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[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 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…)