Lessons From Latin America

Finding Common Ground in Crisis: Social Movements in South America and the US

By Benjamin Dangl

Thursday, 18 December 2008

People in the US seeking ways to confront the economic crisis could follow the lead of South American social movements. From Argentina to Venezuela, many movements have won victories against the same systems of corporate greed and political corruption that produce economic strife across the hemisphere. These movements also have experience holding politicians’ feet to the flames once they are elected, a tactic that will be essential once Barack Obama takes office.

A recent connection between activist strategies in the north and south emerged earlier this month when over 200 laid-off workers from Chicago’s Republic Windows and Doors factory occupied their plant, demanding the severance and vacation pay owed to them.

The occupation in Chicago echoed the worker occupations of factories and businesses in Argentina during that country’s 2001 economic crisis, and is now looking even more like the movement in Argentina: the Republic workers are currently seeking ways to re-open their factory and potentially operate it as a worker-run cooperative.

“This is a place that should’ve stayed open,” Republic union organizer Leah Fried told reporter Meg White. The factory could be very successful in the long run as it produces heating-efficient windows and doors. “The goal is to reopen the plant and create employment,” Fried said.

In Argentina, hundreds of worker coops were formed after the occupations under the slogan, “Occupy, Resist, Produce.” During the occupation of the factory in Chicago, workers and supporters chanted, “You got bailed out, we got sold out,” referring to the fact that Bank of America – a lender to Republic – received $25 billion of the $700 billion government bailout, only to cut off credit to Republic, leading to the closure of the factory. But after six days of the occupation, Bank of America and other lenders relented, agreeing to pay the workers approximately $2 million in severance and vacation pay plus health insurance.

A foundation created by the Republic workers called the “Window of Opportunity Fund,” made up in part from the donations received from around the US and the world to support the workers during the occupation, will be utilized to seek ways to restart the factory.

The similarities between the workers’ actions in Chicago and Argentina show that labor strategies to fight economic crises can be applied as internationally as the free market policies that contributed to these problems in the first place.

One international gathering that embodies the philosophy of cross-border organizing and solidarity is the annual World Social Forum which began in Brazil in 2001 to encourage collaboration and education between social movements from across the world. In 2004 I interviewed Michael Hardt, the co-author, with Antonio Negri, of Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, about the role the World Social Forums and similar encounters can have in globalizing social justice.

“I was at two of the World Social Forums in Porto Alegre, Brazil,” Hardt explained. “At one of them, there was this sort of counter forum going on at the youth camp where there were groups from various places. I was at one meeting where we had Italians, piqueteros from Argentina and a group from a movement in South Africa that is against these electricity and water cut offs in Durban and Johannesburg. It was great having three of them talk to each other, because even in a straight forward, tactical way they are experiencing the same thing, the same kinds of police repression and the same kinds of struggles. And it was not really learning from each other, but recognizing a kind of commonality that then creates new relationships… It is that kind of thing that has to happen on a much larger scale.”

As the economic crisis in the US worsens, and the need to pressure the Obama administration looms, movements in the US could seek such commonality with movements in South America. Of the countless examples of recent social movement victories in South America, here are a few that could suggest potential blueprints for social change in the US.

In the early 1990s, participatory budgeting was implemented by the Workers’ Party in Porto Alegre, Brazil. This process, still in operation, involves thousands of residents gathering to decide how government funding should be used for city projects and development. Popular participation in this process prevents corruption, and expands the conception of democracy beyond simply voting every few years for a different political representative.

During the Cochabamba Water War in Bolivia in 2000, residents of that city expanded the meaning of democracy even further when they united against the Bechtel Corporation’s privatization of their water. The privatization put everything from communally-built wells and rain cisterns under the corporation’s thumb, and led to exorbitant rates few could afford. In response, people from across economic lines joined together in protests and road blockades and were successful in kicking the company out of town and putting the water back into public hands.

In 2003, when former president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada tried to export Bolivian gas to the US for a low price, working class residents of the city of El Alto rose up against the president and his plan. Citizens took shifts at street barricades, distributing food, spreading messages via bicycle and working together with meager resources to fight the police and military, eventually toppling the repressive Sanchez de Lozada government. That revolt paved the way to the election of indigenous president Evo Morales, and the partial nationalization of the gas industry. In his office in El Alto, Bolivian sociologist Pablo Mamani spoke of this rebellion, “During the uprising, the state was broken, it stopped existing, it died in El Alto.”

Other Bolivian social movements point to potential strategies for social change as well. Much of South America’s fertile land is in the hands of a few rich land owners. Landless Farmer Movements (MSTs) across region regularly occupy unused land to work it for their survival. The Bolivian Landless Movement has been instrumental in pressuring the Morales government to implement much-needed land reform. Silvestre Saisari, a bearded leader in Bolivia’s MST, explained his organization’s relationship to the government in this way: “Our democracy depends on us as social movements.”

One story from the neighborhood of El 23 de Enero in Caracas, Venezuela is emblematic of the progressive changes taking place in that country. Juan Contreras, a radio producer and resident of the neighborhood, talked about how he and his compañeros took over the local police station – for decades an outpost for crackdowns on leftist organizing – and transformed it into a community radio station and cultural center.

“This place was a symbol of repression,” Contreras explained to me in the studio, which still smelled like fresh paint from the recent conversion. “So we took that symbol and made it into a new one.” In words that reflect the spirit of the worker occupations in Chicago and Argentina, and the need for a broad grassroots response to the US crisis, he continued, “It is evidence of the revolution made by us, the citizens. We can’t hang around waiting for the revolution to be made for us; we have to make the changes.”

Interview with Oscar Olivera: The Streets and the State in Bolivia

Tuesday, 18 April 2006

By Benjamin Dangl

“Super dogs especial,” yelled the hot dog vendor. His stand was an island in a street packed with World Social Forum participants. Other people sold Che Guevara hats, artesian jewelry, Hugo Chavez dolls and radical buttons in six languages. Drum circles and generators roared as I sat down next to the hot dog stand with Oscar Olivera.

The recent electoral victory of Evo Morales in Bolivia was a big topic of discussion at the Social Forum in Caracas, Venezuela. As people lined up at the stand for dinner, Olivera talked about the relationship between Bolivia’s social movements and the Morales administration.

Morales, an indigenous coca farmer and congressman with the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party, won the Bolivian presidential elections in a landslide victory on December 18, 2005. He has pledged to organize a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution, change the rules of the US-led war on drugs in Bolivia, and protect the country’s gas reserves from corporate exploitation. Though various advances have been made since his inauguration in January, it is still unclear how far Morales will go with the radical changes he promised on the campaign trail.

Olivera was a key leader in the 2000 revolt in Cochabamba, Bolivia against the Bechtel Corporation’s privatization of the city’s water. He was involved in the 2003 uprisings against the Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada administration’s plan to privatize and export the nation’s gas reserves and continues to work closely with Bolivian labor groups. In this interview, he provides an inside look into the current geopolitical situation in Bolivia.

Benjamin Dangl: Please explain some of the differences between the social movements in Bolivia and what is happening here in Venezuela.

Oscar Olivera: There is a strong presence of the MAS party, fundamentally in the rural areas. But there are also people in urban and indigenous movements that are working autonomously, on the margin of the MAS, and without any possibility of becoming politicians. Regardless of whether you are with the MAS or working autonomously, these social movements have had a great capacity to unite in order to defend basic services and natural resources like water and gas. They have also united to say “enough” to the political parties of the right, which have established a monopoly on how political decisions are made. Within the social movements there is not one single leader, there is a collective leadership that has established an agenda which should be fulfilled with the new government. I am not able to say that much about Venezuela because I don’t know that much. I could speak with some people here, with some “leaders” [Olivera’s quotation marks], but what I would like to do is speak with the common people who I believe have the most valid opinion.

BD: There was a meeting among various Bolivian social movements held last December 5, 2005. What is this group of movements planning?

OO: This was a National Congress for the Defense of Water, Basic Services, Environment and Life. It was a gathering of social organizations, and we came together to fight for water and for life. The access to these basic services is vital for the people. For those living in rural areas, the contamination of rivers by mining and gas companies is a big issue. Since this meeting in December we have made an agenda that is ours and that should be met by the government of Evo Morales. For example, this agenda includes the creation of the Minister of Water, the elimination of excessive management positions [in the government], the preparation of a new law of potable water…we are bringing all of these proposals to the constituent assembly.

BD: What is being done autonomously among these social groups, outside of the state, in neighborhoods and cities, to distribute and defend these basic services?

OO: Since December we haven’t been able to do almost anything. It’s been an electoral time period. Everyone was concerned with what president would enter the government. With this government I believe we will demand that access to basic services is a right that all citizens should have. We will also work toward the strengthening of autonomous organizations, such as the cooperatives, the water committees…to obtain our own management of water.

BD: How does this dream of self-organizing relate to indigenous traditions and history in Bolivia?

OO: Now we are in front of a new government, a new political party and state scenario. I believe something will be constructed based on the values and customs of our ancestors. A fundamental part of this should be that the community be in charge, that the community makes decisions, not someone from above. I believe we are now in a process of ideological debate regarding the recuperation of our values. We should continue working with the people in an organized manner. It’s a process we’ve been in for some ten years, which has made this solidarity from the ground up possible.

BD: Bolivian Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera has said that the social movements in Bolivia are currently very strong but aren’t united enough to collaborate with the state. What do think of this perspective?

OO: I don’t know what Alvaro Garcia Linera said, but collaboration is not what [we’re] looking for. We’re working to establish a common horizon between the government and the social movements, to make sure that this agenda which the people have proposed is met.

BD: Could something be done within the constituent assembly to facilitate the collaboration between the government and the social movements?

OO: It’s not about collaboration; it’s about working together for a new society. The constituent assembly is a scenario where we will all be able to discuss. Yet what we’re afraid of is that the MAS will try to control the constituent assembly and I don’t think this would be good.

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Benjamin Dangl is the author of “The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia,” (forthcoming from AK Press, 2007). He edits UpsideDownWorld.org, a website uncovering activism and politics in Latin America. Email Ben(at)upsidedownworld.org

The 2005 World Social Forum in Brazil

Written by Benjamin Dangl

Tuesday, 24 January 2006

Maybe it had to do with the beer, or the heady mixture of languages, or the humidity, but it felt like something unique was growing out of the sweaty discussions and incessant drum circles. It wasn’t the same energy one feels at a large protest or indoor activist conference, and it was more than a tropical version of Woodstock. There was a feeling at the fifth annual World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil that something extraordinary was happening. In this week-long party of ideas and networking, another world did seem very possible. But when such an event occurs, it’s hard not to wonder what will happen when everyone goes home. What went wrong at this international crossroads? And where might it go from here? A key ingredient for this globalized stew was face-to-face conversation with like-minded people from around the globe. At a time when communication is nearly dominated by cell phones, television and the Internet, 200,000 people congregated in one city just to talk with each other. There were Indian students sitting under trees conversing with aging members of Brazil’s Workers Party, Argentineans sharing mate (there is an accent over the e) (a thick herbal tea) around campfires with Canadian media activists and North Americans listening to stories of water privatization from Ghanaians. “You always leave the World Social Forum with more than you arrived with,” Pupi Palero, a member of a program in Mendoza, Argentina that works with micro-credit for women, said. She has been to the WSF in Porto Alegre four times. “Sure, there are people who go to the forum and then just leave and do nothing. Others are inspired to work more. Like me, on a personal level the forums gave me a lot of hope, and after going to the first forum in 2001, I realized I had to do something, so I began working more with organizing and activism in Mendoza.” For many participants, the forum is all about global networking. “You can run into a large amount of diversity, and people from all over with information about anti-capitalist politics, human rights and the environment and so on,” Jimena, from Cordoba, Argentina, explained. “But more than the conferences it offers a chance to meet people and talk with them about the different themes important to them, get to know what the problems are from their country and region, get contacts and organize for specific actions and programs.” The WSF was founded in 2001 in Porto Alegre, Brazil to deliberately take place parallel to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, an annual gathering of business and political leaders. Whereas those at the Davos forum believe the world can be improved through free market business deals, the WSF is a process of seeking and building alternatives to neoliberal policies. Four of the five social forums have been held in Porto Alegre. Last year it was in Bombay, India and this year it was back in Brazil during the last week in January. From day one of the WSF, activists of all ages arrived in Porto Alegre. Some traveled in bus or plane; others hitchhiked. A space for the democratic exchanges of ideas and experiences, the WSF is home to panels and workshops led by intellectuals and representatives from social movements and civil society groups from around the globe. Previous participants include Noam Chomsky, Arundhati Roy, and Naomi Klein. The events are organized around the WSF slogan, “Another World is Possible.” This other world is meant to be one without war, injustice, racism, and economic inequality. For all of its colorful topics and variety, the instant gratification of the forum left some people wondering how much they were actually learning. “It is contradictory that you get a lot of information, exchanges and experience in such a short time,” explained Leo Kuehberger, a PhD student from Austria and author of the book We Make Historyabout the anti-globalization protests in Genoa, Italy. “For example if I wanted to understand the experience of factory workers in my town it takes months, years. So can I really understand that much in a week at the social forum?” The 2005 WSF didn’t come without its faults. For example, workshops were often canceled or relocated without any prior announcement, translators sometimes never showed up, or a band played next to the tent, drowning out the speaker. In spite of this, or perhaps because of it, some of the best aspects of the forum were not the organized events, they were the informal talks people were able to have day and night with each other on topics ranging from Bush’s re-election to alternative media in Patagonia. The forum was comprised mainly of tents and buildings, some of them mildly air conditioned, situated along the beach of the Guaiba River. In the middle of the WSF expanse was the city’s Harmony Park, home to the International Youth Camp, an event organized to provide cheap accommodation and youth oriented activities for WSF activists. Some 35,000 people stayed at the camp, which was full of non-stop discussions, debates, film screenings, partying and music. The Youth Camp, because of its central location and festive atmosphere, was the life of the party. Yet the energy of both events fed off of each other. “There are so many young people here, and the WSF produces an incredible awareness in them,” Paolo, student from Porto Alegre commented. “They’re the ones who will be the intellectuals and leaders in the future. The forum allows youth to interact with the most imminent intellectuals of the left, who are able to pass their experience and knowledge on to younger people. It is an experience that will stay with them forever.” Other aspects of the forum were more problematic. “One huge issue at the WSF was gender dynamics,” Nadja Millner-Larsen, a recent graduate from New York’s Bard College, said. “There was an enormous lack of women on the panels at the social forum. I attended this one panel on the anti globalization movement and at the end of it a lot of women stood up and said “how can we create another world when we don’t have healthy gender dynamics in these panels?” “Some of the men said, ‘Okay, we should pay attention to this.’ But others on the panel had this age-old response that been going on in the left since the sixties. They said, well, classes aren’t equally represented, nor race, therefore you shouldn’t be so outraged by the underrepresentation of women.” “This is skirting around the issue,” Millner-Larsen continued. “If a black person in a white audience asked why there aren’t black people on a panel, the speakers wouldn’t say, ‘Relax there aren’t any women either.’ Here we are thirty years later and we are still arguing class and gender against women…it’s shocking. To allow this unequal gender distribution to be sanctioned within the official forum obviously has this kind of trickle down effect in the youth camp.” In addition to hundreds of robberies and numerous fights in the Youth Camp, rapes were reported there as well. “There was a high level of violence in the Youth Camp, Millner-Larsen explained. I felt more scared there than I really have traveling anywhere else. I got the sense that being alone in the camp was a really dangerous thing.” Another controversy this year was the drafting of a manifesto of demands and proposals, which was strange for an event that prides itself on not (perhaps use - having demands or proposals) or this - having such results. The points of the manifesto included the promotion of equitable forms of trade, the implementation of anti-discrimination policies for minorities and women and demanding debt cancellation for third world nations. It was created by 19 high profile WSF activists and writers including Nobel literature laureate Jose Saramago, Le Monde Diplomatique director, Ignacio Ramonet, and Uruguayan writer, Eduardo Galeano. For some, the manifesto was a healthy step for an event many believed had been counterproductive. “It’s not possible to continue to say ‘another world is possible’ if we do not make some proposals about how to reach this other world,” said Ricardo Petrella, one of the presenters at the press conference on the manifesto. Others believed that 19 intellectuals deciding what 200,000 people believed in contradicted the WSF principles. Brazilian International Committee member Cândido Grzybowski, was unhappy with the decision to create the manifesto and refused to sign it. “The contents of this proposal are perfect, and I believe 80 percent of the forum participants would agree with it,” Grzybowski said in an interview with TerraViva. “What kills this proposal is the method with which it was created and presented… It goes against the very spirit of the forum. Here, all proposals are equally important and not only that of a group of intellectuals, even when they are very significant persons.” Leo Kuehberger didn’t believe the WSF manifesto had much significance. “The WSF is a process that cannot be controlled by anyone. I don’t care what the results of the forums are. Maybe most people don’t care about these proposal or points. No one looks at these things and says , ‘Oh, we should concentrate on that this year.’ It is not about the results on the micro-level. There may be results on paper, but most people care about results made in a personal way, a direct, person-to-person experience.” The day after the forum, the circus left Porto Alegre. People packed up their tents, stuffing numerous pamphlets and dirty clothes into their backpacks. Artists, musicians, writers and students piled back into buses and cars for the long ride home. Sweaty activists with laptops under their arms boarded planes, some leaving the palm trees and samba to return to snow and subzero temperatures. Next year, the WSF is scheduled to be spread out in regional forums around the world, and in 2007 it will take place in Africa. For many, it is difficult to say what the future might have in store for the WSF, whether its popularity and significance will fade, or whether its organizational aspects will change dramatically. “Now it is an open situation, everything is possible,” Kuehberger explained. “Maybe in two years there will be no social forum, or maybe it is growing. We’re in a very open situation.” Gustavo Orego works with a participatory democracy NGO in his home town of Rosario, Argentina and has been to four of the social forums. “When the forum stops being a necessity, people will stop going,” he explained. “The forum is not an end, it is a medium. Now it is a necessary encounter.” Benjamin Dangl is the editor of www.UpsideDownWorld.org, an online magazine about activism and politics in Latin America. This article was initially published in the March, 2005 issues of Clamor Magazine.

An Interview with Michael Hardt

Conducted By Benjamin Dangl

4/14/04

Michael Hardt is a professor at Duke University and is the co-author, along with Antonio Negri, of the book Empire, which Harvard University Press described as “Looking beyond the regimes of exploitation and control that characterize today’s world order, Empire seeks an alternative paradigm – the basis for a truly democratic global society.”

This interview took place during a forum on the global peace movements against the war in Iraq, held at Columbia University from March 27-28, 2004. In the interview Hardt talks about the possible implications of the Free Trade Area of the Americas, the roles of presidents Chavez, Lula and Kirchner in Latin America, the recent US intervention in Haiti and the coordination of activist movements in Latin America and the US.

BD: The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is a huge issue in Latin America. As it looks now, the FTAA might be transformed into smaller trade agreements, such as an “FTAA-Lite” in Bolivia, Ecuador and so on, adjusted somewhat to the particular economic situation in each country. Do you think that these smaller, “individualized” trade agreements pose more of a threat than a larger, over arching one?

MH: It would depend completely on how they are done. I am always still interested in the way that these kinds of developments, and I don’t mean that something like this FTAA shouldn’t be opposed, but the way that the push towards them can also create a kind of a generalized resistance, the way that a FTAA can create a globalization movement of the Americas. By a larger scheme, the framework of domination creates a larger framework for the possibilities of resistance. I don’t mean that therefore I want them to have larger powers, but once we find ourselves in that situation there is a kind of framework we can work in…

BD: Similar to the way the antiwar movement was generated by the move to go to war in Iraq…

MH: Exactly, you know there is less than there should be of interaction among the movements in North America and the southern cone, in Venezuela, Bolivia…it would be I think an enormous enrichment to have a much greater circulation of resistance, if you could call it that.

BD: Do you think that Lula (President of Brazil), Kirchner (Argentina), Chavez (Venezuela) would have been elected if there hadn’t been an economic crisis taking place in their countries prior to the elections?

MH: You might say that with Kirchner, but with Lula and Chavez it is somewhat different. The possibilities presented by a Lula government and a Kirchner government - a kind of southern cone as a progressive block - is I think an enormous possibility and one that could be also useful for activists in changing politics in North America. What I mean is that there is a way in which regional configurations can at least influence the progress of many of the decisions about these global levels of either economic agreements or properly political questions. The same way that in the group of 22 in the Cancun talks we saw what was already an effect of the Lula government having an international effect.

BD: Do Lula, Kirchner and Chavez pose a real threat to the US economic plan in Latin America? It seems to me that Lula is kind of going back and forth, trying not to anger the leftists in Brazil who supported him in the first place and also trying not to create too much economic instability in Brazil.

MH: I am no super expert on it or anything, but it seems quite clear that Lula is constrained by being a head of state. It seems to me it would make no sense to go to war with the IMF essentially. It seems to me that in the present global configuration that a head of state has no choice but to find a way to accommodate the demands of the IMF…and what Lula can do and what Kirchner can do too is try to do that in a way that also forwards the kinds of politics that they have been involved with previously. I think it is unrealistic or even detrimental somehow to be disappointed in Lula’s acting like a head of state. It seems to me that a head of state today has certain restrictions and that’s what Lula seems to me to be acting as. I know that the left wing in the PT (Workers Party of Brazil) has been very critical of Lula and upset with him. At least from my external perspective I don’t understand the rationality of that.

BD: As far as what happened in Haiti and in Iraq, the US seems to pick on the smaller countries that don’t pose the biggest threat to the US; Iraq didn’t have any WMDs, meanwhile Iran, North Korea and Pakistan were possibly producing them or selling them. And then the US goes after Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, instead of going after bigger heavy hitting countries and administrations like those of Lula and Chavez. Why does the US go after the smaller, less threatening countries in these situations? Could Venezuela, Cuba be next? And do you think the recent events in Haiti, along with the FTAA, are part of a larger plan to re-colonize Latin America?

MH: I think maybe the first thing is to start by distinguishing the military operations from the entire political ambitions. It is true, as you say, that these recent wars have been against, not exactly defenseless countries, but Iraq had been under sanctions for years, it wasn’t any great military power. I think though that the restrictions the US government lives under, under its present conditions, are such that it can’t engage in a military operation against a powerful military presence. That’s said though; they don’t only conduct their work by military means, so one might assume that it is unlikely that the US military would roll into Venezuela. That doesn’t mean that the US wouldn’t quite strongly encourage a coup d’ etat in Venezuela, or find other means to do it, other not properly military means to do it. This is probably not very new, these…strategies…I wouldn’t even call them strategies. It is like they live under certain restrictions. They can’t just go and do this.

So I wanted to separate those two things, one should account for the logic of the military actions, but separate them somewhat from the global political strategies. The other distinction that makes sense for me to make is what the core team of Bush policy people view, and they do quite explicitly want to remake the global environment. And that brings with it a lot of things so that now, part of the project with Iraq is remaking the Middle East… It seems important to distinguish their dreams, even what seem to be delusions from what in fact they are capable of doing and can happen. One doesn’t always have to take at their word what these people think they are going to be able to do. I in fact think that they are not able to do what they would like. Iraq looks more like a failure than a success, as far as their plans go.

BD: You talked about creating more solidarity between activist movements in South America and in North America, what do you recommend to help facilitate that?

MH: It seems to me that since Seattle, in the US, there have been two mandates that have been living within the movements. One is to “globalize the movements”, that we are dealing with issues that don’t just relate to North America, and in fact in many ways relate in other places more. Yet, the movements have largely formed between North America and Europe, and so the efforts to globalize them is an ongoing one, and there are certain ways in which it has been done. And the other one is to transform the movements from protest movements, from “summit hopping” or occasion hopping, as far as the war goes, to properly propositional movements, ones that create an alternative rather than simply are dictated by the president’s decision to go to war or the meeting of the G8, or something like that. I pose these not as like “I’m suggesting what the agenda should be”, I think this has been what the agenda has been.

The World Social Forum and the various social forums have done a lot to facilitate both aspects of these items on the agenda. To give you an example, I was at two of the World Social Forums in Porto Alegre, Brazil. At one of them, there was this sort of counter forum going on at the youth camp where there were groups from various places. I was at one meeting where we had Italians, piqueteros from Argentina and a group from a movement in South Africa that is against these electricity and water cut offs in Durban and Johannesburg. It was great having three of them talk to each other, because even in a straight forward, tactical way they are experiencing the same thing, the same kinds of police repression and the same kinds of struggles. And it was not really learning from each other, but recognizing a kind of commonality that then creates new relationships. We had something like thirty people right then, but it’s none the less significant and effective in its small way. It is that kind of thing that has to happen on a much larger scale. I think it was great that the World Social Forum was in South Asia this year, and probably should move other places, even though next year it’s going back to Brazil. In any case though, the social forum process can only be one component of addressing these issues.

It’s not even about solidarity, because, we all feel solidarity. Yes, the cocaleros in Bolivia are great, but we don’t learn from them and know them. Rather than solidarity, it is kind of a process of education that has to go on. In the North American movements there is a lot of sympathy and recognition of injustices in the world, but relatively little, understandably, real understanding of what life is like for different people, what it is like to do politics there. And that’s, I think, the kind of experience that is really transformative.

“Gringo, Go Home!” - Youth Activism in Bolivia

By Benjamin Dangl, WireTap
Posted on December 15, 2003
http://www.alternet.org/story/17380/

On the second floor of an old building shared by worker unions, lawyers and environmental groups, Cochabamba’s main youth activist group gathered for an organizational meeting. The walls of the room were covered with propaganda from Cuba, feminist posters from Sweden, an anti-FTAA banner, a Bolivian flag and news clippings about child soldiers in Colombia.

One person at the table idly strummed a guitar; another kept checking his cell phone while a young woman spoke with a visitor from outside the city about plans to start activism groups in small schools in the mountains.

When asked what they were majoring in, a few students replied, “activism,” referring to the fact that they had put off their studies indefinitely to focus on what they saw as a more pressing issue — Bolivia’s Gas War. A massive grassroots movement against the exportation of the nation’s gas to the US through a Chilean port had been taking place for weeks. The strikes, blockades and protests in the conflict resulted in over 70 dead and 500 wounded. On October 17, the president of Bolivia resigned, marking the beginning of an uncertain peace there.

The activists looked tired. They had been participating in endless protests for weeks, writing articles on Indymedia about the conflicts, making banners, and handing out flyers to gather more recruits for the marches. They began the meeting by discussing plans for a massive march scheduled for the next day, then talked about the costs for the publication of a recent magazine they produced and argued over how they would fund an upcoming trip to a social forum in Santa Cruz. Some students spoke of a series of seminars they had planned with other citizens, students, and professors.

One student pointed out, “We have to inform as many people as possible about these issues, the gas, the FTAA, and the Citizen Security Law. Once they realize what is going on, they will head to the streets to protest with everyone else. It is only a matter of time before the whole city is out there.”

“Police, Who Are You Defending?”

The next morning, the whole city seemed to be marching in the streets, waving banners and chanting, “Our gas is not for sale!” and “Gringo, go home!” referring to their now ex-president, Sanchez de Lozada, who grew up in the US and speaks Spanish with a heavy American accent.

A large group of young people, many from the activist meeting the day before, were waving placards still wet with fresh paint. They marched alongside campesino families who had ridden all night from the nearby Chapare region, a tropical area where much of the country’s coca is produced. Mothers carried babies on their backs in colorful folded blankets which were slung over their shoulders. Members from Bolivia’s Worker’s Union marched behind an enormous red banner. Next to them was a group of miners wearing hard hats and waving signs that said, “The Gas Is For Bolivia.”

Soon, groups that had begun marching from various areas in the city had all congregated in the main plaza and were listening to speeches from opposition leaders such as Oscar Olivera, the leader of the People’s High Command and Evo Morales, coca grower leader, as well as union leaders from the Chapare and teacher unions from within the city. The speakers hollered over the excited crowd from a balcony above the plaza.

Though the protesting sectors had diverse demands, they were gathered in the plaza for a common cause: the rejection of the government’s plans to export the nation’s gas to the US. Many believed the exportation plan would only benefit the US investors and business leaders in Bolivia. Protesters demanded that the gas be nationalized to benefit the neediest social sectors in Bolivia.

After the fiery speeches were over, many protesters marched to major intersections in the city to construct road blockades out of rocks, tires, dumpsters, and bonfires. The students from the youth activist group blockaded an intersection just outside the central plaza. The traffic, which was usually congested day and night in this part of the city, was almost immediately backed up for blocks. Angry taxi drivers pressed on their horns while the activists fueled blockade fires.

Suddenly, a mass of policemen on motorcycles and in trucks appeared towards the end of one street and began speeding towards the blockade. When the cops reached the crowd of students, they fired teargas into them, leapt from their motorcycles and brought their nightsticks crashing onto the bodies and heads of the young activists. Many students were immediately thrown into the backs of the police trucks and handcuffed.

A woman ran into the street, screaming at the policemen, “Who are you defending? Who are you defending?”

US Control Over Political and Economic Identity of Bolivia

Historically, Bolivia’s natural resources such as gold, tin, and coal have been exploited by foreign investors who made enormous profits while most Bolivians remained impoverished. In the Gas War, many Bolivians tried to defend one of the last major natural resources left in the country.

Currently, the Bolivian government is significantly influenced by International Monetary Fund (IMF) structural adjustments and the US government’s pressure in their war on drugs. In order to continue receiving development aid, previous Bolivian presidents have readily allowed themselves be controlled by the US ambassador and IMF officials. The US and IMF-backed methods of strengthening the Bolivian economy and eradicating coca has repeatedly created intense backlashes from the Bolivian public.

The production of coca is a fundamental part of the Bolivian economy, as thousands of Bolivian families grow the crop to survive. Coca has been used for centuries by many Bolivians for Andean religious ceremonies and to lessen pain due to high altitude, hard work, and sickness. It is also an ingredient in cocaine. Both ex-president Sanchez de Lozada and the current president, Carlos Mesa, have been forced to maintain harsh coca eradication laws as a part of the US’s war on drugs. If the Bolivian government refuses to comply with the demands regarding coca eradication, they risk losing funding and political backing from the US.

For years, the US-enforced coca eradication campaigns have involved intense militarization of coca growing areas in Bolivia, which has resulted in extensive human rights violations paired with a lack of significant alternative development projects. However, while the US pours millions of dollars into the war on drugs in Bolivia each year, the amount of cocaine consumed in the US remains the same.

Grassroots Movements Govern From the Streets

In spite of economic and political pressure from the US, some grassroots movements in Bolivia have succeeded in overturning unpopular policies.

In April of 2000 in Cochabamba, a conflict took place called the Water War. It originated when foreign companies, including investors from the US, began a deal to privatize the water in the Cochabamba area. The IMF and World Bank would not lend money to Bolivia unless it transferred control of the water system from the government to a private company. Aguas del Tunari, a subsidiary of Bechtel, bought and took over the water system.

This deal drastically raised the price of water to amounts that most people could not afford. The citizens of the area took to the streets to protest and blockade, demanding that the privatization of their water be stopped. After violent confrontations between security forces and protesters paralyzed the city for weeks, the foreign investors pulled out and the water privatization ended.

In February of 2003, riots rocked the capital of Bolivia as protesters rejected an IMF-backed proposal to increase income taxes. By the end of this conflict, nearly 30 people had been killed. After the riots, the president decided to stop moving ahead with the income tax plan.

In Bolivia’s Gas War, which took place during September and October of 2003, hundreds of thousands of people across the country marched, went on strike and constructed extensive road blockades in protest against the government’s plan to export the nation’s gas to the US. After over a month of violent confrontations and blockades, President Sanchez de Lozada resigned and Vice President Carlos Mesa took power. Mesa has pledged to create an effective democratic forum in which the people of Bolivia will be able to control the destiny of the nation’s gas. However, so far, no specific plans regarding such a forum have been made.

Youth Activists in Bolivia and the US

As an American activist who was in Bolivia during the Gas War, I noticed that organizational tactics in both US and Bolivian anti-global activism are similar. In both countries, activists protesting globalization need to work together in order to make group decisions, coordinate their efforts, create signs and banners, practice civil disobedience, get friends out of jail, find funding, and try to work with an often apathetic public.

However, Bolivia is the second poorest country in Latin America, and this alone sets Bolivian youth activists apart from those in the US. Often, people in Bolivia are fighting immediate threats against their livelihood and way of life. Such was the case with the Water War, when people could not afford to drink the privatized water. In the US, many youth anti-globalization activists live comfortably, and protest out of social consciousness or guilt regarding what their country’s government and corporations are doing to the rest of the world.

Edgar Moya, a law student in Cochabamba, comments on American anti-globalization activism by saying, “The marches against the Iraq War in the US were only due to a social consciousness; they were not due to an economic problem that affected the personal livelihoods of the individuals living in their own country.”

In contrast, he notes that, “In Bolivia, there is a huge amount of poverty, which moves people to activism, not just because of social consciousness, but because these foreign powers of imperialism and globalization are affecting our daily life.”

A social movement such as the Gas War in Bolivia probably would not be possible in the US at this time, simply because of the lack of recognition of a common enemy and lack of coordination between youth activists, unions, and other social sectors.

Current social movements in Bolivia have a huge base of support including indigenous groups, unions, coca farmers, miners, bus drivers, shop owners, teachers, middle class citizens, and religious groups, along with student activists. Luis, an economics student in Cochabamba, points out these differences, “I don’t see this huge base of support in the US. I think that there, a lot of the activists are students and I don’t see a big connection within the movements there between, say, worker’s unions and students. Here, this relationship is very important.”

There is a history of solidarity between students and other protesting sectors in Bolivia, with close connections between youth activists and indigenous groups like the Aymara and Quechua, as well as campesinos, unions and coca growers. For example, activists in Tinku, a Bolivian youth activist group, attend cocalero meetings and each December travel to the Chapare for a three day meeting during which the cocaleros discuss their politics, demands, coca eradication issues, union organizing, and so on. Ramiro Saravia, a member of Tinku, explains, “When the campesino activists arrive in Cochabamba for marches and strikes, we always receive them, support them with food, help out with banners, share coca, and participate in their meetings.”

History and Variety in Bolivian Youth Activism

Youth activism in Bolivia was very strong from the 1960s to the 1980s, during the time of the military dictatorships of Hugo Banzer and Garcia Mesa. The Local University Federation and the Federation of High School Students were very active at this time as well. Marielle Cauthin, a communications student in Bolivia whose father was exiled to Sweden under Bolivia’s dictatorship for his participation in youth activism, speaks about the history of student activism in Bolivia. She explains that socialism inspired many young people, who in turn wanted to support Che Guevara when he arrived in Bolivia. However, an enormous number of students were exiled, imprisoned, tortured and killed. “By the time of the recuperation of democracy in Bolivia,” Cauthin says, “the leftist movement had been greatly reduced because many of the leaders had been killed, or were exiled to other countries.”

Currently, there are a variety of youth activist groups in Bolivia. There are youth groups deeply involved with political parties such as the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), which is a party led by Evo Morales. Anarchist, environmentalist, Trotskyist and religious groups are also present across the country. For example, a nationwide Trostkyist group works successfully each year to lower registration costs for classes in universities.

Tinku, another nationwide youth activist group, focuses on political and cultural issues. Besides organizing regular marches and seminars on political issues, they organize a movie screening every Wednesday that usually has to do with politics and Latin American history. Every Sunday, on the outskirts of the city of Cochabamba, Tinku hosts a community gathering where families, students and musicians gather to eat, drink and dance. Throughout the gathering, which goes on from the afternoon into the night, people of all ages arrive from across the city to dance and play Bolivian folk music.

Apathy

Not all students and youth in Bolivia are interested in activism and preserving Bolivian culture. The apathy that affects activism on campuses and towns across the world is just as present in Bolivia as anywhere. For example, in Cochabamba, at one of the larger marches during the Gas War, nearly 4,000 students gathered to protest. Yet Cochabamba has five universities in it, the largest with 50,000 students.

According to Ramiro, a member of Tinku, “Many young people just show up to the big marches, such as in the gas and water wars, and then you never see them again. There needs to be constant organization for these movements to be successful.”

One engineering student, who says he never goes to protests, is critical of the marches and blockades that rocked Bolivia for nearly two months in the Gas War. “The people in the countryside who make the blockades are uneducated and don’t understand the political issues. They just blockade and march because they like violence and social turmoil. The blockades hurt the economy more than the gas exportation ever would. When the roads are blockaded, business owners who rely on the transportation of goods for their jobs go hungry because they have no income.”

Class issues play a role in this lack of participation as well. Youth from the poorest sectors of society often do not have time for activism, as they have to work constantly to support themselves and their families. Many young people from the richest sectors of Bolivian society often do not care about activism and choose to ignore the policies that negatively affect the rest of the nation.

The Struggle is Global

All over the world, youth are participating in movements against the same systems of power that threaten to manipulate the economic and social identities of whole nations. Across Latin America, young people are taking to the streets in rejection of the FTAA. In Bolivia, thousands of young activists played vital roles in the Gas War. Recently, youth activists in Cancun, Mexico helped cause the collapse of the WTO talks, and each day young people participate in worldwide protests against the US involvement in Iraq. A month ago in Miami, activists demonstrated against the FTAA.

Luis speaks about the importance of this international solidarity. “It gives me hope to know that there are other people in the world that support our struggle. Because we are fighting against a common enemy, which is international capitalism, globalization, US imperialism and war, and we all must keep moving ahead, because the struggle isn’t just in Bolivia, it is in the US, it is in Chiapas, it is in Europe, it is in Palestine…the struggle is global.”

Because international cries of protest against US economic and political policy in countries such as Bolivia, Iraq, Cuba and Palestine may not be heard in the White House, there is a need for US citizens themselves to work internally to make political and corporate changes.

Another… Two Worlds are Possible?: Ibero-American Presidential Summit and parallel Alternative Social Forum

December 10, 2003

by Benjamin Dangl

At this year’s Ibero-American Presidential Summit and parallel Alternative Social Forum, two opposing forces in Latin America’s fierce polemic over the direction of its own social and economic progress were well defined. The twenty one presidents of Latin America were lodged in the most luxurious hotel in Boliva to participate in the XIII Ibero-American Presidential Summit. Meanwhile, blocks away in the same city, activists, farmers, NGO’s, professors and opposition leaders from all over Latin America set up their Alternative Social Forum in the city’s Autonomous University of Gabriel Morenos. The politicians slept in $200 USD a night hotel rooms with shiny bathrooms, room service, armed guards and air conditioned conference halls to talk about trade agreements, poverty, social exclusion and national debt. Those at the university slept on the floor, shared bathrooms and food and discussed, in the heavy tropical heat, trade agreements, poverty, social exclusion and national d! ebt. The slogan for both the Presidential Summit and the Social Forum was “Another World is Possible.”

The two events approached the same issues from opposite view points. The Alternative Social Forum where the activists and farmers were meeting, rejected the FTAA agreement, harsh anti-terror and protest laws, the continuation of Bolivia’s Gas agreement and coca eradication laws. Those at the Ibero-American Presidential Summit were primarily supportive of the FTAA, united in thier “war on terror”, ready to discuss changes in Bolivia’s current gas agreement, but not wholly reject it, and planned to continue with the same stance on coca eradication as stipulated by intense US pressure on the issue.

The Ibero-American Presidential Summit

After the initiative of Juan Carlos I, the king of Spain, the first Ibero-American Presidential Summit took place in Guadalajara, Mexico in 1991. Since then, the Summits have taken place each year in cities across Central and South America, and have always included presidents from all over the continent, as well as those from Portugal and Spain. Every year the meetings are based on a different set of issues, such as health care, education, participative democratic procedures, globalization and regional integration, tourism, environmental issues and national debt.

This year, in Santa Cruz, the streets and intersections around the Tajibos Hotel where the Ibero-American Summit took place were roped off and lined with hundreds of police and military officials. People who lived and owned businesses near the hotel had to evacuate the area during the Summit. Only the presidents and thier officials, the workers at the Summit and the press were allowed to enter the hotel.

The Presidential Summit was all very well planned and controlled. Unlike the Social Forum, there were no improvised discussions, debates or panels. For the most part, when the official program called for their appearance, the presidents and their armies of consultants, advisors and body gaurds came out of their comfortable hotel rooms only to give pre-scripted and vague opinions on various issues.

Good Intentions, Fancy Hotel

Despite the highly controlled atmosphere and uninspiring meetings, some useful contacts between political leaders were made and politicians displayed good intentions in regards to the recent conflict in Bolivia. For example, Evo Morales, Bolivian congressman and coca farmer leader, spoke with Kofi Annan. The United Nations leader invited Morales to participate in an indigenous rights conference in New York City. However, Morales was unable to attend the meeting due to the fact that the US embassy in Bolivia refused to grant him a visa for the trip.

Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela spoke of the issue of impunity: “There is great guilt for what took place here in Bolivia in October. Those guilty people should be tried…Just as the men and women of Latin America should judge the savage neoliberalism that is putting an end to the people of this continent.” Many of the other president’s reserved and careful speeches paled in comparison to Chavez’s fiery discourses.

Fidel Castro could not make it to the Summit due to “agenda problems”, so the vice-president of Cuba, Carlos Lage, was sent his place. After stating that Castro was to double the amount of scholarships that were to be sent to Bolivian students to allow them to study in Cuba, Lage said, “Solidarity isn’t giving a limousine to someone, it is sharing what you have with others.”

However, for many, the gap between the rich facilities of the presidents and the extensive poverty in Bolivia, was hard to ignore. Maria Rodriguez, an activist student from the Autonomous University of Gabriel Morenos, commented on the Presidential Summit, “Yes, there are some good leaders at the Summit. They talk and talk about solutions, and many have good intentions, but why do they have to spend millions of dollars on security, travel costs, food and air conditioning, when there are people all over the continent going hungry?”

The Alternative Social Forum

The Alternative Social Forum in Santa Cruz was a smaller version of what took place at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil last year. This forum’s goal was to “construct democratic debates of ideas, elaborate proposals, establish a free exchange of experiences and articulate effective actions that oppose neoliberalism and the domination of countries for transnational capital or for whatever form of imperialism.”

The Autonomous University of Gabriel Morenos, where the Forum took place, operates on a very low budget and is made up of run-down buildings that have been used for decades. Throughout the Social Forum its classrooms were packed with people from all over Latin America and the world. Delegations at the Forum included representatives from Brazil’s Landless Movement, an ATTAC coalition from Spain, indigenous groups from Ecuador, worker unions and activists from Chile and Argentina, students from all over Bolivia, cocaleros and farmers, human rights NGO’s and Bolivian congressmen and women.

“The idea isn’t just to protest the President’s Summit,” Maria Rodriguez said. “This is an alternative forum where people from all sectors of society can come and exchange ideas and try to educate each other.”

The events at the Forum revolved around topics such as the FTAA, environmental issues, the history of Latin America Social Movements, poverty, Indymedia, feminism, coca eradication, homeless children, agriculture and land issues. Though haggard from the traveling it took to get there, many participants were smiling, energetic and involved in deep discussions, some strumming guitars and selling leftist pamphlets and Che Guevara T-shirts.

Rafael Lopez, a Sociology Student at the University where the Social Forum was taking place, and who worked as an organizer for the event, spoke about his thoughts on the Presidential Summit, “I was going to try to work at the Presidential Summit,” he said, “just to see what it was like. But you needed to pass a special exam in order to work there.” He could not afford the $40 USD fee to take the exam. “If you didn’t pass the exam,” he continued, “you could not work at the Summit and would not even get a refund for your 40 dollars. This in itself limited the participation in the Summit to only certain economic classes.”

For weeks, Lopez and other organizers had been planning for the Social Forum, inviting speakers, renting sound equipment, reserving classrooms, and publishing flyers on the events. Lopez spoke about his participation, “We organized events with various institutions that indentify with the pueblo, the people of Latin America, and not with the elite politicians, such as the case with the Summit. This Forum is free and anyone can come here - the political elite, the opposition leaders, everyone is welcome. It is for all classes of people.”

Strength Through Exuberance

One morning at the Alternative Social Forum, a panel on the landless movement began in the center of the campus, under a huge tent. Representatives from Bolivia and Brazil´s landless movement spoke to a crowd made up primarily of farmers who, like everyone else, had traveled hours to arrive there.

“[Carlos] Mesa (Bolivia’s new president) just wants to tranquilize us so he can go ahead and do the same as Goni (the ex-President). He has a different discourse; he listens to the people, but the system has not changed,” said one of the Bolivian Landless Movement leaders. Many of the speakers on the panel were chewing coca from a huge pile of the green leaves which was spread out on the table in front of them.

In a nearby classroom, a panel was taking place to discuss the FTAA. The panel included a bearded man in sandals, a well dressed professor, a farmer with his hat backwards and an aging union leader. The union leader shook his fist in the air, “We are a colony of the US, we don´t own anything. We are at the mercy of US companies and neoliberalism, the monster with a thousand heads.” The crowd nodded. A fan on the cieling rotated weakly. Outside, a volunteer wandered past with an armload of foam sleeping pads. A bystander walked by with a shirt on that said, “Fertile Land For Everyone.”

There seemed to be a sublte, but notable overlap in vocabulary usage between George W. Bush’s discourse against terrorism, and the left’s discourse against neoliberalism and imperialism at the Social Forum. Leftist speakers were using the same vague and powerful words that Bush uses such as “evil”, “good and bad”, “justice” and “freedom”, to describe their “war against colonization.” The differences between the Bushites and the leftist opposition leaders in Latin America are huge. But it is hard to ignore the fact that a common enemy and scapegoat strengthens any movement or platform. It is also convenient for the left, and often well founded, to base all guilt for the poverty, social turmoil and economic instability in the region on “neoliberalism, the monster with a thousand heads.”

In other talks, people spoke about their theater projects with homeless children, and about forming neighborhood groups and unions. One class discussed community protection of the environment, and another was entitled, “Resisting the Criminalization of Social Movements.”

Often the people in the panels were speaking to the choir. Still, in a country where many cannot afford to go to college or buy newspapers, these classes and panels were valuable. They clarified complex issues and talked about the laws, companies and systems of power that are pressuring many countries in the region.

At the Alternative Social Forum, seminar locations changed at the last minute and often even the organizers didn’t know where certain events were taking place. An impromptu concert would start up next to a soccer game while a children’s theatre production went on in the shade. At one point, a student next to an upside down American flag and a table of Trotskyist literature gave a fiery speech through a megaphone to a crowd of two people. What the Social Forum lacked in organization it made up for in enthusiasm and persistence.

Political Tourism

In the end, the final declaration of the Ibero-American Presidential Summit, which all participating presidents signed, cited social inclusion as a principal mechanism for the development of Ibero-American countries. The declaration also maintained that all participating countries opposed the US trade blockade against Cuba. It stressed the importance of debt reduction, the fight against corruption and the importance of education as a way to improve social inclusion and end poverty. (Opinion, 11/16/03)

Andres Oppenheimer, a journalist for the Miami Herald who has reported on twelve Ibero-American summits, warned that if the president’s are not forced to comply with the promises made at the summits, these expensive meetings could turn into simply an “exercise in political tourism.” He wrote, “They sign a declaration that many don’t have any intention to follow, nor demand that the others follow. How absurd! What sense does it make that Spain, Portugal and the twenty one Latin American countries that form the Ibero-American community continue with this yearly exercise of political hypocrisy?” (El Nuevo Herald, 11/18/02)

Though the reality gap between the Presidential Summit and the Social Forum was significant, some interesting exchanges between the two did occur.

The new president of Bolivia, Carlos Mesa, was invited to give a speech at the Alternative Social Forum. When he arrived, a writhing mass of activists waving anti-FTAA signs were there to greet him. During his speech, he spoke of the importance of justice for the victims of Bolivia’s Gas War and about the necesity to include more sectors of Bolivian society in the democratic processes of the country. When he said that his administration would analyze the FTAA and not oppose it entirely, the crowd began booing. Mesa yelled into the crowd, “You are not going to listen to promises I cannot keep!” Many nodded their heads in agreement.

On the other side of the city, Eduardo Medina, a Natural Medicine professor and organizer of the Alternative Social Forum in Santa Cruz was asked to speak at the Presidential Summit as a representative from the Forum. Medina gave his speech in front of the twenty one presidents of Latin America. Among the conclusions from the Social Forum, Medina spoke about the rejection of the FTAA, a modification of the Bolivia’s hydrocarbon law, an end to impunity for crimes the state has committed against the people, a fair distribution of land and an end to the violence that has developed out of the US’s war on drugs.

In an interview after the speech, Medina said that the declaration he read “was not created just to protest, it was created to suggest proposals. We, the people of Bolivia, and those who were at the Social Forum, need to participate actively and speak out.”

Long winded speeches and self congratulation, something that neither politicians nor activists are safe from, were abundant at both events, showing that the biggest challenge for each party may be transforming their words into actions. At the end of the weekend, each president from the Summit left in separate private jets to thier respective countries and political parties. Those from the Social Forum headed home in overpacked buses over bumpy roads. In this way, the participants from both events shoved off to thier other possible worlds.

An Interview with Celia Martinez of the Worker-Controlled Brukman Textile Factory in Buenos Aires

Conducted by Benjamin Dangl

8/29/05

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One day before Argentina’s economic crash on December 19, 2001, fifty-two workers from the Brukman Textile Factory, the majority of them women, refused to continue working until their bosses handed over their back-wages. Plagued by debt and gradual bankruptcy, the owners hadn’t paid the workers their weekly pay check for fifteen days. The bosses demanded that the workers returned to their stations, but the sewing machines remained silent.

Jacobo Brukman, the owner of factory, told the workers, “If you think you can run the factory better than we can, than here is the key.” But instead of handing over the key, Brukman fled the building. The workers, many of whom didn’t even have the two pesos needed to take the bus home, remained in the factory, placing banners out the windows that said, “We Want Our Salaries!” Protesters in support of the workers showed up the following day. In a telephone conversation, the Brukman owners offered the workers two suits a piece instead of their salaries. The workers refused the offer and constructed a road blockade in front of the building in protest.

Soon after, a Brukman client contracted a large order of Bermuda shorts. The workers produced them, using much of the money from the deal to pay the gas and electric bill of the factory. It was at this time that they began running the business themselves, organizing contracts, salaries and general managerial activity.

What started out as a simple demand for back-wages had turned into a fierce struggle for worker-control of Brukman. Driven by a need to survive and support their families, the workers tried through legal means to gain ownership, fighting against politicians, judges and police in riot gear. Political differences among the workers themselves threatened to weaken and divide this struggle. Yet more than four years after they confronted their old bosses, the workers are still in charge of Brukman. Their fight has become a symbol of the recuperated factory movement in Argentina and an inspirational example to workers and activists around the world.

Celia Martinez, a worker at Brukman, has been part of this struggle from the beginning. In this interview she talks about the worker takeover, how the factory is currently organized, the difficulties of working closely with others in a cooperative, and how this experience has completely changed her political orientation.

Benjamin Dangl: The workers at Brukman have been through a very profound experience. First you were all simply demanding the back wages from the previous boss, and then you ended up taking over the factory and running it yourselves. Which do you prefer now, working for the old boss or operating as a cooperative? Why?

Celia Martinez: In the beginning we just wanted to see the bosses to talk about our wages. Later on, after the 19-20 of December (when the economy crashed, protests filled the streets and President De la Rua was forced from office) we saw what was happening in the country; three government came and went in just a few weeks. The leftists were all in the streets and they came together. I believe it was the leftists that sustained this uprising and made it what it was. The P.T.S. (Socialist Workers Party) worked the hardest so that this uprising would be well known throughout the world.

It was the left that supported us the most. The workers of Brukman were opportunists. Opportunists because we surrounded ourselves with people that gave us confidence, that told us we could fight and take over the factory. We made the most of the time we had to put the factory under work control without any legality and fought long and hard against the government…

I hope that we can be able to unite all of the recuperated factories and create a strong movement and defend each other, so that the factories continue to be of the workers. But now we just saw an attack at Zanon, (a worker run ceramic factory outside Buenos Aires). The wife of a companero was beaten up. They cut all of her face and body up. So what can we hope for? We don’t know.

What we want now is to be able to work and earn our salaries. It is very difficult for these recuperated factories to enter into the market. Those that are entering the market well are the metallurgical factories. They are entering the market easily, but the textiles, for now, are not doing well at all. We barely have any work and our clients don’t respond.

We have some fear that Chinese products will enter the market. The same thing happened in the 1990s when Menem was president, when most large textile factories went to other countries for cheaper labor. We can’t do something like that. It is very dangerous that Chinese products could invade the industry and the textiles could be left with nothing again.

BD: How is Brukman organized now? Do you have assemblies every week? Does everyone have an equal vote and receive an equal salary?

CM: We all charge the same for our work and each person has one vote. The assemblies are held once every week and every fifteen days, depending on the necessity that there is. Sometime we have them twice or three times a week, it depends on what we discuss. Now we have a direct commission, with a president and secretary etc. Before it wasn’t like this. There was an internal commission and nothing more.

BD: When you get together each week, what are some of the issues that you discuss?

CM: It almost always has to do with the work, what we need, legal problems and problems with the machines. It’s always something like this.

BD: What is the secret of maintaining a successful cooperative?

CM: It still is not a successful cooperative so I cannot give you the recipe (she laughs). I believe that the recipe would be – I am not giving you it really because it is still not a successful cooperative – a lot of democracy and class consciousness.

BD: In an interview in the book Sin Patron, conducted by the writers at LaVaca.org, your co-worker Matilda Adorno talked about what the early assemblies were like, just after the factory was taken over: “For many of us it was difficult to understand how to live with each other, and treat each other equally. Now we know what it is like in the other person’s shoes and we have made peace. In the assemblies we would be able to pull each other’s eyes out in order to defend our respective points of views. But afterwards we’d drink mate (thick herbal tea) together.” Could you expand on this experience?

CM: In the beginning we thought that all the companeros were equal and you’d try to see with these eyes, thinking that everyone has the same objective. But sometimes this just isn’t the case. Eventually you have to become accustomed to discussing in assemblies everything that you’re worried about, everything that you want and express your own position – the position of your work politics and your human position. It is important to discuss this in assemblies, but when the assembly is over, the discussion is over as well…

BD: What is the biggest challenge for the recuperated factories that function as cooperatives?

CM: The challenge is to be able to enter the market. It is very difficult. A capitalist could lose thousands of dollars, but we cannot because we don’t have the same economic strength that a capitalist has. We live on a day to day basis.

BD: In an interview with LaVaca.org, you said that your political orientation changed a lot throughout this experience. Could you explain this change?

CM: I used to be a Peronista, like my husband and children. But when we took over the factory I went to ask Peronistas in my community for help. I went a Peronista Senator that lives in my neighborhood for help and advice because I really didn’t know what to do. And he never responded, but the left gave me all the responses and helped me understand that I had to fight until the end. I think that of all the struggles that happened in these recent years, Brukman has come out on top. It has been an enormous experience that is famous all over the world. Journalists from all over the world have come to see this…The Peronistas would have tried to make a deal so that our old boss would come back and we would end up like slaves again.

BD: I was studying here in 2002 and there was a stronger social and political consciousness then with all of the assemblies, protests and the taking over of factories. And now much has changed. The people of Buenos Aires in general don’t support the protesters, piqueteros and the recuperated factory movement nearly as much as before. Why has this changed so much?

CM: Because the political situation in the country has changed. Many people believe in President Kirchner, because he appears to be a President of the semi-left, a president that appears to be with the people, but this is not true. For example, I think he will continue to pay the IMF.

BD: Does this change in consciousness have to do with people earning higher wages?

CM: There is at least a little more work. The middle class is recuperating and they were the ones in the streets in the assemblies because they had all of their money in the corrolito (in 2002, when people couldn’t get their money out of the bank because the financial infrastructure of the country was bankrupt.) This is not the case anymore, their economic situation is improving.

Member of Worker-Run Factory in Argentina Was Kidnapped, Tortured

by Benjamin Dangl

3/24/05

Zanon ceramics factory, one of the most prominent of the recuperated, worker-run factories in Argentina, was taken over by workers in 2001 and since then has been economically successful as a cooperative. However, as a major symbol of Argentina’s recuperated factory movement, (over 200 such cooperatives exist in the country), it has been a target for right-wing hostility. Workers at the factory have received death threats and have been violently oppressed during protests. Recently, this intimidation escalated: a woman who works at Zanon was kidnapped and tortured by a group workers believe is linked to the local government.

In the afternoon on March 4th in Neuquen, a city outside Buenos Aires, the woman (whose name has not been released) was leaving the factory when a group of people forced her into a green Falcon car, the same type of vehicle used during Argentina’s dictatorship in the seventies to kidnap and torture “leftists”. The group in the car began to insult her and said they knew where she lived, where her family worked and where her daughter plays after school. Then they began to cut her with a knife, taunting her by saying things like “cut her more so that the blood will flow in Zanon…” After cutting her arms and face they threw her out of the car and said they were going to go after her daughter next.

The woman called the workers at Zanon and the police. Police surrounded her house to protect her family throughout the night. By morning, however, there was only one policeman on guard. At 9 am one of her kidnappers returned through the back door and repeated what he had done to her in the car: insulting her and cutting her with a knife. When the man left, the one policeman who was on guard said he did not hear or see anything.

“This is one of many things that have happened to Zanon workers. Last year, Pepe, a Zanon worker was seriously injured in the eyes with pellets from police during a protest,” said Esteban Magnani, author of “El Cambio Silencioso” (”The Silent Change”), a book about worker cooperatives in Argentina. “In Neuquen you have Jorge Sobisch, a right wing governor who wants to be the new Carlos Menem (president of Argentina during the nineties who enacted numerous neoliberal policies which many believe greatly contributed to the country’s economic crisis). Sobisch wants to show how tough he is, so he is trying to get rid of Zanon.” The governor recently declared he will run for president in the next elections.

“The police are related to this because they didn’t protect the woman so that the kidnapper was able to return,” Maganani continued. “No one officially knows who conducted the kidnapping, but most people are pretty sure those involved in it are related to the local government…Zanon is very politicized and famous, which is bad for a governor who wants to be seen as a right wing savior. Sobisch feels the need to crack down now, because the longer he waits, the more powerful Zanon becomes.”

At a press conference held by Zanon workers regarding the kidnapping, Alejandro Lopez, the general secretary of Neuquen ceramic workers, said, “The police have not helped Zanon…nothing goes on in Neuquen without the consent of the local government.”

“Neuquen is not an island,” Lopez continued. “What happened there has happened elsewhere. Subway workers (a strong union group which recently went on a city wide strike) have been threatened and are under constant surveillance. Student groups have also been threatened.”

Hundreds of people were in attendance at the press conference, which was held in the worker-run Hotel Bauen in Buenos Aires. The mood at the conference was somber. The memory of the dictatorship’s killings and torture still weighs heavy in the hearts and minds of Argentines. This kidnapping was a harsh reminder that after years of fighting against such horrendous acts, they still do occur.

Hebe Bonafini is a member of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a group of women whose sons and daughters were “disappeared” during the military dictatorship. For decades the women have been fighting for social justice, human rights and answers regarding the whereabouts of their children. “We cannot permit this to happen,” Bonafini said, referring the kidnapping. “The government needs to intervene in this now. I called the Ministry of the Interior and he knows all about this. He just needs to do something.”

“Kirchner and Sobisch are enemies,” Magnani said. “Kirchner wants to be the leftist leader and Sobisch wants to be on the right. One of Kirchner’s flags is human rights. Now with this kidnapping and the continued threats, Kirchner shouldn’t have any excuse to not do something about this.”

Protests regarding the kidnapping and intimidation have taken place in Neuquen and Buenos Aires and various political, human rights, student and activist groups have gathered in solidarity to fight for justice and to prevent such brutal acts from happening again.

To sign a petition in support of Zanon workers, go to www.petitiononline.com/zanon/petition/html For more information on Zanon check out: www.labase.org.

The People’s Bank: Microcredit in Mendoza, Argentina

by Benjamin Dangl

3/6/05

“Without micro-credit, poor people would not be able to participate in globalization. The big question that everyone asks is, yes or no to globalization. For me, this isn’t the question. The real question is a good globalization versus a bad globalization.”

Such was the perspective of Mohammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi economist who invented The Grameen Bank, or The Poor People’s Bank. This bank involves lending small amounts of money to economically challenged people who want to start up their own community projects or businesses. The transaction is based on trust and word of mouth; there are no signatures or paper work. The idea is to infuse confidence into the lending process and empower the borrower.

Yunus developed this lending process after observing that poor families, especially women, could not receive credit by using the traditional financial banking system. He realized that many poor people were living in a viscous cycle that would not allow them to escape from poverty. Many were creative and had a huge capacity to work and produce, but because of their poverty and a lack of credit, they were unable to rise above their situation.

The loans had very low interest rates (2%) and were for, as Yunus explained, “the poorest of the poor.” He believed that the desperation of these people was so great that when they had any opportunity, they would make the most of it. The system was highly successful in his country and later spread internationally. It is now practiced in Africa, Central America, Asia and the Caribbean.

When Nestor Kirchner became the president of Argentina, his administration began a lending program based on this system. Pupi Palero and Fernando Mastrantonio work as representatives of this bank in a poor neighborhood on the edge of Mendoza, a city with a population of roughly one million in western Argentina.

“Major financial institutions are based on a lack of confidence,” said Palero. “In order to get a loan you have to have documents about your house, your property and sign everything. The loan system we’re working with is based on confidence.”

In Mendoza’s Poor People’s Bank, when people want to borrow money, they have to create a group of five people who promise among themselves that they will pay the loan back. After the group is formed, they meet with Pupi and Fernando once a week for a month until the loan is given out. During this time, the members discuss how they will carry out their projects. It is also a time for the people in the group to get to know each other.

“This system gives the people in the neighborhood the power to decide what needs to be done with the money. It is organizing from the bottom-up; they know what needs to be done because they live in the neighborhood and know the community,” Palero explained. “We never say no to a project. If it needs more work, we give advice, but we never say no.”

The amount of the loan starts out at 300 pesos, which is roughly 100 US dollars, and the loan is paid back in twenty-four weekly installments. If the loan is paid back in time and the project goes well, more money is lent after that. Projects often include starting up small businesses or improving the ones already existing. Some people in the groups were starting kiosks; others made clothing, another baked bread and sold it to other women who then distributed it at their kiosk.

Barrio Favorito

I accompanied Pupi and Fernando on a visit to a poor neighborhood in Mendoza called Barrio Favorito. Many of the houses in the neighborhood were shack-like and densely packed into a labyrinth of narrow, garbage strewn paths and roads. “The land these houses are on was taken over roughly twenty years ago, and still no one pays rent to live on it. The electricity is all pirated, but the water and gas is paid for,” Palero explained.

All of the groups they have worked with so far have been women. She attributed this to a variety of factors. “Nearly half of the women we work with are single mothers, and they have to look out for their children, so they are thinking about the long term more than men and often they are better administrators.”

The group we met with called themselves, Las Mudas, or The Deaf People. The name is a joke because they all talk constantly. When Palero handed out the money, everyone began cheering and clapping. It was the culmination of weeks of work, meetings and details.

As one of Las Mudas explained, “I have two kids, no husband and I have to pay someone to watch my kids. I also have to work and study because I went back to school. I receive a subsidy from the government, but it is not enough to live on.”

“More than the commercial and economic success of the person, the best part about this work is reinforcing social connections and dignity,” Palero explained. “A person without work, who is living off government subsidies, loses dignity. We are helping to rescue the dignity and the pride of someone who realizes they can work again. This project also organizes neighbors and helps them get to know one another. It is hard to find good groups because of individualism - capitalism promotes cultural individualism. People have lost confidence in their neighbor. The idea with this project is to recuperate the confidence in the other.”