transation on article about those whose lives were lost in the hands of the polie while asking for food and jobs.
On the same bridges that once upon a time carried thousands of workers fighting for the Program of Social Justice, Political Soveriegnty, and Economic Independence, on October 17, 1945, four organizations representing the jobless:
the Anibal Veron Coordinating Committee, the Strike Block, Barrios on the March, and the MJI, participated in a plan to demand:
- An salary increase for workers with and without jobs
- Food for the jobless and for soup kitchens and schools.
- Subsidies and retirement plans for the jobless.
- Health care and education for all - No more hunger and repression.
In the preceeding days the government made public its decision prohibit popular road blocks. It was also speculated that the Secretary of Security for Beunos Aires, Juan Jose Alvarez, received heat for refusing to crack down on those asking for food and jobs using violence.
Chancellor Ruckauf reiterated the need for the armed forces to become involved in the efforts to suppress uprisings, in support of Minister Juanarena and General Brinzoni.
There is no need ot comment on the merits of the strugles made by the jobless, but it is important to refer to the previous political framework because it adds substance. The organizations of the jobless were fighting for the right to make demands and express their anger by using road blocks in place of general strikes in a country full of closed factories closed due to a four year recession.
Road blocks have been for the Argentine people their main form of strugle to achive social justice, such as job creation plans, denouncing impunity for police abuses, wage increases, environmental concerns, neighborhood concerns, etc.
It turned out to much more than a minor scuffle. The response was brutal: 2 people were murdered, over fifty were injured; four of them severly with live amunition, and more than one hundred and fifty people were detained.
The press, destined to try and distract the public's attention, has tried to spin that this was is only the fault of extreme elements in the government and denies much of the repression against to the jobless movement.
The attempt to annihalate of the unemployed workers movement is nothing more than a ploy by the government to deny its most dynamic expression and the massive social unrest.
The economic establishment is in agreement with this; as are those which have also held the reigns of power. The UCR and Peronist parties. Although I did not know Maximiliano Gostegui, I did know Darío Santillán. There are some things that I should mention about their murder: it is that they were helping to lift a friend up off the ground that had fallen victim to police amunition. I'm convinced that Dario, who was only 21 years old, was a core organizer of the Lanus MTD (Ctd Anibal Veron) and was not killed by a stray bullet. They killed him because, just as they killed Pocho Lopresti in Rosario another comitted organizer for the CTA, of his involment in the actions of last December.
The Triple A has returned to work*1 in Argentina and their targets are the popular orgasnizers. Chancellor Ruckauff, who has shown his pride at ordering assasinations, has assumed ownership of his past, which includes having shared a cabinet post with Jose Lopez Rega, cheif of the Three A's. It would be good if the rest of the Justice party officials would quit being hipocrits and take responsibility for the Chancellor and make sure the demans of the social movements are solely answered by flagrant repression and targeted political assasinations.
Guillermo Cieza
Retruco
*1: The triple A (Argentine Anty-communist Asociation) was a goverment backed paramilitary group during the last Argentine military dictatorship that persecuted, tortured and killed those who it considered to be communists.