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Argentine Economic Tensions Spill Over Into Looting Near Buenos Aires-Global Policy Forum- NGOs Argentine Economic Tensions Spill Over
Into Looting Near Buenos AiresBy Bill Corimer
Associated Press
December 19, 2001
Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to quell a looting rampage near the capital by about 2,000 people who pried open metal gates to shops and carted away everything from food to clothing and shoes as social tensions spilled over from an economic crisis.
The latest unrest came after a weekend of scattered supermarket lootings in some of Argentina's hardest–hit cities that followed a partial freeze on banking and other government restrictions.
Hundreds of people, some shouting angrily against the austerity government of President Fernando De la Rua, gathered in a rundown shopping district late Tuesday in San Miguel, on the northwestern fringes of greater Buenos Aires.
Demonstrators lit trash fires in the streets and looted small shops of everything from food and soft drinks to clothing and shoes. Television broadcast scenes of fires lit by protesters who twisted open metal shop gates and shattered plate glass windows.
Middle–age women with shopping bags also took part, picking up goods scattered on the streets.
"We don't have any money, we are hungry and we HAVE to eat!" one unidentified woman in the growing crowd shouted.
Police using tear gas and rubber bullets clashed with the crowd, which later was estimated to have swelled to 2,000 people.
Police said five officers were injured, but they had no reports on any injuries among the crowd, which eventually dispersed.
A police official, Juan Alberto Saiz, told the newspaper La Nacion that some 2,000 people had taken part in the disturbance and that some 40 shops were looted but that damage was being assessed on Wednesday.
The area where the looting occurred is located along a broad avenue in an area where unemployment has soared well above the nationwide average.
Early Wednesday, riot police continued to patrol the area after the looting was put down, some riding in pickup trucks or walking the streets in long columns as trash fires in the streets continued to smolder.
The spasm of violence seen in San Miguel and other poor communities nationwide began late last week with supermarket lootings in Rosario and Mendoza, two major provincial cities hard–hit by unemployment.
Last week, De la Rua's beleaguered government announced that the jobless rate had risen above 18 percent, still barely a whisker below the record unemployment spike recorded in 1995 after the Mexican peso crisis.
His government has announced eight highly unpopular austerity plans during its two years in power, including a 13 percent cutback in state worker wages and moves to slash pensions and raise taxes.
Hoping to blunt the rising hunger and poverty of a country now four years into a withering recession, the government this week began disbursing more than 400,000 pounds (200,000 kilograms) of food aid – mostly meat, rice, powdered milk and vegetables.
The anger and discontent have ratcheted up after powerful labor bosses punished the government with a 24–hour national strike last Thursday that crippled public transport and most economic activity.
At the root of the crisis is a recession triggered by years of public overspending and heavy borrowing that has left Argentina on the brink of defaulting on its staggering dlrs 132 billion public debt.
The 18.3 percent jobless rate has left nearly 15 million of the 36 million population at or below the poverty line as consumer spending has been chocked off and industrial activity plummeted 11 percent last month alone.
Buenos Aires streets saw several protests in recent days including an angry march Tuesday by Argentine shoemakers who complained that a flood of cheap Brazilian imports was pushing them out of business. They lit ablaze a Christmas tree decorated with Brazilian footwear as ornaments.
Monday saw a daylong strike by freight and passenger trains nationwide that stranded thousands of commuters in a dispute with the government and the private railroad operators.
Meanwhile, Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo has said he wanted to slash more than dlrs 9 billion from his 2002 budget, cutting public spending from dlrs 49 billion to dlrs 39.6 billion. But the proposed cuts have angered some opposition lawmakers, who worry further austerity could spark wider unrest.
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