Everyday Revolutions: Horizontalism and Autonomy in Argentina

1. One of the motivations behind the cacerolazo was the government declaring that all bank accounts were frozen indefinitely. This was a product of growing financial crisis for more than a decade, linked to privatization policies related to structural adjustment agreements with international financial institutions.

2. To my knowledge the first person to write extensively on the use of this the term was Wini Breines in her writing on the politics of the 1960s, and what she saw as a different way of thinking and organizing in part as a rejection of the centrism and vanguardism of the Communist Party:

The term prefigurative politics … may be recognized in counter institutions, demonstrations and the attempt to embody personal and anti-hierarchical values in politics. Participatory democracy was central to prefigurative politics … The crux of prefigurative politics imposed substantial tasks, the central one being to create and sustain within the live practice of the movement, relationships and political forms that ‘prefigured’ and embodied the desired society.

(Breines 1989: 6)

That Breines used the term to reflect on a practice that was specific does not mean that she discovered a historical practice. People have created movements that desire their means to be their ends throughout all of history, from the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in the USA organizing a ‘New society in the shell of the old’, to Gandhi in India speaking of ‘Being the change you want to see in the world’, to the articulation of beloved community by Ella Baker and others in SNCC in the Black Freedom Struggles in the USA.

3. There is no exact translation of the word compañero as it is used within the movements in Argentina. Many have translated it as ‘comrade’ or ‘friend’, and it is often either or both, but not always. Many do not like the term comrade as it harkens back to political parties, and ‘friend’ alone does not reflect the political relationship implied. It also can refer to someone with whom one collaborates on a common political project. However, most often it is used with an intentional affect, reflecting care and trust in the relationship being described.

1. In October 2011 in Argentina, along with sixteen former military officers, Astiz was sentenced to life in prison for crimes against humanity (Amnesty International 2011)

2. There is a long history of debate within the human rights field as to the ‘proper use’ of genocide. While the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 does not include political groups in the definition of genocide, this has been contested in the years since, particularly by some countries in Latin America. There is documented evidence that Argentina’s military dictatorship wanted to eliminate all political opposition, thus fitting into the definition now used by some human rights courts.

3. Actions can take many forms; this above described is only one of many possible variations. Another escrache similar to this is described in the book Winning Small Battles, Losing the War (2008) by Marieke Denissen.

5. This is addressed more in Chapter 2 on rupture as well as in Chapter 7 on the challenges to autonomy.

6. The use of dignity is addressed further in Chapters 4 and 8. Dignity is also the way in which the Zapatistas talk about what they are creating.

1. The Zapatistas of Chiapas first coined the term, ‘One No, Many Yesses’, and since then it has become a kind of slogan for the global justice movements throughout the world.

2. Potencia is the word used for power, both in Spanish, meaning power as a verb, versus poder, power as a noun, but also in English to indicate the relational use of power and not as a thing. This is explored in Chapter 5 on power and autonomy.

3. The caracazo was a popular rebellion in Venezuela which took place on 27 February 1989. It began in the urban peripheries of Caracas and rapidly spread to other cities throughout the country, encompassing more than a million people. The rebellion was in response to growing poverty and austerity programs implemented by the government of Carlos Andres Pérez. The caracazo was met with severe repression, with untold thousands being killed. It is a moment in Venezuelan history that many link to the beginning of the radical movements that followed and continue today under President Hugo Chávez.

5. The conversation with Liliana took place in the street outside Brukman while workers were camping outside and fighting to get back into their factory.

6. ‘El otro soy yo’ means ‘The other is me’ – the idea of seeing oneself in the other. This phrase was first used in Argentina by the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, and similarly, before them by the Zapatistas with the concept of Todos Somos, meaning that we are all the other.

7. The neighborhood assembles comprised those people identifying as middle class. There is a long debate as to what the meaning of middle class is, particularly in Argentina, where it is generally defined based on the clothes that one wears, the coffee shops that one hangs out in, and where one shops, and less on a person’s relationship to production or decision making at work. For the sake of this book I am going to use the term ‘middle class’ quite loosely, as do most Argentines. Whether people are actually middle class or choose to identify that way is not the point as much as the social label and the meaning behind it. Historically the middle class was something that people saw as snobbish, standoffish, and proud. It was also a class that, aside from the revolutionary youth movements that often came from it, were politically moderate, if not on the Right.

8. There is a website that contains some of the notes from the interbarrial, although the accuracy of this site has yet to be substantiated. It is real, but many people who were at some of the assemblies claim that there were more people in attendance, or that many of the topics were left out.

9. It is not easy to translate the use of cursing at protests in Argentina. What literally sounds negative or even crass and gross in context can sound powerful and full of dignity. I have never experienced demonstrations and direct confrontation so filled with graphic cursing and imagery; it is something to behold in context to understand it. Writing that little children hold palos, the sticks used to fight back against the police, and stand near the tires on fire blocking the road, then to skip to ‘I am a fucking piquetero’ can sound odd, but in reality, one wants to join in – the feeling is overwhelmingly powerful. All words and categories are up for retaking and reinterpreting.

10. In the later 2000s those neighborhood assemblies that still exist now use Facebook as a means of communicating and sharing information. A search in March 2011 reflected more than twenty-four Facebook pages for such assemblies.

1. This is a reference to the Zapatistas and how they positioned themselves in the last elections with the Other Campaign, stating that they did not want to go from the bottom up, but rather from below and to the left. The way that they described where they were going was within and without, so from the heart out and then back again.

2. Since the book Horizontalism came out in 2006, the word in English has become more popularized, generally relating closely to the intended meaning, coming from the movements in Argentina but sometimes not. It is important to note how a word from one experience can be translated and reinterpreted very differently. For example, I found a website that took verbatim paragraphs from the introduction to my book, without citations, describing Horizontalism. This website was for accountants in the San Diego area. The one change they made to my writing was to put in the word ‘management’ in place of ‘power’. Then again in 2011, in a very positive way, ‘horizontalism’ was used as a way to refer to the movements in Egypt by the BBC.

3. Galeano is referring to the Argentine filmmaker Fernando Birri and the film El Siglo de la Tormenta.

4. There are countless versions of this story. The one included here is the one most widespread in English, due mainly to Subcomandante Marcos retelling it and having it translated first on the internet and then in the book, Questions and Swords: Folktales of the Zapatista Revolution (2001).

6. The creation of new people, new subjectivities, is discussed in Chapter 4. I also have a forthcoming book on the question of direct democracy and the various forms of horizontal democracy in the contemporary Occupy and assembly movements.

7. Mate is a part of almost all gatherings. An infusion leaf-based tea, it is a drink that is shared with whoever is around. The person holding the mate gourd fills it with water and passes it to the left. Each person drinks, emptying the gourd through a metal straw, and then passes it back to the person with the thermos of water. It is customary to drink and pass it on – one does not say no as it is part of being social. It is also customary to hand round the gourd to everyone.

8. Throughout the interviews people refer to specific encuentros. Generally speaking, an encuentro is a gathering, and it is intentionally different from a meeting. The two specific encuentros referred to in the conversations are the bi-weekly ones that were held in the first two years after the rebellion, and the yearly international one. Maba here is referring to the former. For two years participants from the various autonomous movements would gather together for an entire Saturday to discuss the topics and issue areas that affected them. So, for example, there was a Saturday dedicated to the practice of autonomy, another to the idea of power, etc. People from the neighborhood assemblies and MTDs tended to form the majority at these gatherings, sometimes but there were also participants from the recuperated factories and indigenous movements.

1. It is worth mentioning that this is also true for many in the Communal Councils and other formations in Venezuela as well as El Alto and Cochabamba, Bolivia and even most recently in Egypt, Greece, and Spain.

2. Hanisch, in a new introduction to her piece ‘The Personal is Political’ posted on her website (www.carolhanisch.org/CHwritings/PIP.html), not only explains the intention behind her writing – the article being that of addressing the politics of consciousness-raising – but also informs that the title to the article was not her invention, but rather of the people who printed the piece.

1. In both 2005 and again in 2009, participants from MTD Solano, MTD Allen and the Lavaca collective all shared with me the fact that as movements they decided collectively no longer to meet with James Petras when he requested it. This was based on their reading an article of his published in 2002 in Monthly Review where, among other things, he claims that the movements are dead. I have had numerous discussions with these movements and they do not find it important to meet with scholars whom they perceived as spreading misinformation.

2. ‘The most radical ideas often grow out a concrete intellectual engagement with the problems of aggrieved populations confronting systems of oppression’ (Kelley 2003a). By way of example, John Holloway’s book discussing not taking state power refers to the Zapatistas in Mexico, as Raul Zibechi refers to Bolivia and the Colectivo Situaciones in Argentina. First the movements acted against the idea of hierarchical power, and then the theorists helped to develop the concepts.

3. Most of the young people participating in MTD Cipolletti come from an upbringing in incredibly violent neighborhoods, so while it might sound outrageous for them to suggest defending young women with guns or bats, it is something that they have learned, and in the movement are unlearning. Also interesting in this unlearning process is that one of the adults in the movement was a Montenero, having used violence as a means to try to create a new society. It is the adult who was in a guerilla group which argues the most passionately against violence, and it is his voice that the young men listened to the most.

1. As is explored later in this chapter, the argument here is not that the new relationships are beyond capital, but that the relationship to production specifically is changing and not based on capitalist value – i.e. to profit and money alone.

2. The first two such events took place in Buenos Aires, and the third in Mexico City, involving an even broader array of people.

3. This study was conducted by eighty-five students at the University of Buenos Aires who conducted in-depth interviews consisting of 121 detailed questions. The result was that 73 per cent of the workers went with occupation of the plant, and 50 per cent confronted some type of repression or threat coming from judicial orders (from 2002–2004).

4. In every conversation I had with participants in recuperated workplaces and those supporting them, I never once heard of a situation where a workplace was taken over and recuperated without support from the community in one way or another: 35 per cent of the workplaces hold regular cultural and educational events, and more than 30 per cent give donations to, and collaborate with, neighborhood organizations (Ruggeri 2010a).

5. A note here on an Argentine lunch: this is not a light sandwich or salad. Lunch is a heavy meal, often with meat and potatoes or some version of stew or soup. Lunch is something that would have to be planned and cooked in advance and with care. In the first few years, until sometime in 2004 or 2005, this was often done by the neighborhood assemblies. Later, as the neighbors organized less within this formation, it was former assembly participants with other neighbors and networks of political friendships that continued cooking the lunches.

6. This was even better than my previous visits, where the press office has an ‘official’ tour and usually workers are not to be interrupted for interviews while they are working. On this visit I was able to spend hours on the shop floor interviewing many workers.

7. This is totally distinct from the global historical and contemporary cooperative movement. The International Cooperative Alliance has been facilitating the development and growth of cooperatives globally since 1895 (see: www.ica.coop).

8. See Chapter 2 for a full discussion of the carteneros and the question of recycling in society.

9. Not only would the workers from the former Medrano clinic not speak to me on the record, but there are a number of other researchers and writers who have attempted to follow up with them, and they too have been refused. As of 2010 there were no recorded interviews with the Medrano workers since the state took over the workplace. It is unclear whether this is because the workers are sad and feel regret, or due to a gagging order from the government.

10. ‘A world in which many worlds fit’ is an expression coined by the Zapatistas in Chiapas, and is now used widely around the globe in the more autonomous social movements.

11. The role of Zibechi’s work on territories to the movements today is similar to the role that John Holloway’s book, Change the World Without Taking Power (2002), played in the months after the popular rebellion in 2001.

1. I refer throughout this chapter to the Kirchners, and while Néstor and Cristina governed Argentina at different times, their politics and relationship to the movements as well as human rights have been fairly consistent, and so not worth separating out each time that their politics or perspectives are described.

2. This is discussed specifically with regard to the Ley de Punto Final of 1986 in Chapter 1.

3. It is difficult to differentiate between centrally controlled repression, i.e. the central state, or repression that takes place in the regions around Buenos Aires and throughout the country that the government might know about, but there is not always hard evidence that they do. For example, when police worked with locally hired goons to kidnap and attack workers from Ceramica Zanon, in Neuquén, or when piqueteros were killed in the north in Mosconi, with the oversight of local police, it is unclear how much the Kirchner governments knew, although many argue that they should have known and it is still their responsibility, even if not their active doing.

4. This phrase is taken from the title to Ben Dangl’s book, Dancing with Dynamite (2009), discussing the relationship of social movements to the state in Latin America.

1. Susan Buck-Morss’s first footnote is as follows: ‘This paper grows out of a presentation for the conference, “Communism: A New Beginning”, convened by Slavoj Zižek and Alain Badiou at Cooper Union, NYC, October 2011. The author felt increasingly uncomfortable with the word communist. The “u” had to go. Commonist describes more accurately the ethical argument being made. I want to thank my colleagues in the Committee on Globalization and Social Change at the CUNY Graduate Center, who will recognize here the influence of our discussions.’ The discussions to which she refers often were about the new social movements of 2011, as well as the Argentine autonomous movements, as I am a participant in this City University of New York seminar as well.