Fwd: [surgelocal] Argentina: Diary of a revolution (Guardian / 25 Jan)

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> Students United for a Responsible Global Environment -
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> >Status:  U
> >Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2003 08:20:37 -0600 (CST)
> >Subject: Argentina: Diary of a revolution (Guardian / 25 Jan)
> >From: Sanjoy Mahajan <sanjoy@mrao.cam.ac.uk>
> >Organization: ?
> >Article: 150595
> >To: undisclosed-recipients:;
> >
> >http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4589962,00.html
> >
> >Diary of a revolution
> >
> >Activist  John Jordan gives an eyewitness account of a country working
> >to forget its past
> >
> >John Jordan
> >Saturday January 25, 2003
> >The Guardian (London)
> >
> >Rumours of a hurricane
> >
> >'We know what they are against, but what do they want?' I was tired of
> >hearing   this   refrain,   targeted  at  the  global  anti-capitalist
> >movements.  We  knew  what  we  wanted: another kind of globalisation,
> >where  life  comes before money, where direct democracy and ecological
> >sustainability  become  the  norm,  where  progress  is defined by the
> >amount  of  diversity and dignity in the world, rather than the amount
> >of cash that changes hands. The problem was that we didn't know how to
> >get  it.  Many  of  us realised that, however many economic summits we
> >protested  against or GM crops we uprooted, we weren't really bringing
> >the new worlds we were dreaming of any closer.
> >
> >In  early  2002, while the movements were trying to come to terms with
> >the fear and uncertainty caused by September 11 and the war on terror,
> >something  happened  that  no  one  expected.  Through  the movements'
> >emails,  websites  and  face-to-face  gatherings, stories emerged of a
> >land  where  politicians  were so discredited that they were ridiculed
> >wherever  they  went,  angry  middle-class  women  smashed  up  banks,
> >occupied  factories  were  run  by their workers, ordinary people held
> >meetings  to  decide how to run their neighbourhoods, and thousands of
> >unemployed  people  blocked  highways,  demanding  food  and  jobs. It
> >sounded  like France in 1968 or Spain during the civil war, and yet it
> >was  lasting  for months across a country 11 times the size of the UK,
> >in  a  state  that  was  recently  one of the world's top 20 strongest
> >economies,  a  sparkling model of emerging markets, the most compliant
> >pupil of the International Monetary Fund, with a capital city known as
> >the 'Paris of Latin America'. It was happening in Argentina.
> >
> >I  had  always  wondered  what  a real grassroots rebellion would look
> >like, how it would feel, what it would smell like. I had imagined huge
> >crowds  spontaneously  taking  to  the  streets,  the smell of teargas
> >drifting  across  barricades,  the  noise  of hundreds of thousands of
> >voices  calling for a new world as the government fled from office and
> >people  took control of their everyday lives. All of these things have
> >happened  in Argentina over the past year, inspiring activists from as
> >far  afield  as South Africa, Italy, Thailand and Belgium to visit and
> >see  how  a  crippling  economic tragedy was being transformed into an
> >extraordinary  laboratory for creating alternative economic models, to
> >witness the reinvention of politics from the bottom up.
> >
> >Last September, after several trips to Argentina, I decided to give up
> >my job and my flat in England and move there for an indefinite period,
> >convinced  that  the lessons I could learn could one day be applied to
> >the  anti-capitalist movements closer to home. It did not take me long
> >to realise that it is not the stench of tear gas or the clamour of the
> >angry  crowd,  but  the  smell  of  cooking  and the gentle chatter of
> >neighbours  meeting late into the night that best reflects the popular
> >rebellion that is taking place here.
> >
> >The piqueteros
> >
> >I  met  Carlos,  an  unemployed telephone technician in his 50s. He is
> >part  of  the  MTD  (movement  of unemployed workers), one of the most
> >radical  branches of the enormous unemployed movement, the piqueteros,
> >that  kick-started  the  rebellion  in  the  mid-1990s with their road
> >blockades  (piquetes),  in  which families blocked highways, demanding
> >unemployment  subsidies,  food  and  jobs. We met in a huge, abandoned
> >electronics  factory, which Carlos's group dreams of transforming into
> >a self-managed organic farm, clinic and media centre. He said that his
> >most  profound  political  moment since the December 2001 uprising was
> >seeing  three young piqueteros faint from hunger. 'Our main aim now is
> >to  have  enough  bread  for each other,' he said. 'After that, we can
> >concentrate on other things.'
> >
> >The Argentinian media's image of the piqueteros has been one of masked
> >youths blocking roads with burning tyres. The everyday reality is very
> >different,  but  the  smell  of  baking bread does not make headlines.
> >Their  main work is creating what they call the solidarity economy, an
> >autonomous,  non-profit  economic  system  based  on  need. During the
> >roadblocks,  they  demand a specific number of unemployment subsidies,
> >and  usually  get them from local government. The subsidies are shared
> >and  used  to  fund  community  projects.  Some piquetero groups don't
> >delegate  leaders  to  meet  officials,  but  instead  demand that the
> >officials  come  to  the  blockades  so that everyone can collectively
> >decide whether to accept any offers - they have too often seen leaders
> >and  delegates  bought  off, corrupted, killed or otherwise tainted by
> >power.
> >
> >A friend took me to an extraordinary MTD popular education session. It
> >was  held  in  a  back  yard  in  Admiralte  Brown,  a huge, sprawling
> >neighbourhood  on  the  edges  of  Buenos Aires where hope is in short
> >supply  and unemployment runs at 40-50%. Most of the participants were
> >in  their  early  20s. Despite barking dogs and small children running
> >between  chairs,  they seemed intensely focused as Lola, the energetic
> >facilitator,  ran  a workshop debating the differences between MTD and
> >capitalist forms of production.
> >
> >The  level  of debate was astounding: these young people took turns to
> >stand  up  and  eloquently  explain  how  the  different  systems  are
> >organised,  describe  their  alienating  experiences  of  working  for
> >managers,  their  disdain for profit-driven economies and the joy that
> >collective  work  provides.  After  the  workshop,  Maxi,  one  of the
> >founders  of the group, took me on a tour around his neighbourhood. He
> >listed  the  range  of activities they had organised. 'We have a group
> >building  sewage  systems  and another that helps people who only have
> >tin  roofs  put  proper  roofs on their houses. There is a press group
> >that  produces  our newsletter and makes links with the outside media.
> >We  have the Copa de Leche, which provides a glass of milk to children
> >every  day.  We have a store that distributes second-hand clothes, two
> >new bakeries, a vegetable plot and a library.'
> >
> >That  afternoon, we visited one of the two weekly assemblies that were
> >happening  simultaneously  in  Admiralte  Brown. A group of 70 or more
> >stood  in  a  circle.  They  discussed  plans  for demonstrations, the
> >problems  of  the  past  week, how to get children's shoes, and how to
> >resolve  conflicts  between  group  members.  It  was  mostly  women -
> >earlier,  Lola had told me how women were hit hardest by unemployment:
> >when there is no food on the table, no clothes for the children, it is
> >women who are at the sharp end of poverty. Often the men felt rejected
> >and  paralysed  by the loss of identity that followed unemployment, so
> >it  is  the  women  who are first to take part in roadblocks. 'Women's
> >struggle is the pillar of the movement,' Lola explained.
> >
> >After the assembly, Maxi showed me the Copa de Leche, the project that
> >distributes  milk  to  children,  housed  in  an  abandoned  municipal
> >building  next  to  a  plot  of land the piqueteros had taken down the
> >fences  that  surrounded the plot and used them to build the base of a
> >huge,  roaring  outdoor oven on the edges of a football pitch that had
> >probably  never  seen  grass  but  was  now  surrounded  by  newly-dug
> >vegetable  plots.  Fences  being pulled down and turned into something
> >practical  struck me as a beautiful metaphor for the transformation of
> >the  private  spaces  of  profit into shared tools of social change. A
> >transformation  that  involves people beginning to build the life that
> >they  want  and preparing to defend it - rather than simply protesting
> >against what they don't want. The piqueteros know you can gain nothing
> >by  winning  power. They don't want to take over the crumbling centre;
> >they  want  to reclaim the edges, bring back into their community life
> >that's  worth  living.  'We are building power, not taking it,' is how
> >Maxi described it.
> >
> >Whenever  I  asked  them  what  had  changed in their lives since they
> >became  involved  in  the  piquetero  movement,  they told me that the
> >loneliness  and isolation of unemployment and poverty had disappeared.
> >Tuti,  a  punky  21-year-old  who  is  in  charge  of  the piqueteros'
> >security,  said,  'The  biggest change was the relationship with other
> >people  in  the  neighbourhood,  the development of friendship and the
> >possibility  of  sharing  ...  When you're on a roadblock and you have
> >nothing  to  eat,  the people next to you share their food. Now I feel
> >I'm living in a large family, my neighbours are my family.'
> >
> >The assemblies
> >
> >A  football  careers  across the bank lobby and hits the steel door of
> >the  vault  with a thud. 'Goal!' scream the kids whose improvised game
> >weaves between the soup kitchen, art workshops and video screenings in
> >the new HQ of the Parque Lezama Sur assembly, an occupied bank.
> >
> >The   local  assemblies  meet  weekly,  are  particularly  popular  in
> >middle-class  areas  and  are  open  to  anyone, so long as they don't
> >represent a political party. The first one I attended involved some 40
> >people:  a  breastfeeding mother, a lawyer, a hippy in batik flares, a
> >taxi  driver,  a  nursing  student...  a  slice of Argentinian society
> >standing on a street corner, passing around a megaphone and discussing
> >how to take back control of their lives. It seemed so normal, yet this
> >was  perhaps  the  most extraordinary radical political event I'd ever
> >witnessed:  ordinary  people discussing self-management, understanding
> >direct democracy and putting it into practice.
> >
> >In  the  past  eight  months,  there has been a shift that can best be
> >described as a move away from the politics of quantity towards that of
> >quality. The various projects are bearing fruit and, most importantly,
> >establishing links between assemblies and other parts of the movement.
> >Despite  the  rising  poverty,  destitution  and  despair,  there  are
> >self-managed neighbourhood assembly projects right across the city. In
> >one  of  the  several  occupied  banks, they cook meals for 150 people
> >every  weekend,  while  on  the  top floor independent media activists
> >update  their  website.  Assemblies plant organic vegetable gardens in
> >vacant  lots,  while a self-managed clinic for workers in the occupied
> >factories is being set up.
> >
> >The  assemblies  have  also  become a stand-by citizens' force against
> >police  repression.  Last  June, while a book by asamblistas was being
> >printed  at  a  self-managed  printing  firm  in  Buenos Aires, police
> >arrived  to  evict those in the building. A call went out to the local
> >assembly  and  literally  as the book was coming off the presses, they
> >were forcing the police away and securing the building.
> >
> >In  the  age  of  global networks, it is the small-scale and the local
> >that  have  the  greatest  strength,  something  that activists in the
> >global   anti-capitalist   movement   understand   and  that  many  in
> >Argentina's social movements are practising. 'Our groups don't get big
> >and  bureaucratised,'  one  piquetera  told  me. 'They just divide and
> >multiply.' She knows the era of the giant political monster is over.
> >
> >THINKING BY DOING
> >
> >Whether  you  talk  to  a  middle-class  member  of  an assembly or an
> >unemployed  participant  in  the piquetero movement, there is a common
> >understanding   that  you  can't  change  society  with  an  overnight
> >revolution.  They  understand that change is a step-by-step process of
> >talking  and listening, of dreaming and constructing alternatives that
> >are  rooted  in  our  own neighbourhoods, and that each neighbourhood,
> >each  participant,  each  place  must be profoundly interconnected and
> >mutually supported.
> >
> >'We  can't  do it on our own, and we shouldn't do it on our own,' says
> >Fabian, a member of Mocase, the autonomous peasants' movement from the
> >northern province of Santiago de L'Estera. 'No one can construct a new
> >world  by  themselves.'  When I met Fabian, he was attending a meeting
> >trying to create a national network of the 'solidarity economy', where
> >goats  from  the  provinces  can  be swapped for bread from piqueteros
> >bakeries, seeds traded for popular education and so on.
> >
> >'The resistance can't stand still,' he says. 'It has to keep moving to
> >keep  healthy.  We  have  always made mistakes. It's important to make
> >mistakes.'  He  frowns deeply. 'At first we were like this' - his huge
> >brown  hand  jerks  like  a  rollercoaster  - 'but now we realise that
> >sustainable  change  is slow.' His hand pauses in midair and begins to
> >trace  a  gently  undulating wave, gradually rising higher and higher.
> >And  it's  that  gently undulating wave, like a gentle tide, that best
> >describes  the reinvention of popular politics that is taking place in
> >Argentina.
> >
> >'Do  you  have  any  hope  for what's happening here?' I ask Pablo, an
> >active member of his assembly.
> >
> >'I don't feel hope abstractly, only when I'm doing something do I feel
> >it,' he replies.
> >
> >In  this  economically devastated country, hope has become a verb; not
> >an  abstract noun, but a process. Politics has been freed from the icy
> >grip  of  intangible  ideologies,  liberated from abstract dreams of a
> >pending  revolution.  The  futile  dream  of  taking power and running
> >governments  has  been  abandoned,  and  politics  has returned to the
> >physical  processes  of  everyday  life,  to  the  necessities  of the
> >immediate moment. In Argentina, politics thinks by doing.
> >
> >-  John Jordan is an anti-globalisation activist, and is a member of a
> >collective  currently  working  on  a  book,  We  Are  Everywhere: The
> >Irresistible  Rise  Of  Global  Anti-capitalism, to be published later
> >this year by Verso (weareeverywhere.org).
> >
>
>
>
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