Argentine Leftists Seized for Role in Riots : Workers’ Party Candidate Accused of Instigating Store Looting

Police dragged the former presidential candidate of a tiny far-left political party from Argentina’s version of the White House on Thursday in a roundup of leftists accused of instigating bloody food riots.

The arrest of Jorge Altamira and two other members of the Workers’ Party in the press room of the Casa Rosada (Pink House) took place shortly after the three men had visited Interior Ministry officials there to object to the seizure of two dozen other party members during the day.

Police raided the party’s national headquarters and took away boxes of files after Federal Judge Gerardo Larrambebere ordered all Workers’ Party leaders arrested and the closure of the Trotskyite party’s newspaper. He declared that there was “ prima facie evidence showing that party activists encouraged in large measure” the ransacking of markets in suburban Buenos Aires in recent days.

The Workers’ Party is on the far left of the legal political spectrum in Argentina, and Altamira obtained just 47,886 votes in the May 14 election, or 3/10ths of 1% of the votes cast. In his final campaign speech, he specifically criticized any notion of sacking food stores, and political analysts say that while the party leadership voices revolutionary rhetoric, its leaders have criticized those groups that support violence.

At least 26 leftist political activists, most of them from the Workers’ Party but a few from other parties, were detained Thursday on judges’ orders. It was unclear whether the rulings were issued under the 30-day state of siege imposed Monday by President Raul Alfonsin in response to the food riots.

As he was taken away by plainclothes security officers, Altamira shouted “This is a witch hunt!” and demanded in vain to see a written detention order.

Most areas of the country were quiet Thursday after four days of pillaging in which at least 17 people were killed, hundreds of stores sacked and more than 2,000 looters arrested.

Denied Inciting Rioters

From the outset, government officials had accused leftist activists of inciting the poor to ransack supermarkets. All left-wing parties have denied any such role and responded that the government is attempting to divert attention from the real cause--hunger, which is the result of unprecedented hyperinflation now estimated at nearly 80% for the month of May alone.

Other mainstream political parties agreed that without the serious hardships caused by a devastating economic crisis, would-be agitators could not have found anyone willing to follow them.

Luis Zamora, leader of the United Left coalition who won a seat in the lower house of Parliament, said unknown people pretending to be members of his alliance had been discovered provoking crowds, in some cases using megaphones to urge people to gather outside a store to await free food and then to incite a pillaging.

There was virtually no public criticism of the detentions of the Workers’ Party leadership, despite the contrast it posed to the nearly total respect for civil freedoms during Alfonsin’s term.

Alfonsin, who is due to hand power over to President-elect Carlos Saul Menem in December, took office in 1983 promising to respect human rights after a harsh seven-year dictatorship in which the left was harshly repressed and more than 9,000 people disappeared in the “dirty war” against left-wing repression.

Although the violence appeared to be waning except for scattered clashes that left two more dead, the economic crisis deepened as the nation’s currency, the austral, became almost impossible to obtain. Banks limited withdrawals and exchange houses stayed closed for lack of australs, which many saw as a deliberate government attempt to prevent further flight into dollars.

Businesses and employers were scrambling to find australs to pay employees, and end-of-the-month bills and food shortages worsened. Some feared that the unrest could recur if workers went unpaid and were unable to buy food.