In spite of heavy police and military patrolling, for a second consecutive day there has been sacking in the Uruguayan capital’s slums. The same scenes are repeated over and over: hundreds of displaced people sacking stores and hijacking trucks transporting food. While downtown on the third day of a government decreed banking holiday the only distinctive note are the long queues in front of ATMs, in the suburbs there is a virtual state of war. Air Force helicopters hover above and on the ground hundreds of police officers try unsuccessfully to stop popular outbreaks with clubs and bullets. The situation is such that even sports events have been suspended, because of the impossibility of offering the usual police coverage as well as for the fear that large gatherings could trigger vandalism. In the middle of all this the Minister of the Interior, paper pusher Guillermo Stirling, blames it all on a conspiracy against the institutions, private property and the Uruguayan “way of life”. Last night he expressed his firm belief that the events were “planned and organized”, although he admitted he did not know “by whom” and said that those actions want “to destabilize” and “disrupt the Uruguayan way of life”. He asserted that it’s false that people are protesting because of hunger, for “the State and many religious organizations are giving thousands of food rations”, precisely in the areas where the sacking is taking place. Today (8/3(02) the Minister still insists on the conspiracy hypothesis, explaining that “it’s a well marked strategy that provoked the events in several parts of the city and with the same methodology”. Undoubtedly paper pusher Stirling is right. For many years there has been a conspiracy against the institutions, the way of life, and now against the private property of Uruguayans. But the names of those conspirators are the International Monetary Fund, US Treasury Department, the Colorado Party and the National Party. The four of them have been making a joint effort to drive the country into the present situation, whose only beneficiaries will be international banking, foreign capital and its local lackeys. Weeks ago President Batlle accused those who warned about the possibility of precisely what is happening at this moment (“corralito” --or limitations on drawing funds from accounts-- and sacking) of “watching too much Argentine television”. Facts have demonstrated that Argentine newscasts of six months ago where a kind of futuristic telescope pointed at the Uruguayan present. Television has been making direct broadcasts, with an unusual emphasis, of sackings and its brutal repression. As sacking and repression that brought about the fall of President De La Rúa in Argentina were promoted by the Peronist right, it is hypothetically possible that there could be a political operator behind the sackings. Several operators of the government coalition are hinting that the radical left is promoting the marginal population’s direct actions. Nevertheless, there is no evident advantage for radicals in promoting the sackings. On the contrary, the radical left and the opposition in general could be the worse off due to the consequences of this anarchic rebellion of the poor against the poor. The operators of officialdom already are circulating the rumor that the government is considering a decree of “Prompt Security Measures”, a state of exception that substantially limits public freedoms, and a resource amply used by the Colorado Party in the administration prior to the dictatorship with the objective of repressing the workers’ protests. The latest measures by the coalition government and those that will be put in practice in the near future (leonine Accountability, and Financial Stability Law) will have terrible consequences for the Uruguayans’ income and quality of life, and as of this moment a strong resistance from what’s left of the working class could be expected. In the next few months society could be shaken to its very foundations. What better way to anticipate events than having the State of Exception decree ready for that moment when contradictions will explode?