The Unfinished Fight Against Debt GABRIEL PASQUINI 'Globalization insights’ is a series of feature stories told by journalists from Africa, Asia and Latin America – sto­ries that give an insight into the perceptions and experi­ences of people as globalization unfolds in their environs. This project is jointly organized by the Friedrich-Ebert­Stiftung and IPS EUROPA. Alejandro Olmos was no banker, politician or economist. But for the last 18 years of his life he was obsessed by one thing: Argentina’s foreign debt. On 4 April 1982 Olmos, an intellectual of nationalist per­suasion, appeared before a judge in Buenos Aires to file a charge against what he considered to be one of the greatest crimes ever committed against his country: the acceptance of loans from international banks by the then military regime(1976-83) and the assumption by the state of debts in dollars contracted by private companies. Olmos was not a celebrity and his charge was apparently just one among many that were lodged against the dicta­torship during its final years, precipitated by the war a­gainst Britain over control of the Malvinas/Falkland Isles (2 April-14 June 1982). He did not expect any political support: he had to rely on his own resources. He dug for information, initiated measures, sought agreements with law-makers and economists, tried to interest researchers and journalists. To achieve a greater impact, he compiled all the data he had in a book printed by a small nationalist publisher: All you wanted to know about the foreign debt that they would never tell you. But to little or no avail. 18 years passed. Cancer of the pancreas began to de­vour him rapidly. He still hoped that the court might ligh­ten his last days with a ruling that would lend purpose to his life, but when he died on 24 April 2000 aged 76 his case – like a Kafka novel – was still at the procedural stage. At the time foreign debt was a cancer eating into the Argentine national economy. In 1976, when the Armed Forces took governmental power by force, the country owed 7,875 million dollars, according to Central Bank statistics. By the end of 1983, when democratic govern­ment was restored, this liability had risen to 46,000 milli­on dollars. In other words, the percentage of gross do­mestic product(GDP) accounted for by the national debt had risen from 18.9 in 1975 to 63.6 in 1983. And it has been growing ever since, as if the Argentine state had become addicted to the irresistible drug of foreign finance. Under the administration of Raúl Alfonsín(1983-89), who was forced to resign amid hyperinflation, debt increased by 44.6 percent. During the two terms of office held by Carlos Menem(1989-99), whose policy of privatizing