Economic Genocide
by J.M. Pasquini Duran
Pagina 12, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Sept. 29,
2001
(World Press Review, December 2001)
In a frightening and dramatic fashion, the period of the pax
Americana is coming to an end. This period began in the rubble
of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of the Soviet Union. Many
share the foreboding that the world will be different, but no
one dares predict in what way. The established international order
was challenged in the worst possible way, by suicidal terrorism,
and the possible responses form an intricate maze, where the future
is counted in hours.
As the calendar moves further and further away from the ill-fated
date of Tuesday, Sept. 11, the initial reflexes of revenge and
extermination roused by all the implications of those cruel attacks,
including the wounded pride of the greatest empire of our time,
are confronting simple truth: A military response will not guarantee
final victory over the new barbarians without causing unforeseeable
counterattacks. Such a spiral of violence promises massacres unlike
any seen before, all the more since the objectives of any reprisals
are as diffuse as the fanatic organizations of death themselves,
grouped in tiny cells without a single homeland.
Aside from what President George W. Bush may affirm or deny,
the propaganda in the West has insisted on presenting the attackers
as a demented deviation that is religious in origin, which implies
that Islam is the only credo capable of generating such monsters.
This simplifies recruitment efforts for the West's enemies.
The acts of vigilante violence in the United States during
the past two weeks have already included 250 direct attacks against
members of the Arab community. "This first war of the 21st
century" has just begun to open the gates of hell. The majority
of the American people are asking themselves why there are so
many people in the world who harbor resentment and even hatred
against them. Many Americans do not know, or if they do know,
they do not want to believe that an economic genocide is claiming
a huge number of victims.
In the past decade in Latin America, the number of poor people
has increased by 11 million, reaching 211 million, according to
statistics compiled by the Economic Commission for Latin America
and the Caribbean. Added to the 89 million indigents, the total
number of poor is estimated at 300 million. In the Arab nations
there are even more poor people, and the worldwide total of poor
is in the billions. The scale of involvement by the United States
in the life of the planet has made it, whether by deed or omission,
the main agent responsible for all this incalculable want. This
does not justify the massacre of Sept. 11, but it ought to cause
us to consider how to create a better world.
Might this be an opportunity to rekindle the expectations
at the end of World War II, when the world was still capable of
enthusiastic optimism about the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights? Or is the only response collective immolation? This topic
is much too big to entrust to a single government or a single
nation. Not even Argentina, weighed down as it is with 40 consecutive
months of recession, can exempt itself from responsibility for
the future.
Those who would exercise leadership in this country must at
least make the effort to consider some facts that are plainly
visible. For example, what would have happened to Americans if
they had dismantled their own state at the advice of the International
Monetary Fund, which Argentina followed to the letter? Along with
the world trade towers, the market itself came crashing down;
suddenly full employment was replaced by massive layoffs. Without
a vigorous state to assume control, the ensuing economic and social
chaos would have unhinged the empire, with all the consequences
this might entail.
Luckily for the Americans, the zero deficit is not an absolute
value in the United States, as it is for dogmatists here at the
far southern end of the continent who are deaf and blind to any
other consideration. How much greater would the desperation have
been for those directly affected by the attacks if the best response
the White House could offer had been that "justice is already
running its course," instead of pouring all its resources
into sharing in their affliction and into punishing the attackers?
This week, after seven years and two months of waiting, the oral
arguments in the trial of those responsible for the destruction
of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Aid Association Community Center
that claimed 85 lives have finally begun. A simple review shows
the carelessness and even the irresponsibility with which Argentine
state authorities have handled this case.
The inability to appraise history critically renders the authorities
powerless to take charge of any similar situation. President Fernando
de la Rua has assured us that the state is not taking any risks,
a bold assertion in a world where not even the most powerful are
safe. The security measures that are being implemented are pathetic
imitations of the intricacies of police control in the United
States, without America's multiple resources. Moreover, the state
of Argentina is not good at copying: The current concept of security
depends on the ability to mobilize all of civil society, from
entertainers to firefighters, behind a common cause. Instead,
security is reduced to discussions about the budget and additional
power for the Armed Forces. One thing is clear: How would they
be able mobilize society if they previously defrauded and humiliated
it? In the past five years, 85 percent of the population saw its
income drop by 20-40 percent.
It suffices, therefore, to issue a certificate of dysfunction
to the single economic program that has been tormenting so many
Argentines for so many years, a program that makes every administration
the same as the previous one, as they parade past one after another,
mocking the principle of democratic alternation. The citizenry
has rightfully remained indifferent to the election campaign.
How many will be willing to die for the "financial fatherland"?
It is time to admit that the nation's real problem, just as in
the rest of Latin America, is not the poor but the rich, because
poverty is not a natural phenomenon. Rather, poverty is something
that is manufactured by a minority, just as wars are. From injustice
and ignorance emerge insecurity and disdain for life, both among
individuals and among nations. Those who are excluded in our country
now number about 40 percent of the population, while worldwide
more than half are excluded, for a total of 3.5 billion people,
70 times the number who died in World War II. How many will have
to die to preserve the old order?
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