MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine ultra-Kirchner militants call for government control over foreign trade

Carta Abierta calls to support Cristina Fernandez and warns on the return of the “old oligarchic country”

Following on President Cristina Fernandez administration strategy of blaming big business and banks as speculators that force price increases and the devaluation of the Peso, this weekend a group which brings together intellectuals who support the Argentine Kirchnerite Victory Front have published a new letter titled “The Nation in Danger”.

 Last week Buenos Aires was plastered with the pictures of the CEOs of the same group of big companies and banks, allegedly responsible for hoarding and the mismanagement of the Argentine economy and soaring prices.

This time “Carta Abierta” as the group of K militants is known call for greater state control in foreign trade and defend government-instigated price agreements and argue the government of President Cristina Fernandez was forced to devalue by a handful of big exporting companies.

In an assembly held in the Buenos Aires National Library, members of the organization signaled that “a handful of big companies [Cargill, Noble Argentina, Bunge Argentina, Dreyfus, Molinos Río de la Plata, Vicentin, Aceitera General Deheza, Nidera and Toepfer] export more than 90% of Argentine soy grain, oil and flour, the historic base of the country's wealth and production.”

The businesses are accused of organizing “a financial clamp on the government, forcing it to take difficult measures that compromise the country's future” and have managed to force a depreciation of the Peso, not wanted by the government or convenient for the popular majorities with “a strategy of deepen the situation to levels significantly higher”.

“This is not simply one more episode in our national economic history. The big agro-business organizations have all of the strongest international, financial and communication links and they are always prepared to create the illusion that their interests coincide with those of a large part of Argentina's disconcerted middle class.”

For that reason, Carta Abierta called for “an advance in mechanisms that establish state management of foreign trade” and called for militant support of the government's “Cared prices” program and warned about the return of the “old oligarchic country”.

Watch out because “the old oligarchic country is ready for a comeback with its iron teeth” to force the implementation of an adjustment “on a government which has opposing political achievements to those of a non popular logics”

“Old and new groups, always few but now with greater density and concentration of their economy and with specific relation with the policies linked to world powers in this historic leg of modernity, are hounding the popular government headed by President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner”.

Carta Abierta claims Argentina cyclically has seen its autonomous development plans threatened, boycotted and frustrated because of the restriction of hard currency, which is the resource that gives continuity and in depth to progressive dynamics. “It is therefore indispensable to subtract the availability of those resources from the monopolies blackmail and guarantee government control”.