CASE STUDIES/205one time also railed against the debt; once in power, though, he
abandoned all talk of revisiting this eminently taboo subject.
In spite of all the delays and compromises, a trial is now underway.
It is the result of a complaint lodged by an Argentinian citizen in
October 1982, while the country was still ruled by a dictatorship.
Thanks to this courageous and tireless journalist, the question of who
is responsible for the country's debt burden is now being examined
by the judicial authorities. Many of the dictatorship's economic
officials and heads of state-owned companies have had to testify at
trial hearings. Walter Klein's legal firm has been searched; most of the
documents from the period in question have been seized and placed
in safekeeping at the Central Bank. Sixteen years later, despite indis
putable proof of the guilt of people such as de Hoz and Klein, the trial
has not reached any conclusions. There is reason to fear that the
guilty parties will never be punished.
In the meantime, Argentina has been paying astronomical sums
to service its debts - which hasn't prevented the total owing from
rising. Strategic state-owned companies are now in private hands.
The central bank has not been authorised to create money since the
April 1991 Menem government decision to set up a currency board.
Under this system, the number of pesos in circulation is scrupulously
limited to a fixed ratio of the amount of hard foreign currency held by
the central bank (Cartapanis etal, 1996).
In 1976, Argentina owed S8.2 billion to foreign creditors. In 1980,
it owed S27.1 billion; in 1983, S43.5 billion; in 1993, S74.5 billion;
in 1995, S84 billion. By 1996, the country owed S96.2 billion
dollars to foreign creditors.
MEXICO
1982 to 1998: Mired in Debt
Mexico is at the heart of the 'debt crisis'. The crisis is said to have
begun in August 1982, when Mexican authorities announced that
they would no longer be able to meet their debt-service payments.
This sounded the alarm for private US banks; in the end, however, the
US federal government bailed them out. It saved a number of small
banks known as Savings and Loans, which had become heavily
involved in the Mexican economy. The Reagan administration
negotiated a number of successive agreements with Mexico in order