Argentina on Edge as It Awaits Massive Protest

For days, this metropolis of 11 million people has been preparing for the worst. Come Friday, the rumors go -- or maybe even as early as today -- Argentina will be plunged into a replay of the violent protests and rioting that brought down its president a year ago.

On the fringes of the city, next to the neighborhoods called villas miseria (towns of misery), many businesses have shut down for the week lest they be sacked by hungry slum dwellers. The national Chamber of Commerce reports a boom in the sales of firearms -- mostly to worried shop owners.

Thousands of people are expected to descend on Buenos Aires beginning Friday for a massive downtown rally to demand that the government provide jobs and food for the unemployed. Organizers of the protest say they are working to prevent any violence.

Behind the fear lurks the shadow of Argentina’s most powerful leaders, including former President Carlos Menem, who ruled the country amid a flurry of scandals from 1989 to 1999. Menem is running for president again and is locked in a bitter fight for control of the ruling Peronist movement with current President Eduardo Duhalde.

In recent days, the Buenos Aires media have been filled with vague reports of political operatives offering to pay the leaders of Friday’s protest to start a riot. Many here have charged the two Peronist rivals with fomenting unrest to create a sense of chaos that each can blame on the other.

“If the Peronists don’t want looting, then there won’t be any,” said Luis D’Elia, leader of the Land and Housing Federation, one of a number of groups planning the rally.

Peronist political operatives are widely believed here to have sparked the disturbances that took the lives of 36 people and forced then-President Fernando de la Rua to resign last Dec. 20. After three other men rotated through the presidential chair, Congress appointed Duhalde president in January.

Argentina has remained mired in economic crisis since, with nearly a quarter of the work force unemployed. Unable to spark a recovery, Duhalde has said he will resign before completing his term. Early elections are scheduled for April.

Last month, Raul Castells, leader of the Independent Movement of Retired and Unemployed People, said Menem’s allies offered to pay members of his organization to start a riot. He didn’t say who, exactly, offered the payments.

The former president’s supporters quickly denied the charge.

“Mr. Castells is lying. Neither Mr. Menem nor his supporters believe in the argument that worse is better,” said a spokesman for Menem’s presidential campaign. “We don’t want chaos. What we want is legitimate rule of law.”

Other political leaders and government officials have since repeated Castells’ charges. On Nov. 30, Carlos Vilas, the undersecretary for internal security, said Menem operatives were working to destabilize impoverished Buenos Aires neighborhoods. After Menem’s supporters angrily called for Vilas’ resignation, he was fired.

Miguel Bonasso, the author of a book reconstructing last year’s political upheaval and rioting, says he believes that Menem’s supporters as well as the Duhalde government are spreading the rumors of a new round of violence to suit their own ends.

“Menem is trying to position himself as the strongman who can rescue the country from chaos,” Bonasso said. “And Duhalde can say he is being victimized by a Menem conspiracy.”

As the rumors grew in intensity last week, the U.S. State Department issued a travel advisory, warning Americans to avoid downtown Buenos Aires today and Friday.

Argentine government officials shot back that the Americans were overreacting. “Even in the moments of violence a year ago, foreigners have never been targeted and there has never been any xenophobia against any outside group,” Foreign Minister Carlos Ruckauf said.

The organizers of Friday’s rally say their intentions are purely peaceful. They are united behind a series of militant slogans: “Kick out all the politicians! Rise up, Argentines! For a people’s government!”