Seek End to Argentina’s ‘Caveman’ Mentality : Peronist Unions Strike in Rebuff to Alfonsin

Peronist unions went on strike against government economic policies Thursday in a calculated rebuff to President Raul Alfonsin’s appeal for a national consensus to promote modernization and overcome Argentina’s “caveman” mentality.

Tens of thousands of blue-collar workers snaked through downtown streets demanding higher wages and a break with Argentina’s foreign creditors.

Responding to a call from the General Confederation of Labor for a “noisy” strike, the workers marched to a cacophony of horns, whistles, bugles, cowbells and the bass drums that are the trademark of the labor-based movement founded by President Juan D. Peron, who died in 1974.

“The workers’ struggle has begun,” confederation Secretary General Saul Ubaldini promised the marchers. “We do not seek confrontation for its own sake, but the people will defend their rights.”

No major violence was reported in the 11-hour strike, which began at 1 p.m. and was restricted by union order to an area extending about 40 miles from Buenos Aires, which is home to about a third of the country’s 30 million people.

“Gorilla! Out of the house that belongs to Peron,” the marchers chanted as they passed Alfonsin’s offices in the presidential palace. A handful of demonstrators in a crowd estimated at 100,000 threw stones at the palace.

Thursday’s strike was the seventh since Alfonsin restored elected civilian government to Argentina in 1983 after seven years of military dictatorship. In his speech, Ubaldini called Alfonsin’s policies “an extension of the dictatorship.”

Austral Plan

Renewed inflation--following a year of wage and price controls under an economic program known as the Austral Plan--has stoked labor demands for increased wages. The minimum wage is equivalent to about $100 a month. Alfonsin himself is paid about $1,050 a month.

Inflation has been more than 50% so far this year despite a government promise to hold it to 28%. In August alone, prices rose 8.8%, followed by 7.2% in September.

Complaining that middle-class living standards are eroding, unions have rejected a government-ordered third-quarter wage increase of 9%. Workers on the government-owned railroads, who are striking three days this week, demand an immediate emergency raise of 30%.

The Austral Plan, widely praised by international observers and copied to some extent by Peru and Brazil, broke the back of inflation that was running at 1,000% on an annual basis when it was announced in June, 1985.

The plan’s partially successful government austerity won fresh foreign support for Alfonsin’s Social Democratic development efforts and helped make peace with creditor banks. Argentina’s foreign debt is $50 billion.

Calling his reform effort a success, Alfonsin pointed to projected growth of more than 5% in 1986 in a speech on the eve of the strike, which he denounced as “demagogic and senseless.” The economic growth, which includes increases in industrial output, exports and investment, represents a rebound from consecutive years of stagnation that have dropped real income to levels first achieved in the 1960s.

Alfonsin is urging Argentines, the best-educated and best-fed of all Latin Americans, to unite in support of economic and political modernization in the interests of strengthened democracy. He proposes not only reformed structures but a new and more audacious national vision.

In a nationwide address last week, Alfonsin assailed what he termed Argentina’s reluctance to part with old ways.

Back to the Stone Age

“For many years,” he said, “too many Argentines have perceived the outside world as a dangerous and fearful place, full of unknown threats. In a modern world of machines and cement, we have retreated spiritually to the caveman era.”

Calling for a national “convergence” of all democratic parties, Alfonsin seeks fundamental overhaul of outmoded national institutions. He asks for constitutional reform that would reduce the presidential term to four years from six and creation of an office of prime minister.

He wants to move the capital from cluttered Buenos Aires to the twin cities of Viedma and Carmen de Patagones 600 miles south in the emptiness of Patagonia, in the process increasing the power of Argentina’s 23 provinces and diminishing that of the central government.

Alfonsin also seeks to drastically reduce the economic involvement of the state, which he called an “extraordinarily over-dimensioned, super-bureaucratized, inefficient and obsolete mechanism.” Money-losing state-owned enterprises are earmarked for sale to the private sector as a means of helping to balance the government’s books.

Cautious Response

“These reforms cannot be the work of a single party or an isolated faction,” Alfonsin said. Although there is widespread support for some of his proposals, including construction of a capital in the hinterlands, overall political reaction to the president’s call has been cautious.

The Peronists, whose movement was weaned on the philosophy of fatherly, coffers-full government, reject Alfonsin’s proposals to streamline the state.

“We will not accept incorporation into any modernization conceived by foreigners outside the country,” Ubaldini said in a speech to a recent conference on debt and development, at which he shared the platform with Alfonsin.

Demanding “change in the international financial system and in treatment of the debt,” Ubaldini warned that “we workers will not allow the International Monetary Fund to load its crisis on our backs.”

Alfonsin, who is also being buffeted politically--the right is demanding an end to human rights trials--endured Thursday’s strike in silence. He is to leave today for brief state visits to Spain, the Soviet Union, France and Cuba.