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Argentine Tax Plan Lands a Tough Ally
Wall Street Journal
July 15, 2008

By Matt Moffett

BUENOS AIRES -- When pro-government activist Luis D'Elia crossed paths with one of Argentina's rural antigovernment protesters at a demonstration in March, they spent only a few seconds discussing agrarian policy. Then, while the farm backer was glancing away, the stout, jowly Mr. D'Elia socked him with a right to the head.

That sucker punch -- caught by TV cameras and replayed thousands of times on YouTube -- sent a clear message: President Cristina Kirchner had Argentina's most famous street-fighting political activist in her corner.

Mr. D'Elia is the leader of one of the country's most prominent organizations of piqueteros, or picketers, groups of unemployed barrio residents who are available to join rallies on short notice. The piqueteros have served as Mrs. Kirchner's shock troops in a four-month fight over the government's move to impose a politically unpopular soybean-export tax.

Mr. D'Elia will again be on center stage Tuesday, as Buenos Aires becomes the scene of large dueling demonstrations by farmers and their middle-class allies on one side and Kirchner supporters on the other over the tax, which the Senate is expected to sanction Wednesday. Mr. D'Elia's group claims to represent 120,000 people nationwide.

The Kirchner government maintains cash stipends to low-income families, and many piqueteros are beneficiaries. Some piqueteros have also benefited from government programs such as financial support for low-income housing.

Activists such as Mr. D'Elia, 51 years old, play an important role in Argentina, where politics have played out on the street -- sometimes as a contact sport -- since the days of Evita Peron and her throngs of working-class supporters. Amid a cycle of angry street protests in 2001, Argentina had five presidents in just two weeks. One reason the leftist Mrs. Kirchner seems to be hanging on is the support from Mr. D'Elia and his thousands of troops from the barrios.

See video from an Argentine news network showing pro-government activist Luis D'Elia hitting the head of a backer of the anti-government farmers during a recent demonstration.

Last month, Mr. D'Elia suggested people get ready to defend the Kirchner government by exercising their constitutional right to take up arms. In an intemperate radio interview, Mr. D'Elia growled, "I hate whites...I hate the Argentine high classes, which have done so much harm, which have killed so many people, in the name of one flag, which is the flag of their own gain."

Tuesday's demonstrations represent a last-minute effort to sway Wednesday's Senate vote. The bill would change the tax, which had been fixed at 35%, so that it shifts in line with international prices, which have been rising in recent years.

Farm activists say the tax, which the government introduced in March, places an excessive burden on them; the government says farmers are doing very well and the government needs more revenue.

Fabian Gomez, a piquetero from the city of La Plata, an hour outside Buenos Aires, says he intends to attend the pro-government march Tuesday. He says an increased soybean tax is critical "because it helps pay programs that are important to us."

The government "may win this battle, but the Kirchners are very wounded," says Javier Corrales, a political scientist at Amherst College. He notes the government has lost the support of the middle classes and is enduring a rebellion among provincial governors. The economy has been jolted by the protests, further hurting the standing of Mrs. Kirchner and her husband, Nestor, the former president and head of the Peronist party.

That could make the government ever more dependent on Mr. D'Elia, who doesn't deny that he is a polarizing figure. "Evita was also loved and hated," he says. "In the [more affluent] northern part of the city, where they hate me, they would paint on the walls 'Viva el Cancer!' when Evita was ill."

Mr. D'Elia says he was provoked into the March punching incident by insults from the farm supporter, who denies he said anything provocative.

On Saturday, while he was preparing to go to the movies with his wife and his 15-year-old son, Mr. D'Elia hardly seemed like the two-fisted tough guy whose mere presence can send protesters scurrying in fear. "He's really very calm ... but the media demonizes him," says his son, Luis Ignacio, named for leftist leader and labor activist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who went on to become president of Brazil.

If the piqueteros hadn't taken to the streets last March, Mr. D'Elia maintains, "there would have been 70,000 pot-banging protesters in front of the presidential palace and the media would have been showing it all live." He said Mrs. Kirchner, who took office last December, would have been effectively finished as president. He echoes the view of Mrs. Kirchner and her husband that the agrarian protests amount to an attempted "coup" orchestrated by farmers, business interests and the media.

Many middle-class Argentines complain that piqueteros are layabouts, living on government welfare programs. Signs at pro-farmer protests read, "The countryside fattens calves, not piqueteros."

Mr. D'Elia's opponents point out he has been getting a teacher's salary -- about $300 a month -- even though he hasn't been employed by a school for years, and that several of his family members have government jobs. Mr. D'Elia says his work on a piquetero literacy program justifies the salary.

Buenos Aires Mayor Mauricio Macri, a member of the conservative opposition, criticized the piqueteros' impact as "pure poison." Argentine rock star Charly Garcia said Mr. D'Elia should listen to John Lennon's song "Imagine" because "hate leads nowhere." Carlos Caserio, an official from the rural state of Cordoba, said Mr. D'Elia was "delirious."

Mrs. Kirchner's administration has mostly looked the other way at Mr. D'Elia's excesses. Justice Minister Anibal Fernandez said he didn't think that Mr. D'Elia should be hitting people, but added that he also didn't like it "that D'Elia's people get hit."

Mrs. Kirchner has said that the farmers have been blocking roads and taking to the streets, just as the piqueteros do, but haven't faced the same disdain because they aren't poor.

Mr. D'Elia is a longtime leftist activist who spent much of the 1980s working on programs to obtain land rights for squatters. When Argentina's economy sunk into a deep depression in the late 1990s and the piquetero movement emerged, Mr. D'Elia became leader of a group called the Federation of Land and Homes.

Mr. D'Elia says he was outside the presidential palace in December of 2001, when violent piquetero protests forced then-President Fernando de la Rua to resign and flee the scene in a helicopter.

It wasn't until Mr. Kirchner came to power in 2003 that the government was able to regain some control over the street. Mr. Kirchner worked hard at co-opting the piqueteros with social spending.

Following the murder of a piquetero activist in 2004, Mr. D'Elia and his crew seized control of a police station for nine hours and trashed it. Mr. D'Elia accused the station of protecting the killer. The case against the piqueteros for theft and vandalism has fizzled in Argentine courts.

When Mr. Kirchner assailed Royal Dutch Shell Group's local unit for raising pump prices in 2005, Mr. D'Elia in no time organized demonstrations in front of 30 Shell filling stations.

Mr. Kirchner eventually invited Mr. D'Elia into the government, as sub-secretary of housing. But the piquetero's polemical style would cost him his job. In November of 2006, Mr. D'Elia sharply criticized an Argentine judge who issued warrants for the arrests of several Iranians allegedly involved in a 1994 terrorist attack on a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that claimed 85 lives. Mr. D'Elia said the real problem was "American-Israeli military aggression." Mr. Kirchner, who was using the Iran case to try to better relations with the U.S., showed Mr. D'Elia the door.

Opinion polls show that about 80% of Argentines have a negative view of Mr. D'Elia. But the Kirchners have never completely broken with the piquetero boss because they need him on the street in situations like the current farm crisis, analysts say. Mr. D'Elia has bragged that he has "saved the government in difficult moments."