Malvinas Monument El Calafate

Posted on 18/12/2018 by Michael

Malvinas Heroes Square – El Calafate

Malvinas Monument El Calafate

El Calafate also has a Malvinas Monument, the one here being situated on the western end of the town’s main street, Avenida del Libertador, just before reaching the town limit. This is in the middle of a large square dedicated to the Heroes of the Malvinas War.

But as with the monument in Rio Gallegos I find it difficult to interpret the image and haven’t been able to get any closer to the intended meaning by speaking with local people.

Malvinas Heroes Square – El Calafate

It’s a simple monument consisting of three black, panel vertical panels (with a small space between them) – with the outline of the Islas Malvinas spreading across the top of all three. The panels are of metal and hollow and the design of the islands has been cut into the front side and with the interior of the panels being painted white the outline is clear under all conditions.

Standing in front of the panel – at about one and half life size – is a statue of a woman made from plaster on a metal frame. Her back is to the panel and she stands with her legs apart facing the main street. When I first saw this statue I thought it was one of the many attempts of Argentina to make some recognition that the country was actually stolen from the indigenous population and although nothing will be given back such statues are considered to be a form of saying sorry – a very cheap way and fundamentally meaningless.

Malvinas Heroes Square – El Calafate

However, I realised my mistake when I actually got to the square. Or then perhaps not. I just can’t understand what this woman has to do with the Malvinas and even less to do with the war of 1982. One explanation I was given was that she is supposed to represent an indigenous woman and there is a conflation of the pain and suffering of the indigenous people and the desire of Argentina to regain sovereignty of the islands.

That would make sense if not for a number of inconsistencies. She’s dressed in a mini-dress (unlike any female clothing I’ve seen of the people who lived in Patagonia before the colonisation of the southern cone in the late 19th century) and for some other inexplicable reason the strap over her right shoulder has been broken or released and this means that her right breast is exposed.

Malvinas Heroes Square – El Calafatel

This might be trying to say that she is some type of Amazon prepared to fight for what should, by rights, belong to Argentina. But that doesn’t make sense from all the historical information I’ve so far been able to pick up. The indigenous weren’t fighters. They were nomadic hunter gatherers. Yet she is depicted with a spear that is about one and half times her own height.

To me she looks more like a young woman who has had a wild Friday night out in the centre of a major British town than anything else.

Malvinas Heroes Square – El Calafate

The other inconsistency is that she is holding, in her left hand – whilst at the same time holding her spear – a very large book. What this book represents I can only surmise. If a book of remembrance this takes us even further away from the indigenous idea. In fact, any book of any kind is totally inconsistent with the period before colonisation as the local people didn’t have a written language (and one of the reasons the indigenous languages are disappearing – or have already disappeared).

As for her stance she has her head thrown back and is looking up to the heavens. That stance, together with her right hand being held high above her head in supplication, seems to indicate that she is begging from an unseen and non-existent God that help is given to obtain the liberation of the Malvinas from foreign, imperialist control.

Malvinas Heroes Square – El Calafate

So there’s a conflict between the images and the message I assume it is trying to convey

Both the woman and the panels are placed on top of a square, brick plinth painted yellow. I think the yellow is to reflect the Sun of May that sits in the centre of the Argentina flag, adding a third national colour to the blue and white. On the face of this plinth, under the feet of the woman and facing the street, are a number of plaques and the photo of an individual soldier. As in the monument in Rio Gallegos these consist of different entities making their support known to the cause being represented by the statue.

Malvinas Heroes Square – El Calafate

The statue of the woman is starting to show signs of lack of maintenance and some of the plaster is starting to separate from the metal framework. The general area is also showing signs of lack of care. This might just be a case that cuts in public expenditure mean that public spaces are being neglected – as in many countries where neo-liberal policies are being enforced in a radical manner and the public infrastructure is being neglected. The state of many public spaces in Argentina would seem to support that point of view.

Malvinas Heroes Square – El Calafate

I saw nothing that indicated the artist or the date of inauguration.

So another Argentinian statue that asks more questions that it provides answers.

Malvinas Heroes Square – El Calafate

The problem the Argentinian state – and people – face is that although there is an overwhelming feeling that ‘Las Malvinas son Argentinas’ they also know that there is no military solution (especially after Galtieri cocked it up in 1982) and although the occupation of the Malvinas on the part of the British costs a fortune (and one of the reasons the British were slowly abandoning the islanders to their own fate in the months leading up to the 1982 war) the British are also hoist by their own petard.

Any British government that were to hand the islands back to Argentina would be condemned as treasonous by a sizeable proportion of the British population and media. So it won’t happen peacefully either.

Such are the games that capitalist nation states play.

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The 1922 Patagonian Rebellion

Posted on 17/12/2018 by Michael

1922 Patagonian Peasants Rebellion Monument

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The 1922 Patagonian Rebellion

In the area that is the Estancia La Anita, just a few kilometres from the town of El Calafate, can be found a humble monument to workers who, in the 1920s rose up in opposition to the feudal and almost slave like conditions in which the workers in the countryside had to endure.

As it was Anarchist led, by those who had fled from their governments, principally in Spain and Italy, this peasants revolt ended up in the massacre of hundreds of workers, a mixture of Argentines and Chileans.

They had risen up against the owners of the estancias, taking both hostages and arms in the process. However, due to poor leadership they found themselves isolated when the national government sent in the calvary.

With the end of the 1914-1919 war the price of wool plummeted and the landowners forced the lower costs on the workforce. In August 1920 the rural workers went on strike and this led to an armed confrontation in El Cerrito (on the road between Calafate and Rio Gallegos) in January 1921.

1922 Patagonian Peasants Rebellion Monument

Hostages were taken by the rebels and this was used as an excuse by the landowners to call upon the national government to declare a state of emergency and the Army was sent from Buenos Airies. An agreement was reached between the Army, the landowners and the strikers and the army left the area but the landowners reneged and violence re-erupted. Not surprisingly the English landowners played a major role in pushing for the repression of the strikers. This was when the massacres occurred.

The Army general took a hard line and being outnumbered, outgunned and outmanoeuvred strikers gave up their arms and surrendered. This was a mistake as once unarmed they were summarily executed. Up to 1,500 were eventually shot and buried in unmarked graves.

I have no date for this monument, only really seeing it for a few seconds as the bus to the Perito Moreno stopped and an explanation given. A simple monument (with an obligatory Christian cross) but at least now, almost 100 years later, this rebellion of the workers in the countryside is being remembered on a local basis.

The uprising is known as the Patagonia Rebelde or Patagonia Trágica (Rebel Patagonia or Tragic Patagonia.)

1922 Patagonian Peasants Rebellion Monument

‘Viajero que pasas por este lugar … recuerda que a lo largo y a lo ancho de estos territorios, en tumbas sin nombres, pero no por ello olvidados, yacen aquellos que se alzaron en defensa de sus derechos. En 1922 cayeron fusilados en la Patagonia Argentina cientos de trajabadores laneros y peones rurales de diversas nacionalidades por revalarse contra condiciones de trabajo inhumano y reclamar salarios justos.

Hoy los recordamos …. aqui, en calles y escuelas, por que “La ética siempre vuelve a sugir por más que la degüuellen, la fusilen, la secuestren o la desaparazcan.” (Osvaldo Bayer)’

Translation:

Traveller, who passes this place ….. remember that throughout the width and breadth of these territories, in unmarked graves, but not for that forgotten, rest those that rose up in defence of their rights. In 1922, in the Argentine Patagonia, hundreds of shepherds and peasant workers from diverse countries were shot for rebelling against inhuman working conditions and for demanding decent wages.

“Ethics always reappear no matter how much they slay it, shoot it, kidnap it or disappear it.” Osvaldo Bayer

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Anti-cuts meeting and demonstration in La Plata

Posted on 15/12/2018 by Michael

SUTEBA meeting, La Plata

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Anti-cuts meeting and demonstration in La Plata

On Monday 3rd December I was asked if I would like to attend a meeting called by one the Buenos Aires Teachers Unions, SUTEBA (Sindicato Unificado de Trabajadores de la Educación de Buenos Aires), in the city of La Plata – about an hour’s drive from central Buenos Aires and the Legislative centre for the Buenos Aires Province. On that day the legislature was meeting to decide the budget for the coming year.

For anyone who has an interest in the attacks that social and public services are undergoing throughout the world under the auspices of the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the World Bank they will not be surprised to read that the Trade Unionists were fighting to protect public education in general (it is still free to University level in Argentina) as well as the conditions of work for the teachers and the level of support provided by the state so that a future generation can have a decent start in life.

It will also come as no surprise that the so-called leaders of the province – behind their barricaded Congress Hall with the presence of hundreds of police – decided that the best way forward for the country was to cut the education budget – as well as other social welfare schemes.

As I’ve written so many times in various posts on this blog I just cannot understand why ordinary working people still have any faith in these people, of whatever political colour, who put themselves up for election and then do what they wanted to do in the first place, i.e., maintain their privileged position in society and let the rest go to hell.

However, SUBTE still believes in the electoral process and decided to have a meeting (what they call a press conference) in front of the very barricades in the Plaza de San Martin (known as the ‘Liberator’ in many South American countries) that were protecting the legislature from the anger of those they are supposed to represent.

A meeting is a meeting – even thought the sun was shining and people were sheltering from the sun – so many demonstrations I’ve been in Britain we would have been sheltering from the rain. Pictures in the gallery will give an impression of what was taking place.

Here I want to make a couple of points.

At the very start of the meeting there was the call for a minute’s applause as we were almost exactly four months since the death (on August 2nd 2018) of a deputy director and an assistant in a school in the city of Moreno, about 36 km to the west of Buenos Aires. A faulty gas appliance, which the authorities refused to repair, blew up as they were preparing for the start of the school day. A few minutes later the room would have been full of children.

Applause for Sandra and Ruben

Immediately after the event there were demonstrations in the city by teachers, parents and students protesting that such unnecessary accidents are a direct result of government cuts in education. On the day that the local government was planning further cuts in the education budget it was important that the needless deaths of these two union members was remembered and commemorated.

But what these teachers did to celebrate and remember these fighters for workers’ interests was to have a minute’s applause – not a minute’s silence – which in any Argentinian city is an almost impossibility anyway. I have never come across this before, in any Latin American country, and don’t know if it has become the norm. But isn’t that something more positive than just standing there counting the seconds in a minute’s silence and doesn’t it actually require some level of participation?

What I also thought was strange was the fact that although the teachers had organised (and got permission) for their meeting so close to the legislature they were not really interested if other trade unions (also facing the same sort of cuts in the budget) would be taking action as well. As soon as we arrived in the city it was obvious that something else was going on as a demonstration was forming up in the Plaza Italia. But my companion didn’t know anything of this beforehand, even though she is a full time union official.

I can understand the power of spontaneity when it comes to demonstrations but I also believe in the movement working towards a common goal. In Britain, and in the rest of Europe from my knowledge, the aim is to get as many people on the streets at the same time over similar, if not the same, issues. But that doesn’t seem to be the case in Argentina.

There was a common issue which brought trade unions, neighbourhood organisations and political parties together and that was the G-20 of the week before. If it can be done (with all, the possible conflicts which I mentioned when writing about the G-20 demo) for something exceptional why isn’t it done all the time. The State is always organised and knows exactly what it is doing. Why isn’t the Argentinian working class thinking in the same way? Or am I just missing something here?

Anyway.

As the teachers meeting was coming to an end this demonstration, that had taken over the whole width of the road (it being blocked to vehicular traffic as the extra ‘protection’ for the building had made it impossible for any more than pedestrian traffic to use the street) came along.

And with such vocal force. In front was a large, flat back truck on which was installed a sound system that would have made a 60’s concert goer weep. Huge speakers amplified the words of a couple of women who were taking terms calling out the legislature for what it was. Without a break. No time for empty space. Denunciation followed denunciation. Challenge followed challenge. Insult followed insult.

The March arrives

And behind them the road was filled with fluttering banners – representing people’s political or neighbourhood allegiance rather than that of their work – which might say a lot about the difference between political activity in Argentina and a place like Britain – at least in the past.

Here I became slightly bemused. Although the amplification of the teachers meeting was more than adequate for the task in hand (there being no traffic against which it had to compete) now, getting closer and closer were these loudspeakers, bigger than me, blasting out an anti-government message and behind them groups of drummers banging out a message of ‘we are here’.

But SUTEBA had a programme and they were going to stick to it – which included a musical performance by a Chilean Andean music group – which just got drowned out by the ambient noise of this mass of people coming into the square. But this was just treated as normal by everyone but me.

So I have to accept that I was the odd one out.

The square filled up with people and the truck was parked right in front of the Legislative Building, right next to the reinforced ‘vallas’. Behind them stood ranks of riot police, taking it in turns standing out in the sun or in the shade.

A fireman’s work in Argentina

Earlier I had seen firemen running out hoses, I assume in readiness for an attack on the building on the part of the demonstrators. In Argentina the fire brigade is still part of the police. It was in Britain but I don’t realise that until I went to Liverpool and heard the term ‘fire bobbies’, meaning fire fighters. Although they still follow a very much military structure there has been a significant change in attitude over the years. Pictures from the ‘Bloody Sunday’ events in Liverpool in August 1912, during a transport strike, show the firemen of the time working with the police in ‘riot control’. This is noted in the difference in their helmets.

However, in Argentina, and in many parts of the world, there’s still a close link between fire fighting and the police and that means it’s just in a day’s work for firemen in La Plata to be running out the hoses to be used against the protestors. I assume it is also the same people who would man (and women) the water cannons on the streets.

I would like to think that the fire fighters in Britain have matured enough to become true members of the working class to refuse to carry out such tasks if called upon to do so in Britain. That would have to be taken on by the military – the scabs (strike breakers) in past fire fighters disputes. Perhaps this is one reason why we’ve never seen water cannons used against British protesters.

But, as usual, I digress.

But that Monday in La Plata the State had obviously decided that it didn’t need the bad publicity. Just as it didn’t want bad publicity at the time of the G-20 lock-down – which anyway made any confrontation extremely difficult – it was prepared to just look on, some from the roof of the Congress building.

So nothing ‘happened’ that day in La Plata.

Speeches are made denouncing budget cuts

The people complained. Speeches were made and drums were beaten in response.

The budget was cut – for all social services. As expected.

In the Clarin newspaper the following day there was no mention at all about the demonstrations. Reporters and TV crews were there to record what happened inside the legislative building but seemed blind to what was going on outside. Such is the ‘free press’ under a capitalist system.

Marches will continue to happen. Governments might or might not change. The poor will get poorer and the rich will get richer.

Everything changes but nothing changes.

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