Marijuana March 2009 in Rosario

Last Saturday it was the tenth edition of the Global Marijuana March, and Rosario wouldn't be left out of it, so an event for the legalization of the private use of cannabis was scheduled. Yours truly hasn't even had a tobacco cigarette in his life, but I do support the right of people to smoke whatever they want provided they don't hurt anyone else, so I attended just to see what it was all about.

The meeting place was the spot beside the Planetarium, within the Parque Urquiza, and the time was 3 PM. Marisa and I had a very late lunch, and we couldn't make it until after 4 PM. I had my doubts, because it was supposedly a march, i.e. people would not stay there just waiting for us to come. But there was no march, only fairly scattered groups sitting in the park. Some activists had mounted stands and were giving out pamphlets explaining what marijuana is, the kind of care you must take if you're going to smoke it or eat it, etc.; others asked for the legalization of cultivation for private use and for government-sponsored strategies of damage reduction. A guy walked around disguised as the cannabis plant, in a green foam rubber suit, and people took pictures of themselves with him.

It was sunny and warm, a typical day for this weird autumn. Like ourselves, many had brought thermos and mate, while of course more than a few others were smoking joints. It was all rather calm, with people coming and leaving all the time, while joggers ran and elderly couples strolled by the site, probably curious but not seemingly alarmed. We stayed until our mate ran out, then left for a walk down the coast.

Anything to do with cannabis is illegal in Argentina, which seems rather stupid. As in many other places, the victims are the consumers: if they're caught, they're subject to all-too-frequent police abuse, and if they become addicted, they get treated like criminals. Lots of people sell, buy and smoke marijuana in bars and discos, and the law against it only serves to set up a bribe system benefitting the police and the authorities. Of course, the ones who make money selling bad-quality drugs to the poor are elsewhere.

Banning the possession of marijuana for private use has been deemed unconstitutional several times (per Article 19 of the Constitution, such things are "exempt from the authority of magistrates"). The Supreme Court is currently withholding its position, but it seems the majority wants the repressive law to be repealed.

Big Tobacco strikes back

The tobacco company Nobleza Piccardo (part of British American Tobacco) is suing Santa Fe Province before the Supreme Court because of the provincial anti-tobacco law, they claim, has made them lose a lot of money. Specifically, they feel the articles that ban cigarette advertising go beyond the provincial state's attributions to care for public health and infringe on free expression.

The fight against smoking has a been a frequent subject in this blog. I think we're all pretty surprised at our own reception of anti-tobacco regulations in this country; besides a minority of doomsday sayers, soon reduced to nothingness, most Argentinians have accepted that it's just rude to smoke indoors in a public place, and got on with our lives. I guess that's as far as product loyalty goes — the tobacco companies must have been very disappointed to witness none of the addicts they created mobilized against the rules that forbid them from pushing their poison on teenagers and children.

The suit (a claim of unconstitutionality) was brought to the Supreme Court two months ago but we know about it now because the state attorney Jorge Barraguirre appears on the press denying the charges. Nobleza Piccardo tried to get in an amparo (sort of an injunction, to stop the law from being applied while the matter is decided) but the Court rejected it, so we must wait and see what comes out of it.

More complicated than seven votes

Last Saturday evening the mobile tax exports bill was approved by the Chamber of Deputies. Now it will go to the Senate, and if approved there it will become law.

Each politician and political pundit in Argentina has a slightly different view of the legislative debate and its result. The Kirchnerists are publicly exhilarated, though of course we don't know what they actually believe. For the hardcore K-people, it was a show of power and a triumph of loyalty. For the less sophisticated (the usefully idiotic palaeo-leftists, the Peronist Youth, and all the scum between those extremes), it was victory against the "oligarchy". For more than a few legislators, however, it was simply well-deserved relief from the strain of being pulled in several different directions — by the de facto President Néstor Kirchner, by the farmers, by the governors of agricultural provinces, by the urban middle class threatening with more cacelorazos, by our vulture-like media.

For the ones who lost, it was either the first step towards the unification of the opposition or merely one battle in a war that won't end soon. And they got a precious victory of principles: Cristina Kirchner had to subject to the will of Congress.

Mathematically, the result was simple enough: 129 to 122. The Front for Victory had to call on all of its allies for help, and some of their own defected. If three of the Río Negro deputies hadn't been offered a tax exemption that benefits the apple and pear producers of their province, the difference would've been reduced to one vote. If a certain deputy hadn't chosen to abstain at the last moment, instead of voting for the first minority, it would've been a tie. A year ago, even six months ago, Kirchnerism could've passed any law; yesterday it could've lost by a few votes, if only certain deputies hadn't been bought beforehand. That didn't happen, so the Kirchnerists won.

Néstor Kirchner won — the deputies explicitly ratified the authority of the President to set and modify export tariffs. This is so unconstitutional even a ten-year-old could take this matter as far as the Supreme Court, as it will most surely happen, but Kirchner has never been bothered by the law. The rest of the bill was changed almost beyond recognition — first it establishes a new tax and then it returns the money to 85% of the taxed. But the core of the problem, the one thing that matters to Néstor Kirchner, and which we citizens should never stop protesting — the short line that says that the President is entitled to do as she pleases with tariffs, is still there. So Kirchner can count this as a victory.

However, in a sense, it may be said he lost, too, and he's taking her wife and her party down with himself. Cristina Kirchner's approval rate has plummeted, most people don't believe she exercises power in more than symbolic fashion, the party is divided even at its core, and its alliances are coming apart. Right after Felipe Solá announced his vote against the export taxes, fellow Peronist deputy Carlos Kunkel called him "you traitor son of a bitch" so that everybody could hear. Vice-president Julio Cobos was told to "shut up" by an anonymous phone caller, echoing a previous, slightly more polite suggestion by minister Alberto Fernández. Cobos, who will be presiding the Senate next week, calmly replied he won't resign ("How could I resign, when so many people voted for me?"). Many of Kirchner's former allies, who are aligned with Cobos, will vote no to the taxes.

It's been almost four months since this all began, and everything has turned to the worse — consumer spending is down, credit rates are up to ridiculous levels, capital flight has accelerated, the high dollar-peso rate that made industrial exports competitive has had to be decreased to avoid a run on the dollar, and estimates of GDP growth have been taken down a couple of notches already. The export taxes that should've brought billions into the government's coffers are nowhere to be found, since the farmers refuse to sell, and the government is paying tens of billions per year to subsidize utilities and public services, and somehow has to honour a few additional billions of debt payments. Kirchner hates the idea of "cooling the economy", so public spending continues to rise. How will this end? One ugly word — stagflation.

English coverage:

• Al Jazeera: Argentina parliament backs tax hike
• Yahoo!News: Argentina grain tax bill clears lower house
• BBC News: Argentine MPs approve farm taxes
  

Congress making history — for good or bad

Another round in the government-vs.-farmers fight: last night the relevant committee in the lower house of Congress wrapped up a package of two different proposals to be debated by the whole Chamber of Deputies. One of them is a joint proposal of the opposition, which, after miraculously reaching an agreement, narrowed it down to "Let's suspend the President's bill for a while and see what we can do." This one was the most predictable, of course. It's in the minority, but it's quite a large minority.

There's a proposal championed by dissident Peronist, and former Buenos Aires Province governor, Felipe Solá, plus some other like him and many of the so-called Radicales K, i.e. former members of the Radical Civic Union. It's a compromise solution that maintains the mobile tax exports but decreases the amounts. If I got it correctly, this proposal doesn't count — the committee will only issue two, one for the minority and one for the majority.

The majority proposal is that of the Kirchnerists. What it basically says is "OK, we'll give you greedy farmers more subsidies, and if you ask for it using complicated forms we'll give you back some of the money we'll be unlawfully extracting from you in the first place." And then it explicitly says: "The President still has the right to do as she pleases with export taxes, no matter what the Constitution says, so all of the above is a joke."

The Kirchnerists say they have the votes it takes to pass the law — there's still some room for doubt, but wills can be bought, and they will. Needless to say, as soon as the law is passed the farmers will go back to the roads.

In the meantime, seeing how his own party turned to internal discussion (some legislators were actually thinking for themselves!), Néstor Kirchner has escalated his denunciations and threats. I won't be quoting him anymore, since it's sickening and pointless. The guy is clearly paranoid and very dangerous; in any normal country his own party would be shunning him (if only for political convenience), but Argentina being what it is, we'll have to wait until next year's elections to get rid of his influence.

This is all coming undone fast. Vice-president Julio Cobos hasn't spoken to Cristina in two weeks, since he started showing the common sense that seems to genetically absent in the Kirchners, and now even the ministers and senators tell him to shut up, which he says he won't. Cristina Kirchner seems unable to stop doing inflammatory speeches, but she can no longer get out of the safety zone. Kirchnerist shock troop commander Luis D'Elía went a bit far on his violent rants and was told to shut up and go abroad to preach his hypocritical "Revenge of the Poor" sermon, but the rest of the Kirchnerist mob is mobilized and waiting. Hebe de Bonafini was accused for inciting the take of official broadcasting media and asking for the farmers to be removed "with tear gas and sticks". Some politicians we saw as sensible, more-or-less honest representatives of the people have shown themselves as idiots and cowards at the very least, or simply as well-paid handmaids of the Kirchners.

It's painful process we're going through these days. The country is divided, and some of the worst elements in our society are working hard to widen the rifts. We've always had inept politicians, corrupt governments, economic uncertainty, but it's been long time since we had such violent popular leaders, such senseless verbal rage being poured on us without restraint. I'm optimistic, only in the sense I think it will all work out in the end. But how much time can we afford to lose?

The export tax: debate and circus

There are a lot of things to report about the the government vs. the farmers and the legislative handling of that infamous Resolución 125 (Bill No. 125 of the Executive Branch) that imposed mobile export taxes on soybeans. So many things, in fact, that I've been unable to summarize it these days. You simply can't stay on top of it all.

In short — No. 125 is being debated at the Chamber of Deputies (the lower house), although so far it's been more like a disordered assembly than a true discussion among lawmakers. Clearly as a dilatory measure, Kirchnerism staged an open meeting, where everyone who wished to do so could get in and listen. Insignificant organizations representing minuscule groups of interest demanded to be heard one after another, and the audience applauded or booed. In the meantime, different groups of politicians were lobbied or pressured in different directions, Néstor Kirchner tried to re-inforce his hateful black-and-white view of the issue, the president spoke here and there, the vice-president was rebuked and praised for his meeting with several opposition governors, and finally came... the tents.

First the farmer leader Alfredo De Angeli announced they were setting up a "green tent" on the square before Congress to mark their position. The Kirchnerists reacted quickly and set up several tents of their own. The government of Buenos Aires City ordered them to be taken down, but the Kirchnerist mob insulted the official in charge and refused to acknowledge the authority of the city government or its laws. The Federal Police was asked to intervene, but since it responds to orders of the national government, nothing happened. Yes, you got that right — the City of Buenos Aires has no police force of its own, and the police it's got simply won't enforce the law if the perpetrators are Kirchnerist militants. The government of Buenos Aires filed an accusation (the tents have no security measures and are invading public space without a permit) but a judge, prompted by a Kirchnerist deputy, granted them immunity, the reasoning being that once the tents are installed, the police would have to force the people out and that would be worse than letting them stay. Glory be to fait accompli!

There are now six Kirchnerist tents before Congress, with wooden floors, electric power and heating, plus pamphlets and plasma TV sets. The farmers finally set up their own, and the MAS (a socialist group) brought another one, favouring neither the government nor the farmers. The farmers also hired a giant inflatable bull, which was promptly named "Alfredito", while the Kirchnerists erected an inflatable penguin called "Néstor" (symbol of their leader) and supplied several of their pamphlet-handling militants with egg-shaped costumes. They're considering to bring in a mechanical bull as well. This sounds like a circus, and in a sense it is. Once the entertainment is over, however, no-one knows what might happen.

The government party would have enough legislators on both Houses to turn the presidential bill into law, but only if they were to align with the partisan line dictated by Néstor Kirchner. That won't happen. Most Deputies have had to accept that the bill won't pass unchanged, that they're going to have to concede some things. At least 30 and possibly even 40 Peronist Deputies are going to vote partially or totally against the bill, either because they know it's wrong as it is, or because their constituencies won't forgive them if they submit to Néstor K's wishes. (In fact, unless a miracle erases people's memories or typical Argentine political short-sightedness prevails, it's likely that Kirchnerism will suffer a terrible blow in the legislative elections next year. Some formerly popular politicians are already unable to walk the streets of their home towns without bodyguards.)

Many non-Peronist allies of K are unsure what to do or have already turned their backs on Kirchner, disturbed by his violent discourse and his wild accusations of widespread conspiracy against his wife the nominal president. The opposition is, as always, scattered, but they're converging on a couple of projects regarding the export taxes.

The farmers say that if Congress turns the bill into law without fundamental changes, they'll go back to the strike and take the roads again. Kirchner has told his fellow party members to raise their hands and pass the law exactly as it is. The need to find some middle ground and some compromise settlement is obvious and should be (for savvy politicians) a simple matter of time. But this is Argentina after all...

Traffic incidents

One always assumes that, barring the very few intentionally planned homicides and "crimes of passion", people who run over other people with their vehicles are not doing it on purpose in any sense, and traffic accidents are exactly that — bad things which just happen. All too human mistakes. Bad luck. Randomness. Things going bad at the wrong time.

In Argentina, things seem to "go bad" all the time, so our traffic accident record is appalling. Each Monday, on TV, we get the tally of the weekend's road casualties alongside the football match scores. The tally is never zero, or even close to it; often it's in the double digits. Sometimes it's so bad it makes the international news.

In our law there are these two main alternative views of death (I guess this must be the case in other places as well, though the names and details are sure to vary) that apply to traffic accidents. If you killed the other person on purpose — e.g. you drove as carelessly as to make certain that you'd eventually hit someone, or else (as in most cases) you killed the other person truly by accident. You're still guilty in the latter case (unless the victim jumped in front of the car or something like that), but the legal consequences aren't as great as in the other scenario.

Most drivers don't want to run over people and kill them in the streets; yet most drivers in Argentina often drive as if they didn't mind killing themselves and as many other human beings in the process. At the very least they bypass traffic laws that they deem unimportant, put too much trust in their driving skills, and justify themselves with the lamest excuse in the book: "everyone else does it". Think about it, and you'll find it very difficult to continue referring to those dead and maimed human beings as victims of "traffic accidents".

At last the law is doing something about this. A prosecutor is asking the court to change the accusation against a driver who hit a motorbiker and killed him, last November, in Casilda (45 km west of Rosario). The driver was being investigated under the charge of homicidio culposo (that's more-or-less involuntary manslaughter), but the prosecutor wants him to be charged with homicidio doloso (which implies a degree of willfulness, and stops short of plain murder). This is a new one — and it might establish a precedent. Jurisprudence is not as important in our system (which is one of civil law, rather than the common law system of Britain and former British colonies), but a precedent like this cannot be dismissed.

And just what did the driver do? He drove his pickup truck, at about 9 AM on Sunday, down an avenue, at over 70 km/h. He hit a motorbike he couldn't not have seen, and dragged it (and its driver) more than 20 meters. He didn't try to dodge, and he didn't brake. He was in a hurry because he had a punctured tire and wanted to get it fixed before it was completely flat. And he was reported to have been under the influence of alcohol at around 7 AM. We don't know if the report was accurate, because he didn't allow the police to test him — which made his troubles worse.

We simply can't allow ourselves to keep this "shit happens" stance regarding traffic. Motor vehicles are potentially lethal weapons; and as with weapons, it holds true that "cars don't kill people; people do". Maybe this guy gets the sentence he deserves. What I really hope, though, is that this serves a purpose. Let careless drivers think twice about what they do, and the rest of us should stop thinking of traffic accidents as something akin to the weather. They're not random, and neither (as many seem to believe) is a tendency to recklessness embedded in our genes. "We Argentinians are like that, plain and simple", "there's nothing to do about it", "this country will never change" is bullshit.

Civil unions in Santa Fe... coming soon?

Santa Fe Province is about to join the civilized world, in at least one respect, by passing a law of sex-independent civil unions. You might be familiar with this concept if you live in one of the (still comparatively few) countries that grant special status to couples, no matter whether hetero- or homosexual, who choose to register themselves as such before the state.

In Argentina this matter hasn't been debated seriously, that I know of, on the national level. The Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, the province of Río Negro and the city of Villa Carlos Paz in Córdoba recognize civil unions, each with slightly different implications. A draft for a civil union law was presented to the legislature of Santa Fe, but it was cajoneado — figuratively sent to the bottom of someone's drawer, where it expired without anyone ever caring to debate it. The legislature, especially the provincial Senate, was dominated by conservatives.

The new administration has changed this context quite a bit. It's made up mostly by people who worked in connection to past municipal administrations of Rosario, and their progressive ideas are also supported by a majority of the opposition. The homosexual community has renewed its demands for the recognition of same-sex couples, and now they know they're close to reaching one major goal, with a law project designed by two of their own lawyers, which would give even more comprehensive rights to registered couples (regardless of sex) than those acknowledged by the equivalent law in Buenos Aires City, such as a pension when one's partner dies, and family leave when s/he gets sick. This will hold for all municipal and public employees within the province, in principle, but the project says these are rights that must be acknowledged, as well, by all companies and organizations based in Santa Fe.

The law, they say, should be passed about four months from now, in the political fullness of time, once the debate is done and the paperwork is in place. This is good news not only for homosexuals, but for the many heterosexual couples who won't marry just yet, but feel they're serious enough. The best thing, so far, is that none of that "threat to the institution of marriage" crap that is commonly spread around whenever this discussion is opened, in many countries, hasn't flowed from the pulpits or from behind the desks of bigoted politicians. I'll keep you updated on this.

PS: ... And here comes the first update. A male homosexual couple is going to employ an interesting tactic for effect — they're going to Rosario's Registro Civil (that's where people get married and receive the corresponding papers) at the Center District, and they'll ask to be married. Of course they expect to be rejected, since the Civil Code only recognizes man–woman couples. Once the rejection is formally given, they'll go to the courts to denounce the marriage law as discrimination and ask a judge to suspend its application (this is called recurso de amparo). This is all done ostensibly to bring the issue to media and public attention.

Well, the interesting bit is that, to show their commitment to end discrimination and support the law I mentioned above, the witnesses to the ceremony will be the President of the Provincial Chamber of Deputies, the President of the Deliberative Council of Rosario, plus two other provincial legislators and a national one.

The two guys asking to be married are really a committed couple — a graphic designer and a soon-to-be accountant who've lived together for 5 years. I say this because some may think this is all for show, or merely a private interest group allied with some leftist politicians trying to advertise their "perverted" ideas of same-sex marriage. How can it hurt someone or something to have a couple get their partnership confirmed by the law, I can't conceive, and this is what these guys (people with real faces, with real lives) are trying to show.

PPS: The judge correctly told the wannabe husband-and-husband their thing was a no-no according to the law, before authorities of INADI (the National Institute against Discrimination) and the Sexual Diversity Department of the municipality.

Almost tobacco-free

Good news for us fresh air breathers: non-smoking regulations are respected in most places in Rosario. Research conducted in May, in 34 enclosed public sites (bars, restaurants, pubs and universities), showed that 87% of them had a very good air quality, and that smoke-free rules were kept. The remaining 13% are mostly nightclubs, where controls are non-existent and self-restraint has apparently not caught on. People also smoke in university rooms during class.

I'm surprised at how people have become accustomed, in a matter of months, not to smoke in enclosed spaces. In a country where flaunting the law is done so casually, the degree of common courtesy shown by smokers even in places where no serious control is to be expected is astonishing, in a good way. Other people I've spoken to feel the same. This has to have an effect on the habit. Former chain smokers are now choosing to stay chatting with their families or friends at the table when they go to a restaurant, and only occasionally pop outside for a smoke.

The bit about the universities is depressing, though. I can more-or-less understand that you can't go around a nightclub telling people to put out their cigarettes — not in Argentina, not in the environment of most clubs. But in a classroom? And the worst offenders, I'm told, are the teachers. Of course, once the prof has lit up a cigarette, the students are likely to forget the law as well.

It's been a while since I last heard complaints from smokers. From time to time some politician or editorial journalist tries to make an issue of the alleged "freedom to smoke" that is being suppressed. But the dire consequences predicted by doomsayers ("People won't go to places where they're not allowed to smoke! The economy will collapse!") haven't materialized, and plain citizens who smoke are not demonstrating in the streets. Smokers by and large aren't mad at the law; if anything, a few I know are relieved — they don't want to quit but they've found a way to control their addiction.

I once heard a good analogy used to refute the "right to smoke" claim, even supposing secondhand smoke weren't an issue. Your right to smoke a cigarette next to someone in an enclosed place, the argument went, is about the same kind of right you have to let out a fart. Maybe it won't hurt anybody, maybe it's not anyone's business, maybe you should have the freedom to do what you want with your own body — but nobody else wants it around, and you're just nasty by forcing it on the rest of us.

The future of the abortion issue in Santa Fe

Abortion is illegal in Argentina, and due to a clear intrusion of religious belief in the Constitution of 1994, it cannot be made fully legal under any circumstances without causing a flood of judicial injunctions, unless you change the Constitution itself. But at least you can start by not treating women who abort like murderers.

This hot potato was grabbed by Miguel Ángel Cappiello, currently the Secretary of Public Health of Rosario and soon to become Minister of Health of Santa Fe, yesterday. Cappiello publicly said that he thought abortion should be decriminalized and that, for starters, women who go to public hospitals to be treated by complications of induced abortions will never again be denounced to the police. The law is unclear in this respect, since although abortion is illegal, the physician who deals with it has the right and the obligation to keep the professional secret. The physicians surveyed support Cappiello.

The platitudes of those who claim to be "on the side of life" started right away, of course. It seems as if Cappiello had suggested that mothers should be rewarded for ripping their babies apart or something like that. Unfortunately, the most influential members of the medical and legal establishments tend to be fanatically Catholic wealthy old men who have never seen or spoken to a poor woman forced to raise a child she didn't want, so they feel perfectly fine speaking of the embryo's "right to life" as if this abstract concept superseded any other consideration, and worse.

The minister-to-be is sure to apply the same measures in the province that the Socialist administrations in Rosario have been applying for years regarding contraception and planned parenthood, so abortions should decrease. Santa Fe has the means to reduce unwanted pregnancies, including an appallingly high rate of teenage pregnancies, but the government has done nothing serious about those. Although the current lame-duck governor Jorge Obeid is a left-wing Peronist (one who had ties with extreme leftist Peronists in the 1970s), his power is based on the establishment of Santa Fe City: the reactionary rich Catholics who've been really in charge since the 16th century. Current Health Minister Silvia Simoncini is just a deputy of those higher powers (and an awfully incompetent minister, too). They're going away on December 10. Good riddance!

Crimes of the Church

I wanted to write about something that was news only a week ago, and something that wasn't news anymore, though it should be. The former is the life sentence for Christian von Wernich; the latter is the lack of punishment of Edgardo Storni. They have in common the fact that they're both priests, that as such they've lived off the state (i.e. us) for decades, that they've both committed horrible crimes, and that the Church, being aware of that, has refused to condemn them in the strongest terms.

Von Wernich's crimes were far more horrible (complicity in multiple instances of kidnapping, torture and homicide), and justice has come to him at last, with a delay of thirty years. He was sentenced to a life term for his collaboration with the last dictatorship's murderers. He masqueraded as a faithful chaplain, trying to convince prisoners to confess, and providing theological support for the program of extermination carried out by the military. In his trial he expressed no regrets and he compared himself to Christ.

The top of the Catholic Church stalled long until he was sentenced, and then released a brief note saying "they were moved to pain" by von Wernich's deeds, committed "under his personal responsibility", and speaking against "hatred and resentment" (in Churchspeak, that means the victims' insistence on pursuing justice). The note didn't even hint at the well-oiled relation between the dictators and the Catholic hierarchy, and didn't show any pain for the victims, which included not only guerrilla members but also young activists and pregnant women. The bishop overseeing von Wernich didn't immediately do anything; he said he'll wait a bit — so von Wernich is still technically allowed to confess, celebrate mass, and serve as any good loyal priest.

Storni's crimes were of a wholly different nature and comparatively minor (he only sexually abused a young seminarist) but the rot runs as deep. Storni was the Archbishop of Santa Fe. When the scandal broke out, a priest called José Guntern, sent him a private letter where he told the archbishop he knew about two other instances of sexual abuse, urging Storni to confess and repent. Storni sent for 85-year-old Guntern and had his proxies sit him down before a recantation and a public notary. Guntern signed, but then filed an accusation against Storni. That came to nowhere.

Storni was first sent to Rome, he resigned as Archbishop, and then the Church gave him a nice private home in a secluded spot in Córdoba for his trouble. He's still waiting for his sentence on the abuse case, but in the meantime, the Church arranged for him to receive the retirement pension that bishops are entitled to by a law dictated during the dictatorship — over 7,000 pesos per month. The arrangement was illegal, since it's for disabled bishops over the customary retirement age of 75, and Storni is a healthy 71-year-old. The money comes from the 16.6 million pesos that the state pays the Catholic Church each year, a relic from colonial times that somehow slipped into the Constitution and that nobody has ever challenged.

Catholic bastards

I won't make an apology for the title to any Catholics out there — if the shoe fits, wear it, as the saying goes. I'm as mad as I'm sad to write again about this. Another mentally handicapped girl raped, once more the bigotry, the religious fanatism and the hypocritical despise for life of a few people in power keeping that poor girl from having a safe abortion. I wrote about abortion in Argentina once, of the stories of some girls who went through the same horror, and several other times, about why this seems not to change, ever.

A very poor 19-year-old girl in Entre Ríos, with a severe mental disability, is carrying a baby. She was raped and, through the person in charge of her care, in this case her mother, she's entitled to request an abortion, which must be done without any delays, for free, in any public hospital. But the doctors didn't want to do it, the hospital delayed the procedure, and then the inevitable: like so many other times before, some Catholic freak in the hospital staff calls some fanatic Catholic judge or whoever, and gets an injunction, a ban, or, as in this case, decides to put the unborn child under judicial custody, as if it were a minor in a risky environment.

After another court order cancelled the fetus's custody transfer, the father of the girl, who for 16 years hasn't bothered to support his many sons and daughters or even go to check them every once in a while, suddenly popped up out of nowhere and, with a devout Catholic lawyer on his back, he demanded to have custody of his daughter and stop the abortion. The father is not a wealthy man, but now he has the Catholic Church on his side (the lawyer is a well-known militant member of a Catholic lay order), and together they'll do anything to deprive the girl from his right to rid herself of the fetus, or at least, to delay the procedure as much as possible, until it's too late. They'll promise (they have promised) they'll take care of everything. Such a thing has never happened, that I know.

Mind you, you can be pro-choice or against-choice (the self-righteous "pro-life" title I won't grant you), but this is the girl's right. It's clearly, unmistakably, concisely written in the damn Argentine Penal Code, under Article 86. It's been there for ages. The framers of the Code were probably very Christian and God-fearing, but they saw that forcing a woman with a mental disability to carry a fetus to term and then raise it was cruel beyond measure, and was sure to mean horrible suffering for both. This girl has the right, and the state, through the management of the public hospital that serves the area, has the legal obligation to terminate the pregnancy. Everyone trying to block the abortion (the lawyers, the judges, the doctors, the political administration of the hospital, everyone) is acting against the law.

So how come they're not challenged? How do they get away with this? Beats me. Justice is slow and corrupt, yes, but it does come some times. Will those lawyers and judges, who value their own religious prejudices over the law and even over basic human compassion, be judged some day in turn?

Monsignor my ass

The guy you see on the picture is called José Luis Mollaghan. Now ask yourself (and reply to yourself, of course), what makes it different from you, me or anyone else on this planet? I mean, besides the fact that he's wearing a weird purple hat and speaking on a microphone very close to the top authorities of Argentina.

Well, this guy Mollaghan is called an archbishop, a word which etymology tells us means "chief overseer", or maybe "top-grade supervisor". He's in charge of checking on the local community of Catholics, an arduous job for which he was appointed by the Pope himself. The Pope is in charge of checking on us all, and I mean all the world, since he's the vicar of Christ, and he must not let us sin — since Christ was nailed to a cross 2000 years ago precisely to save us from sin, and apparently we didn't pay attention.

The Pope was found to be OK for this demanding job by an assembly of other notable Catholics called cardinals, in turn appointed by a previous Pope, under the inspiration of someone or something called the Holy Spirit, an invisible, inaudible, inodorous... thing which is one part of the three that make up the entity known as the Holy Trinity, aka the Roman Catholic God, or just "God". Who created the universe and loves us all, forever and ever, and will not let us be tortured in a lake of fire as long as we go to Mass every Sunday, et cetera.

Now it makes sense that the archbishop sits next to the president and tells us what to do, right?

If you, like me, think all of the above is farfetched, absurd and outrageously ridiculous, you'll answer "no". But then you'll be in the minority.

You're also supposed to address Mr. Mollaghan as "Monsignor", that is, "my lord" (or "milord"). Sorry, I thought all titles of nobility in Argentina had been abolished in 1813. This seems unfair to secular nobles.

Mollaghan gave a speech to the troops amassed on the celebration of Flag Day, before anyone else, even the governor or the Commander-in-Chief (that would be the President). The speech had little to do with the occasion; Flag Day was only an easy plug for a religious rant about how Argentina is a Catholic country, how the Virgin Mary wants us all to worship her 24/7, and how it should always be illegal to prefer a poor woman's life over a handful of barely differentiated cells. The authorities (a Socialist mayor, a left-leaning Peronist governor who professes to be a great friend of Fidel Castro, and other officials of a country supposedly governed by a secular Constitution) listened attently and (I guess) tried to ignore a group of women with a green banner set up before the stand who demanded free access to their reproductive rights. I was exposed to religious indoctrination and to this kind of oblivious, matter-of-factly intolerance for such a long time, this shouldn't bother me by now, but it did.

So Monsignor got to advertise his beliefs from a privileged spot during a public secular holiday, and nobody said a thing. But wait: the princes of the Church have other advantages over their secular counterparts: they get paid by the state (a bishop gets 70% of the salary of a federal judge) and their titles and other entitlements are not subject to the legal framework of Argentina — they're in fact representatives of another country, the Vatican, the only modern theocracy in the Western hemisphere, by virtue of a Concordat... signed between the Holy See and the dictatorial (i.e. illegal) government of Juan Carlos Onganía, in 1966.

The hard numbers of abortion

No less than 460,000 pregnancies are terminated each year in Argentina, most of them illegally, many under unsanitary conditions. One every eight women who abort ends up going to a hospital to deal with complications. Around 100 women a year die from abortion complications — mostly poor women, since getting a safe abortion in secret is easy but expensive.

Seventy-eight percent of women from the three largest cities in Argentina support the decriminalization of abortion up to some degree. Ninety-one percent believe that abortion should be accessible free of charge.

Rosario was the first city in the country to implement a responsible parenthood and reproductive health programme (in 1996). Santa Fe Province passed a law for that in 2001, which started working in 2002. The national state only had one in 2002, that was enforced for the first time more than a year afterwards. In 2003, Minister of Health Ginés González García said he'd support the decriminalization of abortion, and a Catholic bishop called for him to be given the biblical "millstone around the neck" treatment. A week ago, a group of pro-choice NGOs presented Congress with a project of law to legalize all abortions up to the 12th week of pregnancy.

Abortion and its legal issues have never, ever, been discussed in any form in the National Congress.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion and many are rising to voice it. It seems, however, that nobody in the high places is willing to debate those opinions, to speak their minds freely and openly present their facts and arguments. I think that silent indifference is the worst that can happen.

The fifth column in the Argentine War on Drugs

A couple of weeks ago I spotted an article about the Argentine version of the infamous "War on Drugs", the laws that govern the personal use of illegal drugs. In the best tradition of Página/12, it was called "Mejor el remedio", a pun-reversal on the first part of the saying "es peor el remedio que la enfermedad", i.e. "the cure is worse than the disease". It noted that the Argentine Penal Code gives you 1 to 6 years in prison for having illegal drugs (any drug, in any amount) on you. If the amount is small, you may get less because it's understood that you have it for yourself, i.e. you're not a dealer. But how small — that's decided at the judge's discretion.

Because it's obvious that a few grams of marijuana or cocaine cannot be the basis for a drug-selling operation, and it's ridiculous to arrest poor sods caught with such small amounts, more and more judges are turning to an alternative, which is forcing drug users to attend courses to fight their addiction. But still a person who consumes drugs will not be left alone. This has not always been so; in 1974 a law mandated punishment, but it was overturned in 1986 by the Supreme Court; in 1990 the Supreme Court (now more conservative and dominated by the infamous "automatic majority" appointed by the Master of Lies) reinstated the prohibition. The legalization of certain drugs for private therapeutical use, and possibly the liberalization of the laws for general personal use, is now winding its way up the tortous Argentine judicial system, after a recent pronouncement of the Federal Chamber, which must be ratified by the Cassation Chamber and will probably end up, again, at the feet of the Supreme Court's current, more progressive justices.

Well, that was very nice, but I let it pass and forgot about it. Yet today I'm brought back to this subject by another article, this time on the strategies that can be employed to help, rather than punish, those who abuse drugs.

There are, we learn, two NGOs working here in Rosario to do what they call "damage reduction" in the field of drug abuse. Put simply, these fellows look out for people who, through abuse of illegal drugs, put their own lives in danger, and supply them with the proper equipment, raising their awareness of security concerns. This is neither a new idea in the world, nor surprising for Argentina; this country has always been a vigorous source of organizations with great ideas that go ahead of their time, or rather, ahead of the unbelievably outdated social dogmata enforced by most lawmakers. The government seems to be always lagging behind, as if its reflexes were numbed; in the face of a failing "war", they keep on fighting unsuccessfully, with useless weapons.

The NGOs, called Centro de Estudios Avanzados en Drogadependencias y SIDA (CEADS, "Center for Advanced Studies of Drug-dependencies and AIDS") and Asociación de Reducción de Daños de Argentina (ARDA, "Damage Reduction Association of Argentina"), have launched a "sniff kit" — a sterile instrument that can be used to safely inhale cocaine or ketamine. "If we're really concerned about the health of those who cannot or will not stop consuming drugs, we need to achieve the goal that they do not die from contagious diseases or [victims of] trigger-happy [police]", says the lady in charge. The article notes, quite obviously, that "the war on drugs turned, long ago, into a war against [drug] users". CEADS also notes that all drug users are treated alike and referred to as addicts, whether they're actually addicted or not, and the penalizing the possession of drugs works for the illegal sellers and for the corrupt police.

A couple of weeks ago, coincidentally, federal judge Laura Cosidoy publicly denounced several members of the Santa Fe Provincial Police of having a well-oiled association with the drug dealers and of selling illegal stuff themselves, and noted that the very head of the local anti-drug department was in charge of doing the night rounds in certain entertainment facilities to collect bribes. Everybody from the governor down reacted with a pretense of astonishment and outrage, as if this wasn't public knowledge. Judge Cosidoy had said more or less the same (though without names) last November, on TV. The governor dismissed the provincial drug department and had a meeting with Cosidoy, but nothing else happened, since, like she herself said, "there's no political will to investigate". The accused cannot be really fired without proof, and nobody seems willing to follow Cosidoy's pointers, so the dismissal was symbolic, just for the cameras. Governor Obeid is a lame duck and it makes sense he'll try to display interest for this issue, even though he hasn't done anything about it in the last 3 years, since he's got nothing to lose and can make his party look good... We all know this'll end up getting nowhere.

I don't have an unmoveable position on this. There are arguments against de-penalizing drug use, but in general I think punishing addicts for doing what they can't help doing is unethical. Sending a person to jail in Argentina means exposing him or her to mental and physical (including sexual) abuse, inhumane living conditions, and of course, even harder drugs. The Argentine Constitution, moreover, specifically says that you can't legislate anyone's private life ("Art. 19: The private actions of men which in no way offend public order or morality, nor injure a third party, are only reserved to God and are exempted from the authority of judges").

Of course many simply want to punish drug users out of self-righteousness or a sort of moral outrage. They feel drugs are "dirty" and degrade morality. They don't seem to have learned from history. Nobody likes a junkie happily hallucinating besides oneself on a bus seat, but that junkie is a person and, as long as he doesn't try to rob you or abuse you, your arguments against his use of drugs have the same value as arguments against the colours currently in fashion.
The so-called "yuck factor" is undeniable — but you can't outlaw a thing because it offends your taste.

I've never used illegal drugs (I've never even tried cigarettes!), but I've been with people who do on occasion — pretty articulate people, most of them; people who work and function OK in society. Some did have problems, and it's quite possible that the drugs made them worse, but drugs were not the original cause. These were middle-class people with access to good-quality recreational drugs, not helpless addicts who would smoke or inhale anything. I think a combination of this access to quality drugs (for occasional users) and a strategy of damage reduction (for otherwise helpless addicts), plus full freedom for therapeutical use, would be nice to have, on a temporary basis. It can't be worse than it is now, anyway.