Posted on 06/26/2002 7:06:15 PM PDT by BlackJack
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (Reuters) - Police firing rubber bullets and tear gas canisters fought pitched battles with anti-government protesters in the Argentine capital on Wednesday, leaving two dead in the worst riots since the elected government was toppled in December.
The clashes began when riot police tried to disperse hundreds of unemployed protesters, some wearing ski masks and holding slingshots, blocking roads into the capital to decry economic policies that have deepened poverty and joblessness across Argentina.
Officials said at least 17 people were injured and 160 arrested.
As evening fell, hundreds more protesters gathered outside Congress and the presidential palace in central Buenos Aires, and the clanging of pots and pans as ordinary Argentines joined in the demonstrations recalled scenes that preceded the fall of President Fernando de la Rua amid food riots.
Argentina's caretaker leader, Eduardo Duhalde, languishing in the polls and fighting for his political future, had vowed a get-tough approach on protests as he struggled to convince a skeptical International Monetary Fund to agree to an aid pact vital to stemming a spiraling social crisis and punishing four-year recession.
Protesters, who demand government aid for everything from medicine to food and who regularly block main highways around Argentina, accused the baton-wielding police of heavy-handedness. They said more than 90 demonstrators were injured.
"We have got to end Duhalde and the IMF's reign. If we don't get change, we will have to fight on," said one picketer brandishing a catapult. Tear gas mingled with smoke from burning tires laid on the road by demonstrators.
Television footage showed the corpse of one of the two protesters shot to death on the outskirts of the capital being rushed from the scene in the back of a pickup truck, his lifeless eyes wide open. It was unclear who fired the shots.
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Most of the poor in Argentina, BTW, are immigrants or the children of immigrants from Bolivia, Paraguay, etc.
I am.
2. Immigration from poorer countries has also been a factor in the post-war era. The Lower and working classes are disproportianatly immigrants or the children of immigrants from Paraguay, Bolivia and Peru.
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