A troubled Argentina

Press, 12 June 1978, Page 16

A troubled Argentina

The staging of the World Cup has brought Argentina to the fore of world attention. The military Government of Argentina apparently hoped that the country’s rather tarnished image would regain some polish when exposed to world opinion In fact world attention has been focused more strongly on, rather than diverted from, the Government's sorry record for repression, torture, use of random violence, and abuse of human rights.

Reasons, but not excuses, for that record can be found. Argentina was in a parlous state in 1976 when the military took over. The economy was on the rocks and the country tormented by terrorists, particularly of the Left. Their assassinations, kidnappings, and assaults helped to bring down the Peronist Government. The military might have used these circumstances as a mandate to clean up the mess of rampant inflation and political violence, to mediate among and try to bring together the groups into which Argentinian society had split. Instead, as earlier in neighbouring Chile, the military chose to ally itself with extremists of the Right, The counter-terrorist campaign that was launched with the connivance, if not the active support, of the country’s military leaders has proved as horrifying as the terror it was meant to eradicate.

In solving the country’s economic problems, the military regime has had no success. Argentina enjoyed good export years in 1976 and 1977, but there is little early prospect of this good fortune being repeated. In the meantinje, inflation runs at an annual rate of 120 to 200 per cent, according to different estimates, and the Argentinian

economy is a textbook case of “stagflation.”

The military leaders are hampered by internal divisions in their efforts to restrain political violence and put the economy on a sound footing. General Videla was confirmed as “primus inter pares” at the beginning of May but this was a papering-over rather than repair of the cracks in the military leadership. Nevertheless, the country’s best hope is probably that General Videla, a moderate in military terms, manages to curb the excesses of the official and semiofficial security forces and to establish some sort of dialogue with civilian leaders. Such leaders are still to be found in the harassed, middle-of-the-road Radical Party and among formerly Peronist labour union leaders.

But General Videla may find such a programme of political reconciliation hard to launch against the opposition of those military hardliners who fear that any concessions to other political groups would return Argentina to the chaos that prevailed before 1976. Should General Videla fail to solve Argentina’s problems by less rather than more repression, the military leaders may split openly and the country degenerate into a chaos worst than that of the present or past. In that event, order may return to Argentina only with the emergence of a “tribune of the people” in the Peronist mould. The Navy chief, Admiral Emilio Massera, is reputed to have his eye on such a role. But Argentina’s recent history is sad evidence that such an outcome of its present difficulties will not resolve the fundamental political and economic problems which are at the root of those difficulties.