MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina Update. Demonstrations by website.

With Argentine banks still a target of people's anger over the Government's financial restrictions, there is comparative political calm after the turmoil of December. After De La Rua's downfall and three interim Presidents, Eduardo Duhalde has been in charge for more than three weeks. But he now faces fresh criticism for breaking his promise, the day he took office on January First, to return savers their deposits in dollars. He has confessed that sufficient dollars do not exist. Demonstrations in which protestors bang together pots and pans, called "cacerolasos", are becoming more organised as citizens increasingly meet in neighbourhood groups to decide how to react to government decisions. Several neighbourhoods have announced a concerted cacerolaso for Friday evening at 8 pm. As well as pots and pans, they are now deploying a new, more modern weapon ? the world wide web. Two protests websites -- elcacerolazo.org and c-a-c-e-r-o-l-a-z-o.com.ar -- are already up and running voicing people's opinions and giving a timetable of future meetings and protests. Banking curbs restricting access to savings and other accounts, which everyone calls corralitos, are fuelling frustration into angry street protests which in recent days have targeted banks in Buenos Aires and in other parts of the country, smashing windows and equipment and starting fires. The Government calls the curbs a "time-bomb" which it is finding very difficult to de-fuse. One depositor is quoted as saying: "Most of my life savings have been taken away from me. I was going to move away to Italy but now I cannot. Argentina is like a prison".

Quitting the country of unfulfilled hopes

As well as queues outside the banks, queues continue to grow at the Spanish and Italian embassies as people seek to emigrate back to where their families originally came from in an attempt to escape economic and political chaos in a country which the Buenos Aires Herald calls a "Third World basket case". One woman said: "We came here in boats and we're leaving by plane". Another said: "Argentina will soon be one big empty space". It is a reversal of the tide of immigration which brought millions of Europeans here dreaming of seeking a better l