Eyewitness Account From Buenos Aires:

Elderly Couple Get Savings Back After Bank Sit-In Update May 15

An elderly couple and several hundred potbanging neighbors held a Buenos Aires bank hostage Wednesday night,forcing the bank to give the couple back half of the money in their savings account. The Colegiales branch of Banco de la Nacion on Avenida Federico de la Croze was surrounded by passing neighbors and people from two different neighborhood assemblies as the couple, Norma and Roberto Marquez, 81 and 86, held a sit-in inside the bank, defying Argentina's six month long bank freeze.

The couple went to the bank at eleven o'clock in the morning with a judge's order authorizing them to take out the $38,000 in savings which they had in their account. But when they got there, they were told to wait while bank officials decided whether to honor the judge's decree or not. Seven hours later they finally got their answer, a single word faxed from the central bank: no. Bank officials told them the judge's order was no longer applicable because the law had changed since the judge had signed the order. The couple decided to stay in the bank until they got their money.

"We worked hard for our life savings," said Norma. "They have no right to take it."

At seven o,clock in the evening they were still there, seated calmly and stubbornly in two chairs behind the plate glass window of the bank, facing the scattered crowd of neighbors and media that had gathered to watch them. Bank officials and police moved nervously about inside the bank, fearing to physically move them out because of the couple's advanced age. On the plate glass windows of the bank, handscrawled signs said: "We're going to stay until we get our money."

"I'm not leaving from here until the police drag me out," Norma, a tiny blonde woman, told a journalist through a crack in the door. Someone in the crowd said Norma had threatened to kill herself. It was Norma who did most of the talking. Her grey-haired husband Roberto sat quietly next to her, looking tired,with a thick square bandage on his forehead. Their son in law, Pablo Perrin, a tall man in a dark grey suit, passed out flyers outside. "Her daughter is unemployed," he said, "and I'm unemployed. Aside from their pension of 150 pesos a month, (about fifty dollars) their savings is all the money they have to live on."

At eight o'clock the members of the neighborhood assembly of Colegiales showed up. First about eight, then fifteen, then thirty. Holding their assembly banner and waving the Argentine flag, they began banging pots and chanting ""Give the abuelitos (little grandparents) back their money!" and "Que se vayan todos! ("Get rid of everybody," referring to corrupt politicians.) Pretty soon other people in the crowd were chanting and banging pots too. "Give them back their money!" From down the street, some of the streetcorner boys who recycle cardboard came with drums, and added their drumbeats and voices to the chant:"GIVE THEM BACK THEIR MONEY!" The neighborhood assembly of Colegiales was joined by the Colegiales-Chacarita neighborhood assembly, who attached their own black and yellow banner to the side of the bank.

In less than an hour, the crowd grew from a handful of neighbors to around three hundred, with people spilling out onto the street and banging on the side of the bank. The noise was deafening: journalists who wanted to talk to the old couple tried to get the potbangers to quiet down. 'You tell them that it's either the IMF or the people," shouted one red-headed woman. "You write that down!" Another woman began a shouting match with a member of the team from the Buenos Aies television station Channel 13. "You aren't even showing the neighbors outside, are you?" She said. "You're all part of the Clarin media empire, you guys never tell the truth!" "Lady, lady, I'm just an employee here, I'm a worker!" The guy from Channel 13 said. But it was true: most of the cameras were focused on what was going on inside the bank, and very few of them were showing the angry potbanging neighbors.

Finally, at about nine o'clock, a bank official came to the door. "They're going to get their money," he said. "Tomorrow. Now please, go home. Please don't break any windows." The man sounded desperate. The banging of the pots and pans were so loud the man could barely be heard. "They're going to get their money tomorrow" the word was passed through the crowd. "Please," a media spokesperson said to the angry neighbors," the old folks have asked that you be quiet for just awhile." The neighbors calmed down, and waited. But eventually the banging and shouting started up again.

One of the men wedged into the group of journalists pressed up against the plate glass windows of the bank said, "They're terrified inside. They still have all those bank employees to get out of the bank, and they're afraid the crowd is going to kill them if they let them out through the front door."

Suddenly an ambulance drove up, its siren still on. The door opened just long enough to let three uniformed attendants walk briskly into the bank. When it opened again, a panic stricken young bank employee with his body clenched in an embryonic position and his hands over his ears was quickly wheeled out in a wheel chair. The crowd ignored him and kept up their banging and shouting.

Finally, the doors opened and Norma and Roberta appeared, with Norma leading the way. The neighbors broke into applause. "Thank you!" They shouted. "Thank you Norma!" Some of them hugged her. The crowd of camera people and journalists elbowed each other to get their microphones in front of Norma. Norma was calm. She was smiling. They were going to get half of their savings, she said. In dollars. Her husband looked tired, but satisfied.

A journalist asked their son in law Pablo Perrin why the bank had finally given Norma and Roberto their money. "Because of the pressure of the people, that's why," he said quietly.

---Lisa Garrigues


Argentina | www.agp.org


Government Struggles under Debt Load, IMF demands

The Argentine government avoided falling into default by paying $680 million that it owes to the World Bank, but it still has to pay off 938 million to the Inter-American Development Bank at the end of the month. Acoording to reports from the ministry of finance, the government will have to pay off 9481 million dollars to various multilateral credit organizations this year: $5467 million to the International Monetary Fund, $2084 million to the World Bank, $1669 million to the Inter-Ameriacan Development Bank and $261 million to the Paris Club, a group of private and institutional investors.

Following the suggestion of U.S. Treasury Dept. officials, the government used dollars in the Central Bank reserve to pay off this debt, sparking fears among some economists that this would further decrease the value of the peso.

Meanwhile, the Inter American Development Bank has agreed to loan $700 million for social welfare programs, and the World Bank has said it will give another $700 million for food and medicine only when Argentina meets the demands of the International Monetary Fund, which include making it easier for international creditors to take over bankcrupt Argentine companies, and eliminating a law which protects the country from financial damage by banks and other businesses.

(sources: Clarin, La Naccion, May 14)


Last update: May 6, 2002

STUDY FINDS ONE AND A HALF MILLION NEW POOR IN FIVE MONTHS

The Buenos Aires newspaper Clarin reports that a new study by the Argentine research organization INDEC has found that 42% of the total population of Argentina is now living in poverty, and that 1,547,000 people have fallen below the poverty line in the last five months. "Poverty" is defined in the study as less than 455 pesos a month for a family of four. The study also found that since 1998, there are 5.5 million new poor, and that half of these people have become poor in the last ten months.

FRUSTRATED BANK CUSTOMER SETS SELF ON FIRE

(from Clarin, Friday, May 3, 2002)

"I heard the lady start to talk to the teller. She said she couldn't take it anymore, that she needed the money to eat. The bank employee continued to repeat that he couldn't do anything," said Alejandro Castagno, who was four places behind the woman. Immediately, according to Castagno, the woman said, "I'm going to kill myself." She took out a bottle of alcohol from her purse, and set herself on fire with a lighter.

The incident took place on Thursday in the San Isidro branch of the Banco Rio. The woman, 59, was in "delicate" condition in the Municipal Hospital with third degree burns.

(Ed note: Last December, the Argentine government instituted a bank freeze which allows its citizens to withdraw only 300 pesos a week from their accounts.)

Argentina Businesses for Two Pesos?

(original article appeared in Clarin, May 3, 2002)

Oscar Lamberto, ex-Secretary of Finance of Eduardo Dualde, said that Anne Kreuger, the number two official of the International Monetary Fund and the United States delegate for the organization, wants Argentina to "explode" and to undergo a hyperinflation that will bring down the price of the country's assets so that North American businesses can "come in and buy our businesses for two pesos."

The ex-Secretary, who was one of the negotiators with the IMF mission headed by Anoop Singh, also stated that the organization was undertaking a prolonged strategy of delay in the negotiations to release any funds to Argentina. "Every time we concede to the conditions they require, they come up with new demands," he complained, and said that it was likely that IMF assistance would come "after the country touched bottom", he told the weekly Veintitres.

He also claimed that the IMF held two positions. One, sustained by Kreuger, who "represented the United States", and the other by the head of the organization, the German Horst Kohler. The latter, he claimed, wanted Argentina to "lay off 500,000 public employees, that we suffer what we need to suffer, but he prefers that we don't end up with hyperinflation."


Argentina | www.agp.org