Argentina's Dream of Equality Unfulfilled, 200 Years On

• by Marcela Valente (buenos aires)
• Monday, May 24, 2010
• Inter Press Service

Indians, slaves and gauchos (cowboys) were the largest and poorest groups in colonial society in May 1810. Today, their place is filled by the country's poor, unemployed slum dwellers and homeless people who often lack access to decent education and health care.

Manuel Belgrano, creator of Argentina's sky-blue and white flag, said at the time: 'We must provide the means so that those whose raggedness and destitution makes them almost ashamed to mix with their fellow citizens can join the social order.'

Two hundred years later, the Equipo de Sacerdotes para las Villas de Emergencia, a pastoral team of Catholic priests working in shanty towns, warned that in Argentina 'the social debt is enormous,' in a document titled 'Bicentenario e Integración Urbana' (The Bicentennial and Urban Integration).

In the poorest slums, 'basic rights are neglected, such as the right to food, access to water, to basic education, to health care and to decent housing,' the document says.

José María di Paola, a priest belonging to the team, told IPS that 'the excluded of today are those living in these slum neighbourhoods, who are unemployed or underemployed and have no access to an education that would make it possible for them to compete.

'They live on the outskirts of the city, without access to basic services, and endure the scourge of drugs and violence as well,' said di Paola, who added that the shanty towns are expanding instead of shrinking as modernisation progresses.

The priests are urging the people of Argentina to look on the bicentennial as 'a great opportunity' to carry out 'concrete actions' for the poor, from now until 2016, the 200th anniversary of Argentina's formal declaration of independence.

Several historians who agree with the priests' diagnosis and recommendations are calling for the commemoration not to be merely the occasion for pointless statues, parades and shows.

Historian Felipe Pigna, the author of '1810. La otra historia de nuestra revolución fundadora' (1810: The Other History of our Founding Revolution), urged Argentines to return to the ideals of freedom, productivity, progress and social inclusion, with justice and education for all.

'In 2010 we have the opportunity to embrace those ideas, not out of nostalgia but out of…an appreciation of their extraordinary relevance, as they could be of great service for reconstructing an inclusive model of productivity in which no one is left out,' he wrote.

The historic leaders of the revolution formed the country's first government in 1810, covering a much smaller territory than that of present-day Argentina, that was hemmed in by indigenous peoples hostile to the Spanish conquistadors and their heirs.

Not counting the indigenous people who were not a part of the new nation, its population has been estimated at 310,000 -- compared to 38 million people today -- of whom 44,000, mostly slaves and other black people, lived in the city of Buenos Aires.

It was the slaves and free blacks, the gauchos, indigenous people and 'mestizos' (people of mixed ancestry), who were forcibly recruited into the armies that spread the capital city's revolution to the provinces in a war that lasted for more than a decade.

During the centenary celebrations in 1910, poverty, hunger, malnutrition, epidemics, urban overcrowding, strikes and the complete lack of labour rights were all ignored.

Four years before the lavish commemoration, which filled the city with landmark buildings and monuments that can still be seen today, Spanish physician Juan Bialet published a report on the working classes that remains a spine-chilling read.

For his study, commissioned by the government, Bialet travelled the length and breadth of the country. In his report he highlighted the appalling working conditions of agricultural, industrial and service workers, including women and children, none of whom had any rights at all.

In the mid-20th century Argentina achieved a series of advances in labour welfare, and the dream of equality seemed almost within reach. The workers' share of national wealth was nearly 50 percent for several decades.

However, these social gains were reversed under the 1976-1983 military dictatorship. Subsequent democratic governments managed to stop or slow down the deterioration in working conditions, but now the dream of equality has faded again in the run-up to the bicentennial.

According to current estimates, more than 30 percent of Argentina's population is living below the poverty line, in spite of the country having been a model for social development in Latin America in the last century because of its progressive employment and education policies and practices.

In 1950, Argentina had the second lowest infant mortality rate in the region, but it has now fallen to fifth place according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). Every year, 9,300 infants die before their first birthday, half of them from preventable causes.

'In the last 200 years we have achieved the occupation and integration of an independent territory, but our economic modernisation is marred by inequality,' says historian Fernando Devoto in a text exhibited at the new Casa Nacional del Bicentenario (Bicentennial Cultural Centre).

'Progress and inequality, integration and conflict have marked our history. The original relatively simple society turned into a complex society,' in which the way of life of the indigenous peoples was destroyed, the text says.

'As always, it is a history of advances and retreats. The result is an unequal, but relatively integrated, society in which the variety of social demands testifies to the people's awareness of their rights,' it says.

© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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