The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.62/No.23           June 15, 1998 
 
 
25 And 50 Years Ago  
June 15, 1973
Late in the evening of his inauguration May 25, Argentine President Héctor Cámpora announced a sweeping amnesty of all the country's political prisoners. Faced with determined crowds of tens of thousands of demonstrators who stormed prisons demanding the immediate release of the prisoners and with rebellions inside some prisons, he immediately declared a pardon for all political prisoners, declining to wait for the new Congress to approve an amnesty law the next day.

But what really forced Cámpora to grant a total amnesty, and to move up his timetable for doing so, was the events at Villa Devoto Prison in Buenos Aires, where many political prisoners were being held.

By late afternoon May 25, the first columns of demonstrators began arriving outside the prison. The prisoners in Cellblocks 2 and 3 had already rebelled and were in control of the situation on the inside. The Buenos Aires daily La Opinión gave the following account:

"In Cellblock 2, the common prisoners had set fire to bed sheets, blankets, and clothes, which they suspended through the bars of the windows. From the street a poster could be seen that announced `Common Prisoners Back the Guerrillas.'" The common prisoners asked only that their sentences be reduced, as is customary during the granting of amnesties.

"In Cellblock 3, which had been taken over by the guerrilla prisoners, the rioters could be seen through the windows of the three floors hailing the demonstrators who were gathering in the street.

June 14, 1948
While Hitler's barbarous uprooting of whole peoples in Europe is generally known to the public, not much attention has been paid to a similar black page in recent American history. This was the shameful forced evacuation of 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry from the Pacific coast and Alaska in 1941.

While the uprooting of all the Japanese-Americans on the West Coast didn't serve the interests of military security, it did serve other interests. These were the interests that lined their pockets by stealing and swindling the property and savings of the deportees. The deportees left behind them about $200,000,000 worth of real estate; personal property and commercial property. Most of that has been gobbled up by the 200% "Americans" who cloaked their robbery in patriotism.  
 
 
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