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Fwd: [surgelocal] Argentina: Diary of a revolution (Guardian / 25 Jan)
by Threehegemons
31 January 2003 02:22 UTC
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Students United for a Responsible Global Environment -
                 www.unc.edu/surge


>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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