Argentine President Cristina Fernandez blasted striking farmers at a rally of more than 20,000 supporters, comparing their nearly three-week-old protest to a 1976 strike that sowed chaos one month before a military coup.
Seeking to build popular opposition to the strike against a disputed export tax increase, Fernandez urged farmers to immediately end hundreds of highway blockades.
"Is it good that highways are cut so that food cannot be transported to market?'' she said angrily, adding that such pressure tactics would not work in times of democracy.
On the strike's 20th day on Tuesday, farmers manned 300 road blockades, which for weeks have strangled the flow of farm goods to cities, emptying supermarket shelves, blocking key exports and causing the biggest crisis for Fernandez since she took office in December.
Small farmers are denouncing a March 11 presidential decree that raised export taxes on soybeans from 35 percent to as much as 45 percent and slapped new duties on other farm exports to attack inflation.
On a stage outside the presidential palace, Fernandez told some 20,000 supporters, including trade unionists, laborers and social and human rights activists, that farmers imposed "food shortages" on Argentina in February 1976 -- just before "our nation's worst tragedy."
The subsequent coup led to a seven-year dictatorship.
The president accused farmers of waging a campaign through local media coverage to win over Argentine support.
"Believe me, I've never seen so many attacks on the government in such a short time, so many insults," she said.
The speech marked a return to tough talk, a day after her government offered concessions intended to benefit at least 62,000 small farmers, including transport subsidies, credits for dairy farmers and tax rebates for small soybean farmers.
Alfredo De Angelis, a hardline strike leader in Entre Rios Province, expressed anger over the charges made in the president's speech.
"We are not coup plotters," he said angrily from a barricade northeast of the capital.
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