Crying for Argentina

Richard West

Buenos Aires It was no surprise to read in an English newspaper that: 'The London Borough of Camden is "adopting" a South American political prisoner a sociologist from Argentina'. As I am trying to show in this series of articles, Argentina, like Chile, Brazil and Uruguay, is now suffering a dictatorship as the result of the public overspending, over-staffing and ideological arrogance which are typified in England by the London Borough of Camden. Perhaps Uruguay, of which I shall write next week, was, before the generals, the nearest thing to a Camden in Latin America. Its colossal bureaucracy was the most 'caring', the most 'compassionate' and the most infested with sociologists. But of all these four countries, Argentina suffered most from another disease afflicting England (and Camden) — the irresponsible power of trade unions.

Those who have seen the delightful Evita will know by now that Juan Peron was elected to power in 1946 thanks to the popularity of Eva, his wife, with the organised workers of Argentina. He was an army colonel, a great admirer of Hitler, Franco and Mussolini, an inspiring orator and an opportunist. He knew how to take peoples' minds off economic hardship. by railing at foreigners, especially the British who then controlled much of the business in Argentina. During Peron's first long spell in power and during his brief second spell in the Seventies — he was succeeded by his third wife — the economy of the country was run down, as agriculture was taxed and weakened to subsidise the industrial workers: or, more precisely, to subsidise the trade unions.

When I visited Argentina during the middle Sixties, I was struck by the contrast between the poverty of the shanty towns and the affluence of the unions. The American AFL-CIO was at that time providing four of these unions with low interest loans to build 65 apartment blocks for their members. One of these unions, Power and Light, had an Olympic-size pool with an electric lift up to the top of the diving board; and it owned one of the biggest hotels in Buenos Aires. Even though Peron was not then in power, the union bosses were the effective rulers of industry and enjoyed the resulting privileges such as mansions, chauffeur-driven cars and firstclass air travel.

Few communists or socialists managed to prise the grip of the Peronists from trade union control. The Argentine unions were not 'left-wing'. Like most of our own unions — the Transport and General Workers, or Camden's local government unions for instance — they were essentially self-serving. They ensured their members jobs, whether or not they were productive; they protected them from the sack or prosecution for absenteeism and theft; above all they supported their own officials. The power of the unions meant a continued stagnation of the economy, and a chronic hostility between the entrenched Peronista trade unionists and the rest of the country. 'Don't cry for me, Argentina', Evita sings in the show; but most Argentinians hated her.

For 30 years the country muddled along under Peron, a right-wing civilian government, a right-wing military government, Peron again and then his widow. The economy suffered from overmanning, industrial disputes, government interference and all the ills that we know in Britain; but Argentina is so rich in agriculture that few people lacked daily bread and beef. The right-wing military coup in 1975 did not, as in Chile, result from a breakdown in the economy but as a reaction to terrorists. These people who called themselves Nonteneros' had nothing to do with the country's traditional politicians, the Peronistas, the socialists or the communists.

When I visited Cuba in 1967 1 noticed, and wrote in a subsequent book, that 'most of the Castroitesand the Communists come from upper — or middle-class families'. The most famous of these, after Fidel himself, was Che Guevara, a wealthy young Argentine who had recently left the island to start up revolution in mainland South America. His attempts to rouse the toiling masses failed dismally and he was killed, in Bolivia. But he became in death a revolutionary cult figure, his scowling, hirsute features appearing on countless T-shirts, throughout the world. Nowhere was he more popular than among his own social class in Argentina.

In stressing the high social class of the revolutionary left in Latin America, as in Europe, I do not intend to be merely paradoxical. The phenomenon needs to be studied seriously. One would like to know why, in the London Borough of Camden, all the houses occupied by the Council officials, the teachers, social workers and architects blaze with Labour posters at election time, while no such posters appear on the working-class council flats. Why are the slogans supporting abortion, or damning the governments cuts, usually chanted in posh or badly disguised posh accents? why in Paris, in 1968, did most of the student rebels hail from the richest arrondissements of the city? Why are the Red Brigade in Italy not only all frorn middle-class families but almost all frord the sociology faculty of a single university? One could say that this last question answers itself; that the minds of these young people have been corrupted by evil teachers, just as in Cambridge before the war, according to Andrew Boyle's new book, most of the undergraduate communists had once studied under the same history master at a certain school in Lancashire. Yet even the most brilliant persuaders need to talk to receptive minds. They need to play on already existing grievances; and such a grievance existed in Argentina. The middle and upper classes had every excuse for feeling discontent. They felt excluded from all establishments: from the landed aristocraacnY; from the military, a hereditary clan; d above all from Peronista trade unions: The young of the middle class es had s grown up listening to their are grumbling against society, the corruption, the bureaucracy, the rising cost of living, taxation, their own falling status with regard to the unskilled working classes, p the worthlessness of a good education: The young absorbed their grievances and grew up wanting to change soeietY . force, if necessary — for fighting appettio to the young. In another age and another country these discontented middle-elase might have turned to an ideology of the Spain f the Right: they did in Germany and the Thirties. Indeed the ideology modern Left has something in wing' with that of the prewar Right — a hatred of Wall Street (now the CIA), international big business (now the multinationals) and the Jews (now the Zionists).

The new revolutionaries did not have to worry about their bourgeois origins, as did the pre-war communists, for were not Fidel and Che themselves from the middle class? They did not have to work in a factory and get involved in trade unions, because the industrial working class had sold out to the capitalists. The answer lay in breaking the system by revolutionary violence, in an alliance with the peasantry, especially those of a black or brown race.

Unfortunately for the Monteneros, Argentina had slaughtered most of its Indians during the 19th century so there was little chance to exploit the issue of race. However the sub-tropical north of Argentina still has a few Indians, most of them from Paraguay, and a dense vegetation suitable for guerrillas. The armed uprising, modelled on that of the Viet cong, was put down almost instantly. From then on, the Monteneros turned to urban guerrilla warfare: bombing, shooting, arson and kidnapping, either for ransom to buy arms, or to exact the release of imprisoned comrades. Some criminal gangs also joined in the kidnapping which turned Buenos Aires into a frightened city.

In 1975, a group of generals seized Power, arrested Senora Peron and scores of Peronistas before mounting a massive counter-terror against the Monteneros. For the last four years the special police have been arresting hundreds or thousands of people either at home or grabbiR them on the street and bundling them into the back of a Ford Falcon car Without licence plates. Some of those who have been arrested were let loose after a day of questioning usually with the aid of electrodes attached to the sexual organs. Many have not been released and many have been assassinated.

It would be pleasant to record that the Argentine press and public had bravely denounced this reign of terror. But they have been afraid, and who can blame them? Would any of us speak out against a police force, if doing so carried the risk Of a day or even five minutes of torture? Besides, every Argentine that I talked to, and every Chilean and Uruguayan, approved of this counter-terror. I cannot Pretend to have talked with a large or representative group of people. However a journalist friend of mine, who is Argentine-born and fluent in Argentine Spanish (barely intelligible to those who have studied Castillian), assures me that the counter-terror is not only accepted but applauded by everyone that he met in all classes. Nor is this really surprising. Which of us has not at times thought how we should feel if our children, for instance, were killed by an IRA bomb or kidnapped by a Sardinian bandit? 'It was a war and we fought back', was a typical comment I heard. 'These committees on human rights, why didn't they come here when the terrorists were in action? We have in Argentina an Association of Mothers of those who have disappeared.

don't feel any sympathy with them. Why didn't they worry about their children going out all night with guns to murder people?'

The policy of the generals is puritan and authoritarian but not, I would say, fascist. 'We're•not suited to democracy', I was told by a most intelligent Argentine. 'We need strong government but we don't need a leader. We don't need a Peron.' If the generals are not clear as to what they like, they know what they dislike. A recent editorial in Cabildo, a glossy that might be described, as Argentina's Now! magazine, listed its 'spectrum of enemies: liberalism, marxism in all its forms, freemasonry and Judaism, venal interests, egotistical and utilitarian conformism, religious and pacifist progressiveness, intellectual pederasty, partycrats, cowardly spirits, mediocrity and envy'. The editorial asked readers to write in to say if anything had been left off the list.

Like the other two countries in the cone of South America, Argentina has put into practice the free market policies of Milton Friedman and the Chicago school of economists. This has meant dropping protection and other supports for Argentine industry; jailing the Peronista trade union bosses although some of these, in the style of the late Jimmy Hoffa, continue to run affairs from prison; and dropping controls and taxes on the production of beef, wheat and maize. Unlike Chile and Uruguay, Argentina has virtally no unemployment. However, inflation continues around 160 per cent. How a free market provides both full employment and high inflation, I frankly do not understand. Nor did anybody I asked here.

Nor did I understand why in Argentina today 'the only thing that is cheap is the dollar'. A pair of shoes, for instance, now costs ten times as much in real terms as it did five years ago but the dollar is so cheap that it pays to shop in Miami, or even London. The travel agents advertise fortnight holidays in South Africa or the United States for less than half what we would pay in England. Conversely American tourists who used to live it up in Argentina, provoking much resentment, are now to be found only in cutprice restaurants and hotels.

There has been a tilt in the old relationship between North and South America, especially noticeable in Argentina. Until the slump of 1929 this was the richest and more progressive (to use the phrase then fashionable) of the Latin American countries. Car ownership was the highest in the world; you could not throw a half-brick on the beach at Cannes without hitting an Argentine millionaire; the whole world danced to the tango, the most beautiful popular music of all time, now played only in Poland and Argentina itself.

The slump and the subsequent economic decline produced dismay and bitterness in the Argentines, which often expressed itself in resentment against the United States. When Juan Peron put himself up for election in 1945, a US Embassy issued a 'blue book' describing his past support for Hitler and Mussolini. Far from being embarrassed, Peron based his election campaign on denouncing interference from 'the colossus of the North'. When I was last here in the Sixties, Argentina was known as the most anti-American country in Latin America. There was a huge painted sign on the airport road 'YANKEE GO HOME' to which an enterprising airline official had added

BY PANAM'.

The United States was accused of economic exploitation, cultural philistinism, and political interference in favour of right-wing causes by the State Department and CIA — or 'See-ya', as it is hissed through Latin American teeth. The anti-Yankee attacks continue but now from the other direction. The United States is accused of being soft on communism; of interfering to stop the torture of left-wing prisoners; of following socialistic economic policies. The Argen tines, in their new-found affluence, can now afford to be patronising. 'Here in Buenos Aires,' I was told, 'you can walk anywhere in the street at night but in New York or Miami — you go out after dark at your peril'.