Dignity of the people: a trip to Argentina, the real

Memory after a rampage, the Argentine filmmaker Fernando Solanas sign with the dignity of the people, released September 27, a striking documentary about Argentina after the 2001 crisis. Made from portraits of men and women struggling to get by, this film shows us the radical Argentina as it really is. Devastated course, but also hopeful, head held high ...

A country devastated by the ultra-liberalism

It was ten years ago, in other words ... a century Argentina was the envy of all Latin America. Led by the spirited Carlos Menem, the "good student of the IMF" applied to the letter the ultra-liberal catechism with the blessing of Washington and the international monetary institutions: full privatization of public sector and vital sectors of the economy (water, electricity, gas ...), layoffs of tens of thousands of civil servants, forced parity between the peso and the dollar, rising interest rates and liberalization of foreign trade ... Argentina was a kind of laboratory economics.

Result of the experiment: in 2001, the Argentine economy is reflected entirely in the hands of foreign multinationals, the state is insolvent, unemployment affects 25% of the population, more than one in two lives in Argentina below the poverty line, one hundred people a day die of hunger, wages are frozen and the ruling class, totally corrupt, place their money abroad. In December 2001, the Minister of Economy decided to freeze the accounts of small investors to pay off the colossal debts of banks. The middle class, strangled and impoverished, had enough. December 19, Argentines finally rebelled, causing the collapse of the government. Thousands of shops were looted and neighborhoods of big cities are devastated. Argentina fell into a chaos from which it is just beginning to emerge.

Argentina, real

How to Argentina, this rich country, has come here? In 2004, Fernando Solanas, a major Argentine film (The South, The Hour of fires), responded to this simple question with a magisterial documentary, Memory of a rampage, greeted by a Golden Bear d honor at the Berlin Festival. This pamphlet was demonstrating implacable social havoc of ultra-liberalism. Solanas accused Menem of Argentina and elite corruption. Multinationals and international organizations that have carved up Argentina were also not spared.

With the dignity of the people coming out in theaters September 27, Solanas has a "suite" in memory of a rampage. And we must see this film to see Argentina today, the real, which is not limited to postcards of Boca or the Perito Moreno. This wonderful choral documentary takes us and committed to meet those Argentines who have lost everything. Built between 2001 and 2005, the Dignity of the people making the floor to those excluded many (more than two Argentine below the poverty line and without health insurance), who were able to raise their heads and fight poverty with the system D. To regain their dignity, strength and that rhymes with solidarity.

In the heart of chaos

Through the portraits of Martin, Silvia, Gustavo or Carola, The Dignity of the people then traces the struggle copy of the Argentine people struggling with economic and social chaos that seems shocking, if not frightening. What do we see in Argentina in the early twenty-first century? A teacher paid 800 pesos a month to teach children who are starving, the soup kitchens where two onions used to make soup for 300 people, hospitals in a total state of disrepair for lack of funding public corridors invaded and occupied by wastes by tramps, where one makes an appointment for an operation six months in advance, people living in slums without water or electricity, the foothills of the gleaming skyscrapers of Buenos Aires .

"The people united will never be defeated. "

Fortunately, Argentines are showing an incredible life force. As the country rebuilds, after all, and not too helped by its ruling class. Thus, blocking road camps piqueteros have the power to bend several times. Hundreds of factories and businesses, the owners have abandoned in 2001, are listed by their employees in a system of self, inventing an alternative economic model. Expropriations have fought successfully in court by campesinos who sing loudly the anthem of Argentina, thus preventing the auctions of land seizures.President Nestor Kirchner, elected in 2003, made some reforms "social" (end of impunity laws, debt renegotiation, strengthening the Mercosur ...). However, out of dignity of the people, we say that the salvation of the Argentine people will only come from himself. For this film, which paints a damning also sad that the disaster in Argentina, ends on a hopeful note. "With my film, I wanted to reveal the small victories of left-to-day, the solidarity actions that demonstrate how this world can be changed," says Fernando Solanas. Two other documentaries (Argentina La Tierra Sublevada latent) are already in preparation. They will complete the fresco of the Argentine people in struggle.