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Buenos Aires: Argentine police in riot gear broke up a farmers' highway blockade on Saturday, briefly arresting 19 demonstrators including a prominent leader of a three-month protest against an increase in grain export taxes.
The arrests near the city of Gualeguaychu and Argentina's river border with Uruguay were broadcast on national television and threatened to inflame a tense standoff between farmers and President Cristina Fernandez's centre-left government.
Strike leader Alfredo de Angeli and the other demonstrators were later freed following noisy protests in the capital demanding their release, including one protest outside the government house. Riot police brought in water tanks and monitored the demonstration, but there were no clashes in Buenos Aires.
Cabinet chief Alberto Fernandez accused striking farmers of "generating a climate of growing public unrest."
The crisis was touched off by the president's decision this spring to raise export taxes on grains more than 10 per cent, saying farmers have benefited from rising world prices and the profits should be spread around to help poor Argentines.
Growers countered that they need to reinvest the profits and the higher taxes make it difficult for them to make a living.
Three months of bitter protests and road blockades have emptied supermarket shelves and led to shortages of meat, oil, flour, vegetables and fuel. Farm goods are the largest source of foreign currency in Argentina, which is the world's third biggest exporter of soy and corn.
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