Maybe you might learn something, Americans:
"In Argentina, squatters stake their claim to a park" by Michael Warren, Associated Press / December 25, 2010
BUENOS AIRES —A new slum is being born....
a grim reminder of the poverty that afflicts so many in Latin America....
Most are immigrants....
Nearby residents are furious. Desperate to prevent yet another slum from springing up next door, many grabbed weapons and ran into Indoamericano Park, torching tents and chanting racist slogans. The squatters fought back, and at least three have died in waves of violence since the first land seizure earlier this month, authorities said....
Squatters invaded two more green areas, a private club’s soccer field and property alongside a closed slaughterhouse.
Other activists blocked two freeways, with one group demanding housing subsidies and another protesting the land grabs. As night fell, squatters and neighbors were lobbing rocks at one another over the soccer field’s fence, with police nowhere around.
The land grabs — initially encouraged by activists who operate on the fringes of the ruling party — pose a political test for President Cristina Fernandez, a self-described leftist militant who has governed mostly by decree and who gives rousing speeches about the need to redistribute Argentina’s wealth....
Argentina’s growing economy and open-door migration policies, which Fernandez celebrates as a humanitarian contrast to the US crackdown on illegal immigration, have drawn more than 325,000 Paraguayans, 233,000 Bolivians, and 50,000 Peruvians in recent years, the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration estimates.
More than 500,000 of the 10 million residents of metropolitan Buenos Aires lack decent housing, the capital’s legislature determined this month. It’s a phenomenon repeated in capitals across Latin America, where economies generally fail to provide for people in the provinces.
The latest land takeovers in Buenos Aires came just weeks after Brazilian police moved decisively into some of Rio de Janeiro’s crowded shantytowns, trying to root out drug traffickers as part of a pacification campaign.
See: Brazilian Gender Bender
What's with all the leftist presidents down there?
The U.S. economic model of enriching the elite and f***ing the people failed, 'eh?
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"Former Argentine dictator sentenced to life in prison; Videla convicted in murder of 31 prisoners in 1976" by Michael Warren, Associated Press / December 23, 2010
BUENOS AIRES — Former dictator Jorge Videla was sentenced to life in prison yesterday for the torture and murder of 31 prisoners in 1976, the first conviction for the military junta leader in 25 years of democracy.
Americans?
As the verdicts were read in the packed courtroom, relatives of the victims applauded. Shouts of “murderers’’ were aimed at Videla and other defendants.
Videla, who led the military coup in 1976 that installed a dictatorship until 1983, is considered the architect of a crackdown that killed thousands of people accused of backing leftist guerrillas. Argentinians refer to the purge as the Dirty War.
Supported by the CIA the whole time under Operation Condor.
The judges found Videla criminally responsible for the torture and deaths of 31 prisoners who were pulled from civilian jail cells and shot as the military consolidated its power in the months after the coup. The government had covered up the crime with a story about a jail break.
Yes, dear readers, GOVERNMENTS LIE!
Videla told the court that Argentine society demanded the crackdown to prevent a Marxist revolution and complained that “terrorists’’ now run the country....
President Cristina Fernandez has encouraged new trials of former military and police figures involved in the clandestine torture centers where thousands of the regime’s opponents disappeared....
Ummm, AMERICANS?
The 31 victims in this case — many of them university students with links to armed leftist revolutionary movements — were taken to a clandestine center in Cordoba and tortured to give up information about colleagues, who were also tortured and killed, lawyers for the victims’ families said....
About 13,000 people were killed or disappeared during the dirty war, according to a government count. Human rights groups estimate the figure is actually 30,000.
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Related: I Will Cry For You, Argentina!
Argentinian Atrocities
Also see: Argentina struggles to stop sale of Peron items
