Argentina Declares Emergency

After a day of looting and rioting that shook cities and towns across the country, President Fernando De la Rua declared a state of siege Wednesday and Argentina’s controversial finance minister resigned early today.

The events amounted to a popular uprising against a tough austerity program demanded by the International Monetary Fund as Argentina struggles to cope with a four-year recession.

Thousands of people, many of them residents of poor communities on the edge of metropolitan Buenos Aires, sacked grocery stores, attacked government buildings and engaged in running street battles with police beginning Wednesday afternoon. At least five people were killed and hundreds injured, including five police officers.

The violence and chaos shook a nation less than a generation removed from military dictatorship and where a center-left government has imposed draconian cuts in social services and now teeters on the brink of collapse.

The disturbances assumed a more organized political tone after midnight, with thousands more Buenos Aires residents, including middle-class families and senior citizens, taking to the streets early today to beat pots and pans in protest. A crowd descended on the Plaza de Mayo, site of the president’s offices. Fires were set at the Finance Ministry.

Domingo Cavallo, the minister at the center of Argentina’s belt-tightening program, tendered his resignation early today, just as riot police dispersed protesters with tear gas in central Buenos Aires.

Other Cabinet members were also expected to resign.

Although it remained unclear late Wednesday exactly what steps the government would take to quell the violence, the state of siege grants the president the right to suspend constitutional guarantees, including the right to assembly. The restrictions were to stay in force at least 30 days.

Rioting erupted in at least half a dozen cities across the country.

Just after noon on a sweltering summer day, a mob of 100 people arrived at a tiny red grocery store in San Martin, a suburb north of downtown Buenos Aires. They were determined to steal everything worth stealing--bread, beer, champagne, even the refrigerator and the Christmas tree.

As the Korean Argentine owners watched from the balcony of their apartment above the store, the crowd ripped open the locked metal shutters covering the front door and bent them back like the tops of sardine cans.

One looter filled a horse-drawn cart with bottles of soda, then rode away at a gallop as police approached.

“We’re ruined,” a 41-year-old father of three explained as he made off with an entire shelf of pastries. “I’ve been fighting for my kids all of my life and I have nothing.”

In provincial Cordoba, hundreds of miles away, protesting city employees set fires inside the municipal government building and engaged in street battles with police, who fired rubber bullets and tear gas.

De la Rua taped a TV address to the nation that aired late Wednesday. “Many enemies of the Argentine republic are taking advantage of the economic and social situation to sow discord and violence, seeking to create chaos to enable them to achieve what they could not at the ballot box,” he said.

The nationwide violence was the culmination of a month of upheaval that has seen people of all social classes take to the streets.

The government, which has been trying to avoid default on an estimated $132 billion of debt, is under intense pressure from the IMF to balance its budget in return for badly needed aid. But with revenues falling because of recession, the administration has been forced to cut social service programs and payments, hitting the poor especially hard. The unemployment rate now stands at about 18%.

For many, Wednesday’s disturbances were a frightening echo of the 1989 unrest that helped bring down President Raul Alfonsin.

Some officials of the ruling Radical Party saw a hidden hand behind the latest incidents, suggesting that the looting was organized by political opponents. But to most Argentines, they were the inevitable result of the government cutbacks.

“We’ve been asking them to give us food for six months,” said Alberto Spagnolo, a priest and leader of the Coordinator of Unemployed Workers, a community group that organized protests in suburban Buenos Aires that led to some of the first food riots Monday.

Similar incidents have taken place this week in La Plata, a seaside college town, and in large cities of the interior, including Rosario, Mendoza and Concepcion del Uruguay. In many cases, merchants have held off the looters by promising to pass out free food to the poor.

In a private meeting with reporters Wednesday afternoon, President De la Rua had said he hoped Argentines would respond to the crisis with “prudence and reflection.”

Scores of people were wounded Wednesday, including a woman in the suburban Buenos Aires community of Villa Celina. She was shot when a merchant opened fire on looters. Argentine television showed dramatic footage of another merchant, an unidentified Asian man, weeping inconsolably as dozens of men, women and children ransacked his store in Buenos Aires.

“Did you call the police?” a reporter asked him.

“Si, si,” the man answered between sobs.

The rioting followed weeks of mostly peaceful protests in response to a series of emergency measures that have limited how much money Argentines can withdraw from their bank accounts, an attempt by Cavallo to stem the flight of foreign exchange from the country.

The government has also announced it will seek a 20% reduction in next year’s budget. Government employees have already endured sharp salary cuts, as have those who receive pensions and social security payments.

On Tuesday, frustrated senior citizens briefly took over a Buenos Aires bank to protest a delay in retirement payments.

Merchants in Buenos Aires have blocked streets and banged pots and pans to protest the austerity measures, which have caused a precipitous decline in Christmas shopping.

The government announced on Dec. 3 that people could withdraw only $250 a week from bank accounts. That limit was relaxed somewhat Monday, with the government announcing a one-time exception that will allow people to draw an extra $500 for the holidays.

In San Martin, as elsewhere in the area, Wednesday’s rioting took place near the edge of a slum.

“The police are just six blocks away, but they can’t do anything,” said Ariel Celaya, 51, as he watched a group of children run past with cans of soft drinks and a bottle of whiskey.

“With the policies of this government, you could see this coming.”