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[Translation of an article from El Clarín of Santiago, Chile, for April 9, 2013. See original here.]

by Pedro Miguel

The first instance of Thatcherism took place six years before Margaret Thatcher arrived at the head of the British government; specifically, it began on September 11, 1973, when a group of military men — urged on by Richard Nixon, his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, then Vice President Gerald Ford and George Bush, senior, who was serving as Washington’s representative to the UN — destroyed Chilean democracy, assassinated thousands of citizens, kidnapped, jailed and tortured tens of thousands. Tens of thousands more were to leave in exile. Once installed, the dictatorship headed by Augusto Pinochet dissolved Congress, declared political parties illegal and, a couple of years later, handed economic management over to a small group of post-graduates from the University of Chicago, where Milton Friedman was teaching, hence the name Chicago Boys: Sergio de Castro, José Piñera, Jorge Cauas, Pablo Barahona… (more…)

[Translation of an article from Página/12 of Buenos Aires for March 17.  See original here.]

The first press conference Pope Francis’ spokesman gave was for the purpose of detaching him from Jorge Mario Bergoglio, accused of turning two priests over to the ESMA [Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada]. Since the statements and the documents are incontestable, the method chosen was to discredit those who circulated them, characterizing this newspaper as leftist. The traditions were followed: it is the same thing that Bergoglio said about Jalics and Yorio to those who kidnapped them.

By Horacio Verbitsky

In his first meeting with the press after the election of the Jesuit Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope of the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church, his spokesman, Federico Lombardi, also a Jesuit, dismissed as old calumnies of the anti-clerical Left, spread by a newspaper characterized by defamatory campaigns, the allegations on the performance of the former provincial of the Company of Jesus during the Argentine dictatorship and, especially, the role he played in the disappearance of two priests under him, Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics. Argentine opposition media and politicians at the same time included the article “Un Ersatz,” published in this paper the day after the papal election, among Kirchnerista reactions to Bergoglio’s enthronement.  In addition, a sector of the governing party chose to acclaim him as “Argentine and Peronista,” the same slogan with which José Rucci is remembered every September, and to deny the incontestable facts. (more…)

((Jorge Videla, left, and Reynaldo Bignone))

Both ex-dictators and more than 20 other defendants will be tried for their part in the persecution and detention of opponents under Plan Cóndor

[Translation of an article from El Observador of Montevideo, Uruguay, for March 4. See original here.]

The Argentine justice system on Tuesday will bring to trial ex-dictators Jorge Rafael Videla and Reynaldo Bignone for their alleged responsibility for the persecution and detention of opponents under “Plan Cóndor,” which involved the cooperation of Southern Cone dictatorships in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

Among the 25 defendants in the evidentiary hearing for crimes against humanity are also the former minister of the interior of the Argentine dictatorship of 1976 to 1983, Albano Harguindeguy, and ex-Generals Luciano Benjamín Menéndez, Antonio Bussi, Santiago Riveros and Ramón Díaz Bessone. (more…)

[Translation of an article from Página/12 of Buenos Aires for June 8. See original here and related article here.]

by Sebastián Premici

“I never understood why they privatized it. What they did with the oil fields was terrible, we could see that, but we did not know the whole of it. The business had very good economic results, you could see it on the books, but none of it stayed here.” Omar Stocco is a chemical engineer and plant manager of the YPF refinery in Luján de Cuyo, Mendoza. He has worked for the company for 25 years and was a witness to the whole process of privatization. Now, at 52, he will be in charge of security at the refinery, which currently produces 13,000 cubic meters of fuel. But he will also be a witness to the new managerial and political change in the petroleum company. “Everything is in place for things to be done well,” he declared. (more…)

[Translation of an article from Brasil de Fato of São Paulo for May 15. See original here.]

by Indira Carpio Olivo and Ernesto J. Navarro

On March 24, 2012, the web site aporrea.org published a story from four days earlier, taken from matrizur.org, stating that the governor of the province of El Chaco was granting permission for installation by the [United States] Southern Command of a military base in that Argentine territory.

The story reads, “The building, which will be inaugurated this month, is located on the grounds of the airport in Resistencia, the capital of the northern province of El Chaco, is in the final stage of construction and will be the first such operations center in Argentina. All that is lacking is to equip it with information technology and then to turn over the facility and to finish with the training of personnel,” says Colonel Edwin Passmore of the Southern Command, who had met weeks earlier with Governor Jorge Capitanich.” (more…)

[Translation of an article from El Clarín of Santiago, Chile, for April 21. See original here.]

By Marcos Roitmann Rosenmann

Measures taken to nationalize and to recuperate basic riches in Latin America or Africa or Asia have always suffered the ire of colonial centers and the enterprises affected. There is no shortage of examples: Lázaro Cárdenas, Jacobo Arbenz, Fidel Castro, Omar Torrijos, Velasco Alvarado, Salvador Allende, Evo Morales, Hugo Chávez; the list is long.

Accustomed to ordering and to being in charge, arrogant empires are unfamiliar with the concepts of independence and sovereignty. They are reluctant to deal as equals. Paternalism, based on positions of strength, shapes the discourse of imperial haughtiness. To declare oneself opposed to paternal authority and the established order usually brings on exemplary punishment: blockades, destabilizing processes, economic strangulation, assassinations of leaders or coups d’état. These days, the expropriation of a private company, Repsol YPF, whose interests are those only of their stockholders and whose objective is to obtain profits at the cost of any ethical, judicial or environmental consideration, awakens the ire of the hegemonic powers, their institutions and principal political leaders. (more…)

London admits that the conflict is clear-cut

[Translation of a column from Página/12 of Buenos Aires for March 29. See original here and related articles here and here. April 2 marks the 30th anniversary of the beginning of the war between Argentina and England over the Malvinas Islands, known in Great Britain as the Falklands. The British won the war but Argentina still claims sovereignty over the islands. And here Atahualpa Yupanqui reads "La Hermanita Perdida."]

By Martín Granovsky

Unless all its functionaries have a command of the language worthy of Winston Churchill, but not his political acumen, the British foreign service admitted yesterday that the question of the Malvinas is “a white elephant.” In an Asian tradition that the foreign office knows well, a white elephant is something difficult to care for, at a cost disproportionate to the advantages it offers.

According to diplomats in the region consulted by this newspaper, the expression was used by Jeremy Browne, Foreign Office Minister, a position equivalent to that of vice-chancellor, representing in this case several areas, one of them Latin America. Browne, a member of the administration of the conservative David Cameron, spoke during a working breakfast with all the Latin American diplomats only five days before April 2, the 30th anniversary of a maneuver by the Argentine dictatorship that consolidated the power of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party. (more…)

An interview with Guillermo Padilla Amador

[Abridged translation of an interview from Página/12 of Buenos Aires for September 19. See original here.]

by Gustavo Veiga

In Honduras, he took part in the resistance movement against the coup that deposed President Manuel Zelaya and a year later he had to seek exile. Despite the fact that Zelaya returned to Honduras and there is now an elected government, dozens of opponents have been assassinated with the coming of a wave of supposed street violence.

Why did you have to go into exile in Argentina after fighting for a year against the coup d’état against Manuel Zelaya in Honduras?

Because there are disguised political assassinations in my country and the Honduran army has the best advisers, Colombians as well as Israelis, for carrying them out. Singers of popular music are turning up run over by cars or activists done away with, with their pants pockets turned out. Street violence has been increased deliberately to cover up political assassinations. The Porfirio Lobo government has allowed these deaths. Fourteen journalists have been assassinated in Honduras during his government. That’s why I’m not going back. (more…)

[Translation of an article from Página/12 of Buenos Aires for July 22. See original here.]

By Darío Aranda

“The gold of the future” the mining companies call it. It’s “a strategic resource” for government authorities. But it’s “our life” for the 86 indigenous communities who yesterday blocked National Highway 52 to oppose the lithium mining now spreading across their ancestral lands despite being covered by national and international laws that spell out indigenous peoples’ rights to the land. Lithium is a coveted mineral, used in batteries for cell phones and computers and needed by the automobile industry, which is experiencing the gradual replacement of hydorcarbons with electric vehicles. “We are expressing our rejection of lithium mining projects and we demand the titles to the commuity lands that belong to us,” the community members declared. Last November the spread of lithium mining reached the supreme court of the nation and arrived last week at the United Nations.
(more…)

Voters also chose members of newly formed communal councils

[Translation of an article from La Jornada of Mexico City for July 11. See original here. Buenos Aires is an autonomous city ruled by a Chief of Government, a Deputy Chief of Government and a 60-member Legislature. All elected official serve four-year terms. The Communal Councils, discussed in the article, are a new feature.]

By Stella Calloni

Buenos Aires – As predicted in the polls, the current head of government of this city, Mauricio Macri, of the rightist Propuesta Republicana (PRO) party, won the election tonight but is to stand in a runoff on July 31 in which he will compete with former Education Minister Daniel Filmus, candidate of the country’s ruling Frente para la Victoria (FPV), as occurred in 2007 but with a stronger challenge by the latter this time. Most important was the election of comuneros to the communal councils in Buenos Aires.

Initial data from the 26 percent of polling places counted show more than 45 percent for Macri, 30 percent for Filmus and, in third place, Fernando Pino Solana of Proyecto Sur, who received 13 percent of the vote, half of what he received in 2007. (more…)

[Translation of an article from La Jornada of Mexico City for February 24. See original article here and the Página/12 article quoted below, in English translation, here.  See US embassy cables on Argentina as released by Wikileaks here.]

by John Saxe-Fernández

An enormous C17 (Globemaster III) belonging to the United States air force, with equipment for police “training,” tried to bring into Buenos Aires an undeclared cargo of powerful long weapons, equipment for encrypted communications, secret information programs and narcotic and stupefacient drugs, “with no satisfactory explanation of what it would be used for” (Página 12, 13-II-2011). In view of the regime change operations against Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador and the Honduran putsch, the resumption of this type of operation with United States personnel, halted by Néstor Kirchner, is surprising; the secret cargo on the C-17 demonstrates the serious risk of these schemes in view of a diplomacy of power that is growing more intense: were they going to teach a course or stage a coup? (more…)

[Translation of a BBC World article from El Mostrador of Santiago, Chile, for February 19. See original here.]

In the past few weeks, the deaths of at least eight children in northern Argentina from serious malnutrition problems has again focussed attention on a problem that baffles many: why do children die of hunger in a country that is one of the world’s main producers of food?

According to the Cooperadora para la Nutrición Infantil (CONIN – Cooperating Agency for Childhood Nutrition), 260,000 children under the age of five suffer some degree of malnutrition, while 2,100,000 people do not have assured daily access to food.

Among the most vulnerable groups are the indigenous communities, especially those living in the northeast of the country, in the area known as Gran Chaco or Chaco Salteño, which includes the provinces of Salta, Formosa, Chaco, Santiago del Estero and Santa Fe. (more…)