southern Command operates schools for the region’s military and police forces. The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation and the School of the Americas, its predecessor from 1946 on, account for almost 100,000 military graduates. The El Salvador-based International Law Enforcement Academy, “purposed to combat transnational crime,” trains police and other security personnel.

The Command in December 2023 undertook joint aerial training exercises with Guyana, where Exxon Mobil is preparing to extract offshore oil from huge deposits in Guyana’s Essequibo province.  Venezuela claims ownership of that area. Venezuelan President Maduro recently accused the U.S. government of establishing secret bases there.  

The story here is of installations and institutions, supply and support systems, and military interrelationships. The complexity of this U.S. undertaking signals fragility. The make-up of allied governments does likewise.

With friends like these

Raised in the United States and buoyed by his family’s great wealth, Ecuadorian president Daniel Noboa is inexperienced. The country faces environmental catastrophe and widespread violence. Indigenous peoples are politically mobilized and security forces cruelly repressive.

Raiding the residence of unelected Peruvian President Dina Boluarte, police on March 29 found jewelry worth $502,700. Establishment politicians appointed her as president after they railroaded progressive President Pedro Castillo, her predecessor, to prison.  Oligarchic rule and occasional dictatorships are customary in Peru, as is indigenous resistance.

Presidential rule in Argentina is bizarre. Eric Calcagno, distinguished sociologist, journalist, and diplomat, told an interviewer recently that President Milei is “asking to be part of NATO, which is the organization that occupied part of our territory, the Malvinas (Falkland Islands).” For Milei, “war is necessary.” The “regime … [is] “the figurehead of local and international monopolies [and] is taking Argentina to the point of no return.”

Argentina is “governed by a gentleman who decides things in consultation with a dead dog, or much worse, with General Richardson of the Southern Command.”  (A news report attributes to Milei devices “allowing him to enter into the spirit of Conan and calm his anxiety.” Conan, a dog, is dead.)

Meanwhile, 800,000 students, workers, unionists, the unemployed, and popular assemblies marched in Buenos Aires on April 23. Joined by 200,000 Argentinians demonstrating elsewhere in the country, they were protesting governmental attacks on public universities.

With popular resistance continuing in Argentina and elsewhere in the region, the precariousness of U.S. military intervention will show. Investigator Jason Hickel points to “imperial arrangement on which Western capitalism has always relied (cheap labor, cheap resources, control over productive capacities, markets on tap).”

He refers to the “Western ruling classes” and the “violence they perpetrate, the instability, the constant wars against a long historical procession of peoples and movements in the global South.” And yet: “[a]fter political decolonization, a wide range of movements and states across the South … sought economic liberation and sovereign industrial development.”

These are national liberation struggles that presumably will continue. Resistance under that banner may someday overwhelm military intrusions like the ones surveyed here.   

W.T. Whitney is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.

Fear mounts in Argentina as ultra-rightist president assumes power / by Francisco Dominguez

Javier Milei, presidential candidate of the Liberty Advances coalition, speaks at his campaign headquarters after polls closed for general elections in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Oct. 22, 2023 | AP

Reposted from the People’s World

Latin America and the world were stunned to learn that on November 19, 2023, Argentina’s most extreme right-wing politician, Javier Milei, had been elected president with a hefty 56 per cent of the vote.

His rival, Peronist Sergio Massa, minister of economics of Alberto Fernandez’s outgoing administration, scratched 44 per cent of the vote. The support of the electoral coalition Juntos por el Cambio, which obtained 24 per cent in the first round, was crucial to guarantee Milei’s victory.

Javier Milei is not just an extreme right-wing politician; he is also a very odd character.

He suffered humiliation and physical violence from his parents, thus, for years he did not have any relationship with them; he was the rock band Everest’s singer; in secondary school, he won the nickname “El Loco” (“the crazy one” or “the madman”) because of his outbursts; he has faced court cases on issues related to plagiarism, gender violence, illicit association and for the finances of his electoral campaign; he has claimed to talk to God; he lives with four dogs (he calls “my four-legged children”) which he has named after famous economists; he claims to talk to “Conan” a dead dog he used to own; and in TV chat shows he has talked about threesomes and other sexual exploits.

A biography narrates that he made his first friend at 33 and had his first love at 47; he is charismatic, highly aggressive, offensive and has been labelled misogynistic; he strongly opposes abortion, he also opposes feminist politics and policies and has stated to be in favor of “liberalizing” the sale of weapons and human organs.

He sees himself as a warrior in the world’s culture wars and he thinks sex education is a Marxist plot to destroy the family. He defines himself as a libertarian or “anarcho-capitalist,” and is an admirer of Margaret Thatcher, Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro.

His proposals are ultra-neoliberal and include replacing the Argentine peso with the U.S. dollar and the eventual abolition of the nation’s central bank; the abolition of all ministries except economy, justice, interior, security, defense and foreign relations; abolition of all subsidies, especially, energy, coupled with an economic reform aimed at drastically reducing both public and social expenditure as well as taxes; and he favors total economic deregulation.

Furthermore, Milei has also confirmed his determination to carry out a wave of privatizations of services such as health, education and all state companies, particularly the system of public media, and state oil and gas companies YPF and ENARSA.

He will also restructure AFIP (Argentina’s Inland Revenue) and ANSeS (national administration of social security) and he has promised to “turn [over] Argentina Airlines to its employees.”

On foreign policy, Milei proposes to break relations with Brazil and China and he is opposed to Argentina joining the BRICS coalition (Brazil, India, China and South Africa) because he “will not promote agreements with communists.” Instead, he said Argentina will align with the U.S. and Israel, countries he will visit before his inauguration.

Rejects joining BRICS

Milei also rejects Argentina joining the Brics because it is a group that favors and promotes the de-dollarization of trade. Milei’s top foreign affairs adviser, Diana Mondino, in an interview with Sputnik News, said Argentina would not go ahead with plans to join BRICS.

Breaking links with Brazil will be damaging to Argentina, but breaking with China would be disastrous: in 2022 Argentina exported 92 per cent of soya and 57 per cent of meat there, and China has carried out substantial investment in the country’s energy sector and its lithium industry.

Ideologically, Milei is an ultra-conservative who defends the 1976 military dictatorship and denies that it murdered over 30,000 people, a figure he says is only 8,753, the result of a “war” in which state forces perpetrated “excesses” but “so did the terrorists,” as he labels the dictatorship’s victims.

Milei was a political associate of genocidal military officer General Antonio Bussi, condemned to life in prison for crimes against humanity (repression, forced disappearances, kidnappings, torture and assassinations) in Tucuman province during the dictatorship.

In 2022, Milei entered into a political agreement with Fuerza Republicana, led by Bussi’s son, Ricardo. Furthermore, Milei combines an anti-system populism with an extreme version of economic liberalism, ideally with “no state” participation in the nation’s economy.

His notion of anarcho-capitalism includes, among other things, loosening the country’s labor laws. In his propaganda he has amalgamated government officials, trade union bureaucrats, the working class and the 40 per cent of Argentineans who depend on social benefits, labelling them “parasites and thieves.”

Milei considers the state to be worse than the mafia and proposes the arming of individuals as a “solution” to ensure public safety against crime. To symbolize his commitment to carry out drastic cuts in state spending he campaigned with a revving chainsaw in his hands.

In his victory speech, Milei declared that in the implementation of his economic policies, there would be no room for gradualism and, against those who resist the elimination of what he labelled “privileges” (working-class gains) “we will be implacable.”

It is unimaginable that such an economic shock can be implemented without grave attacks on political and democratic rights, the right to strike, the right to demonstrate, and even the right to organize. Milei’s views are inimical to liberal democracy since he deems it to be ruled by a “caste.”

Milei’s calls for purging the “political caste” are almost identical to Trump’s commitment to “drain the swamp,” and like the latter’s mantra “Make America Great Again,” the Argentinean constantly repeats his intention to restore his nation to a position of greatness “in the world that it should have never lost.” He even wears hats with the slogan “Make Argentina Great Again.”

Internationally, he has linked up with Spain’s extreme right-wing party, Vox, with Jair Bolsonaro and his son Eduardo in Brazil, and with people like Chile’s extreme right-winger, Jose Antonio Kast. Trump tweeted a euphoric message predicting Milei will “truly Make Argentina Great Again.” Milei has contacted Jair Bolsonaro to personally invite him to his inauguration.

What underlies the Peronist defeat was the IMF-mandated austerity policies of Alberto Fernandez’s government which received a hugely indebted economy, the legacy of the Macri administration, which took out a loan of $57 billion (127 times greater than the indebtedness capacity of Argentina).

Largest loans in history

Between 2018-20 the IMF granted Macri the largest loans in its history: $100billion ($56billion in 2018 and $44billion in 2020). Thus between 2012-21, Argentina had the largest increase in public debt: 40.5 percentage points of GDP.

When Fernandez assumed office in 2019 the country’s debt was more than $320billion which by November 2023 had reached $420 billion — a dire situation.

In August 2023 the Financial Times reported: “Argentina faces mounting pressure to devalue its currency again as its government struggles to avoid economic collapse ………with inflation more than 100 per cent a year; about 40 per cent of people living in poverty; and a recession looming.”

The primary win by Milei led to an 18 percent devaluation of the peso and an increase in interest rates to 118 per cent aimed at restoring confidence, and a generalized price hike of consumer goods by double digits overnight. No wonder demoralized and disenchanted voters flocked in such large numbers to Milei’s simplistic proposals.

However, given the country’s experience with neoliberalism, dollarization and IMF austerity in the past, the Fernandez government failed to mobilize its political base to exert pressure on the IMF to extract concessions to improve Argentina’s bargaining position.

Milei’s plans to slash public spending from 38 percent to 15 percent of GDP will involve severe cuts in highly sensitive areas such as pensions, transport subsidies (12 and 2.5 per cent of GDP, respectively), and welfare benefits support for 40 per cent of the population.

Dollarizing the economy, technically very difficult to implement, will massively exacerbate inequality and poverty, a situation which in the past has led to militant social unrest making non-Peronist administrations unable to finish their mandate.

Given the significance of Brazil and China for Argentina’s economy, it remains to be seen whether Milei is really willing to implement such a self-harming break.

Where Milei may also cause substantial damage is his opposition to continuing to develop a Brazil-Argentina common currency for their mutual trade but also for Latin America as a whole. It would substantially complicate, but not stop, the ongoing process of regional integration.

The election of Javier Milei as president will take Argentina into a gigantic and multifaceted crisis, leading his extreme right-wing administration to assault people’s rights and gains.

His promised brutal ultra-neoliberal policies will be supplemented by implacable repression and persecution of opponents. Thus, we must build the broadest solidarity movement to defend democracy and people’s democratic rights in Argentina.

We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!

Francisco Dominguez is head of the Research Group on Latin America at Middlesex University. He is also the national secretary of the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign in the U.K. and co-author of “Right-Wing Politics in the New Latin America” (Zed Books, 2011). Dominguez came to Britain in 1979 as a Chilean political refuge.

Voters in Ecuador say no more oil drilling in Amazon rainforest / by Associated Press

Voters line up at a polling station during a snap election in San Miguel del Comun, Ecuador, Sunday, Aug. 20, 2023. In a historic decision, Ecuadorians voted on Sunday against the oil drilling of Yasuni National Park, which is a protected area in the Amazon that’s home to two uncontacted tribes and serves as a biodiversity hotspot. | Dolores Ochoa / AP

Posted in the People’s World on August 23, 2023

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP)—Ecuadorians voted against drilling for oil in a protected area of the Amazon, an important decision that will require the state oil company to end its operations in a region that’s home to isolated tribes and is a hotspot of biodiversity.

With over 90% of the ballots counted by early Monday, around six in 10 Ecuadorians rejected the oil exploration in Block 43, situated within Yasuni National Park. The referendum took place along with the presidential election, which will be decided in a runoff between leftist candidate Luisa González and right-wing contender Daniel Noboa. The country is experiencing political turmoil following the assassination of one of the candidates, Fernando Villavicencio.

Yasuni National Park is inhabited by the Tagaeri and Taromenani, who live in voluntary isolation, and other Indigenous groups. In 1989, it was designated, along with neighboring areas, a world biosphere reserve by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, also known as UNESCO. Encompassing a surface area of around 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres), the area boasts 610 species of birds, 139 species of amphibians, and 121 species of reptiles. At least three species are endemic.

“Ecuadorians have come together for this cause to provide a life opportunity for our Indigenous brothers and sisters and also to show the entire world, amidst these challenging times of climate change, that we stand in support of the rainforest,” Nemo Guiquita, a leader of the Waorani tribe, told The Associated Press in a phone interview.

The referendum is the result of a long and winding process. It started in 2007 when then-President Rafael Correa announced that Ecuador would refrain from oil exploration in Block 43 if rich nations compensated the poverty-stricken country. This was to be accomplished through the establishment of a $3.6 billion fund, equal to 50% of the projected revenue from the block.

However, the fund drew in only a small fraction of the intended amount. As a result, in August 2013, Correa declared Ecuador’s intention to proceed with oil exploration in the block. In response, Indigenous and environmentalist movements initiated a campaign under the banner of the Yasunidos movement, seeking to amass signatures for the referendum. After almost one decade of legal battles and bureaucratic hurdles, the Supreme Court ruled in May that the measure must be incorporated into this year’s election.

The outcome represents a significant blow to Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso who advocated for oil drilling, asserting that its revenues are crucial to the country’s economy. State oil company Petroecuador, which currently produces almost 60,000 barrels a day in Yasuni, will be required to dismantle its operations in the coming months.

The South American country started exploring oil on a large scale in the Amazon in the 1970s when it became an Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries member —membership it withdrew in 2020. For decades, oil has been Ecuador’s main export. In 2022, it represented 35.5% of total exports, according to the country’s Central Bank. Block 43 alone contributes $1.2 billion annually to the federal budget.

In a statement Monday, Petroecuador said it would await the conclusion of the ballot counting before commenting on the referendum. The company added that it would comply with the decision of the Ecuadorian people.

The referendum applies only to Block 43. Within the Amazon region, oil production extends to other sections of Yasuni Park and into Indigenous territories. Accidents are commonplace, mostly through oil spills into the rivers.

“It’s not that we’re going to feel relieved. We can breathe a moment of calm, we’re happy, but there are many more oil wells in Waorani territory causing harm,” says Indigenous leader Guiquita. “We hope that with this public consultation, there will be a path marked by the fact that the decision belongs to the people and that we can remove all those who are extracting oil and polluting our land.”

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The Associated Press (AP) is a U.S. multinational nonprofit news agency that operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. Most of the AP staff are union members and are represented by the Newspaper Guild, under the Communications Workers of America, under the AFL–CIO. The Associated Press (AP) es una agencia de noticias multinacional estadounidense sin fines de lucro que opera como una asociación cooperativa no incorporada. La mayor parte del personal de AP son miembros del sindicato y están representados por el Newspaper Guild, en el marco de Communications Workers of America, en el AFL-CIO.