In 2001, Argentina suffered an economic crisis, similar to the one that much of the world is experiencing today. After more than a decade of IMF-mandated structural adjustment, which only deepened poverty and unemployment, the government was forced to default on over $100 billion of public debt and declared a state of emergency in an attempt to calm public unrest. Despite a military-imposed curfew, thousands of people rushed to the streets and forced the president and other politicians out of office with the chant “que se vayan todos/ni se quede uno solo” (they all must go/not one can stay).
These protests were the culmination of years of organizing in response to increasing unemployment and simultaneous reductions in welfare programs as part of neoliberal policies. Workers were taking over factories, the unemployed blocking highways, migrants occupying unused land. When joined by the spontaneous protests of the middle class in December, the mobilizations were able to overthrow the government as the president fled Buenos Aires in a helicopter. The movements were not only the largest mass mobilization in Argentina since the 1970s, but also qualitatively different from earlier movements: not interested in taking state power, nor in working more jobs and longer hours, they struggled to create new forms of life, including new forms of socio-spatial organization and the production and distribution of wealth. In the ten years following the crisis, the strongest of the movements, the Movements of Unemployed Workers (Movimientos de Trabajadores Desocupados, MTDs), has continued on this path, even as the country has recovered economically and has so far been able to resist the effects of the global crisis.
Here I’ll
examine the history and practices of the MTDs, drawing on research
I’ve conducted since 2003 with the MTDs La Matanza and Solano, and
current research in Buenos Aires on the organization of the
unemployed. The movements of the unemployed, which first emerged in
Argentina in the mid-1990s, challenge traditional representations of
the unemployed as lacking political agency and revolutionary
potential. While many Marxists and labor organizers have maintained
the latter position, Argentina’s recent history paints a different
picture: the militant organization of the unemployed across the
country was instrumental in overthrowing the neoliberal government in
2001 and steering the course the country would take following the
economic crisis. Movements of the unemployed in Argentina are
redefining work through their organizational practice, discourses
around labor, and active creation of different forms of production
and reproduction. This will necessarily be a very partial description
of a complex, fragmented, and diverse movement, which has existed for
over fifteen years.
Organizing
the Unemployed
By
the mid-1990s, unemployment in Argentina had reached nearly 20% (with
even higher levels of underemployment), due to rapid
deindustrialization and privatization, alongside a working class
weakened from the earlier military dictatorship. New laws had
stripped workers of remaining rights and led to the increasing
“flexibilization” of labor, allowing employers to hire workers
under short-term contracts and provide less benefits, making it
easier to fire workers and unnecessary to compensate them upon doing
so. Different forms of informal and precarious labor were already the
norm for women and youth, and became increasingly so for adult men as
well. President Carlos Menem had effectively cut social spending so
that only certain sectors received unemployment benefits, and the
jobless could not reliably depend on any support from the state. The
main, officially recognized labor movement, headed by the CGT
(Confederación
General del Trabajo),
was politically in ruins as it continued to support Menem because of
its Peronist party affiliation, while these changes in the
organization of work made the traditional forms of labor organizing
increasingly difficult. Without stable employment, the poor
increasingly relied on different forms of informal labor, illegal
activity, and the political parties’ systems of patronage, as well
as strengthened networks of mutual aid and support within
communities.
It was in
this context that the unemployed began to organize themselves, first
in the interior of Argentina and soon after in the country’s major
urban centers. Their first public actions were roadblocks, using
barricades and burning tires to block major highways, sometimes for
weeks at a time. The roadblocks were organized without any support
from the major trade unions or leftist political parties, but rather
through the already existing networks of support of the poor and
unemployed. In the interior of the country, laid-off workers of the
recently privatized oil company were the first to protest in 1996,
demanding unemployment benefits and/or their jobs back. In the urban
areas, however, the protests were of a more heterogeneous
composition, including many who had never participated in the formal
labor market. In the urban periphery of Buenos Aires, the first
actions were centered around the question of food, with large public
collective meals and protests demanding food assistance from the
state. Other early protests focused on the rising costs of
electricity and gas, the poor living conditions in working-class
neighborhoods, and the lack of state support for the unemployed.
While
different organizations of the unemployed emerged during this time in
Argentina, the MTDs were generally the most independent and
innovative. The MTDs are organized by neighborhood, instead of around
a specific workplace or sector, taking the name of the neighborhood
or region where they are based. Although the different MTDs sometimes
come together in specific campaigns or actions, and have formed
coalitions or blocks, there has never been a national organization
uniting all the different groups of unemployed across the country.
The MTDs are engaged in a constantly shifting constellation of
alliances and networks with each other, different sectors of the
labor movement, and other social movements. Thus each group is
unique, not only in its geographic location, but in terms of its
internal organization, political activity and ideological
affiliations as well. Yet there are several elements the MTDs have in
common, including the tactic of the roadblocks, a form of
organization that emphasizes autonomy and a critique of hierarchy,
and an emphasis on territorial organization and forming their own
productive enterprises.
The
MTDs first came into the public eye for their confrontational
roadblocks, or piquetes.
The roadblock’s immediate purpose is to stop the normal circulation
of goods and services, and to make people’s demands visible. It has
been widely remarked that the piquetes are
the unemployed’s version of the strike or work stoppage, the only
available tactic once denied access to this privileged form of
workers’ revolt. However, the decision to block roads does not
necessarily start from the assumption of lack: the piqueteros took
their protests not to the factory doors, but rather to the streets of
the city, understanding the city as the crucial site of capitalist
production. For this reason, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri
exemplify this tactic as a “wildcat strike against the
metropolis.”1 In
Buenos Aires, the roadblocks were particularly effective because they
often took place at the major bridges or other entry points to the
city from the suburbs, and as the crisis worsened and the
government’s power weakened, at major intersections within the city
itself. The roadblocks were essential in giving the piqueteros a
sense of agency many felt they lacked without access to employment or
the work site as a place to organize and proved to be an extremely
powerful and effective tactic. The piquetes were
successful in forcing the state to provide unemployment benefits and
food baskets to the poor, and for the organizations winning control
over the distribution of the subsidies. This control was important,
as it allowed the movements to remain independent of the political
parties, which would generally distribute benefits in turn for votes
and political support, and because it allowed the movements to choose
how to reinvest the funds in community organization.
The
roadblocks were also important in that they served as a space of
encounter, bringing together the different unemployed and forming new
social relations and communal values. More than just protests,
the piquetes were
encampments in the middle of the street, where people took care of
each other, and shared food and other responsibilities for
maintaining the space.
Horizontality
& Autonomy
While
different organizations of the unemployed, and later other movements
across the country, use the tactic of the roadblock, the MTDs can be
further differentiated by their internal organization and commitment
to autonomy. The MTDs’ internal organization emphasizes direct
democracy, generally using a moderated consensus process in
assemblies which are open to everyone in the movement. While the MTDs
differ in their exact practices of internal democracy, with some
committed to complete horizontalism while others have different
leadership structures, they agree upon a critique of unions and
parties for their top-down, hierarchical, and bureaucratic structures
and practices, and are dedicated to enacting different forms of
internal organization. This differentiates them from other
organizations of the unemployed that are organized more
bureaucratically, or that have come to rely on charismatic leaders.
The
MTDs were formed from self-convened and organized groups of neighbors
and remained autonomous from trade unions, leftist and
national-popular political parties, and the parties’ patronage
networks. They have resisted being incorporated into these
institutions although at times they make strategic alliances with the
more independent unions or leftist political parties. Since the
election of Nestor Kirchner in 2003, many social movements in the
country, including organizations of the unemployed with a more
national-popular/Peronist political leaning, declared their support
for the government, and, in some cases, became officially integrated
into its ranks. Several of the MTDs, including those that make up
the Frente
Popular Dario Santillan,
and the MTDs La Matanza and Solano, have remained independent from
the government, choosing instead to focus on territorial organizing
and creating new productive practices, which continue to this day.
The
commitment to horizontality and autonomy are accompanied by a
critique of representation. It is recognized that the movement is
internally very heterogeneous and there is no ideal figure of the
unemployed worker. Additionally, these movements emerged at the time
of a complete breakdown of representational democracy, as seen in the
neoliberal government of the 1990s and its eventual overthrow. It was
clear that the politicians in power did not represent the people, not
even of their own parties. Nor did the union, which continued to
support Menem, represent the workers. The loss of faith in
representational politics led to the cries that “they all must go,”
and the adoption of popular neighborhood assemblies across the city
of Buenos Aires. This skepticism toward representational politics is
countered by a commitment to territorial organizing, to creating new
ways of life and social-spatial organization in the neighborhoods
where the poor live.
Territorial
Organization
The
territorial organization is another element that distinguishes the
organizations of the unemployed, especially those in urban settings,
from other social movements in Argentina and elsewhere. “The
neighborhood is the new factory” was one of the principal slogans
of the MTDs and other organizations of the unemployed. This slogan
carries a double significance: production is no longer centered in
the factory but dispersed throughout the territory and, in parallel,
labor organizing must be dispersed throughout the neighborhood as
well. Many of the MTDs, especially in southern reaches of Greater
Buenos Aires, emerged from settlements in the urban periphery that
had been illegally occupied in the 1980s. In these settlements, the
neighborhood was already the key site of political organization, as
the settlements were largely collectively controlled by their
inhabitants and sites of constant struggles to maintain their land
and for access to services. The neighborhood was also the obvious
site for political organization for the large numbers of women and
youth that had never been included in the formal labor movement and
had always been excluded from other political organizations. Thus,
they were the ones to take the lead as these movements emerged, a
stark contrast to the many forms of political activity dominated by
men.
The
struggle against capital must also be the struggle to produce a
different type of space and different social relations within the
space.2 That
is precisely what the MTDs seek to do in their territories, by
establishing a physical presence in the neighborhood and seeking to
collectively manage as many of the elements of daily life as
possible. Territorial organization as practiced by the MTDs includes
creating schools, soup kitchens, health clinics, daycares, community
gardens, social centers and productive enterprises within a given
territory. It means organizing around the basic needs of community
residents, food, clean water, housing, education and the desire to
form community in neighborhoods that are socially and ethnically
fragmented. Territorial organization implies opening up all the
spaces of daily activity to critique and as possible sites of
organization. These movements recognize and more fully value the
different types of labor that go into producing a territory.
Ultimately, territorial organization seeks to build on the
self-activity of the working class as expressed through the practices
of everyday life and social organization in the neighborhoods.
Labor
The
MTDs differ from what is traditionally conceived of as the labor
movement because of their decentering of waged labor and explicit
organizing of unemployed people. The MTDs have explicitly taken on
the challenge of organizing the unemployed, as well as
partially-employed, informal, and domestic workers. Through the
positive identity of thepiquetero and
continuing to identify as workers, the MTDs have moved beyond a
definition of the unemployed that is based on lack, on what they
don’t have (employment), to one that values the political
organization of the class. Thus, this discourse no longer privileges
wage labor as the norm, recognizing that this is no longer a
possibility for much of the country’s working class. Yet, the MTDs
continue identifying as “workers,” as the working class, even
without employment or even the possibility of employment. Rather, the
movement recognizes that there are many types of work, and that they
are organized in many different ways.
The
MTDs decenter the experience of waged labor and instead put the
spaces of everyday life in the center of their struggle. In this way,
they are able to challenge distinctions between waged and unwaged
labor, or formal and informal employment, to create a space for the
majority of urban residents who survive on some combination of
precarious work along with state subsidies, illegal activities, and
support from family and friends. Residents of the urban periphery
often work part-time in domestic labor or construction, are
self-employed through micro-enterprises run out of their homes, and
are involved in the constant labor of care in their own homes and
communities. This labor lacks the rights and security that have
helped other workers to organize, as well as geographic stability.
This makes workplace organizing extremely difficult, if not
impossible, meaning that there is generally little place for these
workers within labor unions. The piquetero movement,
however, is one of the few movements that has managed to successfully
bring together these different type of workers without reproducing
the hierarchies and divisions of the labor market.
Within
the piquetero movement
there are differing analyses of work and diagnostics of the economic
situation, which are manifest in the organizations’ demands and
practices. One sector of the movement calls for “genuine work”
and demands their old jobs back: real, legitimate, authentic jobs.
These were opposed to the demands for subsidies and unemployment
benefits, which they considered to reproduce patterns of laziness and
dependency. While certainly politicians’ use of these these
subsidies to pacifty and co-opt movements must be criticized, it is
easy to see how the simple critique of subsidies-as-dependency risks
reproducing the logic of neoliberal capital and its ideology of
individual responsibility. The demand for “genuine work” makes
another mistake by labeling certain forms of labor as legitimate and
authentic as opposed to others, devaluing women’s work in the
household and community, as well as many other types of labor. It
fails to take into account structural changes that make its premise
worthless: there is no more genuine work.
Another
sector of the piquetero movement,
mostly adhering to a nationalist-populist ideology, has centered
their actions around demanding unemployment subsidies from the state.
Thanks to their success in winning these benefits and the right to
distribute them, these organizations grew rapidly in the late 1990s,
yet were unable to provide a real alternative to the corrupt and
hierarchical forms of politics already taking place in working class
neighborhoods. A politics based on making demands of the state means
that most of these organizations now support the Kirchner
administration and many have officially integrated into the
government apparatus, thus losing most of their oppositional
potential.
The
independent MTDs, on the other hand, have taken a different approach
from those either demanding “genuine work” or only demanding
subsidies. While these MTDs decenter waged labor, work remains at the
center of their practice and analysis. The MTDs do not just demand
jobs, however. Instead, they ask: “what kind of work do we want?”
and answer: “work with dignity.” Work with dignity is not so much
a demand as a statement of intent, for it is precisely what the
movements are putting into practice, creating new forms of work that
spill over into new ways of living and organizing the urban
territory.
Alternatives
Starting in
the late 1990s, at the same time as some workers began taking over
their factories, a number of MTDs started their own productive
enterprises as a way to provide an income for some of their members
and to regain a sense of control over their lives, which they had
lost with unemployment. These efforts multiplied after 2001, as the
crisis hit its peak and the lack of a stable government made it clear
that solutions would not come from the state. During this time, the
MTDs also participated in organizing barter markets and alternative
currency networks, creating new economic systems based on mutual aid
and support. Recognizing that full employment was no longer an
option, or perhaps even a desire, for everyone, these groups decided
to create their own ways of reproducing life in their territories,
outside of the capitalist market.
There are
different ways of interpreting “work with dignity,” and different
ways of putting it into practice. We can, however, identify some
common threads: (1) self-management/workers’ control/no boss, (2)
workplace democracy and horizontality, (3) communal values over
market values. These alternatives sometimes take the form of
worker-owned cooperatives, but go beyond obviously productive
enterprises as well. As part of their territorial organization, the
MTDs seek to collectively manage other spaces and activities of life,
from healthcare to education to the food they eat. There is a
dimension of autonomy to these projects as well: although most are
funded at least partially through state subsidies, the MTDs aim to be
self-sufficient in order to no longer rely on the state. This is
mostly a practical concern, since it is expected that the state will
one day take away the subsidies or enforce certain requirements the
movements are not prepared to meet. The subsidies are considered
useful, however, inasmuch as they provide a material base from which
to further strengthen the movement and people’s self-organization.
The
alternatives that the MTDs construct are not limited to workplace
alternatives, to working without bosses and democratically
controlling the workplace. They aim to create different ways of
working, questioning what counts as work and how that work is valued,
how that work is carried out and organized, and the relationship
between that work and other parts of life. This means going beyond
the productive enterprises to focus on activities that create new
social relations within the neighborhoods, relationships that are not
based on competition or profit but on solidarity and mutual aid.
The
productive enterprises the MTDs set up are usually small-scale
workshops making food or textiles, or providing services. Bakeries
and pizzerias are some of the most common. These enterprises are
democratically controlled by the workers themselves and ultimately by
the movement as whole, making the needs of the community more
important than just turning a profit. They attempt to provide an
alternative to the hierarchical discipline of most capitalist
workplaces, as well as divisions between manual and intellectual
labor, by including all workers in decision-making and rotating
roles. Profit is generally invested into the organization as a whole
or distributed to members most in need.
In many ways,
the cooperatives run by the MTDs are similar to the “recuperated
factories” that emerged in Argentina around the same time. In
hundreds of sites around the country, workers took over and restarted
production in factories, rather than submit to owners’ decisions to
close the factories and leave workers unemployed. These range from
small printing presses to large metal factories. There is a wide
range of diversity in how the recuperated factories operate: in some,
workers radically transform the relations of production, instituting
non-hierarchical relations between workers and equally sharing
responsibilities and tasks, decision-making power, and surplus, while
others largely reproduce the relations and practices of the factory
under its former boss. Yet in many ways the recuperated factories
remain limited, because, after all, they are still creating work,
which, instead of relying on a boss to instill the factory
discipline, relies on collective self-exploitation. Overall, the
recuperated factories do little to challenge the overall system of
capital, especially as many continue to fill the same contracts with
capitalist corporations as when they were run by a boss. The
recuperated factories that are doing the most for political change
are those that have been able to create networks with other
worker-controlled enterprises, recreating the whole supply chain, and
those that build ties with other movements and the wider community.
One of the central focuses of all these movements has been education, which can perhaps best be seen in thebachilleratos populares. The bachilleratos populares are high school degree programs for adults run by social movements, but with state funding and accreditation. The schools emerged out of the movements, both the recuperated factories and the MTDs, first without any outside funding or state recognition, as a way to provide education to their members and the public. They arose out of a double acknowledgment: the lack of quality educational opportunities for much of the city’s poor, and the power of education for political empowerment. After years of fighting, the degrees earned in these schools were formally recognized by the state (in 2007 in the province of Buenos Aires and 2008 in the city). The state provides additional resources as well, and in some localities provides small salaries for the teachers. However, the movements control the curriculum, and are responsible for organizing the school and teaching the classes. Teachers are generally movement activists and/or politically committed university students; some work as teachers in other schools. The MTDs put a great deal of emphasis on knowledge production in general, in some cases even operating their own publishing houses, through which they edit and publish their own research.3
Additionally,
some of the MTDs operate health clinics, providing an alternative to
the overcrowded and underfunded public health system and taking more
holistic approaches to health, as opposed to only treating sickness.
Alongside the clinics, the MTDs tend to offer classes about nutrition
and wellness, seeking to integrate these elements of their activities
into the daily lives of their members. The organizations offer a wide
range of cultural and educational programming, from painting classes
to readings groups on Marx, provide legal aid for migrants seeking to
legalize their status, and facilitate women’s empowerment groups.
Participation
in these activities, whether a worker-run bakery or a
movement-controlled high school, creates new subjectivities and
social relations, produces new territories and new forms of life. The
participants go from seeing themselves as helpless victims of global
capitalism, solely defined by their lack of employment, to
identifying as active agents of social and political change, with the
power to confront the state and capital and produce different ways of
living. The MTDs challenge dominant narratives about the centrality
and desirability of waged labor and instead seek to create
alternative forms of production and social organization.
Today
the MTDs are not as publicly visible as they were ten years ago, with
much less open confrontation with the state and piquetes no
longer a daily occurrence. The movement, which was never unified, is
perhaps even more fragmented today: some piquetero organizations
have been integrated into the Kirchner apparatus, receiving subsidies
and other resources from the state, and others are increasingly
critical of these new forms of co-optation. The lack of unified
action poses an important problem as the government tries to divide
“good protesters” from “bad protesters,” determining access
to subsidies, and the cooperatives discover it is hard to sustain
themselves without building larger networks of trade and support.
Certain groups, most notably the Popular Front Darío Santillán, are
attempting to counter this fragmentation through the construction of
new alliances bringing together the unemployed, low-wage and
precarious workers, and students, along with indigenous and campesino
groups from other parts of the country. Despite these challenges,
however, the MTDs remain committed to the day-to-day work of
territorial organizing. There are now around 100 popular high school
programs offering degrees around the country, dozens of cooperatives,
social centers, and other activities, working to directly improve
people’s lives while strengthening the self-organization of
neighborhood residents and building their autonomy from the state and
capital.
Liz
Mason-Deese is
a member of the Counter-Cartographies Collective and
the Edu-Factory Collective,
and is a graduate student in the geography program at UNC Chapel
Hill. She currently lives in Buenos Aires, where she is conducting
her dissertation research.
1. Michael
Hardt and Antonio Negri, Commonwealth,
(Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009).
2. See
Henri Lefebvre, The
Production of Space,
(Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1991) for a theoretical analysis on
the relationship between space and capital. For more on how social
movements across Latin America struggle to produce new types of
spaces, see Raúl Zibechi, Territorios
En Resistencia: Cartografía Política De Las Periferias Urbanas
Latinoamericanas,
(Buenos Aires, Argentina: Lavaca editora, 2008). This book has
recently been released in English asTerritories in Resistance,
trans. Ramor Ryan (Oakland: AK Press, 2012).
3. The
MTD La Matanza has self-published two books: De
la culpa a la autogestión: un recorrido del Movimiento de
Trabajadores de La Matanza (2005)
and Cuando
con otros somos nosotros: la experiencia asociativa del Movimiento de
Trabajadores Desocupados de La Matanza (2007).The
Popular Front Darío Santillán operates a publishing housewhich
has published over 50 books since 2007. The MTD Solano has
collaborated with Colectivo Situaciones on
various projects, including the book Hipótesis
891: Más allá de los piquetes.
