MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Pickets humiliate Argentine Navy's pride

Pickets which have become part of Argentina's daily existence storming at random some of the main accesses to Buenos Aires or blockading all road traffic with Uruguay have added another victim to their long list: the country's main naval base.

Until early last Saturday and for twelve hours picketing civilian personnel from the Ministry of Defence targeted Puerto Belgrano, seat of Argentina's surface fleet, blockading all access and exit including military personnel.

Protestors are demanding higher salaries, apparently an undelivered promise dating two years back, and after holding talks with the regional representative of the Ministry of Labour decided to suspend the pickets until Monday afternoon 17:00 hours when the much expected rise announcement should be confirmed; a decision that should benefit 20.000 civilian workers with Argentina's Armed Forces.

Meantime the strike continues and all activities involving civilian personnel from the Ministry of Defence have ceased pending the agreement, but pickets have another crucial date signalled for taking over the main base of Argentina's Navy, May 17.

On that day which happens to be the Navy Day, President Nestor Kirchner is scheduled to inaugurate a new petty officers school.

Another innocent "victim" of the conflict has been HMS Endurance, which needs urgent repairs in her sophisticated rudder system. A historic event, --since it was the first time a Royal Navy vessel visits Puerto Belgrano since the 1982 conflict--, has been frustrated: the Ice Patrol managed to limp away from Antarctica to be "trapped" by pickets.

The same medicine Uruguay has been suffering for almost two months. Environmentalists and residents from Gualeguaychú, at the head of one of the three bridges linking Argentina with Uruguay have been blockading all traffic to protest the construction on the Uruguayan side of the river of two pulp mills claiming water and air pollution.

However the Uruguayan government has been adamant to consider the issue until the pickets end and traffic is back to normal. The Argentine government has been reluctant to use force against peaceful pickets, spontaneously organized, and has suggested a truce: work in the plants is momentarily suspended (no more than 90 days) and pickets lifted.

In the meantime a panel of international experts will elaborate an environmental impact assessment of the pulp mills on the jointly managed and shared River Uruguay that is the natural border between the two neighbouring countries.

But pickets can't agree and are making further demands, and the Uruguayan government, with support from unions and residents who are to benefit from the pulp mills, is ever more distant from holding back the construction which represent one of the largest investments' ever in the history of the country, equivalent to almost 10% of GDP, 1.8 billion US dollars.

Pickets first emerged in Argentina in 1997 when the oil industry was privatized and many of the feather-bedded jobs were lost, particularly in small towns virtually dependent on an only main employer.

The administrations of presidents Carlos Menem and Fernando de la Rúa contained the phenomenon with the so called "work plans", unemployment insurance. The number grew to 200.000 beneficiaries by 2001, out of a population of 40 million.

However with the 2001/02 melting of the Argentine economy the pickets' outbreak expanded to metropolitan Buenos Aires and proved to be an organization with national structure that had come to stay.

Basically pickets use force or coercion, avoiding violence although not always. A majority of the Argentine population according to opinion polls rejects pickets and would like to seem them banned and dissolved.

The latest statistics show that two million people benefit from the "family plans" (dole), (potentially picketers) of which 10% are somehow politically dominated by the government or allied forces at provincial level. But there's also a hard core of approximately 20.000 radicalized pickets which regularly storm Buenos Aires, garner headlines and ample television coverage, and end intimidating public opinion. The Kirchner administration is very much aware that strong repression by anti riot police forced the previous president, Eduardo Duhalde to advance general elections.

But the Kirchner administration has also set its own limits: no emblematic building or symbol can be stormed or occupied by pickets, i.e. Government House, Congress, Plaza de Mayo, and Court Chambers, which necessarily poses the question, what about Puerto Belgrano and the Navy's pride?

Meantime the pickets' phenomenon is also being exported. Some hard core unions in Uruguay have been taking lessons, reports the Montevideo press, and a budding squatters' movement in Chile has also requested "instructors" from Argentina to teach them how to successfully organize non violent pickets.