Tag: Argentina

Planet Watch

Podcast: Anti-austerity and the utopian moment

Protests against austerity and the lords of capital are erupting simultaneously in Iran, Tunisia, Sudan, Morocco, China, Peru, Honduras, Argentina and Ecuador, recalling the international protest wave of 2011. Such moments open windows of utopian possibility, but those windows inevitably seem to close as protest movements are manipulated by Great Power intrigues or derailed into ethnic or sectarian scapegoating. What can we do to keep the revolutionary flame alive, build solidarity across borders, and resist the exploitation and diversion of protest movements? Bill Weinberg explores this question on Episode One of the long-awaited CounterVortex podcast. You can listen on SoundCloud.

Southern Cone

Argentina: WTO meet collapses amid labor unrest

The 11th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization was held in Buenos Aires, marked by discord within the venue and angry protests in the streets. Inside, talks collapsed, while outside demonstrators clashed with police. The conference came amid ongoing protests against President Mauricio Macri's proposed legislation to take money from workers' pensions to close Argentina's fiscal deficit.

Southern Cone

Argentina: 48 ex-officers sentenced in ‘dirty war’

An Argentine judicial panel sentenced 29 former officials to life in prison, and 19 to between 8-25 years for murder and torture during the military junta's 1976-1983 "Dirty War." The sentencing concluded a five-year trial and represented Argentina's largest verdict to date for crimes against humanity. Collectively, the 48 defendants were charged with the deaths of 789 victims. The crimes were mostly committed at the notorious Higher Naval Mechanics School (ESMA).

Southern Cone

Argentina: judge orders arrest of former president

An Argentine judge ordered the arrest of current senator and former president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner for her alleged involvement in a cover-up of Iran’s participation in a 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish center that left 85 people dead. Kirchner is alleged to have signed a deal with the Iranian government that would allow for Argentine magistrates to interview the officials suspected of ordering the attack in Tehran rather than in Buenos Aires in an attempt to impede the investigation.

Southern Cone

Argentina: protests over ‘disappeared’ activist

Tens of thousands of Argentines held protests across the country, demanding answers one month after the disappearance of an indigenous rights activist. Demonstrators held photos of Santiago Maldonado, who was last seen when border police evicted a group of indigenous Mapuche from lands in the southern Patagonia region. In Buenos Aires, protesters converged on the Plaza de Mayo, iconic for its role in the struggle to demand justice for the "disappeared" under the military dictatorship.

Southern Cone

Argentina: ex-judges get life for crimes against humanity

A court in the Argentine province of Mendoza sentenced four former federal judges to life in prison for crimes against humanity carried out during the country's 1976-1983 dictatorship. The judges were originally tried as accomplices for failure to investigate the abduction, torture and murder of dissidents. The prosecutors eventually charged the judges as principals, arguing that their inaction led to more disappearances.

Southern Cone

Argentine judge demands Iraq arrest Iran diplomat

An Argentine federal judge called upon authorities in Iraq to arrest Iranian diplomat Ali Akbar Velayati, accused intellectual author of the 1994 bombing of Buenos Aires' Jewish center.

Southern Cone

Mapuche militants burn machinery at hydro site

Members of Mapuche Ancestral Resistance burned two excavator machines being used to build a hydro-dam in southern Argentina, demanding restoration of traditional lands.