On the night of the 19th, while the news was on television and the middle class was at home watching, seeing people from the most humble sectors crying, women crying in front of supermarkets, begging for or taking food, and the State of Siege was declared, then and there began the sound of the cacerola (the banging of pots and pans.) In one window, and then another window, in one house and then another house, and soon, there was the noise of the cacerola … The first person began to bang a pot and saw her neighbor across the street banging a pot, and the one downstairs too, and soon there were four, five, fifteen, twenty, and people moved to their doorways and saw other people banging pots in their doorways and saw on television that this was happening in another neighborhood, and another neighborhood … and hundreds of people gathered banging pots until at a certain moment the people banging pots began to walk.
(Sitrin 2006: 22)
Argentina: a crack in history – 19 and 20 December 2001
Hundreds of thousands joined the cacerolazo on 19 and 20 December 2001 in Argentina, and continued in the streets for the days and weeks that followed. Within two weeks five governments had resigned: the Minister of the Economy being the first to flee on 19 December, with the president rapidly following on the 20th.1 The institutions of power did not know what to do. On the evening of 19 December a state of siege was declared, reverting back to well-established patterns of state power and violence. The people were breaking with the past, with what had always been done: they no longer stayed at home in fear, they came onto the streets with even more bodies and sounds – 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! (‘They All Must Go!’) was sung, and sung together with one’s neighbor. It was not just a shout against what was, but it was a song of affirmation sung together by the thousands and hundreds of thousands. ‘Ohhh Que Se Vayan Todos, que no quede ni uno solo’ (‘They all must go, and not even one should remain’). People sang, banged pots, and greeted one another, kissing the cheeks of neighbors whose names had been discovered only recently. People were seeing one another for the first time. It was a rupture with the past. It was a rupture with obedience. It was a rupture with not being together. It was the beginning of finding one another, oneself, and of meeting again. The 19th and 20th was a crack in history upon which vast political landscapes unfolded. Revolutions were created – revolutions of everyday life.
Photo 2 Neighborhood assembly
Throughout history, in numerous places and various eras, there are moments like 19 and 20 December 2001 in Argentina, when the ways in which we see things drastically change: something occurs that allows our imagination to open up to alternative ways of seeing and being, opening cracks in history (Zapatistas). These openings can come from any number of places, from natural disasters to rebellions, strikes, and uprisings. This book addresses what happens in the wake of this rupture, and how the often-inspiring moments that emerge in that space can become lasting, transforming rupture into revolution. When formal institutions of power are laid bare, as often takes place in the moments of a crisis, people frequently come together, look to one another, and create new supportive relationships (Solnit 2005, 2009). These can be some of the most beautiful moments, and moments of the greatest solidarity, that we ever experience. However, what happens repeatedly is that after a period of time, these new relationships are co-opted by institutional power and our previous ways of relating return. How can we prevent this? Under what circumstances is this less likely to occur? How can we bring about moments where history breaks open, where our imaginations are freed and we are able to envision and create new landscapes towards new horizons?
Around the world communities and movements are successfully creating everyday revolutions in social relationships. The autonomous social movements in Argentina are one of these many movements. This book examines what has been taking place in Argentina over the past ten years so as to help us glimpse what alternatives are possible. In particular it looks at the question of rupture as an opening for new social relationships, and asks how we can not only open up a space for new ways of being in a crisis, but continue to develop these relationships. This book shows what has worked in the Argentine experience, what has continued to transform people and communities, and what some of the obstacles have been to an even deeper, longer lasting, and more transformative revolution. The overarching question of what success means is at the heart of what is addressed within these pages.
This book will examine concrete experiences, and I will argue that what allows rupture to continue as revolution of the everyday is a combination of the following:
• horizontalidad – a form of direct decision making that rejects hierarchy and works as an ongoing process;
• autogestión – a form of self-management with an implied form of horizontalidad;
• concrete projects related to sustenance and survival;
• territory – the use and occupation of physical and metaphorical space;
• changing social relationships – including changing identity with regard to the personal and collective;
• politica afectiva – a politics and social relationship based on love and trust;
• self-reflection – individual and collective, as to the radical changes taking place and how they break from past ways of organizing; and
• autonomy, challenging ‘power over’ and creating ‘power with’ – sometimes using the state, but at the same time, against and beyond the state.
Taken together, these new social relationships, grounded in concrete experiences and social creation, form a new way of being, a new way of relating and surviving, and do so in a way that is successful – as defined by those in the movement, measuring this success by dignity and the creation of new subjectivities.
Many autonomous movements and communities around the globe are prefiguring the world that they wish to create, that is, creating the world that they desire in their day-to-day relationships. Many use the language of prefigurative politics to describe this relationship.2 Prefigurative politics, as it sounds, is behaving day-to-day as much as possible in the way that you envision new social and economic relationships: the way you would want to be. Worldwide these are not small ‘experiments’, but are communities that include hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people – people and communities who are opening up cracks in history and creating something new and beautiful in the opening.
These new social relationships have existed, sometimes for many years: enough time to have children born of the new experience who speak as new people. The specific example I use is Argentina, in part because of the diversity of backgrounds of the movement and its participants, from class and social diversity, to political and experiential.
From cracks to creation: the emergence of horizontal formations
In the days of the popular rebellion people who had been out in the streets cacerolando (banging pots) describe finding themselves, finding each other, looking around at one another, introducing themselves, wondering what was next and beginning to ask questions together. They also spoke of this new place where they were meeting, one without the forms of institutional powers that previously existed. Five governments had resigned and the legitimacy of the state was a question. The Que Se Vayan Todos occurred, many of those in power left, and now the question was what to do in this opening. There is no documentation or exact memory recorded by those participating in the neighborhood assemblies as to how they began; but what is remembered is looking to one another, finally seeing each another, gathering in the open, and forming neighborhood assemblies. The feeling of no te metas (‘don’t get involved’) was melting away, and a new meeting was emerging (this will be addressed in detail in Chapter 2).
The social movements that arose in Argentina are socially, economically, and geographically diverse. They comprise working-class people taking over factories and running them collectively; middle-class urban dwellers, many recently declassed, working to meet their needs while in solidarity with those around them; the unemployed, like so many unemployed around the globe, facing the prospect of never encountering regular work, finding ways to survive and become self-sufficient, using mutualaid and love; and autonomous indigenous communities struggling to liberate stolen land. All of these active movements have been relating to one another, and constructing new types of networks that reject the hierarchical template bequeathed to them by established politics. Part of this rejection includes a break with the concept of ‘power over’: people are attempting to organize on a flatter plane, with the goal of creating ‘power with’ one another (Colectivo Situaciones 2001; Holloway 2002). Embedded in these efforts is a commitment to value both the individual and the collective. Simultaneously, separately and together these groups are organizing in the direction of a more meaningful and deeper freedom, using the tools of direct democracy, horizontalidad, and direct action. Together, what is created is a revolution of the everyday. Even with the changes, challenges, and decrease in numbers in many movements, this revolution continues, quietly perhaps, slowly perhaps, but it is walking.
The movements in Argentina, and the new relationships and articulations of the process of creation there, have become a point of reference for many others around the world: from a network of Greek assemblies collectively translating the oral history of the Argentine movements and organizing dozens of conversations about the experience in 2011, to the US Occupy movements using horizontal language, whether it be horizontalism or another derivation, to describe what they are creating; and in the movements that emerged in Egypt, Greece, Spain, and other parts of Europe and from 2010 onwards, speaking of the forms of democracy that they are constructing as horizontal.
Revolution with a small ‘r’
In discussing revolution, I am using a concept that has been expressed by many in the movements and further articulated by the sociologist and militant scholar John Holloway (2002; Holloway and Pelaez 1998). His writings on the concept of power and revolution reflect what has been taking place in the autonomous movements in Argentina, both in action and expression:
The whole conception of revolution becomes turned outwards: revolution becomes a question rather than an answer. ‘Preguntando caminamos: asking we walk’ becomes a central principle of the revolutionary movement, the radically democratic concept at the centre of the Zapatista call for ‘freedom, democracy and justice’. The revolution advances by asking, not by telling; or perhaps even, revolution is asking instead of telling, the dissolution of power relations … A revolution that listens, a revolution that takes as its starting point the dignity of those in revolt, is inevitably an undefined revolution … The open-ended nature of the Zapatista movement is summed up in the idea that it is a revolution, not a Revolution (‘with small letters, to avoid polemics with the many vanguards and safeguards of THE REVOLUTION’) … Revolution refers to present existence, not to future instrumentality.
(Holloway and Pelaez 1998: 167)
Here, Holloway is talking about the specific example of the Zapatistas in Mexico, but this conception of revolution is one that works for so many around the world in contemporary autonomous social movements. These movements define themselves as autonomous precisely because they do not want to take over the state, and see themselves in a position different and separate from the state, therefore autonomous. They do not desire state power, as many left-wing groups and political parties have in the past, but rather want to try to create other forms of horizontal power with one another, in their communities and workplaces. This concept of power and revolution is about a total transformation of society, but one that takes place and continues to expand from below. As the Zapatistas in Mexico say: ‘From below and to the left.’ In Argentina the movements prefiguring the change that they desire are revolutionary in this same sense. They are creating horizontal relationships, transforming their ways of being and organizing, with a focus on that relationship deepening and expanding. This conceptualization of revolution as an everyday transformation, not a storming of the Bastille, is an important distinction put forth at the outset of the book.
Martín, from the Buenos Aires neighborhood assembly of Colegiales, explains how the vision of social change and revolution is a break from these past conceptions and forms:
A lot of things have happened that show that suddenly this other world is possible … of course the difference is that it is not a revolution in the sense that there could have been a revolution in the 1970s, where what they saw was the future. This is a revolution that is seen in flashes, and one where worlds come together. Something along the lines of: ‘It isn’t necessary to wait for the revolution, we can begin now.’
(Conversation in Colegiales, Buenos Aires, 2003)
One of the central arguments implicit throughout the book, and within the movements in Argentina, is a rethinking of the meaning of revolution.
New social relationships
As of 2011, people and movements have continued to take over buildings, land, and factories. Part of what is so unique about the movements in Argentina is the ways in which people are doing this, how they are organizing as they transform their day-to-day realities, not just that they are doing it. Not only are communities finding creative ways to sustain themselves, they are recreating themselves in the process, creating more loving and trusting spaces, and different, more confident people. The language of subjectivity and protagonism is used repeatedly to explain what is happening to people and within people. They feel like agents in their lives: not just because they are running their workplace now, but because they are doing it together, with one another, basing their actions in love and trust. As a compañera3 in the unemployed workers’ movements so eloquently described:
Everything depends on how far one wishes to go in creating a new society. If you begin with loving yourself first and if you can love those in your immediate surroundings, you have the greatest potential for transformation. A life previously devoted to a single leader now assumes a radical stance that is much more profound, it assumes a devotion that is much more profound. We have seen this in our day-to-day lives and in our day-to-day relationships. As we come together to work, or as we come together to carry out a joint project, we generate affective ties that strengthen common support for a project, the things that are fought for by the other person are the same things that I feel I must fight for. And so, it’s as if things take on a different meaning, it’s a completely different horizon, and that is something very new, very of the now.
(quoted in Sitrin 2006: 234)
Horizontalidad
Horizontalidad is a word that encapsulates most directly the ideas upon which the new social relationships in the movements in Argentina are grounded. It is a word that previously did not have political meaning, and emerged from a new practice and way of interacting which has become a hallmark of autonomous movements. People speak of the newness of the relationship as it relates to the movements, and as a break with previous ways of relating and being.
Horizontalidad is a social relationship that implies, as its name suggests, a flat plane upon which to communicate, but it is not only this. Horizontalidad implies the use of direct democracy and striving for consensus: processes in which attempts are made so that everyone is heard and new relationships are created. Horizontalidad is a new way of relating based in affective politics and against all the implications of ‘isms’. It is a dynamic social relationship. It is not an ideology or set of principles that must be met so as to create a new society or new idea. It is a break with these sorts of vertical ways of organizing and relating, and a break that is an opening.
One of the most significant things about the social movements that emerged in Argentina after 19 and 20 December 2001 is how generalized the experience of horizontalidad was and is (Zibechi 2003; Lavaca 2005). This new social relationship is used by those in the middle class in assemblies, with the unemployed in neighborhoods, workers taking back their workplaces, and all sorts of art and media collectives that emerged in the wake of the crisis. Horizontalidad, and a rejection of hierarchy and political parties, was the general experience.
Horizontalidad is a living word reflecting an ever-changing experience. Months after the popular rebellion, many participants in the movement began to speak of their relationships as horizontal as a way of describing the new forms of decision making. Years after the rebellion, those continuing to build new movements speak of horizontalidad as a goal as well as a tool: a means and an end. Our relationships remain deeply affected by capitalism and hierarchy, and thus by the sort of power dynamics that these promote in all of our collective and creative spaces, especially how we relate to one another in terms of economic resources, gender, ‘race’, access to information, and experience. As a result, until these fundamental social dynamics are overcome, the goal of horizontalidad cannot be achieved. Time has taught that in the face of this, simply desiring a relationship does not make it so, but the process of horizontalidad is a tool for achieving this goal. (Horizontalidad and new forms of democracy, as well as the challenges, are explored in Chapter 3).
Power and autonomy
I use the term ‘autonomous’ to describe the social movements in Argentina because this is the way that these movements self-identify. Autonomy is a way of distinguishing oneself and the movement from the state and other hierarchical groups and institutions. Autonomy is used also to reflect a politics of self-organization, autogestión, direct participation and a rejection of power as a thing, something that is used over someone else. In its essence, the concept of autonomy as used by the people in the movements is a ‘do it yourself’ approach to politics and social organization. This includes an increasingly complex relationship to the state (recently explained by someone in one of the unemployed workers’ movements of the south as a ‘Take what you can and run’ sort of relationship; Patricia, Erwin and El Vasco, MTD Cipolletti, Patagonia). Movements want to maintain their own agenda and, at the same time, see what the state has as rightfully theirs; so the dilemma arises, as addressed throughout this book, as to how to be autonomous and yet still relate to the state while transforming society and eventually eliminating (and replacing) the institutional power that exists with something altogether different.
Autogestión
Autogestión is a word that has no exact English translation. Many have used the term ‘self-management’, which it is in part, but it also implies the concepts of horizontalidad and autonomy. Projects in autonomous spaces, for example, are ‘autogestiónados’: they are self-created and self-managed. In the unemployed movement, bakeries, organic farms, popular schools, and clinics are all autogestíonados. They are run collectively, directly democratically and horizontally, often using decision-making processes based on consensus.
Furthermore, autogestión is a practice based not only in ‘the what’, but in ‘the how’. It is the relationships among people who are creating a particular project, not simply the project itself. For example, a neighborhood assembly that decides to organize a neighborhood medical clinic or communal kitchen and how to do it, coordinating things such as schedules, location, gathering materials, etc. – these spaces are autogestiónados. This is a different situation from a community kitchen that is organized by the government. In the government organized kitchens neighbors sometimes volunteer to cook or pass out food, but they do not participate in any decision making. So, the difference lies not in the act of food being distributed by the community, but in who organizes it and how the community directly participates in the entire process.
The longest and most detailed chapter in this book, Chapter 6, is on autogestión, territory and alternative value. Within this chapter I delve into what is being produced, how, and how the relationships to production (as well as the question of work and production itself) are being conceived of in a new way, grounded in the new social relationships created in and by the movements.
New subjectivity and protagonism
A friend from Chilavert, an occupied printing press, once corrected me in a conversation by explaining that he is not ‘political’, but rather ‘an actor and protagonist’ in his life. Chilavert, like hundreds of other recuperated workplaces, uses horizontalidad as a tool and goal for making decisions collectively. Decisions that range from whether or not all workers, should be paid the same despite different hours and tasks, to questions about what to produce and how much. Many in the autonomous movements do not call themselves activists, but rather ‘protagonists and subjects’. Politics is interpreted as something political that parties engage in, or that the state imposes on them. When people say that they are not political but are actors in their lives, they are describing a new sort of politics that is against the hierarchy of the state, political parties, and decisions being made for them.
The new subject is the new person formed as a part of these new relationships; a subject grounded in politica afectiva – a politics of affection, love and trust. Along with this new individual protagonism, a new collective protagonism arises with a need for new ways of speaking of nosotros (‘we/us’) and nuestro (‘our’) as these relate to yo (‘I/me’). This aspiration is a genuinely new conception of the individual self through new conceptions of the collective. These new relationships, compelled by the notion of dignity, are the measure of success for these revolutions. (Chapter 4 explores the question of new subjectivity and politica afectiva, and Chapter 8 considers the measures and meanings of success.)
Collective reflection
A few months after the rebellion, participants from numerous autonomous movements, assemblies, unemployed workers’ movements (Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados, MTDs), recuperated workplaces and various art, media and culture collectives began to gather on Saturdays to reflect on what they were creating, what they were breaking from, and the obstacles that they faced. In all of my years of militancy I have never experienced such high-level theoretical discussions, all based in the day-to-day experiences of the social movements. For example, one Saturday the entire day was dedicated to a discussion of the meaning of autonomy, based in each group’s experience. Since there were close to 100 people there, we broke into small groups, with people from the media collective of Argentina Arde, for example, discussing with unemployed workers from Solano, Guernica and Allen, and asembleístas from Plaza Rodriguez, Cid Campeador, Colegiales, Pompeya, and workers from Ceramica Zanon and Chilavert. This collective reflection, as well as the weekly reflection that took place in each movement, has been fundamental to the continuation of the autonomous movements, regardless of the new forms that they are taking.
The state
Early on in this book I discuss the various forms of solidarity and mutual aid that emerge arising in the spaces created in these situations by the liberating of the collective imagination. Often in these spaces forms of institutional power are removed from the foreground of everyday interaction. People relate to one another without mediation from the state or other forms of hierarchical power. In the later sections of this book I discuss what happens when the state becomes cognizant of a society moving ahead without it. It is in these moments that those creating these vast new landscapes face some of the most serious challenges. It is most often, in this time of reaction to and from institutional power, that autonomous communities are defeated. Inherent in the role of the state is its resistance to people organizing outside of it, much in the same way as corporations resist parallel economies; it is here that often these institutions apply direct repression and cooptation, or a combination of the two.
In this sense there are many instances where the state has been successful: the movements it intended to demobilize stopped organizing in an autonomous way – or worse still, ceased existing altogether. The methods used by the state have ranged from co-opting movements through direct payment and invitations to participate in state agencies, as well as more direct means such as physical eviction of occupation of land and buildings, through to repression, sometimes even resulting in the murder of activists. However, throughout Argentina, there was successful resistance to this: ‘successful’ meaning that the movements or groups involved did not get sidetracked in their agendas by the state’s attempts at demobilization. Many groups shrunk numerically, but as of 2009, many began to regroup and become more public in their activities, taking over land again and creating new micro-enterprises and parallel economies. Many of those I interviewed in 2009 believe that they are even stronger for the experience, explaining that they now have a much deeper understanding of the meaning of autonomy. (These questions and challenges are addressed in greater detail in Chapter 8.)
Challenging the contentious framework
Contentious politics is a framework generally used by US sociologists studying social movements to understand movement dynamics and goals. A contentious relationship to the state and authoritative powers is always an explicit or implicit part of the theory. A crucial aspect of this argument is that all social movements are in a contentious relationship to the state, or another form or institution with formal ‘power over’, whether demanding reforms from or desiring another state or institution.
While useful in many spheres, I will argue that the politics of contention is not sufficient in explaining these contemporary, autonomous social movements, because of these movements’ choice not to focus on dominant institutional powers (such as the state), but rather to develop alternative relationships and forms of power. This reconceptualization of power is linked to the nonhierarchical and directly democratic vision of their organizing.
Walking – and slowly
The Zapatistas say, ‘Walking we ask questions’; they also say, ‘We walk slowly since we are going far’. The walk towards autonomous creation continues in Argentina despite the massive challenges posed by the state and political parties. This creation in the years since 2004, when the state began a full legitimization campaign, has been uneven and moving more slowly. Lessons are being learned in many movements, while in some the state’s attempts at demobilization have been much more successful and lessons have yet to be internalized.
Sometimes, the challenges that have arisen were foreseen by movement participants, and in these situations the groups were more prepared for them. In some cases it was predicted that some of the structures of organization might disappear or be challenged, but it was believed that this could be withstood: the argument being that the movements would continue as long as people’s subjectivities had changed. Today, more than ten years into the popular rebellion, this appears to be true. Participants speak of the success of the movements, and of a success that is not measurable by traditional social science, but rather one that is measured by the formation and continuation of new social relationships, new subjectivities, and a new-found dignity.