WORLD WORLDWIDE ARGENTINA - (en) Argentina, Rosario FA: FAR's position regarding the latest events in Rosario (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Between the murder of workers by drug traffickers and the State's

repressive effort ---- "What might the leaders of the drug cartels think
about the organized peasantry, about the unions and the student
movement? What ideas will form in the heads of the owners of the system
when the movements demand their rights, or take to the streets looking
for new conquests? They may think the same if they are drug traffickers
in the state of Guerrero, or industrialists in China, or owners of the
heaviest accounts in the Wall Street financial casino. They may think
the same if those who govern are the dominant patterns at any scale,
both at the world system level and at local levels. Those are loaded
with the most selfish and reckless weapons humanity has ever known. They
have armies for wars, prisons, the thousand forms of repression
exclusive or associated with their hitmen on duty." - Uruguayan
Anarchist Federation, 2014.

We arrived at this situation from the growth, for more than two decades,
of drug gangs that, over time, began to have links with organizations in
Brazil and Mexico, while managing to control peripheral territory in a
region like the Gran Rosario, with a lot of capital circulation and
violent contrasts. A transit area for an important export of raw
materials, record real estate growth, gentrification and elitization of
some areas and neighborhoods, overcrowding and marginalization in
others, high levels of poverty and precariousness, with high rates of
unemployment and informality, with abandonment of services and
insufficient containment of the public sector, barely sustained with
dignity by the workers themselves.

It is enough to remember that our city was one of the first epicenters
of the looting of '89, 2001 and 2012. A year ago we highlighted, from
the FAR, that if there were sources of work or "life projects for youth
and families of the popular neighborhoods, these drug trafficking
companies could not use the desperation of the popular sectors to carry
out their attack...". It is also worth clarifying that the network of
these gangs reaches the complicity of judges, prosecutors, politicians,
businessmen, merchants, commissioners and even chiefs of the provincial
police were associated. In some way, and as has happened in other parts
of the world, the growth of narco-criminal gangs can only be explained
by the deepening of neoliberalism unleashed after the last military
dictatorship. The increase in poor neighborhoods as a product of
extractivism, the concrete loss of universal rights achieved such as
quality education and public health, labor flexibility and
precariousness, along with the promotion of values such as individualism
and competition. All this left fertile ground for the current scenario.
Where the State was more concerned with controlling with targeted
policies, repression and segregation, than with guaranteeing a future
for the popular sectors. Failing even in its mission, until reaching the
point where it could not promote access to services, where there was no
more containment to provide, and thus finally granted territorial
control to these criminal gangs. This is nothing more than the political
class delegating, privatizing control of a large part of security,
"commerce" and numerous aspects of social life in poor neighborhoods.
Only the community, social and union organizations remain, resisting
marginality and fragmentation, and in the face of the advance of these
gangs we are left in a situation of great asymmetry of power.

Another element to highlight is the dangerous consensus among the
Argentine political class - of all colors - on the need for saturation
of repressive forces in the city. Added to that the Provincial and
Municipal governments have just delegated to the national Executive
(leaving the handling of the conflict in the hands of Buenos Aires
politicians). In March 2023 we marked Rosario as a "testing laboratory",
as we see today, this is accentuated with the arrival of the Army, at
least in the foreground as "security logistics operating personnel". It
is worth noting that at the time of writing this position, it
scandalously contrasts the parades of the arrival of soldiers to
Rosario, while the rain of the last few hours floods the popular
neighborhoods of the city, the result of the apathy of the Provincial
and Municipal States.

In that sense, the "security policy" drawn up and implemented by
Bullrich, since the time when Macri was president, suggests several
issues that, far from solving the underlying issue, alert us to its
seriousness. In that document from March 2023, we also warned that
Bullrich's "stance[...]is part of a more general doctrine of the "war on
drugs" created by the United States in the early 1970s, clearly linking
its proposals to the American embassy and the CIA. This war, which
seemed distant from Argentina, more typical of Colombia or Mexico, is
the imported product of the moment and includes a complete package that
ranges from financing, weapons and even the disembarkation of North
American personnel." We cannot separate this from the recent
announcement of granting part of the control of the navigable waterways
of the Paraná River to the United States (where Trump's return is
foreseen). The interest in full control of transnational corporations
and imperialism over the region becomes more than evident.

On this point, we must pause briefly to look at how this security
doctrine of imperialism developed in Latin America. What is happening in
Argentina, specifically in Rosario, is part of the "construction of the
idea of new threats", taught by United States government agencies -
among them the Southern Command of its Armed Forces. Once the Cold War
ended, this doctrine associated the "fight against drug trafficking" and
the "combat against terrorism" when advancing the North American
military deployment as part of a regional process of the presence of
imperialism. We highlight this because, beyond the disastrous
geopolitical consequences, in all these years, both the interference of
the North American army and the intervention of the local armies of each
country, in internal issues such as drug trafficking, have had
calamitous consequences for the popular sectors. . In all cases, far
from being resolved, the context of social violence deepened. The
military forces even took part in the business. And here we do not even
expand on the aggravation of Human Rights violations, verified in each
intervention. Such negative results show the experiences of Mexico,
Colombia, Brazil or Central America.

At this point, we have to highlight as an aggravating factor the
attempts by Milei and Bullrich to constantly link the control of the
streets to drug trafficking and the targeting of social protest as if
they were part of the same thing. It is within this framework that the
government promotes militarization, reviving the application of the
Anti-Terrorist Law (in force since 2014) and the Chocobar doctrine. The
question arises about how the repressive forces installed in the city
will react to the constant local mobilizations, in a context of social
and economic crisis, in one of the cities in the country with the
largest population below the poverty line.

We must not fail to observe that what is shown as a combat between the
State and drug gangs is a much more complex relationship. Although there
is a dispute over the monopoly of violence, they are concurrent in other
objectives. In this sense, the streets of the city look deserted these
days, mobilizations and protests have been cancelled, people have been
paralyzed by fear. This favors both the adjusting government and the
drug gangs because it has also partially paralyzed, as we already said,
production. Likewise, the relationship becomes even more complex when
the drug business uses the interest of politicians and businessmen to
participate in it.

Are there short term solutions?
When thinking about a way out of this context, we have to assert that
there are no short-term solutions and that it is not a situation
exclusive to Rosario. As we saw above, the increase in repression is
detrimental to the living conditions of the population, already punished
by the national context. In this sense, the "return to normality" is no
longer an option for those at the bottom, not even if we proposed it.
Could the situation get worse? It is more than likely, since it has all
the ingredients for that to happen. On the one hand, it was possible to
learn of a truce proposal between the different drug factions (the
Alvarado and Los Monos clan as the main actors). Also, we already
noticed a serious shifting of the limits in the latest murders: babies
and children belonging to families involved were deliberately shot, then
the victim was randomly chosen on the public street. Finally, workers in
sectors linked to transport - taxis, buses, service stations - were
attacked. This last action attempts to alter the normality of life in
the city, since inevitably the murder of a worker will imply the
cessation of activities in the sector in question. To this, we must add
the absurd media exposure of the Provincial and National governments,
based on spectacular images (weapons, police with their faces covered,
prisoners subdued) and provocative statements by officials in a tone of
bravado, as parts of a defective imitation of the repressive model. of
Bukele.

That is why the organized popular sectors cannot lose the axis in our
construction strategy, nor remain mere spectators of the situation. On
the one hand, we must think about continuing with the agenda of each
sector, regarding the confrontation of the hunger and adjustment
policies of the National and Provincial Government. One of the
objectives of these Governments is to move the needle to implement the
adjustment without resistance. On the other hand, in a local context of
drug violence against workers, it is urgent to demand a reduction in the
working day, including eliminating night hours, given that the majority
of murders occurred at night. For this, it is necessary to stimulate an
assembly state in the workplace, breaking with the normality that the
employers' chambers and the State want to establish. Productivity must
be interrupted depending on our own life. The continuity of strikes and
mobilizations will be the genuine tools to carry out demands of the
context, particular to each sector and general. Our militant task must
also contribute to strengthening the creation of multisectoral and
inter-union groups, since they are effective tools when organizing
large-scale measures, giving good results even when generating impact.
We already experienced it with the Strike of January 24 (with 3
important blocks) or the recent mobilizations of teachers and state
workers against the Provincial Government.

During the last few years, our organization has warned about the serious
damage that this capitalist system has been generating, impoverishing
and destructive of life and the eco-system. We have also written
considerably about the exhaustion and limits of the
democratic-representative system, where it has been demonstrated that
rhetoric of defense of rights can coexist with reactionary, ultraliberal
and fascist institutional practices. Today, we believe in the
proposition today, from FAR we point our analysis and strategy against
this same system that fuels the growth of social violence with more
fragmentation and individualism. The lack of perspective of a decent
life for the popular sectors (the main input of the drug gangs in
Rosario) has no solution if we do not aim to change everything. On the
eve of a new March 24, the need to go for a Social Revolution (the one
for which the 30,000 disappeared comrades fought) is more current than ever.

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=908403264621242&set=a.132988962162680
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca