The events of May this year in Argentina were, in their way, comparable to those of May 1968 in France. Certainly it was the most important happening in Latin America since the upheaval in Mexico at the time of the Olympic Games: a general strike, workers and students out in the streets, a complete change of face in the cabinet, and the international capitalist press calling for the overthrow of General Ongania -the man who for the past three years they have relied upon to keep their investments safe.
But as in France too, the revolution did not produce The Revolution. It is still premature to expect that. What was important was the blow to accepted thinking. Argentina has always seemed the most stable and hopeless country from a revolutionary point of view. Not for nothing was Che, an Argentinian, forced to go to to make the revolution in Cuba, and then in rather than in his native Argentina. for the first time the possibility of major ge, even eventually revolutionary change, is on the agenda.
The parallel with France should not be carried too far. The workers and students never pt together in quite the same way. Workers and students in any case play a different role in Argentina than they do in France. Students from the elite: from the upper and upper idle class. Organised workers too are an paid and better off than the cheap labour from Bolivia and raguay who fill the shanty towns of Buenos Aires and Cordoba.
Another important difference from the situation is that whereas May 1968 drove France, first under de Gaulle and now even more so under Pompidou, back into the arms of the Americans, May 1969 in Argentina Fading that country into a new nationalist ti-American position. Argentina has always strong nationalist strain, but after July 5 when the generals took over, it looked as igh the country was to be handed over lock, and barrel to foreign interests. European akers as well as American monopolies had a after the sharp reminder of May that zaniz does not have the situation the Americans are Minister, Krieger long they had regarded as has been replaced by Dagnino man with strong views about the curbing the influence and oreign firms. made the Americans so worried is of a reunification of the labour some time half the union Vandor has been in the beliet that he might I to take a leftist nationalist under Raimundo