Argentine Election Results T he July/August issue of the magazine contains a "news- brief' from Notisur on the May 1995 Argentine elections that un- critically describes the first-round victory of Carlos Satil Menem. This account does nothing to dispute the standard neoliberal interpretation of Menem's re-election as a demo- cratic mandate for IMF-style eco- nomic stabilization and reform policies. It is surprising to see NACLA inadequately contesting such an interpretation. Menem's 49% of the vote hardly translates into a popular ground- swell for neoliberal austerity. Since a record 20% of the electorate cast implicit protest ballots by not ful- filling their legal obligation to vote, only 38% of eligible voters cast ballots for Menem. Despite outspending the center-left coali- tion FREPASO by 50-to-1, Menem found it necessary to reprise his stealth campaigning tactics from 1989, when he ran as a nationalist- populist and then became a servile functionary of international fi- nance capital after the election. In the 1995 campaign, Menem post- poned an increased value-added tax until after the voting, and an- nounced a massive new investment program to "pulverize" unemploy- ment. Unfortunately, responsibility for financing the investment pro- gram was thrust upon provincial governments already experiencing fiscal crises largely due to the Menem Administration's "fiscal decentralization" efforts. Just three months after the election-when the official unemployment rate had risen to a record 18%-the Menem government admitted there was no funding available for the invest- ment scheme. Readers are invited to address letters to The Editors, NACLA Report on the Americas, 475 Riverside Drive, Suite 454, New York, NY 10115. Letters can be sent by e-mail to: NACLA @igc.apc.org. As in other recent elections in the region (such as Mexico and Brazil), voters who had racked up con- sumer debts were repeatedly warned of the consequences of fail- ing to return to power a regime that continued to abide by the neoliber- al agenda. Meanwhile, domestic and foreign capital teamed up to float the increasingly fragile Argentine banking system past the election with bail-out packages to- taling $6.7 billion. This pre-elec- tion rescue temporarily preempted the need for a currency devaluation and other Draconian austerity mea- sures that the IMF would have de- manded as a condition for further debt-service rescheduling. The most tragicomic element of the newsbrief is the claim that "vot- ers also credited Menem with re- ducing the power of the military." It is difficult to see how Menem could have "reined in the once-powerful armed forces by signing a blanket pardon for human rights abuses committed during the 1970s." Menem has praised the military's efforts to "defeat subversion," is- sued veiled threats to student pro- testers while Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo were publicly beaten by the police, and recommended the promotion of a known murderer/ torturer, Naval Officer Alfredo Astiz. The style and substance of Menem's policies hardly represent a clear departure from the authori- tarian and anti-popular agenda of the military during its rule from 1976 to 1983. Not only was Menem's success in ramming through a pro-capital economic re- form package underpinned by the military's prior repression of the popular sectors, especially orga- nized labor, but these reforms themselves go a long way towards (Continued on page 46) Erratum The picture of the anti-Castro rally in Miami on page 38 of the previous issue should have contained the following credit: Jack Kurtzllmpact Visuals. consolidating the neoliberal policy regime whose foundations were laid by the dictatorship. Paul Burkett and Donald G. Richards Department of Economics Indiana State University Terre Haute, Indiana Brazilian Land Reform Ricardo Tavares' "Land and Democracy: Reconsidering the Agrarian Question" [May/June, 1995] is a brilliant overview of the agrarian-reform debate in Brazil. His focus on social movements such as the Movement of Landless Rural Workers gives insight into the main grassroots players in the agrarian debate. It is also worth mentioning that the struggle for land reform in Latin America is now being waged on an international level. In February, 1994, Latin American peasant orga- nizations held the first Congress of Latin American Rural Workers' Organizations in Lima, Peru. Organizations participating in the Congress produced a document enti- tled "The Final Declaration of the Lima Congress," which was a pow- erful indictment of neoliberalism and North American imperialism. North American support for grassroots agrarian-reform initia- tives such as the Lima Congress can help roll back the devastating impact of neoliberal economic poli- cies. To learn more about the grass- roots struggle for land reform in Brazil, contact: O Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, Rua Ministro Godoy 1484, CEP 95915-900 Sdio Paulo-SP, Brazil. Marcelo Iraja de Araujo Hoffman Richmond, Indiana
