Nogueira, Josh Breitbart, & Chris Strohm
Since
Argentina’s economy collapsed due to an unsupportable external debt, street
protests are the mildest of the daily occurrences. Many banks have been occupied
and smashed, their windows now replaced with sheets of metal to protect the
capitalism inside from the democracy outside.
Several times a
week, in the middle of busy business days, people who have savings trapped in
the banks come down to the financial district to pound on the metal walls and
try to tear them off. It is a surreal site: men in business suits spray painting
typically anarchist slogans on street walls, women taking sledgehammers to bank
windows, and diverse groups conducting spontaneous street-sits in multiple
locations around bustling Buenos Aires.
The initial
source of anger is a government-placed corralito—or fence—on people’s bank
accounts. The corralito is a restriction on withdrawals and conversion of dollar
savings accounts into devalued government bonds as a way to secure payments to
foreign investors in the face of bankruptcy and a $140 billion debt.
If there’s one
outfit that has its fingerprints all over this country’s corpse, it’s the
International Monetary Fund (IMF). In 1991, in exchange for a loan package, the
IMF pressed Argentina to peg its peso to the U.S. dollar as a way to “stabilize
the economy.” While this plan lowered inflation, it also rendered the country’s
exports uncompetitive and required a continual influx of high-interest loans to
support it.
To pay for these,
the IMF demanded that Argentina cut social services. In September 2000, with the
economy crumbling, the IMF directed Argentina to cut salaries to civil servants
by 12 percent, pensions by 13 percent, and emergency employment program salaries
by 20 percent. The bait was a $20 billion dollar loan. The average Argentine
never saw the benefits of that conditional loan, since foreign investors milked
$27 billion out of the country in interest rates alone that year.
The IMF’s
hard-to-swallow prescriptions promised that economic production would rise and
unemployment would fall. But by early 2001, industrial production fell by 25
percent and money was flowing abroad—up to $750 million a day. Unemployment is
now at 18.3 percent and the official poverty line is at 44 percent.
Dissent
Every Friday night
in a show of national unity, families bring out their pots and pans to bang on
in the streets in protest of these economic policies (in Buenos Aires, they do
it in front of the pres- ident’s headquarters). These caserolazos are a
traditional form of Argentine protest and they contributed to the
delegitimization of ex-president Fernando De La Rua and three successive
presidents in a period of two weeks in December 2001. Many of these people have
never associated themselves with activism, much less the anti- corporate
globalization movement, leading many to believe that the uniqueness of the
Argentine rebellion is the fact that it is comprised mostly of the so-called
middle class. Some say that when the money trapped in savings accounts is
returned to these people, the rebellion will quiet down.
But since the
mass protests against foreign debt in December 2001 that saw 32 people killed by
police, the middle class has also supported the blockades of the nation’s major
trade arteries including a dock, the occupation of an oil refinery, and the
takeover of several factories, where the bosses who attempted mass firings have
been locked out and workers’ collectives have taken over the coordination of
production.
Los Piqueteros
The most militant
actions have been orchestrated by piqueteros, a loose term for describing
coalitions of poorly paid and unemployed workers, who have been striking and
protesting for months across the country. They frequently blockade the bridges
and highways leading in and out of the city, a tactic previously common only to
rural areas. During February, they temporarily shut down the city’s oil supply
by blockading the entrance to the local refinery and Dock Sud, where oil could
arrive by boat. These are the poor of Argentina who have nothing to do with the
current fiscal crises, but whose plights have come into sharp focus for the
suddenly conscious middle class.
“When women no
longer have the resources to feed their children,” says piquetera Rosa, “the
government is coming down, no matter what type of government it is.” Laura,
another piquetera says, “The middle class is fighting for something very
concrete, which is the theme of getting the deposits in the bank. But slowly
they are realizing through different politics that they have to change the
system.”
Some common
points have already been found between diverse groups who have agreed to
withhold payments for taxes, public services (until there actually are some),
and foreign debt.
A waiter or cab
driver will tell you that he has no problem with piqueteros making their voice
heard by stopping traffic with burning tires, as long as it does not get
violent. (It seems that no one here considers blockades or other forms of
property destruction, like smashing ATMs or McDonald’s windows, to be violence.)
Despite the fact that some piqueteros in the north are armed for
self-protection, there is a general sense that violence is a symptom of
weakness, especially on the part of the state.
Though the police
have mostly backed off in Buenos Aires, they continue to be violent and
aggressive elsewhere. Towards the end of February, when piqueteros marched
peacefully in the northern tourist town of Salta, police moved in with batons,
bloodying many, mostly women and children, while detaining nine people. Diego
Rojas, a delegate of the asamblea popular of San Cristobal, interviewed at the
workers’ national assembly, says “In order to stay in power, the government is
going to go against the people with blood and with repression, but we are
organizing in this way also,” he said.
The memory of the
32 people killed is very fresh and it has revived the memory of the military
dictatorship that ended less than 20 years ago, which oversaw the murder of
30,000 and the exile of 2 million. Nonetheless, many see the outpouring of anger
that forced out De La Rua on December 20 as a breakaway from the culture of
compliance that the dictatorship created in Argentina. “After the dictatorship,
any form of democracy was welcomed and accepted for the little that it was,”
says Soledad, a resident of Buenos Aires. “Until now, politics has been
something you don’t talk about. But what happened in December was so profound
that people have opened that discussion up again.”
Rebuilding
In the midst of all
the protest, Argentines have indeed found time to begin to develop alternative
institutions for material production, economic exchange, political
decision-making and information distribution.
At the Brookman
suit factory in Buenos Aires, just as in the Zanon Ceramics factory in Neuquén,
workers have taken over operations. “On December 18, 2001, while we were here
working in the factory, the bosses went out supposedly to get money to pay us.
But they never came back,” says one Brookman factory worker. “But we came back
the next day and kept up production and since then, we have been doing that,
maintaining the factory so that we maintain our jobs. Of everything we sell, we
divide the profits equally among all the people who work here.”
In Neuquén, when
the owners abandoned the Zanon plant, the largest tile factory in Latin America,
the workers rebelled. This was in October 2001, months before the general
uprising, and there was a quick response by the state. But the people of Neuquén
came out to support the workers and were able to force the police to retreat.
The workers have been operating the factory ever since; everyone fills their
same roles but without an owner or a boss. Everyone also shares equally in the
profits.
On February 9, an
assembly of hundreds of delegates representing workers, both employed and
unemployed, gathered from around the country at the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos
Aires to share experiences of similar worker takeovers and to demand that the
government respect these spaces.
Direct
Democracy
That same Sunday,
and every Sunday since December 20, thousands gathered for the Asamblea
Interbarrial at Parque Centenario. The asambleas are neighborhood meetings held
all over the country in various cities, in multiple worker-controlled factories,
and in over 80 “barrios” in Buenos Aires alone. They meet weekly to agree on a
list of demands and proposals for change and then gather at these larger
Interbarrio Asambleas where a rotating spokesperson reads off that list of
proposals to members of other asembleas, a number that reaches 4,000 or 5,000 on
any given Sunday. They vote on the proposals by show of hands.
“Que se vayan
todos”—or, “they must all leave”—best sums up the sentiment there. Seeing how
the political class has completely failed them, Argentines are putting a lot
more faith in the process of direct democracy as the tool to lift the country
out of its crisis. No one believes political authority has rushed out of
Congress and into the neighborhood gatherings, but everyone has heard a loud
creak as it shifted slightly in that direction.
“The principle
goal is to coordinate activities and put forward proposals from all the
neighborhoods to know what each other is doing and what issues are of most
concern,” says Mateo, one attendee at a local asamblea. “It is unique because it
is comprised of neighborhoods, small businesses and merchants, and a mix of the
citizenry.” Interestingly, the corralito is rarely mentioned at these meetings.
What is talked
about is the cancellation of the illegitimate foreign debt, the complete
rejection of the current political model, and the setting up of a new kind of
democracy. They talk about the health crises and how they can replenish the
shortage of medicines in hospitals; they vote on how they think the provincial
and national budgets should be allocated; and they brainstorm new forms of
organization to replace those of the crony capitalist politicians.
Beyond
Politicians
The centerpiece of
what is happening is a questioning of the regime, a questioning of all the
institutions of the bourgeois, the Congress, the Supreme Court, all of them,”
says Julia Saavedra of Isquierda Unida, a progressive political party. “That is
why the people are organizing direct democracies. That is what the asambleas
are. They want to decide for themselves what to do with the hospitals, the
budget, the external debt, the banks. These are the things they discuss, not
just that they want their money back.”
“We are
discussing how to take power from the government,” says Diego. “For example,
there was a food kitchen in our neighborhood where poor people go to eat and the
government did not give the place money. So we made a demonstration in front of
one of the corporate supermarkets and made [them] give the place hundreds of
kilos of food.” He feels that the asambleas are not going to achieve
decision-making power over how money is spent until the government is controlled
by the working class. “Until we have the power, we are going to fight.”
Argentines are
also making headway in the alternative economic realm. Pockets of microeconomic
resistance have opened up in the form of trueques—or fair trade barter
exchanges. Similar to swap meets in the United States, they have been around for
quite awhile in Buenos Aires, but since December they have increased
exponentially.
One trueque, held
twice weekly at the Mutual de Sentimiento, a building operated by a former
prisoners’ organization, has grown from a few hundred participants to a few
thousand. On Saturdays and Wednesdays, people line to get into the building and
trade everything from old video games and cheap merchandise to homemade food or
skilled services, like haircuts or cardiograms. No government money is allowed.
To facilitate the exchange, the trueque organizers have printed up credit slips
that function as a micro-currency.
The people on the
street are thinking much further ahead than just resolving what many say is just
a symptom of a much more profound political and economic crisis, and they are
not about to be pacified with some token budgetary reform. In addition, party
politics are close to banned at asambleas.
“What we are
trying to do is reclaim direct democracy. What surfaces in the
inter-neighborhood assemblies, despite the difficulties they raise in terms of
organizing them, is that we don’t have a recipe. In the 1960s and 1970s everyone
had a recipe for what should happen. Today we are recreating it as we go,
because no one has, or wants, a formula, or a hegemony of the movement in terms
of the direction it should take.”
Given that, there
remains an ardent debate about tactics. “There were 6,000 people blocking a
highway, but only 600 blocking the oil refinery,” Fabián Pierucci, of the
Unemployed Workers Movement of Solano, points out. “But the government let the
highway blockade stand and sent 1,000 police officers to clear the piqueteros
from the refinery. What does that tell you?”
Counter
Information
Media is also a
major issue. During bank protests, people often stop by corporate news agencies
to let them know that they do not get off the hook for failing to tell the real
story. “When the people fight, the media misinforms and that is a constant
reality,” says Emiliano. “The problem is that the media serves the dominating
class. They have reduced the social movement to the issue of the corralito.”
In response,
Argentines are building an alternative media network. The Argentina Independent
Media Center was less than a year old on December 19. The small group of Buenos
Aires-based volunteers involved with the project used the Indymedia network to
produce some of the only international and English-language coverage of the
situation in Argentina leading up to the explosion of December 19 and 20.
Since then, the
IMC has allied with other political media and art groups to form Argentina Arde,
which publishes a weekly paper, puts on photo exhibitions during caserolazos,
holds film screenings and info-parties, and provides puppet shows and other
entertainment at some rallies.
“The day the
country exploded, Indymedia exploded,” says Sebastian Hacher, one of the
founders of the Argentina IMC. “We are getting 20 or 30 posts a day…and there
were photos and stories and videos of what happened that day. When people
realize that anyone with a video camera can do this, or even a disposable
camera, they immediately take ownership of it.”
“I am constantly
taking news from there to share with the workers,” says Juan Carlos Acuña, Press
Secretary for the Union representing the Zanon workers. “We also post our news
to the site for people to see and to distribute to the rest of the country. We
hope it reaches the world because this is a fight of all workers.”
The site became
the place to find where and when neighborhood assemblies were meeting, to see
what resolutions had been passed, and to comment on them.
When asked what
specific lesson the international community can take from Argentina’s
experience, many say holding politicians and corporate governments accountable.
“In the United States, in Nice, Prague, and Genoa, the people didn’t fight
against the imperialist governments. I think the anti-globalization movement has
to look a little higher and not only go against the transnational corporations,
they have to go against the imperialist governments,” says Diego.
“In Argentina, we
are fighting not only against Repsol [a multinational oil corporation] but
against the government that allows Repsol to exploit the workers. I think the
youth of the United States should fight against Bush. We need you, the young
people and the working class of the United States, to go against the government
of Bush so our movement can succeed.” Z
Ana
Nogueira is a NYC-IMC reporter who helped found the Argentina IMC in 2001. Josh
Breitbart is with NYC-IMC, and Chris Strohm is with DC-IMC.