How to understand what happened on [19 and 20 December 2001]? Was it a failed outburst of the slogan, “They all must go,” that was never concretized? A problem only of the savers? Or is it a point of inflection in history, in the political culture of the country, and with crucial scope for all of what has happened in this decade that is now ending, and in so much of what is continuing to occur?1
This passage, by writer and movement actor Raúl Zibechi, on the tenth anniversary of the popular rebellion in Argentina, encapsulates not only the central questions of the importance and longevity of the horizontal organizing after the popular rebellion, but also suggests larger questions of how one thinks about social movements, societies in movement, the meaning of success, and revolutionary change. These are some of the very same questions that are today posed to the new wave of movements; many of the lessons learned in Argentina are relevant to those new movements as they take their next steps.
The movement in Argentina precedes these movements by a decade. On December 19, 2001, something broke. After a decade of ever-increasing financial crisis, growing poverty, unemployment, structural adjustment policies, and the response of the government freezing all bank accounts indefinitely, the people of Argentina said ¡Ya Basta! It began with a few hundred individuals going out into the street, banging on pots and pans—cacerolando—and then the hundreds turned into thousands, and then hundreds of thousands. There were no political parties, banners, or slogans on placards—people self-organized and mobilized day after day. Within two weeks, four governments had resigned, the minister of the economy being the first to flee, on December 19, with the president following the next day. Despite the state of siege being declared on December 19, even more people came into the streets, breaking with a past full of fear. And then the sound of the cacerolazo found a voice, a song. It was a shout of rejection, and a song of affirmation. ¡Que Se Vayan Todos! was sung throughout the streets, spreading everywhere.
Ten years later, the movement continues, and has struggled a great deal with the question of how to maintain horizontal relationships and autonomy in an ever-changing political climate—and in particular how to relate to the state when the desire is to construct outside of it. The movements are of course different, and many of the formations are not in existence any longer, but that does mean the movement stopped existing. Just as, in Spain, people refer to the continued organizing as having the DNA of the 15-M, in Argentina they speak of being hijos (“children”) of December 19 and 20, 2001. Hopefully these reflections will give some glimpses of what is possible for organizing today, as well as perhaps help avoid some of the pitfalls the movements faced in Argentina.
The movement of 2001 was as diverse as its many participants. Many projects were born of the rebellion of December 19 and 20—neighborhood assemblies, art and media collectives, collective kitchens—while others existed previously, in incipient forms, and blossomed after the rebellions, such as the recuperated workplaces, and indigenous and unemployed movements.
The neighborhood assemblies are in many ways the most similar to those of Occupy and the similar movements of the squares around the world—especially in the first months of the occupations of plazas and town centers.
People in the neighborhood assemblies first met to explore new ways of supporting one another and meeting their basic needs. People in the streets began talking to one another, saw the need to gather, and began to do so—street corner by street corner, park by park, intersection by intersection. Everyone I met reflected on this experience as something totally new and spontaneous. “This did not obey an ideological decision. People simply met on a street corner in their neighborhood, with other neighbors who had participated in the cacerolazos,” explained Pablo, a participant in the neighborhood assembly of Colegiales in Buenos Aires.
In my assembly, in the neighborhood of Colegiales—and I know many other cases—someone simply wrote on the sidewalk, in chalk, “Neighbors let’s meet here Thursday night,” period. Who wrote this, no one knows. In the first meeting there were maybe fifteen people, and by the next week it was triple. Why did it increase in this way? It was not an ideological decision, or an intellectual, academic, or political one. It is like asking why did the people go out to cacerolas. It was the most spontaneous and elemental thing, to go out in the street and meet others on the corner.2
In each neighborhood the assemblies worked, and many continue to work, on a variety of projects, including helping to facilitate barter networks, creating popular kitchens, providing alternative medicine, planting organic gardens, and sometimes taking over buildings—including the highly symbolic creation of community centers in the shells of abandoned banks. These occupied spaces house kitchens, small print shops, day-care areas, after-school help for children, libraries, micro-enterprises, and free internet access and computer usage; one even has a small movie theater.
Hundreds of neighborhood assemblies emerged in the first year after the rebellion, each comprising anywhere from 100 to 300 participants. There are currently a few dozen assemblies, but nothing like the numbers in the first years after the rebellion. There are many reasons for this decline, but the fact that the number of assemblies has fallen does not mean that the form of horizontal organizing has changed—it is just in different locations now.
There was also the piquetero, or Unemployed Workers Movement (Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados, or, MTD), which arose in the north and south of the country in the 1990s, when unemployed workers, as well as broader-based popular movements, in the context of a growing economic crisis, organized against local governments and corporations. Generally led by women, unemployed workers in the provinces of Salta, Jujuy, and Neuquén took to the streets in their thousands, blocking major transport arteries to demand subsidies from the government. In a decisive break with the past, this organizing was not done by or through elected leaders, but directly by those in the streets, who decided from moment to moment what to do next. In some places neighbors came together first, tried to discover what needs existed in the neighborhood, and from there decided to use the tactic of blockading roads, using piquetes. Many of the neighborhoods in which the MTDs are now located are on the outskirts of cities, in areas that some might refer to as slums. These are neighborhoods that often lack paved roads, and sometimes have no electricity or water connected to the homes. They suffer unemployment not so much as an episode of bad luck as a state of being. You are likely to be regularly unemployed, and your children face similar prospects. Not having a place of work, the traditional means of protest for a worker—a strike or industrial action—was unavailable. Thus, the piquete was created. Many talk about the piquete as not only being the space of protest, but of what opens up when the road is shut down. Movement participants sometimes refer to this as “free territory.” It is in this freed space that forms of horizontalidad and new subjectivities have emerged.
From the piquete, which forced the government to give the first (small) unemployment subsidies in the history of Latin America, many groups became movements—expanding their operations, and creating autonomous areas upon which they have built housing and gardens, raised livestock, created alternative education and healthcare, among many other subsistence projects. These autonomous projects are organized geographically—MTDs emerging with neighbors in different neighborhoods, many of whom work together in network formations. As for the assembly movement, there has been a decline in the number of participants in the autonomous MTDs.
Finally, Argentina’s recuperated workplace movement is perhaps the most influential in form, tactics, and strategy around the world. Workers from Argentina have been invited to speak with other workers and movement participants all over the world—most recently in Greece where their influence directly inspired workers in Vio.Me to take over their workplace. This movement is also one that continues to grow numerically, as well as in its depth of organization.
The dozen or so factory occupations that existed at the start of the 2001 rebellion grew in only two years to include hundreds of workplaces taken over and run by workers, without bosses or hierarchy. Almost every workplace sees itself as an integral part of the community, and the community sees the workplace in the same way. As the workers of the Zanon ceramic factory in the south of Argentina say, “Zanon is of the people.” Zanon is now called FaSinPat—Fábrica Sin Patrón (“Factory Without a Boss”).
Workplaces range from printing presses, metal shops, and medical clinics to cookie, shoe, and balloon factories, as well as a four-star hotel, schools, grocery stores, and a daily newspaper. Participants in the recuperated workplaces explain everywhere they go that what they are doing is not very complicated, with the exception of the financial challenges, and quote the slogan they have borrowed from the Landless Workers’ Movement in Brazil: “Occupy, Resist, Produce.” Autogestión is how most of the recuperated movements describe what they are creating. The vast majority of workplaces have equal pay, and use horizontalidad as a way of making decisions together. The few workplaces that have variations in pay and use representational forms of decision-making are almost always the newer recuperations, with workers who have not had as many years together in the workplace, and have generally not had to resist government repression to defend their recuperation. This reflects deep connections with levels of militancy, trust, and radical democracy.
The recuperated workplace movement continues to grow and gather support throughout Argentina, despite threats of eviction by the state and political and physical intimidation by the previous owners. So far, each threat has been met with mobilization by neighbors, and by various collectives and assemblies organized to thwart the government’s efforts. In the case of Chilavert, a printing press, the elderly from the retirement home across the street came out, and not only defended the factory from the police but insisted on being on the front line of its defense. The recuperations are hugely popular, and many outside the movements explain them quite simply, saying that there is a lack of work, and these people want to work.
Over time, recuperated workplaces have begun to link with one another, creating barter relationships for their products. For example, a medical clinic will service members of a printing factory in exchange for the free printing of its material. Some of the workplaces have organized community centers in spaces that are not being used, or when the factory is closed. There are workplaces that have space that alternative video collectives can use, where political prisoner support groups meet, or where there is internet access; some host social events in the evenings such as art classes, salsa lessons, concerts, and tango nights.
These movements will continue to take over buildings, land, and factories. Part of what is so unique about the movements in Argentina is the methods they have used. As in many of the new movements we have described, the language of subjectivity and protagonism have been used in Argentina to explain what is happening. People feel like actors in their lives—and not just because they are now running their workplaces, but because they are doing it together, basing their actions in love and trust.
Horizontalidad is a word that formerly had no political meaning. Its political usage emerged from a new practice, and came to characterize the new social relationships forged by Argentina’s middle class in assemblies, by the unemployed in neighborhoods, by workers taking back their workplaces, and by all sorts of art and media collectives that emerged in the wake of the crisis. It continues to characterize the way in which most people organize now when coming together for any reason.
The social movements in Argentina also described themselves as autonomous—a term used to reflect politics of self-organization, autogestión, direct participation, and a rejection of power as something wielded over someone else. In fact, the way in which anarchists worldwide have historically spoken of self-management comes closest to its current use in Argentina’s autonomous movements. Projects in autonomous spaces, for example, are autogestionada, in the sense that they are self-created and self-managed. In the unemployed movement’s neighborhood bakeries, organic farms, popular schools, and clinics are all autogestionada. They are run collectively, directly democratically, and horizontally, often using decision-making processes based on consensus.
A friend from Chilavert, an occupied printing press, once rejected a conversational description of him as “political,” explaining that he was not “political,” but rather “an actor and protagonist” in his life. Chilavert, like hundreds of other recuperated workplaces, uses horizontalidad as a tool for making decisions collectively—decisions that range from whether or not all workers, despite different hours and tasks, should be paid the same, to questions about what and how much to produce. Many in the autonomous movements do not call themselves activists, but rather “protagonists and subjects.”
As with the newer movements, the emergence of these new approaches was linked to a politics of affection (a love- and trust-based politics), and the practice of collective reflection. A few months after the rebellion, participants from numerous autonomous movements—from assemblies, MTDs, recuperated workplaces, and various art, media, and culture collectives—began gathering on Saturdays to reflect together on what they were creating, what they were breaking from, and the obstacles faced. In all of my years of militancy, I, Marina, have never experienced such a high level of theoretical discussion, all based in the day-to-day experiences of the social movements. I remember that the whole of one Saturday was dedicated to a discussion of the meaning of autonomy, based on each group’s experience. This collective reflection, as well as the reflection that takes place in each movement, is fundamental for the continuation of the autonomous movements.
I had never heard so many people speak of “waking up” before my time living in Argentina after the rebellion—until, that is, the new movements that are taking their next steps forward today.
One of the things that occurs in these moments of rupture is that forms of institutional power, for various reasons, are no longer in the foreground. We relate to one another for a time without immediate interference from the state, or other forms of dominating or hierarchical power. But when these forms of power wake up to a society moving ahead without them, those of us creating vast landscapes in the spaces left face some of the most serious challenges to our creation. It is in these moments that movements and freed communities are most often defeated. Inherent in the role of the state is its inability to allow people to organize outside it—just as corporations cannot allow people to run parallel economies, and political parties, on the left or the right, over time are rendered obsolete when people organize independently. These groups and institutions fight to destroy the movements, whether through direct repression, co-optation, or some combination of the two. This is what continues to be attempted in Argentina. Fortunately, there is a growing resistance to this, and alternative approaches continue to proliferate.
The years after the rebellion have witnessed a significant decline in the vibrancy of neighborhood assemblies and autonomous unemployed workers’ movements. While the recuperated workplace movement continues to broaden, it is not without its problems, many of which are similar to those faced by other autonomous movements. There are numerous reasons for the change in the movements’ form and size, and it is from exploring some of these that we will be better able to think about a longer-lasting revolution.
The government has found thousands of overt and covert ways of repressing the movements. Movement participants have been killed, sometimes while in the act of rebellion, as in the state-sponsored murder of Darío Santillán and Maxi Kosteki on a piquete in 2002. Evictions are attempted, often violently, against groups occupying buildings and land. When the full force of the state and police is employed, these evictions often succeed—though, depending on the level of resistance, sometimes the government backs down for fear of losing further legitimacy in the face of such popular power. This has been consistent in almost every case of an attempted eviction of an occupied workplace. But in some cases the state has not been able to dislodge the workers when the community has supported them. In Corrientes, in the north of the country, multinational companies, with state support, are attempting to exploit the earth with mines and water projects; but the people have organized horizontally, and despite state-sponsored violence, the corporations have had to back down.
In the early part of the 2000s, especially 2003–2005, one of the biggest challenges that participants in the autonomous unemployed workers’ movements faced was that of attempts by the state to co-opt people through the use of Peronist political parties. Offers of cash, sometimes a great deal of it, have been used to encourage people to leave the movement. The crisis this has created for the movement is not only in the fact that participants leave, reducing both numbers and morale, but that it becomes a topic of conversation that occupies a great deal of time—not only when a person leaves the movement, but also when they want to come back, often within a matter of months. What should the movement do in such circumstances?
Another frequent form of attempted co-optation, and one that has increased in the past few years, is the offering of goods and services to autonomous neighborhood groups and movements. This has been particularly common for the unemployed movements. In itself, this might not sound like much of a challenge, but various issues have emerged. One is that the question of whether to accept state help has become such a contentious debate in the movement that it distracts from the discussion of all of the projects the movement is organizing around. Another is that, when goods have been accepted, movements have sometimes stopped producing those goods themselves, and have become dependent on the state. In the most extreme cases, which have most commonly affected the unemployed movements, accepting help from the state has made the movement materially, and thus politically, dependent on the state. It is from such a situation that the piqueteros K emerged—“K” standing for the Kirchners, both Néstor and Christina, who have held the presidency in Argentina since 2002. Alternatively, the government has offered premises to many of the neighborhood assemblies. Not only has this created a time-consuming debate, but those assemblies that have accepted such offers have later found themselves to be in legal agreements—not only signing leases, but even agreeing to pay rent for some period into the future.
The question of how to relate to the state while also maintaining autonomy is the most challenging yet, and is one that has caused great confusion within the movements. John Holloway argues that we need to be “in, against and beyond the state,” and that we need to make our own time.3 Some in the movements—especially the unemployed movements—seem to be organizing along these lines. It is not easy, however, and the numbers of movement participants who leave out of a very real fear repression, or who join a Peronist Party—even temporarily, so as to receive gifts and money—has not been insignificant.
The struggle to remain autonomous is common to all the movements. Since 2009, however, most of even the more autonomous movements have begun to shift their positions, and decided to relate to the state—though on their own terms. The MTD Chipoletti in Patagonia, for example, first decides what it needs—a building or foodstuffs—and then takes the necessary materials from the state. Receiving raw material is necessary to build the buildings, but is not the same as the state giving you housing; receiving ingredients to cook collectively is not the same as being dependent for your bread each day. Then the movement, organized in various working groups, uses these raw supplies to create what it needs. The idea is that, if the supplies do not arrive, they are not without food or housing—and, most importantly, what they receive is based on what they decide they need.
The MTD Solano began a process with a very similar approach to that of Chipoletti in late 2009. It subsequently entered another transition, finding ways to build autonomously while taking some things from the state. Initially, the MTD Solano attempted to break from all formal economic relationships with the state, beginning in 2005, mostly not going out into the street in piquetes to demand the small monthly subsidy. Its collective opinion was that a constant piquete created a dynamic of perpetual supplication to the state, and that it detracted from autonomous creation in the neighborhood. In subsequent reflections on why it stopped taking subsidies, it highlighted their effect on internal relationships within the movement.
After the first months of the neighborhood assemblies’ self-organizing, a number of political parties saw an opportunity for recruitment and potential domination. They actively “entered” assemblies in an attempt to control them. When domination proved elusive, as it almost always did, they then created what has been called a disruption campaign, which caused many participants to leave assemblies out of frustration. The campaign adopted various faces, from groups that created false neighborhood assemblies so as to intervene in the discussions at the times of the interbarrial—the gathering of all neighborhood assemblies in parks to make coordinated decisions—which was intended to enable them to win the microphone and push their agenda, which often had nothing to do with the neighborhoods, consisting instead of proclamations and global statements such as the call for the end to imperialism, capitalism, and war. In these situations, the speakers so often ignored the facilitator that participants in other assemblies ended up leaving out of frustration. Similar tactics were used within the assemblies, where political party members would attempt to dominate the agenda, ignoring the facilitator until the other participants had left, not wanting to fight with them any more. The lesson of how to resist political party domination has been mostly learned, and parties ostracized.
The Zapatistas say, “Walking, we ask questions” and “We walk slowly since we are going far.” The walk toward autonomous creation continues in Argentina despite the massive challenges posed by the state and political parties. But progress is slower and more uneven. Lessons are being learned in many movements, while in others the state is much more successful, and the lessons have yet to be internalized. Some of the challenges that have appeared were foreseen by movement participants. Some people even reflected early on that some of the structures of organization might disappear—though, were that to happen, it could be withstood since people had been so fundamentally transformed. The argument was that the movements would continue if people’s subjectivity had changed, individually and collectively. Many today are confident that this is the case.
The resilience of the movements in Argentina can be explained in many ways. While the crisis of 2001 created a rupture that caused people to take to the streets and meet one another, it was the new politics of horizontalidad, autogestión, “other power,” and politica afectiva, that kept people organizing. Without the various forms of collective organization that emerged to facilitate an analysis of power, which in turn created changes in subjectivity, the movements in Argentina might easily have gone the way of their counterparts in many other parts of the world when crises developed.
The interviews and conversations included in this chapter took place between 2002 and 2013. Marina lived in Argentina where she collaborated with the autonomous movements and compiled an oral history, Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina.
Movements whose experiences are reflected here include neighborhood assemblies, recuperated workplaces, unemployed movements, alternative media groups, and, most recently, an anti-extraction environmental group that includes many towns and villages in the north of the country, in Corrientes. The majority of the interviews took place in Buenos Aires and the surrounding area, including some neighboring towns and cities, but there are also a number of interviews from the far south in Patagonia, including the occupied factory of Zanon and unemployed the movements in that region. Some of the movements have changed their names—in particular, the unemployed movements that no longer want to identify with the status of unemployment. The ages of the participants at the time ranged from seventeen to fifty-five.
Claudia was in her mid-forties at the first interview, and is now in her mid-fifties. She was active against the dictatorship as a teenager in human rights organizations, and cofounded a number of alternative media projects and collective publications, including Lavaca and MU.
Claudia, Lavaca.org, Buenos Aires: I believe if we pay attention, and people are left to their own devices, you will notice that people naturally organize horizontally, and the rest is a process to unlearn hierarchy. Children are a good example of this. We can observe how they naturally organize, come to agreements, divide roles, and generally come together as a group. It is not that they immediately elect a leader and other children have to talk to him to play in the group. This sort of natural coming together appeared in Argentina when everything else disappeared. Everything in Argentina disappeared—money disappeared, the institutions disappeared, and trust in leaders and government disappeared. The system had been becoming increasingly decadent, and then it was left naked. And in response, but naturally, people began to organize in this way, horizontally.
Alberto was in his early fifties at the time of the first interview, and is now in his early sixties.
Alberto, Recuperated Clinic Medrano, Buenos Aires: There are a ton of factories that are not in any formal grouping. In this clinic we are also politically independent. Our politics are as a cooperative, where everything is resolved in assemblies, from the most minimal individual questions including, for example, a change of hours. These types of things might not seem necessary to decide in assemblies, but for us, we want to be careful not to have only a few individuals making the decisions, and so we discuss among all of us and make all decisions together. We feel that, the more people that participate in the decision, the less likely we are to make mistakes. With this idea in mind, we meet about practical issues related to the functioning of the clinic—things like equipment questions, relationships with doctors, travel allowances; more than just the work in itself—all that is institutional. We also meet to talk about all types of internal organizing, from shift schedules [to] how to organize shifts, etc. All of this is not to say that we do not make mistakes, because to have an assembly is not to say that all of our decisions are written in stone—there is always space for error.
Paula and Gonzalo were in their twenties at the time of the interview. They are both in HIJOS (Hijos e Hijas por la Identidad y la Justicia contra el Olvido y el Silencio—For Identity and Justice and Against Forgetting and Silence) a group first comprised of children of the disappeared.
Paula and Gonzalo, HIJOS: In HIJOS we always try and reach consensus. We vote when it seems necessary, but most often, based on the level of agreement we generally have, it does not seem necessary. When we are discussing something that is really complicated we may decide to have a go around, where each person in the group shares his or her position. Sometimes people get frustrated or angry, but that is usually because we have been discussing the same thing for two hours or more. Clearly, at four in the morning we might decide, OK let’s vote—but that is not the most common outcome. Almost always there is an agreement.
Carina was in her late twenties at the time of the interview. She had not been active beforehand, but is now involved in alternative media and film work.
Carina, Argentina Arde, Buenos Aires: I think all of this is a process that requires a lot of time and patience. For example, there are people who go to an assembly and speak for the first time in their life—people who have never spoken in public, and really just generally stay in their house. I think people are so much more engaged and excited about being involved in things, because now they have the space to express themselves. There are moments when you don’t speak, because you do not have anything to say—and other moments you are dying to speak, and you are not able to say the things you want. I am talking about myself here. At first I did not speak, and I waited for someone to tell me what I should do. This happened in almost all groups. Later, when all of the idols and leaders began to fall, and I saw young women with really clear things to say saying them, well, I noticed that … yes, yes, I can.
Neka was in her late thirties at the time of the first interview, but is now in her late forties. She is unemployed, and one of the first people to bring together MTD Solano—now a network of collectives. She works in the alternative health project, as well as in the women’s group.
Neka, MTD Solano, Greater Buenos Aires: First we began learning something together. It was a sort of waking up to a knowledge that was collective, and this had to do with a collective self-awareness of what was taking place within all of us. First we began by asking one another and ourselves questions, and from there we began to resolve things together. Each day we continue discovering and constructing while walking. It is like each day is a horizon that opens before us, and this horizon does not have any recipe or program—we begin here, without what was in the past. What we had was life, our life each day, our difficulties, problems, crises, and what we had in our hands at the time was what we used to go looking for solutions with. The beginning of the practice of horizontalidad can be seen in this process. It is the walk, the process of questioning as we walk, that enriched our growth, and helped us discover that strength is different when we are side by side, when there is no one to tell us what we have to do, but rather when we decide who we are. I do not believe there is a definition for what we are doing—we know how it is done, but we are not going to come across any definition. In this way it is similar to horizontalidad. More than an easy answer, it is an everyday practice.
Carlos, and Julian, are all in their thirties. They are active in Zanon, Neuquen Patagonia, and were not active before recuperating the factory.
Carlos: Here we try and make decisions using consensus. In the assemblies we try and create a space where each person and position is heard, so that whatever decision we make is ultimately based on all of our opinions, or at least the majority. Here in the plant we are organized into different sectors based in areas of work. Every day each sector has a meeting. The meetings of all sectors of the plant take place on Wednesday, where each sector shares equally what they are doing. It is in this space where we decide things—like, for example, to pay all people the same 800-peso salary.
Julian: Something we have observed is that each assembly is increasingly participatory. Through this we have been able to see a sort of waking-up process of all the compañeros, really all of the compañeros, and that it is not just talk, but everyone is putting their all into this. In this waking process new critiques are constantly developing, and in a way that is a part of always moving this conflict forward, toward the north. It is from there that we put aside our differences and try to get to this north, the solution to this conflict. This is how we organize ourselves.
There are so many discussions in every assembly that it feels like they happen while flying—for example, one person presents an idea, and pa! pim! pum! we explode talking, and it all goes great. Despite everything, we are always full of unity, and unity about everything. It is more than that. For example, in the first assemblies we had to vote on unity and the commitment to unity, and now, day-by-day, it is so much more than a vote—we are living it and applying it.
With the factory, before we took it over, the only thing we had to do was work, and did not worry about much more. But now, with this … conflict, we have to move forward, and the company is not going to solve any of our problems. This is also not what we want—in no way do we want this; it is like an older compañero said, “It is not for us to wait for them to solve things for us—those that treated us only as numbers and tortured us.” Now we are all clear on this.
Carina, in her early forties, was active as a university student before the rebellion and is active in the World Social Forum Argentina.
Carina, World Social Forum, Argentina: I changed. For me it wasn’t a political awakening, because from a practical and theoretical point of view I was always involved. But what I did have was a really skeptical attitude—a typical sociological point of view. For me, there was hope after [December 19 and 20]—although it was difficult economically, I didn’t have this hope before. What I had before was lousy. It made me sad to feel like the only person who was going to save me was myself …
Two years ago I thought about applying to a European or Yankee University, and going to do research, because I thought I would like reading and researching in another place. And now I want to stay, and this is important. I’m from the class of people who can choose to leave. We can choose another type of life abroad, and have better economic opportunities. If the country doesn’t offer me anything, then I can read and research, because as a last resort these are noble things. So, given that I can’t do them here, what part of the world should I do them in? … Now I feel like this is a place to stay and work. In spite of the problems—not just economic, but everything else that I told you about, because of the old politics that are kept in practice, there will always be favoritism and there will always be problems. But, in light of all of this, Argentina is a place where I want to stay and continue being involved.
Candido, in his fifties at the time of the interview but now in his sixties, worked at the Chilavert recuperated workplace. He was still active at the factory, though retired. He had been active on union issues only, but is now active in city-wide organizing in recuperated factories.
Candido, recuperated printing press, Chilavert, Buenos Aires: I am Candido Gonzalez, member of Chilavert, a workplace that was reclaimed by the workers. Our print shop was not only retaken by the eight workers on the inside, but by an entire society committed to us—one that has grown tired of our governing body’s inefficiency, and tired of waiting for change to come from the top. So, together we have begun to change from the bottom.
I am a printer with more responsibilities than I had before we took over the factory—not just responsibilities with regard to the print shop, where we all assume additional responsibilities, but now we have more moral duties to assist other compañeros to take over their own factories. This is a chain, the movement of recovered factories. It’s a chain to which we add new links all the time. The last link added is always a little wobbly, or unstable, and that link needs and receives reinforcement through the unconditional support of other recovered factories—whatever help they need, including resisting the police if necessary. If there’s one thing that all the recovered factories agree on, it’s that we are not alone, that we are together. It is about all of us, really all of society, other recovered factories, and everyone. Once you feel and receive this commitment, it’s as if it is engraved on you by fire—you feel you have more power than money.
Neka, MTD Solano, Buenos Aires: This experience brings you in and makes you commit right from the start. Something that made a profound impression on me related to the idea of affective politics was listening to Luís Mattini speak on his participation in the struggles in the 1970s. He was giving a self-critique, and said something like: “We have fought against and attacked the capitalists, but we did not know how to combat capitalism. We can annihilate all the institutions of capitalism, or of any other system of domination. We can annihilate private enterprise and the corporations that symbolize all of that. But, if we don’t combat our way of relating, which reproduces all these things, it seems as if we are fighting an empty battle.”
Sergio was in his late forties at the time of the interview, and is now in his late fifties. He is the author of a number of political and historical books.
Sergio, Lavaca.org, Buenos Aires: If an earthquake struck and we became uncertain as to what rules should guide us, I can let the rules of affect guide me. If I like someone, I get the feeling that something can work, and this sentiment generates action. Moreover, what I think has changed, in terms of the new autonomy that is growing, is that previously the person was obliged to relinquish the self. The self was dissolved in the massive collective of the traditional political parties of the left or the right. The person had to cease their existence. It seems to me that what we have going now is something akin to a recovery of the self.
Trust is one of the most complex subjects for all of humanity, because no one really knows how it is generated or how it is destroyed.
Paula and Gonzalo, HIJOS, Buenos Aires: We aspire to achieve horizontal relationships, while at the same time we are conscious that true horizontalidad, with true equality of conditions, does not exist. For example, we have compañeros who have ten years’ experience in the movements and compañeros who have two months. We all come from different places and experiences, and one of the things we try and do is bring everyone to the same level, as much as possible. This is not to say that difference does not exist—it does, and we still need to appreciate this difference. Knowledge is always power, and in many cases we are able to use this power in ways that are good in an assembly; but it can also have another manifestation, which is bad, when someone uses this ability, whether language or knowledge of history, to manipulate other compañeros. We try not to abuse knowledge ourselves, and also try and not permit others do it … we construct together.
Martin K., from Buenos Aires, was thirty-three at the time of the interview. He is a psychologist who became active after December 19 and 20, 2001 in his neighborhood assembly of Colegiales, as well as in regional discussions and in organizing on the issue of autonomy.
Martin K., Assembly Colegiales, Buenos Aires: Something really powerful I remember from when we first came together in the assemblies was that we were everyone—from housewives, students, and retired people to professionals and cartoneros [cardboard collectors], there on the corner, talking, and there was no difference between us, and our sharing, it was crazy and really fun. And this is a part of what horizontalidad is and allows. I say we are equal, but we did have a hard time finding a way of speaking a common language, and we have had to work this out in different circumstances; but still, the main principle that allowed us to organize was horizontalidad, with each voice being valued as equal.
Urgent situations come up all the time in the assembly, and it is a real challenge to use direct democracy under conditions where you have to respond quickly all the time. Not having sufficient time to make decisions can complicate the democratic process. It is as if, once again, the enemy is able to force you into a time paradigm that is not yours, and one that does not permit you the most minimal conditions to put your process into action. Direct democracy in this way can represent the tension with representative democracy, which, through delegation to something or someone, can seem more expedient.
It is really difficult to sustain all of this in practice, from horizontalidad and direct democracy to autonomy. These are all ideas and ways of being and reorganizing society that are very much against the established logic under which we live—we do not live in a horizontal society. One can be really horizontal in the assembly, but maybe in your daily work environment you are in a situation of subordination, and are forced to participate in games that are not at all horizontal. This contradiction is really difficult—one cannot live in two worlds and say, OK, I am changing worlds now: “click.” It does not work like that.
Natalia is from Lomas de Zamora, part of La Toma—an occupied building with three assemblies. She was a student in her early twenties at the time of the interview.
Natalia, La Toma, Lomas de Zamora: In our assemblies and activities, sometimes we observe that what we want to do and what we are doing are not the same. For example, we recently saw this with something that happened in the merendero—the popular lunches we organize for many children—with the issue of yogurt distribution. Yogurt is really expensive, though we were able to get some donated for our merendero. It happened that many people began to approach those of us who volunteer in the merendero to ask for yogurt. It was then up to us to decide who got or did not get the yogurt. We observed that what we were doing, in making the decisions, was also reproducing a power relationship. And then the question became, What do we do with this? How do we resolve this? And so we began to have assemblies to discuss these things collectively with those people who worked in the merendero, who are not necessarily the same as those in the assembly of La Toma.
Some of the questions we discussed in this assembly were how to distribute yogurt and food generally, as well as who we are in relationship to others in the community, the assembly, and the merendero. We also asked ourselves if the fact that we were the ones getting the yogurt from donors gave us the power to decide who gets yogurt and who does not, or if we should give it all out in one day, leaving none for the following day. One of the proposals we came up with, in light of these questions, was that those who eat at the merendero also come with us when we ask people to donate yogurt and other food. So we decided that we would all go collectively to ask for food, both children and adults. This was especially important for us, because it reflected that we are not the owners of the food, or in charge of the process of getting food.
I guess this is just one example of power relationships that are developing and how we are learning to think about them. It is all a real process, and one that is created as we go. It takes time, and we are changing both the process and ourselves along the way.
Claudia: One of the problems we are facing as a movement is the issue of how to articulate what we are as a movement. Any attempt at articulation was a frustrating experience, because in one way or another articulation would amount to reification of a particular social order or ideology.
Neka: I believe that the purpose of articulating what we are as a movement is fundamentally not about building a hegemony or unified movement, but rather it is precisely a step toward creating diversity. This is where articulating what we are as a movement becomes interesting.
Claudia: Yes. The thing is that we must figure out how to promote respect for differences. No movement is the same as any other. No experience is the same as any other. No situation is the same as any other. And, that does not mean these things cannot be explained accordingly.
Neka: It is precisely those definitions that are rigid, closed, and structured that limit us, that limit our ability to be free. As we discussed previously in the workshop, once you taste freedom, you will forever fight to remain free. Then, when the set of criteria that at one time functioned as an agreement and served as a basis for organizing instead begins to operate as dogma, or law, I believe that is when movements naturally begin to seek ways to combat that which might ultimately become normative, or status quo.
Emilio, from Corrientes, was seventeen at the time of the first interview, and is now twenty-nine. He was a participant in the neighborhood assembly Tíerra del Sur, located in an abandoned bank in Buenos Aires. He now works in Corríentes with anti-mining struggles, helping organize autonomous projects.
Emilio, Tierra del Sur, Buenos Aires: We don’t need anyone to impose on us a new Communist Manifesto, and throw us into that camp like a bunch of fools. After I abandoned that form of a communist idea, I said to myself, “What is it that we want? What is our project?” The good thing is we have no program. We are creating tools of freedom. First is the obvious—to meet our basic needs. But the process of finding solutions to meet our basic needs leads us to develop tools that make us free. And, for me, that is the meaning of “autonomy.” Because, if you begin to take note of what concepts constitute autonomy, and you then start to discuss the notions of autogestión, self-sufficiency, web, and network-like articulations, non-commercial exchange of goods, horizontal organizing, and direct democracy, you eventually end up asking yourself, “Well, if we achieve all these things, will we then be autonomous?” Autonomous from what? No. If one day we achieve true autonomy, we will not be autonomists, or autonomous—we shall in fact be free.
And yes, we will reach that state, by all means. If I did not believe it were possible to end capitalism I would not be attempting it. The notion that autonomy can exist within the capitalist system is something that often becomes a stumbling block. The idea that we can be non-capitalistic within a capitalist system is a fallacy, because capitalism intersects our lives all the time and everywhere. What we can do, however, is build and create different things without following the logic of the capitalist system. We can attempt to create the revolution in our day-to-day living. The day when all these things succeed, when we truly succeed in all these things, we will have arrived. We will in fact be free, rather than autonomous. Autonomy is a bubble that exists within the larger system. Autonomy is not in itself a system of governance. Autonomy is a tool for gaining our freedom.
Toto helped to initiate the MTD la Plata and was in his twenties at the time of this interview.
Toto, MTD la Plata, la Plata: If you were to walk into any neighborhood and walk up to anybody and ask, “Are you people autonomists?” of course the general response by the majority might be, “I don’t know.” On the other hand, if you were to ask, “How do you relate to the other movements, or to the government?” then I can assure you the response would be, “No, we will not allow others to impose foreign interests on us, or to make decisions for us.” The same would certainly apply to horizontalidad if you were to ask any compañero, “Are you a horizontal or vertical group?” On the other hand, if anyone were to ask them, “How do you people make decisions?” Well, surely anyone of the compañeros would mention the process where some of us get together and hold weekly meetings, make decisions together, all participating, etc. This is why I say that the issue of attaching a label to certain ideas is something that comes from the outside. We talk about this more in terms of how we do things, as opposed to what to call the things we do. Because what might happen is that we would constantly refer to ourselves as “horizontal,” and then end up forgetting what that means, and act in some other way. In other words, to me it seems much more important to remain attached to certain ways of doing things than to start attaching labels that ultimately contradict what we do in practice.
Ezequiel is active in an assembly located in an abandoned bank. He was in his late twenties at the time of the first interview and now is in his thirties, working as a university professor and writer on politics and history.
Ezequiel, Assembly Cid Campeador, Buenos Aires: From the very beginning, the assembly took a very clear stance against having any links with the state and government. For example, my assembly’s meeting place is located very close to one of those City of Buenos Aires government administration and participation centers. In theory, these centers are intended to decentralize government action and to encourage local civic participation. We always flat-out rejected having anything to do with that center—even to the point of absurdity. For example, even though this center allows anyone to walk in and make free photocopies, we would prefer to pay for photocopies rather than enter that place for free copies. In this respect, our intention was always to remain on the margins of the state, but not out of the belief that we were creating an autonomous space. Rather, it seems to me that, at least initially, we were manifesting our rejection of representative government—our rejection of politicians in general. I believe our de-linking from the state came from this place.
As an assembly, we have always been somewhat schizophrenic with respect to the state. On one hand, we have been vehemently opposed to having any links with the government. But, on the other hand, there have been cases when in fact we have accepted and received state support. For example, the city government started giving us bags of food some months back. These we did accept, and used to start a popular kitchen, and so on. In this respect, these things soon result in a de facto link to the state, though we don’t accept it as such. We do not want to view this as a link to the state. In assembly jargon, we refer to this as something we snatch away from the state, as opposed to something we ask from them, or something we give to them. Therefore, at the very least, our distance from the state is kept alive in our discourse.
Alberto S, from Solano, was in his late thirties at the time of the first interview, but is now in his late forties. He was practicing as a priest when the MTD Solano movement began, and was one of its founders. He left the priesthood, and is now working on land occupation, crop cultivation, and animal husbandry in order to sustain the movement.
Alberto, MTD Solano, Greater Buenos Aires: We believe that the tension continues, even though Kirchnerismo has tried all things it can to make it go away—like all power sectors will do to be able to regain governability without a crisis, this government was born in the middle of a very profound crisis, so its project was to return the institutions to normality. Then they took all these symbols, such as human rights and wealth distribution, which generated an illusion in some militant sectors, many of which went to work directly with the government. We remained in a critical position—critical in the sense that we did not believe in their discourse, we do not believe there will be a transformation. So we do not believe in their very pretty speeches that are not translated into practice.
And we persevere in this critical time without subordinating our logic, believing that the hope in Argentina is the movements, with their work half hidden at times, working and weaving the network that will permit a profound transformation. We are careful not to antagonize those who in the past we were together with, and who now we believe will have to learn in practice—though many of these movements have gone into the logic of senators and deputies, and have paid a high price.
Neka: It seems to me, at this point in the game, that the discussion is, if you take things from the state, the state is generating conditions for you. The thing is, today, to live is necessarily to live through money, so the question is how to start thinking about experiences that go around, overcoming this subjectivity—that is, taking things that are necessary to live without getting trapped in these things. I think that’s the challenge. How to get things from the state in everyday life is another story. How do we build anti-capitalist spaces and break up the market logic? This is the strongest challenge.
There are small openings. For example, we occupy this land in the countryside, here in Varela, and we can consume eggs, vegetables, etc., without buying them—things we produce ourselves; and that’s a beautiful experience. There is no relationship with money, and we even produce the seeds. This is an experience where we have all the knowledge and skills. We have self-management of some other things, like health, for example, preventive work, the recovery of natural medicine, a lot of things—creating opportunities for group reflection to heal some things. So there are openings outside market relations—there are these cracks we talked about today. We are poking holes in the system, in capitalism, but they are cracks, and we need to enlarge them. I believe the biggest question is what we want for our lives—not what the government can do for us, but what we want and how we are going to strengthen this desire from this experience. That is the hardest for us.
El Vasco, in his fifties at the time of the interview and is now in his sixties, was imprisoned during the dictatorship. He is a trained optometrist, and helped begin the MTD Chipoletti and Allen, now working with the MSD (Movimiento Social Dignidad)—standing for Movement for Dignity in Chipoletti. In particular, he works with young people in the movement.
El Vasco, MTD Chipolletti, Patagonia: I believe that relations with the state have always been complicated. To put forward autonomy necessarily implies not to get caught up in the state agenda, but to look for ways to meet your concrete needs that you have, and take them from the state—and to do it in a way that does not harm our sovereign space most of all …
It is a difficult relationship, but there are issues that we are clear about in this regard: from the state we will take what we can get, and will not let the state condition our own practices or constructions. If it seems like that is happening, we have a sort of red light or alarm that goes off, and we all run fast the other way. But we start from the premise that everything the state has is ours, so then what we are doing is taking back what is ours, and always serving in the construction of an autonomous area … This does not mean that the state is not constantly attempting to co-opt what we are trying to do. But we don’t take it. We won’t accept it.
Placido was in his mid-forties at the time of the interview, and is now in his mid-fifties. He was active in his local community before taking over the print shop.
Placido, recuperated printing press, Chilavert, Buenos Aires: The state is encouraging all workers to come together and form cooperatives, like the MTD Solano is doing, though without any initial capital, and then the state proposes that it will support this project with initial capital. This is a good program to help alleviate unemployment, but for us this does not help, since we need someone to sell to on the market. We are trying to continue to exchange things with other recuperated workplaces, and when this begins to go well [the state] is then there, always putting obstacles in our way—like inspections, permits—and right when you are going to get back to work, there is another bureaucratic obstacle that takes all your time, and you end up doing nothing.
Claudia, lavaca.org, MU and MU Punto de Encuentro, Buenos Aires: I find that there are those who say, “It’s all co-opted, all useless.” And then, when you get directly involved, it’s the opposite, and you say, “This is full of life.” In other words, between the discourse and practice there is a great divorce. I think it will take many years of thinking to figure out how to conceptualize or theorize about what is happening now—it is quite challenging … So, the intellectual, logically, what he does is defend his position and hold his ground, because otherwise this process undermines him.
Emilio, Ibera Guardians, Corrientes: With respect to what we talked about and what I understand of autonomy and horizontalism, clearly this is a process that began in Argentina on December 19 and 20, 2001, with experiences that can be seen in direct-democracy roadblocks, the assemblies of the movements of unemployed workers, etc. It was developed in a process years before [then], but the social explosion was generated from [that point], so everything that had been brewing came to light and was magnified, became much larger and more diverse. All the energy that was released on December 19 and 20, and all that happened again in 2002, 2003, and later did not slow down in Argentina. That is, there was an epochal change. It has been more than ten years already—[there has been] a change in the government, and we have a government that already has a long continuum of Kirchnerismo, and the changes in Latin America. But the important energy is citizen participation, to join a meeting to discuss problems, listen, create tools through direct action, struggle with roadblocks, demonstrations. That is not stopping, but the opposite—something that was spread by new movements and movements that already existed.
So yes, sure, one can go to Buenos Aires today and not find a neighborhood assembly in every neighborhood, on every corner, as it was in 2002. But it is no less true that today, if you went around the whole country to all the provinces, in many you would find horizontal assemblies of territorial defense, fighting unions, endless struggles taking place in the form of direct meetings with strong horizontalism, and where the discussion of the role of the state or unions or institutions is strong and permanent—that is, the discussion about the autonomy of these experiences is permanent.
Ibera Guardians was born in April 2011, during a direct action we did in a town called Colonia Carlos Pellegrini on the banks of Lake Ibera, and we were repressed and some members of the organization were detained by the police. In all the confusion that was generated then, in the various groups and assemblies they began to talk about Ibera Guardians as an organization. That was what we were discussing when it was born. And today the Ibera Guardians is composed of the towns of the valley where the group Alma Fuerte operates, in Chavarria.
We understand the need to finance our productive projects, and we can use state funding as initial investment on all of our projects—realizing that the money has come from the workers, and the workers can use that money as seed capital to generate our own projects to be autonomous and independent from governments and private employers. It is a way to recover rent that comes from the status of workers—to use that money to build our self-productiveness. In the other cases where the national government intervenes to enforce national laws, which are exploited by private companies in Corrientes, we understand that as part of our demands and part of our struggle, and to the extent that our demands are met they will be welcome.
Yes, our vision of autonomy is based on the strong territorial presence and strong political independence of the organization, in the sense that the sovereignty of our decisions is the people in each village assembly. We will not allow the state or political parties or businesses—no one, neither the church nor anyone—to violate the political sovereignty of our assemblies, and therefore of our organization. Now, that does not mean we cannot have a dialogue or relationship with the church or the state—because they exist, they are real, because they interfere in our lives, and so we can set up specific issues. And in the case of the state, the state exists and captures the workers’ money, so I do not think there is any contradiction in obtaining financing for our projects, provided they do not violate our policy decisions.
1 Raúl Zibechi, “19 y 20: los días que parieron und década,” Lavaca.org, April 10, 2013.
2 Marina Sitrin, Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2006), p. 41.
3 Marina Sitrin, interview with John Holloway, “Against and Beyond the State,” Upping the Anti, no. 4, 2007.