Workers’ Responses to the Argentine

Crisis: The Case of a Cartonero

Co-operative.

LYNNE CHRISP

PhD

Volume one of two

July 2017
 NORTHUMBRIA UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

MODERN LANGUAGES DIVISION

PhD DISSERTATION

Workers’ Responses to the Argentine

Crisis: The Case of a Cartonero
Co-operative.

LYNNE CHRISP

Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of

Northumbria University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

SUBMISSION DATE: July 2017

ABSTRACT

This research is located in the aftermath of Argentina’s economic collapse in

December 2001. In broad terms, it questions how subaltern or marginalised
populations contest disadvantage in an environment of economic meltdown.
Following the economic crash, unprecedented levels of unemployment, poverty and
social marginalisation generated a variety of organic ‘survival’ responses. These
initiatives took various forms and adopted differing approaches, including
confrontational activity of piquetero organisations, whilst more institutional or
structured actions of co-operative projects formed from workplace recovery. A
further response was cartoneo, the practice of gathering and selling recyclable waste.
Working as a cartonero, or waste gatherer was generally adopted as a last resort
strategy by desperately poor, marginalised individuals from predominantly informal
and semi-formal settlements in peripheral areas of the Greater Buenos Aires Province
(GBA) and other urban areas nationally.1 Possibly taking their lead from the broader
trends in co-operative organisation, numbers of waste gatherers, or cartoneros,
banded together to form co-operatives. The subject of this thesis is one such project,
the Tren Blanco co-operative, established in Villa Independencia, an impoverished
shanty town in José León Suárez, San Martín department, GBA.

The topic was selected on the basis of the opportunity it afforded to present a
subaltern study and bottom–up account of the event from the perspective of the
protagonists. Appropriate to this aim, the focal aspect of the study was obtained by a
qualitative oral approach of informal and semi-structured interviews combined with
ethnographic observation conducted between July and August 2007. Secondary
resource materials, including academic literature and other media sources, were used
to provide a contextualisation of the event within both the broader context of
Argentina’s socio-economic history and the more specific context of late twentieth-
century and early twenty-first-century history. Literature on the subject of social
1
Gran Buenos Aires (GBA) is defined by the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos (INDEC) as
the area including Buenos Aires City and twenty-four surrounding municipalities of Buenos Aires
Province. The total area of GBA is 3,833 km². INDEC, ‘¿Qué es el Gran Buenos Aires?’,
INDEC.org.ar, pp. 3-5.
<http://www.indec.com.ar/indec.gov.ar.htm> [accessed 16 September 2013]

i
responses to Argentina’s economic crisis is limited. Research into the specific
phenomenon of cartonero co-operatives is even sparser. As such, this study
contributes to the body of Argentine socio-economic history in both the broad and
more specific sense. This work is valuable in that it provides an alternative reading to
traditionally top-down recording common to some historiographical traditions and
accounts. However, the core value of this research is that it provides an original
contribution to knowledge by considering the meaning and human relevance of work
and co-operative organisation in a marginal community in the chronological and
geographical context of early twenty-first-century Argentina.

ii
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Volume One.
Abstract i
Table of Contents iii
Preface iv
Acknowledgements vii
Declaration Page viii

List of Abbreviations ix

Chapter 1-Introduction. 1-34

Chapter 2-Literature review: The theories of work: Co- 35-90
operative structure and theory: Co-operatives in Latin
America: Popular responses to the 2001 economic crisis:
Kirchner to Kirchner economic change and social policy.

Chapter 3- Riches to rags: Argentina’s twentieth-century decline. 91-172

Chapter 4-Anti-imperialism, vendepatrismo and the political 173-195
class.

Volume Two
Chapter 5-Argentina’s co-operative movement: European 196-223
antecedents to state projects.
Chapter 6-The Argentine response to crisis: Politics and 224-273
organisation and the compromised state.

Chapter 7- Official response to the cartoneros in post-neoliberal 274-298

Argentina. Waste management in the GBA and the question of
landfill in José Léon Suárez’s Relleno III: Legislation to respond
to twenty-first century challenges.

Chapter 8-The research site: The municipality of San Martín, 299-323

José León Suárez town, Villa Independencia and The Tren
Blanco co-operative.

Chapter 9- Tren Blanco success and failure: The members share 324-355
their experiences of life, co-operative organisation
and work
Conclusion 356-368
Appendices 369-371
References 372-430

iii
PREFACE

My interest in the topic of cartoneros in Argentina is the result of a deep-seated

interest in all things Hispanic, sparked by a friendship I formed with a local family
whilst on holiday to the Balearic Island of Ibiza. Subsequent invitations from the
family to make regular visits over the period of several years encouraged me to learn
to speak Spanish. As a consequence, I developed an interest in Hispanic language
and culture, which proved enduring. A memory from my younger years, perhaps
from a vintage newsreel presented in a documentary programme, is the image of
Juan Perón addressing the crowds of trabajadores from the balcony of the Casa
Rosada Presidential Palace. This image remained with me in the form of an
unanswered question as to the basis of Perón’s appeal for Argentina’s workers. Many
years later, this question crystallised as a research project on Perón’s early
presidencies, which was presented in the form of a Master’s dissertation in 2003. A
consequence of this research was to introduce me to an aspect of contemporary
Argentine history.

Prior to the country’s economic collapse, 1,000 people were pushed into poverty
each day and Argentina entered the twenty-first century with poverty levels so acute
that many citizens lacked sufficient resources for an adequate daily calorific intake.1
As the Spanish government shipped emergency donations of food and medical
supplies to its former colony, a minor media report by Becky Branford described the
heartbreaking plight of one of thousands of small children dying of hunger in
Tucumán Province.2 The situation facing the community was made all the more un-
palatable by the fact that the region’s farmers had made record profits by withholding
sales of food produce to the local market.3 A further section of the article presents the
experience of Córdoba, an unemployed construction worker who, along with
thousands of others, is forced to survive by gathering recyclables with his family.
Counterbalancing the apparently hopeless plight of the Tucumán children and
1
Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS), ‘Argentina Paradise for a Few’, (2000), p. 2
<http://www.socialwatch.org/node/10676> [accessed 22 July 2007]
2
Becky Branford, ‘Hunger Follows Crisis’, BBC NewsOnline, 16 October 2002
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2307491.stm> [accessed 22 February 2003]
3
Naomi Klein, ‘“IMF, Go to Hell” The IMF Had its Chance to Run Argentina. Now it’s the People’s
Turn’, Globe & Mail Online, 16 March 2002 <http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KLE203A.html>
[accessed 20 July 2002]; Branford.

iv
invidious situation facing the disenfranchised cartonero population, Branford
provides an anecdote containing some element of hope. She describes the reopening
of an abandoned privately-owned bakery in Buenos Aires Province as a co-operative
run by local residents for local residents with the dual aims of providing affordable
food and work.4

The country’s experience of popular ‘insurrection’ of 19 and 20 December 2001

attracted widespread international interest. The plethora of academic, media and
political publications, presented in the wake of the country’s economic crisis,
provided a wealth of information and discussion surrounding the innovative social
movements, methods and survival techniques which developed as isolated
individuals united to reappropriate public space and challenge the conditions of
economic and social humiliation affecting them. Operating at a local level were
asambleas barriales, piqueteros, fábricas recuperadas, cooperativas de
trabajadores, cartoneros and redes de trueque, as well as various individual
community projects. A central focus of the majority of these projects was to redefine
socio-economic relationships, generate ‘meaningful’ work and recover citizens’
‘dignity’ in a society in which worker status is fundamental to identity and personal
esteem.

Despite my interest in the broad range of new social movements, I found myself
increasingly drawn towards a deeper consideration of the various types of co-
operative ventures which were developing as a response to unemployment and
community need. Worker co-operatives in Argentina were outstripping similar
projects in neighbouring countries, in purely numerical terms and also in the
diversity of circumstances surrounding their formation, organisation and aspirations.
Nevertheless, and despite the proliferation of these ventures in Argentina, the topic
of co-operative projects received less attention than the more overtly militant and
‘revolutionary’ examples of popular resistance, which attracted greater academic and
media interest.

4
Branford.

v
Similarly, the subjects of cartonero co-operatives and the figure of the cartonero
were relatively unexplored in the immediate post-2001 period. However, an article
and accompanying short video presented by the Working World micro-credit
organisation showcased the activity of the Tren Blanco co-operative. The subsequent
contact I made with the co-operative members made a profound intellectual and
emotional impact on me. This decided the final direction of my research, which
traces the co-operative’s establishment in 2004 to its virtual demise in 2008.5

5
Tren Blanco co-operative, although still officially registered, is not operational and no longer figures
on the Workingworld website
<http://market.theworkingworld.org/?action=photoGallery&type=Photos&sortBy=Date&LimitStart=1
147&LimitEnd=15&preferredLanguage=ES&preferredLanguage=EN> [accessed 5 July 2006]
The video ‘Working World Case Study-Tren Blanco Co-operative’ is now available uniquely at
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ofOyaK0toI> [accessed 3 September 2013]

vi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Carlos Conde Solares, for his invaluable
patience, support, guidance and advice during the years of research and writing of
this doctoral thesis. I would also like to thank my second supervisor Dr. Katy
Jenkins, who joined my supervision team in the later stages and gave valuable advice
and guidance. In addition, I also thank Dr. Michael Joseph Derham for providing
absorbing insights into aspects of Latin American studies. I would also like to thank
Dr. Brenda Reed for all her encouragement and practical advice. In Argentina, I
would like to thank Esteban Magnani for his support and help in arranging for me to
establish contact with the Tren Blanco members. I would also like to thank Ernesto
‘Lalo’ Paret for the part he played in arranging interviews and meetings with
members of various co-operatives and above all for his friendship and
encouragement, which enabled me to meet numerous cooperative workers in more
informal circumstances. My thanks also go to the cooperatives: Hotel Bauen, Inimbo,
Cooperativistas Unidos por el Calzado (CUC), Jardín Maternal (CUC), 19 de
diciembre, Chilavert, La Cacerola and Panadería La Argentina, all of whom provided
me with insight into the challenges, goals and successes in the daily running of
community co-operatives. My greatest thanks must go to the members of the Tren
Blanco co-operative, who not only took time from their busy schedules to meet with
me and afford me interviews, but also showed me friendship, invited me to spend
time with them in their workplaces and homes and trusted me to present their story.
To them I dedicate this work.

vii
Abbreviations

A-B
ACA Asociación de Cooperativas Argentinas.
ACTRA Asociación de Cooperativas de Trabajo de la República Argentina.
ALCA Área de Libre Comercio de las Américas.
ARI Argentinos por una República de Iguales.
C-D
CABA Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires.
CC-ARI Coalición Cívica Afirmación para una República Igualitaria.
CCC Corriente Clasista y Combativa.
CEAL Centro Editor de America Latina.
CEAMSE Coordinación Ecológica Area Metropolitana Sociedad de Estado.
CEDES Centro de Estudios de Estado y Sociedad.
CELS Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales.
CEPA Comité Ejecutivo para el Estudio de la Pobreza en la Argentina.
CEPAL Comisión Económica para América Latina. (See ECLA- ECLAC)
CEPED Centro de Estudios Sobre Población, Empleo y Desarrollo.
CGE Confederación General Económica.
CGP Centros de Gestión y Participación.
CGT Confederación General del Trabajo.
CGTA Confederación General del Trabajo de los Argentinos.
CICOPA Organisation Internationale des Coopératives de Production
Industrielle, Artisanale et de Services International.
CIEPP Centro Interdisciplinario para el Estudio de Políticas Públicas .
CNV Comisión Nacional de la Vivienda.
CONDADEP Comision Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas.
CONSUFA Consejo Supremo de Las Fuerzas Armadas.
CTA Central de Trabajadores de la Argentina.
CTDAV Coordinadora de Trabajadores Desocupados Aníbal Verón.
CUC Cooperativistas Unidos Por el Calzado.
DGI Dirección General Impositiva.
DNT Departamento Nacional de Trabajo.
E-F
EAIM Ente Autónomo de Industria Municipal.
ECLA/ Economic Commission for Latin America. Established February
ECLAC 1948. In July 1984 ECLA broadened its scope to include certain
Caribbean countries and as such, from that point became known as
the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.
However, the Spanish acronym CEPAL, remains unaltered. (See
CEPAL)
EDSA Encuesta de la Deuda Social Argentina.
EHU Ente de Higiene Urbana.
ENGIRSU Estrategia Nacional para la Gestión de Residuos Sólidos Urbanos.
EnTel Empresa Nacional de Telecomunicaciones.
EPH Encuesta Permanente de Hogares.
ESEADE Escuela Superior de Economía y Administración de Empresas

ix
ESDA Encuesta de la Deuda Social Argentina
FACC Federación Argentina de Cooperativas de Consumo.
FAO Food and Agriculture Organisation
FARN Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales.
FENCOOTRA Federación de Cooperativas de Trabajo de la República
Argentina.
FENCOOTER Federación Nacional de Cooperativas de Trabajo en Empresas
Recuperadas.
FLACSO Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales
FORJA Fuerza de Orientación Radical de la Joven Argentina.
(Radicalist Guiding Force for Young Argentina).
FREJULI Frente Justicia Unión y Libertad.

FrePaSo Frente País Solidario.

FSD Foundation for Sustainable Development
FTV Federación Tierra y Vivienda.
G-H
GAN Gran Acuerdo Nacional.
GBA Gran Buenos Aires.
GDP Gross Domestic Product.
GINI The Gini coefficient or index, named after its inventor, Italian
statistician, Corrado Gini, measures income inequality on a scale of
0 to 1. A score of 0 on the Gini scale represents perfect equality in
income distribution.
GOU Grupo De Oficiales Unidos. Grupo Obra de Unificación.1
HIJOS Hijos e Hijas por la Identidad y la Justicia contra el Olvido y el
Silencio.
I-J
ICA International Cooperative Alliance.

IMF International Monetary Fund.

IMFC Instituto Movilizador de Fondos Cooperativos.
IMPA Industrias Metalúrgicas y Plásticas Argentina.
INACyM Instituto Nacional de Acción Cooperativa y Mutual.

INAES Instituto Nacional de Asociativismo y Economía Social.

INDEC Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos.

ISI Import Substitution Industrialisation.
K-L
M-N
MAyEP Ministerio de Ambiente y Espacio Público

MDS Ministerio de Desarrollo Social

MECON El Ministerio de Economía y Finanzas Públicas de la Nación.
MIJD Movimiento Independiente de Jubilados y Desocupados
MNER Movimiento Nacional de Empresas Recuperadas.

1
See p.102, fn. 58.

x
MNFRT Movimiento Nacional de Fábricas Recuperadas por sus
Trabajadores.
MOW Meaning of Work.
MTA Movimiento de Trabajadores Argentinos.
MTD Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados.
MTDAV Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados Aníbal Veron.
MTE Movimiento de Trabajadores Excluidos.
MTR Movimiento Teresa Rodríguez.
N-AERUS Network-Association of European Researchers on Urbanisation in
the South.
NCBA National Cooperative Business Association. (US).
NCCR National Centre of Competence in Research.
NGO Non-Governmental Organisation.

O-P
OSAL Observatorio Social de América Latina.
PAN Partido Autonomista Nacional.
PDN Partido Democrático Nacional.
PDP Partido Demócrata Progresista.
PO Polo Obrero.
PRIST Programa de Ingreso Social con Trabajo.
PSI Partido Socialista Independiente.
PYMES Pequeñas y medianas empresas.
Q-R
RGT Red Global de Trueque.
Red LACRE Red Latinoamericana de Recicladores.
S-T
SEL Sociedad de Estudios Laborales.
SMATA Sindicato de Mecánicos y Afines del Transporte Automotor de la
República Argentina.
SOE State Owned Enterprise.
STWR Share the World’s Resources Org.
TBA Trenes de Buenos Aires.
TEL Taller de Estudios Laborales.
U-V
UBA Universidad de Buenos Aires.
UCA Universidad Católica Autónoma
UCR Unión Cívica Radical.
UCRP Unión Cívica Radical del Pueblo.
UNICEF United Nations International Child Emergency Fund
UOM Unión Obrera Metalúrgica.

UST Unión Solidaria de Trabajadores

UTD Mosconi Unión de Trabajadores Desocupados de General Mosconi.
UWCC University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives.
W-Y
YPF Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales.

xi
Chapter One

Introduction

In the 1990s, Argentina attained iconic status, lauded as the envy of other Latin
American countries and touted as an ‘economic miracle’ in the United States
financial press. Indeed, the country’s successful transition from a violent seven-year
military dictatorship to democratic rule and reversal of subsequent economic
instability suggested a bright future for the country. However, Argentina’s economy
crashed in December 2001. The depiction of events in the international media
showed civil disorder in the form of food riots, attacks on banks and street
demonstrations during which twenty-seven protesters lost their lives in clashes with
riot police. This culminated in the resignation and spectacular exit of President
Fernando de la Rúa, who fled the country by helicopter from the roof of the Casa
Rosada presidential residence. He left behind an environment of ardent anti-
imperialism and anti-politics, which saw popular disillusionment focused
predominantly on the country’s political class, international financial agencies, in
particular the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and foreign multinational
corporations as attested by the iconic chanting of crowds, whose call of ¡Qué se
vayan todos! (All of them out!) accompanied the December 2001 protests.1

As the spectacular events of December 2001 drew international attention to the

country, it became apparent that the media presentation of affluent twentieth-
century Buenos Aires’ life, enclosed residential areas, foreign holidays, country
clubs, luxury shopping malls touted as ‘twentieth-century Argentina’ had in fact
been the premise of a privileged minority. The country’s economic ‘miracle’ had
been achieved at a cost of rising levels of economic polarisation, unemployment,
under-employment, poverty, and declining living standards which affected not only

1
For a perspective on the personal reasons why individual participants chose to join the 2001
mass mobilisation, see Olga Onuch, ‘“It’s the Economy, Stupid,” or Is It?: The Role of Political
Crisis in Mass Mobilisation: The Case of Argentina 2001’, in Argentina since the 2001 Crisis:
Recovering the Past, Reclaiming the Future, ed. by Cara Levey, Daniel Ozarow and Christopher
Wylde (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 89-114.

1
Argentina’s popular sectors but also large sectors of the country’s former middle-
income bands.

The circumstances of economic hardship experienced by a broad sector of the

population produced multifarious responses in terms of projects initiated and
demands advanced. Resistance and survival strategies, eschewing traditional
political solutions, took the form of locally based self-help grass-roots initiatives
and inter-class solidarity projects. As Argentina’s middle sectors formed asambleas
barriales or experimented with alternative economies in the clubes de trueque,
members of the popular sectors sought to redefine socio-economic relationships,
generate ‘meaningful’ work and recover their ‘dignity’ as citizens in a society in
which worker status played a fundamental role in defining identity and personal
esteem. Numbers of unemployed workers registered political, social and economic
demands, erecting strategic roadblocks as piqueteros, whilst others returned to their
former workplaces and attempted to re-initiate production.

Finally, occupying the bottom rungs of the socio-economic ladder, numbers of

Argentines resorted to gathering recyclable materials for resale. These individuals
came to be referred to as cartoneros by the media and general population.2 At the
height of the economic crisis in late 2002, an estimated 40,000 people were working
in cartoneo in GBA.3

In the regional and broader international context, waste pickers gathering

recyclables to make a living generally constitutes an unremarkable sight and, in a
limited number of countries, cartoneros have in fact developed well-coordinated
teams linked to government initiatives, which provide relatively well remunerated
employment.4 In Argentina, the practice of waste scavenging for the purpose of
recycling, initially referred to as cirujeo, dates back to the 1860s and therefore is

2
Although the cartoneros sought various types of recyclable material, the name cartonero comes
from cartón, cardboard, one of the materials sought by the gatherers.
3
Risa Whitson, ‘Negotiating Place and Value: Geographies of Waste and Scavenging in Buenos
Aires’, Antipode, 43: 4 (2011), 1404-33 (p. 1404) <http://www.indec.com.ar/indec.gov.ar.htm>
[accessed 16 September 2013]
4
Gabriel Fajn, Cooperativa de recuperadores de residuos: Exclusión social y autoorganización
(Buenos Aires: Centro Cultural de la Cooperación, 2002), p. 28.

2
not a new phenomenon, as such.5 However, in the past the practice was conducted
in peripheral areas by a marginalised sub-class.6 In the contemporary context ever-
increasing numbers of cartoneros, adults often accompanied by young children,
rooting in black plastic bags of rubbish awaiting collection on city streets, presented
a wholly incongruous sight against the backdrop of elegant and ultra-modern
buildings lining the streets of Buenos Aires city centre. Presenting ‘a ubiquitous,
hyper‐public expression of individual need, community survival, and national
crisis’, the cartonero phenomenon generated debate on a variety of issues, notably,
public space, ecological concerns, health and social welfare, relating in particular to
waste handling, child labour and public policy, and marginal status and work as a
determinant of social integration and identity.7

In a bid to improve their opportunities, numbers of cartoneros, most notably in

Buenos Aires province, banded together forming co-operatives as family and/or

5
Verónica Paiva and Mariano D. Perelman, ‘Aproximaciones a la historia del cirujeo en la
ciudad de Buenos Aires’, Instituto de Arte Americano e Investigaciones Estéticas: Semenario de
crítica,161, (University of Buenos Aires,19 December 2008)
<http://www.iaa.fadu.uba.ar/publicaciones/critica/0161.pdf > [accessed 21 May 2012]
6
Mariano D. Perelman, ‘Haber sido y ser. De trabajadores y cirujas en la ciudad de Buenos
Aires (1977-2007)’, in Diversidad y poder en América Latina", VIII Reunión de Antropología
del Mercosur (San Martín, GBA: Universidad de San Martín, 2009)
<http://uba.academia.edu/MarianoPerelman/Papers/726486/Haber_sido_y_ser._De_trabajadores
_y_cirujas_en_la_ciudad_de_Buenos_Aires_1977-2007> [accessed 4 June 2012]
7
Whitson, p. 1405. For a discussion of the debate on public space as it relates to marginal and
specifically waste workers, see Whitson. For a consideration of the cartoneros as it refers to
ecological issues and public policy, see Verónica Paiva and Mariano D. Perelman, ‘Recolección
y recuperación informal de residuos. La perspectiva de la teoría ambiental y de las políticas
públicas Ciudad de Buenos Aires 2001-2007’, Cuaderno Urbano, Espacio Cultura, Sociedad,
7: 7 (2008), 35-54; Greenpeace Organisation Argentina, ‘Sin centros verdes no hay basura cero’,
(2007) Greenpeace.org
<http://www.greenpeace.org/argentina/Global/argentina/report/2007/6/sin-centros-verdes-no-
hay-ba.pdf > [accessed 27 July 2012]. The question of health as it applies to cartoneo and
public policy is discussed in Irene Martín et al., ‘Vulnerabilidad y riesgos de los recuperadores
de residuos de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires’, in Recicloscopio: Miradas sobre
recuperadores urbanos de residuos de América Latina, ed. by Pablo J. Shamber and Francisco
M. Suárez (Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento, 2007), pp. 285–302. The
topic of child labour and public policy is discussed in the report presented by the UNICEF
organisation. Pablo Javier Gutiérrez-Ageitoset al., Informe sobre trabajo infantil en la
recuperación y reciclaje de residuos (Buenos Aires: UNICEFArgentina, 2005)
< http://www.unicef.org/argentina/spanish/informetrabajoinfantil.pdf> [accessed 27 August
2013] On cartonero identity and social integration see Cristina Reynals, ‘De cartoneros a
recuperadores urbanos’, in Seminario Internacional Respuestas de la sociedad civil a la
emergencia social: Brasil y Argentina comparten experiencias (São Paulo, Brazil: University of
São Paulo, 4 November 2002)
<http://desarrollourbano.caf.com/media/153967/031_reciclaje%20en%20baires%20y%20brasil.
pdf> [accessed 4 June 2012]; Fajn, Cooperativa; Mariano D. Perelman, ‘De la vida en la Quema
al trabajo en las calles. El cirujeo Ciudad de Buenos Aires’, AVÁ, 12 (2008), 117-35; Perelman,
‘Haber sido’.

3
community initiatives, often developing solidarity links with other agencies. These
agencies range from asambleas barriales to international non-governmental
organisations (NGOs).

The regeneration of Argentina’s economy in 2003, in addition to the introduction of

state welfare projects, led to a decline in survival activity projects. However, the
economic upturn did not reach everyone and in 2005 a group of Argentine
cartoneros, residents of Villa Independencia, one of Buenos Aires province’s
numerous shantytowns or villas, united to contest their continued conditions of
poverty, unemployment and marginalisation by setting up a community co-
operative to serve the local cartonero population. Their project, The cartonero co-
operative, Tren Blanco, is the central focus of this study, which considers the
significance of the themes of co-operative identity, work and the political process
from the viewpoint of twelve of the project’s members in the specific context of
socio-political and economic extremity of an Argentine villa at the turn of the
twenty-first century. The operating principles of the co-operative are shown in the
Figure 1.1.
Figure 1.1

4
Central to this thesis is the author’s belief that the proliferation of self-help
projects inaugurated in Argentina by members of both the popular and middle
sectors during the country’s economic difficulties did not represent a uniquely
pragmatic response to material need. Rather, their formation, informed by
political paradigms established predominantly as of the late nineteenth century,
constitued a political response encompassing: mass rejection of trends of
individualism originating as a result of 1990s neoliberal socio-economic policy,
repudiation of an incompetent and/or perfidious self-serving, opportunistic
political class and, in the case of a significant contingent, indignation at the
surrender of national patrimony to foreign imperialism by domestic elites. This
subject is explored in detail in Chapter Four of this work. However, at this point
the action presented in this work is contextualised by a brief charting of the
country’s twentieth-century socio-economic trajectory from a leading world
economy to economic meltdown. Complementing this is a further section
providing quantitative data on the generalised deterioration in socio-economic
standards experienced during the period, most notably: rising income inequality,
poverty, under- and unemployment, unfavourable working conditions, labour
informality and declining living standards.

From riches to rags: Argentina’s chequered twentieth century.

Traditionally, Argentina has been perceived and respected as a wealthy, successful

country enjoying economic status and winning respect both within the continent and
in the wider international context.8 During the country’s Golden Age, as a world
leader in agro-exports, the expression ‘rich as an Argentine’ was a common saying
in Europe indicative of Argentina’s prosperity.9 In fact, in 1895 Argentina’s per
capita income was equal to that of most European countries.10 By 1914, Argentina

8
In 2002, the Chile-based Latinobarómetro poll, conducted in Latin American countries,
indicated high levels of respect for Argentina, placing the country as the most respected in the
region after Brazil. In a similar vein, the Latinobarómetro 2010 report, posed the question,
‘¿Cuál es el país de mayor liderazgo en la región?’. According to the total responses Argentina
came a close second to Uruguay. Latinobarómetro org., ‘Informe 2011’, p. 99
<http://www.infoamerica.org/primera/lb.pdf > [accessed 28 August 2013]
9
Argentina’s Bella Época or Golden Age refers to the country’s period as a world leader in
agro-exports. Colin M. MacLachlan, Argentina: What Went Wrong (Westport, CT: Praeger
Publishers, 2006), p. 35.
10
Mullhall quoted in Rory Miller, Britain and Latin America in the Nineteenth and Twentieth
Centuries (New York, NY: Longman, 1993), p. 149.

5
was one of the richest countries in the world.11 GDP growth in Argentina was above
that of Canada, the United States, Australia and several western European
countries.12 As the recipient of waves of immigration from Europe, the perception
of Argentina by the international community from the late 1800s was that of a
country in which social development was more closely related to European
standards rather than those of Latin America. Buenos Aires city was compared to
the United States of America in terms of economic potential and the European
capital Paris in terms of its architectural style and cultural sophistication.13
However, this popular image eclipsed a parallel socio-economic panorama of social
polarisation.

The mid-1940s under Juan Perón saw Argentina’s working and marginal classes
come to enjoy greatly ameliorated socio-economic standards and citizen status
which far outstripped those of their regional counterparts, comparable even to those
in several European countries.14 Argentina’s Belle Epoque potential was not
realised; by the mid-1950s the country had declined into economic mediocrity. The
1960s were characterised by political strife and antagonism, civil unrest, intra-
military conflict, escalating terrorist violence and related socio-economic
instability.15 Perón’s return to the presidency, in September 1973 brought
significant economic stability and growth and improved socio-economic conditions,

11
Frederic S. Mishkin, The Next Great Globalization: How Disadvantaged Nations Can
Harness Their Financial Systems to Get Rich (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006),
p. 10.; Javier Villanueva, ‘Economic Development’, in Prologue to Perón: Argentina in
Depression and War, 1930-1943, ed. by Mark Falcoff and Ronald H. Dolkart (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press,1975), pp. 57-82 (p. 57).
12
Javier Villanueva, ‘La economía argentina en la edad dorada’, Boletín de Lecturas Sociales e
Económicas, 8: 35 (2001), 16-26 (p. 17).
13
Villanueva, ‘La economía argentina’, pp. 15-6.
14
Personal anecdotal experience from a private conversation with Brazilian-born, Universidad
de Buenos Aires (UBA) lecturer and author Dra. Dulce Sauaya. Dra. Sauaya recounted her
surprise when, brought to Buenos Aires at a young age, she witnessed the living standards
enjoyed by working-class Argentines as compared to those of workers in her native Brazil. Dra.
Sauaya named specific items such as refrigerators and cars unattainable to Brazilian workers.
David Rock, Argentina, 1516-1987. From Spanish Colonization to Alfonsín (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1987), pp. 262-3.
15
See Guido Braslavsky’ ‘El otro dos de abril: La batalla en el ejército entre Azules y
Colorados’, ClarínOnline, 2 April 2003 <http://edant.clarin.com/diario/2003/04/02/p-
02301.htm> [accessed 26 October 2013]; Robert A. Potash, The Army and Politics in Argentina:
1945-1962; Perón to Frondizi (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1980), pp. 46-63.

6
generating renewed optimism. Proving transitory, this optimism dissipated as
internal and external forces conspired to undermine the country’s economic gains. 16

Perón’s untimely death in July 1974 saw renewed social unrest, economic
instability and multi-tendency terrorist violence under Isabel Martínez de Perón,
culminating in a military coup in March 1976. The ensuing period of military rule,
notorious for its unprecedented human rights atrocities, ended in 1983 in a context
of extreme economic instability, unprecedented foreign debt, anti-military
sentiment and democratic enthusiasm. Assuming power in highly unfavourable
socio-economic circumstances and plagued by conflicting demands, the Unión
Cívica Radical (UCR) government, unable to achieve economic stability, equitable
socio-economic conditions or contain social unrest, called early elections which
returned a Peronist government to power under Carlos Menem in July 1989.

After two years of unimpressive performance, Argentina’s economic fortunes

reversed following the introduction of a dollar-peso currency peg; a dramatic
reduction in inflation was matched by equally dramatic increases in foreign
investment and GDP.17 In fact, it is likely that Menem’s claims that Argentina was
entering the First World ‘Somos el primer mundo’, raised hopes that the country
was on the brink of realising its Golden Age potential as a regional and
international economic and social leader. However, the economic miracle proved
not only unsustainable but, significantly, the benefits generated were predominantly
limited to Argentina’s upper echelons whilst large proportions of the popular and
ultimately even the middle sectors suffered unprecedented deterioration of their
living standards, as unemployment and poverty escalated. Menem’s replacement in
December 1999 by the Alianza para el Trabajo, la Justicia y la Educación,
a coalition comprising the UCR and Frente para un País Solidario (FrePaSo)
alliance, failed to reverse the deteriorating socio-economic panorama and to

16
In late 1973, the world oil crisis led to inflation. In fact, the state’s inability to enforce total
compliance with the wage and price strictures dictated in the terms of the pact became apparent
when faced with oil crisis inflation. A further blow to the economy, over which the government
had no control, came in July 1974 with the EU decision to cease imports of Argentine beef.
17
Arie M. Kacowicz, Globalisation and the Distribution of Wealth: The Latin American
Experience 1982-2008 (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 150.

7
regenerate Argentina’s economy.18 By December 2001, increasingly acute popular
resentment culminated in the explosions of civil disobedience, which led to de la
Rúa’s resignation and the return of a traditional Peronist government. This
government, under Eduardo Duhalde, reflected public concerns by introducing
programmes to address the socio-economic need and adopting measures to boost
the state’s role in economic policy.19 Nevertheless, the country’s economic
deterioration continued, peaking in 2002. On the period Pablo Vinocur and
Leopoldo Halperin make the following comment, ‘la pobreza y la indigencia
estuvieron en permanente crecimiento desde 1993, registrando una aceleración
significativa a partir de 1998 y una expansión explosiva en 2002 y 2003, con una
cuarta parte de la población bajo la línea de indigencia.20

Twentieth-century ills: inequality, poverty and altered working patterns.

In general terms, declining trends, established in the share of workers’ income as a

percentage of GDP since the 1950s and in the average real wage since the Proceso
military government (1976), persisted into the 1990s and into the twenty-first
century.21 However, as of the 1990s, the additional problem of income inequality
reached unprecedented levels in Argentina. Marina Benito explains, ‘Todas las
estadísticas confirman el incremento en el reparto desigual de la riqueza…la
Argentina exhibe la mayor desigualdad en la distribución del ingreso de su
historia’.22 Between 1992, the achievement of economic stability, and 1995, the
post ‘Tequila Crisis’, Argentina’s lower income bracket suffered a 20 percent
decline in income, the income of the country’s middle sectors’ dropped by 15

18
Paul Cooney, ‘Argentina’s Quarter Century Experiment with Neoliberalism: From
Dictatorship to Depression’, Revista de Economía Contemporánea, 11: 1 (2007), 7-37 (p. 15).
19
For more details on the scope of the Planes and a discussion, see Laura C. Pautassi, Julieta
Rossi and Luis Campos, Plan Jefes y Jefas. ¿Derecho social o beneficio sin derechos? (Buenos
Aires: CELS, 2003)
<http://www.cels.org.ar/common/documentos/analisis_jefes_jefas_oct2003.pdf > [accessed 2
October 2010]
20
Pablo Vinocur and Leopoldo Halperin, Pobreza y políticas sociales en Argentina de los años
noventa (Santiago, Chile: Comisión Económica para América Latina (CEPAL), División de
Desarrollo Social, 2004), p. 22.
21
Vinocur and Halperin, p. 15.
22
Marina Benito, ‘La explosión de la pobreza en la Argentina, Indicadores de un crecimiento
alarmante’, in Informe sobre la situación de derechos humanos en Argentina, ed. by CELS
(Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI de Argentina Editores, 2000), p. 8.

8
percent, whilst the highest income sector registered a much lower decline of 5
percent.23 After 1995, both levels of income inequality and related poverty rose to
historic highs.24 In GBA during the 1990s as a whole, the gap between the richest
ten percent of the population and the poorest 40 percent increased by 172 percent.25
Tables 1. 1 and 1. 2 demonstrate increasing trends in socio-economic inequality.

Table 1. 1: Percentage share of per capita income 1980-1997.

Per capita income Area 1980 1985 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997
as a percentage of
GDP.
Top 10% Metro 29.2 31.2 36.6 34.1 32.5 34.9 33.7 36.5 36.7 36.6
Ba
Middle 60% Metro 59.4 59.8 54.6 57.1 57.8 56.4 57.3 55.4 55.2 55.7
Ba
Bottom 30% Metro 11.4 9.0 8.8 8.8 9.7 8.8 9.0 8.1 8.1 7.7
Ba

Source: Michael Cohen, Argentina's Economic Growth and Recovery, 2001-2008: The Economy
in a Time of Default (New York, NY: Routledge, 2012), p. 47.

Table 1. 2: Inequality in Argentina according to the Gini Index 1986-1999.26

Year Value

1986 44.51

1992 45.35

1996 48.58

1998 49.84

Source: INDEX MUNDI, GINI Index,

<http://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/SI.POV.GINI/compare?country=ar> [accessed 16
August 2014]

23
Benito, p. 3.
24
Carlos A. Acuña, Sebastián Galiani and Mariano Tommasi, ‘Understanding Reform: The Case
of Argentina’, in Understanding Market Reforms in Latin America, ed. by José María Fanelli,
(New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 31-72 (p. 58).
25
Laura Tedesco, ‘The Crisis in Argentina: Contrasting Perspectives’, Bulletin of Latin
American Research, 22: 2 (2003), 165-9 (p. 165).
26
‘Gini index measures the extent to which the distribution of income or consumption
expenditure among individuals or households within an economy deviates from a perfectly equal
distribution…a Gini index of 0 represents perfect equality, while an index of 100 implies perfect
inequality.’GINI <http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI>[accessed 1 April 2015]

9
In the first poverty study, which was conducted in Argentina prior to the
establishment of the 1976 military government, levels of five percent in urban
populations and nineteen percent in rural locations were noted. This compared very
favourably with the rest of the Latin American region’s levels of percent urban and
rural poverty which were twenty-six and sixty-two percent respectively.27 Poverty
in Argentina has been reported by various sources, including both official domestic
organisations and international bodies. All of these reports confirm that poverty
reached unprecedented levels during the 1990s. Most studies of poverty in
Argentina are based on data provided by the Encuesta Permanante de Hogares
(EPH) provided by INDEC. INDEC measures poverty according to the dual criteria
of both a poverty line and unsatisfied basic needs. The poverty line identifies
poverty in two ways. The canasta básica criterion identifies poverty in purely
alimentary terms by establishing the level of income required to purchase an
adequate diet. A further criterion, the canasta básica total, includes essential non-
food costs such as transport and household items. The costs of the canasta básica
and the canasta básica total are both calculated using the cheapest possible items.28
Unsatisfied basic needs, on the other hand refers to unsatisfactory living conditions,
such as unsanitary and crowded accommodation, that is, conditions generally
experienced by the structurally poor. Extreme poverty or indigence refers to anyone
living in circumstances whereby even a basic diet cannot be accessed. In fact, the
INDEC’s dual criteria facilitated identification of a group of Argentines, who
emerged in the 1990s and became known as the ‘New Poor’. That is, economically
impoverished members of the former middle sectors who were not suffering from
lack of basic needs.

A report by the Comité Ejecutivo para el Estudio de la Pobreza en la Argentina

(CEPA), an executive committee commissioned by Menem himself to challenge
claims that poverty was on the rise, revealed that in both 1993 and 1994 poverty,
having reached double digits in GBA, was high by historic single figure norms.
As of 1995, levels of poverty and indigence reached historic highs. Between
1994 and 1998, Argentina’s poor were reported to have increased to over four
27
Alejandro Grimson and Gabriel Kessler, On Argentina and the Southern Cone: Neoliberalism
and National Imaginations (Hoboken, New York, NY: Taylor and Francis, 2014), Global
Realities ebook. p. 102.
28
Susana Torrado, ‘La pobreza según como se mide’, Clarín.com, 10 June 1990
<http://edant.clarin.com/diario/1999/06/10/i-01901d.htm> [accessed 12 April 2014]

10
million.29 By 1998, levels of 29 percent poverty were recorded; a further 7
percent of the population fell into the category of indigent.30 Expressed in
numerical terms, in 1998, some 11 million people were living below the poverty
line, whilst a further 2.6 million were suffering from extreme poverty or
indigence. See Figure 1. 2. Rising poverty in GBA and other large urban areas
was also seriously affecting Argentina’s rural communities. INDEC does not
collect data from Argentina’s rural communities or semi-urban areas with
populations of between 2,000 and 5,000. However, when combined, the
residents of rural and smaller urban areas comprise 15 percent of the country’s
total population.31 As such, extreme levels of poverty in the countryside were
going unrecorded. As Tom Wiens notes, ‘…about twice the proportion of the
population are poor in rural areas as in urban areas…and the severity of poverty,
however measured, is greatest among the rural poor’.32

Figure 1. 2: Percentage growth of poverty in GBA.

Source: Ministerio de Economía y Finanzas Públicas de la Nación (MECON), ‘Los años 90’: la
acentuación de la exclusión y la pobreza’, p. 19
<http://www.mecon.gov.ar/analisis_economico/nro3/capitulo1.pdf> [accessed 12 January 2009]

29
Benito, Chapter 3, p. 4.
30
Benito, Chapter 3, p. 5.
31
Lee Haeduck, ‘Poverty and Income Distribution in Argentina: Patterns and Changes’,
Background Paper I, in Poor People in a Rich Country, Vol II (Washington, DC: World Bank,
2000), pp. 3-44 (pp. 13-4).
32
Tom Wiens, ‘An Analysis of Rural Poverty in Argentina’ Background Paper VI, in Poor
People in a Rich Country, Vol II (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2000), p. 2.

11
The freezing of bank deposits in November 2001, referred to as the corralito, most
directly affected the middle sectors.33 However, the ever-increasing informal sector,
reliant on cash transactions, was also negatively affected; individuals who had
joined the ranks of informal workers, whose payment was often immediate and in
cash, found themselves with no means of satisfying their daily living costs.34
Numbers of people living below the poverty line soared in the period immediately
preceding the country’s turn-of-the-century economic collapse.

Both the social and psychological significance of work and unemployment will be
considered in Chapter Two. At this point, the phenomenon of unemployment is the
central focus in terms of its significance as a contributory factor to poverty and need
as of the 1990s. With unemployment at only 5 percent in the 1970s and between 7
and 8 percent during the 1980s, the primary cause of poverty had been salary erosion.
However, in contrast to poverty experienced in previous decades, as of the 1990s,
poverty was predominantly the result of under- and unemployment.35 Ironically,
despite increased investment and GDP growth, Argentina’s 1990s economy proved
increasingly unable to generate employment opportunities to satisfy demand.36 The
apparently anomalous combination of increased GDP accompanied by increases in
unemployment, a trend which affected both GBA and other urban areas in the early
years of the 1990s, can be seen in Figure 1. 3 (p. 13).

33
For a ninety-day period, citizens would be restricted to a once-a-week cash withdrawal of 250
pesos; all other transactions were restricted to cheques, debit cards, or electronic transfers.
Furthermore, cash transfers abroad were restricted to 1,000 pesos.
34
Vinocur and Halperin, p. 18.
35
Eileen Stillwagon, Stunted Lives, Stagnant Economies: Poverty, Disease, and
Underdevelopment (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998), p. 15.
36
Noemí Giosa-Zuazúa, ‘Transformaciones y tendencias del mercado de empleo en la
Argentina. Entre el desempleo y el empleo precario’, in Transformaciones recientes en la
economía argentina: tendencias y perspectivas, ed. by Victoria Basualdo and Karina Forcinito
(Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros, 2007), pp. 321- 40 (p. 326).

12
Figure 1. 3: GDP, employment and unemployment of the urban population
nationally and in GBA.

Source: Noemí Giosa-Zuazúa, ‘Transformaciones y tendencias del mercado de empleo en la

Argentina. Entre el desempleo y el empleo precario’, in Transformaciones recientes en la
economía argentina: Tendencias y perspectivas, ed. by Karina Forcinito and Victoria Basualdo
(Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros, 2007), pp. 321-40 (p. 327).

The information presented in the graph in Figure 1. 4 is based on data provided by

INDEC; as can be seen, in 1994, during the Mexican ‘Tequila’ crisis, Argentina’s
unemployment levels exceeded 18 percent nationally and 20 percent in GBA.

Figure 1. 4: Unemployment in GBA and urban areas.

Source: MECON, ‘Los años 90’, p. 16.

The percentage of individuals in fulltime employment fell below the total

employment and involuntary underemployment increased in both GBA and

13
urban populations nationally. See Figure 1. 5. A further effect of labour
flexibilisation legislation was a generalised reduction in salary quality. In
addition to salary reduction, significant deterioration to various aspects of the
non-remunerative quality of employment was also registered.37 Instances of job
instability, such as temporary contracts and posts lacking standard formal sector
benefits, both of which have been identified as indicators of poor quality
employment, increased significantly in this period.38
Figure 1. 5.

Source: MECON, ‘Los años 90’, p. 16.

Of further significance is the fact that workers assumed multiple jobs, more non-
traditional workers, women and even children sought employment to help support
the household and the number of people working in the informal sector grew
significantly.39 The proportion of individuals working informally increased steadily
and, by 1999, 38 percent of the total GBA workforce was comprised of informal
workers.40 See Table 1. 3 (p. 15).

37
Mariana González and Nicolás Bonofiglio, ‘Evidencias sobre el deterioro de la calidad del
empleo en la Argentina’, Cuadernos del CEPED, 8 (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica
UBA, 2004).
38
Ariel Fiszbein, Paula Inés Giovagnoli and Isidro Idúriz, ‘The Argentine Crisis and its Impact
on Household Welfare’, Cepal Review, 79 (2003), 143-58 (p. 147); González and Bonofiglio,
p. 15.
39
Silvio Feldman and Pedro Galin, ‘Nota introductoria’, in La precarización del empleo, ed. by
Pedro Galin and Marta Novick (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina (CEAL), 1990),
pp. 10-7.
40
Cooney, p. 24.

14
Table 1. 3: Growth of informal employment 1980-1996.

Indicators Area 1980 1985 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996
Unemployment Urban 5.9 6.3 6.0 7.0 9.3 12.2 16.6 17.4
rate %
Informal Metro 27.6 31.5 31.8 32.8 31.1 32.9 34.9
employment BA
rate %
Source: Cohen, p. 47.

Rising unemployment continued in the post convertibility period, with

widespread job losses, particularly in the area of unskilled work.41 By the first
quarter of 2002, the construction industry, a key provider of employment for
unskilled labour, had contracted by 42 percent compared with the first quarter of
the previous year.42 At this point, those most affected were: younger people
hoping to enter work for the first time, poorly skilled workers, and /or heads of
household close to retirement age.43 During the course of 2002, under- and
unemployment, labour informality and poverty, continued to rise, reaching
unprecedented levels.44

From 2003, Argentina’s economic performance improved significantly and socio-

economic conditions ameliorated. However, Jean Grugel and María Pía Riggirozzi
and Noemí Giosa-Zuazúa present sobering comment, noting that the structural
changes to the labour market, implemented most notably from the 1990s, had not
been reversed and employment quality remained low.45 In fact, between 2003 and
2005, Giosa-Zuazúa notes that the percentage of unregistered workers reached
unprecedented levels. See Table 1. 4 (p. 16).

41
Fiszbein, Giovagnoli and Idúriz, p. 144.
42
Fiszbein, Giovagnoli and Idúriz, p. 144.
43
Gabriel Kessler and María Mercedes Di Virgilio, ‘Impoverishment of the Middle Class in
Argentina: The “New Poor” in Latin America’, Laboratorium, 2 (2010), 200-20 (p. 203)
<http://www.soclabo.org/index.php/laboratorium/article/view/202/442> [accessed 12 August
2012]
44
Vinocur and Halperin, pp. 14-8.
45
Jean Grugel and María Pía Riggirozzi, ‘The Return of the State in Argentina’, International
Affairs, 83:1(2007), 87-107 (p. 101); James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer, What's Left in Latin
America?: Regime Change in New Times (Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2009), pp.
60-6.

15
Table 1. 4: Percentage of unregistered workers 1992-2005.

1992-1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

31 34 36 37 37 37 39 41 49 48 47

Source: Noemí Giosa-Zuazúa ‘La estrategia de la administración Kirchner para enfrentar los
problemas del empleo’, Centro Interdisciplinario Para el Estudio de Políticas Públicas (CIEPP)
Análisis de Conyuntura:12 (July, 2006), p. 12.

Of further concern was the fact that falling unemployment figures cloaked the
previously noted ‘damaging and persistent unemployment’ in young people,
especially young men.46 That is, the 1990s had bred a generation of young people,
predominantly males, who had no experience of working in a traditional formal
workplace environment. As such, even as domestic manufacturing did increase,
significant numbers of young men were essentially unemployable in the newly
created traditional-styled working environments. Therefore, early twenty-first-
century unemployment comprised disproportionate levels of young males.47 See
Table 1. 5 and Figure 1. 6 (p. 17).

Table 1. 5: Unemployment among young people aged 15-24 in Argentina.

Year 1990 1995 2000 2003 2005
Unemployment 13.0 28.2 31.0 30.9 27.4
percentage
Source: Grugel and Riggirozzi, ‘The Return’, p. 102.

46
Grugel and Riggirozzi, ‘The Return’, p. 102.
47
Grugel and Riggirozzi, ‘The Return’, p.102.

16
Figure 1. 6: Unemployment youth total (percentage of total labour force) ages 15-
24.

Source: World Bank, World Bank Cross Country Data

<https://www.quandl.com/data/WORLDBANK/ARG_SL_UEM_1524_ZS-Argentina-
Unemployment-youth-total-of-total-labor-force-ages-15-24> [accessed 16 June 2015]

Samuel Freije notes that trends of high unemployment among 15-24-year-olds

continued into the post-2009 period with levels that placed Argentina in the
upper rank of the youth-to-adult unemployment ratios in the world.48

Added to the above, problems of drugs and violence, which emerged in the 1990s in
working-class communities, were magnified in shantytowns and informal
settlements.49 As such, Grugel and Riggirozzi posit that these problems represented
a further contributory factor to unemployment among young Argentine males, on
the basis that fears on the part of middle-class employers, associated with these
problems, led potential employers to avoid offering employment opportunities to
this specific sector of the population.50

The topic of the shantytown is considered in detail in Chapter Seven. However,

it bears noting at this point that the population living in the suboptimal
conditions of the villas miseria, began to increase significantly from the 1990s.
In Buenos Aires city in 1991, villas miseria accommodated 52,472 individuals;

48
Samuel Freije, ‘Labor Market Adjustment during the Great Recession’, in Understanding the
Poverty Impact of the Global Financial Crisis in Latin America and the Caribbean, ed. by
Margaret Grosh, Maurizio Bussolo and Samuel Freije (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2014),
pp. 115-53 (p. 128).
49
Javier Auyero, ‘The Hyper-shantytown: Neo-liberal Violence(s) in the Argentine Slum’,
Ethnography, 1: 1 (2000), 93-116.
50
Grugel and Riggirozzi, ‘The return’, p. 102.

17
in 1998, this figure had grown to 86,663.51 Explanations which seek to explain
the growth of the populations of villas miseria as being formed from new
arrivals and therefore supplementary to existing populations are challenged by
Alejandro Rojo Vivot, who notes, ‘hay un desplazamiento interno, de clase
media baja y sectores de pobreza no extrema que pierden ingresos y terminan
recalando en las villas’.52 Of further interest is the fact noted by Rojo Vivot that
whilst unemployment of the economically active population in Villas miseria is
an estimated double of that in mainstream areas, at the same time, 2,000
individuals, under 15 years of age and living in villas miseria, have some type of
job.

Empirical evidence from the experience of the members of the Tren Blanco co-
operative reveals practical anecdotal evidence of issues recorded in this section.
The one professionally trained co-operative member, Don Héctor, a carpenter,
found himself moving to the villa as his work contracts declined. The older
female members, who had formerly been employed as cleaners and carers, lost
their steady jobs as the business rationalised or closed or as their patrons own
financial circumstances deteriorated. The younger male members, including
Cristian, who had actually achieved a level of secondary education, had never
experienced work in formal employment, having all worked uniquely under
informal conditions in the construction industry or cartoneo. One young male
member, whose limited work experience in a small store had proved negative,
reflecting the increasing disaffection among the youth, had become involved in
petty crime and joined the co-operative upon his release from a custodial
sentence for the theft of a car.

This thesis, ‘Argentina: Workers’ Responses to the Economic Crisis: The Case
of a Cartonero Co-operative ’, discusses how a specific group of impoverished
workers sought to challenge their conditions of marginalisation and alleviate
their economic need in the circumstances of Argentina’s 2001 economic
meltdown. From an academic viewpoint, the subject of Argentina’s cartoneros
was and remains a relatively unexplored phenomenon and provides a fertile
51
Alejandro Rojo Vivot, La desocupación y el trabajo: Aspectos sociales, 3rd edn (Buenos
Aires: Dunken, 2012), p. 77.
52
Rojo Vivot, p. 77.

18
source of interesting material upon which to present a contribution to
knowledge. In addition, Argentina has a rich tradition of co-operative
organisation, which includes workers’ cooperation. However, the topic of
Argentina’s co-operative tradition, which is discussed in Chapter Five, is
limited in the documentation it has received, both historically and even in the
context of the post-crisis burgeoning of workers’ co-operatives. Finally, given
the country’s Peronist heritage, the topic of work and worker identity in
Argentina is a particularly suggestive area. However, the subject of the meaning
of work for Argentina’s popular classes remains largely unresearched and this
thesis presents a consideration of the various meanings represented by work for
the members of the Tren Blanco cartonero co-operative. In terms of the
methodology selected, I believe that to a large extent this must be explained on
the basis of the intrinsic qualities of the researcher. In order to locate my work in
the context of current the literature on the cartonero phenomenon, an overview
of key texts on Argentina’s contemporary co-operatives and cartoneros is
presented in the following chapter. However, this section continues with a
comment on the practicalities of making contact with the participants, the
selection of methodology and the subject of the work’s subaltern or bottom-up
approach.

The project: First contact, methodology and the subaltern perspective.

My initial contact was made with the Tren Blanco members with the assistance
of journalist, author and political activist Esteban Magnani. Aware that, as a
representative of the Working World microcredit organisation, Magnani had a
professional relationship with the Tren Blanco co-operative, I contacted him
directly, requesting contact details for the co-operative. Magnani relayed my
interest in meeting the Tren Blanco co-operative members during one of his
professional visits to the co-operative’s José León Suárez site. I subsequently
received an emailed photograph of several co-operative members with a
message informing me of their willingness to share their experiences with me. In
addition, Magnani provided me with the contact details of Movimiento Nacional
de Empresas Recuperadas (MNER) member Ernesto ‘Lalo’ Paret. As a former
cartonero and inhabitant of José León Suárez’, Villa Independencia, Paret

19
afforded me further assistance providing contact numbers for the co-operative’s
sites and, once in Argentina, facilitating visits to several recovered workplaces
operating in San Martín municipality.

The fieldwork was conducted over a period of several weeks between July and
August 2007. During this time, regular visits were made to the two operating
sites of the Tren Blanco co-operative in San Martín town and Villa
Independencia in José León Suárez town.

It is the researcher’s contention that an individual’s ontological stance and

epistemological position are largely inherent or intrinsic. To borrow and recast an
analogy made by David Marsh and Paul Furlong, I suggest that one’s ontological
and epistemological stance is comparable to ‘a skin not a sweater’.53 As such, it
would generally be the case that an individual researcher’s choice of methodology
would reflect his or her inherent ontological/epistemological stance. As such, I
would suggest that my personal anti-foundationalist and interpretivist stance
generated the choice of a research project for which a qualitative methodology was
appropriate.
In broad terms, the study reflects an interdisciplinary approach. In order to present a
detailed, accurate, if arguably subjective, portrait of the socio-economic and
political context of the research project, it draws on the techniques of archival and
documentary analysis common to historians, whilst the research techniques of
interview and observation employed are more common amongst anthropologists.

In addition, although not essentially a mixed method study, elements specific to

quantitative methodology have been included in the thesis in order to provide a
contextual backdrop for the study of the Tren Blanco co-operative. Quantitative
data is presented to support a broad chronological overview of the country’s
political and structural paradigms as well as to trace the more specific topic of
waste collection in Argentina from the early days of the 1860s to the twenty-first

53
David Marsh and Paul Furlong, ‘A Skin not a Sweater: Ontology and Epistemology in
Political Science’, in Theory and Methods in Political Science, ed. by David Marsh and Gerry
Stoker, 2nd edn (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp. 17-41.

20
century. Various secondary sources, notably academic and media texts and official
and private broadcasts, are also used.

To return to the question of choice of methodology, it is vital that the researcher

select the most appropriate research technique according to the requirements of
their individual project.54 Following Christine Griffin, the essential difference
between qualitative and quantitative research methodology presents itself as a
tension between depth and breadth of the analysis.55 As such, the predominant
methodology selected as appropriate to produce this work, which is an in-depth
account of the experience of co-operative organisation for a specific small group of
individuals and their personal perceptions of the meaning of this ‘event’, must
necessarily evolve or emerge from a qualitative approach.

In further support of my selection of qualitative rather than quantitative

methodology, I would cite Albert Einstein, who noted, ‘Not everything that can be
counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted’.56 Additionally, as
noted by Caroline O. N. Moser, ‘Poverty statistics are people with the tears wiped
off’ and my aim is to present the personal view of the participants which not only
allows for emotional, subjective response but, in fact, views it as an integral aspect
of the work.57

The methodological choice of the semi-structured, selective, interview, afforded

the opportunity to focus my line of inquiry on the specific areas of the members’
co-operative identity, attitudes to work and unemployment, and national politics,
while at the same time allowing interviewees the scope to expand and develop
more personalised responses. The interviews were conducted and recorded on
the worksite premises under conditions which afforded interviewees strict
confidentiality.58 The data from the interviews was complemented by

54
Christine Griffin, ‘The Advantages and Limitations of Qualitative Research in Psychology
and Education’, Scientific Annals of the Psychological Society of Northern Greece 2 (2004), 3–
15 (p. 5).
55
Griffin, p. 5.
56
This well-known remark is traditionally attributed to physicist, Albert Einstein.
57
Caroline O. N. Moser, Confronting Crisis: a Summary of Household Responses to Poverty
and Vulnerability in Four, Poor Urban Communities (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1996).
58
Several of the co-operative’s male members had pronounced accents, which, although they
were clearly comprehensible during the interviews, were not readily deciphered in recorded

21
unstructured informal group and personal conversations along with observations
which were later recorded in a diary. A significant advantage of the researcher’s
on-site presence was that this provided an opportunity for interaction with and
observation of not only the co-operative members but also their customers and
members of the community on visits to the co-operative. Citing Griffin,
‘Qualitative methods…allow…a degree of flexibility…facilitate the
examination of sensitive or difficult topics if a relationship of trust
develops…and enable researchers to make connections between different
aspects of people’s lives’.59 As such, the time spent off-site, both as a guest in
the co-operative members’ homes and exploring the wider community in the
company of co-operative workers or their friends and family, provided equally
valuable insights. To conclude, the benefit of using this qualitative ethnographic
approach is that it affords a richer and more complete representation of the
worldview and co-operative experience of the research participants. As Jonathon
Wayne Moses and Torbjørn L. Knutsen point out the ‘thick descriptions’ which
these methods produce provide the opportunity for the writer to climb into an
intricate (hi)story and get to know it from inside to out.60
Adopting a different perspective, Hayden White makes an interesting suggestion on
qualitative work. If such work is perceived as a subjective account or story, rather
than an objective presentation of facts, White posits that stories created from
collections of facts gathered by qualitative researchers, such as historians or social
analysts, necessarily rely on literary techniques which he refers to as ‘emplotment’.
White distinguishes four main types of ‘emplotment’: romance, tragedy, satire and
comedy.61 Romance presents the triumph of ‘good’ following a series of trials and
tribulations. Tragedy gives an account of potentially failed progress. Satire is a
reaction to the story presented as a romance in which events are presented as
meaningless and the ‘romantic’ interpretation is naïve and simple-minded. Comedy
is a story of progress towards a happy ending but one in which the progress is
neither clear nor linear. I would struggle to ascribe any single ‘plot’ to this project

form. For this reason, several recordings were prioritised for transcription in Argentina with the
assistance of native speakers for later analysis.
59
Griffin, pp. 6-7.
60
Jonathon Wayne Moses and Torbjørn L. Knutsen, Ways of Knowing: Competing
Methodologies in Social and Political Research (New York, NY: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2012),
p. 199.
61
Hayden White cited in Moses and Knutsen, pp. 222-3.

22
because the data presented appears to contain elements of both comedy and tragedy.
As such, it may be appropriate to leave the interpretation open to the individual
reader.

However, any methodology will have limitations and several points have been
noted on those which apply to qualitative studies. The fact that these studies rely
on data provided by a relatively limited number of participants makes the
conclusions of such projects specific and, therefore, not broadly applicable.
Furthermore, qualitative research is interpretive and less scientific, and for this
reason, it has been branded as a ‘soft’ option and judged to offer less academic
value than quantitative work.62 Certainly, this work affords a limited world view
in that it relies on data provided by twelve key participants and, in fact, its
strength, from the author’s point of view, resides in the fact that the work
presents this specific intimate experience.

In more specific terms, it could also be suggested that participant objectivity

may have been compromised. Considering the participants, as active co-
operative members of a closely-knit working group, it is entirely possible that
this may have affected their responses to an extent. The fact that the research,
which relied heavily on data accessed via the spoken word, was conducted by a
non-native Spanish speaker raises the possibility of information being ‘lost’ or
perhaps ‘appended’ in translation.63 However, the concept of translation can also
extend beyond the purely linguistic, as Leslie Swartz and Poul Rohleder note,
‘in a social constructionist approach … translation and interpretation become
complex activities … we have to take into account the extent to which the act of
translation implies the construction of a particular reality’ which is in turn to be
analysed by a non-native speaker.64 In a similar vein, Per F. Gjerde notes that:

Each view and every statement has an ideological dimension […] and
anyone who maps cultural phenomena has, implicitly or explicitly, a
value orientation that influences his or her perceptions […] there is no

62
Griffin, p. 5.
63
Leslie Swartz and Poul Rohleder, ‘Cultural Psychology’, in, The Sage Handbook of
Qualitative Research in Psychology ed. by Carla Willig and Wendy Stainton-Rogers (London,
UK: Sage, 2007), pp. 541-53 (p. 549).
64
Swartz and Rohleder, p. 548.

23
 neutral place from where to observe, interpret, or name cultural
phenomena.65

The fact that this thesis relies heavily on the use of semi-structured interview as
a means of gathering information generates important considerations. Clearly,
the method implies an element of researcher subjectivity and dominance or, at
the very least, direction. This, in turn, raises the question of the project’s
subordination to the researcher rather than the researched.

In the light of the above and given the fact that the focus of the thesis is to present
the (hi)story of a grassroots initiative taken by members of a subaltern population, it
would be appropriate turn to the subject of narrative construction in post-modernist
thought. The following section considers the subject of imperialist and/or
ethnocentric representation in ‘North-South’ dialogues presented in post-colonial
discourse, as specifically related to subaltern study. The subject is vast and a source
of extensive debate. However, in this section the lead will be taken from work by
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, whose well-known affirmation that ‘the subaltern
cannot speak’ has, for obvious reasons, significant implications for those who
conduct research into subaltern or marginal populations.66

From the critical viewpoint expressed in post-colonial or post-imperialist thought,

the fact that this project was undertaken by a university-educated European or
alternately, a non-Latin American, non-argentine, non-shanty town inhabitant with
no experience of participation in co-operative organisation the project could be
challenged on several hegemonic bases.67 A central criticism of works on the
‘South’ by ‘Western’ authors is that these works are presented from the viewpoint

65
Per F. Gjerde,‘Culture, Power, and Experience: Toward a Person-Centered Cultural
Psychology’, Human Development , 47 (2004), 138-157 (pp. 153-4).
66
Gayatri Chakrovarty Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, in Colonial Discourse and Post-
Colonial Theory: A Reader, ed. by Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (New York, NY:
Routledge, 2013), pp. 66-111 (p. 104).
67
This is not to say that a researcher’s non-European, or non-western background, or similar
claim to authenticity, would necessarily place them in an optimum position to produce a study of
a subaltern population. In fact, similar criticisms as those applied to ‘North-South’ research
relations have been levelled with regard to power relationships between subalterns and ‘native’
researchers. See, Ramón Grosfoguel, ‘Decolonising Post-Colonial Studies and Paradigms of
Political Economy: Transmodernity, Decolonial Thinking and Global Coloniality’,
Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World: 1: 1
(2011), 2-38 (p. 5); Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Outside in the Teaching Machine (New York,
NY: Routledge, 1993), pp. 55-7.

24
of members of societies whose historical construction was based on, and arguably
continues to be based on, political, economic and cultural dominance of other
societies. For the post-colonial/post-imperial thinkers, there is no possibility of
equal power relationships in encounters between dominant and dominated.
Representations of the latter by the former will always be recounted in accordance
with and from the point of view of the dominant Eurocentric geopolitical or
institutional background or ‘lens’ of the reporter.68 Such portrayals, produced
according to the noted ‘us and them’ mentality, necessarily construct and present
their subjects in terms of ‘otherness’. This is particularly true in the case of
presentations of subaltern communities in the wider subaltern state.

The historical process of socio-economic western imperialism is considered to be

reproduced in the contemporary context in the form of cultural imperialism.69 In the
academic sphere, this is reflected in the form of scholars visiting the ‘South’ to
carry out research and fieldwork. Spivak describes the academic research process in
terms of the plunder and appropriation of the ‘subculture’s resources by the
dominant power whereby the subordinate culture, ‘a repository of an ethnographic
“cultural difference”, is ‘mined’ in order that the raw materials may be transferred
back for use by the imperial power.70 However, of specific concern is the fact that,
according to Spivak, irrespective of the integrity of individual academics and
researchers, their intrinsic position of privilege and power will invariably lead their
projects to fail in their emancipatory intention. The actual effect of such projects is,
in fact, to silence the very people whose voices they aim to make heard. Rather than
allowing the subaltern to speak, those in positions of ‘power’ either speak for or
about subalterns, hence Spivak’s assertion ‘the subaltern cannot speak’.

It would appear that from Spivak’s viewpoint projects which aim to produce studies
of subaltern activity of true value are inevitably doomed from the onset. As such, it
is unsurprising that Spivak’s work has been identified as having a paralysing effect

68
Spivak, Outside, p. 34.
69
Spivak, cited in, Ilan Kapoor, The Postcolonial Politics of Development (New York, NY:
Routledge, 2008), p. 47.
70
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a Critique of the
Vanishing Present (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 388.

25
on the ‘intellectual and pursuit of knowledge’.71 Nevertheless, and apparently
contradictorily, Spivak accepts the concept of good practice in subaltern research
and, in fact, identifies guidelines for the production of such work. In essence, she
notes that researchers must acknowledge the fact that their personal desires and
interests will be written into their ‘constructions’. For this reason, she specifies that
the researcher must attempt to understand and, in effect, deconstruct their
constructed ‘lenses’ and be prepared to learn from the research subjects or ‘from
below’. The process of learning ‘from below’ requires the researcher to relinquish
value judgments based on western formations and to be prepared to accept
unexpected responses.72 Finally, she highlights that for research to be intimate and
non-exploitative it must be conducted on a face-to-face basis.73

According to Spivak’s criteria, it appears that the final requirement was met to an
extent as this project is based on face-to-face contact. Furthermore, I would note
that my entry into the villa was reliant on the consent and hospitality of the resident
population, which, at some level, reversed the power paradigm and placed me in a
subaltern position as the ‘other’. Given the detailed research which was conducted
before actually arriving at the research site to meet the co-operative members, in
terms of both self-reflection and the geo-historic circumstances related to the
participants, it is tempting to assert that the project was conducted in a ‘lens-
conscious’ way. However, as previously noted the selective methodological
approach to the information gathering precludes any claims to completely open
representation in terms of the final product.

Certainly, a wealth of opinion exists which would identify possible flaws in various
aspects of qualitative methodology, including this research, which cannot be
discounted. I cannot claim to be value-free nor would I wish to claim impartiality

71
Asha Varadharajan, Exotic Parodies: Subjectivity in Adorno, Said, and Spivak (Minneapolis,
MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), p. 89.
72
Elizabeth Grosz and Gayatri Chakrovarty Spivak, ‘Criticism, Feminism and the Institution’, in
The Post-Colonial Critic Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues, ed. by Sarah Harasym (New York,
NY: Routledge, 1990), pp. 1-11 (p. 9). This chapter is a presentation of an interview conducted
and recorded between the author and Spivak on 17 August 1984 in Sydney, Australia. 1993;
Spivak, Outside, p. 60. Both of these points have value in analysing this research.
73
Sarah Ahmed, ‘An Impossible Global Justice? Deconstruction and Transnational Feminism’,
in Feminist Perspectives on Law & Theory, ed. by Ralph Sandland and Janice Richardson
(London, UK: Cavendish Publishing Limited, 2000), pp. 53-70 (pp. 66-9).

26
preferring to adopt an attitude of ‘being for’ the co-operative members’ venture.
Therefore, if the choice between producing a possibly imperfect but conscientious
investigation into the lived experiences of the participants and abandonment of the
project, on the basis of cultural and linguistic slips, then the former is the preferable
option. In further support of this, I would add that, in addition to expressing their
confidence in my integrity, Tren Blanco co-operative members, were actively
supportive and in full agreement that the recording of their ‘voice’ and experience
was of value to them and the broader community noting, ‘Es muy importante que la
gente sepa de la cooperativa’.74

Claims of subjectivity and unequal power relationships implicit in the construction

of knowledge presented in post-colonialist theory cannot be summarily dismissed.
Therefore, respectful of post-colonialist theory and mindful of Spivak’s suggestion
that subaltern representation may be impossible this thesis has taken its lead from
the thought of Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci offers a more useful standpoint from
which to present this work, in that he perceives recording of subaltern activity to be
possible and indeed vitally important.75

Before continuing, it bears noting that what follows is based largely on the content
of notebooks written by Gramsci whilst incarcerated during Mussolini’s fascist
government.76 The unusual circumstances under which the notebooks were written
combined with Gramsci’s evolutionary personal thought style resulted in work of
‘labyrinthine structure’ with an ‘open and unfinished nature’.77 Practical linguistic
issues arising from translation of the notebooks from Italian and the complex,
fragmented and developmental nature of their content has generated significant
debate on interpretation and use of Gramsci’s theories and their transferability to
the contemporary context.78

74
Mirta Belizán. This point was reiterated in various forms by the co-operative’s members.
75
Antonio Gramsci, ‘Quaderno’ 3: 14, in Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del Carcere Volume
Primo, Quaderni 1-5, 2nd edn (Torino, Italy: Giulio Einaudi Editore, 1977), pp. 299-300.
76
Limited access to information and the need to circumvent censorship have been cited as
examples of practical problems facing Gramsci.
77
Marcus E. Green, ‘On the Post-Colonial Image of Gramsci’, Postcolonial Studies, 16:
1(2013), 90-101(p. 92).
78
Alistair Davidson, ‘The Uses and Abuses of Gramsci’, Thesis Eleven, 95: 1(2008), 68-94.
Davidson discusses several authors’ use of Gramscian theory to present considerations of
significantly divergent circumstances; Paolo Capuzzo and Sandra Mezzadra, ‘Provincializing the

27
Therefore, it must be noted that the claim of this thesis to present a subaltern,
‘integral’ history in Gramscian terms is subject to a level of personal interpretation
of Gramsci’s thought.79 However, it is appropriate to note that Gramsci himself
recognizes the need for flexibility and stresses that no theory should ‘be treated as if
the author were a Messiah who had laid down a nostrum once and for all’. He adds,
that ‘theory would remain barren were it not developed to cope with new problems
arising from the passage of history’.80 With this in mind, it is hoped that the account
presented here would receive Gramsci’s seal of approval.

The following section presents a summary of Gramsci’s view of societal power

structures, his concepts of subalternity, his thoughts on the subject of ‘integral
history’ and his suggested methodology to accomplish the recording of subaltern
history.

Central to Gramsci’s form of Marxist theory was the concept of hegemony which
extended the theorising of the concept of power beyond terms of economic relations
and worker-capitalism class struggle. That is, Gramsci’s Marxism extended into the
area of cultural relations in which culture was identified as a central means of
expression of class inequality in routine, daily, lived experience. In liberal thought
political society and civil society, are considered separate entities.81 However,
according to Gramsci, the modern state is ‘integral’ and in the ‘integral state’
political society and civil society are actually a single unified body.82

Italian Reading of Gramsci’, in The Postcolonial Gramsci, ed. by Neelam Srivastava and Baidik
Bhattacharya (New York, NY: Routledge, 2012), pp. 34-54 (pp. 36-47); Marcus Green,
‘Gramsci Cannot Speak: Presentations and Interpretations of Gramsci’s Concept of the
Subaltern’, Rethinking Marxism, 14: 3 (2002), 1-24 (p. 1). For a convincing presentation of the
case for the applicability of Gramscian theory to current debates on inequality and oppression,
and some examples, see Kate Crehan, Gramsci’s Common Sense: Inequality and its Narratives
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016), pp. 118-98.
79
The concept of integral history is revisited at a later point. However, see also Kylie Smith,
‘Gramsci at the Margins: Subjectivity and Subalternity in a Theory of Hegemony’, International
Gramsci Journal, 2 (2010), 39-50 (p. 45); Raul Mordenti, Gli occhi di Gramsci: Introduzione
alla vita e alle opere del padre del comunismo italiano (Rome, Italy: Red Star Press, 2014),
section five. Redstar Press ebook.
80
Davidson, pp. 68-9.
81
Political society is formed from state bodies such as government, the armed forces the
judiciary and law enforcement agents. On the other hand, civil society is formed from voluntary
organisations such as places of religious worship, the media, trade unions and political parties.
82
‘nella concreta vita storica societa politica e societa civile sono una stessa cosa’, Antonio
Gramsci, ‘Quaderno’, 4: 38, in Gramsci, Quaderni, p. 460.

28
In contrast to the historic, feudal state, in which power took the form of domination,
in the modern ‘integral state’, power is expressed predominantly through a process
of bourgeois ‘leadership’ which Gramsci termed ‘hegemony’. Hegemonic control is
exerted through a process directed by ‘organic’ intellectuals whereby the values,
ideologies and goals of the ruling group are presented as being of common
interest.83 Gramsci calls this ‘engineered’ popular opinion as ‘senso comune’. In
short, the dominated mass ‘agrees’ to its own domination or subordination.84 Of
keen interest is the fact that hegemony originates from everyday people’s beliefs
and activity, is therefore operational at the personal level, in the abstract realm of
ideas and located within civil society. As such, the hegemonic process is necessarily
driven by an interaction between dominant power and the ‘dominated’ or ‘led’
individuals and is therefore, dynamic. People’s ideas modify their environment and
create new norms to live by and guide their conduct.85 This, in turn, impacts on the
state and hegemonic powers which respond to the new challenges.86 In cases where

83
Antonio Gramsci, ‘Direzione politica di classe prima e dopo vandata al governo’, ‘Quaderno’
1: 44-7, in Gramsci, Quaderni, pp. 40-55. Gramsci’s term ‘organic intellectual’ differs from the
usual meaning of the word which refers to an individual with a background in traditional
academic higher education. Organic intellectuals are individuals created by social groups as a
means of promoting the ascent to power of the particular group to which they belong. They
accomplish this on the basis of their specific form of hegemonic discourse. Therefore, the
‘organic intellectual’ does not necessarily have a traditionally academic background. For
example, Gramsci would identify all members of a political party, progressive or reactionary, as
‘organic intellectuals’, on the basis that they are equipped with the requisite narrative to promote
the interests of their group and challenge or even replace the existent hegemonic group. Among
the ‘organic intellectuals’ Gramsci identified as complicit in the production of hegemonic
discourse, were Italians, Giustino Fortunato and Benedetto Croce. Croce, he notes, was
instrumental in directing the Southern leadership away from potentially revolutionary action and
towards a tamer middle way. See Antonio Gramsci, Franco de Felice and Valentino Parlato, La
questione meridionale (Rome, Italy: Editori Riuniti, 2005), p. 48. For an in-depth consideration
of the development and role of the organic intellectual in hegemonic discourse, see Crehan,
pp. 18-42.
84
‘Stato è tutto il complesso di attività pratiche e teoriche con cui la classe dirigente giustifica e
mantiene il suo dominio non solo ma riesce a ottenere il consenso attivo dei governati’, Antonio
Gramsci, ‘Quaderno’,15: 10<https://quadernidelcarcere.wordpress.com/2014/12/25/machiavelli-
sociologia-e-scienza-politica/> [accessed 12 February 2017]
85
‘Ogni uomo, in quanto è attivo, cioè vivente contribuisce a modificare l’ambiente sociale in cui si
sviluppa (a modificarne determinati caratteri o a conservarne altri), cioè tende a stabilire «norme»,
regole di vita e di condotta. La cerchia di attività sarà maggiore o minore, la consapevolezza [della
propria azione e dei fini] sarà maggiore o minore; inoltre, il potere rappresentativo sarà maggiore
o minore, e sarà più o meno attuato dai «rappresentati» nella sua espressione sistematica
normativa’. Antonio Gramsci, ‘Quaderno’, 14: 13
<http://www.nilalienum.com/Gramsci/Q14fnote.html>[accessed 12 March 2017]
86
‘ne domanda una continua riorganizzazione e sviluppo, così come lo sviluppo del partito e dello
Stato in concezione del mondo, cioè in trasformazione totale e molecolare (individuale) dei modi di
pensare e operare, reagisce sullo Stato e sul partito, costringendoli a riorganizzarsi continuamente

29
anomalies in the hegemonic discourse become apparent, subordinated groups
discover opposing interests and recognise commonalities. This provides fertile
ground for the creation of a new ‘senso comune’ and related social change.
However, this change may, or may not, be progressive.

Gramsci’s ultimate goal was to promote ‘a war of position’. For this to be effective,
subordinated sectors would need to unite and present a counter-hegemonic
discourse reflecting an alternative conception of civil society, based on values of
social inclusion.87 However, to reiterate, a key impediment to this process is the
coercive power of the ‘senso comune’ which, as Marcus Green explains, must be
rejected in preference to a higher form of ‘critical awareness, consciousness, and in
turn culture, in which one understands that the conditions of society are not dictated
by the laws of nature or history but are the effects of human will and initiative’.
This conception of the world, he notes ‘provides the necessary ethico-political
foundation for subaltern political transformation’.88

The roots of critical consciousness can be found in elements of truth located

amongst the largely incoherent and ambiguous conception of the world, which is
‘senso comune’.89 These elements of truth, or insights, which run contrary to the
dominant narrative, Gramsci terms ‘buon senso’, good sense.90 ‘Buon senso’, Kate
Crehan notes is ‘embryonic and encrusted with aspects of the ‘senso comune’.91
However, as these flashes of ‘buon senso’ are co-ordinated into a coherent

e ponendo loro dei problemi nuovi e originali da risolvere’. Antonio Gramsci, ‘Quaderno’, 17: 52
<https://quadernidelcarcere.wordpress.com/2015/02/18/machiavelli-34/> [accessed 12 March]
87
Antonio Gramsci, ‘Quaderno’, 10: 44
<https://quadernidelcarcere.wordpress.com/2014/10/18/introduzione-allo-studio-della-filosofia-
13/> [accessed 17 March 2017]
88
Green, ‘On the Post-Colonial Image’, pp. 94-5. Gramsci notes the need for independent
thinking and critical awareness, ‘è preferibile elaborare la propria concezione del mondo
consapevolmente e criticamente e quindi, in connessione con tale lavorio del proprio cervello,
scegliere la propria sfera di attività, partecipare attivamente alla produzione della storia del
mondo, essere guida di se stessi e non già accettare passivamente e supinamente dall’esterno
l’impronta della propria personalità’. Antonio Gramsci, ‘Quaderno’, 11: 12
<https://quadernidelcarcere.wordpress.com/2014/10/28/4308/> [accessed 21 January 2017]
89
Benedetto Fontana, ‘Intellectuals and Masses: Agency and Knowledge in Gramsci’, in
Antonio Gramsci, ed. by Mark McNally (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), pp. 55-
75 (p. 59).
90
Gramsci speaks of good sense coming from self-awareness or,‘knowing oneself’, ‘conosci te
stesso’, See Gramsci, ‘Quaderno’, 11: 12.
91
Crehan, p. 186.

30
discourse, fashioned by new organic intellectuals, a different progressive ‘senso
comune’ can develop and social change can occur.

Integral to the concept of hegemony is the concept of subalternity. That is, the
position of subordination in the unequal power relationship established by the
prevailing hegemonic discourse. Gramsci explores the theme of subalternity in-
depth in his monothematic notebook entitled ‘On the Margins of History (The
History of the Subaltern Social Groups)’ written in 1934.92 As the title suggests
Gramsci’s conception of subalternity is heterogeneous. Among the groups of people
he identifies as subaltern are slaves, peasants, religious groups, women, different
races and the proletariat.93 Subaltern organisation is differentiated and ranges from
significant levels of regulation to complete lack of cohesion.94 However, it is
predominantly the case that the latter is true and the majority of subaltern sectors
are characterised by fragmentation and disconnection from one another.95 For these
reasons when subaltern groups do raise their voice in protest it constitutes a
defensive rather than an aggressive gesture.96

As Gramsci points out, subaltern groups have frequently been ignored noting that
certain subaltern sectors ‘have no history: …there are no traces of their history in
the historical documents of the past’.97 He further states that when subalterns are
mentioned it is predominately the case that they are misrepresented and/or confined
to the margins of dominant historical accounts.98 In support of this point, Gramsci
highlights the extremely unfavourable representation afforded to subaltern classes

92
Guido Liguori, ‘Conceptions of Subalternity in Gramsci’, in McNally, pp. 118-33 (p. 119).
93
Green, ‘Gramsci Cannot’, p. 2.
94
Joseph A. Buttigeig, ‘Subaltern Groups in Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks’, in The Political
Philosophies of Antonio Gramsci and Ambedkar: Itineraries of Dalits and Subalterns, ed. by
Cosimo Zene (New York, NY: Routledge/Taylor Francis Group, 2013), pp. 35-42 (p. 36).
95
Buttigeig, p. 36.
96
‘Le classi subalterne subiscono l’iniziativa della classe dominante, anche quando si ribellano;
sono in istato di difesa allarmata’, Antonio Gramsci, ‘Quaderno’, 3: 14, in Gramsci, Quaderni,
p. 300.
97
‘«classi subalterne» che «non hanno storia», cioè la cui storia non lascia tracce nei documenti
storici del passato’ Antonio Gramsci, ‘Quaderno’, 14: 39
<https://quadernidelcarcere.wordpress.com/2014/12/07/letteratura-popolare-manzoni-e-gli-
umili/ > [accessed February 2015] Translation of the Italian taken from David Forgacs and
Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Antonio Gramsci: Selections from the Cultural Writings (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), p. 294.
98
Marcus E. Green, ‘Race, Class, and Religion: Gramsci’s Conception of Subalternity’, in,
Zene, pp. 116-28 (p. 116).

31
in literary and historiographical accounts.99 Given the hegemonic potential of the
depiction process, it is unsurprising that Gramsci should stress the incalculable
value of faithful accurate contextualised recording of every trace of independent
initiative by subaltern groups.100 In Gramscian terms, the Tren Blanco community
co-operative project represents an example of an independent initiative resulting
from the defensive action of a group of concerned villeros’ who united to challenge
the subaltern conditions of poverty and marginalisation affecting them and their
community.

Gramsci identified three areas by which to support the emancipation of the

subaltern sectors. These were, to produce a methodology of subaltern
historiography, to document a history of the subaltern classes and finally, to use the
methodology and documentation to devise a practical political strategy for the
transformation of their social position.101 Gramsci approaches the recording of
history, and specifically subaltern history, from an ‘integral’ viewpoint. It is the task
of the ‘integral historian’ to contextualise accounts within broader socio-political
relations and to analyse events in terms of the way in which they relate to lived
experience.102 This thesis will show that the subaltern condition of the participants
and that of the wider community can be viewed in the context of the various
hegemonic discourses which punctuated Argentina’s nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, notably liberalism, peronism and neoliberalism.103

99
Using Shakespeare’s work as an example, Gramsci notes the playwrite’s preferential portrayal
of the dominant classes over that of the ordinary people explaining subalterns are presented as
repulsive and ridiculous, ‘parteggia manifestamente per le classi elevate della società; il suo
dramma è essenzialmente aristocratico. Quasi tutte le volte che egli introduce sulla scena dei
borghesi o dei popolani, li presenta in maniera sprezzante o repugnante, e li fa materia o
argomento di riso’, Antonio Gramsci, ‘Quaderno’, 3: 151, in Gramsci, Quaderni, p. 404.
Gramsci further notes that political and resistance action by subalterns is portrayed as
pathological. He exemplifies this with reference to the portrayals of David Lazaretti and his
movement. Rather than seeking to understand the movement by contextualising its formation
against the backdrop of the peasant group’s harsh living conditions, those who presented the
movement did so in terms of irrationality and insanity. See Antonio Gramsci, ‘Cuaderno’, 3:12,
in Gramsci, Quaderni, pp. 297-8.
100
Ogni traccia di iniziativa autonoma dap arte dei gruppi subalterni doverebbe perciò essere di
valore inestimabile per lo storico integrale. Antonio Gramsci, ‘Quaderno’, 25: 2
<https://quadernidelcarcere.wordpress.com/2015/06/12/criteri-metodologici-3/> [accessed 16
January 2017]
101
Green, ‘Gramsci Cannot Speak’, pp. 19-20.
102
Green, ‘Gramsci Cannot Speak’, p. 9.
103
This is notably the case of Chapter Three which considers Argentine socio-economic history
from the liberalism of the country’s golden-age to the recent Kirchner governments’ pro-popular
discourse.

32
In Prison Notebook 3 Gramsci noted subaltern resistance as being defensive,
sporadic and uncoordinated and, as such, he stressed that recording of any political
initiative taken by the subaltern groups would be a difficult and necessarily
monographic process.104 In this same text, he presents a six-phase methodological
gauge for research into subaltern activity.105 Stage one refers to the objective
formation of the group. Stage two constitutes their active or passive affiliation to
the dominant political formations and attempts to influence the dominant programs
with demands of their own. Stage three sees the birth of new parties and dominant
groups, created with the predominant aim of subjugating and retaining subaltern
groups in their subordinate position. Stage four refers to formations made by
subaltern groups to defend their limited rights. Stage five is the formation of new
bodies which assert the subaltern groups’ autonomy within old frameworks. Stage
six refers to entirely autonomous formations. According to Gramsci’s criteria the
Movimiento de Trabajadores Excluidos (MTE), which represents various groups of
marginalised workers, notably cartoneros, and has a significant level of overtly
political organisation, would be considered to have reached stage four. The Tren
Blanco project, on the other hand, would be considered to have reached phase two
on Gramsci’s developmental chart. However, this point will be revisited in the
concluding section of the thesis after the information from the field study has been
presented.

Having identified Gramsci’s thought as the inspiration for this work it remains to
make a brief final comment. I consider my personal politics as progressive, share
Gramsci’s desire for social change and believe that knowledge production should
extend its impact beyond the academic community. Nevertheless, for Gramsci, the
purpose of recording subaltern history was predominately political and directed
towards victory of the subaltern classes in the ‘war of position’. My view is less
delineated. It is hoped that this history will contribute to the process of hegemonic
change envisioned by Gramsci at some level. Clearly the Tren Blanco co-operative
104
‘La storia delle classi subalterne è necessariamente disgregata ed episodica: c’è nell’attività
di queste classi una tendenza all’unificaio bis zione sia pure su piani provvisori, ma essa è la
parte meno appariscente e che si dimostra solo a vittoria ottenuta. … In ogni modo la
monografia è la; forma più adatta di questa storia, che domanda un cumulo molto i grande di
materiali parziali’. Antonio Gramsci, ‘Quaderno’, 3: 14, in Gramsci, Quaderni, pp. 299-300.
105
Antonio Gramsci, ‘Quaderno’, 3: 90, in Gramsci, Quaderni, pp. 372-3.

33
project is important in the political sense in that it constitutes part of the country’s
wider trend of resistance and counter-hegemonic discourse. However, in addition to
this, it is my belief that an equally central value of this account is that it provides an
inspirational (hi)story in its own right which both I and the individual members
were passionate to share.

The thesis is structured as a ten-chapter study. Following this introductory chapter,

Chapter Two presents a review of literature on various themes relevant to this work
in the following chronological order: theories and key research surrounding the
topic of work, co-operative theory and structure, co-operativism in the Latin
American context, the popular responses to the crisis focused on workplace
recovery and the cartonero phenomenon and, finally, the impact produced by the
Kirchner governments on Argentina’s poor. Chapter Three presents an outline of
Argentine history in the twentieth century, identifying consensus views on the
sources of the country’s experience of relative decline. In contrast to the more
objective views presented in the previous chapter, Chapter Four reviews more
subjective perceptions of the causes of Argentina’s twentieth-century decline,
which, as the author contends, form the basis for the specific responses developed
during the period of economic meltdown. Chapter Five provides a contextualisation
of Argentina’s contemporary co-operative movement by considering the tradition of
co-operative organisation specific to Argentina. In Chapter Six, key strategies
adopted by both middle and popular sectors to face the crisis are reviewed. Chapter
Seven considers aspects of waste collection in Buenos Aires City and GBA,
focusing specifically on the topic as it relates to the cartonero population. Chapter
Eight moves to a consideration of the Province of San Martín and the town of José
León Suárez. The chapter explores the development of informal settlements in
Buenos Aires city and GBA, moving the focus to Villa Independencia, the origin of
the Tren Blanco co-operative and the origin of the project. Chapter Nine, which
focuses on the case study, sees the members of the Tren Blanco co-operative afford
insights into their experience of co-operative organisation in the context of post-
crisis Argentina. Chapter Ten offers some words of conclusion.

34
Chapter Two

Literature review: The theories of work: Co-operative

structure and theory: Co-operatives in Latin America: Popular
responses to the 2001 economic crisis: Kirchner to Kirchner
economic change and social policy.

(i) The theories of work.

The term ‘work’ is in itself difficult to define as it has multifarious
interpretations which extend far beyond paid employment. Whilst work is an
action or activity, paid employment refers to a relationship or contract
whereby work is exchanged for payment. In practical terms, whether paid or
unpaid, work is also a precondition of existence, being essential for continued
living.1

In ancient Greece, work was synonymous with slavery.2 In the European

historical and cultural contexts, work has been portrayed as negative, positive
and as a combination of both. Negative appraisals present work as an
obligation and burden to be endured. For example, in the Old Testament of the
Holy Bible, work is expressed in the extremely unfavourable terms of toil and
punishment.3 In the unmechanised preindustrialial period, work was
interpreted in terms of hard, physically debilitating labour. Mechanisation and
increased levels of production under early capitalism generated views of work
based on exploitation and alienation. Alternately, positive appraisals, which
proved fundamental to the development of Protestantism, were proposed by
early thinkers, who saw work in terms of duty, as a natural, necessary activity,

1
Barringer quoted by Warr, Peter B. Warr, Work, Happiness and Unhappiness (London, UK:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2007), p. 3.
2
Elena Zubieta et al., ‘Concepciones y creencias sobre el trabajo. Estudio descriptivo de algunas
fuentes de variación en una muestra laboralmente activa, Anuario de Investigaciones: XV
(2008), 59-67.
3
‘By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground’, Genesis 3.
19. Holy Bible: New International Version (London, UK: Hodder and Stoughton, 1988).

35
and as a means of accomplishing God’s will. In this context, work was
expressed as noble and as central to identity formation.4

For Sigmund Freud, ‘love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness’.5
On the latter he explained that, although not usually a source of pleasure, work
is necessary and fundamental to psychological health: ‘Work constitutes
man’s strongest tie to reality, and without it he is likely to be psychologically
damaged.’6

El trabajo es menospreciado por el hombre como camino a la

felicidad. La inmensa mayoría de los seres sólo trabajan bajo el
imperio de la necesidad, y de esta natural aversión humana al
trabajo se derivan los más dificultosos problemas sociales…Es
imposible considerar adecuadamente en una exposición concisa la
importancia del trabajo en la economía libidinal. Ninguna otra
técnica de orientación vital liga al individuo tan fuertemente a la
realidad como la acentuación del trabajo, que por lo menos lo
incorpora sólidamente a una parte de la realidad de la comunidad
humana.7

With this is mind, the following section identifies the specific benefits
identified as deriving from participation in work and involvement in the
workplace, and also considers the related theme of unemployment.
Using empirical evidence from a study of unemployed people in an Austrian
working-class community, Psychologist Marie Jahoda identified the functions
of employment in terms of intended, self-evident functions, notably earning a
living and also additional positive latent functions. These latent functions

4
Warr, p. 5. Of interest are points made by Ramón Ayala, the president of Chaco province’s
Inimbo rope manufacturing co-operative. Whilst attending a conference on worker self-
management in Buenos Aires City, Mr. Ayala granted me an interview. During the interview
he identified himself as a Christian, reiterated the citation from Genesis, 3. 19 and noted that
for him the concept of work was closely bound to his sense of religious identity. As he
expanded, it became clear that Mr. Ayala’s perception of the significance of work would be
considered to be closer to the Protestant perception of work as it is identified here. That is, he
indicated that work afforded him great pleasure and satisfaction in that it represented a means
of fulfilling his obligations and duties towards, not only God, but also, his dependents and co-
workers.
5
Bernice Bratter and Helen Dennis, Project Renewment: The First Retirement Model for Career
Women (New York, NY: Scribner, 2008), p. 50.
6
Sigmund Freud quoted in John Burnett, Idle Hands: The Experience of Unemployment,
1790-1990, (London, UK: Routledge, 1994), p. 286.
7
Graciela Leticia Filippi, ‘El significado y el valor del trabajo en distintos grupos socio-
laborales en los albores del siglo XXI’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Buenos
Aires, 2008), pp. 40-1.

36
occur as an unintended by-product of purposeful action, and support
psychological well-being.8 The five latent functions of work identified by
Jahoda were: affording a time structure to work, enabling individuals to share
experiences and make contacts with individuals other than members of their
immediate or nuclear family, linking workers to goals and purposes that
transcend their own, defining aspects of personal status, and enforcing activity
that would otherwise require extreme personal feats of self-motivation.
Adopting a slightly different focus, Peter Warr seeks to identify aspects of
work related to job satisfaction or workplace happiness. Warr expands
Jahoda’s model to include nine positive primary features.9 Identifying earning
money as the central aspect of work, he further identifies aspects of personal
control over activities, environment, the future and security, opportunities for
self-improvement such as skills development, positive social status and
challenges, and also the opportunity for variety and social contact. These
factors, of course, are often interrelated and several latent benefits of work
appear to be inextricably linked to earning money as, under normal
circumstances, achieving financial security is central to one’s ability to exert a
level of personal independence, stability and control over one’s immediate and
future circumstances.

Conversely, just as work affords the opportunity for the satisfaction of

psychological needs, unemployment generally results in the stifling of the
benefits derived from work’s latent functions. In circumstances of protracted
unemployment, the latent functions of well-being derived from work are no
longer effective and money shortage is likely to impact on the possibility of
developing valid alternatives. In addition to the reduction in social integration,
which generally accompanies unemployment, there is the stigma associated
with joblessness.

Multi-national empirical research into the perception of the importance or

value of work indicates that Argentine subjects expressed more positive and

8
Marie Jahoda, ‘Work, Employment and Unemployment: Values, Theories and Approaches
in Social Research’, American Psychologist, 36: 2 (1981), 184-91 (p.188).
9
Warr, pp. 82-9.

37
enduring attitudes than members of other countries. This is particularly the
case for lower income sectors. 10 The vast majority of Argentines consider
that, ‘el trabajo es lo que hace que la vida valga la pena vivirse y no el ocio’,
ranking work as higher in importance than religion and leisure, and as second
in importance only to family.11 The most positive attitudes towards work
appear to be held by older Argentines and by those of the interior provinces,
although Argentines with higher educational levels have a somewhat less
positive attitude towards the value of work.12

This positive popular view of work by Argentines, also demonstrated in Brazil

and México, has been attributed to individuals adopting more ‘materialist and
conservative’ attitudes. This, it is posited, has been engendered as a result of
higher levels of job uncertainty and the country’s relatively lower level of
economic development in the international context.13 I would suggest that an
additional, more favourable, explanation for this positive attitude towards
work, amongst members of Argentina’s popular classes, stems from the high
profile popular work received under Perón. As highlighted in Chapter Three,
Perón’s economic planning afforded Argentine citizens both a right and a duty
to work for the benefit of the country as a whole. Peronism recognised the
value of the worker as a respected, integral player in the creation of
Argentina’s future. I would suggest that the theme of worker identity being
central to Argentine subjectivity may persist either as an actual personal
memory of earlier conditions or bequeathed memory, possibly somewhat
mythologised, focused on popular experience during the first Peronist
presidencies.

Work as central to worker co-operation.

For the Comité International des Coopératives de Production et de Services
Industrielles et Artisanales (CICOPA), the nature of co-operative work differs

10
Carballo cited in Filippi, p. 50.
11
Filippi, p. 50.
12
Filippi, p. 50.
13
Filippi, p. 50.

38
from wage labour or that of independent contractors.14 CICOPA identifies the
aim of work in the workers’ co-operative as the creation of dignity in work. Of
particular significance to this work is the fact that in the Argentine context,
particularly in the post-December 2001 period, the term concept of dignified
work has been afforded varied interpretations. Demands for genuine or
dignified work were expressed by various contemporary social movements on
the basis of differing criteria. For some, meaningful, genuine work was work
with a clear social value. Examples of this type of work are the establishment
and running of local community projects. The Tren Blanco cartonero co-
operative represents one such example. For others, generally individuals
whose background was in formal industry, demands for genuine meaningful
work referred to work in the traditional sense of the word: that is, reinsertion
into the sector of industrial production.

The concept of dignified work in the ideology of the workers’ co-operative

appears to reflect aspects of both the above criteria. Workers’ co-operatives
operate alongside and, therefore, necessarily in competition with, traditional
businesses with lucrative aims; however, at the same time, they operate with
altruistic aims which focus clearly on worker satisfaction and community
benefit. That is, workers’ co-operatives are established with the aim of
providing workers with an alternative form of earning a living which foments
creativity, benefits the local community and avoids the traditional exploitative
relationship of employment implied in traditional wage labour. However, they
also aim to enable members to make a living and improve their material living
standards. As such, the instrumental aspect of work, getting enough money to
survive ‘comfortably’, is a central aspect of co-operative organisation.

Chapter Nine of this work revisits the theme of work in general and as specific
to co-operative experience as the participants of the Tren Blanco co-operative
reflect on their experiences.

14
CICOPA is the branch of the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) dedicated to workers’
co-operatives.

39
(ii) Co-operative structure and theory.
Throughout history, human beings have satisfied material needs by mutual
assistance or co-operation via the exchanging of goods and services. Iñaki Gil de
San Vicente makes reference to formal business organisation based on co-
operation in Babylonian agricultural co-operative societies, which, as early as
550 BC, shared many common characteristics with contemporary Rochdale-
style co-operatives. In fact, he also cites anecdotal evidence of ventures in co-
operation and social economy which predate the Babylonian projects.15

European co-operation can be traced to the industrial revolution and subsequent

birth of modern society. This new market or capitalist society can be viewed in
terms of redefining the human being as a mere commodity or resource. The
popular classes’ suffering under capitalism led to both grassroots solidarity and
the emergence of champions of the exploited, extending philosophical
challenges to the status quo of exploitation and ‘commodification’ of the
subaltern populations in Europe: ‘Co-operation has two histories; on the one
hand, there were the ideas of the co-operative thinkers, mainly wealthy and
middle or upper class and, on the other, the actions of working class people in
forming mutual aid societies, co-operative stores and workshops in order to
protect their basic conditions of subsistence’.16 In broad terms, from the mid-
nineteenth century, traditions of consumer co-operation developed with most
strength in Britain. Workers’ co-operatives in France and Italy and credit
co-operatives in Germany also emerged, with agricultural co-operation most
prevalent in Denmark and Germany.17 Significantly, Mary Mellor, Janet Hannah
and John Sterling note the support afforded by the French and Italian states as a

15
Iñaki Gil de San Vicente, Cooperativismo obrero, consejismo y autogestión socialista.
Algunas lecciones para Euskal Herria (Bilbao, Spain: Boltxe Liburuak, 2013), p. 8.
16
Mary Mellor, Janet Hannah and John Stirling, Worker Co-operatives in Theory and Practice
(Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press, 1988), p. 29.
17
Johnston Birchall, The International Co-operative Movement (Manchester, UK: Manchester
University Press, 1997), pp. 75-125. For more on the development of co-operation in Italy, see
Birchall, p. 23; C. R. Fay, Co-operation at Home and Abroad: A Description and Analysis
(London, UK: P. S. King & Son, 1920) digitalised edition 2007, p. 249
<http://archive.org/stream/cooperationathom00faycuoft#page/n3/mode/2up> [accessed 8
November 2012]

40
key contributory factor of the robust growth of workers’ co-operatives in both
countries.18

The response of early Communist theorists to workers’ co-operatives as a

vehicle to socialism was singularly negative. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
viewed the projects of ‘socialist reformers’, which they designated ‘Utopian’, as
ultimately negative in terms of the impracticality of their projects as transitional
vehicles to socialism.19 However, Marx’s response to worker co-operation has
been subject to contradictory interpretations and his appraisal of co-operative
organisation has been reinterpreted as revealing elements of approval.20 To the
contrary, Marxist thinker Rosa Luxemburg expressed an unequivocally negative
view of the value of the workers’ co-operative as a potential instrument of the
implementation of socialism. On the workers’ co-operative, ‘a hybrid form in
the midst of capitalism …small units of socialised production within capitalist
exchange’, Luxemburg proffers an equally negative appraisal of the co-
operatives ability to prosper economically whilst operating in accordance with
their fundamental doctrine as follows:

… in capitalist economy exchanges dominate production. As a result

of competition, the complete domination of the process of production
by the interests of capital … becomes a condition for the survival of
each enterprise... In other words, use is made of all methods that enable
an enterprise to stand up against its competitors in the market. The
workers forming a co-operative in the field of production are thus
faced with the contradictory necessity of governing themselves with
the utmost absolutism. They are obliged to take toward themselves the
role of capitalist entrepreneur - a contradiction that accounts for the
usual failure of production co-operatives, which either become pure
capitalist enterprises or, if the workers’ interests continue to
predominate, end by dissolving.21

18
Mellor, Hannah and Sterling, p. 24.
19
See Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels, ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party. Section III, ‘Critical
Utopian Socialism and Communism’, (1888)
<http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=3273359> [accessed 25 March
2012]
20
For a synopsis of Marx’s stance on the significance of co-operative organisation, see Mellor et
al. pp. 21-3. An alternative perspective is presented by Bruno Jossa. Bruno Jossa, ‘Marx,
Marxism and the Co-operative Movement’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 29 (2005), 3-18.
21
Rosa Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution (London, UK: Militant, 1986), Chapter Seven: Co-
operatives, Unions and Democracy.

41
Beatrice Potter-Webb, a proponent of state socialism, echoed Luxemburg’s
negative stance towards the possibility that co-operative organisation could
provide a vehicle to achieve socialism.22 Empirical evidence drawn from the
experiences of a significant number of Argentina’s contemporary co-operatives
tends to support Luxemburg and Potter-Webb’s assertions. Cases of worker self-
exploitation in Argentina’s recovered workplaces are endemic. Numbers of co-
operatives have reported the need to return to traditional hierarchical functioning
to enable the business to survive. However, examples to the contrary do exist
both in the international and the Argentine context.

The University of Wisconsin Center for Co-operatives (UWCC) definition of a

co-operative organisation is, ‘an autonomous association of persons united
voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and
aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise’.23

Throughout its history, the co-operative movement has constantly changed.

However, despite changes, co-operative organisation retains a fundamental
respect for all human beings and a belief in their capacity to improve
themselves, economically and socially, through mutual self-help. Furthermore,
the co-operative movement believes that democratic procedures applied to
economic activities are feasible, desirable and efficient. It believes that
democratically-controlled economic organisations make a contribution to the
common good. There is no single tap root from which all kinds of co-operatives
emerge. They exist all around the world in many different forms, serving many
different needs, and thriving within diverse societies. However, ‘norms
…should prevail in all co-operatives regardless of what they do and where they
exist’.24

To the above succinct definition, which identifies the basic premises of a co-
operative as an associative, aspirational, person-centred organisation,
independent of government and private influence, is added the statement of

22
Mellor, Hannah and Stirling, pp. 20-1.
23
UWCC, ‘Background Paper to the Statement on Co-operative Identity’, 8 January 1996
<http://www.uwcc.wisc.edu/icic/issues/prin/21-cent/background.html> [accessed 15 March
2013]
24
UWCC.

42
values, which highlights the qualities of: self-help, self-responsibility,
democracy, equality, equity and solidarity. All of these characteristics, the ICA
notes, reflect the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and
caring for others, in keeping with the tradition of co-operative enterprise
established in the context of nineteenth-century Europe.25

In order to reflect changes to international socio-economic order, the guiding

principles on which the alliance operates are subject to periodic revision, which
remains, nevertheless, consistently in keeping with the core values of
co-operative organisation stated above. The most recent revision took place in
1995 in response to the negative effects produced on co-operative organisations
by expansion to the market economy and deregulation introduced on an
international scale between 1970 and the 1990s.26

The ICA’s restatement identified the seven core principles of co-operative

organisation for the contemporary era as:

Voluntary and open membership. ‘Co-operatives are voluntary

organisations, open to all persons …willing to accept the responsibilities
of membership, without gender, social, racial, political or religious
discrimination’.

Democratic member control. ‘Co-operatives are democratic organisations

controlled by their members, who actively participate in setting their
policies and making decisions. Men and women serving as elected
representatives are accountable to the membership… members have equal
voting rights (one member, one vote)’.

Equitable economic participation and distribution. ‘Members contribute

equitably to, and democratically control, the capital of their co-operative’.
Surplus or savings, arising from the co-operative’s operations belong to
the members and are distributed so as to prevent any individual member
gaining at the expense of other members.
25
ICA, ‘Co-operative Identity, Values and Principles’ <http://ica.coop/en/whats-co-op/co-
operative-identity-values-principles> [accessed 21 September 2014]
26
UWCC.

43
 Autonomy and independence. If co-operatives ‘enter into agreements with
other organisations, including governments, or raise capital from external
sources, they do so on terms that ensure democratic control by their
members and maintain their co-operative autonomy’.

Education, training and information. ‘Co-operatives provide education and

training for their members, elected representatives, managers and
employees so they can contribute effectively to the development of their
co-operatives. They inform the general public, particularly young people
and opinion leaders, about the nature and benefits of co-operation.’

Co-operation between co-operatives. ‘Co-operatives serve their members

most effectively and strengthen the co-operative movement by working
together through local, national, regional and international structures.’

Concern for community. ‘Co-operatives work for the sustainable

development of their communities through policies approved by their
members.’27

The above principles closely reflect the spirit of fairness, transparency, equality,
democracy and personal and community enrichment formulated by pioneers of
the co-operative movement in ninteenth-century Europe, most specifically those
established to guide the first consumer co-operative established in Rochdale,
England in 1844.28 Broadly speaking, to date, co-operative organisation has
developed within five distinct traditions, all of which reflect the social and
economic aims noted above.29 These are:

(i) Consumer co-operatives in which members retail goods and services

according to principles established by the Rochdale pioneers.
(ii) Worker co-operatives in which members of the same trade unite to earn
a living by the product of their work.
(iii) Credit co-operatives which provide funding for co-operative ventures
that would otherwise experience difficulty accessing finance.
(iv) Agricultural co-operatives.
(v) Service co-operatives such as housing and health co-operatives.

27
ICA.
28
These principles are to be found in Appendix 1.
29
UWCC.

44
Additionally, co-operatives which combine two or more of these functions also
exist; these are termed hybrid co-operatives by the United States National Co-
operative Business Association (NCBA).30 Hybrid co-operatives can
amalgamate various combinations of co-operatives, for example, producers and
consumers, with some even comprising co-operative and independent bodies.
The Tren Blanco co-operative, which is the central focus of this study, falls into
the category of worker co-operative, as do each of the co-operatives I visited
whilst conducting my research. In fact, in the context of increasing
unemployment in the 1990s and early post-2000 period, the vast majority of the
co-operatives established were worker/producer enterprises.

As in the case of all co-operative organisations, a workers’ co-operative reflects

the fundamental co-operative values of collective self-help, socio-economic
improvement and community spirit. To this, the Argentine Federación de Co-
operativas de Trabajo (FENCOOTRA) adds the reversal of traditional
(capitalist) business practice, in favour of a person-centred experience by which
an individual’s work belongs to them:

Una cooperativa de trabajo es una asociación de personas que se

reúnen para trabajar en común, con el esfuerzo mancomunado de
todos, con el fin de mejorar la situación social y económica, dejando
de ser asalariadas para transformarse en dueñas de su propio destino,
poniendo el capital y el trabajo al servicio del hombre, revirtiendo la
modalidad de otros tipos de empresa.31

However, the essential raison d’être of the worker co-operative is to create

work, which distinguishes it from other traditions of co-operative organisation.
As such, it is very often the case that worker co-operatives are established
during circumstances of economic downturn. These may take the form of new
businesses established by unemployed workers or the regeneration of a failing
conventional business by former workers. Despite their customarily humble
beginnings, worker co-operatives have been described as the ultimate

30
NCBA, ‘Co-operatives, Types’ <http://usa2012.coop/about-co-ops/types> [accessed 12
October 2012]
31
Fencootra, ‘¿Qué es una cooperativa de trabajo?’, Fencootra.org.
<http://www.fecootra.org.ar/web/content/%C2%BFque-es-una-cooperativa-de-trabajo>
[accessed 2 December 2012]

45
co-operative experience, as the ventures’ fundamental and essential capital
comes in human form, constituting supreme potential for promoting
interpersonal trust and solidarity:

…es la forma cooperativa más perfecta. En ella todos viven de y para

la cooperativa, deben esforzarse en su trabajo y dedicar todo su
tiempo a lograr el crecimiento de la entidad. Desarrollan además al
máximo el espíritu solidario.’ 32

In general terms, several benefits central to workers’ co-operation have been

identified. Co-operative organisation is recognised as an effective means of
encouraging sustained, stable, local economic development.33 The Argentine
situation affords little doubt that co-operative organisation can offer and, indeed
has offered, a series of benefits to members and, in many cases, the local
communities in which they are located. Outstanding examples of successful co-
operative ventures in Argentina include the CUC footwear factory in San Martín
municipality, the emblematic Cooperativa 18 de diciembre (former Brukman)
garment factory and the Patagonian FaSinPat (former Zanón) ceramics factory.
Each of these co-operatives, formed by combative workplace takeover, has not
only succeeded in providing work for the original occupying workforce but has
expanded to create work for unemployed members of the local community. As
well as opening their premises as venues for community projects, Argentina’s
co-operatives often sponsor community educational projects in basic literacy
and numeracy. As stressed by FaSinPat’s José Julián Peñuñuri, ‘La fábrica es
del pueblo’.34 FaSinPat has sponsored and funded various community projects in
health care and housing. A further notable example of cultural solidarity action
by FaSinPat workers are the fair-trade links developed with the local Mapuche
community, whose quarries provide clay used in the factory’s ceramics and

32
Ricardo Passadore and Dora E. Temis, ‘Las cooperativas de trabajo y el fraude laboral.
Legitimidad de su existencia’, Legalmania.com. (February 2001)
<http://www.legalmania.com.ar/derecho/cooperativas_fraude_laboral.htm> [accessed 15
September 2013]
33
John Mugambwa, ‘The Saga of the Co-operative Movement in Papua New Guinea’, Journal
of South Pacific Law, 9:1 (2005) <http://www.paclii.org/journals/fJSPL/vol09no1/1.shtml>
[accessed 6 March 2013]
34
José Julián Peñuñuri (FaSinPat), Address at Sheffield University, February 2004.

46
whose experience under the former management was one of extreme
exploitation. 35

In terms of members’ benefits, worker co-operative organisation is recognised

as creating greater job satisfaction as it provides an opportunity for greater
levels of worker participation, productivity and, arguably, creativity.36 The level
of economic risk to members’ private property is reduced by the limited liability
clause applying to most co-operative ventures, which precludes confiscation of
members’ private property should the co-operative fail. Co-operative
organisation eliminates the need for ‘middlemen’ and foments an environment
in which control structures, such as supervisory and management personnel,
become redundant, with the effect of significantly reducing overheads. In
addition, co-operative ventures have been accredited with the quality of
hardiness, both on the basis of the members’ willingness to make financial
sacrifices in times of hardship, and on the basis of the open membership policy,
which allows for member withdrawal and replacement, thus enabling the co-
operative to function on an indefinite basis. A related benefit of the member-
focused, non-profit values and principals central to workers’ co-operative
organisation is that redundancies are unlikely. Co-operation, rather than
competition as in traditional firms, between co-operatives is a further aspect of
co-operative ideology which affords economic benefit.37

Notwithstanding, in contrast to traditional capitalist firms, workers’

co-operatives tend to share an unimpressive record internationally in terms of
their perceived ability to prosper to the same extent as their capitalist rivals.38 In
purely pragmatic terms, to survive, the worker/producer co-operative must
operate efficiently and produce goods and services that are as attractive as those

35
John Restakis, Humanizing the Economy: Co-operatives in the Age of Capital (Gabriola
Island, Canada: New Society Publishers, 2010), pp. 197-200 (p. 200).
36
Andrew Hindmoor presents the opposite case using the example of the Mondragon experience
to suggest that producer co-operatives tend towards low levels of innovation. Andrew
Hindmoor, ‘Free Riding off Capitalism: Entrepreneurship and the Mondragon Experiment’,
British Journal of Political Science, 29:1 (1999), 217-24.
37
The majority of the worker co-operatives which I visited had links with other co-operatives;
an example of this was the Bauen Hotel, which provided a market for the produce of the
Panadería La Argentina.
38
Hindmoor, p. 217.

47
of other businesses. This, in most cases, requires capital investment, particularly
in the initial stages. John Mugambwa identifies a common drawback faced by
fledgling worker/ producer co-operatives as the inability to either raise or attract
adequate capital investment from traditional capital investors.39 This was a
particularly common experience reported by members of recovered workplace
co-operatives, who, as well as noting reluctance of creditors to advance funds to
the business on political grounds, speak in terms of having no profile or past
reputation to call upon in support of requests for the necessary credit to initiate
production. As such, in certain cases, members of recovered workplaces were
forced into taking the difficult decision to sell personal assets such as their
homes in order to obtain funds to launch the projects. 40 For the cartonero in the
context of the cutthroat, informal micro-economy from which individual
gatherers scratched a daily living subject to extremes of intimidation and
exploitation by a network of unscrupulous entrepreneurs, no surplus would be
available to invest in equipment required to set up a self-managed business, co-
operative or otherwise. Cartonero ‘business’, as it existed, tended to be a family
affair run from home. For cartoneros wishing to start a co-operative or small
local business, accessing support and funding presented a major hurdle.

The theories of co-operative organisation presented above are revisited in

Chapter Nine, providing a framework against which the members of Tren
Blanco co-operative share the meaning and value of co-operative organisation
from the viewpoint of their lived experience.

(iii) Co-operatives in Latin America.

Prior to colonisation, Latin America indigenous societies practised various
forms of co-operative organisation, some of which continue to exist to the
present time in countries with higher indigenous populations, notably
Guatemala, Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru.41 Further co-operative experiments,
stemming from previously existing indigenous co-operative or communal living

39
Mugambwa.
40
Anecdotal evidence provided by Ernesto Paret.
41
For further details, see Jorge Coque-Martínez, ‘Las cooperativas en América Latina: visión
histórica general y comentario de algunos países tipo’, CIRIEC-España, Revista de Economía
Pública, Social y Cooperativa, 43 (2002), 145-72 (p. 150).

48
systems, were established by external agents. As in the case of the indigenous
organisations, many of these systems are still operational to the present day.42
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Jesuit priests formed living
systems based on principles of co-operation with members of the indigenous
communities. These reducciones, as they were called, were opposed by elite
sectors on the basis of their perceived revolutionary quality.43 In 1773, the
reducciones were proscribed by Papal Order, resulting in the massacre of entire
indigenous communities and the incarceration of thousands of priests.44

In general terms, Jorge Coque-Martínez identifies the predominant influences on

nineteenth-century Latin American co-operative organisation in chronological
order as: Rochdale style co-operation brought by European immigrants, credit,
consumer and undertaker co-operatives informed by syndicalist and mutualist
thought, again brought to the country by immigrants and finally, more
autochthonous socially oriented co-operatives promoted by intellectual and
political leaders.

The European conquest brought co-operative organisation to the region and in

both Mexico and Venezuela, formal savings and credit co-operative ventures,
which predated the 1844 British Rochdale experience, had been established. 45
By 1875, co-operative organisations based on the Rochdale principles had been
established in Uruguay by members of Montevideo’s Eurocentric bourgeoisie;
these were closely succeeded by comparable ventures in Argentina.46

From the early twentieth century, the efforts of European immigrants saw the
development of agricultural co-operatives in Honduras, Mexico, Argentina,
Brazil and Uruguay. However, in other parts of the region, their development
did not commence until the 1930s, with most notable growth occurring during

42
Coque-Martínez, p. 151.
43
Coque-Martínez, p. 151.
44
Coque-Martínez, p. 151.
45
Alberto Mora, ‘Visión histórica del movimiento cooperativa en América Latina’, in El
cooperativismo en América Latina. Una diversidad de contribuciones al desarrollo sostenible,
ed. by Rodrigo Mogrovejo, Alberto Mora and Philippe Vanhuynegem (La Paz, Bolivia: OIT,
2012), pp. 29-85 (p. 45) <http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---americas/---ro-
lima/documents/publication/wcms_188087.pdf > [accessed 13 January 2013]
46
Esteban Magnani, El cambio silencioso: Empresas y fábricas recuperadas por sus
trabajadores en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros, 2003), p. 31.

49
World War II until the 1960s.47 At this point, in a bid to strengthen USA-Latin
American relations and prevent potential ventures into communism, the USA
introduced the Alliance for Progress Programme. Funding from the programme
was predominantly used to create various forms of rural co-operative projects.
However, this generated little success. Concurrent with the US-sponsored co-
operatives, other ventures in co-operative organisation developed. These,
promoted by the Catholic Church and union organisations, proved more
enduring than their US-promoted counterparts.48 Involvement of regulatory
bodies, such as the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the ICA, has
also provided positive reinforcement to the development of Latin American co-
operative organisation.

It is reasonable to assume that co-operative ventures will evolve and diversify to

reflect the specific context in which they are created. The supremely
heterogeneous panorama of Latin America’s cultural, historical and socio-
political development has led to suggestions that the Latin American co-
operative movement is more diverse than that of its European counterpart. 49
As noted by Coque-Martínez:

…puede decirse que el cooperativismo latinoamericano ha resultado

en general más diverso que el europeo, fruto de sus diversos orígenes
y contextos’. Adding, ‘Además, ha primado la línea exógena,
excluyendo en la mayoría de los casos a los pueblos autóctonos En
esto, el cooperativismo no ha sido diferente a otras realidades de
América Latina.50

On the diverse nature of Latin American co-operative organisation, Javier

Salamis noted the following:
cada arquetipo de cooperativismo responde en gran parte al modelo
ideológico que lo ha orientado … también las necesidades e intereses
de los estratos socioeconómicos con que se ha vinculado, el tipo de

47
Coque-Martínez, p. 152.
48
Coque-Martínez, p. 152.
49
Javier Alejandro Salminis, ‘El cooperativismo agropecuario en la República Argentina: Notas
sobre su origen y evolución’, in Jornadas de Historia Económica, Asociación de Historia
Económica (Córdoba, Argentina: Universidad Nacional de Río Cuarto, 21-24 September 2010)
<http://www.aahe.fahce.unlp.edu.ar/jornadas-de-historia-economica/xxii-jornadas-de-historia-
economica-rio-cuarto-2010/ponencias/salminis.pdf/view>[accessed 15 September 2013]
50
Coque-Martínez, p. 152.

50
 actividad que ha desarrollado o la estrategia a que ha obedecido, le
han aportado al cooperativismo de cada país un sello característico.51

Alberto Mora categorises co-operative development in Latin America according

to four distinct fundamental sources of influence: European immigration which
promoted Rochdale-style consumer co-operatives and mutual societies, which
came to predominate in the Southern Cone countries. The Catholic Church
provided the main impulse behind co-operative development in Mexico, Central
America and the Andean area. National Government was particularly influential
in the development of worker co-operatives in Chile, the Dominican Republic,
Costa Rica, Colombia, El Salvador and Nicaragua. Finally, union organisations,
which viewed co-operative organisation as a means of improving the conditions
for workers and their families, were the predominant source of influence on co-
operative development in Chile and Uruguay.52 To the above, and with specific
reference to agricultural co-operation, Antonio García adds state influence, with
specific reference to Uruguay.53 State influence also applies in the case of
Argentina at various junctures, but specifically during Perón’s first mandates.

Dante Cracogna, on the other hand, categorises Latin American co-operative

organisation on the basis of four distinct politico-cultural principles:
(i) Indigenous co-operation, with its roots in pre-Columbian culture and most
pronounced in the Andean area and Mexico.

(ii) Revolutionary co-operation, which is based on class struggle and aimed at

social revolution and which is particularly opposed to Rochdale style co-
operation on the basis of its ‘bourgeois’ reformist nature.

(iii) Anti-statist, anarchistic, libertarian co-operation, which endorses free and

voluntary organisation.

(iv) Classic European Rochdale style co-operation, which is predominant in the

Southern Cone and specifically Argentina. This is the most widely practised
type of co-operation in Latin America.54

51
Salminis, p. 3.
52
Alberto Mora, ‘Prólogo’, in Mogrovejo, Mora and Vanhuynegem, pp. 13-5 (p. 13).
53
Antonio García quoted in Salamis, p. 4.
54
Dante Cracogna cited in Salminis, p. 4.

51
Unsurprisingly, given the Eurocentric focus of nineteenth-century-Argentine
positivist ideology and the consequent arrival of waves of European immigrants,
the roots of contemporary Argentine co-operative organisation can be traced to
nineteenth-century Europe, both in terms of the fundamental Rochdale-style
guiding principals adopted and the origins of the actual founding members.55

(iv) Popular responses to the 2001 economic crisis: Fábricas recuperadas and
cartoneros.
There is significant literature available on the social responses generated to
respond to conditions of increasing economic hardship and marginalisation
which took place in the 1990s and turn of the twenty-first century. The
following section presents a review of work on the topics of co-operative
organisation in the recovered workplaces

A key text in the area of contemporary co-operative organisation in recovered

workplaces is Gabriel Fajn’s Fábricas y empresas recuperadas: Protesta social,
autogestión y rupturas en la subjetividad.56 Fajn researches ruptures in the
participants’ subjectivity and construction of new social identities and bonds via
a mixed-method research project, based on surveys and in-depth interviews
conducted in 170 recovered workplaces nationwide. Pablo Heller, an economist,
academic and political activist, presents the phenomenon of fábricas
recuperadas according to his Marxist ideology.57 Although partisan, the account
is useful in that it provides a sympathetic and detailed overview of the various
challenges facing workers involved in workplace recovery. Heller’s focus is to
challenge the acumulación o construcción de poder thesis, popular with the
Latin American left, which has been adopted by supporters of the workers
involved in recovering their workplaces.

Journalist and political activist Esteban Magnani is a further key author on co-
operative organisation in recovered workplaces.58 Magnani’s involvement with

55
Salminis, p. 2.
56
Gabriel Fajn, Fábricas y empresas recuperadas: Protesta social, autogestión y rupturas en la
subjetividad (Buenos Aires: Centro Cultural de la Cooperación: Ediciones del Instituto
Movilizador de Fondos Cooperativos, 2003).
57
Pablo Heller, Fábricas ocupadas Argentina 2000-2004 (Buenos Aires: Rumbos, 2004).
58
Magnani.

52
the recovery process came as a result of working as a translator during the
production of the documentary film La Toma.59 Magnani’s sympathetic position
to the workers’ cause is reflected in his work El Cambio Silencioso, which
provides an overview of the historical, legal, social and economic aspects of the
recovery process in both general and specific terms. Much of the content draws
on information provided in interviews conducted with workers, bosses and
politicians during the filming of La Toma. Significantly, the author states that
the aim of the book is to provide a voice for the subaltern workers, ‘Por eso ese
libro. Por eso la intención de amplificar una voz a la que la mayoría de las
veces los periodistas no acercan sus grabadores ni micrófonos’. 60

A further contribution to the literature on workplace recovery is Julián Rebón,

who, along with a research team, conducted an investigation spanning 17
recovered workplaces in CABA.61 The researchers’ aims are twofold. In the
first place, they seek to identify the fundamental conditions which led to the
growth of the post-2001 workplace recovery. Secondly, they propose an
examination of the validity of responses to the phenomenon which sought to
present the recoveries in terms of a class-based response.62 In the case of the
first question, they identify the reason for the failure of the 1980s workplace
takeover movement, noting the fact that it did not generate reproduction as a
basis for their analysis.63 Their principal conclusions identify two sets of factors
central to the process, which are exogenous factors, in this case the crisis, and
endogenous factors. The recoveries were not spontaneous actions but rather a
result of the interaction between workers and other social actors in the specific
context of deconstruction and reconstruction accompanying the country’s crisis
of socio-economic and political legitimacy.64 The second question is addressed

59
La Toma, dir. by Avi Lewis (Odeon, 2004).
60
Magnani, p. 19.
61
Julián Rebón et al., Desobedeciendo al desempleo: La experiencia de las empresas
recuperadas (Buenos Aires: PICASO: La Rosa Blindada, 2004). The sample comprised 75
percent industrial workplaces, the remaining 25 percent belonging to the service industry. Rebón
et al., p. 51.
62
For these Marxist writers, workers’ struggle in these recoveries equated to the regeneration of
the participants’ class-consciousness. Rebón et al., pp. 107-8.
63
Rebón et al., pp. 29-30.
64
Rebón et al., pp. 30-1

53
by a questionaire aimed at identifying evidence of class consciousness. 65 Rebón
argues that, rather than revealing evidence of a class-based analysis, the survey
shows workers’ opinions to be both heterodox and also firmly based on their
personal project.66

A synopsis of the above broad project was presented in 2006 by Rebón in

conjunction with Ignacio Saavedra.67 In 2015, Rebón revisited the topic in the
form of an article produced in collaboration with José Itzigsohn.68 The article
reflects the focus of previous work in that it focuses on explaining, firstly, the
emergence of the fábricas recuperadas and, secondly, whether the recuperations
actually represent a challenge to capitalism. Their analysis is presented in the
context of further supportive government legislation and the lengthier period of
the workplaces’ operation.69 With reference to the first question, a particularly
novel aspect is that their analysis includes a cultural viewpoint.70 Responding to
the second question, the authors note that the practice challenges, ‘the basic
organisation of property and the idea that labour is a commodity to be disposed
of at will’.71 However, they conclude that although property relations are
challenged, this challenge does not extend to the capitalist system as such.72

A recent contributor to the debate on Argentina’s fábricas recuperadas is Alice

Rose Bryer.73 Published in 2010, Bryer’s research combines approaches of
anthropology and critical political economy of accounting to address the
question of whether it is possible for workers to run socially responsible
enterprises or if such businesses are, in fact, doomed to failure from

65
Specific questions relate to the workers’ perceptions of the causes of unemployment and their
feelings of belonging and working-class solidarity. Rebón et al., pp. 107-39.
66
Rebón et al., p. 123.
67
Julián Rebón and Ignacio Saavedra, Empresas Recuperadas: La autogestión de los trabajadores
(Buenos Aires: Capital Intelectual, 2006).
68
José Itzigsohn and Julián Rebón, ‘The Recuperation of Enterprises: Defending Workers’
Lifeworld, Creating New Tools of Contention’, Latin American Research Review, 50: 4 (2015),
178-96.
69
The authors refer to bankruptcy legislation introduced by Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in
2009, Itzigsohn and Rebón, p. 193.
70
The authors recognise the cultural dimension and highlight the relationship between wage
labour and dignity in the historical construction of Argentine working-class identity. Itzigsohn
and Rebón, 180-1.
71
Itzigsohn and Rebón, p. 178.
72
Itzigsohn and Rebón, p. 179.
73
Alice Rose Bryer, ‘Beyond Bureaucracies? The Struggle for Social Responsibility in the
Argentine Workers’ Cooperatives’, Critique of Anthropology, 30: 1 (2010), 41-61 (p. 41).

54
bureaucratisation and self-exploitation under the dominant contemporary socio-
economic system.74 Her response to the above question is affirmative. Bryer
identifies links between the everyday politics of profitability, wider processes of
state formation and workers’ social understandings from empirical study
focused on workers’ responses to accounting practices in the IMPA and Bauen
Hotel recovered workplaces. She differentiates between the two workplaces,
identifying the use of accounting in the IMPA workplace as a restrictive,
‘bureaucratic tool of moral and political leadership’, which she contrasts to
practice in the Bauen Hotel, where accounts were democratised to promote
social responsibility based on worker self-empowerment.75

In further work, Bryer considers the transformative capacity of the fábricas

recuperadas.76 In the context of the stated person-centred aims of the social
economy, Bryer poses the question, ‘Can worker cooperatives enable self-
realisation, or are they simply doomed to reproduce the limits of the existing
socio-economic and political conditions?’77 Bryer again presents comparative
case studies of a printing press and a city-centre hotel, contrasting the
management practices in each workplace, most notably their accounting
procedures and relationship with the concept of profit maximisation. In her final
analysis, she reiterates the point made in her earlier work by answering her
question in the affirmative and noting the potential of the co-operatives to
‘protagonise an emergent process of institutional and cultural change’.78

A further contributor to the body of literature on Argentina’s fábricas

recuperadas is academic and activist, Marcelo Vieta. In 2010, Vieta presented a
consideration of worker self-management in the context of unfavourable
economic conditions.79 After identifying the historical conjuncture at which
Argentina’s recovered workplaces emerged, Vieta moved to a discussion of

74
Bryer, ‘Beyond Bureaucracies?’, p. 41.
75
Bryer, ‘Beyond Bureaucracies?’, p. 41.
76
Alice Rose Bryer, ‘The Politics of the Social Economy: A Case Study of the Argentinean
Empresas Recuperadas’, Dialectical Anthropology, 36: 1 (2012), 21-49.
77
Bryer, ‘The Politics’, p. 22.
78
Bryer, ‘The Politics’, p. 46.
79
Marcelo Vieta, ‘The Social Innovations of Autogestión in Argentina’s Worker-Recuperated
Enterprises: Cooperatively Reorganising Productive Life in Hard Times’, Labor Studies Journal,
35: 3 (2010), 295-321.

55
most common microeconomic and organizational challenges faced by the newly
recovered workplaces, identifying specific innovations devised to respond to
these challenges. Vieta highlights the social and economic transformations that
these innovations suggest and posits the possibility of their reproduction in the
international context.80

2012 saw Vieta, Manuel Larrabure and Daniel Schugurensky present a

comparative case study of Argentina’s recovered workplaces, empresas
recuperadas, and Venezuela’s unidades de producción social established under
President Hugo Chávez.81 The authors identify points of coincidence and
difference between the Argentine and Venezuelan co-operatives in terms of the
origins and relationship with the state, the wider economy and management
structures. Nevertheless, whilst recognising their relatively short-term operation,
the authors make a tentatively optimistic comment on their socially
transformative potential.

Later work published by Vieta considered the subject of workers’ self-

determination in the recovered workplaces in the context of the stream of radical
economic thought underpinning the subject of worker self-management,
autogestión. 82 This focused on workers’ emancipation from the exploitative
form of wage labour under capitalism. Having conducted an in-depth
consideration of trends in the development of the stream, Vieta identifies three
central characteristics of contemporary self-management debate: the
effectiveness and viability of forms of social production to provide needs and
also social wealth, economic justice by means of democratic organization of the
productive bodies and social ownership of the means of production.83 However,

80
Vieta, ‘The Social Innovations,’ pp. 307-15.
81
Marcelo Vieta, Manuel Larrabure and Daniel Schugurensky, ‘Social Businesses in Twenty-
First Century Latin America: The Cases of Argentina and Venezuela’, in Businesses with a
Difference: Balancing the Social and the Economic, ed. by Jack Quarter, Laurie Mook and
Sherida Ryan (Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press, 2012), pp. 131-59.
82
Marcelo Vieta, ‘The Stream of Self-Determination and Autogestión: Prefiguring Alternative
Economic Realities’, Ephemera, 14: 4 (2014), 781-809. Vieta identifies the stream of economic
thought as beginning with nineteenth-century classical social anarchism through twentieth- and
twenty-first-century notions of an alternative economic reality. Vieta, ‘The Stream’, pp. 781-2.
83
Vieta, ‘The Stream’, p. 797.

56
Vieta points out that, in the case of the Argentine experience of self-
management, the workplaces began from below as a result of need rather than
from the influence of an enlightened vanguard and, as he notes:

Not as a new totality - a new and detailed socio-economic model,

ready-made to replace the old one - but, rather, as a set of future-
oriented possibilities, experiments, or preliminary sketches that suggest
alternative economic, productive, cultural, and social practices in the
present and for tomorrow. 84

In later work, Vieta combines the theoretical perspectives of class-struggle

analysis and workplace and social action learning theory with an ethnographic,
qualitative approach to reveal the transformative learning potential which is
afforded by the process of struggle during workplace recovery.85 Considering
the informal inter-co-operative and intra-co-operative learning dynamics, Vieta
identifies the role of the recovered workplaces in the development of not only
workers, but also organizations and the local community. Finally, Vieta revisits
the subject of the transformative capacity of Argentina’s recovered workplaces
as a contribution to a wider internationally based study of the social solidarity
economy.86 Vieta again highlights the transformative power of these
organisations, noting the positive changes they create in worker subjectivity,
workplace management structures, community wellbeing and local
development.87

Alejandro Pizzi and Ignasi Brunet Icart consider the subject of contemporary
workplace recovery from the perspective of the relationship between collective

84
Vieta, ‘The Stream’, p. 800-3.
85
Marcelo Vieta, ‘Learning in Struggle: Argentina’s New Worker Co-Operatives as
Transformative Learning Organisations’, Relations Industrielles, 69: 1 (2014), 186-218. The
four co-operatives in the study are: the emblematic print shop Artes Gráficas Chilavert and
Unión Solidaria de Trabajadores (UST) waste recycling, construction, and parks maintenance
co-operative both located in Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires (CABA) and Comercio y
Justicia newspaper and Salud Junín clinic, both of which are located in Córdoba city.
86
Marcelo Vieta, ‘Saving More Than Jobs: Transforming Workers’ Businesses and
Communities through Argentina’s Worker-Recuperated Enterprises’, in Social and Solidarity
Economy: Towards Inclusive and Sustainable Development, ed. by Roberto Di Meglio, Martin
Gasser and Valentina Verze, 4th edn (Turin, Italy: ILO, 2014), pp. 5-34.
87
Vieta, ‘Saving’, pp. 26-8.

57
action and self-management.88 Pizzi and Brunet Icart posit a positive correlation
between heightened collective activity and the success of their workplace based
on the findings from their own empirical research. The authors studied several
aspects of the recovery process: workers’ political development, formation of a
group identity, relationship with the state and inter-worker communication,
noting the positive correlation between heightened social mobilisation and
successful workplace performance.

Irena Petrovic and Slobodan Cvejic have recently published a paper in which
they provide an up-to-date review of political, economic and social aspects of
the workplace recovery phenomenon.89 The authors highlight their careful
attention to the subject of legal and institutional preconditions surrounding the
phenomenon, stressing the significance of these factors in encouraging, limiting
and determining the scope of the new worker co-operatives.

Finally, Zack Fields explores the Argentine experience of workplace recovery to

demonstrate the limits of classical economic theory, which upholds, ‘only a
particular set of self-centred, social-Darwinian incentives can produce efficient
workers and firms’.90 From his fieldwork in 11 recovered workplaces, Fields
makes the case that horizontal employee-controlled management can generate
workplace efficiency equal to that of traditional hierarchical employer-control.91
This, he asserts, undermines the rationale underpinning unequal ownership of
the means of production and wage distribution and supports the case for
reorganisation of systems of production that achieve more equitable wealth
distribution without concomitant productivity loses.92

88
Alejandro Pizzi and Ignasi Brunet Icart, ‘Autogestión obrera y movilización social: El caso de
las empresas recuperadas argentinas en la Ciudad de Buenos Aires y Provincia de Buenos
Aires’, Latin American Research Review, 49: 1 (2014), 39-61.
89
Irena Petrovic and Slobodan Cvejic, ‘Social and Political Embeddedness of Argentina’s
Worker-Recuperated Enterprises: A Brief History and Current Trends’, Euricse Working Papers,
80: 15 (2015).
90
Zack Fields, ‘Efficiency and Equity, ‘The Empresas Recuperadas of Argentina’, Latin
American Perspectives, 35: 6 (2008), 83-92 (p. 84).
91
Fields, p. 84.
92
Fields, p. 84.

58
In the pre-crisis era, work on the topic of waste collection tended to focus on the
aspects of historical trajectory and organisational aspects of the actual waste
disposal process, largely omitting the human element.93 However, the huge
increase in the visibility of families of cartoneros at work on Buenos Aires
city’s streets at the turn of the 21st century sparked interest among the academic
community. Early writers on the cartoneros are Pablo Schamber and Francisco
Suárez, who produced a detailed consideration of the historical trajectory of
informal waste workers until mid-2001.94 Media offerings tended to be emotive,
a characteristic which increased in tandem with the progression of the economic
crisis. This media coverage generated two detailed studies.95 The focus of
studies by NGOs and human rights groups lay in the improvement of the
cartoneros’ living conditions. In 2005, the United Nations International
Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) published a study focusing on the
welfare of cartoneros’ children.96

Rather than presenting an in-depth analysis of the press coverage, I will consider
two key scholarly articles on the topic of media presentation of the cartonero
phenomenon by Sofía Andrada and by Manuel Tufró and Luis M. Sanjurjo.97

93
Ángel Óscar Prignano, Crónica de la basura porteña: Del fogón indígena al cinturón ecológico,
(Buenos Aires: Junta de Estudios Históricos de San José de Flores, 1998); Francisco Martín Suárez,
Qué las recojan y las arrojen fuera de la ciudad. Historia de la gestión de los residuos sólidos (las
basuras) en Buenos Aires (San Miguel, GBA: Instituto de Conurbano, Universidad Nacional de
General Sarmiento, 1998) <http://www.ungs.edu.ar/cm/uploaded_files/publicaciones/163_dt08.pdf>
[accessed 13 November 2012]
94
Pablo J. Schamber and Francisco M. Suárez, ‘Actores sociales y cirujeo y gestión de residuos:
Una mirada sobre el circuito informal del reciclaje en el conurbano bonaerense’, Revista
Realidad Económica, 190: 16 (2002), 1-11. The authors noted the fluidity of the circumstances
surrounding the waste gathering process, pointing out that since they began writing, ‘muchos
aspectos de la realidad que se intenta reflejar han cambiado sustancialmente’, Schamber and
Suárez, ‘Actores sociales’, p. 10. For this reason, in 2012 they presented an updated report of the
subject of the cartoneros in CABA, covering the period 2002-2012, noting, ‘En muy poco
tiempo, el fenómeno cartonero transitó un sendero en el que de ser ignorado e invisible, mutó
como algo a corregirse (combatirse, reprimirse), hasta finalmente volverse un aspecto
insoslayable cuando de políticas públicas referidas a la gestión de los residuos sólidos urbanos
se trata.’ Pablo J. Schamber and Francisco M. Suárez, ‘Logros y desafíos a diez años del
reconocimiento de los cartoneros en la CABA (2002-2012)’, Realidad Económica, 271 (2012),
103-32 (p. 104).
95
Sofía Andrada, ‘Los medios de comunicación y el fenómeno cartonero. Análisis de la
cobertura de los medios antes, durante y después del lanzamiento de la campaña de separación
de residuos’ (unpublished master’s dissertation, Belgrano University, Buenos Aires, 2005);
Manuel Tufró and Luis M. Sanjurjo, ‘Cuerpos precarios: La construcción discursiva de los
cartoneros, entre la invasión del espacio público y la gestión biopolítica’, Questión UNLP, 1: 28
(2010) <http://perio.unlp.edu.ar/ojs/index.php/question/issue/view/42> [accessed 16 June 2012]
96
Gutiérrez-Ageitos et al.
97
Andrada; Tufró and Sanjurjo.

59
Following Andrada, initial reporting of the topic in the Buenos Aires’
newspapers, La Nación and Clarín, tended to focus on the inadequate
government response to cartonero activity.98 Andrada’s study notes the
predictable reflection of the political bias of the above newspapers and the daily
Página/12 in reporting the topic. Despite noting a common trend towards a
‘sympathetic’ treatment of the cartonero issue by each of the dailies, coverage
by the more conservative, La Nación, indicated less tolerance towards the
practice of the individual workers in the specific areas of public hygiene and the
unregulated nature of their work.99 Clarín adopted a more nuanced stance,
tending to present a more human interest focus on the ‘problem’. The more left-
oriented Página/12 is identified as having adopting a firm stance in support of
the cartoneros and initiatives launched to help them, whilst publishing acerbic
criticism of projects identified as contrary to their interests.

Tufró and Sanjurjo’s work considers the presentation of the cartoneros in the
Clarín and La Nación newspapers. The authors posit that the newspapers
present the cartoneros presence in Buenos Aires city in terms of intrusion and
‘otherness’ as a means of instigating a government response or intervention.
They then move to a consideration of the government response to the cartonero
‘problem’, which, they note takes the form of a disciplinary inclusion, which
they claim can be interpreted as a form of Foucaultian biopolitical action.100

98
As such, she identifies the media campaign as having played a significant role in both the
introduction of Buenos Aires government programmes aimed at domestic and private waste
separation at source and also the passing of Ley 992 in January 2003. Andrada, pp. 69-70. Ley 992,
which introduced measures to regulate and formalise cartonero activity, is discussed in Chapter
Seven. Andrada, pp. 69-70.
99
One explicit example is Franco Ruiz, ‘Las calles de la ciudad, cubiertas de residuos’, La Nación, 7
April 2008 <http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1002000-las-calles-de-la-ciudad-cubiertas-de-residuos>
[accessed 10 May 2012]
100
Biopolitics is a theory of social control extended by Michel Foucault to explain the exercise
of power in the contemporary context. Foucault identified the concept of power under classical,
eighteenth-century liberalism as being based on what he termed the ‘right to death’ or ‘droit de
mort’ that is, a power-form wielded on the basis of punishment taking the form of subtraction.
On the ‘right to death’ form of power, see Michel Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité Vol I (Paris,
France: Tel Gallimard, 1976), pp. 177-8. Foucault contrasts this model of dominance and power
with what he terms ‘power over life’ or ‘pouvoir sur la vie’. For ‘power over life’, see Foucault,
Histoire, pp. 179- 83. Foucault asserts that in contemporary Western society the overtly
punitative ‘right-to-death’ style of government has been largely replaced by the ‘power-over-
life’ style of exercising power and control. This power operates at both the individual level, as
‘discipline’ and the societal level, as ‘biopolitical’ administration, see Foucault, Histoire, p. 179.
Biopolitics can be described as a method of governance which functions on the basis of norms or
normalisation and which is located predominately outside of institutions and is self-regenerating.

60
An early writer on the subject of cartoneo, to which the practice of waste
gathering is generally referred, is aforementioned UBA academic, Fajn.101
Fajn’s study, which considers El Ceibo cartonero co-operative in the Palermo
district in CABA, is based predominantly on data from informal anonymous
interviews conducted with co-operative members and other key figures involved
in the area of waste recovery.102 Fajn identifies the significance of work as
providing the fundamental tools of social integration, which, lost during the
process of economic structural change, he asserts are key elements addressed by
effective co-operative organisation.103 As such, Fajn notes the co-operative
offers members:

la posibilidad de edificar un sendero por el que gradualmente avancen

en la regulación de un trabajo de carácter formal, recreando un
sistema relacional con distintos tipos de instituciones sociales y
restableciendo lazos sociales entre pares, en el marco de un proyecto
de trabajo colectivo.104

Subsequent to Fajn’s pioneering study is work produced in 2003 by journalist

Eduardo Anguita.105 The closure of the Hogar El Armadero facility, a shelter
established to promote social reintegration of vulnerable young people, left
empty premises which were re-opened by former workers for use by cartonero

Foucault, Histoire, pp. 189-90. Biopolitical administration aims to optimise the life of the
specific population. However, this optimisation may take the form of biopolitical power which
seeks to remove the ‘power over life’ for those/or groups of those ‘others’ who threaten the
wellbeing or ‘power over life’ of the larger group. This is expressed as the ‘help to live’ and
‘allow to die’ biopolitical attitude. A good example of this is provided in a lecture presented on
28 January 1976 as part of a series of lectures entitled ‘Il faut défendre la société’. In this lecture
Foucault described Nazist use of popular mythology to present the racial persecution of Jewish
individuals on the basis of ‘the threat they posed’ to the wider Aryan ethnic group. Michel
Foucault, ‘Il faut défendre la société’, Cours au Collège de France (1975-1976), 28 January,
1976, p. 57 <monoskop.org/images/9/99/Foucault_Michel_Il_faut_defendre_la_societe.pdf.>
[accessed 20 February 2017] The concept of biopolitics is usefully applied to questions
surrounding minority groups as in the case of Tufró and Sanjurjo’s article which shows pressure
of opinion which is brought to bear on the legislative body. For an alternate presentation of the
theme of otherness, see Didier Fassin, ‘The Biopolitics of Otherness: Undocumented Foreigners
and Racial Discrimination in Public Debate’, Anthropology Today, 17: 1 (2001), 3-7.
101
Gabriel Fajn, Cooperativa de recuperadores de residuos: Exclusión social y
autoorganización (Buenos Aires: Centro Cultural de la Cooperación, 2002).
102
Fajn, Cooperativa, p. 5.
103
Fajn, Cooperativa, p. 14.
104
Fajn, Cooperativa, p. 40.
105
Eduardo Anguita, Cartoneros: Recuperadores de desdechos y causas perdidas (Buenos
Aires: Grupo Editorial Norma, 2003).

61
organisations. Anguita stresses the work’s clear social intention noting, ‘¡Ojalá
estas páginas colaboren a abrir los poros de los porteños! Para que los
derechos y la dignidad de los más desposeídos, en esta nueva étapa del país,
estén garantizados’.106 The book presents cameos views of four cartoneros, one
of which documents the experience of work in a co-operative organisation.107
These are punctuated by interludes containing historical and contemporary
socio-economic and political background. Written in journalistic narrative rather
than academic style, the content nevertheless reflects a qualitative approach. Of
significance is that the work was reviewed and approved by the subjects
themselves.108 The work’s value is two-fold; first is the contribution it makes in
highlighting the problems facing the cartonero population; secondly, by
affording an insight into the lives of this tiny section of Argentina’s vast
subaltern population, the work’s supreme value is that it records a historical
interlude that would otherwise be bypassed. As cartonero Daniel Palacios notes,
‘Detrás de cada uno de nosotros hay una historia. Somos padres, madres de
familia sin trabajo formal, madres solteras’.109 This work serves to reveal these
hidden stories.

A later study on the topic of cartoneros is Verónica Paiva’s 2008 publication,

which considers the specific subject of cartonero co-operatives.110 Her work,
which has a clearly ecological focus, is based on the author’s 2004 doctoral
thesis and further data from 2007. Paiva identifies two types of co-operative
formed by members of differing social groups, namely, the structural poor and
the impoverished middle-sectors, highlighting divergent aims and objectives of
the co-operatives according to the class-composition of their membership. Later
106
Anguita, p. 11.
107
Anguita’s presentation of co-operative experience is provided from the viewpoint of the
cartonero Carlos. Anguita, pp. 161-226.
108
The fact that I have written in English means it is not possible for any of the members of the Tren
Blanco co-operative to actually endorse my presentation of them, which would clearly add
significant value to the work. However, I believe that each one of the group was satisfied that their
portrayal in this work would be produced accurately and ethically. I base this firstly on the fact that
the members actually allowed me to interview them, spend a considerable amount of their working
time with them and welcomed me to share their more personal non-working time and secondly that
during informal contact a number of the members stated their desire for their story to be recorded
and reported.
109
Anguita, p. 126.
110
Verónica Paiva, Cartoneros y cooperativas de recuperadores. Una mirada sobre la recolección
informal de residuos. Área metropolitana de Buenos Aires 1999-2007 (Buenos Aires: Prometeo
Libros, 2008).

62
work by Paiva explores the subject of waste gathering from the perspective of
‘human environmental theory’, of which a central pillar is social wellbeing.111
From the context of waste recovery legislation introduced between 2008 and
2012, Paiva analyses the legislation and practices of cartoneros in CABA,
identifying the anomaly between the tenets of environmental theory and the
Argentine and broader Latin American contexts. More recent work by Paiva and
Juan Banfi explores the work of cartoneros in the provincial setting of Mar del
Plata beach resort in the south of GBA.112 A key strength of the work is its
qualitative methodology, which allows working cartoneros to describe their
construction of a persona that enables them to successfully carry out their work.

Graciela Leticia Filippi’s doctoral thesis submitted in 2008 also bears

mentioning, as cartoneros constitute one of her survey groups.113 Using a
predominantly quantitative methodology, the study, informed by criteria of the
1987 Meaning of Working (MOW) study, presents a comparative inter-group
analysis of the significance afforded to work, as paid labour.114

A master’s dissertation on the topic of waste management by geographer,

Marie-Noëlle Carré, explores the CABA government’s response to the
incorporation of the cartoneros into the city’s waste management process in the

111
Verónica Paiva, ‘Cartoneros, recolección informal, ambiente y políticas públicas en Buenos
Aires 2001-2012’, Urbe. Revista Brasileira de Gestão Urbana, 5 (2013), 149-58.
The concept of ‘human environment’ was first articulated by the UN in the early 1970s and later
incorporated into the 1990s’ ‘sustainability debate’, which proposes a balance between
economic growth, environmental sustainability and social wellbeing. Paiva, ‘Cartoneros,
recolección informal’, p. 154. For the UN declaration, see United Nations Environment,
‘Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment’
<http://www.unep.org/documents.multilingual/default.asp?documentid=97&articleid=1503>
[accessed 12 February 2017] For more on the topic of sustainable development, see Jennifer A
Elliott, An Introduction to Sustainable Development 4th edn (London, UK: Routledge, 2013). For
an overview of the recent UN goals for sustainable development, see United Nations,
‘Sustainable Development Goals: 17 Goals to Transform Our World’, (2015)
<http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/> [accessed 12
February 2017]
112
Verónica Paiva and Juan Banfi, ‘Cartoneros, espacio público y estrategias de supervivencia.
Mar del Plata, Argentina, 1990-2014’ Sociologias, 18: 41 (2016), 270-90.
113
Filippi. The participants in Filippi’s study included cartoneros, piqueteros, unemployed
workers with and without government head of household workplans, workers from the
recovered workplaces and independent workers.
114
For the original study, see MOW International Research Team, Meaning of Working (Orlando,
FL: Academic Press, 1987).

63
period 2002-2008.115 A focus of the work is the ‘Green Centre’ initiative. Carré
evaluates the extent to which the interrelated social, ecological and economic
targets identified for these centres by the CABA government have been
achieved by the time of her writing.116 Her subsequent doctoral study, presented
in 2013, includes sections on both the historical and the contemporary
cartoneros.117 On the latter, she presents a detailed account of various aspects of
the subject, including activity, organisation and links with other social actors.
However, as in her earlier study, the subject of the cartoneros is subsumed
within the account of the process of waste management in GBA and, in both
works, qualitative content is directed towards the specific subject of waste
management.

Pierre Louis Le Goff’s master’s dissertation explores the appropriation of public

space by the cartonero population in the context of the ‘re-imagineering’ of
Buenos Aires city after 1990.118 The study highlights the continuing conflictual
and contested nature surrounding the meanings, legitimate uses and ownership
of public space in cities. In addition, the study reminds us that the domination
and appropriation of space by different groups allows us to understand wider
processes of social relations and social structures.

The theme of socio-spatial relations as related to waste management is further

explored by Risa Whitson.119 The role of geographies of production and
consumption in understanding socio-spatial relations is acknowledged by
economic and social geographers as a topic of interest. However, in the context
of the recent burgeoning numbers of informal waste collectors, geographies of
115
Marie-Noëlle Carré, ‘Trier et récupérer à Buenos Aires: Des cartoneros aux conteneurs - les
transformations territoriales du service de gestion des ordures ménagères à l’épreuve de la
sélection des déchets recyclables dans la Ville Autonome de Buenos Aires (Argentine)’
(unpublished master’s dissertation, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, 2008)
<http://geoconfluences.ens-lyon.fr/doc/transv/DevDur/popup/CarreMaster2.pdf> [accessed 20
September 2009] See Chapter Seven.
116
The Zero Waste Law was passed in late 2005 by Buenos Aires legislation. Under the law, the city
was to decrease the proportion of solid waste sent to landfill by 30 percent as of 2010, 50 percent as
of 2012, and 75 percent as of 2017. By 2020 there was to be no solid waste sent to landfill.
117
Marie-Noëlle Carré, ‘Gouverner la métropole par les déchets. Service urbain, action publique
territoriale et écologie urbaine à Buenos Aires’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Université de la
Sorbonne nouvelle-Paris III, 2013).
118
Pierre Louis Le Goff, ‘Los cartoneros of Buenos Aires: Waste Scavenging and the Appropriation
of Space in the Neoliberal City’, (unpublished master’s dissertation, Oxford University, 2011).
119
Whitson.

64
waste and waste disposal have become central to the understanding of social
relations and change. For Whitson, geographies of waste and disposal, like those
of production and consumption, are imbued with the potential for either
transforming or reinforcing long-standing inequitable social structures. As such,
she stresses that, in addition to considering waste in managerial or
environmental terms, equal consideration must be afforded to waste as a social
process.

Whitson contends that legislation alone is insufficient to alter the marginalised

social position afforded waste workers in both the figurative and literal sense.
She presents a compelling argument that ostensibly progressive legislative
measures directed towards the cartoneros have failed as tools of social
integration.120 This, she attributes to the fact that legislative measures have not
addressed culturally engrained perceptions of waste and, by extension, waste
workers, as being of ‘zero value’ and ‘belonging elsewhere’. She posits that, to
be effective in reversing the marginalisation of waste workers, the concept of
waste itself must be redefined as a commodity with a place and value.

A further important area of study is the theme of cartoneras in view of their dual
subaltern identity as both women and waste recyclers. In the period 2004-2009,
three studies were conducted, two of which had the specific aim of providing
positive contributions to proposed gender-based decision-making in public policy.
The first study, produced in 2004 by Guillermina Martín and Cecilia Laura Bellistri
using data from the Registro Único de Recuperadores Urbanos, provided policy
suggestions for use by the Secretaría del Medio Ambiente.121 A second study,
conducted in 2009 by María Angélica Ginieis, also identifies the aim of her work as
being to inform public policy on waste collection in order to improve conditions for
female workers.122 A particularly interesting aspect of Ginieis’ gender-based

120
On the topic of waste legislation, see Chapter Seven.
121
Guillermina Martín and Cecilia Laura Belistri, ‘Algunas aproximaciones a la conceptualización
del trabajo de las mujeres cartoneras que trabajan en la Ciudad de Buenos Aires’ (Buenos Aires:
2004)<http://www.buenosaires.gob.ar/areas/med_ambiente/dgpru/archivos/aproximaciones_CABA.
pdf> [accessed 31 May 2013] From 2005, the Department of the Environment, responsible for the
PRU ‘Programa de Recuperadores Urbanos’ established by Ley 992/3, committed to include gender
issues in policy decisions.
122
María Angélica Ginieis, ‘Circuitos invisibles y rincones olvidados: Las cirujas de Pehuajó desde
una perspectiva de género’ (unpublished master’s dissertation, Facultad Latinoamericana de

65
analysis is the setting of the study: a remote Pampean community in GBA.123 In the
third study, Gabriela Vergara-Mattar presents the subject of gender and poverty as a
quantitative comparative study of male and female cartoneros.124 Unlike most
studies, focused on GBA and/or CABA cartonero populations, this work was based
in Córdoba Province. The study considers three specific areas of social and gender-
based divergence in cartonero households: organisation of public activity,
processing activity in the domestic sphere and the contentious issue of recognition
of ‘domestic’ female activity as work. Vergara-Mattar notes that the context of
extreme need, rather than leading to reinterpretations of the female role, tends
towards the reinforcement of established gender-based relationships.

Anthropologist, Mariano Daniel Perelman has produced extensive work on the

subject of cartoneros, which has, in fact, provided valuable secondary source
material for this thesis. A key aspect of interest in Perelman’s earlier research is
that, from 2002 to 2007, he forged links with members of the historical waste
gatherers, cirujas.125 This enabled him to present a timely documentation of an
aspect of historical experience from the perspective of the early ciruja
population, which, bypassed by other contemporary researchers, would
otherwise have gone unrecorded. However, Perelman’s work spans various
themes, most notably access to public space, subjectivity, inclusion and social
acceptance as related to worker identity, a particularly powerful concept in
Argentina.126

Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO), 2009) <http://www.ambiente.gov.ar/?idarticulo=8489> [accessed 29

May 2013]
123
Pehuajó is a department located in Buenos Aires Province, some 360 kilometres southwest of
Buenos Aires city. In addition to the different economic and political context in which their work is
carried out, Ginieis identifies differences between these workers and those working in larger cities,
noting, in particular, physical working parameters, timetables and lack of anonymity. Ginieis, p. 3.
124
Gabriela Vergara-Mattar, ‘Género y pobreza: Una aproximación a las recuperadoras de residuos
de San Francisco (Córdoba,-Argentina)’, Nómadas, 20: 4 (2008), 499-512
<http://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/NOMA/article/view/NOMA0808440499A>
[accessed 18 August 2013]
125
These individuals differ from the contemporary ‘cartoneros’ in that they belong to a family
tradition of waste gathering. See Chapter Six.
126
Perelman, ‘De la vida en la Quema; Perelman, ‘Haber sido y ser; Mariano D. Perelman, ‘El
cirujeo en la ciudad de Buenos Aires: Visibilización estigma y confianza’, Revista de Antropología
Iberoamericana, 5: 1 (2010), 94-125
<http://arq.unne.edu.ar/publicaciones/cuaderno_urbano/cu_7/archivos/pdf/paiva_perelman.pdf>
[accessed 4 June 2012]

66
Perelman’s work is extensive and therefore the following paragraphs present a
synopsis of the main themes considered in the author’s most recent
contributions. These are the historical process of waste collection, the debate on
public space and cartoneo as work. Perelman revisited the theme of waste
collection in GBA, presenting an historical analysis of the development of the
waste collection process as it relates to both the historical and contemporary
waste-gathering populations.127 Reflecting the civilisation-barbarism debate,
Perelman notes the Eurocentric concept of, ‘higienismo... como mito de la
expansión de la civilización’, identifying the negative implications for
individuals involved in waste gathering. Significantly, Perelman highlights the
persistence of this perception in the contemporary context despite efforts by the
government and the contemporary cartonero population to reverse the negative
image associated with the activity.128

The subject of marginal populations and the rights to access public space is
revisited by Perelman in collaboration with Natalia Cosacov as an examination
of two specific social situations involving cartoneros and residents of a middle-
upper-middle class neighbourhood.129 The first situation considers strategies
developed by cartoneros to gain access to and operate successfully as workers
in middle-sector neighbourhoods. The second situation documents the eviction
process of the Morixé cartonero settlement in the Cabillito neighbourhood of
Buenos Aires city. Exploring the limitations of acceptance of cartonero
presence in the neighbourhood’s public space, Perelman demonstrates the
process of reproduction of social inequalities.

On the specific subject of work, Perelman presents cartoneo, often considered

non-work, in the context of, and in relation to, evolving hegemonic discourse.

127
Mariano Daniel Perelman, ‘Caracterizando la recolección informal en Buenos Aires, 2001-
2007’, Latin American Research Review, 47 (2012), 49-69.
128
For the civilisation-barbarism debate, see Chapter Three.
129
Natalia Cosacov and Mariano D. Perelman, ‘Struggles Over the Use of Public Space:
Exploring Morals and Narratives of Inequality. Cartoneros and Vecinos in Buenos Aires’,
Journal of Latin American Studies, 47: 3 (2015), 521-42;
Natalia Cosacov and Mariano Perelman, ‘Modos de apropiación de la ciudad, conflicto y gestión
del espacio urbano. La construcción de fronteras en la ciudad de Buenos Aires’ in La cuestión
urbana interrogada. Transformaciones urbanas, ambientales y políticas públicas en Argentina,
ed. by Mercedes Di Virgilio et al. (Buenos Aires: Editorial Café de las Ciudades, 2011), pp. 291-
322.

67
Perelman notes methods of social interaction and waste-gathering patterns
adopted by ‘informal’ workers to generate tangible material results. However,
he argues that in the specific context of Argentina, historical and contemporary
socio-economic factors have led to a situation in which work appears to have
become fetishised and synonymous with dignity. From this perspective, the
cartoneros’ struggle to establish their activity as work, and themselves as
workers, equates to the desire to supersede feelings of low self-worth and to
achieve a sense of personal dignity.130

A further work on the topic of Buenos Aires cartoneros is a doctoral thesis by

geographer, Katherine Marie Parizeau.131 Informed by the disciplines of health
geography and medical geography, Parizeau explores the subject of various
aspects of health and wellbeing as related to independent cartoneros working in
the CABA.132 The research, conducted between January 2007 and June 2009, is
essentially a qualitative study, informed by a baseline survey of 397 cartoneros.
However, in-depth follow up interviews were also completed and the Clarín and
La Nación newspapers consulted. Significantly, Parizeau emphasises the social
justice orientation of her work and its purpose as a tool for social change.133

Parizeau has produced further work, based on the results of her empirical
doctoral research and additional data collected in 2011.134 ‘Re-presenting the
City: Waste and Public Space in Buenos Aires, Argentina in the Late 2000s’,

130
Mariano Daniel Perelman, ‘Formas sociales de estabilización en actividades informales.
Cirujas y vendedores ambulantes en la ciudad de Buenos Aires’, Revista Lavboratorio, 25
(2013), 37- 55; Mariano Perelman, ‘Contesting Unemployment. The Case of the Cirujas in
Buenos Aires’, in Anthropologies of Unemployment: New Perspectives on Work and Its
Absence, ed. by Jong Bum Kwon and Carrie M. Lane (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
2016), pp. 97-117 (pp. 112-3).
131
Katherine Marie Parizeau, ‘Urban Dirty Work: Labour Strategies, Environmental Health, and
Coping Among Informal Recyclers in Buenos Aires, Argentina’ (unpublished doctoral thesis,
University of Toronto, 2011).
132
The individuals taking part in the research were not members of any co-operative or group
organisations.
133
Parizeau, ‘Urban Dirty Work’, p. 119.
134
Kate Parizeau, ‘Re-presenting the City: Waste and Public Space in Buenos Aires, Argentina
in the Late 2000s’, Environment and Planning, 47 (2015), 284-99; Kate Parizeau,
‘Formalization Beckons: a Baseline of Informal Recycling Work in Buenos Aires, 2007-2011’,
Environment & Urbanization, 25: 2 (2013), 501-21; Kate Parizeau, ‘Urban Political Ecologies
of Informal Recyclers' Health in Buenos Aires’, Argentina Health and Place, 33 (2015), 67-74;
Kate Parizeau, ‘When Assets are Vulnerabilities: An Assessment of Informal Recyclers’
Livelihood Strategies in Buenos Aires, Argentina, World Development, 67 (2015), 161-73.

68
considers neoliberal governance strategies as they relate to the process of
neoliberal urbanism.135 By focusing on the topic of public space and basing her
argument on the experience of cartoneros working in the CABA during the
regeneration process initiated after 2007 by governor, Mauricio Macri, Parizeau
identifies the neoliberal urbanisation process as a driving force of inequality in
Buenos Aires.136 However, her empirical study also enables her to point out
contradictions to both support the deconstruction of the neoliberal representation
of public space and identify concrete ways in which the process of neoliberal
urbanisation has been effectively challenged and its progression disrupted.

In ‘Formalization Beckons: a Baseline of Informal Recycling Work in Buenos

Aires, 2007-2011’, Parizeau presents an appraisal of the formalisation plans
introduced in CABA. In this work, she traces the development of initiatives
introduced to complement the decriminalisation of informal waste gathering in
2002, to the government’s formalization plan begun in late 2008.137
Significantly, although Parizeau recognises the beneficial effects of the plan for
a number of cartoneros, she also highlights the fact that progress was slow and
positive results were applicable to only a minority of the cartonero
population.138 Parizeau also uses the work as a platform to present a suggestion
for government policy to improve the environmental effectiveness of
cartoneros’ work by introducing initiatives to encourage more comprehensive
collection of waste.

Finally, two further articles by Parizeau consider the subjects of precariousness

and health for cartoneros.139 In the first of these, Parizeau considers the
resilience of cartoneros’ ‘livelihoods’ in the framework of an asset-vulnerability
model.140 The instability of assets for many low-income populations, including

135
Parizeau defines neoliberal urbanism as, ‘a collection of creatively destructive practices that
serve to justify the retrenchment and privatisation of state services, while also refocusing global
economic competitiveness to the city scale’. Parizeau, ‘Re-presenting’, p. 286.
136
Parizeau, ‘Re-presenting’, p. 285.
137
Parizeau, ‘Formalization Beckons’.
138
Parizeau, ‘Formalization Beckons’, pp. 518-19.
139
Parizeau, ‘When Assets’; Parizeau, ‘Urban Political Ecologies’.
140
Parizeau, ‘When Assets’. In essence, the definition of a sustainable ‘livelihood’ is one
comprising the capabilities, assets and activities needed for living and is able to cope and
recover from shocks whilst maintaining or improving on its capabilities and assets and passing
these on to the next generation.

69
cartoneros, she notes, is central to the theorisation and implementation of
measures based on ‘livelihoods’ approaches to poverty alleviation. From
empirical findings, Parizeau notes the fact that cartoneros are regularly required
to ‘trade-off’ their assets with other assets as a ‘livelihood’ strategy.141 Parizeau
highlights the importance of government in understanding these factors at both
the macro- and the local level. She notes that in recent years, interventions have
been implemented at both levels, improving the assets and reducing the
vulnerabilities of low-income Argentines. However, her endorsement of the
asset-vulnerability framework as a tool for informing government policy is
tempered by the caveat that her empirical study indicates that, in order to
address the dynamics of the lives of the urban poor, this approach cannot be
oversimplified and must acknowledge the interrelated nature of precarious assets
and vulnerabilities.142

The second work focuses uniquely on the subject of cartoneros’ health.143

Noting the urban political ecology approach, which demonstrates that
environment can play a significant role in determining health, Parizeau
highlights that, compared to other sectors in GBA, the cartoneros suffer uneven
health geographies.144 Parizeau’s empirical research indicates that cartoneros
are aware of the detrimental health effects of their work, which they relate to
various social, economic and environmental processes. However, the workers
appear to have little alternative other than to continue their work irrespective of
the health implications. Parizeau concludes by stressing the need for the
incorporation of a cartonero voice in the construction of programs and public
policy which have a direct bearing on their lives, work and health.145

Carolina Ana Sternberg, an academic with an interest in local urban politics in

both Latin America and the United States, has completed a doctoral thesis based

141
Parizeau, ‘When Assets’, p. 169. One of many such examples noted in the case study of the
cartoneros is the trade-off of a future based on educational achievement by leaving school
studies and moving into work in order to support the financial needs of the asset of the family
unit. Parizeau, ‘When Assets’, p. 167.
142
Parizeau, ‘When Assets’, pp. 169-70
143
Parizeau, ‘Urban Political Ecologies’.
144
Parizeau, ‘Urban Political Ecologies’, p. 68.
145
Parizeau, ‘Urban Political Ecologies’, p. 73.

70
on neoliberal redevelopment governances in Buenos Aires and Chicago.146 This
study forms the basis of an article on the topic of Argentina’s cartoneros.147
Like Parizeau, Sternberg’s focus is on urban neoliberal governance. However,
Sternberg suggests a very political interpretation, identifying the relationship
between the CABA government and the cartoneros in terms of cynical
exploitation and control.148 Apparently supporting Sternberg’s position is
Nicolás Villanova, whose detailed study chronicles CABA government’s
integration of cartoneo into the formal waste management process in the period
2001-2012.149 Villanova provides evidence of the infinitely superior cost-
effectiveness of cartonero ‘service’ over that of the commercial waste
management companies. However, despite identifying a level of improvement
afforded to a limited number of cartoneros by legislation, formalisation projects
and benefits, notably post-2010, Villanova notes the wide disparity between
their economic status and the actual financial benefits cartonero work affords
the CABA waste management system.150

Recuperadores, residuos y mediaciones. Análisis desde los interiores de la

cotidianeidad, la gestión y la estructuración social, is a recently published
compilation of articles covering the areas of work, subjectivity, public policy
and organisation and gender as related to waste gathering.151 Each article offers
new perspectives on the topic of waste gathering, including eschewing the usual
research setting of CABA to present a provincial, inter-provincial or local-
international perspective and rethinking the classical interpretation of scientific
and technical innovation.

146
Carolina Ana Sternberg, ‘The Dynamics of Contingency: Neoliberal Redevelopment
Governance in Chicago and Buenos Aires’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, 2012).
147
Carolina Ana Sternberg, ‘From “Cartoneros” to “Recolectores Urbanos”. The Changing
Rhetoric and Urban Waste Management Policies in Neoliberal Buenos Aires’, Geoforum, 48
(2013), 187-95.
148
Sternberg, ‘From “Cartoneros”’, p. 188.
149
Nicolás Villanova, ‘Los cartoneros y la estatización de su condición como población sobrante
para el capital por intermedio de las cooperativas. Ciudad de Buenos Aires, 2001-2012’, Trabajo
y Sociedad, 23 (2014), 67-91.
150
Villanova, ‘Los cartoneros’, pp. 83-4.
151
Recuperadores, residuos y mediaciones. Análisis desde los interiores de la cotidianeidad, la
gestión y la estructuración social, ed. by Gabriela Vergara (Buenos Aires: Estudios Sociológicos
Editora, 2015).

71
In 2013, Santiago Bachiller considered the redefinition of the concept of work
for the informal waste workers operating at the Rivadavia open-air municipal
dump in the Patagonian town of Comodoro, based on a detailed investigation of
their work histories.152 Reflecting Perelman’s research, Bachiller identifies
divergent attitudes in the individuals according to the duration of their
involvement in the activity.153 However, the author also notes that respondents
identify informal waste collection as providing those benefits and characteristics
generally associated with formal work, noting, ‘la recolección es definida por
los informantes como sinónimo de trabajo’.154 In more recent work, presented in
this compilation, Bachiller revisits the subject of work in the context of the
IATASA company proposal to construct a processing plant to replace the
Rivadavia tip.155 By considering the waste workers’ speculations on their
possible future, should the project go ahead, Bachiller presents a nuanced
analysis of the varying meanings afforded to the concept of work by this
particular group.

Cecilia Cross contributes to the topic of work, presenting a study focused on

so-called ‘unemployables’ working at government-sponsored waste separating
plants, plantas sociales, located in the Cinturón Ecológico Área Metropolitana
Sociedad del Estado (CEAMSE) Relleno III site in Reconquista, José Léon
Suárez.156 The grounded theory produced contributes to the understanding of
conflicts arising in the implementation of the social programmes, altering
personal perceptions of individuals registered on the programmes and the links
they establish in carrying out various aspects of their work. In fact, the plant
workers’ experience is noted to be positive on various levels. However,
returning to the concept of ‘unemployability’, Cross underlines the fact that the

152
Santiago Bachiller, ‘El laburo va y viene, el basural siempre está ahí: una etnografía sobre las
constantes resignificaciones del trabajo en recolectores informales de residuos’, El Cotidiano,
182, (2013), pp. 51-62.
153
Perelman, ‘De la vida en la Quema; Perelman, ‘Haber sido y ser’; Perelman, ‘El cirujeo en la
ciudad de Buenos Aires’.
154
See ‘The theories of work’ in the current Chapter. Bachiller, ‘El laburo’, p. 61.
155
Santiago Bachiller, ‘Clausura de un basural a cielo abierto e imaginarios sobre el futuro por
parte de los recolectores informales de residuos’, in Vergara, pp. 79-100.
156
Cecilia Cross, ‘Trabajo, rebusque, changa: Experiencias de trabajo alrededor de la basura en
el Área Reconquista’, in Vergara, pp. 101-32. Cross explains the concept of ‘unemployability’
was developed in the field of economic theory to denote individuals whose assumed productive
capacity is too low to enable them to be incorporated into the labour market. Cross, p. 102. The
subject of plantas sociales is discussed in Chapter Seven.

72
relationship between the organisers of the programmes and the workers involved
cannot be defined in terms of a simple trade contract. The study, she notes,
challenges the concept of ‘unemployability’, identifying its use as a tool for
control and as justification for the perpetuation of a system based on inequality:

nos permite señalar el escaso valor heurístico del concepto de

inempleabilidad. Su utilización no nos permite conocer por qué algunos/as
trabajadores/as no se insertan en empleos formales, porque oculta el hecho
de que la informalidad y la precariedad son necesarias para disciplinar a
todos/as los/as trabajadores/as y no un hecho contingente derivado de las
carencias de ciertas personas o grupos. Más aún, al hacer responsables a los
sectores más vulnerados de su propia vulnerabilidad, coadyuva a sostener el
proceso de reproducción de la pobreza y la desigualdad.157

Contributors to the section on subjectivity are Sebastián Carenzo and Hernando

Herrera. Carenzo explores the relation between ‘subjects and objects’ in the
Reciclando Sueños co-operative.158 His work documents the creative process
of the co-operative members in the area of technological innovation in their
workplace. Carenzo notes that his ethnological observations support the view
that their workplace practices of creating tools and classification systems result
from intrinsic human qualities, which he describes as, ‘una biotécnica anclada
en la dotación vital del hombre’.159 He further maintains that these practices
exceed the traditional limited interpretation of tools as survival mechanisms,
providing the basis for imagination, dreams, hopes and feelings of personal
pride.160 The second work on cartonero subjectivity is Herrera’s study, which
adopts a bottom-up approach to the topic approached from the point of view of
day-to-day life experience recounted by individual cartoneros working in Villa
María, Córdoba.161

157
Cross, p. 128.
158
Sebastián Carenzo, ‘Materialidades de la “basura” y praxis creativa: aportes para una
etnografía de tecnologías cartoneras’, in Vergara, pp. 157-74. Previous very interesting work
carried out by Carenzo considered the processes accompanying the construction of mechanical
presses by the co-operative members. This study enabled him to produce a reading which moved
beyond study of objects and disciplinary boundaries and/or traditional economic or political
readings, demonstrating the multiple significances of the manufacturing process including the
transfer of virtual knowledge. Sebastián Carenzo, ‘Lo que (no) cuentan las máquinas: la
experiencia sociotécnica como herramienta económica (y política) en una cooperativa de
"cartoneros" del Gran Buenos Aires’, Antípoda, 18 (2014), 109-35.
159
Carenzo, ‘Materialidades’, p.171.
160
Carenzo, ‘Materialidades’, p.172.
161
Hernando Herrera, ‘La cosmovisión natural relativa de los cirujas y su cotidianidad en Villa
María’, in Vergara, pp. 175-200.

73
Santiago Sorroche and Victoria D’hers and Cinthya Shammah present work on
the organisation and politics of waste management by cartoneros. Sorroche
considers the theme of globalisation of waste gathering links from field work
carried out in a recycling co-operative in the Isidro Casanova district of La
Matanza municipality, GBA.162 The concept of globalisation and increasing
trends for social movements to seek cross-border solutions, globalisation from
below as it is known, is reflected in transnational links developed by the
region’s waste gathering communities.163 Sorroche notes how shared
international know-how and experiences can, and are, adapted to the local
setting and also how local experience is absorbed into the international
setting.164

Again considering organisation and politics in waste management, D’hers and

Shammah present the topic from the perspective of five different Argentine
cities.165 The work seeks to evaluate the practical results of legislation on waste
reduction in the cities and the level of involvement achieved by non-government
bodies such as private firms and informal recyclers. In terms of the latter, the
municipal waste legislation in each of the cities identifies the inclusion of the
cartonero population in the process of waste management as a central aim. The
authors consider the concept of ‘fantasía’ as a basis for considering the true
level of participation enjoyed by the ‘recoverers’ in the cities’ waste

162
Santiago Sorroche, ‘Líderes, residuos y lugares: Reflexiones sobre la gubernamentalidad
global del reciclaje desde la experiencia de una cooperativa de cartoneros de La Matanza’, in
Vergara, pp. 51-78.
163
The Red Latinoamericana de Recicladores (Red LACRE) was formed in Bogota in 2008 at
the Tercer Congreso Latinoamericano y Primer Congreso Mundial de Ricicladores and has
gained the support of several NGOs, notably, the Avina Foundation. Sorroche, ‘Líderes’, p. 60.
164
To exemplify, Sorroche traces origins of the co-operative’s practice of differentiated
separation, to information shared by Brazilian waste workers at an international waste-gatherers
conference in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The prohibitive cost of implementing the system on the
one hand and the clear evidence of effective results in reduction of waste production on the
other, led the members to reinterpret their work in terms of a social service. This in turn, led
them to solicit a fee from local government for their service. The concept of their work as a
public service, at first viewed with scepticism when expressed in an international waste workers’
forum, eventually came to be incorporated into the list of the Red LACRE’s demands. Sorroche,
‘Líderes’, p. 72.
165
Victoria D'hers y Cinthia Shammah, ‘Políticas y prácticas en torno a la gestión de los RSU.
Un estudio de cinco ciudades de Argentina’, in Vergara, pp. 25-50. The cities included in the
study are Mendoza (Mendoza province), Córdoba (Córdoba province), CABA, Rosario (Santa
Fe province) and Bariloche (Río Negro province).

74
management process.166 Their conclusion is that municipal governments have
inadequate financial and technological resources to support the implementation
of effective long-term projects in liaison with either private companies or
recoverers.167 They note the disappointing results achieved by the co-operatives
introduced under the programs as invaluable tools for fomenting genuine
inclusion and providing more tangible benefits for the recoverers;

En este panorama, la existencia de cooperativas tampoco garantiza la

inclusion real en la cadena de valorización del residuo, viendo la operación
de ciertas fantasias en el nivel de hacerlos visibles ocultando su antagonismo
de fondo: si bien se formaliza la participación de los recuperadores hasta
cierto punto (y en consonancia con las numerosas regulaciones en esta
dirección), esto no se materializa en mejoras generalizadas de las ganancias
de los trabajadores y en sus condiciones laborales.168

Gender-specific perspectives of the subject of cartoneo are provided by Claudia

Marinsalta and the compilation’s editor, Gabriela Vergara. Marinsalta’s work
considers the theme of gender as related to female waste workers in Villa Irupé
and the Spur and Maldonado districts of Bahía Blanca municipality, GBA.169
Marinsalta considers the subject of inter-gender power relationships in the
context of globalisation, Menemist labour reform and Argentina’s economic
crisis, highlighting the connection between increased labour informality and the
feminisation of the workforce.170 Having considered the traditionally patriarchal
system central to Argentine culture, in which the female role is clearly defined
in terms of domesticity, nurture and reproduction, she stresses that inequalities
stemming from this system are perpetuated and intensified in the context of
global mechanisms and conditions of extreme need.171 Vergara’s contribution
considers the subject from the perspective of cartoneras in the specific setting of

166
On the subject of ‘mecanismos fantasmáticos’, Scribano, notes, ‘La eficiencia de los
mecanísmos fantasmáticos se debe en parte, a su capacidad para ocultar antagonismos. Las
fantasías operan ocultando conflictos, haciéndolos visibles sin su antagonismo inherente. Las
fantasías sociales ocultan mostrando. Hacen aceptables conflictos estructurales
invisibilizándolos, desplazando la mirada social hacia otros objetos de la escenificación
fantasmática’, cited in D'hers and Shammah, p. 37.
167
D'hers and Shammah, p. 46.
168
D'hers and Shammah, p. 46.
169
Claudia Marinsalta, ‘Supervivencia, relaciones intergenéricas y trabajo informal en la vida
cotidiana de las cartoneras bahienses frente a la crisis socio-económica de 2001’, in Vergara,
pp. 201-28. Marinsalta notes the municipal government has no provisions for the informal waste
gatherers.
170
Marinsalta, pp. 204-8.
171
Marinsalta, p. 225. For representations of the female role under Perón, see Chapter Three.

75
Córdoba province.172 She explores the tensions arising from the demands of
their dual role as ‘providers and home-makers’ in the contrasting settings of the
open streets and/or landfill sites, and the domestic home setting. For these
marginalised women, insertion into the labour market, she concludes, is not
indicative of a triumphant recasting of gender-based roles or reversal of the
subservient position traditionally afforded to women in the family structure.173

A further researcher with a specific interest children’s work is Maria Eugenia

Rausky.174 Rausky’s interest in child workers prompted her to conduct an
empirical research project with waste gatherers in a marginal community of La
Plata town, GBA.175 In an article published in 2016, Rausky considers the topic
of working in public areas in this highly polemical, emotive and, in fact, illegal
activity, from the perspectives of individual cartoneros and their children.176
Rausky presents a nuanced account of diversity and frequent ambivalence
surrounding the cartoneros’ personal perceptions of the activity, in the context
of frequently hostile public opinion. However, she also identifies the
development of organic regulatory codes as well as concerns surrounding the
issues of personal safety.177

Finally, Débora Gorbán has presented a significant body of work on the specific
subject of cartoneros, specifically those living in La Carcoba and Villa
Independencia, two marginalised shantytowns in José León Suárez. Gorbán’s

172
Gabriela Vergara, ‘Mujeres recuperadoras de residuos entre familias y trabajo: la percepción
de proveer como amas de casa (Córdoba, 2006-2013)’, in Vergara, pp. 229-60.
173
Vergara, in Vergara, p. 240.
174
See María Eugenia Rausky, ‘Acerca de la relación trabajo infantil y asistencia escolar:
Apuntes para su comprensión’, Questión, 1: 17 (2008)
<http://perio.unlp.edu.ar/ojs/index.php/question/article/view/515/434> [accessed 15 February
2017]; María Eugenia Rausky, ‘Trabajo y familia: el aporte de los niños trabajadores a la
reproducción del hogar’, Trabajo y Sociedad, 12 (2009)
<http://www.scielo.org.ar/pdf/tys/n12/n12a05.pdf> [accessed 13 February]; María Eugenia
Rausky, ‘El revés de la infancia: Experiencias en torno al trabajo infantil en sectores pobres
urbanos de la Ciudad de La Plata’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Universidad Nacional de Buenos
Aires, 2010).
175
María Eugenia Rausky, ‘Espacialidad y trabajo: los cartoneros en la ciudad de La Plata’,
Revista Pilquen, 19: 1 (2016), 29-41 (p. 30).
176
La Plata’s waste legislation is not reflective of that of CABA, other GBA municipalities and
various provinces, in that, unlike in these areas which have legalised waste gathering, in La Plata
it remains a prohibited activity. For legislation on the practice of cartoneo, see Chapter Seven.
177
Rausky, ‘Espacialidad’, pp. 37-8.

76
interest in the subject crystalised in a master’s dissertation presented in 2005.178
From qualitative research, Gorbán presents a thorough exploration of the topics
of organisation and the use and meanings of public space in the locations of the
street/workplace, the neighbourhood and the cartonero train.179 Subsequent to
this, Gorban developed her study of the cartoneros in the form of a doctoral
thesis presented in 2009.180

In 2014, Gorbán published the book Las tramas del cartón. Trabajo y familia en
los sectores populares del Gran Buenos Aires.181 Gorbán’s thorough application
of qualitative methodology enables her to present a nuanced, in-depth analysis
of a variety of subjects as they relate to the cartoneros’ experience. To
contextualise her work, Gorbán presents an analysis of the economic and
infrastructural conditions which gave rise to the widespread practice of waste
gathering from the1990s accompanied by an historical overview of the activity
in GBA. She then moves on to provide detailed analyses of cartoneo from the
perspective of female, child and young workers; comparative analyses based on
the testimonies of individual workers revealing their contrasting work methods,
timetables, attitudes to working in the public domain and creation of inter-
personal links and bonds are also presented. The theme of waste itself,
generally considered in negative terms of undesirability and expendability, is
also considered and its significance reversed as Gorbán identifies not only the
practical economic benefits of the ‘waste’ but also its potential for generating
positive intangible benefits related to the ideas of security and planning.

To conclude, as can be seen, the literature on Argentina’s cartoneros spans a

range of disciplines and adopts varied methodological approaches. The
cartonero phenomenon, as it has been denoted, has generated equally varied

178
Débora Gorbán, ‘Formas de organización y espacio. Reflexiones alrededor del caso de los
trabajadores cartoneros de José León Suárez’ (unpublished master’s dissertation, University of
Buenos Aires, 2005).
179
For the cartonero train or ‘Tren Blanco’, see Chapter Six.
180
Débora Gorbán, ‘La construcción social del espacio y la movilización colectiva: Las formas
de organización espacial de los sectores populares en Buenos Aires: Salir a cartonear
desentrañando prácticas y sentidos entre quienes se dedican a la recolección de materiales
recuperables’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, L’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and
Universidad de Buenos Aires, 2009).
181
Débora Gorbán, Las tramas del cartón. Trabajo y familia en los sectores populares del Gran
Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires: Editorial Gorla, 2014).

77
discussion on issues such as the environment, waste management, grassroots
and co-operative organisation, identity construction, subjectivity, public space,
marginalisation, health, international co-operation and even technological
innovation.182 Clearly, this thesis reflects various aspects of the social aims and
content of current research on the cartonero phenomenon. The topic of public
policy is considered, the themes of identity, subjectivity and work are also
explored. Added to this, the thesis considers the participants’ relationship with
the ecological debate and co-operative identity.183 However, it offers a unique
contribution to existing knowledge on the topic in that the noted themes are
combined with an in-depth exploration of the topic of work as an aspect of co-
operative identity. As such, I would claim it as an original complementary
contribution to the body of literature in the area of work and co-operative
organisation.

(vi) Kirchner to Kirchner economic change and social policy.

Néstor Kirchner’s presidency came at a time of regional political change, a

period in which disappointment with neoliberalism had contributed to the
widespread election of ‘protest’ candidates, creating a ‘new left’ often referred
to as the ‘Pink Tide’.184 By 2009, almost two thirds of South- and Central-

182
See especially Carré; Schamber and Suárez, ‘Actores sociales; Cecilia Cross and Ada Freytes-
Frey, ‘The Social and Ecological Dimensions of a Decentralisation Process: Social Movements
Participation in the Sustainable Management of Urban Solid Waste in Buenos Aires’, in
Decentralisation Meets Local Complexity: Local Struggles, State Decentralisation and Access to
Natural Resources in South Asia and Latin America, ed. by Urs Geiser and Stephen Rist (Bern:
Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) North-South, 2009), pp. 58-93;
Reynals; Paiva, Cartoneros y cooperativas.
183
This is particularly the case of work by Fajn, Anguita and Gorbán. Fajn, Cooperativa;
Anguita; Gorbán, ‘Formas de organización’; Gorbán, ‘La construcción’; Gorbán, Las tramas.
However, similarities such as do exist are outweighed by differences. As such, this thesis can be
viewed as complementary to these works rather constituting a replication.
184
The term protest candidate was coined by Manzetti, Luigi Manzetti, ‘Accountability and
Corruption in Argentina During the Kirchners’ Era’, Latin American Research Review, 49: 2
(2014), 173-95 (p. 173). It bears mentioning that the concept of what constitutes ‘left’ in
contemporary Latin America is significantly different from the traditional concept presented in
socialist and notably Marxist frameworks. Levitsky and Roberts identify key political aims of
the contemporary Latin American left as wealth and/or income redistribution, relaxation of
social hierarchies and affording disadvantaged groups a greater say in the political process. In
socio-economic terms, the contemporary left, they note, does not oppose private property or
market policies. However, it does deny unregulated market policy as being able to provide a
solution to social needs. They further note the shift from the uniquely class-based analyses of the
traditional left to include other sources of inequality such as gender and ethnicity. Steven
Levitsky and Kenneth M. Roberts, ‘Latin America’s Left Turn: A Framework for Analysis’, in

78
American countries were under some form of leftist government.185 See Figure
2. 1. Furthermore, even in most other countries which were not ruled by left-
wing governments, a strong cohort of leftist opposition existed.186
Figure 2. 1.

Source: Levitsky and Roberts, p. 2.

This broad move towards the left has, in itself, generated several works which
seek to present a comparative approach by locating the governments of Néstor
Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner within these leftist trends of Latin
American government. There is a general consensus that the Kirchner
governments are included in this leftward shift in regional politics.187 However,
analyses differ significantly as to how to categorise them.

Publishing in 2006, Jorge G. Castañeda favours a view of Latin America’s ‘new

left’ as divided into two types. The first is a ‘modern, open-minded, reformist

The Resurgence of the Latin American Left, ed. by, Steven Levitsky and Kenneth M. Roberts
(Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2011), pp. 1-30 (p. 4).
185
Levitsky and Roberts, p. 1.
186
Levitsky and Roberts, pp.1-2.
187
See, for example, Marcelo Leiras, ‘Latin America's Electoral Turn: Left, Right, and Wrong’,
Constellations, 14: 3 (2007), 398-408 (p. 398); Mathew R. Cleary, ‘A "Left Turn" in Latin
America? Explaining the Left’s Resurgence’, Journal of Democracy, 17: 4 (2006), 35-49.

79
and internationalist’ left and another, which, ‘born of the great tradition of Latin
American populism is nationalist, strident and close-minded’.188 He categorises
Néstor Kirchner’s administration, along with that of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez,
Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Mexico’s Manuel López Obrador as belonging to the
second group of rhetoric-driven politically irresponsible leaders.189 Steven
Levitsky and Kenneth M. Roberts on the other hand, whilst noting the
heterogeneous composition and individual characteristics of the leftist
governments, apply a classification system which places the Kirchner
administrations in an intermediate position. These authors locate Kirchnerist
Argentina between the poles of countries which retained the predominantly
orthodox macro-economic policy and the liberal democratic constitutions of
their predecessors and the state-led, redistributive project of Venezuelan
President Hugo Chávez.190

Perhaps the most useful and broadly accepted proposal by which to identify a
framework common to these new-leftist governments is that of the concept of
post-neoliberalism. Unlike neoliberal theory, in which the state is distinct from
civil society, post-neoliberal theory presents the relationship between state and
civil society as inclusive or incorporative. Furthermore, as Grugel and
Riggirozzi explain, post-neoliberalism is more than simply the ‘return of the
state’ in terms of the economy, ‘it is also a call for a new kind of politics, rooted
in and responsive to local traditions and communities, and an attempt to forge a
new pact between society and the state’.191

The above contextualises the Kirchner mandates in the broader literature on the
Latin American paradigm shift away from neoliberalism to post-neoliberalism.
However, as Christopher Wylde notes, the term post-neoliberalism could be
criticised for failing to be ‘sufficiently sensitive to national-level idiosyncrasies’,
and as such, it is appropriate to move to a consideration of work produced on the

188
Jorge G. Castañeda, ‘Latin America's Left Turn’, Foreign Affairs, 85: 3 (2006), 28-43 (p. 29).
189
Castañeda, p. 38.
190
Levitsky and Roberts, p. 3.
191
Jean Grugel and Pía Riggirozzi, ‘Post-neoliberalism in Latin America: Rebuilding and
Reclaiming the State after Crisis’, Development and Change, 43 (2012), 1-21 (p. 3).

80
specific subject of aspects of Argentine government under the Kirchners.192
Publications on the Kirchner period cover a variety of areas from socio-
economic policy to university education. The following paragraphs present a
brief resumé of work presented on the period.

Wylde is a key author on the subject of the Kirchner administrations and has
presented detailed comparative analyses of Néstor Kirchner’s presidency in
terms of continuity and change. In 2011, Wylde presented the subject of
Kirchner’s brand of Peronism as a comparison to the original Peronist paradigm
implemented by Perón in the 1940s-50s and Menem’s neoliberal project.193 He
identifies points of both commonality and difference between the previous
forms of Peronism as well as aspects which are unique to Kirchner’s policy.
Noting Peronism’s changing nature, Wylde describes Kirchner’s Peronism as
twenty-first-century Peronism.194

A further detailed political and economic analysis by Wylde explores aspects of

continuity and change between Néstor Kirchner’s government and that of Carlos
Menem.195 Wylde identifies the contrasting economic programmes of the two
governments in terms of durability, maintaining that this is a characteristic of
Kirchner’s form of government but not of Menem’s.196 A key contributory
factor to this stability, he argues, is the stable and competitive real exchange
rate, which he links to Argentina’s debt reduction and increased exports. Whilst
recognising the impact of the favourable international circumstances, such as the
rise in the price of primary products and increased international demand, he re-
stresses the positive role played by Kirchner’s specific government policy.
However, Wylde identifies two key areas of continuity between Kirchner’s and
Menem’s policy. These are the persistence of the pre-crisis capital accumulation
model towards production of low value-added goods accompanied by lack of
192
Christopher Wylde, ‘Post-Neoliberal Developmental Regimes in Latin America: Argentina
under Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’, New Political Economy, 21: 3 (2016), 322-41 (p. 332).
193
Christopher Wylde, ‘State, Society and Markets in Argentina: The Political Economy of
Neodesarrolismo under Néstor Kirchner’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 30: 4 (2011),
436-52.
194
Wylde, ‘State, Society’, pp. 449-50. On Peronism’s transformations, see Chapter Three.
195
Christopher Wylde, ‘¿Continuidad o cambio?: Política económica argentina posterior a la
crisis y el gobierno de Néstor Kirchner, 2003-2007’, Iconos, Revista de Ciencias Sociales, 43
(2012), 109-33.
196
Wylde, ‘¿Continuidad o cambio?’, p. 130.

81
inter- and intra-industrial coordination, and the fact that income distribution
continues to flow towards capital rather than the workforce.197

Daniel A. Cieza has also considered the subject of continuity and change
between Menem’s and Kirchner’s politics. Cieza presents a detailed analysis of
neoliberal policies implemented under Carlos Menem. He then proceeds to
contrast this with Néstor Kirchner’s mandate, which he applauds as constituting
a break from US dominance of Argentine national sovereignty. 198 However,
Cieza also notes the limitations and ambiguities inherent within Peronism,
which, he suggests have resulted in Kirchner’s ability to establish stable forms
of political organisation. As such, he notes that rather than having secured a
complete rupture with Menemist-style government, Kirchner, in fact, developed
what he describes as a new form of progressive Caesarism.199

To return to Wylde, commenting on Néstor Kirchner’s mandate, he contests that

current meta-theoretical readings of political economic development provide an
incomplete explanation of Kirchnerist political economy.200 Therefore, he
moves away from models traditionally applied to Latin America, identifying
Developmental Regime theory as an appropriate framework by which to
interpret Néstor Kirchner’s mandate.201 Noting that Developmental Regime
theory is based on three essential elements: socio-economic alliances, political-
economic institutions and a public policy profile, Wylde applies the criteria to
Néstor Kirchner’s mandate.202 He notes that his analysis has enriched the
Developmental Regime approach and re-iterates the relevance of this approach,
highlighting that fact that ‘Kirchnerismo … can only be wholly interpreted

197
Wylde, ‘¿Continuidad o cambio?’, p. 130.
198
Daniel A. Cieza, ‘From Menem to Kirchner: National Autonomy and Social Movements’, in
Empire and Dissent: The United States and Latin America, ed. by Fred Rosen (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 2008), pp. 188-204 (pp. 188-9).
199
Cieza, p. 189.
200
Christopher Wylde, ‘The Developmental State is Dead, Long Live the Developmental
Regime!: Interpreting Néstor Kirchner’s Argentina 2003-2007’, Journal of International
Relations and Development, 17: 2 (2014), 191-219.
201
Wylde notes that this theory is proposed by T. J. Pempel, see T. J. Pempel, ‘The
Developmental Regime in a Changing World Economy’, in The Developmental State, ed. by
Meredith Woo Cumings (Ithaca, NY: Cornel University Press, 1999), pp. 137-81.
202
Wylde, ‘The Developmental State’, pp. 209-15.

82
through such an approach’.203 Later work by Wylde applies the developmental
regime tripod-approach to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s governments.204
Wylde identifies specific weaknesses of the Kirchners’ post-neoliberal project as
excessive reliance on international commodity markets and the relative lack of
institutionalisation of state society-relations, that is to say, the
underdevelopment of the third pillar of the tripod framework.205 By using the
tripartite approach, Wylde is able to identify differences between the various
Kirchner regimes and tensions in the Argentine post-neoliberal model arising in
the context of shifts in international political economy during Fernández de
Kirchner’s mandates.

A further contributor to the subject of the Kirchner governments is María

Victoria Murillo. In addition to an individually written article on the challenges
facing Argentina’s first elected female president, Murillo has presented joint
considerations of the 2007 transfer of the presidency from Néstor Kirchner to
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s re-election
in 2011.206 Levitsky and Murillo consider the transfer of the presidency from
Néstor Kirchner to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner against the background of
the quality of Argentine Democracy. The authors identify Kirchner’s
enhancement of the democratic system.207 Attesting to the robust nature of
Argentina’s democracy in general, they discount the possibility of the Peronist
governments developing into a hegemonic regime.208 Nevertheless, they note the
weakness of many political and economic institutions, which went unaddressed
during Kirchner’s mandate, and the likelihood that this will impact negatively
on the country’s future democratic stability.209

Further work by Murillo and Ernesto Calvo presents an analysis of voting

patterns in the 2011 elections, which, they note, indicate the durability and

203
Wylde, ‘The Developmental State’, p. 215.
204
Wylde, ‘Post-neoliberal developmental’.
205
Wylde, ‘Post-neoliberal developmental’, p. 332.
206
Steven Levitsky and María Victoria Murillo, ‘Argentina from Kirchner to Kirchner’, Journal
of Democracy, 19: 2 (2008), 16-30; Ernesto Calvo and María Victoria Murillo, ‘Argentina: the
Persistence of Peronism’, Journal of Democracy, 23: 2 (2012), 148-61; María Victoria Murillo,
‘Curtains for Argentina’s Kirchner Era’, Current History, 114: 769 (2016), 56-61.
207
Levitsky and Murillo, p. 21.
208
Levitsky and Murillo, p. 24.
209
Levitsky and Murillo, pp. 25-6.

83
flexibility of the Peronist brand.210 The authors highlight the country’s faltering
economic performance and suggest that this will directly influence Fernández de
Kirchner’s popularity and credibility.211 They speculate that this, in turn, will
compromise her ability to appoint a credible successor.212 Finally, Murillo
addresses the uncertain future of Peronist politics in the run-up to the 2015
presidential elections.213 Considering the economic climate, she predicts a move
towards more moderate policy and notes the likelihood that Kirchnerist
government has run its course. Ironically, she comments that a victory to the
opposition may prove more beneficial to the long-term future of the Kirchnerist
model.214

The subject of working conditions under Néstor Kirchner’s 2003-2007

government is presented by Giosa-Zuazúa.215 Given the government’s
commitment to addressing social issues such as unemployment and inequality
under previous governements, Giosa-Zuazúa’s findings are surprising. In fact,
she identifies a very clear discrepancy between the governement’s rhetoric and
the actual situation. She notes that the apparently positive decrease in
unemployment figures is accompanied by continued labour precarity and
exclusion.216

Ana Cecilia Dinerstein, a key author on contemporary Argentine social

movements, presents an interesting consideration of the Kirchner governments’
absorption or neutralisation of popular political protest.217 Dinerstein takes the
December 2001 ¡Qué se Vayan Todos! mobilisations as her starting point; she
identifies the phrase as containing elements of both disagreement (what politics

210
Calvo and Murillo, ‘Argentina: the Persistence’, p. 148.
211
This reference is to issues of perceived incompetent governance and accusations of
corruption appear to have been tolerated under favourable economic progress. Calvo and
Murillo, ‘Argentina: the Persistence’, p. 153.
212
Calvo and Murillo, ‘Argentina: the Persistence’, p. 159.
213
Murillo, p. 56.
214
Murillo, p. 61.
215
Giosa-Zuazúa, ‘La estrategia de la administración Kirchner’; Giosa-Zuazúa,
‘Transformaciones y tendencias’.
216
Giosa-Zuazúa, ‘La estrategia de la administración Kirchner’, p. 23.
217
Ana Cecilia Dinerstein, ‘Disagreement and Hope: The Hidden Transcripts of Political
Recovery in Argentina Post Crisis’, in Levey, Ozarow and Wylde, 115-33.

84
is) and hope (what does not yet exist).218 Dinerstein identifies a process by
which both Kirchner governments defused the energy of the 2001 protest
movements by partial absorption of their demands into state policy, which she
denotes as ‘translation’ and ‘erasure’. However, she concludes that the process
of co-optation and erasure is not ever fully achievable and will necessarily be
contested.219

The subject of political discourse by Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de

Kirchner has generated several interesting studies. María Antonia Muñoz and
Martín Retamozo analyse elements of Néstor Kirchner’s post-2001 discourse to
explain his reconfiguration of national leadership.220 They identify Kirchner’s
co-optation of the historically highly-charged concept of ‘pueblo’, to which he
aligns himself and his government, in contrast to the old-style anti-popular (anti-
pueblo) neoliberal government.221

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s political discourse also constitutes the basis of

several academic studies. Interesting work has been written by María
Alejandra Vitale on the subject of the inaugural addresses made by Fernández
de Kirchner on assumption of the presidencies.222 Vitale contrasts Fernández de
Kirchner’s discursive style with that of her husband Néstor Kirchner by
applying the concept of ‘êthos’. She notes that whilst Néstor Kirchner’s
discourse can be ascribed having a militante ‘êthos’, Fernández de Kirchner’s
discourse can be described as pedagógico-experto.223 In a further comparative
study, Vitale considers the inaugural speeches of Fernández de Kirchner,
Chilean president Michelle Bachelet and former Brazilian president Dilma
Rousseff.224 In this instance, she seeks to identify whether the women’s

218
Dinerstein, ‘Disagreement and Hope’, p. 117.
219
Dinerstein, ‘Disagreement and Hope’, p. 130.
220
María Antonia Muñoz and Martín Retamozo, ‘Hegemonía y discurso en la Argentina
contemporánea. Efectos políticos de los usos de “pueblo” en la retórica de Néstor Kirchner’,
Perfiles Latinoamericanos, 16: 31 (2008), 121-49.
221
Muñoz and Retamozo, pp. 148-9.
222
María Alejandra Vitale, ‘Êthos y legitimación política en los discursos de asunción de la
presidente argentina Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’, Icono 14: 11: 1 (2013), 5-25.
223
On the concept of ‘êthos’, see Vitale, ‘Êthos y legitimación’, pp. 8-11.
224
María Alejandra Vitale, ‘Êthos femenino en los discursos de asunción de las primeras
mujeres presidentes de América del Sur: Michelle Bachelet, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner y
Dilma Rousseff’, Anclajes, 18: 1 (2014), 61-82.

85
discursive style favours a feminine ‘êthos’. Vitale identifies points of
concurrence and difference between the womens’ discourse, however; broadly
speaking, she identifies Fernández de Kirchner’s discursive style as less reliant
on expression of qualities traditionally considered feminine.

Vitale’s study is complemented by a further extensive comparative, gender-

focused analysis of the discourse and self-representation of Fernández de
Kirchner and Bachelet by Jane L. Christie.225 Christie identifies both presidents’
relationship with women-led social movements, which have sensitised the
political context to the issue of gender in their respective countries. She posits
that identification with the “maternal legacy” of these movements enabled the
presidents to circumvent identification with various former national political
strands, including the feminist movement. She further notes that the effect of
this was to limit both governments’ gender-based policy to the specific area of
the female role in the family.226

The subject of the Kirchner governments’ position towards international

companies in Argentina is an interesting topic, notably due to the polarised
stance adopted by other Peronist presidents, Juan Perón and Carlos Menem.227
Key authors in the relatively unstudied area of foreign economic power under
the Kirchners are Alejandro Gaggero, Martín Schorr and Andrés Wainer, who
present the subject in terms of Argentine dependency.228 The authors highlight
aspects of both continuity and change in the pattern of foreign business
involvement in Argentina. Significantly, they note that despite Kirchnerist
policy change, the process of ‘extranjerización’ of the Argentine economy has
persisted and, in fact, foreign companies are increasingly monopolising

225
Jane L. Christie, ‘Negotiating Gendered Discourses: Michelle Bachelet and Cristina
Fernández de Kirchner’(unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Auckland, 2012).
226
Christie, p. 238.
227
See Chapter Three.
228
Alejandro Gaggero, Martín Schorr and Andrés Wainer, Restricción eterna: El poder
económico durante el kirchnerismo (Buenos Aires: Futuro Anterior and Revista Crisis, 2014);
Andrés Wainer and Martín Schorr, ‘Concentración y extranjerización del capital en la Argentina
reciente: ¿Mayor autonomía nacional o incremento de la dependencia?’, Latin American
Research Review, 49: 3 (2014), 103-25. On the dependency paradigms, see Chapter Four.

86
economic power. They further note that domestic firms fail to offer them any
challenge.229

According to these authors, unlike in the neoliberal period, during which new
companies were attracted to the country, the current heightened economic
control by foreign companies is the result of the expansion of established firms
and lack of competitive capacity of domestic firms. Wainer and Schorr note that
these companies, which tend to make little contribution to the country’s
economy either in terms of employment creation or increased national revenue,
have achieved a dual insertion into the country’s economic panorama by
retaining their place in the traditional mining and agro-sectors whilst branching
out into new sectors of the international economy.230 On the contemporary state
of Argentine foreign capital in Argentina, the authors conclude:

Difícilmente se encuentre entre las prioridades de las empresas

transnacionales el modificar sustancialmente el rol de la economía
argentina en el mercado mundial ... Pero tampoco parece existir una
burguesía nacional dispuesta a llevar adelante un proyecto de país
distinto al que surge “naturalmente” de la tradicional división del
trabajo internacional. En este contexto, de no mediar una fuerte
acción estatal que limite y condicione el libre juego del mercado en el
espacio nacional, la economía argentina parece condenada a
mantener o profundizar los aspectos centrales de su carácter
dependiente.231

Laura Roberta Rodríguez considers state relations with the university education
system between the Ley de Educación Superior passed in 1995 and the Kirchner
governments.232 Rodríguez identifies aspects of both continuity and change
between the Kirchners’ policy and that of preceding governments. She
specifically notes aspects of continuity and change between the Kirchners’
policies compared to those in place under neoliberal government, notably in the

229
Gaggero, Schorr and Wainer; Wainer and Schorr, p. 123.
230
Wainer and Schorr, pp. 121-23.
231
Wainer and Schorr, p. 123.
232
Laura Roberta Rodríguez, ‘Veinte años de prácticas de coordinación universitaria. De la Ley
de Educación Superior a las medidas adoptadas por los gobiernos de Néstor Kirchner y Cristina
Fernández (Argentina, 1995-2014). Una propuesta de problematización’, Educar, 52: 2 (2016),
359-77.

87
area of state funding.233 She points out that a significant aspect of divergence
between previous government policy and that of the Kirchners is that the current
state adopts a less coercive presence in the system of higher education.
However, she questions whether this reduction of state power is, in fact,
indicative of a move towards a less centralised system university education or a
case of state withdrawal from university education. 234

Enrique Andriotti Romanin considers the relationship between the Kirchner

governments and the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo.235 Using analysis of primary
and secondary source material, Andriotti Romanin traces the process of the
group’s transformation from its position of active opposition to government
after democratic restoration in 1983 to one of support for and eventual
integration into Néstor Kirchner’s government. He identifies two central
motivations behind the Madres’ changed relationship with the government. The
first is instrumental and related to access to resources. The second refers to long-
term political strategy and concerns to the possibility of strengthening and
influencing political response to impunity. However, he further notes the
strength of emotional coincidence of government policy and the ideology of the
Madres in cementing the bond.

Débora Lopreite considers the success of gender policies under the Kirchner
governments in the context of the failure of Menem’s ‘gender mainstreaming’
policy.236 On the Kirchner administrations, Lopreite highlights the fact that,
rather than promoting gender equality per se, Kirchnerist women’s programmes
were closely linked to maternalism, and this social assistance provision
effectively reinforced traditional gender roles for poorer women.237 On the
specific issue of reproductive rights, which, as noted, were closely linked to the
issue of poverty rather than choice, she identifies Cristina Kirchner’s reversal of
more liberal abortion legislation introduced under Duhalde and upheld by

233
Rodríguez notes that state funding increased significantly under the Kirchners, Rodríguez,
p. 367.
234
Rodríguez, p. 377.
235
Enrique Andriotti Romanin, ‘De la resistencia a la integración. Las transformaciones de la
Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo en la “era Kirchner’, Estudios Políticos, 41 (2012), 36-56.
236
Débora Lopreite, ‘Gender Policies in Argentina after Neoliberalism Opportunities and
Obstacles for Women’s Rights’, Latin American Perspectives, 42: 1 (2015), 64-73.
237
Lopreite, p. 69. This reflects the findings of the aforementioned study by Christie.

88
Néstor Kirchner. In sum, Lopreite identifies the limited progress towards the
adoption of a comprehensive gender approach under the Kirchner
governments.238

The subject of executive accountability and corruption during the Kirchners’

mandates is considered by Luigi Manzetti.239 In general terms, Manzetti argues a
positive correlation between the reduction in accountability resulting from
greater concentration of political power in the executive branch and heightened
corruption and misuse of funds. He identifies this pattern as a salient
characteristic of Menem’s presidency. Writing at the time of Cristina Kirchner’s
second presidency, he further observes that, despite the Kirchnerist
governments’ vocal endorsement of strong government regulation, they, in fact,
shared aspects of Menem’s management style. Manzetti notes the deliberate
efforts of both Kirchner governments to, ‘act unilaterally by emasculating the
institutions of horizontal accountability’.240 He presents a catalogue of examples
of circumvention of the law by the Kirchner governments, which, he explains,
are more excessive than those effected under Menem.241 Manzetti explains the
Kirchner administrations ability to avoid accusations of corruption in terms of
patronage. He highlights the favourable economic conditions which enabled the
Kirchner administrations to avoid public outrage by offering financial support to
struggling provincial governments, subsidising public services and extending
welfare programmes.242 Manzetti further notes the effect of perceived corruption
on business investment and the fact that foreign investment has tended to favour
both Chile and Uruguay in preference to Argentina on the basis of perceived
high levels of corruption in the latter.243 Manzetti concludes by emphasising the
positive correlation between government transparency and accountability and
socio-economic stability and laments the fact that, whilst the Chilean, Brazilian
and Uruguayan leaders have recognised this fact and introduced appropriate
regulatory mechanisms, Argentina’s political representatives have not.

238
Lopreite, pp. 72-73
239
Manzetti, ‘Accountability and Corruption’.
240
Manzetti, ‘Accountability and Corruption’, p. 192.
241
Manzetti, ‘Accountability and Corruption’, p. 193.
242
Manzetti, ‘Accountability and Corruption’, p. 193.
243
Manzetti, ‘Accountability and Corruption’, p. 193.

89
Melina Vázquez considers the topic of ‘militant management’, which is the
relationship between employment in public administration and militant
commitment under Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s consecutive
governments.244 Vázquez analyses three specific ministries which adopted
Kirchnerist ideology: the Gran Makro, Juventud de Obras Públicas and the
Corriente de Liberación Nacional. She identifies the fact that boundaries and the
significance of activism and politics are redefined and broadened as features of
practice, discourse and representations linked to activism in public management.

Finally, Alejandro Kaufman presents an interesting, if partial, article on the

factors contributing to the reversal of the poor results achieved by Cristina
Fernández de Kirchner in the 2009 mid-term elections.245 He also puts forward
the case that the former president’s sudden death dispelled the validity of the
myths of Caesarism and totalitarianism woven around Kirchner’s government
style.246 Kaufman identifies the 2010 bicentennial celebrations as achieving a
level of reversal of the government’s declining popularity by instilling a sense of
re-legitimisation into the social narrative of ‘Argentineness’.247 This process, he
asserts, was further promoted by the coincidence of the national census and
sudden death of Néstor Kirchner, which had the effect of pausing condemnation
of Kirchnerist politics prevalent in the media and enabling an opening for an
alternative narrative favourable to the faltering Fernández de Kirchner
government.

244
Melina Vázquez, ‘“Bringing Militancy to Management”: An Approach to the Relationship
between Activism and Government Employment during the Cristina Fernández de Kirchner
Administration in Argentina’, Apuntes, 74 (2014), 67-97.
245
Alejandro Kaufman, ‘What’s in a Name: The Death and Legacy of Néstor Kirchner’, Journal
of Latin American and Caribbean Cultural Studies, 20: 1 (2011), pp. 97-104.
246
Kaufman, p. 102.
247
Kaufman, p. 101.

90
CHAPTER THREE

Riches to rags: Argentina’s twentieth-century decline.

From 1880 to 1930, Argentina ranked amongst the world’s fastest growing
countries.1 By the turn of the twentieth century, Argentina’s GDP surpassed that of
several European countries and almost rivalled that of Canada. Argentina
experienced phenomenal growth from the latter part of the nineteenth to the early
twentieth century. This trend continued until 1970, albeit at a slower rate in world
terms. After 1970, Argentina’s economy began to stagnate and experience periods
of decline. In the contemporary context, Argentina’s wealth registers below, not
only the European economies which it formerly dwarfed, but also certain
contemporary expanding Asian economies.2 Argentina’s 2001 economic collapse
and subsequent external debt default, which took place against a backdrop of social
chaos and distressing scenes of extreme poverty, sparked widespread international
interest in the media and academia. The contrast between Argentina’s elevated early
twentieth-century economic status and late twentieth-century collapse generated
interest in identifying what had gone so badly wrong or, how a country, which had
begun the twentieth century enjoying levels of GDP amongst the highest in the
world, could enter the twenty-first century in so ignominious a fashion.

Argentina’s apparently poor economic performance has been attributed to a variety

of factors; structural aspects, economic policy and contexts of conjuncture have all
been identified as causal elements. Structural analyses have focused on colonial
legacies, the country’s uneven relationship in the international context, problems in
capital formation and inadequate performance by the leaders of the country’s
industrialisation. In contrast, opinion founded on policy and specific historic
conjunctures as the key explanation for Argentina’s low growth rate tend to

1
Andrés López, ‘Multinational; Enterprises in Argentina: From Primary Commodity Exporter to
the New Liberal Era’, in The Impact of Globalization on Argentina and Chile, ed. by Geoffrey
Jones and Andrea Lluch (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing Inc., 2015), pp. 108-34
(p. 109).
2
World Bank figures per capita GDP set Argentina’s 2014 position at 24 in the world ranking.
World Bank Data< http://databank.worldbank.org/data/download/GDP.pdf> [accessed 27
September 2015]

91
highlight aspects of state intervention, albeit as directly opposing views, socio-
political institutions and various circumstantial processes.3 However, it is worth
adding that the question has been raised as to whether the ‘Argentine anomaly’, as
Argentina’s apparently failed economic potential is termed, could in fact be
overstated. The view that Argentina is not exceptional in any real economic sense
has been expressed as two contrasting theories. Pablo Gluzman and Federico
Sturzenegger posit that Argentina is currently not as poor as official statistics
indicate.4 Alternate explanations present Argentine ‘exceptionalism’ in terms of a
temporary, ‘boom-type’ phenomenon, unaccompanied by other factors, such as
human capital, physical capital and access to technology, required for sustained
growth. As such, the early 1990s are to be viewed as, ‘a brief outlier and
Argentina’s post-1945 economy has merely reverted to the level of wealth implied
by its core assets’.5

In the context of this investigation, the concept of the country as a victim of

unfulfilled economic potential is particularly significant. This perception constitutes
a key informing factor of partisan and, more importantly, popular anti-institutional
feeling, which constitutes a central theme of this research and is discussed in detail
in Chapter Four.

The purpose of this chapter is twofold. Firstly, it includes a consideration of

Argentina’s relative economic decline as presented in academic opinion. Secondly,
it seeks to introduce salient aspects of socio-cultural change specific to the
experience of the country’s popular sectors. In order to present both specific cases
identified as causal factors of Argentina’s relative twentieth-century economic
decline and salient aspects of socio-economic change, the chapter has been
structured as a linear chronology of delineated historic timeframes, specifically the

3
Eduardo Míguez, ‘El fracaso argentino: interpretando la evolución económica en el “Corto
Siglo XX”’, Desarrollo Económico, 44: 176 (2005), 483-514 (p. 483).
4
Pablo Gluzman and Federico Sturzenegger, ‘An Estimation of CPI Biases in Argentina 1985-
2005, and its Implications on Real Income Growth and Income Distribution’, Documento de
Trabajo del CEDLAS, 87 (May 2009) <http://hdl.handle.net/10915/3646> [accessed 3
November 2015]
5
Rafael Di Tella, Edward Glaeser and Lucas Llach, ‘Introduction’, in Exceptional Argentina,
Rafael Di Tella, Edward Glaeser and Lucas Llach, p. 2.
<http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/DiTellaetal2013.pdf> [accessed 12 January 2016] This view is
expressed by Lucas Llach in Lucas Llach, ‘Newly Rich not Modern Yet: Argentina before the
Depression’, in Di Tella, Glaeser and Llach, pp. 20-45; Míguez.

92
Golden Age, the conservative restoration or Década Infame, the Peronist years, the
interim governments and Perón’s return to the presidency, the Military Proceso
government and the period of democratic restoration presided over by Raúl
Alfonsín, Carlos Menem, and Fernando de la Rúa, respectively. Given the wealth of
opinion which exists on the topic of Argentine relative decline these sections
constitute a limited resume of prevalent academic views of the socio-economic and
political challenges presented during the period.

The Argentine military.

The repeated intervention by the military in Argentina’s political life has been
identified as a key aspect of the country’s twentieth-century difficulties. Either
direct or indirect military intervention has occurred in Argentina’s political process
at each major economic downturn or political crisis. Significantly, these
interventions by the country’s armed forces were afforded significant civilian
support, either active or tacit. As such, before continuing to the chronological
presentation, it would be appropriate to comment briefly on the role assumed by the
military in national governance during the past century. It is significant to note that
the traditional perception of the Argentine military to their role in the country’s
development was the defence of ‘La Patria’ against enemies and threats.6 The
threats facing ‘La Patria’ and its enemies may alter, but the armed forces’
perception of their fundamental role in national defence has proven abiding.7 To
provide a specific case in point, the 1943 coup would be explained in terms of
military liberation from the perceived threat of a return to conservative liberalism
under Robustino Patrón Costas. As noted by David Rock, ‘Perón and the
nacionalistas saw it (the army) as the very epicentre of the national community,
charged with leading and mobilising society’. 8

6
Brian Loveman, For la Patria: Politics and the Armed Forces in Latin America (Wilmington, DE:
Scholarly Resources, 1999), p. xi.
7
Loveman, p. xi. It is difficult to qualify the term ‘la Patria’ due to its socio-cultural nature and the
‘eternal and ever-changing transformational’ quality linked to the state to which it refers. Loveman,
p. xx. Loveman explains ‘La Patria’ in terms of a fusion of territorial, racial, ethnic, cultural and
political myths whose conservation and defence demand the ultimate loyalty and sacrifice. For more
on the concept of ‘La Patria’, see Loveman, pp. xvii- xx.
8
David Rock, ‘Argentina 1930-1946’ in Argentina since Independence, ed. by Leslie Bethell
(Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 173-242 (p. 227).

93
The military have generally perceived or explained their interventions as temporary
measures, taken for the ‘common good’, to enable the restoration of effective
democratic governance. As such, military intervention has occurred to end
perceived corrupt or ineffective civilian governments, as occurred during the
presidencies of Arturo Frondizi, Arturo Umberto Illía, and indeed Hipólito
Yrigoyen’s second presidency. Military intervention also occurred when
governments appeared unable to contain insurrectionary activity. Such was the case
of the military coups which ousted the defacto military government of Juan Carlos
Onganía and Isabel Perón’s civilian government. Hence General Arturo Rawson’s
comment, ‘When the nation, as a result of bad rulers, is put into a situation where
there are no constitutional solutions [the military] has a duty to fulfil: to put the
nation in order.’9

Equally important is the attitude of the civilian government and population to the
role of the military in maintaining national order. Brian Loveman notes that from
the 1930s to the 1960s, intervention by Argentina’s armed forces was generally
perceived as legitimate, and afforded either tacit or active support from the civilian
population.10 In fact, Federico Finchelstein notes that the infamous military Proceso
government, which ruled Argentine between 1976 and 1983, requested and was also
afforded widespread civilian support.11

Ironically, civilian governments were removed by the military with the support of
democratic civilian political parties of the opposition, albeit concealed:

After 1930…resort to the armed forces as a source of legitimacy [became]

a tacit rule of the political game in Argentina…All will publicly deny this
rule, but in private Argentine politicians cannot ignore that, at one time or
another during this quarter century,…they have all knocked on the doors
of the garrisons.12

9
General Rawson June 1943. Quoted by Loveman, p.120.
10
Loveman, p. 120.
11
Federico Finchelstein, The Ideological Origins of the Dirty War: Fascism, Populism, and
Dictatorship in Twentieth Century Argentina (Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014),
pp. 125-6. Finchelstein notes Videla’s call for civilian support for the reorganisation project.
Finchelstein, p. 127.
12
José Luis de Imaz, quoted in Loveman, p. 120.

94
The relationship between the military and civilian population is summed up by
Loveman as follows:

Military officers sincerely believed that their intervention could substitute

efficiency for pathetic civilian bungling, probity for corruption, patriotism
for opportunism…Yet …[they]… almost always intervened at the urging
or plea of civilians, sometimes on their own, often in alliance, but never
without significant civilian support.13

In the contemporary context, it appears that civilian support for military

intervention is arguably less pronounced as a result of the violence perpetrated
on the population by the Proceso military regime, active from 1973 until the
restoration of democratic government in 1983. However, evidence from the
2010 Latinobarómetro report suggested that although public support for military
solutions had declined, it had not altogether dissipated.14 From the perspective
of the military, it appears that a substantial body of contemporary armed forces
favour revision of their role towards a more professional apolitical focus.
Therefore, it is safe to assume that overt military involvement in contemporary
politics is unlikely.

Argentina’s Golden Age 1880-1930.

James Mahoney identifies Argentina’s Golden Age agro-export prosperity as
firmly rooted in the country’s colonial past.15 For Mahoney, institutions and
actors established in the late eighteenth century provided the foundations for its
later growth and prosperity.16 This said, Ezequiel Gallo asserts that until 1870
Argentina’s socio-economic panorama appeared generally unimpressive.17 The

13
Loveman, p. 120.
14
Latinobarómetro’s 2010 poll indicates that 69 percent of Argentines would not support the
military under any circumstances, 27 percent would be prepared to support a military intervention if
conditions deteriorated sufficiently and a further 5 percent were unsure. Latinobarómetro.org. 2010,
‘Actitudes hacia los gobiernos militares en America Latina’
<http://www.latinobarometro.org/latino/LATContenidos.jsp> [accessed 29 October 2013]
15
James Mahoney, Colonialism and Postcolonial Development: Spanish America in
Comparative Perspective (Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
16
Key factors identified by Mahoney were the country’s politically dominant free-trade
merchants who were unshackled by landed elites, state officials who were not oriented towards
monopolistic regulation and market-responsive landed elites who were not dependent on
subordinate indigenous labour. Mahoney, p. 129.
17
Ezequiel Gallo, ‘Argentina: Society and Politics, 1870-1916’, in The Cambridge History of
Latin America, 12 vols ed. by Leslie Bethell (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
1994-2008) v (1995), pp. 359-91 (p. 359).

95
country had a basic pastoral economy, vast tracts of unutilised land lay beyond
the ‘frontier’, population was sparse, the railway network rudimentary and port
facilities inadequate.18 Added to these factors was a scarcity of capital.19
Argentine cattle and sheep products, which by the end of the century would
become synonymous with excellence, were of poor quality and the country,
which would come to be designated ‘el granero del mundo’, actually imported
wheat and flour.20 However, in 1870, Argentina entered a period of robust
growth which would continue until 1930. The country’s ‘belle époque’ wealth
as a global supplier of agricultural produce can be attributed to several factors.
Firstly, growth of demand for agricultural goods occurred in industrialising
European countries. Secondly, increased capital investment enabled huge
improvements to infrastructure, facilitating extended population settlement and
land use in an agro-export-based economy. Thirdly, increases in labour supply
were created by successful immigration. Finally, export opportunities were
boosted by significant advances in refrigeration methods.

Considerable investment came from private national and international groups.

The Argentine state provided certain capital investment in addition to the loans
secured from European countries, most notably Britain. British groups with
links to international banking proved particularly significant in the railway
sector.21 Between 1880 and the beginning of World War I, Argentina developed
an effective infrastructure of railways, roads, ports, and agricultural machinery,
etc. 22

Manpower shortage was resolved by successful immigration policy and

relatively favourable earnings, which between 1871 and 1914 saw Argentina
attract almost six million immigrants.23 The vast majority of these immigrants
were males of working age of predominantly Spanish and Italian origin.24

18
Gallo, p. 359.
19
Gallo, p. 359.
20
Roberto Cortés Conde, ‘The Growth of the Argentine Economy, c.1870-1914’, in Bethell, The
Cambridge, pp. 325-58 (p. 328).
21
Cortés Conde, ‘The Growth of the Argentine Economy’, p. 341.
22
On the specific subject of the development of ports, see Daniel K. Lewis, The History of
Argentina, 2nd edn (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press, 2015), p. 54.
23
Lewis, The History, p. 53.
24
Cortés Conde, ‘The Growth of the Argentine Economy’, p. 335.

96
Advances in refrigeration techniques had enabled the establishment of the River
Plate Fresh Meat Company in 1882.25 Subsequent developments in refrigeration
and freezing techniques post-1900 transformed Argentina’s meat industry
through transportation of frozen and chilled beef products to Europe,
specifically Britain. Meat and cereal exports in 1912 and 1913 equated to 500
million gold pesos. Therefore, Argentina entered the twentieth century as one of
the richest countries on Earth. In 1913, it was richer than France or Germany,
had almost twice the wealth of Spain, and boasted a GDP per capita approaching
that of Canada.26

Between the outbreak of the World War I and the time of the Great Depression,
Argentina continued to prosper, increasing output and maintaining its position as
a leading world agro-exporter.27 However, growth during this period differed
from the linear upward growth of the earlier period, being less even with
instances of depression alternating with others of boom and expansion.
Nevertheless, in the post-war period from 1919 to 1929, the start of the Great
Depression, Argentina’s economy recovered; exports increased, real wages rose
and unemployment declined.

In terms of governance, from 1880, the nominally democratic country had been
governed by the Partido Autonomista Nacional (PAN), ‘an aristocratic “liberal
and conservative” elite, formed of landowners and politicians who also held
leading positions within the armed forces … with the National Army as its
mainstay’.28 Significantly, Jill Hedges notes that the description of the PAN as
liberal referred to the area of economic policy alone, the PAN being in no way
guided by aspirations of social inclusiveness.29 The Saenz Peña Law passed in
1912 extended suffrage to all native and naturalised males over 18, effectively
ending the former monopolistic political tenure. Argentina experienced liberal

25
Gordon Bridger, Britain and the Making of Argentina (Southampton, MA: WIT Press, 2013),
p. 42.
26
Di Tella, Glaeser and Llach, ‘Introduction’, p. 1.
27
David Rock, ‘Argentina from the First World War to the Revolution of 1930’, in Bethell, The
Cambridge, pp. 419-52 (p. 420).
28
Julio Godio, ‘The “Argentine Anomaly”: From Wealth through Collapse to Neo-
Developmentalism’, Internationale Politik und Gesellschaft, 2 (2004), 128-46 (p. 132).
29
Jill Hedges, Argentina: A Modern History (London, UK: I.B. Tauris, 2011), p. 24.

97
representative government between 1916 and September 1930. That is, from the
election of the UCR government under Yrigoyen to the military coup led by
General José Félix Uriburu, which ended Yrigoyen’s second mandate in
September 1930.30 The coup was the first in a pattern of periodic military
intervention and rule, which would characterise the country until 1983.

Given the fact that the perception of Argentina’s failed growth is based on the
country’s ‘Golden Age’ performance, the period has been the subject of
extensive discussion. There are numerous comparative analyses with other
‘corresponding’ settlement lands, notably Australia, which have experienced
greater economic growth over the twentieth century. 31 The foci of analyses
which identify the legacy of the ‘Golden Age’ as having a significant bearing on
country’s apparent failure to develop are abundant and varied. Highlighted
amongst the posited causal factors are: the country’s pre-modern social
structures, inappropriate institutional systems and the ill-adapted ruling class.32
Protracted dominance by the country’s ruling elite of landed ranching/agro-
exporters, the oligarchy, is credited with obstructing potentially innovative
political change. The landed class’s reliance on agro-exports as a source of
personal, and by extension, national income, is viewed as a root cause of the
country’s minimal wider development.33

The foreign trade relationship established during the country’s Golden Age
generated emotive and theoretical responses which would prove significant to
the country’s future political and economic development. An emotive response
took the form of perceptions of imperialist domination. This was absorbed into
nationalist thought, created anti-imperialist and anti-political vendepatrista
sentiment and led to extensive political and economic change. For structuralists,

30
For a brief outline of suggested reasons behind Yrigoyen’s ouster see Terence Roehrig, The
Prosecution of Former Military Leaders in Newly Democratic Nations: The Cases of Argentina,
Greece, and South Korea (London, UK: McFarland, 2002), p. 31.
31
The list of works is exhaustive. However, a series of essays on the subject is presented in
Néstor E. Stancanelli, ed., Under the Southern Cross: Australia-Argentina: a Comparative
Analysis (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 2011). See also, Pablo Gerchunoff and Pablo Fajgelbaum,
¿Por qué Argentina no fue Australia? (Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno Editores Argentina,
2006).
32
Míguez, p. 450.
33
See Míguez, pp. 485-500.

98
adopting the world systems approach, notably Raúl Prebisch in Argentina, the
country’s economic problems of unfavourable terms of trade, between what they
defined as core and peripheral economies, were rooted in the country’s export-
led economy.34 Structuralist theory crystallised as active promotion of import
substitution industrialisation (ISI) policy by the CEPAL or Economic Comission
for Latin America (ECLA) as a deliberate economic policy tool after World War
II.35

1930-1943: Conservative restoration, socio-economic change, the growth of

nationalism and the rise of Peronism.

With the UCR proscribed, a coalition, the Concordancia, led by General Agustín
Justo, was formed. The Concordancia, comprising the anti-Yrygoyenist section
of the UCR, Partido Democrático Nacional (PDN), and the Partido Socialista
Independiente (PSI), effectively returned power to the country’s landed elites.36
Despite the administration’s relatively successful economic performance in the
difficult context of first, the Great Depression and later World War II, the period
came to be dubbed the ‘Década Infame’. The epithet, coined by nationalist
journalist José Luis Torre, was assigned to the period on the basis of the
administration’s apparently extensive practice of electoral fraud, political
opportunism, conspiracy and reactionary socio-economic bias towards elitism
and privilege. As the period progressed, loss of legitimacy of the liberal
‘consensus’ and increasing fragmentation of political parties were accompanied
by significant changes in the form of greater state involvement in the economy
and the development of new social actors and ideological currents.

34
Michael P. Todaro and Stephen C. Smith, Economic Development, 10th edn (Essex, UK:
Addison-Wesley, 2010), p. 598.
35
Werner Baer, ‘Import Substitution and Industrialization in Latin America: Experiences and
Interpretations’, Latin American Research Review, 7: 1 (1972), 95-122 (p. 97).
36
The names of the PND and PSI parties are misleading as the former was not democratic and
the latter not actually socialist. Hedges, p. 47.

99
Rural decline, the balance of payments and divergent visions of national
industrial growth.
The Great Depression (1929-1939) had the effect of halting the flow of foreign
capital.37 The price of agricultural products fell internationally and, despite the
fact that export quantities remained the same, earnings from both the agrarian
sector and society in general decreased; foreign debt repayment and the
budgetary deficit became a serious problem.38 Trade relations with Britain
degenerated as markets were lost. At the same time, attempts to establish
alternative trade markets with the United States were proving largely
disappointing.

Argentina’s massive European immigration had declined; however, the period

witnessed internal migration from the rural to the urban sector. Rural decline has
been explained in terms of both ‘push’ and ‘pull’ effects. The collapse of
international prices for agricultural produce impacted on producers, leading to
significant unemployment, most notably among smaller concerns. Further jobs
were lost as larger concerns introduced more efficient agricultural technology.39
Finally, unprofitability of cereal farming led to the replacement of maize
production with livestock farming. Between 1937 and 1940, whilst 3.5 million
cattle entered the Pampas, half a million rural workers left.40 A further cause of
decline in the rural economy which has been identified was the ‘pull’ factor of
increasing industrialisation and relatively favourable urban wages.41 Rural
migration to the urban centres, which began in the 1920s, had reached even
higher levels by the 1930s.42 Between 1937 and 1943, 70,000 migrants arrived
in Buenos Aires city and the surrounding suburbs, rising to 117,000 between
1943 and 1947, thereby boosting demand for employment in industry.43

37
Luis Alberto Romero, A History of Argentina in the Twentieth Century (University Park, PA:
The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013).
38
Romero, A History, p. 65.
39
Hedges, p. 49.
40
Rock, in Bethell, Argentina since Independence, p. 211.
41
Rock, Argentina, 1516-1987, pp. 237-8.
42
Hedges, p. 53.
43
Rock, ‘Argentina 1930-1946’, in Bethell, The Cambridge, p. 28.

100
From 1933, economic policy led by Federico Pinedo saw Argentina’s economic
planning adopt an alternative route of increased state intervention. The Central
Bank was established, with the primary purpose of regulating cyclical
fluctuations of the money supply and controlling the activity of private banks.44
In addition, 1933 also saw the establishment of National Boards to support
grain, meat, wine and cotton producers in periods of price decline.45 Benefiting
domestic industry, the economy moved towards closed market policy and ISI.46
Assisted by economic closure, shortage of foreign exchange and import tariffs,
base industries, which had experienced some limited growth in the 1920s,
expanded significantly during the 1930s.47 In fact, industrial growth in the
two-year period between 1935 and 1937 almost equalled total industrial growth
from 1914 to 1935.48

Traditional Argentine manufacturing comprised largely primary processed

products and, by the 1930s, primary production had been superseded by growth
in the secondary sector.49 Expansion occurred in the areas of food processing,
clothing, chemicals, rubber, metallurgical products, machine production and
textiles.50 Cotton production in particular increased threefold between 1930 and
1937.51 Most businesses were small-scale low-investment enterprises, although
several large monopolies did exist in areas with an abundant supply of cheap
raw materials.52

The outbreak of World War II created renewed problems for Argentina’s industrial
development as the country’s ability to import and export was again hindered.
Attempting to redress the problem of shortages, trade connections with the United

44
Romero, A History, p. 66.
45
Adriana Puiggrós and Jorge Luis Bernetti, Historia de la educación argentina Tomo 5:
Peronismo: cultura política y educacíon (1945-1955) 3rd edn (Buenos Aires: Editorial Galerna,
2006), p. 18; Romero, A History, p. 67.
46
Romero, A History, p. 67.
47
Romero, A History, p. 67.
48
Alberto Spektorowski, The Origins of Argentina's Revolution of the Right (Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), p. 95.
49
Spektorowski, The Origins, p. 95.
50
Spektorowski, The Origins, p. 95.
51
Natalia Milanesio, Cuando los trabajadores salieron de compras, nuevos consumidores,
publicidad y cambio cultural durante el primer peronismo (Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno
Editores, 2014), p.17.
52
Rock, in Bethell, Argentina since Independence, p. 196.

101
States were courted, only to be ultimately rebuffed as a result of Argentina’s
commitment to neutrality. The ISI drive was intensified, In fact, by the end of the
war, Argentine regional exports had doubled and the number of factories had risen
from 38,456 in 1935 to 86,440 by 1946.53

In November 1940, in response to the decline in agricultural exports, ministers Raúl

Prebisch and Federico Pinedo presented a further economic reactivation plan, which
constituted, ‘the most comprehensive state effort regarding economic planning in
Argentina to that date’.54 The plan, aimed at stimulating industry and preventing
unemployment, ‘went beyond temporary solutions and offered … measures aimed
at fostering industrial growth and increasing exports of industrial goods … trade
agreements with other Latin American countries to create markets for Argentine
products’.55 It also included provisions regarding the nationalisation of the
railways.56 It was, nevertheless, heavily weighted in favour of the agricultural
sector. 57 Defending the plan, Pinedo presented an analogy comparing agricultural
exports to a ‘master wheel’ in the Argentine economy, in which ‘smaller wheels’,
linked to ‘healthy industrial protectionism’, were also crucial components.58 As it
was, the plan was rejected.

An alternative second vision for Argentina’s industrial future was that held by the
Grupo de Oficiales Unidos (GOU) military sect.59 The GOU vision was not limited
to ‘natural’ industries identified by Pinedo’s project. The GOU aimed to achieve
economic autarchy by a process of state regulation. ISI and the oil and steel
industries were to be expanded to focus supply on the internal rather than the export
market. Finally, and importantly, the industrialisation project had a clear social
purpose. In addition to promoting national development, it was aimed at job

53
Milanesio, p. 17.
54
Jorge Nállim, Transformations and Crisis of Liberalism in Argentina, 1930-1955 (Pittsburgh,
PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012), p. 137.
55
Nállim, p. 136.
56
Nállim, p. 136.
57
Hedges, p. 51.
58
Nállim, p. 136.
59
The acronym GOU is generally cited as denoting Grupo de Oficiales Unidos. However,
Peronist historian Fermín Chávez states the correct name of the group as Grupo Obra de
Unificación. Fermín Chávez, ‘Fuentes ideológicas del pensamiento peronista’, Historia del
peronismo <http://historiadelperonismo.com/fuentes-ideologicas-del-pensamiento-peronista/>
[accessed 14 August 2016]

102
creation.60 Despite opposition from Radicals and Socialists, 1940 to 1943 saw
increased state intervention in the industrialisation process.61

Growing trends in Argentine nationalism.

Dramatic changes in the rural-urban panorama were also accompanied by

significant ideological shifts, with the expansion of a new nationalist movement.
Nationalist thought at the turn of the century had centred on shoring up the
liberal vision of development by instilling patriotic sentiments in the second
generation immigrant population.62 However, new nationalism proposed the
antithesis, ‘all the nationalist groups and authors coincided in their celebration
of the death of liberalism’.63 This nationalism was expressed in both cultural and
historical revisionist work. Criollismo in the form of gaucho identity and
caudillo politics, despised as barbaric and irrational by the liberal positivist
Europhile vision, was reversed by both right and left cultural revisionists. In the
revised reading, gauchos and caudillos, both fictitious and factual, were recast
as symbols of authentic Argentine national identity, argentinidad.64 Historical
revisionists, on the other hand, decried Argentina’s longstanding demeaning
submission to Britain, maintained by the country’s liberal oligarchy.65 The first
work in the genre of historic revisionism was Rodolfo and Julio Irazusta’s La
Argentina y el imperialismo británico: los eslabones de una cadena, 1806-
1933.66 The central focus of the 1934 publication was a trade agreement
between Britain and Argentina. The terms of the agreement, signed the previous
year and generally referred to as the Roca-Runciman treaty, had infuriated

60
Milanesio, p. 18.
61
Nállim, p. 136.
62
Mariano Ben Plotkin, Mañana es San Perón: A Cultural History of Perón’s Argentina
(Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2002), p. 7.
63
Plotkin, Mañana, p.7.
64
Michael A. Burdick, For God and Fatherland: Religion and Politics in Argentina (Albany,
NY: State University of New York Press, 1995), p. 17-8. Prominent cultural revisionist authors
include Manuel Gálvez, Ricardo Rojas and Leopoldo Lugones. See Spektorowski, The Origins.
See also Ryan Hallows, ‘Alluvial (Re) inscriptions of the Gaucho in Argentine Literature’
(unpublished doctoral thesis, Indiana University, 2013). See specifically Chapter Two,
‘Defending Autochthony, Cultural Nationalism and the Gaucho’.
65
Michael Goebel, Argentina’s Partisan Past: Nationalism and the Politics of History
(Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, 2011).
66
David Rock, Authoritarian Argentina the Nationalist Movement, its History and its Impact
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995), p. 115.

103
Argentine nationalists. Given the strength of reaction to the agreement, it would
be appropriate to pass a brief general comment on the pact.

The pact, signed in May 1933, constituted a response to the loss of Argentine
markets to Britain’s colonies, resulting from preferential trade policy agreed at
the 1932 Ottawa Imperial Economic Conference. Essentially, the pact
established a guaranteed fixed share in the British meat market and eliminated
tariffs on cereals for Argentina. Britain on the other hand, benefited from
restrictions to trade and currency exchange and guarantees to preserve Britain’s
Argentine commercial interests. The treaty received significant criticism,
having, ‘for many people, …been turned into a symbol of the faults of the
Argentine economy and society’, as Daniel Drosdoff notes, adding, ‘but not
everyone is agreed why’.67 The provisions and terms in which negotiations of
the treaty were conducted were widely interpreted as providing evidence of
wilful subjection of the country by the political class to dependency and even
colonialism. In the wake of the agreement, anti-imperialist sentiment from both
the right and left of the political spectrum ran high.68 Less partisan views on the
value of the pact also proved divided. As Rory Miller notes, the pact addressed
several issues, which creates difficulties in isolating and quantifying factors. As
such, the tendency of historians has been to attempt to focus on specific aspects
of the pact, rather than the pact as a whole, thus producing divergent opinions.69
To illustrate, Hedges notes opinion which identified the pact in terms of the
government’s narrow focus in seeking to retain its traditional market and
consequent missed opportunity to broaden Argentina’s export base.70 However,
Peter Alhadeff reconsiders the pact in positive terms, highlighting the role of the
Roca Funding Loan, provided as a direct result of the negotiations surrounding
the pact.71 For Alhadeff, the funding enabled Pinedo to implement his key

67
Daniel Drosdoff cited by Rory Miller. Rory Miller, Britain and Latin America in the Nineteenth
and Twentieth Centuries (London, UK: Longman, 1993), p. 217.
68
Carlos H. Waisman, Reversal of Development in Argentina: Postwar Counterrevolutionary
Policies and their Structural Consequences (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014),
p. 48.
69
Miller, pp. 217-8.
70
Hedges, p. 48.
71
Peter Alhadeff, ‘Dependency, Historiography and Objections to the Roca Pact’, in Latin
America, Economic Imperialism and the State: The Political Economy, ed. by Christopher Abel
and Colin M. Lewis (London, UK: Bloomsbury, 2015), pp. 367-77 (p. 369).

104
policy the Plan de Acción Económica 1933-34, ‘Argentine economic recovery
after 1933 was based upon the price support scheme for agricultural producers
and the funding of the internal debt, both of which were underwritten by the
Roca Funding Loan’.72

I would tentatively suggest that possibly affording a level of vindication to anti-

imperialist opinion, positive analyses of Roca Runciman appear to be presented
in terms of limited choice and the best available option in a difficult situation.
Historians’ guardedly positive appraisals of the pact are reflected in the
defensive response of government official, Raúl Prebisch, Roca’s advisor.
Prebisch argued the closure of the United States markets left economic policy-
makers with little alternative:

Sigo estimando,… que el acuerdo era lo único que podía hacerse para
proteger la exportación argentina del desastre de la gran recesión
mundial. No fue un acuerdo dinámico. Fue un acuerdo de defensa, en
un mundo económico internacional que se contraía.73

However, for nationalists, Roca Runciman existed in terms of a tangible

metaphor of Argentine perennial subjugation to foreign interests.74

The 1930s nationalist movement was divided into two principal divergent
strands: popular nationalism of the Fuerza de Orientación Radical de la Joven
Argentina (FORJA) and the Nacionalistas, who, although right-wing in most
respects, expressed a commitment to progressive reform. Specific aims of the
nacionalista groups, which centred on achieving social justice, included radical
agricultural reform, destruction of the oligarchy, expanded industrialisation and
nationalisation of foreign-owned public services.75 The themes of inequality and
elite decadence, features of popular tango music, were increasingly incorporated

72
Alhadeff, p. 376.
73
Juan Carlos de Pablo, ‘Prebisch, un multifacético y polémico economista’, La Nación, 23
April 2006.
74
See Chapter Four.
75
See, Mariela Rubinzal, ‘El nacionalismo frente a la cuestión social en Argentina (1930-1943).
Discursos representaciones y prácticas de las derechas sobre el mundo del trabajo’(unpublished
doctoral thesis, Universidad Nacional de la Plata, 2013), pp.159-70.

105
into popular culture, whilst works of more incisive social critique increased.76
By the latter stages of the 1930s, nationalism, previously a peripheral ideology,
had reached an increasingly broad social sector, including the military.77

In 1940, President Roberto Ortiz stood down due to ill health and acting power
transferred to conservative rural oligarch, Ramón Castillo.78 Castillo, who
became president in 1942, was removed by a military coup in June 1943. The
coup has been attributed to varied circumstances including Castillo’s rotund
rejection of support for increased industrialisation.79 However, the most
proximate cause of the coup was Castillo’s naming of a fellow conservative,
Tucumán sugar magnate, Robustiano Patrón Costas, as his successor. Endemic
corrupt electoral practice would have assured Patrón Costas’ election and
generated fears in politically liberal circles and nationalist sectors of the military
of a return to nineteenth-century-style oligarchic government.

The coup heralded a key turning point in the country’s social and political
trajectory described by Mariano Ben Plotkin as:

el ciclo de la restauración conservadora abierta en 1930 y

continuada con la democracia fraudulenta establecida a partir
de 1932 se cerraba con este golpe que abriría el camino a una
nueva etapa en el desarrollo político y social del país,
poniendo de manifiesto las consecuencias de profundas
transformaciones sociales que habían venido dándose desde la
década anterior.80

Perón’s presidencies.
At the core of the coalition of liberals and nationalists which orchestrated the
coup was the semi-secret vehemently anti-communist GOU organisation,

76
Matthew B. Karush, ‘Populism, Melodrama and the Market: Mass Cultural Origins of
Peronism’, in The New Cultural History of Peronism: Power and Identity in Mid-Twentieth-
Century Argentina, ed. by Matthew B. Karush and Óscar Chamosa (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2010), pp. 21-52 (pp. 27-8).
77
Rubinzal, p. 165; Plotkin, Mañana, p. 24.
78
Hedges, p. 51.
79
Hedges, p. 51; MacLachlan, p. 92.
80
Mariano Ben Plotkin, El día que se inventó el peronismo: la construcción del 17 de octubre
(Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 2007), p. 9.

106
rumoured to have been founded by Colonel Perón.81 Following the coup,
General Arturo Rawson assumed the presidency, only to be promptly replaced
by the more moderate, General Pedro Pablo Ramírez. However, internal power
struggles and Ramírez’ capitulation to perceived US intransigence are identified
as the cause of his speedy replacement by nationalist General Edelmiro Farrell,
supported by Perón.82 Once in power, the nationalists reiterated neutrality, broke
all discussion with the United States and began seeking reciprocal trade links in
the region. By late 1943, a substantial export trade had been established with
other Latin American countries. A raft of measures was introduced, including
censorship of the press, reintroduction of religious education into schools, trade
union circumscription, energy nationalisation and pro-poor legislation.83

On 28 October 1943, Perón was appointed head of the Departmento Nacional

del Trabajo (DNT), ascending to the post of cabinet minister when the DNT was
replaced as the Secretaría de Trabajo y Bienestar Social. In this post, Perón
made contact with the trade unions, notably providing resolutions to several of
their long-standing demands. Ramírez’ deposition and replacement by General
Farrell afforded Perón a second cabinet post as Minister of War. As minister of
the Secretaría de Trabajo, Perón developed relations with the unions by direct
personal contact, whilst strengthening his standing in the military in his second
post. By September 1945, tensions mounted, leading to anti-Perón
mobilisations, naval support for a return to parliamentary rule, an unsuccessful
coup launched by General Rawson and Perón’s imprisonment. Mass protests by
workers in Buenos Aires and other major cities on 17 October protesting against
Perón’s imprisonment led to his release and return to government.

Perón advanced his candidacy as leader of a political coalition in presidential

elections scheduled for 1946. The coalition comprised the Partido Laborista,

81
Puiggrós and Bernetti, p. 19.
82
Norberto Galasso, Perón: Formación, ascenso y caída: 1893-1955 (Buenos Aires: Colihue,
2005), p. 178.
83
Rock, in Bethel, Argentina since Independence, pp. 226-7. On the specific subject of the
nationalisation of energy and other public services during this period, see Norma Silvana
Lanciotti, ‘From a Guaranteeing State to an Entrepreneurial State; the Relationship between
Argentina’s State and Urban Utility Companies, 1880-1955’, in Jones and Lluch, pp. 182-214
(pp. 199-205).

107
backed by trade unions, members of the UCR, leading members of the FORJA
and conservative nacionalistas. Perón’s platform synthesised concerns which
had developed during the previous ‘decade’, combining themes of economic
independence, political sovereignty and social justice. On these premises, Perón
garnered a broad multi-class support base which included sectors of the rural
poor and indigenous population, the church, industrialists, middle-class business
and blue collar workers, nationalists, progressive, industrialisation-oriented
military officers and the urban working classes.84 Following refreshingly
fraud-free elections, Perón assumed the presidency in February 1946, a position
he would hold until his exile in 1955.

Days after his election, Perón married his partner, actress and radio broadcaster,
María Eva Duarte, affectionately referred by her supporters as Evita. As First
Lady, Evita came to play a key role in the Peronist movement, cementing an
invaluable emotional bond between Perón and the members of the working and
popular classes, who would provide both Perón and Peronism’s most enduring
support.85 As the structural effects of Perón’s economic policy are peripheral to
this study, the following section passes a very brief comment on the subject.
This is followed by a consideration of popular experience under Peronist socio-
economic policy. The section then turns to a chronological synopsis of the
theories of Perónism’s popular roots.

Economic considerations.
In the ‘Informe preliminar acerca de la situación económica’ report presented in
October 1955, ECLA president, Prebisch, posited that Perón’s policy was
misguided to such an extent that imminent economic catastrophe had only been

84
For an aspect of Perón’s indigenous support, see Diana Lenton, ‘The Malón De La Paz of
1946: Indigenous Descamisados at the Dawn of Peronism’, in Karush and Chamosa , pp. 85-
111.

85
Donna J. Guy, Creating Charismatic Bonds in Argentina: Letters to Juan and Eva Perón
(Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2016), p. 2. Evita worked as a point of
contact between Perón and the CGT unions on the one hand and the country’s poor and
marginalised on the other.

108
avoided by the timely intervention of the Revolución Libertadora.86 A major
criticism of Peronism is its creation of a strong unionised labour force capable of
effective mobilisation, which has been accredited with a raft of economic ills,
including inflation.87 A further criticism of Perón’s economic policy is that it
was carried out in favour of politics over economic rationale. Salient examples
include Perón’s initial veto on foreign investment and purchase of foreign-
owned companies to conform to ideals of national sovereignty.88 Perón was also
criticised for neglecting the rural economy during his first presidency. Perón’s
(mis)use of foreign reserves, to fund public spending on social projects, and a
swollen unproductive public sector created to provide employment, generated
further disapproval.89 In fact, in a counterfactual reading, Gisela Cramer posits
that the course of Argentine development may have been significantly different
had Pinedo’s more conservative form of ISI, suggested in his Plan de
Reactivación Económica, been implemented in preference to Perón’s ‘massive
redistribution of income and extremely expansionist fiscal and monetary
policies’.90 Of course, this raises the question of how increasing popular
dissatisfaction, which Perón’s ‘costly’ social policy sought to address, may have
created unrest and consequent disruption to economic policy. Less censorious
analysis of the apparent failure of Perón’s economic policy is identified by Rock
and Colin M. Lewis.91 As Rock notes, ‘…at the time of its formulation his
(Perón’s) program was largely consistent with reputable and impartial forecasts
of the country’s opportunities in the post-war world’.92

86
Milanesio, p. 23; For a synopsis of Pinedo’s assertions and a response, see Pablo Gerchunoff
and Lucas Llach, El ciclo de la ilusión y de desencanto. Un siglo de políticas económicas
argentinas (Buenos Aires: Ariel, 1998), pp. 235-7. For the report, see Raúl Prebisch, ‘Informe
preliminar acerca de la situación económica’, El Trimestre Económico, 23: 98: 1(1955).
87
James P. Brennan and Marcelo Rougier, The Politics of National Capitalism: Peronism and
the Argentine Bourgeisie, 1946-1976 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State Press, 2009), p.
5; Gary W. Wynia, Argentina in the Postwar Era: Politics and Economic Policy Making in a
Divided Society (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1978), p. 80.
88
For purchases of transportation and utilities assets during the Peronist regime, see Appendix
2(a).
89
William C. Smith and Aldo C. Vacs, ‘Argentina’, in The Oxford Companion to Politics of the
World, ed. by Joel Krieger, 2nd edn (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 43-5
(p. 43).
90
Gisela Cramer, ‘Argentine Riddle: The Pinedo Plan of 1940 and the Political Economy of the
Early War Years’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 30: 3 (1998), pp. 519-50 (p. 550).
91
See Rock, Argentina, 1516-1987, p. 266; Colin M. Lewis, Argentina: A Short History
(Oxford, UK: One World, 2002), p. 58.
92
Rock, Argentina, 1516-1987, p. 266.

109
Furthermore, recent research has presented a significantly more positive
appraisal of mid-twentieth-century Peronist economic policy. For example,
Gerchunoff and Llach challenge accounts of negative economic performance
and failure to address issues presented in Prebisch’s ‘Informe Preliminar’. 93

Popular experience under mid-twentieth-century Peronism.

In 1930s Argentina, the state’s role in politics was that of a tool to benefit the
economically dominant sector and, as such, the country’s industrial growth had
not been matched with improved income distribution.94 The content of a series
of surveys, conducted by the DNT, which, it should be noted, did not include
more marginal workers, revealed Argentina’s popular sectors to be suffering
severe material privation.95 Inflation had caused a decline in real wages in urban
zones.96 In fact, over 50 percent of the average worker’s wage was spent on
foodstuffs.97 Furthermore, rapid industrialisation had created housing shortages
in urban areas. In 1937, 60 per cent of workers’ families in Buenos Aires city
were living in single-room accommodation.98 A survey, conducted six years
later by Ballent, revealed the persistence of unsatisfactory living conditions for
both the urban and provincial poor.99 For many, home was in villas miseria or
villas de emergencia, which had been spreading rapidly in both Buenos Aires
city and GBA from the 1930s.100

A central focus of Peronist policy was the reversal of societal inequality and
improvement of life quality for lower-income and marginalised Argentines.
Broadly speaking, Peronist social policy fell somewhat short of its original
targets, in most cases being an expansion of the existent provision rather than

93
Gerchunoff and Llach, pp. 235-7.
94
Plotkin, Mañana, p. 11.
95
Eduardo Elena, Dignifying Argentina: Peronism Citizenship and Mass Consumption
(Pittsburgh, PA: Pittsburgh University Press, 2011), pp. 39-40.
96
Daniel James, Resistance and Integration Peronism and the Argentine Working Class, 1946-
1976, (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 8.
97
Milanesio, p. 185.
98
James, Resistance, p. 8.
99
Juan Carlos Torre and Elisa Pastoriza, ‘La democratización del bienestar’, in Nueva historia
argentina, VIII. Los años peronistas (1943-1955), ed. by Juan Carlos Torre (Buenos Aires: Editorial
Sudamericana, 2002), pp. 257-313 (p. 284).
100
See Chapter Seven.

110
new policy.101 For example, the universal welfare system proposed in Perón’s
1946 five-year plan was not implemented and the needs of Argentina’s most
marginalised and vulnerable were assigned to the auspices of the Fundación Eva
Perón (FEP) charitable organisation, established two years later.102 Nevertheless,
it is undeniable that the combination of Perón’s social and economic policy did
achieve significant success in creating a fairer distribution of wealth and
improving lower-class living standards.

In the area of economic policy, as Natalia Milanesio explains, to become the

modern industrial economy of ‘New Argentina’, pledged by Perón, the country
required new technology and capacity for mass production.103 This in turn,
required a marked increase in widespread domestic consumption, impossible for
Argentine popular sectors in the early 1940s. Relatively high commodity prices
and low levels of wages afforded Argentine workers significantly less
purchasing power than their counterparts in the United States and Britain.104
Popular purchasing power was promoted to increase consumption and to fund
the Peronist model. Wage earners’ incomes increased substantially.105 Peronist
price controls on rents, energy, public services and basic food items also
benefited the popular sector in general.106 By 1947, Argentina was hailed as, ‘el
país donde la vida cuesta menos y el obrero gana más’.107 For the first time
ever, members of Argentina’s lower social echelons were able to save some of
their income in Post Office accounts.108 In fact, by 1951, data indicated that
under Perón, Argentine workers had come to have the highest standard of living

101
See Peter Ross, ‘Justicia social: Una evalución de los logros del peronismo clásico’, Anuario
Del IEHS, 8 (1993), 105-24 (p. 109).
102
The FEP addressed the needs of a wide variety of Argentines; its functions included support
for aged workers who were unable to claim a pension, accommodation for single mothers and
orphans, provision of hospitals and treatment centres for children, organisation of holiday
projects and construction of low-cost housing and nurses’ training schools. Torre and Pastoriza,
p. 294.
103
Milanesio, p. 15.
104
The results of a study conducted by the Armour Research Foundation commissioned by the
Corporación para la Promoción del Intercambio in the early 1940s. Milanesio, p. 15.
105
During Perón’s first two presidencies, the share of wages, as a proportion of GDP, rose from
37 percent to 47 percent, whilst real wages increased by 40 percent. Mariano Ben Plotkin, ‘Final
Reflections’, in Karush and Chamosa, pp. 271-85 (p. 273).
106
Ross, p. 112.
107
Milanesio, p. 16.
108
Ross, p. 113.

111
of their class worldwide.109 When Perón left into exile in 1955, real wages were
60 percent above those in 1945, in addition to which, workers wages had risen
to equate to 50 percent of GDP.110

Added to the above, labour legislation was passed to provide greater job stability
and a range of improvements to working conditions were introduced. These
included a statutorily defined length of working day, paid annual holidays,
enforcement of Sunday rest laws, pension schemes, protection against layoffs,
improved working conditions for factory workers, accident compensation,
regulated apprenticeships, controls on female and child labour, and compulsory
and binding conciliation and arbitration procedures.111 Workers also benefited
from subsidised housing and legal services, complimentary accommodation in
designated vacation resorts and annual Christmas bonuses or aguinaldos.112

Added to increased incomes and opportunity to save, further indicators of

general wellbeing, notably access to an adequate diet, education, healthcare and
appropriate housing, also improved under Perón. A salient factor in the trend of
increased consumption was in the area of food and drink. For example, despite
huge rises in production, levels of domestic meat consumption rose to such
levels that exports were affected.113 The problem of excessive domestic demand
became so acute that in 1952, the sale of meat dishes was prohibited in
restaurants on certain days.114

Educational attendance grew, which Torre and Pastoriza attribute to increases in

provision.115 The literacy rate showed clear signs of improvement.116 However,
it was in the area of secondary education that most growth was registered.117
Significantly, this has been attributed to increased enrolment on to technical and
business courses among urban workers’ children, keen to benefit from the

109
Milanesio, pp. 15-6.
110
Torre and Pastoriza, p. 281.
111
Rock, Argentina 1516-1987, p. 262.
112
Rock, Argentina 1516-1987, pp. 275-6.
113
Torre and Pastoriza, p. 282.
114
Torre and Pastoriza, p. 282.
115
Torre and Pastoriza, pp. 295-7.
116
Torre and Pastoriza, p. 298.
117
Torre and Pastoriza, p. 298.

112
increased opportunities created by the new Peronist government’s provision. See
Figure 3.1.

Figure 3. 1: Enrolment on secondary education programmes 1930-1955.

Source: Torre and Pastoriza, p. 298.

Ross identifies the areas of healthcare and housing as those in which Peronist
policy was most effective.118 Bearing witness to the improvements in general
standards of health was the significant decline in the death rate, accompanied by
increased levels of life expectancy.119 Under Peronism, doctor-patient ratios
were reduced.120 Campaigns against endemic illnesses were particularly
successful, notably malaria, which was virtually eradicated.121 Construction of
new hospitals and facilities enabled healthcare provision to almost double and
the number of available hospital beds to rise by 98.3 percent.122

Construction, as an integral aspect of Perón’s industrial stimulation policy,

complimented government social commitment to housing provision, with the
result that unprecedented improvements were seen in living conditions. Between
1847 and 1955, some 3,000,000 homes were built.123 Alterations to home
ownership law and provision of affordable mortgages saw first-time home
ownership reach new heights under Perón.124 Social housing projects were also
created to serve the needs of numerous poorer citizens. Notable examples of

118
Ross, p. 110.
119
Torre and Pastoriza, p. 293.
120
Torre and Pastoriza, p. 292.
121
Eric D. Carter, Enemy in the Blood: Malaria, Environment and Development in Argentina
(Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 2012), p. 142.
122
Torre and Pastoriza, p. 291.
123
Ross, p. 115.
124
This was the result of purchase or individual construction. Torre and Pastoriza, pp. 285-6.

113
social housing projects were the 5,000 houses of Ciudad Evita and the 1,000
apartment blocks of the Los Pedrales development in Mataderos.125

Finally, a further important aspect of Perón’s government is the stance it

adopted towards female Argentines. The Peronist ideal of the female role, which
was to be a wife and mother, responsible for providing spiritual guidance for
offspring, was undeniably conservative. See Peronist publicity posters in Figures
3. 2 and 3. 3 (page, 115). However, in practical terms, female Argentines gained
significant, unprecedented empowerment under Perón. On 9 September 1947, la
Ley de Sufragio Femenino was passed. This enabled women not only to vote but
also to run for government office, with the result that, in the 1951 national
elections, 34 women, six senators and 23 members of parliament were
elected.126 In 1949, the right to equal pay for equal work was made law,
specifically benefiting the female sector of the Buenos Aires industrial labour
force, which by that year comprised 45 percent women.127

Figure 3. 2.

Source: Anahi Ballent, ‘Las huellas de la política: Vivienda, ciudad, peronismo en Buenos
Aires, 1943-1955’, (Buenos Aires, Universidad Nacional de Quilmes: Prometeo, 2005), p. 21.

125
Torre and Pastoriza, p. 286.
126
Marysa Navarro, ‘Evita’, in Nueva historia argentina, Tomo 8: Los años peronistas (1943-
1955), ed. by Juan Carlos Torre (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 2002), pp. 313-54
(p. 344).
127
Benjamin Keen and Keith Haynes, A History of Latin America, Vol II, Independence to the
Present (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2013), p. 381.

114
Figure 3. 3.

Source: Torre y Pastoriza, p. 305.

Peronism: theories of popular support for Perón: from structuralist analyses to

cultural history.
Socio-economic and political changes introduced during Perón’s first presidency
constituted the crucial turning point in twentieth-century Argentine socio-
economic and political history. Ideological divisions, developed during the
1930s, were deepened and consolidated. Under Perón, the system of social
identification and political and non-political identities were recast, and
polarisation, founded on Peronist and anti-Peronist identities, informed and
superseded other forms of social identification, ‘…the distinction between
Peronism and anti-Peronism permeated into and subordinated other forms of
social identity’.128 Social and cultural behaviours, established during Perón’s
early presidencies continue to inform perceptions of identity and influence
contemporary Argentine politics.

The continued impact of the mid-twentieth-century Peronist experience on

contemporary Argentine politics and identity has inspired the unrelenting
interest of academia. Further promoting continued academic research into early
Peronism are the development of new research paradigms and more practical
factors, such as the relaxation of official restrictions governing research into
Peronism and first-time availability of historical documents. A case in point is
the release of documents to the public by the Argentine Archivo General de la
Nación in the early 1990s. The documents included letters and official responses
written as part of the ‘Perón wants to know’ campaign. The letters, in which the
Argentine public were encouraged to correspond with Perón to offer suggestions

128
Plotkin, ‘Final Reflections’, pp. 271- 85 (p. 272).

115
for public works to be incorporated into the 1952 second government Five-year
plan, were analysed to form the basis for works by Eduardo Elena and Donna
Guy.129 Elena’s work, based on the intimate method of political participation
afforded by the letter-writing campaign, explores the appeal of the programme
and meaning of involvement in the state planning process for participants. Guy,
on the other hand, focuses on the creation of charismatic bonds between Perón
and the Argentine public. Further indicating the potential for academic research
the release of these particular documents has enabled is Hernán Comastri’s
doctoral thesis, which considers suggestions made on the specific topic of
scientific innovation.130 In short, contemporary interpretations of the early
Peronist experience offer a more nuanced, broadly focused view than earlier
work on the subject.

Current work complements earlier work, predominantly focused on state-labour

questions, by considering the broader panorama, including topics such as social
policy and the Peronist regime’s institutions and relationship with civil
society.131 Actors other than the traditional urban working class have assumed
centre stage, including women and provincial inhabitants.132 Nevertheless,
irrespective of shifting paradigms and multiple disciplinary approaches, a
question which continues to excite interest is the subject of the movement’s
popular support. As such, the following section presents a brief chronological
consideration of academic work of the theme of mid-twentieth-century popular
support for Perón and Peronism.

In the initial Peronist period, the subversive effect on the order of the social
structure created by Perón’s movement generated profound disconcertion in more
privileged sectors. Responses from various disciplines sought to understand or

129
See Eduardo Elena, ‘What the People Want: State Planning and Political Participation in
Peronist Argentina,1946-1955’, Journal Of Latin American Studies, 37: 1 (2005), 81-108; Guy.
130
Hernán Comastri, ‘La política científica en el primer peronismo: discursos e imaginarios
sociales (1946-1955)’(unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Buenos Aires, 2015).
131
Eduardo Elena, ‘New Directions in the History of Peronism’, Estudios Interdisciplinarios de
América Latina y el Caribe, (EIAL), 25: 1(2014), 17-39 (p. 22).
132
In the case of Daniel James’ Doña María’s story, both a female viewpoint and non-urban
viewpoint is presented. Daniel James, Doña María’s Story, Life History, Memory and Political
Identity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000).

116
explain the object of their consternation.133 Early ‘modernism’ theories on the
popular origins of Peronism, presented Perón’s support in terms of an aberration
based on manipulation and irrationality.134 Modernist theory, posited by Gino
Germani, Alain Tourraine and Seymour Lipset, maintained that behaviour patterns
of migrants from the interior provinces deviated from those of traditional urban
workers. Rural migrants, they posited, identified with caudillo-style leadership.135
Reflecting the nineteenth-century liberal determination of barbarism, they attributed
support for Perón to their ‘disponibilidad’ or availability, caused by uprooting and
ascriptive traditions of political clientelism and paternalism.136 That is, modernists
portrayed politics in the Europeanised capital city and coastal area as rational,
whilst in the ‘barbarous’ interior, political choice was irrational, subjective and
dominated by personalism. This perception of coastal-interior dichotomy has been
challenged by Adelman, who notes that personalist, clientelist government and
subjective election were not unique characteristics of the politics of the country’s
interior, ‘political activity in Greater Buenos Aires never exemplified the rational
behaviour …modernists impute. Rather… Buenos Aires local and national politics
were fluid, personalist, and dominated by strongmen’.137

Enduring support for Perón and Peronism undermined the pathological, temporal
basis central to modernist theory and by the 1960s it had been largely discounted.
With the spread of Marxism, analyses of Peronism’s popular roots focused on the
response of organised labour and were recast in terms of a rational, instrumental,

133
For examples of a literary approach to the unsettling effect of Peronist phenomenon, see
Cortázar’s ‘Casa tomada’, ‘Ómnibus’ and ‘Las puertas del cielo’, in Julio Cortázar, Bestiario
(Madrid, Spain: Alfaguara, 2014). Historian, radical and anti-Peronist, Felix Luna presents the
theme in terms of his personal experiences in Félix Luna, El 47: crónica de un año decisivo
(Buenos Aires: Editorial Jorge Alvarez, 1969).
134
Plotkin, Mañana, p. x.
135
Silvia Sigal, ‘El peronismo como promesa’, Desarrollo Económico, 48: 190-91 (2008), 269-
87 (p. 270); Jeremy Adelman, ‘Reflections on Argentine Labour and the Rise of Perón’, Bulletin
of Latin American Research, 11 (1992), pp. 243-59 (p. 245).
136
See, for example, Gino Germani, ‘Transformation of the Social and Political Structure’, in Why
Perón Came to Power, ed. by Joseph R. Barager (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), pp. 110-
26; Eldon Kenworthy and Mario R. Dos Santos, ‘Interpretaciones ortodoxas y revisionistas del
apoyo inicial del peronismo’, Desarrollo Económico, 14: 56 (1975), 749-63 (pp. 749-50) For a
challenge to Germani’s modernisation claims, see Walter Little, ‘The Popular Origins of Peronism’,
in Argentina in the Twentieth Century, ed. by David Rock (London, UK: Duckworth, 1975),
pp. 162-78. Little contests the pre-modern origins of the urban workers at the time of Perón’s
presidency.
137
Adelman, p. 245.

117
class-conscious response. As Juan Carlos Torre notes:

Su respuesta positiva a la convocatoria de Perón debe ser

entendida entonces no como tributaria de un fenómeno de anomia
colectiva o de un síndrome clientelista, sino como resultado de un
proceso de deliberación racional que opuso a las desventajas del
orden social y político anterior.138

Exemplifying this viewpoint is the essay, ‘El movimiento obrero en los orígenes
del peronismo’, by Miguel Murmis and Juan Carlos Portantiero presented in
their work, ‘Estudios sobre los orígenes del peronismo’.139 The essay presents a
firm repudiation of dualist or modernisation theory. The authors’ main argument
is that support for Peronism was not the novel phenomenon claimed by dualists,
but rather, the result of combined structural characteristics which occurred
during the 1930s development process. The authors identify the working class as
a homogeneous group, on the basis of a shared experience of exploitation,
characteristics of which included low purchasing power and unmet labour
demands and note their position thus:

Más que destacar la división interna de la clase obrera, toma como

punto de partida su opuesto: la unidad de ésta, como sector social
sometido a un proceso de acumulación capitalista sin distribución de
ingreso, durante el proceso de industrialización bajo control
conservador… durante la década del 30.140

By positing that workers’ support for Perón was based on the potential benefits a
Peronist government would afford their class, the authors provided a class-based
analysis based on the workers’ extremely rational choice.

The promise of material improvements and realisation of these improvements

clearly represented a partial basis of Perón’s initial and continued popular
support. However, significantly, these benefits were accessed predominantly
after Perón’s election. Wage increases were not common in the pre-election

138
Juan Carlos Torre, La vieja guardia sindical y Perón: Sobre los orígenes del peronismo (Buenos
Aires: Editorial Sudamericana: Instituto Torcuato di Tella, 1990), p. 9.
139
Miguel Murmis and Juan Carlos Portantiero, Estudios sobre los orígenes del peronismo, 4th.
edn (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI Editores Argentina, 2004), pp. 113-90.
140
Murmis and Portantiero, p. 132.

118
period. It was not until two years into Perón’s presidency that the link between
the working class and Perónism represented a significantly tangible or material
basis.141 Furthermore, Perón was able to retain popular loyalty, even in periods
when conditions were unfavourable to their interests.142 In short, explanations
based purely on instrumentalism came to be seen as insufficient.

1980s thought favoured more sophisticated nuanced explanations of Perón’s

working-class support.143 These analyses consider the opportunities and
constraints facing workers in the context of 1940s Argentina in which diverse
social forces competed for a political voice. Daniel James offers a ‘bottom up’
viewpoint of the meaning of Peronism for rank-and-file workers.144 Using oral
testimony from members of the popular classes, James created a ‘structure of
feelings’.145 James provides a partial explanation of the emotional attraction of
the early Peronist experience for Argentina’s popular sectors as its ‘heretical’
significance. Peronism provided workers with a discourse that articulated their
concealed feelings of frustration and resentment, that is, ‘Peronist discourse’s
ability to articulate these unformulated experiences was its truly heretical
power’.146

By challenging traditional social hierarchies, and in many ways reversing the

accepted system of social classification, Peronism also promoted feelings of both
empowerment and self-worth in working-class identity.147 Following James, Perón
reversed terms associated with lower-class humiliation and lack of status. Epithets
such as ‘descamisados’, a reference to material poverty, and ‘cabezas negras’,
referring to the darker skinned non-European physical characteristics of the
autochthonous, lower-class population, were inverted and converted into symbols of

141
David Rock, ‘The Survival and Restoration of Peronism’, in Rock, Argentina in the
Twentieth, pp. 179-221 (pp. 187-8).
142
Alberto Spektorowski, ‘The Ideological Origins of Right and Left Nationalism in Argentina,
1930-43’, Journal of Contemporary History, 29: 1 (1994), 155-84 (p. 176); James W. McGuire,
Peronism without Perón (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), pp. 68-70.
143
See, for example, Ernesto Laclau, Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory: Capitalism
Fascism and Populism (London, UK: NLB, 1977), pp. 143-98; Emilio Di Ípola, Ideología y
discurso populista (Mexico City: Plaza y Valdéz, 1987).
144
James, Resistance, pp. 7-40.
145
Karush and Chamosa, ‘Introduction’, in Karush and Chamosa, p. 7.
146
James, Resistence, p. 30.
147
James, Resistance, p. 30-1.

119
working-class value.148 Simply put, ‘Perón made workers feel good about
themselves’.149 For James, the perennial quality of Peronism is firmly linked to the
powerful Peronist identity created during Perón’s first presidencies. In political
terms, as members of a central pillar in the Peronist economic model of the ‘New
(Industrial) Argentina’, the popular sectors were afforded a key role implying rights
and also responsibilities.

The iconic photograph of lower-class Argentines gathered in the Plaza de Mayo on

the 17 October 1945 to protest Perón’s incarceration provides a graphic visual
metaphor of the profound ‘heretical’ interpretation and sense of empowerment
Peronism afforded the marginalised popular classes. Formerly abashed, or fearful of
entering the hostile elite environment of the central area, lower-class Argentines
defied ‘the rules’ and re-appropriated public space, privatised by social convention.
See Figure 3. 4.

Figure 3. 4: October 17 1945. Crowds in front of the Casa Rosada Presidential

Palace.

Source: Archivo General de la Nación Argentina, Reproduced in, La Nación, ‘Los 70 años de
una fecha incómoda para el gobierno’, La Nación, 17 October 2015.

Returning to earlier theory, the concept of Perón as caudillo, identified by the

modernists in negative terms, may have had some bearing in truth, not least for

148
James, Resistance, p. 31.
149
Nicolas Shumway, The Invention of Argentina (Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press,1991), p. 298.

120
Perón himself. Perón’s choice of political style echoes cultural revisionist
accounts, in which caudillos provided effective leadership based on their
qualities of decisiveness, intuition and attention to the desires of autochthonous,
criollo populations. The slogan, ‘Perón Cumple’ attested to Perón’s
commitment and ability to get things done. Perón identified intuition and
reciprocation in political relationships as central aspects of his perception of the
role of the political leader, ‘El conductor político es un hombre, que hace por
reflejo lo que el pueblo quiere. El recibe la inspiración del pueblo… la política
se comprende, y solamente comprendiéndola es como es posible realizarla.’ 150

Interestingly, the concept of a ‘reciprocal relationship between leaders and

followers… who projected their own values onto strongmen (caudillos)’,
resonates with Guy, who, exploring the previously mentioned letter-writing
campaign promoted by Perón, identified echoes of caudillismo in the reciprocal
emotional-symbiotic bond the campaign sought to establish between Perón and
the Argentine public.151 The campaign enabled poor, non-unionised, often
elderly and provincial populations to express their wishes and add their voice to
shaping government policy. Extremely significant is the fact that suggestions at
times prompted personal interventions by Perón or ‘Evita’, whilst others were
incorporated into state policy.152

Perón’s rhetoric reverberated with references to political culture as promoted in

cultural revisionists’ accounts. Allusions to Martín Fierro, tango songs and use
of lunfardo dialect, all essential aspects of Perón’s discourse, provided clear
reference points for his audience. Significantly, traditional workers’ parties
whose tone when addressing ‘their’ workers James has described as, ‘didactic,
moralising and apparently addressed to a morally and intellectually inferior
audience’ had failed to generate a significant working-class appeal.153

150
Taken from an interview in 1971 with Juan Perón by Fernando ‘Pino’ Solanas and Octavio
Getino. The article ‘Entrevista a Juan Domingo Perón (Crisis)’, originally published in 1974 in
Revista Crisis, is now available at El Historiador
<http://www.elhistoriador.com.ar/entrevistas/p/peron_crisis.php> [accessed 12 October 2012]
151
Guy, p. 144.
152
Guy, p. 11.
153
James, Resistance, pp. 23-4. George I. Blanksten, Perón’s Argentina (Chicago, Il: University of
Chicago Press, 1953), p. 379. Eldon Kenworthy, ‘The Function of the Little-Known Case in Theory
Formation or “What Peronism Wasn’t”, Comparative Politics, 6 (1973), pp. 17-45 (p. 29).153 For

121
Recent research, adopting a cultural approach to the study of Peronism, moves
away from emphasis on subaltern conscience. This body of thought seeks
explanations based on the actors’ struggles to find meaning in the context of
multiple discourses.154 An example of this posture is a recent study by Mathew B.
Karush, which proposes a cultural interpretation of the success of Perón’s discourse.
That is, ‘Perón was able to appropriate discursive elements that circulated in mass
culture and refashion them into a powerful political appeal’.155 From the view point
of the cultural historian, rather than simply the result of a process of
industrialisation or a reflection of workers’ politics, Peronism is integral to a wider
pattern of specific mass cultural development.156 In order to construct an
explanation of how Perón created a credible vision of popular participation in the
modern, consumerist, industrial Argentina, Karush explores the, ‘cultural
prehistory’ of Perón’s advent.157 The trend of binary moralism, a central feature of
Perón’s discourse, which underpinned popular melodramatic entertainment, ran
contrary to materialist aspirations aroused by the proliferation of representations of
market-driven, commercial culture. However, Perón, he posits, successfully melded
mass cultural discourse, founded on ‘authenticity’, with a modernising discourse of
industrialisation and nationalism.158 This version hints at a further explanation for
the choice of Peronism over traditional workers’ parties, which were not grounded
in consumerism or modernisation and, as such, ‘lacked’ cultural authenticity.159

Explanations for the endurance of Peronism often highlight the role of the party
machine, patronage and clientelist networks. However, Plotkin explains Peronism’s
enduring quality on the basis of the creation of a loyal Peronist sub-culture.160 For
Plotkin, Perón was able to generate widespread consent for and mobilisation in

example, Marxists were attributed with overemphasising ideological concepts in unnecessarily

obscure language.153 Mario Amadeo, ‘Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow’, in Barager, pp. 248-57
(p. 255). The Argentine Socialist Party is described as prone to political over-intellectualisation, as
George I. Blanksten notes, ‘The Socialist weakness lies in addiction to theory and philosophy and
what we might call their lack of practical, sound common sense’, Blanksten, p. 379.
154
Karush and Chamosa, p. 13.
155
Karush, p. 23.
156
Karush, p. 23.
157
Karush, p. 22.
158
Karush, pp. 21-53.
159
Karush, pp. 22-3.
160
Plotkin, Mañana.

122
defence of his movement by strategies based on specific types of state intervention
and massive political ritual. The state education system and introduction of specific
public works and institutions played a significant role in this process. In a bid to
crush oppositional discourse, Perón aimed to dominate the totality of public
symbolic space. An example of effective ritual building by the regime is the
appropriation of events of 17 October 1945, depicted in the photograph on page
120. The original labour celebrations and mass demonstration in support of Perón
came to represent a recurrent confirmation of Perón’s leadership and Peronist
identities.

The topic of popular support for Perón and Peronism is a vast and constantly
evolving subject of academic debate. However, particularly pertinent to this study is
the significance of ‘Perón’s’ early Peronism as a referent against which the author
believes contemporary popular conditions are evaluated.161 Emphasis should be
placed on the relatively proximate timeframe between the Peron’s early
presidencies and the subject on which this study is grounded.162 Empirical
experience leads me to believe that perceptions of the popular experience under
Perón’s first mandates constitute a powerful reference point against which
contemporary actors evaluate subsequent systems. In my personal experience,
which took me into poorer barrios and villas, in any exchange, whether on the
subject of popular living standards or not, conversations inevitably included
references to Perón and Evita. These references varied from idealised accounts to
simple recognition of the fact that, for the popular sectors, Peronism represented a
fairer, more inclusive form of government.163 These recurrent references to ‘Perón’s
Argentina, I interpreted as implicit condemnation of the anti-popular tendency of
161
The use of the term, ‘Perón’s early Peronism’ refers to the fact that Peronism adopted
differing forms both before and after Perón’s death. At a later point in this study, the transitions
which occurred to Peronism during the period of Perón’s exile are discussed. However, I feel it
is important to note that Peronism as presented in Menem’s neoliberal experiment does not
qualify as Peronism, either politically or ideologically, in any real sense.
162
Many people with whom I spoke had first-hand experience of Perón’s first mandates, some
having actually ‘met’ him. In addition, physical evidence of socially beneficial projects
established under Perón, such as the iconic ‘Ciudad Evita’ still remain.
163
Both in general conversations with Argentines, or with members of co-operatives I visited,
talk invariably turned to popular living standards under Perón. Reference was made to fairness
of policy, ‘No soy peronista y no puede haber igualdad total, pero Perón, Perón por lo menos
compartía’, Jorjito, founding member CUC. References to socially motivated work such as
affordable housing projects established during the Peronist period were frequent. The list of such
anecdotes is extensive. ‘Evita’ does not figure in this work. However, references to Perón rarely
omitted mention of the First Lady.

123
subsequent governments and, possibly, the desire for an alternative system more in
line with early Peronism.

Between Perón and Perón: the interim governments.

On 16 September 1955, Perón went into exile. Despite the fact that the country was
experiencing economic difficulties, it would appear that Perón’s reduced support
was founded on ideological, rather than economic rationale.164 His overthrow is not
attributed to his traditional opposition, but to former supporters, the Church,
Nationalists, and significant numbers of the Army.165 Added to this was the absence
of support from a considerable section of the working classes. Perón had retained
significant continued support as witnessed by suppression of three coup attempts.166
Nevertheless, after threats by naval officers to bombard Buenos Aires and the La
Plata Eva Perón Oil Refinery, Perón left the country. It is speculated that, given his
continued support amongst significant numbers of workers and the Army, his action
possibly constituted a bid to avoid civil war.167

Opposition to Perón and Peronism dominated the political agenda of each of the
governments between 1955 and 1973. Each administration, civilian or military,
liberal or nationalist, to varying degrees considered Perón’s labour and
economic policy to be the root cause of Argentina’s arrested economic
development, and viewed the dismantling of Peronism as a prerequisite to
establishing political order and sustained economic growth. Ironically, in the
face of proscription and persecution, Peronist identity would prove resilient to
whatever changes occurred in Argentine society as a whole and, in fact, seemed
to grow stronger.168 Perón continued to influence politics from his position in
exile, and presided over the metamorphosis of the movement, which by the
1970s comprised a broad-based umbrella structure encompassing diametrically
polarised ideologies including left- and right-wing armed guerrilla factions.

164
For more on the Church’s opposition to Perón, see Catalina Scoufalos, 1955, memoria y
resistencia (Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos, 2007), pp. 33-4. On Nationalist opposition, see
McGuire, p. 72.
165
Scoufalos, p. 28.
166
Loveman, pp. 123-4.
167
Loveman, pp.123-4, Hedges, p. 168.
168
James P. Brennan, ‘Clasismo and the Workers. The Ideological-Cultural Context of
‘Sindicalismo de Liberación’ in the Cordoban Automobile Industry, 1970-1975’, Bulletin of
Latin American Research, 13: 3 (1996), 293-308 (p. 297).

124
Luis Alberto Romero qualifies the period between Perón’s ouster and his return as a
state of empate.169 The empate, or deadlock, refers to the fact that Argentina’s three
main political forces, the military, the Peronist movement, notably the unions and
the UCR, vied against one another to install their political vision but failed to do so
as each one had the strength to block projects proposed by either of the others.170
Any attempt to change the economic model was blocked by interest groups and
neither orthodox nor non-orthodox economic policy achieved a lasting solution.171
Eleven governments took office, six established by military, or military-supported
coups, and the entire period was characterised by political strife, socio-economic
instability and antagonism, civil unrest and intra-military conflict.172 By 1973, in
the face of acts of traditional labour protest, militant activity, including
worker-student alliances, widespread popular defiance and terrorist and counter-
terrorist activity, forceful enough to undermine each of three consecutive military
governments, the country’s political leaders had concluded that the sole solution to
the social turbulence lay in returning Perón from exile.

For Argentina’s popular classes, the period as a whole was one of deteriorating
living standards as gains made under Peronism declined severely. Average
family incomes remained below 1949 levels until the mid-1960s. Wage income
as a percentage of GDP decreased significantly. The pattern of industry
promoted and protected by Perón’s policy was eroded and small, labour-
intensive, domestic companies were replaced by larger firms.173 These business
failures were accompanied by unemployment and underemployment.
Concurrent with the generalised decline in living standards was a deterioration
in educational standards; the percentage of children completing their term in
education reverted to turn-of-the-century levels.174 Shanty towns or villas de
emergencia, which Peron’s social policy had sought to address, mushroomed in

169
Luis Alberto Romero, Breve historia contemporánea de la Argentina 1916-2010, 3rd edn.
(Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2012), p. 153.
170
Goebel, p.108.
171
Roberto Cortés Conde, The Political Economy of Argentina in the Twentieth Century (New
York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp.194-244.
172
Braslavsky, ‘El otro dos de abril; Potash, pp. 46-63.
173
Laura Tedesco, Democracy in Argentina: Hope and Disillusion (London, UK: Frank Cass,
1999), p. 17.
174
Rock, Argentina 1516-1987, p. 320.

125
the periphery of Buenos Aires city and the wider province. Numbers of residents
in these areas soared from 112,350 in 1956 to 2,250,000, a fifth of the
population, in 1970.175

Transformations in Argentine labour and the significance of the Cordobazo.

In 1966, a military coup supported by the trade unions brought General Juan Carlos
Onganía to the presidency. 176 Two years later, in March 1968, the trade union
movement split. The Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT), led by Agustín
Vandor of the Buenos Aires Unión Obrera Metalúrgica (UOM) Metalworkers’
Union, adopted a more conciliatory approach towards Onganía than that of the
newly-formed Confederación General del Trabajo de los Argentinos (CGTA). The
CGTA, led by Raimundo Ongaro of the Buenos Aires print workers’ union, was
particularly strong in Córdoba, Argentina’s second largest industrial city. 177
Between the 29 and 30 May of the following year, a highly significant working-
class protest, popular revolt and urban insurrection, the Cordobazo, took place in
this city.

The immediate political effect of the Cordobazo was to weaken the credibility of
Onganía’s dictatorship, the strongest of all the post-Peronist regimes.178 In the
longer term, the Cordobazo came to exercise a fundamental influence on local
working-class militancy and labour struggle, as James P. Brennan notes:

To a certain extent, all the furious labor agitation of the next six years
occurred in the shadow of the Cordobazo. Some unions consciously tried
to recreate the experience and others used it as an edifying example of the
latent power of the working class, but all took their cue from it in some
way.179

175
Rock, Argentina 1516-1987, p. 320.
176
Pablo Martín Pinto, Partisan Investment in the Global Economy: Why the Left Loves Foreign
Direct Investment and FDI Loves the Left (Cambridge; NY: Cambridge University Press, 2013),
pp. 180-1.
177
James P. Brennan and Mónica B. Gordillo, ‘Working Class Protest, Popular Revolt, and
Urban Insurrection in Argentina: The 1969 Cordobazo’, Journal of Social History, 27: 3 (1994),
477-98 (p. 479).
178
James P. Brennan, The Labor Wars in Córdoba 1955-1976: Ideology, Work, and Labor
Politics in an Argentine Industrial City (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994),
p. 138.
179
Brennan, The Labor, p. 139.

126
Added to this was the myth surrounding the event which created the impetus for the
violence experienced in Argentina in the 1970s.180

Brennan advises against partisan and tendentious over-simplification of the causes

and protagonist component of the Cordobazo, both aspects of which he identifies as
multiple and rooted in a unique economic and social setting.181 The following brief
outline of the events of the Cordobazo provides an insight into the above factors as
identified predominantly by Brennan and Mónica B. Gordillo. Onganía’s labour
policy was profoundly anti working-class. However, in Córdoba, car and metal
workers were at their lowest ebb.182 Co-operation between unions of different
political shades had been engendered as a result of the violent repression of a
protest by the Sindicato de Mecánicos y Afines del Transporte Automotor de la
República Argentina (SMATA) union, which had prompted the union’s leader,
Elpidio Torres, to seek solidarity with the UOM led by Alejo Simó and the Luz y
Fuerza union headed by Agustín Tosco.183

Córdoba University students had experienced the regime's purges of educational

facilities and their union was proscribed. As traditional participants in local politics,
under proscription and forced into clandestine action, Córdoba's student
organisation, both Peronist and Marxist, became increasingly radicalised through
collaborative efforts with CGTA projects and left-wing grassroots projects linked to
the Catholic Church. The quality of student organisation was far superior to that of
local political parties, which were ‘in disarray’ under proscription.184 In early 1969,
the inept response of Córdoba’s Governor, Carlos Caballero, to a CGTA document,
Declaración de Córdoba, which called for a broad united front against the regime,
served to fuel disdain for the official suspected of promoting clandestine violence
against unions. Caballero’s property tax passed in the early part of the year
generated further discontent among the town’s middle sectors.

180
Brennan and Gordillo, p. 494.
181
Brennan, The Labor, p. 140.
182
A key cause of dissent for the UOM was business owners’ refusal to respect the quitas
zonales legislation, which had removed the system of regional pay differentials between Buenos
Aires and provincial plants, an issue which Vandor was unwilling to pursue. For automobile
workers in the SMATA union in particular, the repeal of the Sábado Inglés system, on 12 May,
created anger. Brennan and Gordillo, p. 486.
183
Brennan, The Labor, p. 143.
184
Brennan, The Labor, p. 145.

127
By May, labour discontent had extended to transport and power unions. In the same
month, the violent repression of student demonstrations causing one death and
numerous injuries in Corrientes engendered nationwide protest, spearheaded by
students and CGTA members. Increased inter-union solidarity saw a twenty-four-
hour general strike scheduled for 30 May. In Córdoba, it was agreed to begin the
strike a day earlier thereby extending it to forty-eight hours. The initial stages of the
strike and protest march involved multiple unions, which filed along different
routes towards a rendezvous point in the city centre. Police gunfire causing the
death of worker, Máximo Mena, and the wounding of significant numbers of others,
unleashed a response which turned the organised protest into a popular cross-class
insurrection, the strength of which elicited a military response. When, by the
evening of 30 May, the rebellion had eventually been quashed, official figures
recorded a death count of 12, although Jonathan C. Brown suggests that 60 is a
more accurate figure, together with hundreds of wounded and over a thousand
arrests.185

Analysis of the Cordobazo reveals that the predominant impetus behind the
rebellion was the working-class; both CGTs and virtually every Cordoban union,
including traditionally inactive ones, were involved in the protest. Contrary to
accounts from various political factions, the predominant inspiration behind
participation in the protest was Peronist. Nevertheless, participation in the
Cordobazo, at some point and at some level, extended to almost all sectors,
specifically after Mena’s death when the protest evolved into a spontaneous mass
response drawing support from sectors of the population not involved in the original
protest marches. Certainly, the grievances of the union members toward
increasingly anti-labour policy provide some explanation for the working-class
presence in the protest. However, a full explanation of the Cordobazo, Brennan
asserts, is found in Argentina’s political culture; that is, one in which some form of
participation in politics was expected by all classes. As such, under the authoritarian
policies of the Onganía regime, political frustration was raised to an unsustainable

185
Jonathan C. Brown, A Brief History of Argentina (New York, NY: Facts on File, 2003), p. 37.

128
level.186 Consequently, following the police attack the demonstration became a
political protest, a spontaneous explosion of opposition, a popular repudiation of the
authoritarian regime.187

A further aspect of interest was the development of a new militant revolutionary

labour movement, Clasismo or Sindicalismo de liberación. Although a national
movement, Clasismo enjoyed particularly strong representation at the provincial
level. The central discourse of clasista leaders was ideologically-based, portraying
the working-class relationship with capital as antagonistic, promoting the
suppression of capitalism and the creation of a socialist society. However, Clasismo
was culturally and ideologically homogeneous.188 Significantly, evidence suggests
that Clasista leaders were chosen not on the basis of their socialist or Marxist
orientation but in spite of it. This is explained by certain Clasista leaders
themselves as a choice against the traditional excessively bureaucratised union
structure and remote leadership.189 Rank-and-file Peronist workers appear to have
selected clasista leaders on the basis of personal qualities such as integrity, an
attribute perceived as lacking in the traditional union leadership.190

The birth of urban terrorism.

Perón’s definition of Peronism was a clearly conciliatory movement which
sought to avoid antagonism by achieving consensus through fair state-mediated
inter-sectoral negotiations.191 This continued to be the case into his third
presidency, as evidenced by the Social Pact. Peronism was not intended to be a
revolutionary movement, nor had it the capacity to be.192 However, under
proscription, and in the context of atrocities committed, as actors across the
socio-political spectrum identified in Peronism a definition of their specific

186
Brennan, The Labor, p. 162.
187
Brennan, The Labor, pp. 162-3.
188
Brennan, ‘Clasismo’, pp. 293-308.
189
Brennan, ‘Clasismo’, p. 299.
190
James, Resistance, p. 234.
191
Chono Martínez, Los trabajadores: Ordenamiento sistemático de la doctrina peronista y la
doctrina social de la iglesia (Buenos Aires: Dunken, 2006), p. 314; Alejandro García, La crisis
argentina 1966-1976. Notas y documentos sobre una época de violencia política (Murcia, Spain:
Universidad de Murcia, Secretariado de publicaciones, 1994). p.12.
192
Horacio Verbitsky, Ezeiza (Buenos Aires: Editorial Contrapunto, 1985), p. 1.

129
aspirations, Peronism underwent a transformation into which the use of violence
was introduced.193

In the months following the Cordobazo, after several bombings, the general climate
of instability was intensified by the emergence of left-wing urban guerrilla
organisations. This, in turn, generated the formation of right-wing ‘anti-terrorist’
squads formed from the civilian population both from within and outside the
Peronist movement. By 1970, the provinces of Buenos Aires and Córdoba, in
particular, were experiencing regular attacks by urban guerrillas, predominantly the
Montoneros, radical Peronists loyal to the memory of Evita. Between 1969 and
1970, guerrilla fighters carried out 548 armed operations.194 On 29 May 1970,
former army general, Pedro Aramburu, a key protagonist in the anti-government
violence which had led Juan Perón to leave in exile in 1955, was kidnapped by
Montoneros. His ‘execution’, which occurred three days later, provided the final
impetus for a coup, which replaced Onganía with General Roberto Levingston.

By 1970, it had become abundantly apparent that the military were unable to
resolve the situation. On 11 November 1970, in an unprecedented show of unity,
Peronists, the Unión Cívica Radical del Pueblo (UCRP) and several other minor
parties issued a joint statement against continued military government named La
Hora del Pueblo. The statement, which called for an immediate return to
democracy, demanding political stability, greater equality of income distribution
and the safeguarding of nationally owned sectors of the economy, garnered not only
the support of the political parties, particularly the Peronists and the Radicals, but
also sections of the armed forces and the local bourgeoisie.195 In addition to
significant economic difficulties, acts of labour unrest persisted and terrorism and
counter-terrorism escalated. March 1971 saw renewed unrest in Córdoba in the
form of the Viborazo uprising, often referred to as the second Cordobazo. However,
unlike the Cordobazo, the Viborazo, although predominantly worker-led, had a

193
Hedges, pp. 170-3. Included in the atrocities was the murder of workers not involved in any
uprising on a José León Suárez rubbish dump on June 9 1956. Hedges, p. 172.
194
Cyrus Steven Cousins, ‘General Onganía and the Argentine [military] Revolution of the Right:
Anticommunism and Morality 1966-1970’, HAOL, 17 (2008), 65-79 < http://www.historia-
actual.org/Publicaciones/index.php/haol/article/viewFile/268/256> [accessed 3 June 2011]
195
Guillermo A. O’Donnell, Bureaucratic Authoritarianism: Argentina 1966-1973 in
Comparative Perspective (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 208-9.

130
significant presence of left wing guerrilla organisations.196 The following month, a
further military intervention brought Alejandro Agustín Lanusse to the presidency.

Lanusse and the return of Perón.

On assuming office, Lanusse announced a controlled return to democratic
government.197 A Great National Accord (GAN) was introduced and the ban on
political parties, other than the Peronist Party, was lifted. However, terrorist activity
under Lanusse did not abate, and shootings, robberies and kidnappings by left-wing
groups persisted.198 Guerrilla activity, supported by a vocal educated sector of the
population, undermined the confidence of Argentina’s traditional elites and
damaged the economy as the climate of fear and uncertainty led to suspended
investment and escalating capital flight.199 As indicated at the beginning of this
section, Lanusse recognised that the only hope of stabilising the country lay with
Perón. As a result, he began to negotiate his return to Argentina.

Peron’s return to power.

Discussion between Lanusse and Perón brought former Montonero, Héctor
Cámpora of the Frente Justicialista de Liberación (FREJULI) coalition, to the
presidency.200 The FREJULI won the election with a clear majority, returning
Argentina to democratic governance on 25 May 1973. Cámpora’s presidency was
short-lived, a fact generally attributed to his inability to maintain order.201
Following a brief interim presidency by Raúl Alberto Lastri, with 62 percent of the
vote, Perón was elected president with his politically inexperienced, unpopular wife
as Vice-President.

196
Julio Carreras, La política armada: desde los Uturuncos y el FRIP hasta los Montoneros y el ERP
(Santiago Del Estero, Argentina: Editorial Quipo, 2003), pp. 190-1; Brennan, The Labor, p. 193.
197
Jörg Le Blanc, Political Violence in Latin America: A Cross-Case Comparison of the Urban
Insurgency Campaigns of Montoneros, M-19 and FSLN in a Historical Perspective (Newcastle
upon Tyne,UK: Cambridge Scholars Publication, 2013), p. 83.
198
Le Blanc, p. 84.
199
Paul H. Lewis, The Crisis of Argentine Capitalism (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North
Carolina Press, 1992), p. 387.
200
FREJULI comprised the PJ Partido Justicialista and several other minor parties.
201
To some extent, one can attribute the truncation of President Héctor Cámpora’s presidency,
which lasted from 25 May 1973 until 12 July 1973, to his apparent partiality towards leftist sections,
best exemplified in the amnesty granted to terrorist prisoners. This partiality alienated other sectors
of the coalition and saw Perón withdraw his support for Cámpora.

131
As we have seen, neither the collective bargaining strategies of wage management,
nor income policy employed by the Frondizi and Illía regimes, nor Onganía’s
autocratic method of enforcing compliance with income policy had succeeded in
controlling labour. Therefore, it is likely that the extreme violence and instability of
the previous years disposed sectors traditionally unfavourable to Perón and Peronist
corporate ideology to accept his leadership in the hope that he could secure labour
co-operation. Reminiscent of his first administration, and reflecting the need for
unity and co-operation, Perón proposed a Social Pact: a two-year economic strategy
designed to control inflation and relieve social tensions by redistributing income in
as non-confrontational a manner as possible. There was initial acceptance of the
new government and its economic policy, ‘The impression was that a government
with a strong social arbitrating power had finally arrived and that, at a price, each
sector had received a not unacceptable share of the national income.’202

Affording most benefit to the poorest sectors of the working class, the terms of the
social pact saw prices frozen and a 13 percent wage increase introduced,
representing one of the largest increases in wages as a proportion of GDP in the
previous ten years.203 Initially the pact, favoured by a commodity boom in 1973,
which raised export earnings by 65 percent, was successful; inflation dropped, the
economy grew significantly and unemployment was practically eliminated.204 By
late 1973, the world oil crisis had led to high inflation. In fact, the state’s inability to
enforce total compliance with the wage and price strictures dictated in the terms of
the pact became apparent when faced with the inflationary impact of the oil
crisis.205 A further blow to the economy, over which the government had no control,
came in July 1974 with the EU decision to cease imports of Argentine beef.206

The unravelling of the social pact was accompanied by a parallel deterioration of

the political system. As the contradictions of Peronism became apparent, and

202
Guido Luis Justo Di Tella, Argentina under Perón 1973-76. 2nd edn (Buenos Aires: Editorial
Sudamericana, 1983), p. 112.
203
Tedesco, Democracy, p.18.
204
Adolfo Canitrot reports zero and minus zero levels of inflation. Adolfo Canitrot, La
viabilidad económica de la democracia: un análisis de la experiencia peronista 1973-1976
(Buenos Aires: Centro de Estudios de Estado y Sociedad (CEDES), 1978), p. 17.
205
Lewis, The Crisis of Argentine Capitalism, p. 482.
206
Tedesco, Democracy, p. 19.

132
terrorist activity between the left-wing peronists and right-wing “anti-terrorist”
squads persisted, Perón struggled to harness mounting tensions.207 Opinions differ
as to whether, had he lived, Perón’s charisma and popularity would have been
sufficient to maintain social co-operation and lead the country out of economic
downturn. His policy had certainly succeeded in achieving a level of social
consensus by containing antagonism between different interests within set
boundaries. However, this is speculation. With Perón’s death on 1 July 1974, the
presidency transferred to Isabel Perón.

Isabel reversed traditional socially-based Peronist economic policy and made a

radical shift from a moderate centre-left coalition, based on trade union
organisation, to an extreme right-wing position. In addition to increasing
inflationary trends, which reached three figures by 1975, Isabel’s presidency was
characterised by labour resistance and power struggles within the Peronist
government.208 Escalating violence from left and right led to intervention by the
armed forces and state security police, culminating in Isabel’s government’s ouster
in a coup led by Jorge Rafael Videla on 24 March 1976.

Argentina’s urban lower classes demonstrated a seemingly organic tendency

towards organisation and self-defence, possibly the combined result of traditions
established by their European heritage. Peronist practice and experience promoted
workers’ organisation but the bureaucratisation of the union movement stifled
grassroots action. Certainly, workers’ protests have by no means been uniquely
informed by Peronism. The spontaneous demonstrations of 17 and 18 October 1945
and the clasista union activity during Ongañía’s regime could be viewed as historic
precedents for the popular activity on which this work focuses.

El Proceso Militar.
From 24 March 1976 to 10 December 1983, Argentina was controlled by the
Proceso military dictatorship initiated under the leadership of General Jorge Rafael
Videla. The period marked an abrupt end to Argentina’s corporatist inward-oriented

207
Hedges, pp. 206-8; Tedesco, Democracy, p. 19.
Elizabeth Jelin, ‘Labour Conflicts under the Second Peronist Regime, Argentina 1973-76’,
208

Development and Change, 10 (1979), 233-57 (p. 242 and p. 365).

133
economic model in place since the 1940s, and marked the country’s entry into the
economic paradigm of globalisation.

The military manifesto presented to justify the takeover identified the Peronist
government’s complete loss of ethical and moral standing, failed economic policies,
the threat of anarchy from corruption and mismanagement and the unresolved
problem of subversion.209 In addition to committing to eradicate subversion and
establish social stability, the manifesto appealed to beliefs deeply rooted in the
Argentine psyche by promising economic development and thus securing
Argentina’s rightful place in the world economy.210 This and the widespread
perception that the country was slipping into chaos, and given the fact that
Argentina’s population had experienced, and was not averse to authoritarian
leadership per se, the military were generally afforded widespread tacit public
support or acceptance.211

In contrast to previous military regimes, which had, in fact, effected a partial

militarisation of the higher echelons of the state apparatus, the Proceso assigned
military personnel to all ministerial and state posts. Of significance is the fact that
the navy, as the most consistently anti-Peronist branch of the armed forces, was
assigned to the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Social Welfare and, as such, was
responsible for reconstructing the services of housing, public health and social
security, that is, the services which would most deeply affect the sectors where
support for Peronism was strongest. The only exception was the Ministry of the
Economy, to which free market civilian economists of the Milton Friedman School
were appointed, headed by José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz. Martínez de Hoz

209
Junta Militar, ‘Proclama 24 March 1976’ in Documentos básicos y bases políticas de las fuerzas
militares para el proceso de reorganización nacional (Buenos Aires: Impresa del Congreso de la
Nación, 1980), p. 11 <http://www.bnm.me.gov.ar/giga1/documentos/EL000162.pdf> [accessed 11
September 2011].
210
Sebastián Barros, ‘Violencia de Estado e identidades políticas. Argentina durante el Proceso
de Reorganización Militar (1976 –1983)’, Amnis: 3 (2003); Canitrot, ‘La viabilidad económica’,
p. 9.
It should be noted that the subversives mentioned are not clearly defined according to the manifesto,
which reads ‘Esta decisión persigue el propósito de terminar con el desgobierno, la corrupción y el
flagelo subversivo sólo está dirigida contra quienes han delinquido o cometido abusos de poder’,
Junta Militar, p. 11.
211
Barros, p. 6. In fact, Finchelstein describes the public’s support for the military coup as
enthusiastic. Finchelstein, pp.124-5.

134
personified the united interests of agrarian, industrial and financial concerns.212 The
Proceso identified protectionism as the source of economic stagnation. In their
view, inefficient Argentine domestic industry had survived through being financed
by, and to the detriment of, the agro-export sector.213 A key belief of the Proceso’s
leadership was that primary produce was the sector in which the country’s natural
advantage lay and that this area had been exploited and curtailed via taxes and price
controls established to benefit the popular sectors. Further causes for concern were
expenditure on the state bureaucracy, considered to be inflated as a means of job
creation, public expenditure and the inefficient welfare system and free-at-source
health care.214 In line with static comparative advantage theory, the aim of the
military government was to redress the balance, enabling the agro-export sector
freedom to progress unfettered whilst withdrawing state support from domestic
industry.215

Economic Policy.

On assuming control of the Ministry of Economy, shored up by the effective use of

coercion by the military and special services to intimidate and neutralise any
possible opposition, Martínez de Hoz introduced structural reforms. Former
protectionist nationalist industrialisation projects were reversed in favour of a
modified free market policy. The peso was devalued, financial deregulation
introduced, trade opened up and some parts of the state sector privatised. Within
three days of the coup, a relationship with international creditors, which would
enable the Proceso government to amass an unprecedented level of nationalised

212
Ronaldo Munck, Politics and Dependency in the Third World: The Case of Latin America
(London, UK: Zed Books, 1984), p. 298; Stillwagon, p. 36.
213
Ana Gabriella Castellani, ‘Intervención económica estatal y transformaciones en la cúpula
empresaria durante la última dictadura militar (1976-1983)’, in Argentina, 1976: Estudios en
torno al golpe de estado, ed. by Clara Eugenia Lida, Horacio Gutiérrez Crespo and Pablo
Yankelevich (Buenos Aires: El Colegio de México, 2008), pp. 131-64 (pp. 134-5).
214
Susana Belmartino, Carlos Bloch and Zulema Torres de Quinteros, ‘El programa de
estabilización económica y las políticas de salud y bienestar social: 1976-1980’, Cuadernos Médico
Sociales,18 (1981), 1-27 (p. 3) < http://www.ilazarte.com.ar/cuadernos/pdf/n18a058.pdf >[accessed
16 July 2011]
215
Marcelo Rougier, Estudios sobre la industria argentina (San Isidro, GBA: Lenguaje Claro,
2010), p. 96; Anred ‘Publicidad y dictadura: Crónica de una relación estratégica’, see
specifically the video, ‘La historia de la vaca triste’, Anred 23 March 2008
<http://www.anred.org/article.php3?id_article=2507> [accessed 10 August 2011].

135
foreign debt, was heralded by IMF approval of a loan in excess of 100 million
dollars.216

Under the new economic policy, certain intermediate industry prospered.217

However, small and medium domestic businesses, which had flourished during the
ISI period, suffered.218 An extreme case in point was the textile industry, which
contracted by half.219 In the period immediately after the coup, over 20,000
workplaces closed.220 By the early stages of 1979, manufacturing, which had
represented 38.1 percent of the country’s GDP in 1974, had shrunk to 35 percent.221
In that same year, growth of imports was triple that of exports.222 The contraction in
manufacturing was complemented by growth of the agricultural and tertiary sectors,
allowing a transfer of manpower from industry to these sectors. Between 1979 and
1980, the number of businesses faced with bankruptcy rose by 74 percent and
numerous large domestic and foreign firms went out of business.223 Included in the
closures was Sasetru, Argentina’s largest grain and food producing company, which
closed in 1980, to be occupied and reopened by members of the local community in
the post-2001 crisis period.

A key target of the Proceso were the working and popular classes. The percentage
of workers and union activists subjected to violence was significantly above that of
members of any other sector of the population, including guerrillas. It is estimated
that the number of workers, largely second level and shop-floor factory leaders,
who fell victim to the Proceso’s violence, was double that of the regime’s guerrilla
victims.224 New labour legislation, specifically the New Law of Professional
Associations, which outlawed all labour unions including the CGT workers’ union
and even the moderate entrepreneurs’ union, Confederación General Económica

216
Ismael Bermúdez, ‘El derrumbe de los salarios y la plata dulce’, Clarin, 24 March 2006
<http://edant.clarin.com/suplementos/especiales/2006/03/24/l-01164108.htm> [accessed 3 June
2011]
217
Rougier, pp. 97-8
218
Rougier, p. 97.
219
Rock, Argentina, 1516-1987, p. 369.
220
Castellani, p. 137.
221
Rock, Argentina, 1516-1987, p. 369.
222
Jo Fisher, Mothers of the Disappeared (London, UK: Zed Books, 1995), pp. 109-10.
223
Fisher, p. 110.
224
Rock, Argentina, 1516-1987, p. 368. CONADEP, Nunca Más, Informe de la CONADEP,
(Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 1984). See Appendix 2(b).

136
(CGE), was introduced to break the vertical structure of union organisation under
Peronism. All forms of industrial action which ‘impeded productivity’ were banned
and made punishable with custodial sentences. Removal of union leaders and
activists was facilitated by the New Redundancy Law or Rationalisation Plan
(21.274), which allowed dismissal of workers on ostensibly rational grounds,
without notice or compensation. The right to strike was suspended, meetings
prohibited, covert disruptive labour practices, such as go slows, banned and labour
organisation effectively placed under government control.225 In addition to these
laws, aspects of working conditions including health and safety regulations were
subject to alterations prejudicial to the worker.

Total GDP accounted for by wages of working-class Argentines fell significantly,

see Figures 3. 5 and 3. 6. (page. 138). 1975 saw state control of salary levels create
a 40 percent decline in real wages compared to the previous year.226 In fact, during
the period 1975-1982, the average wage fell by 30 percent in real terms.227
However, the fall in wages was not uniform. The principal victims of wage controls
were public sector workers, provincial workers and small and medium enterprises,
pequeñas y medianas empresas (PYMES), specific branches of industry and less
qualified workers.228 As such, salary differentiation generated certain fragmentation
of the working class.229

225
Héctor Recalde, ‘Supression of Workers’ Rights’, in The Economic Accomplices to the
Argentine Dictatorship: Outstanding Debts, ed. by Horacio Verbitsky and Juan Pablo
Bohoslavsky (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 217-34 (p. 220); Victoria
Basualdo et al., La clase trabajadora argentina en el siglo XX: experiencias de lucha y
organización 1976-1983 (Buenos Aires: Cara o Seca Editorial Atuel, 2011), p. 5.
226
Horacio Verbitsky, ‘The Lawyers: From Repression to Neo-liberalism’, in Verbitsky and
Bohoslavsky, pp. 351- 63 (p. 351); Victoria Basualdo, ‘Contributions to the Analysis of the Role
of Labor Leadership in Worker Repression in the 1970s’, in Verbitsky and Bohoslavsky,
pp. 201-16 (p. 214).
227
Scott Mainwaring and Aníbal S. Pérez-Liñán, Democracies and Dictatorships in Latin
America: Emergence, Survival, and Fall (Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2013),
p. 153.
228
Basualdo et al., p. 7.
229
Basualdo et al., p. 7. López, 125.

137
Figure 3. 5

Source: Castellani, ‘Intervención económica estatal’, p.139.

Figure 3.6

Source: Basualdo et al., p. 25.

138
Prices were allowed to rise irrespective of the needs of poor Argentines. In more
general terms, the financial position of the popular classes was weakened by
additional state actions. These included raising transport costs and the removal of
rent controls. The introduction of dress codes in schools, the workplace and public
domain, which could be used as a means of control and/or exclusion, echoes the
experience of humiliation and control to which the Argentine lower classes had
been subjected during the period prior to Perón’s first mandate. The percentage of
the national budget assigned to Public Health fell from 6 percent in 1975 to under 3
percent by 1981.230 An analysis of the politics of health care and social services
provision for the period 1976-1980 concluded that the government’s drive towards
privatisation of health care plans and inadequate budgetary allowance obviated any
proposals for state commitments.231 Death and disease amongst the most vulnerable
sectors increased dramatically.232 In tandem with the national integrated health plan,
pension plans were repealed in favour of inadequate, inferior private provision.

A fundamental aspect of Proceso policy was to reinstate Buenos Aires’ elite

quality, restoring ‘order’ by maintaining the city free from intrusion by the
subversive or subaltern. During Yrigoyen’s populist presidency, the values of
old-world classism, apparent in Buenos Aires architecture and culture, had been
increasingly challenged by modernist referents closely associated with New
York City.233 Furthermore, industrialisation and widespread migration during
the Peronist 1940s and 1950s had further ‘tarnished’ the elite homogeneous
quality of Buenos Aires’ public space. The Proceso conception that, ‘Buenos
Aires es sólo para quien merece vivir en ella’, saw legislation and violence
combine to ensure order was restored. As such, the city reverted to its former
status as the domain of the privileged classes, free from ‘inappropriate
intrusions’.234 Several concrete actions were taken to restore Buenos Aires’ elite,
ornamental status. These included increasing the cost of living in the city and

230
Belmartino, Bloch and Torres de Quinteros, p. 15.
231
Belmartino, Bloch and Torres de Quinteros, p. 7 and p. 15.
232
Paul G. Buchanan, ‘The Varied Faces of Domination: State Terror, Economic Policy, and Social
Rupture during the Argentine "Proceso", 1976-81’, American Journal of Political Science, 31: 2
(1987), 336-82 (p. 367); Stillwagon, p. 38.
233
James Gardner, Buenos Aires: the Biography of a City (New York, NY: St. Martin's Press,
2015), pp. 185-7.
234
Mariano Daniel Perelman and Martín Boy, ‘Cartoneros en Buenos Aires: Nuevas
modalidades de encuentro’, Revista Mexicana de Sociología, 72: 3 (2010), 393-418 (p. 400).

139
relocating contaminating industries and their 1.2 million-strong workforce
outside the city.235 An extensive programme of motorway construction razed
villas miseria and their subaltern occupants were ‘expelled’ to the outskirts of
the city, interior provinces or even neighbouring countries.236 Ordenanza 33.652
passed in July 1977 sanctioned the forcible removal of marginal populations and
destruction of informally established settlements.237 By 1980, some 180,000
individuals had been evicted from their homes, the majority relocating in
informal settlements of GBA.238

Fear of a working-class uprising led the military to put pressure on the economic
team to avoid creating permanent unemployment, and for the first two years official
figures indicated unemployment was maintained at 3-4 percent. However, official
unemployment figures failed to record what Ronaldo Munck identifies as ‘hidden’
unemployment, which included: jobless immigrant workers returning home,
females leaving employment, emigration and jobless people setting up their own
informal businesses.239 Nevertheless, by 1981, 800,000 workers had lost their jobs
as a result of bankruptcy of smaller domestic businesses.240

Compelling cases have been presented to support the view that the Proceso’s
purportedly ‘rational’ economic policy was introduced, first and foremost, with the
highly political aim of breaking the power of the unions and thus eliminating the
political and economic strength of the working classes.241 Adolfo Canitrot posits

235
Óscar Oszlak, Merecer la ciudad: Los pobres y el derecho al espacio urbano (Buenos Aires:
Centro de Estudios del Estado y Sociedad, 1991), pp. 17-21.
236
Perelman and Boy, pp. 400-1.
237
Eduardo Blaustein, Prohibido vivir aquí: la erradicación de villas durante la dictadura
(Buenos Aires: Editorial Punto de Encuentro, 2006), p. 67.
238
Nora Clichevsky, Pobreza y acceso al suelo urbano. Algunas interrogantes sobre las políticas de
regularización en América Latina (Santiago: Naciones Unidas, CEPAL, División de Desarrollo
Sostenible y Asentamientos Humanos, 2003); Luján Menazzi Canese, ‘Ciudad en dictadura.
Procesos urbanos en la ciudad de Buenos Aires durante la última dictadura militar (1976-1983)’,
Revista electrónica de geografía y ciencias sociales, XVIII: 429 (2013)
<http://www.ub.edu/geocrit/sn/sn-429.htm> [accessed 19 October 2015]
239
Munck, p. 304.
240
Lewis, The Crisis of Argentine Capitalism, p. 471.
241
Ana Dinerstein, ‘The Battle of Buenos Aires: Crisis Insurrection and the Reinvention of Politics in
Argentina’, Historical Materialism, 10: 4 (2002), 5-38; Adolfo Canitrot, Teoría y práctica del
liberalismo. Política antiinflacionaria y apertura económica en la Argentina, 1976-1981 (Buenos
Aires: CEDES, 1980); Buchanan, pp. 336-82.

140
that the choice of policy post-1977 suggests that an effective economic alternative
was eschewed in favour of an alternative strategy which:

Tomó decisiones expresamente dirigidas a cortar el proceso de auge

económico y a constreñir la libertad de operación de las empresas.
Manifestó de este modo su propio orden de prioridades. Primero el
disciplinamiento social, sólo después el crecimiento.242

To this Buchanan adds the suggestion that the shift in focus from industrial to
agricultural and tertiary sectors constituted a concealed attempt at eroding working
class unity and strength. That is, the transfer of workers from the former sector
which had a strong sense of collective identity and high level of union organisation,
to the latter sectors, both of which were characterised by more individualistic types
of work and relatively weak organisation.243 Additionally, salaries and prospects in
the said sectors were typically less favourable than in industrial employment.

Labour and popular protest during the Proceso.

Having lost their leaders to various forms of persecution, workers were faced with
brutal repression, conducted, on occasion, with the direct complicity of the
workplace owners.244 However, during the Proceso government, the labour
movement was weakened in general but not fully subjugated to the military
government’s dictates.245 Instances of worker protest were recorded throughout the
duration of the regime. Strike action continued and escalated significantly after
1979. 246 However, as of 1976 new alternate forms of covert action, such as
workplace sabotage and go slows known as trabajo a tristeza or trabajo a desgano,
were developed.

En el período 1976-1981, sobre 291 conflictos analizados … el 33%

fueron huelgas, el 32% quites de colaboración y trabajos a
reglamento, y poco más del 10% …"medidas diversas", como boicots
al comedor, concentraciones internas, etc. A las que agrega un 23%
242
Canitrot, Teoría y práctica, p. 26; Grimson and Kessler, p. 78.
243
Buchanan, p. 360.
244
Victoria Basualdo, ‘Complicidad patronal-militar en la última dictadura argentina: Los casos
de Acindar, Astarsa, Dálmine Siderca, Ford, Ledesma y Mercedes Benz’, Comisión Provincial
Por La Memoria
<http://www.comisionporlamemoria.org/investigacionyensenanza/pdf_biblioteca/Basualdo-
%20Complicidad%20patronal-militar.pdf> [accessed 23 October 2015].
245
Wynia, p. 230.
246
Basualdo, ‘Complicidad’, p. 8.

141
 correspondiente a petitorios y reclamos que, si bien no eran "medidas
de fuerza"… Estas prácticas abiertas de protesta se combinaron o
alternaron con los sabotajes. 247

More recent studies, which tend to adopt a more refined individualistic approach
rather than attempting to identify overarching trends, as was the case of earlier
studies, suggest that instances of worker protest activity constituted a response to
negative working conditions, rather than opposition to the government per se.248
However, neither can it be asserted that lack of militant activity denoted approval or
even tacit acceptance of the government.249

Human rights abuses were publicly condemned by new social actors from varying
socio-economic backgrounds. The most iconic example of protest took the form of
the silent vigils whereby women broke their traditional gender role to lead protests
against the military regime on human rights issues.250 The Madres and Abuelas de
la Plaza de Mayo, whose white baby-shawl head scarves embroidered with the
name of their disappeared relative and/or the slogan ‘Aparición con vida’,
combined with their symbolic circular walk around the Pirámide de Mayo, emerged
as perhaps the most internationally recognised human rights group and durable
emblem of resistance to the violence perpetrated by the military during the Proceso
Government.

Finally, as precursor to the post-2001 asambleas, a novel form of popular self-help

organisation emerged in the form of the locally based, vecinazos. Vecinazos were
grassroots organisations aimed at resisting poverty and isolation by providing
vulnerable community members with access to adequate nutrition and health care.
247
Research results of Ricardo Falcón cited by Dicósimo and Carminati in Daniel Dicósimo and
Andrés Carminati, ‘Sabotaje a la dictadura. Un estudio sobre las formas de sabotaje industrial
durante la última dictadura militar en el Gran Rosario y el centro sudeste bonarense (1976-
1983)’, Anuario IEHS, 28 (2013), 257-78 (p. 263).
248
Daniel Dicósimo, ‘Dirigentes sindicales, racionalización y conflictos durante la última
dictadura militar’, Programa Buenos Aires de Historia Política del siglo XX (ND)
<http://www.historiapolitica.com.ar/datos/biblioteca/dicosimo.pdf>[accessed 24 October 2015]
249
Ivonne Barragán, ‘La represión a la organización sindical de base en una fábrica estatal. La
experiencia represiva de los trabajadores del Astillero Río Santiago durante la última dictadura
militar’, IV Seminario Internacional de Políticas de la Memoria. Ampliación del Campo De Los
Derechos Humanos (Centro Cultural de la Memoria Haroldo Conti. Buenos Aires, 29
September-1 October, 2011).
250
The form the protest took was reflective of Argentina’s traditional iconic silent and dignified
female image, but the fact that women were actually organising politically, independently and
publicly was novel.

142
Despite the non-confrontational form of the vecinazo, it constituted a clear political
statement of rejection of the subalternity and vulnerability assigned to the popular
sectors through the Proceso’s social disciplining programme.

In purely economic terms, in the early stages, the military government’s economic
policies did achieve certain short-lived success.251 However, unlike similar projects
in neighbouring Chile and Brazil, the Proceso’s performance in terms of
accomplishing its stated goal of economic growth and stability proved undeniably
unsuccessful.252 The economic opening of the country had failed to generate the
modern economic growth intended as the vast bulk of foreign deposits which were
attracted, rather than funding long-term projects, were invested in short-term
speculative ventures. Accelerating inflation and soaring foreign debt provided
glaring evidence of economic failure. According to Sabine Michalowski, these were
440 percent and 45 million dollars respectively by the end of the regime.253 Added
to these problems were decreasing GDP and increasing unemployment.254

Fischer attributes this economic failure, rather than human rights issues, as the
predominant cause of mass resistance to the government.255 As the economic
programme underpinning the alliance of interests, which had kept the government
in power, began to disintegrate, so did the alliance itself. 1980 saw the collapse of
the country’s four most important financial institutions. In 1981, the Sociedad Rural
Argentina publicly protested negative circumstances affecting Argentine firms, and
the Unión Industrial Argentina demanded measures to stem the destruction of the

251
Martínez de Hoz’s announcement of his economic programme produced an historic boom on
the Buenos Aires stock exchange, Bermúdez, ‘El derrumbe’. Inflation declined temporarily,
Mario D. Rapoport, ‘Una revisión de la inflación y de sus causas’, in Aportes de la economía
política en el bicentenario ed. by Juan Manuel Vázquez Blanco, Santiago Fraschina and
Emmanuel Agis, (Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros, 2011), pp. 135-65 (p. 145). Labour costs fell
whilst at the same time productivity increased. This represented an increase in the absolute profit
rate, which afforded industrial employers gains of 69 percent, Tedesco, Democracy, pp. 40-2;
López, 119.
252
Klaus Friedrich Veigel, Dictatorship, Democracy, and Globalization: Argentina and the Cost
of Paralysis 1973-2001 (University Park, Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania State Press, 2009),
p. 6.
253
Sabine Michalowski, Unconstitutional Regimes and the Validity of Sovereign Debt: A Legal
Perspective (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007), p. 12.
254
Lewis, The Crisis of Argentine Capitalism, p. 478.
255
Fisher, p. 110. At the same time, human rights issues were gaining a higher profile both
domestically and in the international panorama, putting additional pressure on the government
and causing the Church, initially a firm supporter of the military regime, to reduce support.

143
country’s productive apparatus.256 Added to this high-level opposition was dissent
from senior ranking military officers.257 However, at the forefront of protest were
the working class, whose social and economic status had borne the brunt of the
government's structural policy.

A general strike in 1979 heralded the reconstitution of the proscribed CGT in 1981.
In a context of growing popular protest and generalised unrest, military
fragmentation saw transfer of leadership from the moderate General Roberto
Eduardo Viola to hardliner General Leopoldo Galtieri, neither of whom proved able
to generate significant political momentum, gain popular support or unite the armed
forces.258 In a bid 'for short-term political gain', taking advantage of widespread
grievance over perceived British imperialism on the issue of sovereignty of the
Falkland Islands, April 1982 saw Galtieri station troops in the contested area. 259
Heralding the end of the military government, the period following Argentina's
defeat two months later saw heightened protest, a mass human rights demonstration,
a tax revolt in GBA, a general strike and a large demonstration demanding a return
to democracy.260 Elections which returned the country to democratic government in
October 1983 occurred in a context of economic chaos and near debt default.

To conclude this section, the military government did succeed in eliminating urban
terrorism. However, public memory of the Proceso regime, united under the iconic
slogan Nunca Más, is one of unprecedented human rights violations.261 Violence
committed under the Proceso government, combined with the undeniable failure of

256
Fisher, p. 110.
257
Fisher, p. 110.
258
Rock, Argentina, 1516-1987, pp. 374-6.
259
The view that British and Argentine political leaders acted opportunistically to shore up waning
popularity is expressed by Rock, Argentina, 1516-1987, p. 381. However, this point of view proved
widespread amongst co-operative members with whom I had conversations and who chose to
discuss the subject.
260
McGuire, p. 181.
261
I am using the term ‘public memory’ somewhat loosely. I am not referring to the actual process of
individual or collective memory but rather a generalised concept constructed from a compilation of
various sources from personal testimony to documentary sources, which, given that the period is one
of multiple unresolved issues, continues to receive comment regularly in the public sphere possibly
via interest groups but also in the mainstream press. From my experience of conversations with
Argentines, who had in fact not suffered any direct loss, the subject of the ‘disappearances’ which
took place during the period of the Proceso is very much alive. It appeared that the people I spoke
with, who chose to discuss the subject, share a sense of loss and empathy with those who have lost
loved ones as well as what could be described as a sense of responsibility or shame.

144
the economic programme, which left the country with spiralling inflation,
ever-declining productive capacity and an unprecedented foreign debt, can be
considered as having virtually extinguished popular credibility in military solutions.
In terms of creating renewed social order, the Military regime’s results were equally
disappointing. It appears that the Military’s physical and economic aggression
merely succeeded in destroying the established social fabric, most specifically
bonds founded on working identity, without establishing a valid alternative.

In seeking to explain the failure of the economic measures, Martínez de Hoz and
free-market economists in general refer to interference by the military, which
prevented the economists making radical cuts to public spending and privatising the
economy.262 Furthermore, the Ministry of the Economy had no jurisdiction over
military spending, which was placed by an independent source as the highest in
Latin America.263 In fact, the military has been criticised for the progressive
increase in spending in the initial quadrennium, which was double the historical
national average, including the military governments from 1969 to 1973.264

The democratic restoration.

Democratic elections in January 1983 brought UCR candidate Raúl Ricardo
Alfonsín to the presidency on a platform of social justice and economic
sovereignty.265 As co-founder of the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights,
Alfonsín had provided unpaid representation for families of ‘disappeared’, publicly
opposed the Falkland Islands invasion, and suffered incarceration for outspoken
criticism of the Peronist and Onganía regimes. Alfonsín’s political integrity
afforded him personal popularity second only to Juan Perón.
The socio-economic context bequeathed to the incoming government by the
dictatorship was extremely negative. Alfonsín faced soaring inflation, fiscal deficit

262
David A. Steinberg, Demanding Devaluation: Exchange Rate Politics in the Developing
World (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015); Rock. Argentina 1516-1978, p. 368. Lewis,
The Crisis of Argentine Capitalism, p. 452.
263
Lewis, The Crisis of Argentine Capitalism, p. 454.
264
David Pion-Berlin, ‘The Limits to Military Power: Institutions and Defence Budgeting in
Democratic Argentina’, Studies in Comparative International Development, 33: 1(1998), 94-115
(pp. 101-02).
265
Raúl Alfonsín speech, UCR, Boletín Institucional Honorable Convención Nacional, p. 4.
<http://www.ucr.org.ar/data/file/hcn-documentos/BoletinEspecial2.pdf> [accessed 12 July 2013]

145
of over 12 percent and an inefficient stagnating economy.266 Added to this was
unprecedented foreign debt equating to 70 percent of GDP, service payments for
which constituted 8 percent of GDP.267 The social panorama was one of popular
poverty, predominantly due to eroded purchasing power but also, to some extent,
unemployment, added to which were economic pressures caused by inadequate
health care and housing provision.268 Nevertheless, two weeks into his presidency,
Alfonsín had initiated a national food programme and pledged a 25 percent
budgetary increase to the state education system. Economy Minister Bernardo
Grinspun announced his intention to foment economic growth, re-inflate the
economy and effect more equitable income distribution.269 The dictatorship’s self-
amnesty laws were repealed and trials of numerous high ranking officers in the
military juntas ordered. In addition, an independent commission, Comisión
Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas (CONDADEP), was established to
investigate human rights violations.

However, the promising future indicated by the government’s initial decisiveness

was not realised. After less than six years in office, a backdrop of soaring inflation,
currency failure, widespread poverty, civil disorder, nationwide strikes, regular
power cuts, factory closures, layoffs and democratic discontent saw Alfonsín bring
forward elections, which returned a Peronist government to power. The following
section considers the key factors which led to the Alfonsín government’s apparently
poor performance.

On the basis of twentieth-century precedents, Alfonsín feared that union unrest

could provoke a coup and as such, that the Armed forces and Peronist unions should
be democratised and weakened.270 In the first two years of his mandate, Alfonsín
introduced a raft of measures aimed at professionalising and weakening the

266
Carlos Escudé, Festival de licuaciones: Causas y consecuencias de la pobreza en Argentina
(Buenos Aires: Lumière, 2006) ebook, Chapter Three, opening paragraphs.
267
Bermúdez, ‘El derumbe’; Dinerstein citing Di Tella; Ana Dinerstein, ‘The Violence of
Stability: Argentina in the 1990s’, in Global Humanization: Studies in the Manufacture of
Labour, ed. by Mike Neary (London, UK: Mansell Publishing Ltd., 1999), pp. 47-76. (p. 55).
268
Buchanan, p. 357.
269
Roehrig, pp. 63-7; Luigi Manzetti and Marco Dell’Aquila, ‘Economic Stabilisation in
Argentina: The Austral Plan’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 20: 1 (1988), 1-26 (p. 3).
270
Tedesco, Democracy, p. 62; Lewis, The History, pp. 156-7.

146
military.271 However, the process of prosecuting human rights violations
encountered multiple setbacks.272 Establishing the Consejo Supremo de Las Fuerzas
Armadas (CONSUFA), Alfonsín provided the opportunity for self-cleansing using a
scale of culpability, allowing Junta leaders to assume blame. Delays in proceedings,
the publication of damning evidence from the CONADEP report and a rare united
front, which saw the Armed forces refuse to recognise their crimes, conspired to
transfer the process to civilian courts. The prosecution and conviction of five
leading members of the Proceso government represented an unprecedented
keystone event in Latin American history. However, when civilian courts
disregarded Due Obedience guidelines, the proceedings escalated beyond
Alfonsín’s control.273

Introduction of the Punto Final or time limit on prosecutions proved

counterproductive. The ensuing upsurge in indictments undoubtedly engendered the
1987 Semana Santa military rebellion.274 Public rejection of the rebels’ action
proved virtually unanimous, a joint labour, business and political pro-democratic
solidarity pact was signed and even rank and file military response to the rebellion
was largely unsupportive. However, rather than deal firmly with the perpetrators, in
June 1987, the government passed a further apparently conciliatory Law, Ley de
Obediencia Debida, which limited the legal responsibility for human rights abuses
to senior officers above the rank of colonel. Alfonsín’s presidency saw three further
military rebellions, the final one in late 1988.

Alfonsín’s apparently indecisive attitude towards the Military appears to have been
reflected in his stance toward the Peronist unions. After initially following an
unsuccessful confrontational policy approach which created stalemate between the
government and the unions, the government adopted a conciliatory strategy based
on a ‘concertación social’ or social agreement. The agreement, which sought a

271
See Tedesco, Democracy, pp. 64-5. See also Roehrig, pp. 63-7.
272
For more on this, see Elin Skaar, ‘Argentina: Truth, Justice and Reconciliation’ in Roads to
Reconciliation, ed. by Elin Skaar, Siri Gloppen and Astri Guhrke (Lanham, MD: Lexington
Books, 2005), pp. 157-76 (pp. 160-2).
273
Roehrig, p. 69.
274
The leader of the rebellion Lieutenant-Colonel Aldo Rico made a clear statement that the
rebellion was not a coup d’état but rather a protest at the legal proceeding against the military.
Roehrig, p. 72.

147
three-sided accord between labour and business organisations and the government,
yielded equally disappointing results as the unions resisted government controls.
Significantly, Tedesco identifies the negative economic situation as a salient factor
in the trade union-government antagonism.275

Alfonsín’s early assertion ‘con la democracia se come, con la democracia se educa,

con la democracia se cura’ had raised hopes of improved living standards for
Argentina’s workers and popular sectors. However, in a context of growing income
inequality, wage gains achieved at the beginning of the democratic period declined,
notably in the areas of manufacturing and public administration.276 Pension values
dropped and many small retailers and self-employed workers went bankrupt.
Manufacturing continued its downward trend.277 As people moved to self-
employment or employment in smaller businesses, the number of workers with no
health care, social security and legal protection doubled, comprising almost 25
percent of the total workforce. Finally, by 1988, almost 37 percent of households
and 44 percent of individuals were living below the poverty line or suffering from
unmet basic needs.278 Poverty levels were even more pronounced in the smaller
interior cities of Neuquén, Posadas, and Santiago del Estero.

Figure 3. 7: Poverty in GBA during the 1980s (By percentage of population)

Source: Powers, p. 40.

The country’s external debt appears to have played a significant role in

undermining the government’s credibility. Public opinion was firmly against

275
Tedesco, Democracy, 79-80.
276
Nancy Regina Powers, Grassroots Expectations of Democracy and Economy: Argentina in
Comparative Perspective (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001), pp. 42-3.
277
Powers, p. 42.
278
Powers, p. 42.

148
payment of the debt. Grinspun’s Economic advisor, Prebisch had identified two
main problems in the economy: firstly, inflation and, secondly, the debt. Reflecting
public opinion, Prebisch defined the debt as a political, rather than an economic
problem, on the basis that it consisted of capital flight and included a significant
private component.279 Further highlighted was the fact that a significant proportion
of the debt had been contracted illegally by a non-democratic government.280
Therefore, the moratorium, set under the previous government, was reconfirmed
and solidarity to oppose payment sought with other Latin American debtor
countries.281 However, the proposed front did not form. Furthermore, other
international creditor countries and agencies refused support unless Argentina
conceded to negotiate an agreement with the IMF. The lack of support and
likelihood of retaliatory international sanctions saw Alfonsín capitulate and
negotiate debt repayment. On 3 September 1984, Grinspun, having firmly stated,
‘We will not make any agreement with the IMF if this in any way limits the growth
of the Argentinian [sic] economy’, was forced to reverse his decision.282 If the
government attempted to resist the IMF-prescribed austerity measures, which
inevitably generated labour unrest, or failed to meet targets, sanctions were
imposed, as was the case in 1984-1985.

Signalling the end of the government’s attempt to achieve consensus on social and
economic policy with trade unions and business organisations, on 14 June 1985, the
Austral Plan was introduced.283 The plan was presented as fundamental to
democratic consolidation, which could not be achieved in the context of the
prevailing economic crisis.284 The plan aimed at halting persistent high inflation and
courting IMF support.285 Orthodox tight fiscal policy and monetary restraint

279
Tedesco, Democracy, p. 90. Manuel Alfieri, ‘Cavallo y su rol en la estatización de la deuda
privada en la dictadura’, El Tiempo Argentino, 1 July 2012.
280
Tedesco, Democracy, p. 90.
281
Melisa Deciancio and Diana Tussie, Argentina en el mundo (1960-2000), América Latina en
la historia contemporánea Series (London, UK: Taurus, 2015) ebook.
282
Margaret Conklin and Daphne Davidson, ‘The IMF and Economic and Social and Human
Rights: A Case Study of Argentina, 1958-1985’, Human Rights Quarterly 8: 2 (1986), 227-69
(pp. 241-2).
283
Tedesco, Democracy, p. 115.
284
Si el problema económico no es resuelto, la vida política de la nación correrá, sin duda, serios
riesgos… El plan de reforma no es para salvar un gobierno; es para salvar un sistema político; es
para salvar un estilo de vida; y también es para recuperar el orgullo y la ambición nacional. Taken
from a speech made by Presidente Alfonsín, 14 June 1985.
285
Manzetti and Dell’Aquila, p. 3.

149
combined with the plan’s less conventional shock treatment for inflation.286 A new
currency, the austral, pegged to the dollar, was introduced. The plan was generally
well received, and initially succeeded in reducing inflation. However, this was
short-lived. Residual inflation rose, causing a decline in ‘real’ wages and leading
Alfonsín to revert to wage negotiation. The dollar-peso peg was abandoned and the
crawling peg system reintroduced.287 By deviating from agreed adjustments, the
government forfeited IMF support.288 A further plan, el Plan Primavera, aimed at
short-term stabilisation, was implemented in August 1988. After briefly curbing
inflation, the plan failed, a fact which Tedesco attributes in large part to IMF
reluctance to extend the finance required to bolster it.289 A subsequent run on the
austral and ensuing economic turbulence saw both important businesses and
workers incur losses.290 The end of el Plan Primavera in February 1989 effectively
signified the end of the UCR government.

There can be little doubt that Alfonsín’s government was handicapped from the
outset by the extremely negative economic context in which it assumed power,
specifically the weight of external debt. Caught between diametrically opposed
powers, the UCR did succeed in consolidating democracy and neutralising the
threat of military intervention. However, this came at the expense of the
tempering or abandonment of Alfonsín’s social and human rights commitments
and intended economic structural policy in favour of anti-popular monetarist
reform which effectively mirrored that of the previous government. Unlike the
Military, the labour movement recovered a significant degree of its combative
capacity, which it employed to resist government policy, thus contributing to the
government’s disappointing socio-economic performance.

Menem-Duhalde.
The human cost of 1990s neoliberal policy for Argentina’s popular sectors was
documented in the introduction of this work. This section seeks to provide a

286
On the specific policy instruments of the Austral Plan, see Manzetti and Dell’Aquila, pp. 6-7.
287
Acuña, Galiani and Tommasi, p. 36.
288
Ana C. Dinerstein, ‘The Violence of Stability: An Investigation of the Subjectivity of Labour
in Argentina’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Warwick, 2001), p. 174.
289
Laura Tedesco, ‘The Crisis of the Argentinian State: Democratisation and Economic
Restructuring, 1976-1989’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Warwick, 1994), p. 209.
290
Tedesco, Democracy, p. 258.

150
brief consideration of the economic policy adopted by Carlos Menem’s Peronist
government as it sought to resolve the country’s extreme economic difficulties,
which, it has been posited, were firmly rooted in the need to address the foreign
debt bequeathed by the Proceso government.291 The section contextualises the
experience of unprecedented unemployment, poverty and inequality previously
described, and also seeks to identify possible weaknesses in aspects of economic
policy at the domestic and the national level.

Menem’s electoral platform was traditionally Peronist and promised, ‘una

revolución productiva’ and a ‘salariazo’. However, once in power, Menem
abandoned promises of Peronist policy and adopted a market approach.292
Within months of assuming the presidency, Menem had introduced two
complementary laws with the clear aim of restructuring the state apparatus and
reducing economic intervention and regulation by the public sector. The first
law, Ley de Reforma del Estado 23.696, facilitated privatisation of state assets
and afforded the government sweeping executive emergency powers over state-
owned property.293 The second law, Ley de Emergencia Económica 23.697/89,
declared the Central Bank independent, cancelling its role as direct provider of
national or provincial finance.294 Further features of the law included: annulment
of public service sector grants, subsidies and special concessions; abandonment
of the Compre Nacional policy favouring national industry and all other
regulations affording preferential selection of nationally produced goods;
suspension of the industrial promotion programme; introduction of equality of
treatment for foreign and national capital, and finally, establishment of benefits
and tax exemptions for private sector concerns.295 In addition, the National
Executive Power was granted the authority to rationalise the public sector, cut

291
T. Phillips, ‘Fourteen Billions between Friends’, Project Allende (2006), 1-10
<http://www.projectallende.org/deuda/www-deuda/mdeh.pdf> [accessed 11 September 2011]
292
Powers, pp. 44-6.
293
See Alberto Bonnet, La hegemonía menemista: el neoconservadurismo en Argentina, 1989-
2001 (Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2007), pp. 24-7.
294
Marisa Duarte, ‘El Consenso de Washington y su correlato en la reforma del estado en la
Argentina: Los efectos de la privitización’, in Más allá del pensamiento único: hacia una
renovación de las ideas económicas en América Latina y el Caribe, ed. by Martín Schorr
(Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2002), pp. 143-88 (p. 147).
295
Norberto Zeller, Reseña del proceso de reforma del estado en la Argentina (1989-1996)
(Buenos Aires: Instituto Nacional de la Administración Pública, Dirección Nacional de Estudios
y Documentación, Dirección de Estudios e Investigaciones, 1999), pp. 21-2.

151
excess staff and eliminate unprofitable sectors.296 A further example of
economic ‘opening’ legislation issued in 1991 was the wide-ranging decree
which abolished import quotas and simplified customs procedures as well as
affording professionals the freedom to set their fees, decontrolling prices of
staple food and prescription medicines and eliminating regulatory boards for
grain and meat in particular.297

Tax reforms were introduced, income and value added taxes were raised and
their range extended.298 During the first year and a half of Menem’s
administration, 60,000 government employees were dismissed or forced into
retirement.299 By the end of his mandate, this figure had reached 700,000.300
Nevertheless, between 1990 and 1993, despite the massive dismissals of public
servants, Argentina’s tax collection board Dirección General Impositiva (DGI)
doubled its payroll.301 Penalties for tax evasion were introduced, prosecutions
rose and closures imposed for tax evasion soared.302 Revenue from tax
collection in 1992 registered an increase of 8.7 billion dollars in two years.

Decentralisation was introduced as a means of reducing state spending and, by

1993, a World Bank study reported, ‘Provinces now have most responsibility for
. . . such social services as education, health, security and housing’.303 As social
and welfare service costs were transferred to the provincial municipalities, they
were unable to access sufficient funding for necessary services such as schools
and hospitals. Georgina M. Gómez notes that most of the provinces ran deficits
and many provincial banks went bankrupt during the 1995 crisis.304 She adds
that funding shortages fuelled clientelism as necessary finances were made

296
Robert J. Alexander, A History of Organized Labor in Argentina (Westport, CT: Praeger
Publishing, 2003), p. 210.
297
McGuire, p. 219.
298
Acuña, Galiani and Tommasi, p. 56.
299
Alexander, p. 210.
300
Steven Levitsky, Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America: Argentine Peronism
in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p.145.
301
McGuire, pp. 218-9.
302
Kent Eaton, Politics and Economic Reform in New Democracies: Argentina and the
Philippines in the 1990s (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002),
p.198.
303
David Rock, ‘Racking Argentina’, New Left Review, 17 (2002), 55-86 (p. 67).
304
Georgina M. Gómez, Argentina's Parallel Currency: The Economy of the Poor (London,
UK: Routledge, 2015), p. 51.

152
available from the central powers in exchange for support for specific unpopular
government bills.305

Adjustments to labour policy were introduced in order to achieve flexibility and

reduce the cost of labour.306 The National Employment Act 24.013, passed in 1991,
comprised a comprehensive piece of legislation which introduced new categories of
worker to whom varied temporary contracts would be applied.307 Amendments to
Law 24.013 in 1995 saw the introduction of six-month trial periods to new
employment contracts.308 Key flexibilisation measures were: the introduction of
fixed-term contracts, limited-term contracts aimed at enabling the launch of a new
activity and short-term training contracts.309 Legislation was also introduced aimed
at decentralisation of collective bargaining and the deregulation of the labour
market as well as the privatisation of social security, traditionally provided by CGT
as Obras Sociales.310 Between January 1992 and early 1993, various decrees were
passed with the objective of removing union jurisdiction and monopoly over the
handling of funds and the Obras Sociales together with legislation to transfer
pensions to private concerns, a system which several unions accepted.311 Further
anti-labour legislation was enacted, preventing strike action by certain sectors of the
public services designated as ‘essential’.312

The negative implications of the above-noted changes to employment and

income levels, job security and general welfare are self-evident. Equally
apparent is the negative implication of cancellation of preferential treatment
agreements and tax reforms to the successful operation of Argentina’s
traditional domestic PYMES. However, added to this was increased competition
from foreign imports, which were made cheaper by convertibility. Privatisation
also produced a negative impact on domestic business in three key ways. Firstly,

305
Gómez, p. 51.
306
Chris Wylde, Latin America After Neoliberalism: Developmental Regimes in Post-Crisis
States (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 116.
307
María Lorena Cook, The Politics of Labor Reform in Latin America: Between Flexibility and
Rights (Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007), p. 74.
308
Wylde, Latin America After Neoliberalism, p. 116.
309
Dinerstein, ‘TheViolence of Stability: An Investigation’, pp. 227- 33.
310
Dinerstein, ‘The Violence of Stability: An Investigation’, pp. 230-3.
311
Dinerstein, ‘The Violence of Stability: An Investigation’, p. 235.
312
Bonnet, p. 31.

153
price increases of non-tradable goods, supplied by the privatised companies,
specifically energy and transportation, significantly affected the competitiveness
of domestic producers of tradable commodities.313 Secondly, business was lost
by local firms to the parent companies of privatised conglomerates.314 Finally,
local business contracted and unemployment and informality increased.

As a consequence of the above, union membership and resources declined and

finances deteriorated.315 Unlike during the Alfonsín regime, most Peronist unions
acquiesced and, to some extent, co-operated with Menem’s more radical reforms.
Co-operation with Menem’s reforms by Peronist union leaders and numbers of the
rank and file has been attributed to several motivations including economic
pragmatism, desire for political stability, deeply rooted party loyalty and, not least,
in the case of the former group, personal gain.316 Nevertheless, the general
acquiescence of the CGT leadership was not shared by all, leading to a further split
and the formation of the Movimiento de Trabajadores Argentinos (MTA).317

Concurrent with the decline in sectors of traditional union activity were new forms
of resistance and protest activity. The first cazerolazo and piquete took place in
Argentina to protest against Menem’s socio-economic policy. The emblematic
teachers’ Carpa Blanca, and Marchas en Silencio were further new types of protest
that began in the 1990s.318 Menem’s pardoning of ex-military involved in the
human rights crimes committed during the Proceso government led to the formation

313
Daniel Azpiazu, Las privatizaciones en la Argentina: diagnóstico y propuestas para una
mayor competitividad y equidad social (Buenos Aires: CIEPP, Fundación OSDE, Miño y Dávila
Editores, 2003), p. 75; Julio Godio, Argentina, luces y sombras en el primer año de transición :
las mutaciones de la economía, la sociedad y la política durante el gobierno de Eduardo
Duhalde (enero-diciembre de 2002) (Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos, 2003), p. 231.
314
Leopoldo Rodríguez-Boetsch, ‘Public Service Privatisation and Crisis in Argentina’, Privredna
Izgradnja, XLVIII: 3: 4 (2005), 97-113 (p.103).
315
McGuire, p. 218.
316
Steven Levitsky, ‘Democratic Survival amidst Economic Failure’, in The Third Wave of
Democratization in Latin America: Advances and Setbacks, ed. by Frances Hagopian and Scott
Mainwaring (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 63-90 (p. 76).
317
Bonnet, p. 364.
318
The Carpa Blanca was a white tent erected in front of Congress House to demand increased
spending on education and an end to provincial inequality. See, for example, Isidoro Cheresky,
Poder presidencial, opinion pública, y exclusión social (Buenos Aires: CLACSO Manantial, 2008),
pp. 122-4. For the origins of the Marchas en Silencio, see Marcelo Bergman and Mónica Szurmuc,
‘Gender, Citizenship and Social Protest: New Social Movements in Argentina’, in The Latin
American Subaltern Studies Reader, ed. by Ileana Rodríguez (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2001), pp. 383-401.

154
of a new group of social actors under the name of Hijos por la Identidad y la
Justicia contra el Olvido y el Silencio (HIJOS). The HIJOS, children and young
relatives of disappeared Argentines now in their mid-twenties, adopted a form of
protest known as escraches.319 The escraches were acts of public shaming whereby
details of crimes committed were written on a person’s residence as graffiti.

Economic policy: Growth and decline.

The first two and a half years of Menem’s presidency, although experiencing a
brief period of stability, relapsed into hyperinflation and hyper-recession.320 It
was not until March 1991 that stability was achieved, with the introduction of
the convertibility law. To bring inflation under control, Minister of the Economy
Domingo Cavallo pegged the Argentine new peso at a one-to-one rate with the
United States dollar. Central to the plan was that currency could only be printed
in amounts supported by the country’s reserve stock. Any future deficits could
not be covered by the printing of currency and those which did arise would
necessarily be covered by debt. The implications of this aspect of the plan with
regard to the external debt are discussed later.321 However, initially,
convertibility succeeded, enforcing monetary and fiscal discipline, reducing the
national debt service inflation and curbing inflation.322 Inflation fell from 5,000
percent per annum in 1989 to 0.16 percent by 1996.323

With inflation declining, the government enacted further wide-ranging measures

to heighten the liberalisation of Argentina’s economy, including capital and
trade flows and banking regulations.324 Trade barriers were lowered, many
foreign banks established branches in Argentina and state-owned enterprises,
including oil, telecommunications and energy, were privatised. The security
afforded by convertibility and the ease with which profits could be repatriated

319
See Ana Cecilia Dinerstein, The Politics of Autonomy in Latin America: The Art of
Organising Hope (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), pp. 121-4.
320
See William C. Smith, ‘State, Market and Neoliberalism in Post-Transition Argentina: The
Menem Experiment’, Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, 33: 4 (1991), 45-82
(pp. 52-63).
321
J. F. Hornbeck, Argentina's Defaulted Sovereign Debt: Dealing with The "Holdouts",
(Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, 2010), p. 2.
322
Hornbeck, Argentina's Defaulted Sovereign Debt, p. 2.
323
Kacowicz, p. 151.
324
Cohen, p. 43.

155
attracted investment from many sources, but most specifically, from European
countries, notably Spain, France and Italy.325 Clear economic growth was
registered from 1991 to late 1994. The early 1990s saw GDP grow at record
levels. In fact, from 1990 to 1994 Argentina outperformed Brazil and Chile with
GDP growth of some 40 percent.326

The country experienced a brief recession as a result of the effects of the

Mexican peso or Tequila crisis in December 1994. This led to an increase in the
costs of capital required to service both the country’s debt and loans to cover the
fiscal deficit; Argentina’s GDP declined by 2.8 percent.327 Nevertheless, the
currency peg survived the Mexican crisis and economic growth resumed
between 1996 and 1998.328 However, the system of pegging one currency with
another implies risk largely attributable to the inflexibility inherent in the
system. As Arie M. Kacowicz notes, ‘a volatile international economic
environment requires frequent adjustments of exchange rates to potential
damaging external shocks, which the Argentine regime did not allow due to
convertibility’.329

External shocks in the form of the East Asian financial crisis in 1997, which
moved to Russia in 1998 and then Brazil in 1998, impacted on Argentina,
producing a profound recession from the third quarter of 1998. In addition, as
the US dollar began to appreciate against other currencies, the Argentine peso,
pegged to it, became artificially over-valued.330 When in 1999 Brazil, which
accounted for 30 percent of Argentina’s exports, devalued the real in a bid to
address their domestic economic crisis, this produced a significant negative
impact on Argentina’s exports.331 The increased cost of credit to Argentina

325
Cohen, p. 44; For an account of Spain’s investment in Argentina during Menem’s mandate,
see Javier Vidal Olivares, ‘Spanish Business in Argentina and Chile since 1880’, in Jones and
Lluch, pp. 135-51, pp. 142-4.
326
Kacowicz, p.150.
327
J. F. Hornbeck, ‘The Argentine Financial Crisis: A Chronology of Events’, CRS Report for
Congress, 31 January 2002 <http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/8040.pdf> [accessed 3
January 2015]
328
Hornbeck sets this growth at 5.5 percent in 1996 and 8.1 percent in 1997, Hornbeck, ‘The
Argentine Financial Crisis’.
329
Kacowicz, p. 152.
330
Kacowicz, p. 152.
331
Hornbeck, Argentina’s Defaulted Sovereign Debt, p. 2.

156
translated as reduced investment, difficulty in servicing the external debt and
increasing fiscal deficit.332

Table 1. 1: Argentina’s external debt 1985-2004

Year Debt Year Debt

1985 51,156,731,000 1995 98,773,129,000
1986 52,688,153,000 1996 111,386,695,000
1987 58,722,661,000 1997 126,837,492,000
1988 59,108,556,000 1998 140,105,444,000
1989 65,538,430,000 1999 150,014,418,000
1990 62,510,868,000 2000 147,029,336,000
1991 65,675,403,000 2001 149,706,909,000
1992 68,605,634,000 2002 145,644,399,000
1993 64,681,396,000 2003 161,120,874,000
1994 75,094,059,000 2004 165,690,509,000

Source: World Bank, ‘External debt stocks, total (DOD, current US$)’,
2015<http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/DT.DOD.DECT.CD/countries/1W-
AR?display=default>[accessed 14 January 2015]

The deficit was covered by financial support in the form of loans from the IMF.
These loans came with conditions that the government effect further fiscal
adjustment, market reforms including the liberalisation of the labour market,
additional tax laws and financial regulations, which Menem generally followed. 333
Nevertheless, Argentina’s economic contraction persisted and, from
1997, significant withdrawal of speculative capital became evident and GDP had
registered a negative rate of 3.4 percent by 1999.334 The external debt continued
increasing. Amidst increasing levels of public discontent in mid-1999, and serious
accusations of corruption levelled at the Menem administration, elections in
October 1999 saw the Peronists removed by a victory for the Alianza para el
Trabajo, la Justicia y la Educación.

The Alianza, headed by UCR politician Fernando de la Rúa, comprised two

centre-left parties, the UCR and the FrePaSo, which had been formed in the
mid-1990s by Peronists disillusioned with Menem-style Peronism. When de la
Rúa assumed the presidency, the economy was showing predictable signs of

332
Cohen, p. 45.
333
Cohen, p. 45.
334
Kacowicz, p. 158.

157
collapse.335 The Alianza Coalition focused on issues of transparency, law and
order and social justice. De la Rúa’s electoral campaign address had contained
clear personal criticisms of Menem and promises to resolve key issues of
economic and legal inequality, unemployment, corruption, violence and lack of
dignity faced by increasing numbers of Argentines.336 The Alianza’s manifesto,
entitled Carta a los argentinos promised to fight for social justice, combat tax
evasion and financial speculation, raise health and education budgets and retain
the convertibility law. The decision to retain the restrictive convertibility system
is explained by Levitsky as a necessary, if undesirable, political decision:

In political terms it was almost impossible to abandon the dollar peso

peg due to sparking fears of renewed inflation and also the fear that
any congressional debate on the possibility of removing the peg would
promote speculation and instability.337

Despite promises of reform, the de la Rúa administration, with José Luis

Machinea as Minister of the Economy, did not introduce any fundamental
changes to the macroeconomic policies introduced by their predecessors and
continued to implement austerity measures, which, rather than promoting
improvements, aggravated the economic and related social crisis.338

De la Rúa’s post-adjustment policies included structural reform to eliminate the

state deficit and free the labour market. Tax increases, introduced despite already
high tax rates, were approved; these increases became effective in January 2000 and
April and August 2001.339 Reductions of between 12 and 15 percent were applied to

335
Kacowicz, p. 152.
336
De la Rúa’s electoral campaign address is available in Bonnet, p. 263.
337
Steven Levitsky, ‘The Normalisation of Argentine Politics’, Journal of Democracy, 11: 2
(2000), 56-69 (p. 67).
338
Mario E. Carranza, ‘Poster Child or Victim of Imperialist Globalization?: Explaining
Argentina’s December 2001 Political Crisis and Economic Collapse’, Latin American
Perspectives, 147: 32: 6 (2005), 65-89 (p. 70).
339
Joint Economic Committee United States Congress, ‘Argentina’s Economic Crisis: Causes
and Cures’, (2003) <http://www.hacer.org/pdf/Schuler.pdf> [accessed 16 October 2009] To add
perspective to the rises, the paper makes the following comparison: the highest rate of personal
income tax, 35 percent, was near the level of the United States, but the combined rate of federal
payroll tax paid by employer and employee was 32.9 percent, versus 15.3 percent in the United
States; the standard rate of value-added tax was 21 percent, versus state sales taxes of 0 to 11
percent in the United States. Argentina imposed taxes on exports and on financial transactions
from April 2001, which do not exist in the United States. Argentina’s high tax rates encouraged
tax evasion: an estimated 23 percent of the economy was underground and 30 to 50 percent of

158
pensions and the wages of state employees with monthly salaries of over four
figures.340 In May 2000, Congress approved the Ley de Reforma Laboral, which
intensified Menem’s flexibilisation law. Significant criticism of the law centred on
its provisions for the extension of the standard trial period of three months
established under Law 24.013 (December 1991), provisions for instant termination
of trial periods without indemnity payments and decentralisation of collective
bargaining.341

The external debt continued to restrict political manoeuvre. In early 2001, faced
with possible debt default, Machinea negotiated an agreement with the IMF and
other financial institutions, by which Argentine debt bonds were exchanged for
some 39,700 million US dollars, referred to as the blindaje, or shield.342 The
agreement on which the blindaje loan was secured included reducing future
pensions and deregulation of labour unions' work insurance.343 The plan raised
hopes but ultimately failed. This, in turn, led to Machinea’s resignation, the
government’s commitment to economic orthodoxy, implementation of strict
austerity measures and the eventual appointment of Domingo Cavallo.344

Cavallo requested special powers and committed to arrive at zero fiscal deficit by
cuts of up to 13 percent to be applied to pensions and public sector wages for
workers earning over 500 pesos per month, as well as further reductions in federal
transfers to the provinces. 345 In mid-2001, in order to avoid default on the external
debt, Cavallo implemented the megacanje initiative, by which short- and medium-
term bonds were exchanged for bonds of seven, fifteen and thirty years maturity

all transactions evaded payment of tax. Joint Economic Committee United States Congress,
p. 10.
340
Juan E. Corradi, ‘Prelude to Disaster: Weak Reform, Competitive Politics in Argentina’, in
Post-Stabilization Politics in Latin America: Competition, Transition, Collapse, ed. by Carol
Wise and Riordan Roett (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003), pp. 105-33 (p.
124).
341
For the full terms of the law, see MECON
<http://infoleg.mecon.gov.ar/infolegInternet/anexos/60000-64999/63208/norma.htm>[accessed
12 August 2010]
342
Claudio Ziotnik, ‘El FMI aprobó ayer la operación blindaje por US$ 40 mil milliones: Con coraza
la vida es otra cosa’, Página12, 1 January 2001< http://www.pagina12.com.ar/2001/01-01/01-01-
13/pag11.htm> [accessed 24 October 2011]
343
Ziotnik.
344
Protest was widespread. Both the Interior Minister and the Vice President resigned in protest.
345
Leonor Arfuch and Gisela Catanzaro, Préterito imperfecto: lecturas críticas del acontecer
(Buenos Aires, Prometeo Libros, 2008), p. 95.

159
held in Argentine banks and pension funds at a higher rate of interest. However, in
practice, the growth expected from the funds, required to enable repayment in the
longer term, was not generated. By December 2001, the official unemployment rate
was approaching 20 percent, with real unemployment figures substantially
higher.346

In the wake of the 11 September ‘Twin Towers’ disaster, and its repercussions for
US business, Argentina experienced severe capital flight. On 30 November, in order
to curb the outflow of capital and prevent the banks’ collapse, Cavallo introduced a
measure known as the corralito, by which bank deposits were frozen to prevent a
run on personal funds. To add insult to injury, instances of profiteering from the
corralito were commonplace. Although cash withdrawals were restricted to 1,000
pesos per month, purchases by credit card, debit card and cheque were allowed.
Profiting from the crisis, members of the international banking system applied
usurious rates for purchases made by credit card.347 The effects of the corralito
were especially felt by small- and medium-scale bankers, workers whose salaries
were paid into bank accounts a compulsory aspect of de la Rúa’s banking reform
legislation and, obviously, those who were paid in cash and who generally belonged
to the lower end of the wage sector.348 Argentina’s cartoneros, the sector which is
the focus of this study, were severely impacted by this measure.

The negative effects of the corralito on Argentina’s popular and middle sectors
united both groups. General strikes against financial restrictions and the IMF, and
looting of supermarkets in Buenos Aires, Mendoza, Concordia and Rosario
occurred on 13 and 16 December.349 On 19 December, thousands of Argentines
took their protest to the streets in Buenos Aires in a mass mobilisation and
cazerolazo. The cacerolazo referred to here took place in Buenos Aires city,
although others occurred in many major cities. The crowd demanded President de la

346
Joseph E. Stiglitz, ‘Argentina, Short-Changed: Why the Nation that Followed the Rules Fell to
Pieces’, Washington Post, 12 May 2002.
347
Larry Elliot and Jill Treanor, ‘British Banks Profited from Argentina’s Woes’, Guardian
Unlimited, 15 January 2002 <http://www.guardian.co.uk/argentina/story0,11439,633551,00.html>
[accessed 15 April 2002]
348
Elliot and Treanor.
349
Ana C. Dinerstein, ‘¡Qué se vayan todos! Popular Insurrection and the Asambleas Barriales in
Argentina’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 22: 2 (2003), 187-200 (p. 192).

160
Rúa’s resignation. However, their rallying slogan ¡Qué se vayan todos, qué no
quede ni uno solo! (All of them out not a single one must remain!) indicated that de
la Rúa’s resignation was insufficient; their message was to the entire governing
body, the union and business hierarchies and the international financing bodies.350
De la Rúa’s declaration of a state of siege and repression leading to over 20 deaths
would appear to have prompted the resignations of Cavallo and then de la Rúa
himself.

The immediate aftermath of de la Rúa’s resignation saw a series of five presidents

take office in little over a week. Senator Eduardo Duhalde, Buenos Aires Governor
and Vice-President under Menem from 1989-1991, finally assumed the presidency
on 1 January 2002 with a congressional mandate to serve out the remainder of de la
Rúa’s term. Rock described the challenge facing Duhalde as, ‘steering the country
through an unparalleled economic depression, grappling with the demands of the
IMF and heading off widespread revolt’.351

Argentina’s trade unions, the traditional bargaining tools of the working class, had
been weakened and fragmented by 1990s economic policy and labour legislation.
However, in their stead, effective, well-coordinated and innovative forms of
resistance and protest in addition to alternative survival mechanisms had developed
in response to increasing hardship and marginalisation. Grugel and Riggirozzi
highlight Duhalde’s focus on the restoration of traditional forms of governance and
stability by both assuming control of the new sources of production and
reintegrating the new social actors into the formal channels of state-society
networks.352

With these aims in mind, Duhalde rejected ‘menemist’ speculative neoliberal style
and orthodox stabilisation programmes, which would have focused on regaining
investor and IMF confidence, and instead increased state intervention into economic

350
Aníbal Ibarra, ‘Para que surjan nuevos dirigentes’, Clarin, 27 April 2002
<http://edant.clarin.com/diario/2002/04/27/o-379121.htm> [accessed 1 February 2005]
351
Rock, ‘Racking Argentina’, p. 56.
352
Grugel and Riggirozzi, ‘The Return’, p. 95.

161
planning; the close relationship Menem had cultivated with the United States was
eschewed in favour of strengthening relations with the Mercosur and Brazil. 353
As Grugel and Riggirozzi explain:

Duhalde turned to old ideas and the residual legitimacy of the national
(desarrollista) development project that had been overturned in the 1980s
and 1990s… In particular, the government set out a new policy based on a
proactive state in some key areas of the economy and in the delivery of
social services, and called for a new alliance between state, markets and
civil society.354

The Neo-desarrollista model selected by Duhalde for economic growth was, as its
name indicates, a version of the desarrollista nationalist developmentalist political
economy of 1940-1960. Having identified national industrial reactivation as a
cornerstone of economic policy in January 2002, Duhalde ended convertibility and
allowed the peso to free-fall in the international market. This caused the value of the
peso to depreciate by 70 percent.355 This ‘devaluation’ generated increased exports
and energised production of competitive tradable commodities.356

The Duhalde administration was able to avoid hyperinflation, normally the

result of currency devaluation, by implementing a combination of orthodox
fiscal and monetary policy and heterodox policy in the form of asymmetric debt
conversion and a further freezing of bank deposits.357 By mid-2002, the
economic crisis had bottomed out and, by the end of the year, the economy was
witnessing significant growth.358 In addition to economic policy, the
administration introduced a consensus-building initiative, the Mesa de Diálogo.
Despite the government’s orientation toward public and development policies,

353
Godio, Argentina: Luces y sombras, p. 29.
354
Grugel and Riggirozzi, ‘The Return’, p. 95.
355
Luigi Manzetti, Neoliberalism, Accountability, and Reform Failures in Emerging Markets:
Eastern Europe, Russia, Argentina, and Chile in Comparative Perspective (University Park, PA:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), p. 150.
356
Grugel and Riggirozzi, ‘The Return’, p. 95.
357
Francisco Panniza, ‘ “Everybody Out”, “We Are Fantastic”: The Politics of Financial Crises
in Argentina and Uruguay 2001-2003’, in Moments of Truth: The Politics of Financial Crises in
Comparative Perspective, ed. by Francisco Panniza and George Philip (New York, NY:
Routledge, 2014), pp. 27-46 (p. 33).
358
Federico Sturzenegger and Jeromin Zettelmeyer, Debt, Defaults and Lessons from a Decade
of Crises (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), p. 186.

162
the central aim of this process is identified by Barnes as being:

to cope with an emergency situation that was threatening to move

beyond (the government’s) control, in a context in which civil society
was determined to express itself one way or another and alternatives
such as repression had already proven ineffective.359

The Mesa, made up of a broad range of social actors, concurred on the need in
several areas for urgent action, notably a programme of Citizen Income, with the
state guaranteeing a minimum income to all citizens as a form of social inclusion.360
This recommendation led to the introduction of Planes Jefe y Jefa de Hogar. The
‘plans’ provided Argentines who were unemployed, actively seeking work and in
charge of minors, with a weekly allowance of 150 pesos, in return for which
recipients were required to participate for 20 hours in community-focused ventures
or micro-enterprises.361

However, despite his efforts, Duhalde’s public approval remained low, seldom
rising above single digits throughout his mandate.362 During the course of 2002,
poverty and unemployment indicators increased to unprecedented levels and
popular dissatisfaction with the government’s performance was indicated by
repeated protest activity from increasingly well-coordinated social movements.363
Examples include the cacerolazos and vociferous mobilisations, which occurred in
early January 2002, to protest against the freezing of bank accounts and subsequent
‘pesification’ by which savers incurred huge losses.364 In the context of delayed
economic recovery, clashes between armed police and demonstrators led to the
deaths of piqueteros, Darío Santillán y Maximiliano Kosteki, on 26 June 2002.

359
Helen Barnes, ‘Conflict, Inequality and Dialogue for Conflict Resolution in Latin America:
The Cases of Argentina, Bolivia and Venezuela’, Human Development Report Office (Geneva:
United Nations Development Programme, 2005), p. 20.
360
Grugel and Riggirozzi, ‘The Return’, p. 96.
361
Daniel Kostzer, ‘Argentina: A Case Study on the Plan Jefes y Jefas de Hogar Desocupados,
or the Employment Road to Economic Recovery’, Levy Economics Institute Working Paper
Collection, Paper Number 534 (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY: Levy Economics Institute, 2008),
p. 22.
362
Edward Epstein and David Pion Berlin, ‘The Crisis of 2001 and Argentine Democracy’, in
Broken Promises? The Argentine Crisis and Argentine Democracy, ed. by Edward Epstein and
David Pion Berlin (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008), pp. 3-26 (p. 13).
363
For more details on the scope of the Planes and a discussion, see Pautassi, Rossi and Campos.
364
Guardian, ‘Argentina Hit by Riots over Banking Freeze’, Guardian, 11 January 2002
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/jan/11/argentina> [accessed 3 February 2015]

163
Public protest surrounding the events was such that Llanos identifies a clear
correlation between the said events and the fact that Duhalde brought forward
elections scheduled for September 2003 to April 2003, bringing Peronist Néstor
Kirchner to the Presidency.365

The Kirchner governments and the Argentine poor.

Contrary to 2002 predictions, relatively high levels of voter participation (78.0

percent turnout and a 3 percent blank vote) were registered in the first ballot of the
2003 presidential elections.366 The final round was between two Peronist
candidates, former president, Menem, and Kirchner heading the Frente para la
Victoria faction of the Peronist Justicialist Party. Both candidates’ platforms
focused on economic issues; Menem relied heavily on his past record of ending
inflation. However, Kirchner reflected a traditional Peronist stance focussing on
increased state intervention in the economy, job creation and price stabilisation.367

Menem’s default in the second round brought Kirchner to the presidency in May
2003. His legitimacy was tenuous. The percentage of votes afforded to him was
the lowest in Argentine political history. Furthermore, he was tainted by
accusations of corruption, personal enrichment and (mis)use of executive power
on a par with Menem.368 Nevertheless, Kirchner sought to broaden his support
base to include new social actors beyond the Peronist party and to re-legitimise
discredited institutions. He identified salient causes of public indignation:
impunity of the political and economic elite, profiteering, corruption and/or
incompetence of the political class and legal system, external debt repayment,
issues of inadequate education and health provision and unpunished human
rights abuses committed during the Military Proceso government. Three months

365
Mariana Llanos, ‘Presidential Breakdowns in Argentina’, in Presidential Breakdowns in Latin
America: Causes and Outcomes of Executive Instability in Developing Democracies, ed. by Mariana
Llanos and Leiv Marsteintredet (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 55-72 (p. 67).
366
Martha Farmelo and Alan Cibils, ‘The Argentine Presidential Election: Is Political Renewal
Possible?’, Americas Program, 5 June 2003
<http://www.cipamericas.org/page/127?fb_page_id=6690570687> [accessed 23 September
2013]
367
Mathew McMinn Singer, ‘The Electoral Politics of Vulnerability and the Incentives to Cast
an Economic Vote (published doctoral thesis, Duke University, 2007), p. 62.
368
Levitsky and Murillo, p.19.

164
after assuming office, Kirchner’s performance had an 80 percent approval
rating.369

Under Kirchner, unemployment fell, living standards improved and poverty was
reduced significantly. By 2007, unemployment, over 20 percent in 2002, had
fallen to 9 percent.370 Private consumption increased by 52 percent in the same
period.371 Poverty, which had peaked at almost 52 percent in 2003, had been
reduced to just below 27 percent by 2007.372 Kirchner maintained high levels of
approval throughout his term, leaving the presidency in 2007 as the most
popular president in modern Argentine history.373

Kirchner’s support base extended to members of Argentina’s middle sectors and

human rights organisations, notably the militant and highly respected Madres y
Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo.374 Cases of alleged corruption and human rights
abuses by judicial, military and law enforcement agencies were reopened. Six of the
nine Supreme Court judges appointed during Menem’s mandate were removed and
replaced with respected jurists.375 Alfonsín’s Final Point and Due Obedience laws
were revoked, leading to the repeal of military amnesties.376 Excessive bribe-taking
by members of Congress, most specifically in the area of labour legislation under de
la Rúa, was also addressed.377 In addition, Kirchner introduced policy changes to
weaken the powers of authoritarian mafioso-style political elites.378

Kirchner gained support from anti-imperialists by adopting a neutral political stance

towards the United States and giving preference to links with the left-of-centre
governments in the region, notably Venezuela, Brazil, Chile and Bolivia.379

369
Fernando Cibeira, ‘Nos reímos juntos con Kirchner’, Página/12, 30 December 2003
< http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-29909-2003-12-30.html> [accessed 14 February
2011]
370
Unemployment figures for 1999-2013 are available from
Indexmundi <http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=ar&v=74> [accessed 19 February 2015]
371
Levitsky and Murillo, p. 17.
372
Indexmundi.
373
Levitsky and Murillo, p. 17.
374
Cieza, p. 202.
375
Petras and Veltmeyer, p. 57.
376
Levitsky and Murillo, p. 18.
377
Petras and Veltmeyer, p. 57.
378
Petras and Veltmeyer, p. 58.
379
Cieza, p. 201.

165
Furthermore, Kirchner adopted an ostensibly hard line in foreign debt negotiations,
openly criticised the IMF and increased public control over privatised companies.380
He began the nationalisation of private industries and also created new state
enterprises.381 By March 2005, Argentina had renegotiated the foreign debt with the
majority of bondholders, thus affording the country greater economic and political
autonomy.382 Appropriately, Kirchner’s economic policy sought export
opportunities in multiple markets in the Área de Libre Comercio de las Américas
(ALCA), Mercosur, the creation of bilateral links with Brazil and China and a
free-trade pact with the EU.383

In terms of economic success, assisted by currency devaluation and consequent

growth in exports between 2003 and 2006, Kirchner’s unorthodox development
plan, based on a mixture of statist and pro-market policies, revived Argentina’s
economy.384 A trade surplus representing more than 5 percent of GDP was
generated by record highs in the international market for Argentina’s main agro-
mineral export products.385 Kirchner’s first three years saw GDP growth of 9
percent per year.386 The most notable industrial development occurred in
construction, tourism and agricultural exports.387

Positive revisions were introduced to labour law, affecting both individual and
collective levels.388 Law 25.877, passed in February 2004, prevented misuse of the
trial period set up under previous governments and introduced indemnity payments
for dismissals of short-term employees.389 Collective bargaining at sectoral level
and ultractividad, introduced during Perón’s final presidency to enable workers to

380
Cieza, p. 201.
381
See Gustavo Flores-Macías, After Neoliberalism?: the Left and Economic Reforms in Latin
America (Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 42-3.
382
Elliot Gotkine, ‘Argentine restructuring success’, BBC News 4 March 2005
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4317009.stm>[Accessed 20 September 2016]
383
Petras and Veltmeyer, p. 56.
384
McMinn Singer, p. 63.
385
Petras and Veltmeyer, p. 60.
386
Levitsky and Murillo, p. 17; Cieza, p. 199.
387
Cieza, p. 199.
388
For the details of Law 25.877, see MECON, ‘Regimen Laboral’
<http://infoleg.mecon.gov.ar/infolegInternet/anexos/90000-94999/93595/norma.htm> [accessed
17 February 2015]. For a comparison of Labour policy under the Menem, de la Rúa and
Kirchner administrations, see Cook, pp. 96-7.
389
MECON, Régimen Laboral.

166
reinstate favourable collective agreements, were also reintroduced.390 Several
periodic increases to the minimum wage were introduced. Furthermore, tax
incentives were introduced to encourage PYMES to expand and create employment
opportunities. Reductions of 33 percent were introduced to payroll taxes for a
twelve-month period for up to 80 new starters. This increased to 50 percent for new
employees moving from unemployment benefit.391

The Ministerio de Desarrollo Social highlighted the government commitment to

supporting the development of work opportunities, specifically popular and/or
community projects, on the basis of the value of work, expressed as follows:

El trabajo es una actividad clave en la vida del ser humano tanto para
desarrollo de sus capacidades personales, como para el de su familia y
su comunidad. En el ámbito laboral, las personas sociabilizan y
crecen con dignidad. Es por ello que el trabajo es el mejor
organizador e integrador social y constituye la herramienta más eficaz
para combatir la pobreza y distribuir la riqueza… la generación de
empleo digno y genuino es la mejor política social.392

The Argentina Trabaja package, initiated in 2003, comprised five initiatives. A

key focus of the projects was to move unemployed Argentines or those working
in the informal or semi-informal sector to a regulated work environment. The
specific initiatives sponsored by the schemes Ingreso Social con Trabajo, Manos
a La Obra, Marca Colectiva, Micro Créditos and Monotributo Social provided a
variety of support strategies, including the provision of necessary tools and
equipment, technical advice and low-interest credit for small, community or
family businesses and the opportunity to access pension rights. Ingreso Social
con Trabajo included the establishment of government-funded ‘co-operatives’ to
work in community enrichment projects. These co-operatives are discussed in
Chapter Five.

390
Ultractividad is the principle which allows previous negotiated agreements to remain in effect
without the need for renegotiation. Matthew E. Carnes, Continuity Despite Change: The Politics
of Labor Regulation in Latin America (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), p. 181.
391
Cook, p. 97.
392
Ministerio de Desarrollo Social, ‘Argentina Trabaja’
<http://www.desarrollosocial.gob.ar/argentinatrabaja/> [accessed 12 February 2014]

167
Funding for public works, education and health care was raised.393
Social security reform was extended to include more than a million unemployed
and informal sector workers. Social security was re-nationalised and the
privatised pension system opened in 2007, which allowed 1.1 million
individuals to either register on to, or transfer their privatised pensions back to
the state system.394 Subsidies were introduced on such items as pharmaceuticals
to benefit low income families and price caps were introduced for services
provided by the private sector.395 Price controls were introduced with the dual
purpose of reining in inflation and alleviating hardship. Price freezes were
placed on foods, utilities and natural gas.396 Under Kirchner, Argentina’s public
services became among the cheapest in Latin America.397 Also benefiting
Argentina’s poor was the ban placed on exports of beef and wheat, which
enabled these products to be redirected towards the domestic market.398

Regarding specific social programmes, in 2004, the Jefes and Jefas de Hogar
plan, founded under the previous administration, was replaced with the Plan
Familiar. The aim of the new plan was to improve levels of education and
health. Under the terms of the new plan, Child Benefit equivalent to 49 US
dollars per month was awarded for first children and 8 dollars for each
additional child.399 Receipt of the benefit was conditional on the child’s school
attendance and provision of their vaccination certificates. By 2007, 500,000
families were in receipt of this benefit.400

Kirchner was replaced by his wife, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who

completed a further two presidential terms up to December 2015. Fernández de
Kirchner’s governments retained the social focus introduced by Kirchner, price
controls were retained and spending on health, education and public

393
Farmelo and Cibils, p. 5. Levitsky, and Murillo, pp.17-18. Flores-Macías, pp. 33-4.
394
Carnes, p. 183.
395
Eduardo Silva, Challenging Neoliberalism in Latin America (New York, NY: Cambridge
University Press, 2009), pp. 99-100.
396
Flores-Macías, p. 43.
397
Flores-Macías, p. 43.
398
Flores-Macías, p. 43.
399
Flores-Macías, p. 44.
400
Flores-Macías, p. 44.

168
employment increased.401 IMF estimates indicate that, by 2013, unemployment
had decreased to 6.9 percent.402 Under Fernández de Kirchner, between 2003
and mid-2013 levels of poverty and extreme poverty continued to fall, being
reduced by 70 percent and 80 percent respectively.403 In 2009, privatised
pension funds were nationalised, reaching almost universal coverage.404 In the
same year, family allowances, which until that point had been linked to the
salaries of formal workers, became available to low-income families on a non-
contributory basis.405 By 2010, this had been extended to pregnant mothers. In
fact, in June 2015, Fernández de Kirchner was honoured by the ‘World Food
Project’, for reducing malnutrition to less than five per cent of the population.406

However, widespread perception of radical changes under the Kirchner

mandates has been challenged. James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer attribute
economic growth under the Kirchners to the context of a favourable market and
low starting point rather than content or substance of their policies.407 They also
question Kirchner’s stance on issues of corruption and human rights abuses,
which gained him considerable support from Argentina’s middle sectors on the
basis of the thoroughness and punctuality of the implementation of reforms, a
process which they viewed as being hampered by the persistence of traditional
institutions.408

401
Stephen B. Kaplan, Globalisation and Austerity Politics in Latin America (New York, NY:
Cambridge University Press, 2013).
402
Mark Weisbrot, ‘Why Macri’s Win is Bad News for Argentina’, Fortune, 24 November 2015
<http://fortune.com/2015/11/24/mauricio-macri-presidential-win-bad-for-argentina/>[accessed
18 February 2016]
403
Weisbrot.
404
Ernesto Calvo and María Victoria Murillo, ‘Argentine Democratic Consolidation, Partisan
Dealignment and Institutional Weakness’, in Constructing Democratic Governance in Latin
America, ed. by Jorge I. Domínguez and Michael Shifter (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins
University Press, 2013), pp. 129-57 (p. 144).
405
Calvo and Murillo, ‘Argentine Democratic Consolidation’, p. 144.
406
Harriet Alexander, ‘Argentina Elections: Highs and Lows of 12 Years of the Kirchners’, The
Telegraph, 10 December 2015, World.
407
Petras and Veltmeyer, p. 60.
408
Petras and Veltmeyer note that the cleansing process is not continuous and that in the absence
of mass pressure and fundamental structural changes, the previous abusive system will be free to
reinstate itself. They also add that military retrials scheduled are impeded by the continued
existence of the traditional structural linkages between political institutions, the Peronist Party
and both foreign and domestic neoliberal economic elites. Petras and Veltmeyer, p. 58.

169
It is undeniable that under the Kirchner governments, a significant sector of
Argentina’s lower classes experienced improvements in their standard of living.
However, under Kirchner’s new model, registered workers enjoyed improved
salaries and working conditions but the benefits of systematic growth did not reach
the entire population.409 In fact, the cost of increased employment was salary
reduction and reduced purchasing power for others, notably non-registered workers.
Of the total number of jobs created during the 2003-2004 period, 69 percent were
unregistered posts. See Figure 3. 8. That is, the 9 percent annual growth in the
two-year period between 2003 and 2004 equated to a minimal 2 percent reduction
in non-registered work.410

Con este nuevo modelo “intensivo en empleo” se viene reduciendo la tasa

de desempleo, pero la estructura segmentada y de exclusión se mantiene y
se hace presente en la dinámica de generación de puestos... La exclusión
no es menor por contar con mayor cantidad de puestos de empleo...y las
empresas incrementan su excedente de explotación... 411

Figure 3. 8: Evolution of working and unemployment patterns 1992-2006.

Source: Giosa-Zuazúa, ‘La estrategia’, p. 12.

Key to Figure 3. 8.

Column 1 Column 2 Column 3 Column 4

Unregistered Registered Self-employed
Unemployed
workers workers and other

409
Giosa-Zuazúa, ‘La estrategia’, pp. 17-18.
410
Farmelo and Cibils, p. 12.
411
Giosa-Zuazúa, ‘La estrategia’, p. 23.

170
Significantly, reflecting this conservative appraisal, villera and Tren Blanco co-
operative member, Mirta Belizán, advised me that she did not see Fernández de
Kirchner’s reforms as necessarily positive on the basis that they constituted
‘alleviation rather than cure’.412

To conclude, this chapter has considered Argentina’s decline from its early
twentieth-century standing as one of the richest countries in the world, to the
economic chaos and widespread human suffering which accompanied its entry
into the twenty-first century. In addition to exploring theories on the causes of
the country’s decline, a further central focus of the chapter was to consider the
experience of the period for poorer, more marginalised Argentines.

The ‘Argentine Anomaly’, as Argentina’s failure to realise its perceived

potential is known, has generated myriad explanations presented from various
academic standpoints. A selection of these has been included in this chapter. Of
particular significance to this study is the role that Argentina’s economic history
has played in shaping patterns of ideological and political thought. Chapter Four
examines the persistent trends in anti-imperialist ideology and related
expressions of widespread disillusionment with the country’s political class.
Both themes spanned a period of over a century, initially as responses to the
early Golden-Age liberal model and, more recently, as a reaction to democratic
governments, whose policy, it has been demonstrated in this chapter, was
heavily influenced by the need to address the country’s huge foreign debt.

The crucial significance of Peronism in Argentina’s twentieth-century history is

attested to by the wealth of study it continues to generate. The advent of
Peronism in the 1940s undoubtedly constitutes the most significant phenomenon
in Argentina’s twentieth-century history. From its inception, Peronism
influenced, and has continued to influence, Argentine politics, labour relations
and social identity. Peronism’s political alliances have proved fluid. However,
support for Peronism has remained central to workers’ politics and lower-class

412
Author’s translation of a comment made during a conversation with Mirta Belizán.

171
identity, and 1940s Peronism appears to represent a continued reference point
for the contemporary popular classes. In terms of purely tangible benefits,
Argentina’s twentieth-century lower classes experienced unprecedented
standards of living and benefits under Perón, which were eroded under
subsequent governments. Significantly, after Perón’s first presidencies, the
country’s lower sectors, if not specifically targeted for economic sanction, have
undoubtedly been the most negatively affected by subsequent economic policy.
This, I would suggest, continued to be the case for Argentina’s most vulnerable
communities, even during the ostensibly pro-poor Kirchner mandates.

Finally, of further relevance is the resilience of the combative and organisational

potential demonstrated by Argentina’s popular and, at times, middle sectors.
This tendency is demonstrated by examples of organic organisation that
developed as alternative and/or complementary responses to traditional labour
activity which had been reduced by persecution and removal or co-optation of
union leadership and the reduction of the unionised working class through
unemployment and alterations to the country’s industrial paradigm. The
potential for effective alternative organisation is clearly reflected in the scope
and focus of the various popular and middle-sector projects generated in post-
crisis Argentina.

172
CHAPTER FOUR

Anti-imperialism, vendepatrismo and the political class.

The previous chapter considered twentieth-century decline from the viewpoint

of various aspects of academic, economic and political theory. The purpose of
this chapter is to afford a more emotive and subjective view of issues, which not
only form a central aspect of nationalist discourse, but are also widely reflected
in popular perceptions of the origins of Argentina’s socio-economic ills, based
on a variety of sources, notably their own personal experience. Of key relevance
is popular memory of a fairer, more just system of leadership experienced at
first-hand by a significant number of Argentines. This memory provides a
touchstone against which to evaluate the contemporary popular experience of
economic hardship, inequality and social marginalisation. Popular memory of
Perón’s first presidencies is that of a period in which the ‘common’ Argentine
was afforded respect, dignified living standards, and a central role in national
development. However, this commitment to justice went beyond the traditional
working class; it extended dignity and a sense of personal worth to the very poor
and marginalised ‘descamisados’. As previously commented, my personal
experience, gained from interaction with members of recovered workplaces I
visited, as well as from spontaneous conversations, sparked up with individuals
during the course of their daily life, bore testimony to the endurance of positive
memories, as either first-hand or recounted experience, of life under the
leadership of President Perón and his wife ‘Evita’.

173
The ‘¡Qué se vayan todos!’ chants, which accompanied the 2001 popular
mobilisations presented clear testimony to widespread vehemently anti-
imperialist sentiment combined with rejection of the country’s political
representatives and discredited institutions, which had been fermenting over an
extended period, perhaps the twentieth century in its entirety. Certainly, the
characteristics of anti-imperialism and frustration with the performance of the
political class, demonstrated during the iconic protests, are not unique to the
present time. In fact, they have constituted recurrent themes during the past
century.

From colonial times, perceptions of Argentine history, as characterised by

economic, cultural and political subordination at both the national and domestic
levels, have informed nationalist discourse and inflamed anti-imperialist
sentiment in sectors of the country’s wider population. At the national level,
perceptions of Argentina as the victim of economic and, to some extent, cultural
plunder by foreign ‘imperialist’ forces facilitated by the county’s elite and
political class have fostered anti-imperialist responses punctuating the span of
the twentieth century and beyond. On the other hand, at the domestic level, the
civilisation-barbarism debate testified to internal tensions between the
‘civilised’, largely European populations located in Buenos Aires and the coastal
provinces, and the ‘irrational’, unsophisticated, autochthonous masses of the
country’s interior. This antagonism, in turn culminated in nationalist discourse,
which presented a counter-reading of the europhile civilisation vs barbarism
position by which the cultural heritage of the country’s interior, centred on
criollo identity, represented the superior and true Argentine identity.1 As we
have seen during the course of this work, europhile positivism, which during the
1990s underwent a revision, assumed a US referent and acquired a micro-level
metaphoric expression in the context of Buenos Aires city space.

It would appear that public memory of Argentina’s erstwhile prosperity has

constituted a key reference point in shaping the recurrent popular frustration

1
See Chapter Three.

174
with domestic elites, the political class and international agencies.2 The account
of a rich, albeit highly unequal, country reduced to poverty at the hands of inept
and venal native political representatives in league with usurious foreign powers
constitutes a compelling narrative.

Argentina’s tradition of dependence.

Aspects of the country’s colonial heritage have been identified as integral to the
country’s development into an export-led economy during the Golden Age period.
During Argentina’s colonial period, land grants provided the Spanish Crown with a
means of ensuring the political support of the Spanish and Creole elites.3 As such,
Argentina’s independence from Spain in 1816 left huge tracts of land owned by a
small number of ranchers. Further land acquisition was facilitated through policies
and laws which enabled the purchase of large areas of land.4 By the mid-nineteenth
century, this group of landed elite authoritarian rentier ranchers, located principally
in the Buenos Aires province, had formed a close alliance with the ruling PAN
party. The economic policy adopted by the alliance was one described as short-
term, profit-based livestock ranching practices and grain cultivation which was
narrowly focused on agricultural production and export.5 This was accompanied by
wide-scale import of manufactured goods and related disdain for, or neglect of,
industrial development.

Retrospective perception of the Golden Age period up until the early years of the
1940s, favoured in nationalist discourse and showcased in Perón’s anti-imperialist
rhetoric, portrayed an elitist oligarchy whose unpatriotic, reactionary and self-
serving policies impeded national development and meant that the country was

2
Specific interviews with co-operative members and contact with the general public supported this
opinion often taking the form of numerous references to the plundering of the country’s cofres de
oro by their leaders. Conversations with Enrique Iriate (19 de diciembre), Silvia Díaz (La Cacerola),
Dante (CUC) and Ernesto Paret of the MNER all reinforced this viewpoint.
3
Ewout Frankema, ‘The Colonial Roots of Land Inequality: Geography, Factor Endowments, or
Institutions ?’, The Economic History Review, 63: 2 (2010), 418-51.
4
In the post-independence period, Rivadavia afforded state ownership to vast amounts of land which
were subsequently leased at a fraction of the land’s value. On expiry of the leases in 1836, provincial
governor General Juan Manuel Rosas transferred ownership to the tenants. Furthermore, in 1879
General Roca’s ‘Conquest of the Wilderness’ initiative enabled 381 people to acquire a vast area of
8.5 million hectares of land. McGuire, p. 31.
5
Godio, ‘The “Argentine Anomaly” ’, 128-46.

175
forced into a subordinate, dependent and humiliating relationship with the foreign
powers of industrialised nations.

A salient example of the perception of Argentina’s national subordination to foreign

dominance presented itself in the form of the vehement reaction to the
controversial, previously noted Roca-Runciman treaty. The nationalist perception of
the pact’s humiliatingly unjust terms inflamed growing anti-imperialist sentiment,
leading Partido Demócrata Progresista (PDP) politician Lisandro de La Torre to
comment, ‘en esas condiciones no podría decirse que la Argentina se haya
convertido en un dominio británico, porque Inglaterra no se toma la libertad de
imponer a los dominios británicos semejantes humillaciones’. 6 Significantly, an
ever-pragmatic Perón advised of the high cost of this subservient, dependent
relationship, ‘Independizarse de ese coloniaje, explícito e implícito, es lo que se ha
propuesto el gobierno justicialista; ... nosotros, cada uno de todos los argentinos,
pagará el tributo de esa dependencia porque no se depende gratuitamente’.7

In fact, the somewhat subjective nationalist and popular perceptions of Argentine

subjugation were reflected in the more theoretical response of the Dependency
paradigm which came to prominence from the late 1960s to the early 1970s.8
Dependence has been described as a functional, unequal relationship between
dominant ‘core’ or developed countries and subordinate ‘satellite’ or less developed
countries.9 In specifically economic terms, Theotonio Dos Santos describes a
dependent relationship thus:

Dependence (is) a situation in which the economy of certain countries is

conditioned by the development and expansion of another economy to
which the former is subjected. The relation of interdependence between
two or more economies, and between these and world trade, assumes the

6
Felipe Pigna, ‘Aquel negociado de las carnes’, ClarínOnline, 23 September 2007
<http://edant.clarin.com/suplementos/zona/2007/09/23/z-03801.htm> [accessed 9 September 2010]
7
Juan Carlos Rousselot, Perón en doctrina (Buenos Aires: Consejo del Partido Justicialista de
Morón, 1997), p. 331.
8
Cristóbal Kay, Latin American Theories of Development and Underdevelopment (London, UK:
Routledge, 2011), p. 125. Dependency literature is vast, for an analysis of the broad trends in
dependence see, Kay, pp. 125-62.
9
Publications by Hans Singer and Raúl Prebisch 1949. See ECLA, The Economic Development
of Latin America and Its Principal Problems (Lake Success, NY: United Nations Dept. of
Economic Affairs, 1950) and Hans W. Singer, ‘The Distribution of Gains between Investing and
Borrowing Countries’, The American Economic Review, 40: 2 (1950), pp. 473-85.

176
 form of dependence when some countries (the dominant ones) can expand
and can be self-starting, while other countries (the dependent ones) can do
this only as a reflection of that expansion, which can have either a positive
or negative effect on their immediate development.10

Three separate Dependency paradigms have been identified. The earliest type of
Dependency was identified as taking the form of colonial subordination, which saw
Latin American countries subordinated to the Spanish or Portuguese Crowns in both
cultural and economic terms. In the post colonial period, dependence assumed the
form of financial-industrial dependence prevalent by the end of the nineteenth
century. By the post-World War II period, technological-industrial dependence, or
penetration by multinational companies came to be recognised as the renewed face
of the Dependency paradigm.11 Considering Argentina in terms of Dependency, by
the early twentieth century, the country would be viewed as already having been
subject to dependency of both the colonial and financial industrial types. Finally, a
third state of dependency, initiated under the Proceso Military regime, would
intensify from the 1990s, in the form of penetration by multinational companies and
financing agencies encouraged by the neoliberal economic policies embraced under
Menemism. On the specific subject of the IMF, Claudia Kedar traces the
organisation’s involvement in Latin America from its founding to the present time.
Her broad analysis leads her to identify a process of ‘routinisation of dependency’,
which, in Argentina, culminated in the consolidation of this particular form of
dependency.12

Ironically, the risk to the country’s sovereignty and threat of profound national
oppression under the third form of dependency had been warned against in 1988 by
Peronist politician, José Humberto Martiarena. Martiarena emphasised the

10
Theotonio Dos Santos quoted in Berch Berberoglu, The Political Economy of Development:
Development Theory and the Prospects for Change in the Third World (Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press, 1992), p. 26.
11
T. Dos Santos quoted in Rajandra Pandey, Sociology of Underdevelopment: Theories and
Critiques (Delhi: Mittal Publications, 1986), p. 136. In fact, Svampa has suggested a return to the
country’s twentieth-century status as agro-exporter in the contemporary geopolitical order.
Maristella Svampa, ‘Revisiting Argentina 2001-13: From “Qué se Vayan Todos! to the Peronist
Decade’, in Levey, Ozarow and Wylde, pp. 155-75 (p. 161).
12
Claudia Kedar, The International Monetary Fund and Latin America: The Argentine Puzzle in
Context (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2013).

177
overwhelming nature of national Dependency by the insidious invasion by foreign
capital as follows:
El imperialismo no es una ficción sino una realidad. Ya no es el
imperialismo del ejército invasor, que se apodera de fragmentos de países
vecinos o no vecinos; ya no es el imperialismo del siglo anterior al
pasado. Ahora el imperialismo es más dúctil es, más sutil. Es la
penetración de los capitales transnacionales, convertidos en
superpotencias por encima de los gobiernos, de los organizaciones y de
los Estados, que no solamente buscan el lucro razonable, legítimo,
genuino, sino que penetran con el ansia incontenible de dominar todas las
estructuras del Estado...13

Argentina’s long history of pillage at the hands of foreign powers is described by

Peronist politician and cinema director, Fernando ‘Pino’ Solanas, as follows:

Más allá de los siglos, y de los métodos, las conceciones de bienes del
estado serían continuidad de las viejas explotaciones coloniales. Antes fue
el oro y la plata de Potosí, hoy las ganancias del petróleo, el agua o las
comunicaciones.14

Reflecting Lisandro De La Torre’s indignation at ‘Roca Runciman’, Solanas adds,

‘Las compañías extranjeras hicieron en nuestro país lo que no se los hubieran
permitido en los suyos’.15

An important aspect of a dependent relationship, which is highlighted by Ferraro is

the active supportive role required by the elites of the dependent state.16 That is, a
dependent relationship can only be established with the consent of a country’s
leaders and/or élites. Kedar and Raúl García-Heras underline this fact by noting
Néstor Kirchner’s vociferous opposition to the IMF and his eventual expulsion of
the organisation from Argentine economic affairs.17

13
José Humberto Martiarena (Diario de sesiones del Senado, 27 and 28 April, 1988) cited by
Borón and Thwaites Rey in Atilio Borón and Mabel Thwaites Rey, ‘La expropiación neoliberal:
El experimento privatista’, in Las privatizaciones y la desnacionalización de América Latina,
ed. by James Petras et al. (Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros, 2004), pp.113-83 (p. 126.)
14
Memoria del saqueo, dir. by Fernando E. Solanas (Cinesur, 2004).
15
Memoria.
16
Vincent Ferraro, ‘Dependency Theory: An Introduction’, in The Development Economics
Reader, ed. by Giorgio Secondi (London, UK: Routledge, 2008), pp. 58-64 (p. 63).
17
Kedar, pp. 180-1. Raúl García-Heras, El fondo monetario y el banco mundial en la Argentina:
Liberalismo, populismo y finanzas internacionales (Buenos Aires: Lumière, 2008), p. 182.

178
The term vendepatrismo refers to the selling out of one’s own country, often for
personal economic gain or favours, by ‘traitors’, who allow foreign interests to
exploit the country via economic and political intervention. Perceived acts of
vendepatrismo by Argentina’s political and economic national elites have
constituted a recurrent cause of public dissension for Argentines throughout the
twentieth century and beyond. Related to the theme of vendepatrismo is that of anti-
imperialism, as such, a salient aspect of nationalist and popular discourse, and
periodically, middle-sector sentiment, have presented an anti-imperialist focus. In
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the key target of Argentine anti-
imperialist feeling was Great Britain. From the mid-twentieth century this
resentment would be transferred to the United States of America. As noted, anti-US
feeling would come to focus on the North America-based IMF, Central Bank and
international financing agencies. However, in the following section, which
considers the subject of Argentina’s privatisation process as an example of
imperialist exploitation, multinational companies of former European colonial
powers, specifically Spain and France, figure highly on the list of contemporary
‘imperialists’.

Privatisation: the surrender of Argentina’s national assets to foreign capital.

Privatisation of state industry had been suggested by Raul Prebisch during the
interim military government of 1955-1958 and certain limited privatisations were
actually effected under Arturo Frondizi’s subsequent 1958-1962 government.18 The
Military Proceso Government’s economically liberal ideology was reflected in the
statement of Minister of Economy, José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz; ‘Hay que
achicar el Estado para agrandar la Nación’.19 However, the government’s vaunted
privatisation plans produced extremely limited results due to successful opposition
to the plans from a combination of sources including nationalist members of the
military themselves.20 The subject of privatisation of state assets was again

18
Peter Calvert, ‘Privatisation in Argentina’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 15: 2 (1996),
145-56 (p. 146).
19
Alberto González Toro and Néstor Restivo, ‘El fin del mito del Estado elefante’, Clarín, 27
March 2003 <http://edant.clarin.com/suplementos/zona/2003/07/27/z-00201.htm> [accessed 20
September 2016]
20
Luigi Manzetti notes that only 120 privatisations, of which the majority were of negligible
significance, were completed. Luigi Manzetti, Privatisation South American Style (Oxford, NY:
Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 35.

179
broached by UCR president Raúl Alfonsín. However, Alfonsín’s move to privatise
state assets was founded, not on a shift in the president’s ideological paradigm, but
rather, ‘urgencies de caja y a la necesidad de satisfacer las requisitorias demandas
de los negociadores de la deuda externa’.21 The UCR’s proposed privatisation
programme was met with outrage from the Peronist opposition. In September 1987,
in response to Rodolfo Terragno’s defence of a package of proposed privatisations,
including the partial privatisation of the Empresa Nacional de Telecomunicaciones
(ENTeL) telecommunications network, Aerolíneas Argentinas and the emblematic
Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF) petroleum concern, Eduardo Menem,
brother of the future president, offered the following traditional patriotic Peronist
response:
En ese precio de mercado, ¿cuál es el valor que tiene la soberanía?...la
soberanía nacional no tiene precio, no se vende, no se anejena ni se debe
poner en peligro…de lo que pueden estar seguros es de que el
justicialismo no les ha puesto ni les pondrá jamás la bandera de remate,
porque está en juego la soberanía del Estado.22

Added to the Peronist opposition, several factors combined to undermine Alfonsín’s

privatisation plans and by 1988 privatised state assets represented a mere 5.5 percent
of GDP.23

Nevertheless, a few years later, the Justicialist Party, under Carlos Menem, would
perform an apparent ideological U-turn; free market economic policies outlined in
the Washington Consensus were adopted, including a privatisation project of
unprecedented magnitude.24 Large deficits and decline in the quality of services
provided by State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) during the 1980s resulted in limited
widespread opposition to the concept of privatisation as such.25 Furthermore, the
impact of opposition from popular sectors such as neighbourhood associations,
academics’ groups and state employees, was reduced by media and political
endorsements lauding the potential benefits of privatisation and support from a

21
Borón and Thwaites Rey, p. 122.
22
Eduardo Menem (Diario de Sesiones del Senado, 27 and 28 April 1988) cited in Borón and
Thwaites Rey, p. 125.
23
Escudé, Chapter Four, p. 1.
24
The theme of treachery on the part of Argentina’s political class will be resumed at a later
point in this chapter.
25
Rodríguez-Boetsch, p. 101.

180
self-interested trade union leadership.26 Between 1989 and 1998, wide-ranging
privatisations were effected.27

However, initial support for, or indifference to, the subject of privatisation was to
be reversed in the light of the damaging results yielded at both the personal and
national levels.28 In fact, fuelling the claims of foreign penetration and exploitation
of national patrimony, extended by nationalists and/or patriots, widespread opinion
exists to support the view that the only beneficiaries of the privatisation process
were foreign capital and international lending organisations. That is, unless one
takes into account the cases of graft which surrounded the privatisation process,
providing huge sums of money to political representatives involved in unscrupulous
transactions.29

There was no evidence of improvement of access to services under the new

privatisations for private customers.30 In fact, in the case of the railways, the
impact caused by cutting the 36,000-kilometre railway system to 8,000
kilometres decimated entire provincial communities. Users located in numbers
of villas suffered a complete loss of domestic power as the privatised energy
company indiscriminately disconnected whole areas.31 In terms of cost, it is
generally the case that bodies providing public services will be subject to
regulations to protect consumers and ensure reasonable charges for public
services. This is often achieved by price caps and price decreases annexed to
profits. However, in the Argentine case, whilst the privatised companies made
record profits this was rarely reflected in reduced utility costs. On the other
hand, price increases, annexed to US inflation, occurred whilst Argentines were
suffering the effects of deflationary trends in the domestic economy.
26
Daniel Azpiazu and Eduardo Basualdo,‘Las privatizaciones en la Argentina: Génesis, desarrollo y
los impactos estructurales’ in Petras et al., pp. 55-112 (pp. 67-8).
27
Included in the privatisations were: telephones, television channels, roads, railways, water, natural
gas, electricity, two iron and steel plants, airports, the radio and postal system as well as the
national savings bank Caja de Ahorro y Seguro.
28
Marcelo Peláez, La gran estafa: Veinte años de privatizaciones en Argentina (Buenos Aires:
Sudamericana, 2013).
29
Luigi Manzetti, ‘Oportunismo político y fallas de la privatización’, in Corrupción y
transparencia: debatiendo las fronteras entre estado, mercado y sociedad, ed. by Irma Eréndira
Sandoval (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 2009), pp. 95-120 (p. 113); Peláez.
30
Viviana Cifarelli, ‘Las privatizaciones en la Argentina’, Taller de Estudios Laborales (TEL)
<http://www.tel.org.ar/lectura/privarg.html> [accessed 26 January 2016].
31
Cifarelli.

181
Compounding the sense of injustice is the fact that whilst the privatised
companies introduced lower tariffs for large business users, domestic users saw
their costs rise. Prices of 0.03 cents per kilowatt for large-scale users were
matched with prices between 0.10 and 0.15 cents per kilowatt for private
individuals and small businesses.32 Commitments to improvements in the
service by the ownership of the privatised company were not honoured.33 A case
in point is that suffered by customers of the European Consortium Water
Company headed by Suez y Vivendi, 800,000 of whom, were left without
drinking water, and a further 1,000,000 without domestic drains.34 The chronicle
of compromise of private individuals at the hands of privatised companies is
exhaustive.35

On the specific subject of water privatisation, less partial analyses reveal

similarly unremarkable appraisals.36 Sarah Botton and Gabriela Merlinsky
identify the significant conflict the process generated for both individuals
connected to the existent system and others awaiting connection on the basis of
costing in the case of the former and lack of access in the case of the later.37
They further identify ecological and infrastructural damage created by the rise in
the water table which occurred during the process.38 George R. G. Clarke,
Katrina Kosec and Scott Wallsten identify a marginal improvement in access for
members of poorer communities in GBA. However, they temper this apparently
positive finding by stressing that their evidence does not support the view that

32
Cifarelli; Azpiazu and Basualdo, p. 77.
33
Daniel Azpiazu, Memoria.
34
Memoria.
35
See Cifarelli; Borón and Thwaites Rey; Azpiazu, Memoria; Azpiazu and Basualdo; Daniel
Azpiazu, ‘Privatizaciones en la Argentina. La captura institucional del estado’, IADE, Realidad
Económica, 189 (2002), 1-9 < http://publicacioneseconomia.flacso.org.ar/images/pdf/176.pdf>
[accessed 12 September 2016]
36
Sarah Botton and Gabriela Merlinsky, ‘Urban Water Conflicts in Buenos Aires, Argentina:
Voices Questioning the Economic, Social and Environmental Sustainability of the Water and
Sewerage Concession’, in Urban Water Conflicts: An Analysis of the Origins and Nature of
Water-Related Unrest and Conflicts in the Urban Context, ed. by International Hydrological
Programme (Paris, France: UNESCO, 2006), pp. 53-70; George R. G. Clarke, Katrina Kosec
and Scott Wallsten, ‘Has Private Participation in Water and Sewerage Improved Coverage?
Empirical Evidence from Latin America’, Journal of International Development, 21 (2009),
327-61.
37
Botton and Merlinsky, p. 58.
38
Botton and Merlinsky, pp. 66-7.

182
this negligible improvement can be specifically attributed to the privatisation
process.39

Outrage at the catalogue of overpriced, inadequate and unethical service provision

by the privatised companies was matched by indignation at the excessive levels of
profit these same groups were able to reap. To contextualise, Daniel Azpiazu points
out that, in the period 1993-2000, of the total profit made by the top 200 firms
operating in Argentina, the 26 privatised firms, which constituted a mere 13 percent
of the total, took 56.8 of the revenue.40 In addition, profits attained in Argentina far
exceeded those made elsewhere. Examples of this discrepancy are the profits of 15
and 16 percent made by the French Télécom and the Spanish Telefónica companies
respectively as a result of their purchase of EnTel Argentina. This can be compared
with the average 5.4 percent profit gained in the same period by the ten largest
international telecommunications companies, to which Télécom and Telefónica
belong.41

Further negative aspects have been identified by critics of the privatisation process.
The privatisation process made no effort at ownership dispersal; entry to the
bidding process was limited.42 Shares in the companies could be acquired in
exchange for Argentine debt. As such, winning conglomerates were virtually all
powerful domestic business groups linked to foreign financial institutions holding
Argentine debt and multinational enterprises.43 Their enormous ‘risk-free’ profits
were made possible by a series of special concessions afforded to purchasers.44
Prior to their sale, firms underwent a clean-up process in order to make them
attractive to potential purchasers. In anticipation of the sale, prices of shares were
fixed artificially low and then reverted to their true value after purchase.45 Debts
owed by the firm were annulled. Tariffs doubled or tripled prior to purchase.46

39
Clarke, Kosec and Wallsten, pp. 352-4.
40
Azpiazu, ‘Privatizaciones en la Argentina. La captura’, p. 2.
41
Azpiazu, Memoria.
42
Rodríguez-Boetsch, p. 102.
43
Rodríguez-Boetsch, p. 102.
44
Azpiazu notes, 'a nulo riesgo, ganancias descomunales’, Memoria.
45
Solanas, Memoria.
46
A salient example is the case of the EnTel privatisation led by María Julia Alsogaray. In the
10 months during which the sale took place, the cost of a call rose 711 percent compared to the

183
Layoffs demanded by potential purchasers, estimated to have affected 15,000
workers, were funded by the Argentine State.47 Significantly, funds to pay the costs
were covered by loans from the World Bank.48 Conceding to purchasers’ demands,
the process resulted in a clear case of flaunting of the law. The Convertibility Plan,
which declared any form of indexing of funds illegal, was circumvented in late
1991, with the previously noted effects. In addition, repeated contractual
renegotiations enabled statutory government tariffs to go unpaid with complete
impunity. For Azpiazu, these renegotiations provide evidence of the elitist
weighting of government response:

la sistemática recurrencia a opacas y nada transparentes renegociaciones

contractuales…En todas las renegociaciones emergen determinados
denominadores comunes: incremento de tarifas, postergación de los
planes de inversión comprometidos, condonación de deudas por
incumplimientos, extensión de los plazos de conseción, etcéra (sic) .49

To this he adds the expansive level of institutional involvement in the dubious

privatisation process:

El Poder Judicial ha sido en buena medida cómplice o partícipe pasivo de

muchas de las ilegalidades e incumplimientos de las privatizaciones; el
Poder Legislativo, muy particularmente La Comisión Bicameral de
Seguimiento de las Privatizaciones, otro tanto. En tal sentido, además de
la tradicional «captura de las agencias reguladoras», en la Argentina esa
funcionalidad estatal frente a los privilegios de las privatizadas involucró
a todas las instancias del poder del estado y del poder político.50

The catalogue of apparently exploitative and abusive practice characteristic of the

privatised companies, as well as the evident impunity with which the companies
operated, generated growing resentment. The rapid nature of the sales and the
concessions granted in order to enable completion generated further criticism. Each
of these factors fuelled accusations of contemporary vendepatrismo levelled against
Menem’s government and anti-imperialist sentiment towards the foreign
conglomerates.

exchange rate, which was 235 percent. Also between 1992 and 1993 the cost of a cubic metre of
natural gas rose by 23 percent. Azpiazu, ‘Privatizaciones en la Argentina. La captura’, p. 5.
47
Memoria.
48
Rodríguez-Boetsch, p. 102.
49
Azpiazu, ‘Privatizaciones en la Argentina. La captura’, p. 3.
50
Azpiazu, ‘Privatizaciones en la Argentina. La captura’, pp. 6-7.

184
In the previous chapter it was suggested that a central aspect of the economic failure
of Alfonsín’s UCR government was attributable to pressure to achieve economic
stability whilst grappling with the weight of a debt inherited from the previous
military regime. Less attention was paid to the question of the foreign debt faced by
Menem on assuming the presidency. However, it has been suggested that Menem,
like Alfonsín, was placed in an untenable situation. As such, his apparent post-
election treachery, casting off traditional Peronist politics in favour of Washington
Consensus prescriptions, has been ascribed to his desperate need to address the debt
crisis and the absence of valid alternatives.51 Lending support to this view was the
argument presented by Roberto Dromi, Minister of Public Works and Services, on
the specific case of the privatisation process. Responding to heavy criticism levelled
at the hasty and weak negotiations surrounding the sale of Aerolíneas Argentinas
and the privatisation process as a whole, in a ‘private’ interview made public,
Dromi referred to the politicians’ desperately compromised position in the context
of national dependence in the following dramatic terms:

Ustedes saben con honestidad que todos los pliegos tienen una cláusula
no escrita por vergüenza …que es el grado de dependencia que tiene
nuestro país, que no tiene ni siquiera la independencia, ni siquiera
dignidad, para poder vender lo que hay que vender. Un país que no tiene
disponibilidad de sus bienes, un país que está inhibido
internacionalmente. A-rro-di-llado, a-ver-gon-za-da-mente.52

In fact, Dromi was cited in several cases of corruption and accepting bribes. The
subject of the popular image of the Argentine political class is considered in a later
section.

Argentina’s foreign debt.

At this point, it seems appropriate to pass a comment on aspects of the subject of
Argentina’s debt, a further target of anti-imperialist feeling. According to this
reading, Argentina’s history of foreign debt is synonymous with conditions of
popular poverty, national political and economic subordination and dependence.

51
Donald G. Richards, ‘The Political Economy of Neo-Liberal Reform in Latin America’, Capital
and Class, 21: 1 (1997), 19-43 (p. 23).
52
Martín Granovsky, ‘Arrodillados’, Página /12, 12 July 2001
<http://www.pagina12.com.ar/2001/01-07/01-07-10/pag03o1.htm>[accessed 23 August 2015]

185
Once again, key players according to this interpretation are foreign capital and the
corrupt domestic elite vendepatrias. As Solanas notes:
La deuda externa argentina ha sido una de las causas del
empobrecimiento y la corrupción y uno de los escandalosos conflictos.
Desde el primer empréstito firmado por Rivadavia en 1824 por la banca
inglesa Baring Brothers, la deuda serviría para fortalecer a sus socios
argentinos, controlar finanzas y transferir recursos a las metrópolis.
Desde entonces, la deuda externa estuvo ligado a los negocios y
complicidades de casi todos los gobiernos desde Mitre y Quintana a
Menem y de la Rúa. La política del endeudamento fue gestando en la
Argentina generaciones de tecnócratas y funcionarios más dispuestos a
servir a bancos y corporaciones internacionales que a defender su país.
Moldeados en Harvard o Chicago, Oxford o Buenos Aires …Hasta los
ultimos directores de la banca pública … administradores de una deuda
que había nacido en los años setenta con la dictadura militar.53

As previously discussed, the effects of the debt accumulated under the Proceso
government placed severe negative constrictions on subsequent governments, who
invariably found themselves dependent on IMF funding and, as such, subject to
Central Bank economic policy tutelage and dictates. Making the debt crisis all the
more unpalatable were the accusations that its contraction was illegal and that,
furthermore, a substantial proportion of the debt was private debt transferred to the
Argentine State by the then head of the Banco Central de La República Argentina,
Domingo Cavallo.54 It is significant that the debt was not managed by the Argentina
Central Bank and, as such, records of transactions were not available on the return
to civilian government. This being the case, it was impossible to establish the exact
amount of the debt. On the chaos surrounding the debt Patricia Adams notes:

By the end of 1982 no one really knew for sure what the total debt was.
The economy minister, Jorge Wehbe, declared a $43 billion debt. The air
force insisted it was no more than $37.8 billion. In 1983, AmEx Bank
estimated it at $43.7 billion, adding that of the $63 billion of debt
"missing" among the twenty-four largest debtor countries, Argentina had
"lost" a quarter of the total. Debts were "lost" because they had been
contracted by the government, state-controlled companies, and the military
on their own authority, bypassing the notice of government departments
that normally would track them.55

53
Memoria.
54
For a list of principal benefactors of the transferral of private debts to the public accounts see
Alfieri.
55
Patricia Adams, Odious Debts: Loose Lending, Corruption and the Third World’s Environmental
Legacy (Toronto, Canada: Earthscan Canada,1991).

186
The creation of the debt in itself has been attributed to actions of the developed
world, which offered loans to developing countries, including Argentina, at low
rates of interest. The suggestion of illegality arises at the point interest rates were
raised to usurious levels, in some cases as high as 16 percent, engendering cases of
bankruptcy in Third World countries.56 With specific reference to Argentina’s debt,
it could also be suggested that the fact that the money was offered at all to a
government established illegally, via a military coup, constitutes further vindication
of accusations of illegal activity on the part of creditor countries. The debate as to
the legal and moral validity of the Third World debt continues at the international
level.57

A further point as to the legitimacy of the debt resides in the concept of odious debt.
The term, coined by Alexander Nahun Sack, describes a situation when debt,
contracted by the state, cannot be considered legally binding:

…if a despotic power incurs a debt not for the needs or in the interest of
the State, but to strengthen its despotic regime, to repress its population
that fights against it, etc., this debt is odious for the population of the
State. The debt is not an obligation for the nation; it is a regime’s debt, a
personal debt of the power that has incurred it, consequently it falls within
this power….The reason these ‘odious’ debts cannot be considered to
encumber the territory of the State, is that such debts do not fulfil one of
the conditions that determines the legality of the debts of the State, that is:
the debts of the State must be incurred and the funds from it employed for
the needs and in the interest of the State. ‘Odious’ debts, incurred and used
for ends which, to the knowledge of the creditors, are contrary to the
interests of the nation, do not compromise the latter – in the case that the
nation succeeds in getting rid of the Government which incurs them –
except to the extent that real advantages were obtained from these debts.58

56
Herman E. Daly and Joshua Farley, Ecological Economics: Principles and Applications, 2nd
edn (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2011).
57
Abundant literature is available on this topic from charities such as Oxfam to organisations
specifically dedicated to campaigning for the cancellation of the Third World debt. See website
STWR, ‘Cancelling Third World Debt: Share the World’s Resources’
<http://www.stwr.org/aid-debt-development/cancelling-third-world-debt.html> [accessed 2
September 2012]
58
Sack cited in, Robert Howse, The Concept of Odious Debt in Public International Law,
Discussion Papers Series: 185 (Geneva, Switzerland: United Nations Conference on Trade and
Development, July, 2007).

187
Comparisons with other Latin American debtor countries revealed an extremely
inappropriate use of credits in the case of Argentina.59 According to the above
criteria, it is unsurprising that Adams cites debt accrued under the military regime
as odious, given her appraisal of the military government as lax and/or corrupt in its
use of public funds, to the extent that a judge investigating the economic practice of
the military concluded, ‘It is not clear whether we are dealing with the results of
massive looting or chaos or both.’60 It is undeniable that debt was solicited and
exists. Nevertheless, a wide body of opinion exists among Argentines themselves,
and others, that the debt is neither morally nor legally attributable to the Argentine
State.

A further area of serious contention lies in the question of the transfer of the
proportion of the debt contracted privately during the military regime to state
responsibility. In the final stages of the Proceso period, Domingo Cavallo, Director
of Argentina’s Central Bank, implemented financial policies to transfer private
debts to the state; that is, debt contracted by multinational banks, industrial
companies and major domestic giants, became the public obligation of the
Argentine people. By the end of 1983, as much as half the national debt was
comprised of nationalised private debt. 61 Cavallo noted the extreme ‘gravity’ of the
situation and asserted that assuming the debtors’ debt was deployed as a means of
preventing wide-scale disruption of the national financial infrastructure:

Estaban en situación generalizada de quiebra casi todos los sectores

productivos (y esto) planteaba un estado de insolvencia en el sector
financiero (...) en la medida en que (éste) había asistido a la actividad
privada.62

The policy was not unique to Cavallo, having been applied previously by Martínez
de Hoz, nor did the polemic process of nationalising private debt end with the

59
Both Mexico and Brazil contracted large debts. However, Mexico used funds to develop a
petroleum infrastructure whilst Brazil developed its national industry. Phillips, p. 4.
Furthermore, a study conducted in 1986 by The Morgan Guaranty Trust of New York revealed that
of all Latin American debtor countries with a ratio of 50:1 Argentina retained the lowest percentage
of debt within the country, Phillips, p. 4.
60
Adams, Chapter 14.
61
According to several sources, including Alfieri and Solanas, of the estimated debt of some 45
billion dollars, 23 billion dollars were owed by private enterprises.
62
Domingo Cavallo quoted by Escudé, p. 57.

188
military regime.63 However, it is doubtful that Cavallo’s explanation would provide
comfort to future generations of Argentines suffering hardship due to economic
policy decisions apparently adopted, at least in part, in observance of debt
repayment dictates established by international finance organisations.

A final aspect of the private debt is contested by lawyer Alfredo Eric Calcagno,
who asserts that the debt owed by subsidiary companies of multinationals located in
Argentina, qualifies as an inverse debt. That is, the parent companies located
abroad are responsible for honouring the debt to the Argentine government. In
support of his case, Calcagno cites the 1971 Swift Deltec case in which ‘parent’
companies were decreed responsible for the debts of their subsidiaries.64

A further practice which has been identified as playing a significant role in debt
accumulation is that of profiteering and transferring funds out of the country via a
system known as the bicicleta financiera. The process was made possible by the
crawling peg devaluation system introduced by Martínez de Hoz in 1978. The
crawling peg was aimed at maintaining Argentine business competitiveness but
created an overvalued peso. In Argentina, swapping pesos for foreign currencies
was not only legal but could be described as being subsidized by the state. The
public sector would borrow money from foreign banks and then sell the foreign
currency to private individuals and companies who deposited it abroad.65 As
explained by Jorge Oviedo:

Los capitales comenzaron a ingresar en dólares, compraban pesos, se

colocaban en tasas de interés superiores a la inflación y mucho mayores
que la devaluación, por lo que podían comprar poco tiempo después
muchos más dólares y fugarse.66

63
Martínez de Hoz assisted the Acindar steel company, of which he was president, to access foreign
credit and was responsible for the transfer of the company’s debts over to the state. Jorge Cadus,
‘José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz: El empresario de la represión’, Portal de los Pueblos, 16 March
2013
<http://www.portaldelospueblos.com.ar/2013/03/jose-alfredo-martinez-de-hoz-el.html> [accessed 12
September 2014]
64
Interview with Alfredo Eric Calcagno in Memoria.
65
Adams, Chapter. 14.
66
Jorge Oviedo, ‘La tablita, la plata dulce y un futuro amargo’, La NaciónOnline, 19 March 2006
<http://www.lanacion.com.ar/789806-la-tablita-la-plata-dulce-y-un-futuro-amargo> [accessed 24
July 2011]

189
Lobbying to have the debt cancelled, on the basis of its illegal contraction and the
fact that it continues to shackle policy decisions of contemporary administrations,
continues to the present.67

The IMF.
In view of the high level of anti-IMF feeling demonstrated during the 2001 mass
protests, this section presents a brief consideration of the likely roots of popular
discontent with the IMF and other international finance agencies, which can be
considered as further causes of contemporary anti-imperialist feeling in Argentina.

IMF and Central Bank involvement in Argentina dates back to 1958. The Fund was
established in 1949 with the stated aim of promoting:

economic and financial co-operation among member countries in order to

facilitate the expansion and balanced growth of world trade …to provide
(temporary) financial assistance to members that are facing potential or
actual balance of payments difficulties.68

In order to fulfil the prescriptions set out in its ‘Articles of Agreement’, the Fund
has a body of policies and procedures known as Conditionality, a set of stabilisation
policies which potential creditor countries will be expected to follow in order to
access funds. As a means of ensuring compliance with the stabilisation conditions,
funds are released at intervals. Failure to meet performance targets, or reticence in
implementing particular policies, leads to suspension of payments. The immediate
implication of the above is the perception of national subordination under the
tutorial role by which a foreign lending agency is afforded the right to dictate and/or
manipulate the country’s sovereign right over its economic, and by extension, social
policy, which often fuels anti-imperialist sentiment.

In keeping with the organisation’s free market orientation, the IMF

recommended that policies should centre on anti-inflationary policies aimed at

67
For an example, see Jim Armitage, ‘Britain Under Fire for Demanding Argentina Pay Back
Junta’s Debts’, Independent, 30 May 2014, Business News.
68
Articles of agreement of the International Monetary Fund, adopted 27 December 1945 cited by
Conklin and Davidson.

190
reducing aggregate demand and economic opening.69 Typical policies include
influencing taxes, spending cutbacks, freezing and/or reduction of public sector
wages, curtailing of welfare programmes, including pensions and the reduction
of minimum wage levels. As previously noted, conditions also extend to the
restructuring and privatisation of public enterprises. The implications of these
policies for lower sectors in the creditor countries are apparent.

The nature of IMF policies and the widespread perception of the unfairness of their
evident anti-popular weighting have been made all the less palatable by the fact that
the Latin American context provides clear, extensive, empirical evidence of the
failure of IMF prescriptions to generate the desired effects of growth and economic
stability.70 With specific reference to Argentina, Margaret Conklin and Daphne
Davidson note:

The IMF stabilisation programs in Argentina have not improved prospects

for economic growth and in fact have led to a decrease in the standard of
living for a significant portion of the population… the implementation of
the harsh conditions included in these programs has been linked to the
forceful repression of labor and to political instability. The overall impact
of these programmes thus suggests that they have contributed to violations
of the economic and social human rights of Argentines.71

A graphic analogy of the subordinate relationship of creditor countries to the IMF’s

draconian dictates is presented by Mark Alan Healey and Ernesto Seman, ‘The
country is like a donkey being taught to stop eating: When it doesn't do what it's
told, it gets spanked; and when it finally does, it starves to death’.72 A further cause
of contention surrounding IMF involvement in the economic policy of creditor
nations is that the IMF economists operate from a position of total impunity and are
not required to assume responsibility for or compensate for failures resulting from
their directives.

69
Conklin and Davidson.
70
Stiglitz.
71
Conklin and Davidson, p. 262.
72
Mark Alan Healey and Ernesto Seman, ‘The Cost of Orthodoxy: Argentina was the Poster Child
for Austerity and Obedience to the IMF Formula’, The American Prospect Magazine, 4 January
2002.

191
A further aspect of IMF operation which has come under criticism is the apparently
contradictory content of clauses in the guiding ideology. The official legal position
of the IMF is to disclaim responsibility for the inequitable impact its stabilisation
programmes may produce.73 However, this position runs contrary to the social
content of purposes set down in Section iii and to some extent Section v of Article 1
of the Fund’s Articles of Agreement and also to further guidelines introduced in
1979.74 In addition, it should be stressed that the IMF is a specialised agency of the
United Nations Organisation and, as such, is bound by the organisation’s basic
charter, central to which is the commitment to meet the needs of citizens and ensure
the basic rights of workers.75 As such, the IMF position of detachment not only
goes in complete contradiction to the stated purposes of the fund itself but can also
be considered to be in violation of basic human rights as set out in the 1948
Declaration of Human Rights and clarified in the International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in force since 1978. Contradictory legalities
aside, the apparent eagerness of the IMF to court relations with the usurping
Proceso Militar has been interpreted as testimony to the organisation’s broader
disregard for democratic governance and human rights issues.

Anti-imperialist feeling may constitute a central aspect of certain individuals’

personal political ideology based on their intellectual perception and predisposition.
However, it appears that in Argentina, such attitudes may have developed as a
direct consequence of their negative personal empirical experience. The appalling
human cost of Argentina’s IMF-guided neoliberal experiment, observable for
Argentines on a daily basis, constitutes a series of graphic images of widespread
suffering and personal humiliation. A simple anecdotal example from my personal
experience was the response of a female member of the public, which took place
while waiting on a railway platform. As the Tren Blanco pulled up in the station,
groups of cartoneros making the journey to Buenos Aires city centre were visible
through the dirty barred windows of the bare, dark carriages. Clearly upset by the
sight, the lady chose to strike up a conversation with me, highlighting the fact that
for her, the most disturbing aspect of the ‘sad shameful’ sight was the fact that

73
Conklin and Davidson, pp. 246-7.
74
Conklin and Davidson, pp. 246-7.
75
Conklin and Davidson, pp. 246-7.

192
children were among the victims of the conditions of need and marginalisation on
public display.

Political leaders.
Dissatisfaction with President Alfonsín’s leadership is generally attributable to
perceptions of personal weakness. Salient examples of the president’s
fainthearted approach are his apparently conciliatory attitude during the process
of prosecutions of military personnel for crimes committed during the preceding
Proceso regime and his failure to honour his commitment of a hard stance
towards the imperialist IMF. However, the subsequent presidency of Carlos
Menem would raise a consensus of feeling which would see the 1990s
denominated ‘segundo década ínfame del siglo veinte’. 76 The period, heralded
by Menem’s immediate post-electoral ‘betrayal' of promises made during his
candidature, unfolded as a catalogue of broken promises by high ranking cabinet
members, accusations of rampant misconduct, corruption and even intimidation,
murder and money laundering associated with arms and drug trafficking.77
Frequently misusing emergency decrees to circumvent constitutional
regulations, Menem and his associates, it is asserted, circumvented the law and
operated in a context of flagrant impunity.78 Bearing testimony to the validity of
these accusations in June 2001, Menem was convicted of arms trafficking
offences.

However, accusations of abuse of political power did not end with Menem’s
presidency. In the 1999 national elections, the Alianza, a coalition under Fernando
de la Rúa, focused on issues of transparency, law and order and social justice. De la
Rúa’s electoral campaign address contained clear personal criticisms of Menem and
promised resolution of key issues of economic and legal inequality, unemployment,

76
The term is widely used in reference to the period. However, one such example is provided by
Federico Bernal. See Federico Bernal, Petróleo, estado y soberanía:hacia la empresa
multiestatal latinoamericana de hidrocarburos (Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos, 2005), p. 119.
77
See CNA, ‘La década del ’90 y la impunidad política’, CNA, 31 January 2016
<http://www.agenciacna.com/2/nota_1.php?noticia_id=29398> [accessed 2 February 2016]
Anecdotal evidence is available in Memoria.
78
Manzetti, Neoliberalism, Accountability, and Reform Failures, p.161; Scott Morgenstern and
Luigi Manzetti, ‘Legislative Oversights: Interests and Institutions in the United States and
Argentina’, in Democratic Accountability in Latin America, ed. by Scott Mainwaring and
Christopher Welner (Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 132-69 (p. 158).

193
corruption, violence and lack of dignity faced by increasing numbers of
Argentines.79 The Alianza’s manifesto, entitled Carta a los argentinos, promised to
retain the convertibility law, to fight for social justice, to combat tax evasion and
financial speculation and to raise health and education budgets. However, as de la
Rúa’s presidency progressed, he also became the subject of allegations of
corruption, including dispensation of impunity to members of the political class,
notably Carlos Menem.80

To conclude, the perception of the country as a subordinate victim of despotic

foreign powers has received broad acceptance, spanning the twentieth century, and
continues to inform contemporary political discourse and popular perception. The
perceived agents of imperialism have altered over the century. Nevertheless, anti-
imperialist rhetoric remains a central aspect of discourse in contemporary Argentine
political discussion. This chapter has sought to present a contextualisation of the
vehement feelings of anti-imperialism towards international finance, notably the
IMF, and also the high levels of rejection of the country’s domestic political class,
as witnessed during the mass protests accompanying the country’s 2001 economic
crisis. The chapter has highlighted the widespread popular perception of the
fundamental role assumed by the IMF in dictating Argentina’s erroneous domestic
economic policy and the equally pernicious role played by the domestic political
class in the country’s economic crisis.

For a broad sector of Argentines, the 1990s imperialist assault, led by international
finance and facilitated by the fainthearted or mercenary attitudes of domestic
politicians, had not only brought the once proud, internationally prominent country
to the brink of economic collapse, but had also demonstrated total disregard for

79
Bonnet, p. 263.
80
On 15 July 2001 Menem was arrested on charges of arms sales to Ecuador and Croatia. However,
on age grounds he was allowed to serve his sentence in the palatial surroundings of a friend’s ranch,
accompanied by his wife, from which he was subsequently released. The theme of impunity, and
inequality in the country’s justice system was a key aspect of the interviews which I conducted and
will be revisited at a later stage.

194
human suffering, which, in its most extreme form, generated the question:

¿cómo es en un país (con) una riqueza capaz de satisfacer tres millones

de personas … de enfermedades curables o desnutrición mueren cada día
en Argentina cincuenta y cinco niños, treinta y cinco jóvenes y adultos,
diez mayores, un promedio de treinta y cinco mil personas por año? 81

81
Memoria.

195
Chapter Five

Argentina’s co-operative movement: European antecedents to

state projects.
The purpose of this chapter is to present an overview of aspects of Argentine co-
operative organisation. In the first section, the contemporary co-operative
movement is contextualised by tracing the development of Argentina’s early co-
operative organisation in the agricultural and urban setting. Following this, the
altering patterns in the area of Argentine workers’ co-operation are considered.
The final section considers developments in the official response to co-operative
organisation, from the nineteenth-century efforts to introduce supportive
legislation, to more proactive and/or intrusive policies instituted during the mid-
twentieth century and the more recent state-sponsored co-operatives of both
Kirchner governments, raising the question of the state’s role in co-operative
organisation.

Urban co-operation.

Formal interest in co-operative organisation was inspired by French sociologist

Adolfo Vaillant, in Argentina and neighbouring Uruguay, in 1875 with the
creation of the Sociedad Cooperativa de Producción y Consumo de Buenos
Aires. Although unsuccessful, the project must be recognised not only as
providing certain inspirational impetus to Argentina’s urban co-operative
movement and as an attempt to improve the living standards of Argentina’s
popular classes but, equally importantly, it establishes Argentina’s fledgling co-
operative movement on a timescale comparable to that of several European
countries.1

Nevertheless, despite the above, León Schujman highlights the fact that that the
most effective early co-operative organisation developed, most notably between

1
Gobierno de la Ciudad de Córdoba, ‘Desde los comienzos: Primeros pasos del cooperativismo
argentino’<http://web2.cba.gov.ar/actual_web/cooperativas_nuevo/paginas/pag_historia_arg.ht
m> [accessed 14 September 2013]

196
1870 and 1929, from the practical efforts of working-class immigrants from
Europe in a bid to better their living conditions:

Aunque las ideas del llamado socialismo utópico, que inspire a los
precursores del cooperativismo en el Viejo Mundo, fueron patrimonio
de prohombres de nuestra historia como Echeverría, Alberdi,
Sarmiento y otros, es la experiencia concreta y vital de esta forma de
organización socioeconómica para la satisfacción de necesidades
sentidas y defensa de sectores menos favorecidos, la que impulse la
aparición de y diseminación de formas asociativas de base solidaria
en nuestro suelo.2

Co-operation was developed prior to 1900 by members of several European

immigrant communities.3 These early co-operatives operated in a variety of
areas from food supply and pharmaceuticals to telephones, and books.4
Between 1885 and 1886 La Unione Cooperativa Italiana was formed with the
aim of creating a comprehensive project of producer, consumer, credit, and
construction co-operative organisations.

A particularly successful co-operative organisation, Cooperativa el Hogar

Obrero, was established in La Floresta district of Buenos Aires city in July 1905.
Headed by Drs. Juan B. Justo, founder of the Partido Socialista, and Nicolás
Repetto, the organisation aimed to provide housing, either as rental property or
by offering credit, to enable construction and purchase of homes as well as
technical advice on construction.5 The project is also significant for its role in
the development of urban co-operative organisation in Argentina.6 In general
terms, Argentina’s urban co-operative movement developed at a somewhat
slower rate than its rural counterpart, beginning with consumer organisations
followed by other types of co-operative. The urban co-operatives began to form

2
León Schujman, ‘El cooperativismo en la Argentina’, REVESCO: Estudios Cooperativos, 52
(1984), 126-36 (p. 126).
3
Graciela Mateo and Ximena A. Carreras Doallo, ‘La economía social en la Argentina peronista
(1946-1955): Una Mirada desde el discurso official’, EIAL, 24:2 (2013), 79-104 (p. 82);
Gobierno de la Ciudad de Córdoba.
4
For a detailed presentation of these early Argentine co-operatives, see Gobierno de la Ciudad
de Córdoba.
5
The custom was for workers to actually construct their homes themselves. By 1910, the Hogar
Obrero had 130 members, had built 29 houses and had provided 91 mortgages. For more on the
historic activity of the Hogar Obrero, see the webpage: El Hogar Obrero, ‘Historia’
< http://www.eho.coop/historia> [accessed 13 January 2017]
6
Gobierno de la Ciudad de Córdoba. For a brief account of the historic development of the
Hogar Obrero’s construction projects, see El Hogar Obrero webpage,
<http://www.eho.coop/proyectos> [accessed 12 January 2017]

197
affiliations from 1932 with the establishment of the consumer co-operative
Federación Argentina de Cooperativas de Consumo (FACC).7

Agricultural Co-operation.
Other than a short-lived experiment in 1889 aimed at land colonisation, the first
steps in agricultural co-operation occurred between 1898 and 1908, the earliest
agricultural co-operative in Argentina being the iconic El Progreso Agrícola de
Pigüé, established by French immigrants in Buenos Aires province in October
1898.8 El Progreso aimed to provide insurance cover for hailstone damage to
crops after a hailstorm which caused damage to crops between 1897 and1898.9
On 12 August 1890, a group of Jewish immigrants established Colonia
Novibuco, later Colonia Lucienville, in Entre Ríos province. The central aims of
this co-operative were to experiment and fund equipment necessary for crop
cultivation. This co-operative became the model on which the country’s
subsequent mixed, multiactive agricultural co-operatives were based.10
Argentina’s first cotton co-operative was established in Margarita Belén, Chaco
province, in 1906 and two years later Santa Fé had its first agricultural co-
operative.11

In the context of early 20th century rural Argentina, lack of specific knowledge
of co-operative practice, the relative isolation of the rural workers, generalised
opposition to co-operative organisation by the elite landowning exporting
concerns and the endemic latifundio system of land exploitation all conspired
against the rapid development of agricultural co-operative practice.12

7
Facultad de Economía Universidad de Buenos Aires, ‘Introducción a las sociedades
cooperativas’, p. 6.< www.econ.uba.ar/www/.../g288/Cooperativas.doc> [accessed 14
September 2013] Not to be confused with the FACC, Federación de Cooperativas de Crédito.
8
Government-sponsored land colonisation by European immigrants was introduced as an aspect
of the nineteenth-century Argentine political modernisation drive.
9
El Progreso Seguros, ‘¿Quién es “El Progreso Agrícola” cooperativa de seguros limitada?’,
(2008) <http://www.elprogresoseguros.com.ar/lacompa%C3%B1ia.htm> [accessed 10
November 2012]
10
These co-operatives were so named as they aimed to include activity other than insurance
provision. Graciela Mateo, ‘El cooperativismo agrario en la provincia de Buenos Aires (1946-
1955)’, Mundo Agrario, 2: 4 (January-June/2002)
<http://www.mundoagrario.unlp.edu.ar/article/view/v02n04a03/1526> [accessed 14 September
2013]
11
Mateo.
12
Mateo.

198
Nevertheless, despite negative militating factors, and assisted by the leyes
11.170 Ley de Arrendamientos 1921 and, more specifically 11.388 Ley de
Cooperativas 1926, co-operative organisation did expand to some extent,
displacing militant confrontational activity by rural labour.13 This shift was
lauded by Juan B. Justo, co-founder of the Argentine Socialist party, as
indicative of heightened social awareness:

el cooperativismo es impulsado por trabajadores y productores que

van madurando su comprensión de la realidad y de su propia posición
en ella hasta que de a poco, por sobre la experiencia frustrante de las
huelgas, fue creciendo un nuevo concepto: la solidaridad de hacer,
que exige un grado de capacidad mucho más elevado que la acción
gremial negativa de las huelgas. Entonces, en lugar de protestar
contra el almacén de ramos generales o contra el acopiador, los
productores van organizándose para reemplazarlos por
co-operativas.14

By the 1930s, the agricultural co-operative movement was already consolidated

in Buenos Aires, Santa Fé, Córdoba, Entre Ríos and La Pampa provinces and
was developing in the Chaco province cotton industry.15 Additionally, dairy
farming co-operatives initiated in 1918 flourished and, by 1945, there were 235
co-operatives with a total membership of 12,703, predominantly in the Santa Fé
and Córdoba provinces.16 By 1945, Graciela Mateo reports that 44 percent of the
country’s yerba mate and 75 percent of the cotton crop was produced by co-
operative organisations.17 See Table 5. 1 (page, 201).

13
The ley de arrendamientos facilitated the sale of land to lease holders and tenant farmers
Fernando J. Devoto, Historia de los italianos en la Argentina, 2nd edn (Buenos Aires: Editorial
Biblos, 2008), p. 277.
14
Juan B. Justo cited in Sunchaleshoy, Sunchaleshoy Editorial, ‘Bonfatti, Nuestra provincia ha
sido pionera en el cooperativismo’, Sunchaleshoy, 16 March 2012
<http://www.sunchaleshoy.com.ar/2012/03/16/bonfatti-nuestra-provincia-ha-sido-pionera-del-
cooperativismo/> [accessed 10 September 2013]
15
Mateo.
16
Mateo.
17
Mateo.

199
 Table 5. 1: Co-operative growth in the farming sector 1937-1951.

1937 1947 1951

Type Co-ops Members Co-ops Members Co-ops Members
of co-op.
Agro 138 33,233 192 61,729 434 124,095
livestock
Cotton 20 2,970 29 9,132 31 11,522
Cereal - - 7 945 15 2,468
Dairy 78 3,217 357 22,941 - -

Vine/fruit 29 1,182 26 2,946 46 5,399

Yerba 13 1,590 17 8,012 18 8,725
mate /
tobacco
Flour - - - - 400 28,881
total 278 42,182 628 105,705 944 181,070
Source: Mario Yuri-Izquierdo cited by Graciela Mateo, ‘El cooperativismo agrario en la
provincia de Buenos Aires (1946-1955)’, Mundo Agrario, 2: 4 (January-June, 2002), p. 7.

Ultimately, Buenos Aires developed the most prolific agricultural co-operative

sector, to a large extent as a result of the traditional economic superiority of the
area.

Accompanying the development of rural co-operatives was the creation of co-

operative federations, notably the Asociación de Cooperativas Argentinas
(ACA). The ACA, initially founded on 16 February 1922 under the title
Asociación de Cooperativas Rurales Zona Central, comprised 10 co-operatives
located in Santa Fé and Córdoba provinces.18 By 1946, now named the ACA,
the organisation had flourished and comprised 110 co-operatives and 40,000
agricultural producers in Córdoba, Santa Fe and Buenos Aires.19

However, in a thesis published in 1900, Raimundo Real notes the relative lack
of significance of Argentina’s co-operative movement at that point.20 In addition
to identifying what could be considered disappointing or limited numbers of co-
operatives registered, Real also notes the fact that many of the co-operatives
actually registered in the period were not, in fact, operating on co-operative
18
Nuevo ABC Rural, ‘90 años impulsando el cooperativismo en el país’, Nuevo ABC Rural, 7
March 12 <http://www.nuevoabcrural.com.ar/vertext.php?id=4537> [accessed 12 December
2012]
19
Noemí M. Girbal-Blacha, ‘Organización cooperativa agraria y política gubernamental en la
Argentina peronista 1946-1955’, Signos Históricos,12 (2004), 39-67 (p. 45).
20
Raimundo J. Real, Sociedades Cooperativas (Buenos Aires, Schürer-Stolle, 1900).

200
principles. This he attributes to either a generalised unclear understanding of
co-operative principles or to commercial profit-making ventures exploiting co-
operative status.21 Real provides a particularly pessimistic assessment of the
number of projects operating on genuine co-operative principles saying: de las
...que funcionan con el nombre de cooperativas, quizás no hay tres que lo sean
en realidad.22

The relatively limited success and impact of the approximately 56 registered

and authorised co-operatives established prior to 1900 appears to have been
due in large part to the absence of any concrete legislation to inform co-
operative ventures and organisations.23 As such, the introduction of state
legislation in 1926 provided a turning point in the history of Argentina’s
co-operative movement.

Legislation.

In terms of the legal regulatory principles governing Argentina’s co-operative

organisations, two clearly defined stages can be identified, namely pre- and
post-1926. Pre-1926, the co-operative movement has been described as,
‘visualizado como una alternativa o complemento distinto del propuesto por el
Estado ….No existe en el período …una planificación que lo contemple aunque
“el hecho coorporativo” desarrolla en el seno de la sociedad por la fuerza de
su propia virtualidad’.24 However, in 1926, legislation was introduced to
inform and govern co-operative organisation.25

The first actual reference to co-operative organisation by a legal body was

contained in Ley 1420 de Educación Común of July 1884. The law contained
specific reference to the value of encouraging co-operative ventures into the

21
Gobierno de la Ciudad de Córdoba.
22
Gobierno de la Ciudad de Córdoba.
23
Verónica Lilian Montes and Alicia Beatriz Ressel, ‘Presencia del cooperativismo en
Argentina’, UniRcoop, 1: 2 (2003), 9-26 (p. 11)
<http://extension.comteco.com.bo/documentos/descargas/Presencia%20del%20cooperativismo
%20en%20Argentina.pdf> [accessed 12 October 2012]
24
Andrea Levin and Griselda Verbeke, El cooperativismo Argentino en cifras. Tendencias en su
evolución: 1927-1997 (Buenos Aires: Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Ciencias
Económicas, 1997), p. 4.
25
Levin and Verbeke, p. 2.

201
sphere of popular education projects. 26 A further, more commonly cited legal
reference to co-operative organisation is the 1889 reform to the Código
Comercial, which introduced certain limited concepts of co-operation with the
addition of articles 392, 393, and 394. According to the terms of the Código
Comercial, the Rochdale principles of one man one vote and the individual and
nominal quality of shares were established. However, organisation and
administration were entrusted to commercial ventures and the conditions of
membership and capital accumulation and capital increase were established
according to the individual business’s bylaws. This created confusion and
allowed for abuse, as non co-operatives could operate under the title of co-
operative or limited society with complete impunity.27

Subsequent projects specific to co-operatives were presented in 1905 by Senator

Francisco Uriburu for the establishment of Rural Credit co-operatives based on
Raiffeissen’s model, and a new bill proposed in 1911 by Agricultural Minister
Eleodoro Lobos by which credit from the Banco de la Nación would be
available to support co-operatives. Both these, and a further bill presented by
Lobos the following year failed to be ratified.28 The first comprehensive law,
Ley General de Cooperativas, was, in fact, passed in 1915 on the initiative of
Socialist Juan B. Justo co-founder of the iconic Hogar Obrero Construction Co-
operative. The bill, which presented clear defining criteria for a co-operative
society, also specified the rights of married women to full membership,
revolutionary in the specific Argentine context in which married women’s civil
rights were on a par with those of children and the mentally handicapped.29
However, the law failed to be approved by the Argentine parliament. Between
1916 and 1920, a further five projects specific to agricultural credit were

26
Ley 1420 de Educación Común specified that co-operative public libraries and educational
facilities should be promoted at a local level and co-operative educational publications and
establishments encouraged nationally. Daniel Plotinski, ‘La Ley 11.388 Sobre Régimen Legal de
las Sociedades Cooperativas (1926)’, Centro Cultural de la Cooperación Floreal Gorini,
Cooperativismo en movimiento blog, 7 April 2010
<http://www.centrocultural.coop/blogs/cooperativismo/2010/04/07/historia-del-cooperativismo-
6-la-ley-11388-sobre-regimen-legal-de-las-sociedades-cooperativas-1926/> [accessed 14
September 2013]
27
Plotinski, ‘La Ley’.
28
Plotinski, ‘La Ley’.
29
Article 2 Proyecto de ley sobre cooperativas, cited by José H. Porto et al., Revista de Ciencias
Económicas 92, 93, 94 (Buenos Aires: Centro Estudiantes de Ciencias Económicas; Colegio de
Doctores en Ciencias Económicas y Contadores Públicos Nacionales, 1921), pp. 93-4.

202
unsuccessfully presented.30 In 1921, Juan B. Justo presented a second, more
comprehensive Proyecto de Ley General on co-operatives, which he reiterated in
1923.31 That same year saw two proposals for the regulation of agricultural and
consumer co-operation. An additional proposal for co-operative legislation was
added in 1924 by president Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear and his Minister for
Justice, Antonio Sagarna.32 10 February 1926 saw previous efforts at
introducing legislation for co-operatives come to fruition with the the enactment
of Ley 11.388 on the Régimen Legal de Sociedades Cooperativas by Socialist
senator Mario Bravo.33

Article 2 of Ley 11.388 reflected the principles expressed by the Rochdale

pioneers and presented the first clear legal definition of co-operative societies.34
Concurrently, Ley 11.380 was passed to promote co-operation, authorising the
Banks, Banco de la Nación Argentina and Banco Hipotecario to authorise
special credits to co-operative entities, whilst exonerating them from national
taxes for a variety of their running costs.35 It has been suggested that Ley 11.388
was the most influential factor in the robust development of co-operative
societies in Argentina as, within two years of the law being passed, 79 urban co-
operatives and 143 agricultural co-operatives had been established.36 The new
co-operatives were located initially in Buenos Aires city and province, then
subsequently in the coastal area, Córdoba and the Territorios Nacionales.37 The

30
Daniel Plotinski, ‘Orígenes y consolidación del cooperativismo en la Argentina’, Revista
Idelcoop, 215 (2015), 157-78 (170).
31
Plotinski, ‘Orígenes’, p. 170.
32
Plotinski, ‘Orígenes’, p. 170.
33
Plotinski, ‘Orígenes’, p. 170.
34
Plotinski, ‘La Ley’.
35
Specifically, ‘gastos de constitución, reconocimiento, registro y funcionamiento, de
contribuciones sobre el valor de los edificios e instalaciones y de patentes’. Plotinski, ‘La Ley’.
36
Montes and Ressel, p. 11.
37
The term Territorios Nacionales refers to nine areas: Misiones, Formosa, Chaco, La Pampa,
Neuquén, Río Negro, Chubut, Santa Cruz and Tierra del Fuego. With reference to Ley 11.388,
amongst the most important regulations stipulated in this law were the limited responsibility of
co-operatives, the non-divisional quality of the social reserves and the impartial disposal of
remaining assets on dissolution of the co-operative. Further stipulations were political and
religious neutrality, prohibition of credit facilities and public services to be used by members
only.

203
regulation of co-operative entities was through Ley 11.388 until May 1973,
when it was replaced by Ley 20.337.38 Nevertheless, the fact that legislation
specific to co-operative organisations existed from 1926 must be attributed in
the main to the isolated but persistent efforts of individual political figures and
independent grassroots organisations rather than the result of a majority
government commitment to the promotion of co-operative enterprise or
recognition of the value of co-operative organisation as an integral part of
national development.

Changing trends in co-operative organisation: the rise of workers’ co-operatives.

There has been a clear shift in Argentine co-operative organisation in terms of
the prevalent type of co-operative. Despite significant levels of co-operative
expansion, between 1984 and 1989, agricultural co-operatives, traditionally the
principal sector of Argentina’s co-operative movement, began to show signs of
stagnation. From the mid 1970s, the growth rate of the agricultural co-operative
sector registered just 2 percent.39 Consumer, credit, insurance and public service
co-operatives also declined in number in the period from 1984 until 1994.40 By
comparison, the same decade saw record levels of co-operative expansion in the
urban sector, with significant rises of 20.6 percent in the numbers of worker co-
operatives and 13.3 percent in housing and construction co-operatives.41

In Argentina, workers’ co-operation had been somewhat slow to develop.

Itemised records of co-operative organisation do not exist for the pre-1950
period, but it is estimated that from 1928, when Argentina’s first worker co-
operative La Edilicia de Pergamiño was established by twelve construction
workers, until 1950, only 100 worker co-operatives had been established.42 That
is to say, a mere 3.9 percent of the total co-operatives were worker co-
operatives.43 Perón’s socio-economic policy spurred unprecedented growth in
worker/producer co-operatives. However, post-Peronist Argentina saw a decline
38
Dante Cracogna, ‘The Framework Law for Cooperatives in Latin America’, in The
International Handbook of Cooperative Law, ed. by Dante Cracogna, Antonio Fici and Hagen
Henrÿ (Heidelberg, Germany: Springer, 2013), pp. 165-86 (p.166).
39
Levin and Verbeke, p. 12.
40
Levin and Verbeke, p. 12.
41
Levin and Verbeke, p. 12.
42
Mirta Vuotto, El cooperativismo de trabajo en la Argentina contribuciones para el diálogo
social (Lima: OIT, 2011), p. 17.
43
Vuotto, El cooperativismo de trabajo, p. 17.

204
in the numbers of worker/producer co-operatives.44 At the national level, the
decade spanning 1984 to 1994 witnessed a rise of 24.9 percent in the number of
worker co-operatives. From representing 9.9 percent of the total co-operatives
registered in 1984, by 1994, the number had risen to 34.8 percent.45 See Table
5. 2

Table 5. 2: Distribution of operational co-operatives according to type of

activity 1984 and 1994.

Groups Type 1984 1994

number % number %
Agricultural 1,282 31.5 1,305 17.3
Worker 404 9.9 2,632 34.8
I Provision 342 8.4 631 8.3
Housing and construction 392 9.6 1,365 18.1
Consumer 209 5.1 106 1.4
II Credit 287 7.0 200 2.6
Insurance 57 1.4 55 0.7
Public services 1,100 27.1 1,270 16.8
Total 4,073 100.0 7,564 100.0
Source: Levin and Verbeke, p. 12.

The trend of increasing levels of new co-operative registrations countrywide

would continue. See Table 5. 3 (page, 207). Between 1990 and 2000, 5,787
worker co-operatives were established, constituting 50 percent of the country’s
total co-operative bodies. By 2000, registrations of worker co-operatives
reached unprecedented levels, as workers struggled to find sources of
employment.46

44
Vuotto, El cooperativismo de trabajo, p. 17.
45
Levin and Verbeke, p. 12.
46
Vuotto, El cooperativismo de trabajo, p. 17.

205
Table 5. 3: Distribution of co-operatives according to type and region May 1996
- June 1997.

Co-operative type Centre and Cuyo Northeast Patagonia Northwest Total

Coastal
area
Agricultural 1,020 161 267 174 299 1,921
Worker 2,899 175 210 388 592 4,264
Consumer 118 11 22 24 31 206
Credit 287 22 16 18 32 375
Provision 708 55 56 74 213 1,106
Insurance 55 3 1 45 1 105
Public Services 1,197 142 145 227 89 1,800
Housing and 1,761 219 105 164 277 2,526
construction

Totals 8,045 788 822 1,114 1,534 12,303

Source: El Instituto Nacional de Acción Cooperativa y Mutual INACyM, now Instituto Nacional
de Asociativismo y Economía Social (INAES). Cited in Levin and Verbeke, p. 15.

In the national panorama, GBA saw the highest rise in numbers of worker co-
operatives. See Table 5. 4. In fact, María Cecilia Roggi points out that, between
1992 and 1999, the province witnessed a rise in the number of worker co-
operatives registered which came to represent 63 percent of the total number of
the region’s co-operatives.47

Table 5. 4: Co-operatives registered by field 1980-1999 GBA.

Year 1980- 1984- 1989- 1992- 1996- Total

1983 1988 1991 1995 1999
Sector
Worker 18 120 203 760 729 1,830
Agriculture 3 31 19 53 83 189
and
Fisheries
Housing 15 184 74 226 116 655
Public 29 68 20 51 140 308
Services
Credit 5 9 1 4 4 23
Consumer 12 56 11 9 1 89
Provision 24 46 30 70 58 228
Unspecified 1 3 2 2 8 16
Total 107 517 360 1,215 1,398 3,331
Source: Roggi, p. 5.

47
María Cecilia Roggi, ‘Desarrollo cooperativo y entorno institucional: El caso del cooperativismo
de trabajo en la provincia de Buenos Aires’, Documentos del Centro de Estudios de Sociología del
Trabajo Universidad de Buenos Aires: 31 (2001), 1-20 (p. 4).

206
However, Mirta Vuotto advises caution when interpreting the high levels of co-
operative registration as actually constituting successful project consummation
on the part of the actual individual co-operatives.48 The reality of the situation
was that numbers of co-operatives, initiated and registered in a bid to provide
members with a source of livelihood, proved unable to garner the resources
necessary to actually either initiate and/or sustain production.49

In addition to their increased numbers, Argentina’s worker co-operatives also

reflected alterations in the country’s economic panorama through changes to the
type of the goods and services they provided. Traditionally, worker co-
operatives were established in sectors which required a high level of intensive
labour. Until the 1980s, the highest levels of growth in workers’ co-operatives
occurred in industrial activities requiring specific skills, such as food and drink,
textiles and wood.50 Worker co-operatives which formed later as a result of
workplace closure tended towards higher levels of representation in the areas of
metalwork, food processing, printing, and textiles, with a lower percentage
dedicated to health care, education, gastronomy, and journalism.51 Furthermore,
the changing focus of Argentina’s economy during the 1990s produced greater
representation of co-operatives linked to the increasingly influential service
industry, with increased numbers of worker co-operatives in areas such as
construction, cleaning and distribution of periodicals.52 In these service-based
co-operatives, members tended to be fewer in number and significantly less
skilled than those in the industrial workers’ co-operatives.53

Given the specific socio-economic circumstances governing the development of

workers’ co-operatives, Argentina’s contemporary co-operative movement
covers a particularly heterogeneous panorama. It is possible to group

48
Mirta Vuotto, ‘Organizational Dynamics of Worker Co-operatives in Argentina’, Service
Business, 6: 1 (2011), 85-97 (p. 88).
49
Vuotto, ‘Organizational Dynamics’, p. 88.
50
Fajn, Cooperativa, p. 9.
51
M. Santoro, ‘De planta madre de GATIC SA a Cooperativa Unidos por el Calzado (2001-
2004)’, XXII Jornadas de Historia económica Asociación Argentina de la Historia Económica,
(Río Cuarto, Córdoba: Universidad Nacional de Río Cuarto, 21-24 September 2010).
52
Fajn, Cooperativa, p. 9.
53
Fajn, Cooperativa, p. 9.
53
Fajn, Cooperativa, p. 9.

207
contemporary ventures in self-management into broad categories on the basis of
their origins:

(i) Traditionally established co-operatives.

(ii) Co-operatives formed from workplace recovery.

(iii) Newly established workplaces created by the unemployed, often with

support from external bodies, official or NGO, both of which Yohanan Stryjan
terms pragmatic co-operatives on the basis that they are established for practical
rather than ideological reasons.54

In addition to the aforementioned independently established co-operatives, in

the first decade of the twenty-first century, government-sponsored teams,
designated as co-operatives, began to operate in populations and areas identified
as vulnerable.

Traditional co-operatives are those established by a group of individuals who,

by combining their knowledge and abilities in a given area, are able to set up an
economically viable project which they operate on the basis of members’ shared
ideals and values. Many of these co-operatives date back to the early twentieth
century, one such example being the Cooperativa Argentina de Florecultores,
established in 1940.55

The fábricas recuperadas, constituting the majority of co-operatives registered

from the mid-1980s but most particularly during the 1990s, are those referred to
as ‘phoenix’ co-operatives. 56 These workplaces, which closed under a variety of
circumstances, were subsequently ‘reborn’ as worker-controlled co-operative
enterprises, under an equally varied set of conditions.57 As a general rule, these
co-operatives were established with the support and guidance of two

54
Yohanan Stryjan, ‘Cooperativas, emprendimientos colectivos y desarrollo local’, Documentos
Publicación del Centro de Estudios de Sociología del Trabajo: 22 (Buenos Aires: Universidad de
Buenos Aires, 1999), p. 5 <http://www.econ.uba.ar/cesot/docs/documento%2022.pdf> [accessed
21 February 2012]
55
Cooperativa Argentina de florecultores <http://www.floricultores.com.ar/> [accessed 15
September 2013]
56
The term phoenix co-operative is coined by Mellor, Hannah and Stirling, p. 44. Forty-one
percent of recuperaciones took place during the 1990s. Fajn, Cooperativa, p. 7.
57
The fact that the recuperaciones occurred in very diverse conditions is noted in key studies on
the fábricas recuperadas. Fajn, Fábricas y empresas; Heller; Magnani; Julián Rebón and others.

208
organisations, the MNER and the Movimiento Nacional de Fábricas
Recuperadas por sus Trabajadores (MNFRT), which secured legal and financial
assistance for workers engaged in workplace recovery.58 Recovered workplace
co-operatives constitute a particularly heterogeneous sub-group. Differences
include contrasts in legal status and organisational model. The reasons for this
are varied and can be the result of multiple conditions specific to their
establishment: the level of conflict entailed in establishing the business, the
differing political orientation of the agencies providing them support, solidarity
links with the local community and activist groups and challenges in areas such
as personnel, equipment, and products. The vast majority of the members of
these co-operatives adopted the co-operative model as a means to an end, that is,
to continue to work, with members’ co-operative spirit developing, or perhaps
not, in the post-inscription period. As this anonymous co-operative worker
notes:

La prioridad es no quedar sin laburo. La cuestión de la forma que se

va a dar es llegar al momento y ver. El año pasado ninguno de
nosotros tenía una mentalidad cooperativa… simplemente que la
forma de poder seguir laburando era esa. 59

The term ‘newly created workplaces’ refers to completely new ventures

established as worker co-operatives. An example of this type of co-operative is
La Cacerola, a project set up by the vecinos, unemployed workers, and the
members of a local asamblea in an abandoned building in Calle Franklin of
Buenos Aires city’s Almagro district. La Cacerola, named after the cacerolazo
popular protests which took place during December 2001, combines a bakery,
cafeteria, and drop-in centre and is frequented by students and community
members. The Tren Blanco co-operative established in 2004 and operating in
the neighbouring GBA towns of San Martín and José León Suárez is a further
example of this type of pioneering, worker co-operative enterprise.

58
The MNER is the more combative of the two organisations as indicated by its slogan ‘Ocupar,
Resistir, Producir’. A lesser number of recovered workplaces are represented by the
FECOOTRA and the Federación Nacional de Cooperativas de Trabajo en Empresas
Recuperadas (FENCOOTER).
59
Interview with a co-operative worker in a recovered workplace, Fajn, Fábricas y empresas,
p. 64.

209
Stryjan posits that co-operatives are established and operate on the basis of four
interrelated conditions, any one of which may constitute the initial impetus
behind the co-operative’s establishment. He identifies these conditions as:

(i) The social context or community, which essentially refers to the creative
potential of interpersonal links. Co-operative ventures may be established on the
basis of community-shared locality. Founders of these cooperativas barriales
are often sub-populations of geographically well-delimited areas who, benefiting
from links of friendship or familiarity, have identified a common need, in this
case employment.60

(ii) Need, referring to a specific shared need, which can simply be employment.

(iii) A shared vision or idea.

(iv) An existing workplace in which the actors define themselves on the basis of
shared experience in employment.61

These conditions or circumstances, although they indicate a specific emphasis in

the individual co-operative at any given time, are necessarily interrelated and
offer the possibility of permanent recasting. Following Stryjan’s model, in
terms of the differing impetus behind their establishment, the traditional co-
operatives would be established on the basis of a vision and the phoenix or
recovered workplaces on the basis of their shared experiences in their condition
as former co-workers. In terms of the newly established co-operatives, on the
other hand, the starting point may differ. For example, from my personal
experience, regarding the initial impetus behind the two co-operatives
previously identified (La Cacerola and Tren Blanco), the predominant impetus
behind the establishment of the former was afforded by the community setting
of the Almagro barrio.62 The experience of the Tren Blanco co-operators, on the
other hand, would appear to indicate that their project was fundamentally driven
by their need for employment and social inclusion.

A further point of interest is that the circumstances surrounding the underlying

initiative behind the formation of the enterprise are reflected in the members’

60
Stryjan, p. 7.
61
Stryjan, pp. 8-9.
62
Interview with La Cacerola co-operative’s founding members Argentine, Silvia Díaz, and
exiled Uruguayan, Walter Blanco (9 August 2007).

210
differing self-perceptions and relationship with the co-operative. In the
traditional co-operative, predictably, members’ sense of self-identity is as co-
operative members. Members of co-operatives established as a result of
workplace recovery, on the other hand, tend to focus on their identity and rights
as former workers. In the case of the government-sponsored co-operatives,
workers in these workplaces indicate low levels of identification, if any, as co-
operative workers.63 Moreover, specific aspects of the government-sponsored
co-operatives, which run contrary to the essential nature of a conventional co-
operative structure, would appear to engender feelings of low value and
identification with the work and little sense of belonging to the co-operative.64

Co-operative development and relationship with the Argentine state.

As previously noted, Argentina’s state policy towards civil society was

traditionally anti-interventionist with co-operative development generally
occurring either as a result of the activity of individual activists or from
grassroots organic co-operative organisation, independent of institutional
influence or support. However, periods of active state intervention and
promotion of co-operative ventures occurred periodically from the mid-
twentieth century. As noted in Chapter Two, in the cases of France and Italy in
particular, the history of state involvement and support for co-operative
organisation proved beneficial, constituting a significant factor in the
development and ultimate endurance of their co-operative movements.
However, not all state-co-operative relations achieve positive, amicable results.
The proposal of state aid and support may be attractive to a potential
co-operative enterprise, particularly in the case of ventures established for
pragmatic economic reasons where initial start-up capital is a serious
impediment. However, in accordance with co-operative ideology, this aid must
come without compromising the fundamental co-operative principles of

63
Vuotto, El cooperativismo de trabajo, p. 20. These co-operatives are discussed at a later stage
in this chapter.
64
Angélica De Sena and Florencia Chahbenderian, ‘Argentina ¿trabaja?: Algunas reflexiones y
miradas del plan “Ingreso Social con Trabajo”’, Polis, 30 (2011), 77-98
<http://polis.revues.org/2136> [accessed 3 July 2013];Vuotto, El cooperativismo de trabajo,
pp. 8-9.

211
autonomy and freedom to operate without interference from all external bodies
including the state:

la cooperativa es una organización autónoma frente a otras

organizaciones y, especialmente, frente al Estado. Esta afirmación ha
sido elevada al rango de principio, al igual que el gobierno democrático
y las puertas abiertas. De manera que las cooperativas no pueden
descansar en el apoyo estatal al precio de subordinarse a sus políticas.
Pueden acometer actividades en conjunto cuando fuera conducente al
logro de sus objetivos pero sin sacrificar su autonomía e
independencia.65

In the Argentine case, this has proved a polemical area as both co-operatives and
their representative bodies have sought to challenge intrusive state policies
aimed at regulating or influencing aspects of the co-operatives’ functioning.
More recently, an additional cause for concern which has been expressed is the
usurpation and fraudulent use of the co-operative identity by the Kirchner
governments as a tool of social appeasement.66

A positive correlation between state policy, which seeks to encourage and

support co-operative organisation, and the number of co-operatives registered is
identified by Andrea Levin and Griselda Verbeke.67 However, as previously
noted, consideration of registration figures alone can conceal less positive levels
of efficient operation and survival of these same co-operatives. Periods during
which increased levels of co-operative registration and concurrent low levels of
cancellation or failure can be identified, in contrast to others in which the
opposite trends of low co-operative inscription and high cancellation
predominate. The periods 1950 to 1954 and 1984 to 1988 demonstrate patterns
of increased co-operative development and concurrent low levels of
cancellation. In addition, an upsurge in the number of co-operatives, specifically
worker co-operatives, was registered post-2001, as workers sought to revive

65
Dante Cracogna, ‘Prólogo del coordinador’, in La legislación cooperativa en los países de
México, Centroamérica y el Caribe, ed. by Dante Cracogna (San José, Costa Rica: Alianza
Cooperativa Internacional para las Américas, 2009), pp. 7-12 (p. 10)
<http://www.aciamericas.coop/IMG/pdf/legislacion.pdf> [accessed 12 February 2013]
66
Rubén M. Lo Vuolo, ‘El programa “Argentina Trabaja” y el modo estático de regulación de la
cuestión social en el país’, Documento de Trabajo CIEPP, 75 (March 2010), p. 4
<http://www.ciepp.org.ar/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage_new1.tpl&pr
oduct_id=23&category_id=8&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=1&vmcchk=1&Itemid=1>
[accessed 15 September 2013]
67
Levin and Verbeke.

212
former workplaces. Again, in 2003 and in 2009, co-operative registrations
increased largely due to government-sponsored ‘co-operative’ initiatives. In
sum, the timeframes coinciding with Peron’s first mandates, the return to
democratic government of the post-Proceso period, and the recent context of
socio-economic crisis have experienced the highest levels of co-operative
registration with the lowest accompanying levels of cancellation. These three
specific timeframes are discussed in the following section.

Peron’s view was that co-operative organisation was a complementary and even
fundamental aspect of his ‘third way’ political vision, ‘El cooperativismo es un
tipo de organización popular que está en la médula del justicialismo’.68
According to Perón, co-operation provided a means of obtaining social justice
and strength in unity to avoid capitalist exploitation:

El espiritu cooporativista, es el triunfo de la justicia social y de

la consciencia social del campo argentino. Los pueblos que ni
tienen esa consciencia social, son fácil presa de los
explotadores. Un explotador, por milianario que sea, no puede
enfrentar a muchos millones de hombres sin capital, pero que
unidos forman un capital que es, siempre, superior en forma
material y moral al explotador.69

From the onset of his presidency, Perón expressed his intention to encourage
and support worker/producer co-operatives, and for the first time in the
country’s history, promoting co-operative organisation became a central aspect
of government policy. The development of co-operatives was at the heart of
both of Perón’s Five-Year plans. The first Five-Year plan (1947-1951) identified
the specific aim of promoting agricultural co-operatives which Levin and
Verbeke claim was a means of generating funds to finance state projects.70 The
plan also identified the government’s intention to promote consumer co-
operatives to generate economic stimulation. After 1950, Perón’s ‘Vuelta al

68
Perón cited by Ricardo C. Bazán, Ricardo C. Bazán, ‘Perón y el cooperativismo’, la solapa
entrerriana blogspot
<http://lasolapaentrerriana.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/peron-y-el-cooperativismo.html> [accessed
20 July 2016]
69
Bazán, ‘Perón y el cooperativismo’.
70
The plan introduced 19 legal stipulations and created three separate legislative requirements
specific to funding. Levin and Verbeke, p. 4.

213
Campo’ policy saw heightened government interest in the agricultural sector.71
This was particularly true after the implementation of the second Five-Year plan
in 1953.72 A central aspect of this plan was the provision of increased financial
support for the diversification of the rural economy and promotion of a
comprehensive organisation of producer and marketing co-operatives.73

The positive correlation between supportive government policy under Perón and
the growth of producer co-operatives is clearly exemplified in the case of Chaco
province’s cotton industry. Chaco’s co-operatives had traditionally been the
unique premise of an elite minority of the province’s rural society. However,
benefits such as guaranteed markets, low-interest credit facilities and fixed
prices facilitated widespread growth of cotton producing co-operatives in the
area. By the end of Perón’s presidencies, twenty-seven cotton producing co-
operatives had been established in Chaco province.74

Significant growth in the number of co-operatives also occurred in the urban

context.75 The previously mentioned consumer co-operatives reflected the
Peronist platform of increased socio-economic equality, and were encouraged as
a means of providing affordable products for lower-class urban populations.
These co-operatives tended to take the form of state-sponsored, independent
organisations, which found most fertile ground in sectors with prior exposure to
the leftist-inspired co-operative movements of the past and union affiliates.76

However, worker/producer co-operatives also flourished in urban areas. From

the 1950s in particular, the public service and the building industry became
fertile ground for the development of workers’ co-operatives. Significantly,

71
See Noemí M. Girbal-Blacha and Sonia Regina de Mendonça, Cuestiones agrarias en
Argentina y Brasil: Conflictos sociales, educación y medio ambiente (Buenos Aires: Prometeo
Libros, 2007), pp. 236-7.
72
Mateo and Carreras Doallo, p. 92.
73
Susana Novick, ‘El IAPI, La experiencia del primer peronismo sobre comercio exterior’,
(2005) <http://labuenafruta.com.ar/historia/el-iapi-la-experiencia-del-primer-peronismo-sobre-
comercio-exterior > [accessed 28 January 2013]
74
Brennan and Rougier, pp. 96-7.
75
Elena, Dignifying, p. 176.
76
Elena exemplifies this by citing a workers’ consumer co-operative established in 1947 by 25
unions in conjunction with municipal officials and other community representatives in the
Quilmes district of GBA. Elena, Dignifying, p. 176.

214
Perón himself oversaw the creation of CGT of Argentina’s first worker co-
operative association, Asociación de Cooperativas de Trabajo de la República
Argentina (ACTRA) within the CGT.77 A further example of an area of urban
economic activity, which registered significant co-operative growth, was that of
electricity provision.78 La Scaleia notes the purpose of government promotion of
electricity co-operatives was both social and political.79 On the one hand,
electricity co-operatives were charged with extending the power supply to
remoter communities without access to electricity. On the other hand, affording
contracts to domestic co-operatives also had the effect of reducing the number
of concessions afforded to foreign energy providers.

It is undeniable that the effect of early Perónism’s favourable policy towards co-
operatives engendered their unprecedented growth; however, the state
relationship with both the urban and the agricultural co-operatives received
certain criticism. For example, accusations of clientelism were registered in
relation to the urban co-operatives. In the rural context, state intervention was on
occasion, considered to have run contrary to the principle of autonomous
operation, central to co-operative theory. Perón’s favourable stance towards co-
operative organisation was again revealed for a brief period in his third
presidency. For example, a bill was proposed in support of the uncompensated
confiscation of land, which had suffered long-term under-cultivation, for the
possible establishment of agricultural co-operatives. 80 However, after Perón’s
death, which occurred barely eight months into his mandate, the legislation was
never implemented.

With the return to democracy in 1983, given both its democratic participatory
structure and fundamental purpose of institutional transformation, Argentina’s

77
Mario César Elgue, Más allá de "lo económico" y "lo social": La economía social en un
proyecto nacional de desarrollo integrado (Buenos Aires, Corregidor, 2006), p. 226.
78
Luis Rodrigo La Scaleia, ‘Estado peronista y cooperativismo eléctrico: El caso de la
Cooperativa Eléctrica de Las Flores entre 1946 y 1951’, Mundo Agrario. Revista de Estudios
Rurales, 6: 12 (2006) < http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=84501210> [accessed 12 July
2016]
79
La Scaleia, p. 9.
80
Mario César Elgue, ¿Populismo urbano anti-campo?
<http://contexthistorizar.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/click-para-ampliar-mario-elgue-es-
el.html>[accessed 12 July 2015]

215
co-operative movement was perceived by government policy both in terms of a
tool with potential to strengthen civil society and an effective socio-economic
instrument both for co-operative members and wider society: El Estado es visto
como un importante agente de cambio social y el cooperatismo aparece como
valioso complemento de su acción en cuanto a las prioridades fijadas por el
gobierno. 81 The Secretaría de Acción Cooperativa, which was established under
the Ministerio de Economía, saw a significant rise in the number of co-
operatives registered, exceeding by 47 percent even the Peronist period 1950-
1954, to that point, the most prolific.82 For co-operatives registered between
1927 and 1983, see Table 5. 5.

Table 5. 5: Total co-operatives registered between 1927 and 1983.

Period Total registered

1927-29 164
1930-34 337
1935-39 309
1940-44 353
1945-49 647 Perón’s first and second ‘Five-
1950-54 1,483 Year’ plans
1955-59 1,166
1960-64 1,118
1965-69 1,085
1970-76 1,806
1977-83 1,253
Source: Levin and Verbeke, p. 6.

It was previously posited that post-2000, the magnitudinous institutional crisis

and resulting widespread expression of highly combative, anti-political and anti-
establishment sentiment forced a positive state response to popular initiatives. In
a bid to diffuse insurgency and regain political stability, the government
provided support for popular causes, aimed at fostering collective public
involvement and job creation. As such, with specific reference to the fábricas
recuperadas, state response, although at times ambivalent and inconsistent, was
generally favourable on issues pertaining to the workers’ cause.

In 2003, under Néstor Kirchner, social policy, focused on inclusion and reversal
of the predominant mentality based on individualism inculcated during

81
Levin and Verbeke, p. 8.
82
Levin and Verbeke, p. 8.

216
neoliberalism, was introduced promoting locally-focused, socially-oriented
economic projects, including mutual and co-operative ventures, specifically
worker co-operatives. In August 2003, under the banner ‘Porque el trabajo es el
mejor organizador e integrador social y genera riqueza, la creación de empleo
digno y genuino es la mejor política social’, the Ministerio de Desarrollo Social
introduced the Plan Nacional de Desarrollo Local y Economía Social ‘Manos a
la Obra’.83 The ‘Manos a la Obra’ plan aimed to provide countrywide financial,
advisory and technical assistance to enable members of vulnerable local
populations to establish viable self-managed economic projects, including co-
operatives.84 From its inception until September 2009, the initiative laid claim to
having provided assistance to over 600,000 small enterprises.85 In general terms,
it received the predictable claims of lack of transparency and facilitation of
political clientelism. However, in more practical terms and with specific
reference to the recipients of assistance, critics identify the plan as characterised
by frequent administrative delays in the approval and release of funding for
projects and inadequate ongoing support.86 As will become apparent, each of
these failings impacted on the development of the Tren Blanco co-operative.

Two further programmes were introduced by state bodies and these focused
uniquely on state-generated ‘co-operative’ organisation aimed at providing
workforces for public works projects in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. These
were the Programa Federal de Emergencia Habitacional introduced on 19
September 2003 and the Agua más Trabajo introduced in the following year.
The Programa Federal de Emergencia Habitacional, again created with the
stated aim of ‘reversing former trends and creating genuine work’, established
co-operatives in eight provinces nationally, comprising 16 members of whom at
least half were to be in receipt of the Jefes and Jefas de Hojar initiatives.87

83
Estela Grassi, ‘Política social en la Argentina contemporánea. Alcances, novedades y
salvedades’, Ciencias Sociales, 135-36 (2012), 185-98 (189).
84
For a detailed account of the scope of the Manos a la Obra project, see Ministerio de
Desarrollo Social, Argentina Trabaja: Manos a la Obra
<http://www.desarrollosocial.gov.ar/socioproductivos/115> [accessed 25 March 2011]
85
Vuotto, El cooperativismo de trabajo, p. 36.
86
Vuotto, El cooperativismo de trabajo, p. 36.
87
‘cooperativas …dando una lucha contra el flagelo de la desocupación a través de la dignidad
del trabajo y la vivienda". Este mecanismo cambia las tradiciones que se han llevado hasta
ahora’, Néstor Kirchner, cited in Los Andes, ‘Lanzan programa federal de emergencia

217
According to the plan, co-operative members would be subscribed to the
monotributo social contribution system providing them with formal worker
status and related benefits. In addition, members were housed in constructions
built by the co-operative and received instruction and training in co-operative
organisation and construction skills.88 The Agua más Trabajo plan, mirroring the
2003 plan in terms of the co-operative members enlisted and areas chosen,
focused on providing drinking water to homes in vulnerable populations.

By 2009, levels of heightened economic growth had given way to a more

moderate growth rate, at which point significant levels of poverty and
unemployment, mirroring 2001-2002 conditions, were again recorded. For
example, in the second trimester of 2009, INDEC recorded a poverty level of
13.2 percent. 89 However, given the context of persistent two figure inflation, the
independent Observatorio Social de América Latina (OSAL) organisation set
this figure at over 30 percent in real terms.90 By the third trimester of 2009,
INDEC indicated unemployment levels of 9.1 percent in GBA.91 However, the
independent Buenos Aires-based Sociedad de Estudios Laborales (SEL), which
set the average unemployment in GBA at 10.5 percent in June 2009, identified
unemployment levels of 17.8 percent in the province’s more peripheral areas.92
According to the SEL report, in these more remote GBA locations, some
250,000 people, representing 50 percent of their active population, were
unemployed.93 In response to deteriorating conditions, an additional Ministerio
de Desarrollo Social ‘Plan’, which outstripped the Manos a la Obra in terms of

habitacional’, Los Andes: Política, 19 September 2003

<http://archivo.losandes.com.ar/notas/2003/9/19/politica-85323.asp> [accessed 13 January
2015]
88
Pilar Arcidiácono, Karina Kalpschtrej and Ángeles Bermúdez, ‘¿Transferencias de ingresos,
cooperativismo o trabajo asalariado?: El programa Argentina Trabaja’, Trabajo y Sociedad, 22
(2014), 341-56 (p. 346).
89
Sandra Guiménez and Malena Hopp, ‘Programa Ingreso Social Con Trabajo, “Argentina
Trabaja ”: Una mirada reflexiva desde el corazón de su implementación’, in "Aportes para la
reconstrucción de lo público", IV Encuentro Internacional de Políticas Públicas y Trabajo
Social. (Buenos Aires: University of Buenos Aires, 12 -13 May 2011), p. 2. fn. 4.
<http://trabajosocial.sociales.uba.ar/jornadas/contenidos/27.pdf> [accessed 14 September 2013].
90
Guiménez and Hopp, p. 2. fn. 4.
91
Guiménez and Hopp, p. 2. fn. 5.
92
Guiménez and Hopp, p. 2. fn. 5.
93
Guiménez and Hopp, p. 2. fn. 5.

218
funding, was launched under President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.94 The
Programa de Ingreso Social con Trabajo (PRIST) provided funding for the
establishment of worker co-operatives, which would undertake public works and
community construction projects nationally.

On the whole, the PRIST has received a mixed reception. Support for the project
is based on the pragmatic premise that the programme creates immediate
tangible improvements to the economic circumstances of members of extremely
vulnerable populations. Detractors of the programme note that this programme
and other non-universal action plans create an opportunity for their usurpation
for the practice of electoral strategism, clientelist practice and economic bias
towards Buenos Aires and the coastal zones.95 A recent example of this are
claims of misuse of PRIST resources in 2012, when it was claimed that, as
Minister of Social Development, Alicia Kirchner established disproportionate
numbers of co-operatives in GBA in a bid to support her candidature for
parliamentary election in October 2013.96 To presage a point raised in the
following chapter, a further criticism of the PRIST initiative posited by Lo
Vuolo is that it constitutes an instance of ‘static regulation’ (modo estático de
regulación). That is, rather than seeking to eliminate critical issues such as
poverty, unemployment and unstable employment, the true function of the
PRIST initiative is perpetuation of power relations underpinning the socio-
economic status quo:

administrar estos problemas de forma tal de no alterar el

funcionamiento considerado correcto y normal de la sociedad y de la
economía. Es un modo de gestión que realiza el estado de la cuestión

94
The first stage of the PRIST Argentina Trabaja plan received investment of 1,500 million
pesos, which equated to 375 million US dollars, to use for payment of the members and material
for the projects. Guiménez and Hopp, p. 5.
95
De Sena and Chahbenderian. Abundant examples of criticism of the PRIST plan can be found
in reports published in the La Nación newspaper. For one example, see Rodrigo Zarazaga, ‘Las
políticas sociales que siguen faltando’, La NaciónOnline, 15 October 2012
<http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1517272-las-politicas-sociales-que-siguen-faltando> [accessed 16
February 2013] Supporters of the programme include UBA academics Sandra Guiménez and
Malena Hopp.
96
Laura Serra , ‘El plan de Alicia: Crecen sin control las cooperativas sociales y abundan las
quejas’, La Nación, 10 March 2013 <http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1561788-crecen-sin-control-
las-cooperativas-sociales-y-abundan-las-quejas> [accessed 20 August 2015]

219
 social con el objectivo principal de subordinar la atención de los
problemas sociales a la administración general del gobierno.97

In terms more specific to the subject of co-operation and co-operative theory,

the state-funded co-operatives, established under the governments of Néstor and
Cristina Kirchner, raise the issue of illegitimate use of co-operative identity.
That co-operative organisation promotes social engagement as well as
autonomous popular organisation, as suggested by the Ministerio de Desarrollo
Social (MDS) in the stated aims of the project, is a fundamentally sound claim.
However, these stated aims clearly lack validity when applied to the ‘co-
operative’ ventures established by the Argentina Trabaja programme as they do
not operate on a basis that conforms to the central principles of co-operative
management or remunerative policy, with the result that workers do not benefit
from the non-material advantages afforded by co-operative work. The failure of
the PRIST initiatives to provide a true co-operative experience is described by
Rodrigo Zarazaga, who makes a salient point:

La figura de cooperativas es una fachada bajo la cual el Estado

organiza cuadrillas de trabajo a las órdenes de capataces. En gran
parte estas cuadrillas realizan tareas propias de empleados
municipales. Cabe preguntarse si este tipo de programa no termina
desvalorizando el concepto de cooperativa y propiciando desde el
Estado el trabajo precario.98

To conclude, this chapter has traced Argentina’s co-operative tradition from its
roots in the nineteenth-century ideological experiments and pragmatic grassroots
projects, to the contemporary self-help co-operative initiatives and state-
promoted projects which developed as a response to protracted poverty
unemployment and social exclusion. A central focus of this chapter was a
consideration of the role played by the Argentine state in the development and
shaping of the country’s co-operative organisation, which found ideological,
social and political expression in government policy from the early twentieth
century.

97
Lo Vuolo, p. 3.
98
Zarazaga.

220
Argentina’s 1926 co-operative legislation, although passed in a somewhat
peripheral spirit, nevertheless proved timely and effective in promoting good co-
operative practice and preventing fraudulent usurpation of co-operative identity
for lucrative purposes. During Perón’s first two mandates, co-operative values
and ideology gained a high profile and co-operative practice. In particular the
worker/producer type expanded significantly in both the rural and the urban
settings. During his third term as president, Perón advanced further plans for the
development of rural co-operatives. In both this chapter and Chapter Two, it has
been strongly suggested that a positive correlation exists between favourable
state policy and co-operative growth. Therefore, it could be speculated that had
it not been for Perón’s untimely death, worker/producer co-operatives may well
have gained a strong presence in the country’s late-twentieth-century socio-
economic panorama.

On a less positive note, Perón’s co-operative policy was criticised on the bases
of suspected clientelism and state intrusion into independent co-operative
policies. However, frequent instances of resistance by co-operatives to
purportedly intrusive government policy indicate that, under Perón, Argentina’s
state-promoted agricultural co-operatives had developed both a co-operative
conscience and capacity for independent management.99

In terms of the more recent Peronist policy of the Kirchner governments,

significant shortfalls in funding were identified. This was notably the case of the
‘Manos a La Obra’ programme. Furthermore, Lo Vuolo’s compelling ‘static
regulation’ thesis, in which he suggests the intentions of the programme were
instrumental and coercive rather than supportive, can not be summarily
dismissed. Nevertheless, it is also true that without government support the new
ventures and fledgling small business projects, co-operative or otherwise, which
were able to start up using government funding would not have been able to do
so. A similar case can be made in favour of the various aspects of positive state

99
Girbal-Blacha, A specific case in point occurred in 1947 was the ACA campaign for the return
to free market practice as co-operatives opposed state pricing intervention.
Girbal-Blacha, p. 47.

221
policy directed at the recovered workplace co-operatives, discussed in the
following chapter.

However, the fact that co-operative identity was attributed to members of the
Peronist state-sponsored co-operatives: Programa Federal de Emergencia
Habitacional, Agua más Trabajo and the more recent PRIST public work co-
operatives, has generated considerable negative comment. This is due to the fact
that these ‘co-operatives’ did not embody any of the central principles of co-
operative organisation. It is unlikely that any government official responsible for
overseeing such a high-profile programme would be unaware of the basic
premises of co-operative organisation. As such, it may be suggested that support
for the contemporary state-sponsored co-operatives, rather than representing a
bid to encourage and nurture co-operative orgnisation, was merely one of
several government strategies aimed at achieving popular appeasement. That is,
by usurpation and manipulation of co-operative identity, Peronist presidents,
Néstor Kirchner and later Cristina Fernández de Kirchner were able to reassert
authority over unemployed, disenfranchised Argentines desperate for work.
However, the theme of protest pacification will be revisited in the following
chapter, which focuses on the various strategies adopted by Argentines in
response to conditions of material and psychological need in the post-neoliberal
period.

Finally, reflecting the face of contemporary co-operation internationally, the

composition of Argentina’s workers’ co-operation movement is heterogeneous
and the ideology by which individual co-operatives and members are governed
is fluid in nature. As such, instrumental ventures, established with the
predominant desire to create work, coexist alongside other more ideologically
based endeavours. Nevertheless, it appears that workers in the ‘pragmatic’ co-
operatives values the independence, personal control and solidarity, fundamental
to traditional co-operative ideology, which their new working experience
provides. For these individuals, their pragmatic response has provided an

222
alternative response to the isolation and dependency fundamental to the political
zeitgeist of the 1990s and early twentieth-first century.100

100
Mellor, Hannah and Stirling, p. IX.

223
Chapter Six

The Argentine response to crisis: Politics, middle- and popular-

sector organisation and the compromised State.

This chapter presents a consideration of four types of survival strategies devised to

weather conditions of socio-economic need in Argentina in the 1990s and early
twenty-first century. In providing a detailed narrative of the widespread innovative
collective projects initiated, the chapter provides a useful contextualisation of the
cartonero co-operative phenomenon. However, further central focal points of the
section are to highlight the essentially political character of the projects and to offer
insight into the state response with which they were met.

Before continuing, it should be noted that from a certain perspective, trueque

groups discussed in this chapter, which comprised predominantly middle- to upper-
sector members, may be interpreted in terms of disconnection with working- and
popular-sector projects. Whilst a number of the middle-sector asambleas actively
sought inter-class links, trueque groups did not. It has even been suggested that
trueque activity had the effect of reinforcing social polarisation.1 Nevertheless, a
consideration of trueque organisation is included in this chapter. The decision to
incorporate the apparently incongruous trueque activity resulted from the author’s
belief that recourse to this form of activity shares common roots with other
responses discussed in the chapter.

Clearly, all of the projects sought to respond to conditions of material need and
economic necessity and, as such, it must be recognised that their formation
constituted a level of pragmatism. However, it is the researcher’s view that the
various forms the initiatives adopted constituted manifestations of the rejection
of the status quo as expressed in the December 2001 mobilisation. That is, the
projects represent tangible metaphors of the environment, in which the key

1
José Luis Coraggio, ‘Las redes de trueque como institución de la economía popular’, in Trueque y
economía solidaria, ed. by Susana Hintze (Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros, 2003), pp. 259-74
(p. 270).

224
trends are: loss of legitimacy of key legal and political institutions, widespread
disillusionment with political representatives and disenchantment with the
long-awaited democracy.

The post-neoliberal initiatives reflected various ideological and political

perspectives ranging from anti-political solutions to demands for re-inclusion into
the system. However, as will become apparent, a common feature of each type of
activity, which bound the projects together, was the generalised focus on proactive,
member control which eschewed involvement of the bodies traditionally afforded
leadership roles, such as political or labour-based institutions. Furthermore, these
projects adopted a locally based or community focus, prioritising inter-project
solidarity, cooperation and organic democratic organisation. This, it may be argued,
presents a clear contrast to and rejection of the competitiveness and individualism
characteristic of 1990s neoliberal economic culture. Significantly, empirical studies
point to the considerable psychological benefits derived from these projects. As
individuals involved in the various activities gained control over their personal
economic universe and improved their material wellbeing by collective action based
on democratic and participatory decision making, their feelings of isolation and
decreased self-esteem, engendered by the climate of insecurity, fear and hardship,
were reversed.2

In terms of the state response, it would appear that pressure from various groups
and initiatives presented a serious challenge to the various post-crisis governments.
Said governments found themselves torn between their need to provide financial
and legislative support for the initiatives and their equally pressing need to retain
the favour of both domestic and foreign business elites. The content of this chapter
supports the view that government response towards collective projects, cast in
deference to elite interests, was largely selective and arbitrary and, as such,
produced disappointing results.

2
Susana Hintze, Alberto M. Federico Sabaté and José Luis Coraggio describe findings of
research by Ford and Picasso into the Estación Nodo in Buenos Aires. Susana Hintze, Alberto
M. Federico Sabaté y José Luis Coraggio, ‘Documento base de la jornada nacional sobre el
trueque y economía solidaria’, in Hintze, pp. 17-31 (pp. 28-9). This concept is revisited in
reference to my own research. See Chapter Nine.

225
As identified previously in this work, Argentines have a rich tradition of
contention and capacity to resist negative socio-economic conditions. However,
the unprecedented conditions of socio-economic need experienced in the
Menemist 1990s and early twenty-first century presented many Argentines with
challenges greater than any previously experienced, soliciting a varied response
from both popular sectors and the impoverished middle classes. The
ever-increasing experience of economic hardship and exclusion generated
various class-specific responses or strategies which reflected not only economic
but also political or ideological dimensions. These strategies can be broadly
divided into five types. Trueque, alternative market systems, were formed to
enable impoverished members of the middle sectors to access goods and
services by mutual exchange. Asambleas, locally based groups, also favoured
by middle sector Argentines, were formed during the 2001 popular
demonstrations to seek solutions to the immediate effects of the crisis. Piquetero
activity, organised by unemployed workers, saw roadblocks halt the
transportation of goods and services, which emulated the direct disruptive picket
action common to striking workers. Fábricas recuperadas, refers to closed
workplace recoveries, reopened predominantly as co-operatives, by former
members of the workforce. Finally, cartoneo is the practice of gathering
recyclable materials for resale, which was adopted by large numbers of
Argentina’s most marginalised sectors. This final response was generally
considered by the other unfortunate Argentines as denoting the ultimate fate, to
be avoided at all costs. Despite the fact that the individual cartoneros, as the
people who carried out the practice came to be referred, were generally
recognised as hard workers, in practice, they arguably ranked in status as nearer
to a beggar than a worker and, at times, were labelled as thieves, as stated by
34-year-old cartonera, Roxanna ‘Ante todo somos lo más bajo, Decís cartonera
y podés decir ladrona, como dice (Mauricio) Macri’.3

3
Roxanna, cartonera, 34 years of age quoted by Vicente Muleiro. Vicente Muleiro, ‘La Argentina
del cartón’, Clarín, 27 October 2002 <http://edant.clarin.com/suplementos/zona/2002/10/27/z-
00215.htm> [accessed 17 December 2012]. Mauricio Macri was Chief of Government of the CABA
from his election in 2007 until December 2015. He is the current President of Argentina.

226
The formation of clubes de trueque and asambleas was most specific to Argentina’s
middle sectors. In the past, Argentina’s middle sectors had been able to devise
survival strategies to weather periods of temporary inflation and even
hyperinflation.4 However, with the progression of neoliberalism in the 1990s, these
same actors, the ‘New Poor’, as they became designated, saw their life patterns
often irreversibly and/or profoundly altered. On this process, Kessler provides the
following anecdote:

Al fin de cuentas, podían pasar de tener mucama a trabajar de mucama,

de comer a su antojo a suprimir los postres, del orgullo a la vergüenza, de
planificar cambiar de coche cada tres años a reflexionar antes de subir al
colectivo.5

The phenomenon of ‘New Poverty’ was referred to by Castel as una

desestabilización de los estables, a very apt description of those Argentines who
were formerly able to plan ahead on the basis of a regular, in most cases above
average, salary or pension.6 Argentina’s ‘New Poor’ found themselves faced with
the need to take decisions in the absence of life experiences by which to inform
their decisions. Sociological appraisals of the experience of new poverty in
Argentina refer to Schutz’s ‘stock of knowledge theory’, which posits that all
interpretations of the world are based on a stock of knowledge founded on previous
experience, either personal or imparted via family or social institutions.7 This ‘stock
of knowledge’ enables the individual to respond appropriately to given situations.
Significantly, responses devised to respond effectively to the time-limited historic
bouts of inflation did not constitute a body of knowledge transferable to use in the

4
For more on strategies employed to weather economic hardship caused during bouts of inflation,
see Gabriel Kessler and Sylvia Sigal ‘Comportements et représentations face à la dislocation des
régulations sociales: L’hiperinflation en Argentine’, Cultures et Conflits, 24: 25 (1997), 37-77.
5
Gabriel Kessler, ‘Redefinición del mundo social en tiempos de cambio: Una tipología para la
experiencia del empobrecimiento’ in Desde abajo: La transformación de las identidades
sociales, ed. by Maristella Svampa (Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos, 2003), pp. 25-50 (p. 49).
6
‘Desestabilización de los estables’, is literally a destabalising of the stable (people) Robert
Castel quoted in Gabriel Kessler and María Mercedes Di Virgilio, ‘The New Urban Poverty:
Global, Regional and Argentine Dynamics during the Last Two Decades’, Cepal Review, 95
(2008), 31-50 (p. 33).
7
Kessler, ‘Redefinición del mundo’, p. 28.

227
case of protracted hardship with which 1990s Argentines were faced. As noted by
Kessler, ‘Ni la socialización familiar ni la cultura, ni las estrategias más cotidianas
y ni siquiera sus peores pesadillas los preparaban para el empobrecimiento
definitivo sin retorno.’ 8 Svampa makes a similar point in reference to the
circumstances governing the development of survival strategies by members of the
‘New Poor’:

Expulsadas de las antiguas estructuras (normativas y sociales) que

definían la orientación de sus conductas y los dotaban de certezas, los
sujetos se ven obligados a producir su acción en un contexto donde los
márgenes de imprevisibilidad, contingencia e incertidumbre se amplían
considerablemente. 9

Social capital has a role in survival strategies employed to access material benefits
or goods and services. The concept of ‘social capital’, although multifariously
defined, refers essentially to human interaction based on expectations of reciprocity
and trust. The said interaction, which in fact predates its current popularisation as
social capital, whether interpreted as a tool for community use or on a more
individualised level, is reflected in the strategies to which Argentina’s ‘New Poor’,
in particular, had recourse. 10 Initially, social capital was accessed informally from
pre-established relationships. The apparently incongruous life of certain members
of the ‘New Poor’ has been seen as the result of gains achieved from previously
established social capital, often as friendships and working relationships.11 In time,
a significant proportion of Argentina’s ‘New Poor’ sought to develop a more formal
means of social capital by setting up clubs and networks to broaden the range and
speed of social exchange.

In terms of clubs and networks, social capital was sought and created by
participation in the trueque clubs and networks established in urban centres

8
Kessler, ‘Redefinición del mundo’, p. 28.
9
Svampa, ‘Introducción’, in Svampa, pp. 9-24 (p. 10).
10
Focus on features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust each of which
facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit is characteristic of work by Putnam.
Bourdieu’s focus, on the other hand, is at the level of individual interaction. Tristan Claridge,
‘Definitions of Social Capital’, Social Capital Research
<http://www.socialcapitalresearch.com/literature/definition.html>[accessed 25 July 2013]
11
See Gabriel Kessler, Le processus de paupérisation de la classe moyenne argentine (1976-1995)
(Lille, France: Atelier National de Reproduction des Thèses, 1999).

228
regionally and nationally. There was pronounced participation of Argentina’s ‘New
Poor’ in the trueque network, particularly in the initial stages. The fact that the
trueque system involved a high level of participation by well-educated individuals
with considerable entrepreneurial assets constituted a key contributory factor in the
success of the trueque network.12 However, it should be noted that success refers to
the expansion of the initiative. Jeff Powell suggests that the pronounced
participation of middle-class members in the trueque networks tended to produce an
exclusionary effect on the structurally poor and lower income sectors.13

The trueque initiative began on 1 May 1995 as a single club set up by urban
ecologists Horacio Covas, Carlos de Sanzo and Ruben Ravera in a garage in Bernal
province of Gran Buenos Aires. Its principal focus was to address the problem of
unemployment and the related psychological effects, rather than providing a means
of material subsistence. 14 The founding principles expressed by the Red Nacional
de Trueque clearly establish the ideological focus as an ethical, ecological,
non-profit, non-competitive organisation based on fair trade and cooperation.15 In
order to avoid replication of the one-sided, non-reciprocal consumption pattern of
the traditional market structure, a stipulation for participation in trueque was that all
members must perform a dual role, i.e. to produce goods or services as well to
consume. For this reason the members were denominated prosumidores. As an
ethical, alternative economy with a contemporary, innovative form, trueque
generated considerable interest in a range of academic fields as well as activist
circles.16

In the initial stages, the trueque system consisted of straightforward exchanges from
which it derived its name (from the verb trocar, which in Southern Cone Spanish
refers to the basic process of exchange). However, in order to avoid the need for
trueque participants to establish ‘double coincidence of needs’ and enable indirect

12
Jeff Powell, ‘Petty Capitalism, Perfecting Capitalism or Post Capitalism? Lessons from the
Argentine Barter Experiments’, Review of International Political Economy, 9:4 (2002), 619-49
(p. 640-1).
13
Powell, pp. 640-1.
14
Inés González Bombal, ‘Sociabilidad en clases medias en descenso: experiencias en el
trueque’, in Hintze, pp. 279-309 (p. 281).
15
See Appendix 3 for the principles of trueque.
16
Alternative currency schemes engender debate in the fields of economics, political science,
sociology, geography, anthropology, and cultural, environmental and gender studies. Powell, p. 620.

229
exchange, a system of virtual, non-money or créditos was introduced in order to
enable participants in trueque fairs to exchange their produce for the specific goods
and services that they were seeking. By 1996, interest and participation in the
activity was such that a national network of barter clubs, the Red Global de Trueque
Solidario (RGT), was founded. The number of clubs increased annually, peaking in
2002 at the height of the economic crisis, representing a reported total membership
of 2,500,000. Products available at fairs ranged from basic subsistence items, food
and household goods and domestic services, to so called ‘knowledge’ trade such as
educational classes, legal advice and medical attention. Trueque developed as a new
market created by and for those excluded from the conventional market.
Prosumidores exchanging at Mendoza fair in 2001, for example, were able to
acquire between 21 percent and 40 percent of their household requisites.17

Table 6. 1 Growth of Trueque 1995-2002.

Year Number of groups Total number of people Average number of members

involved in trueque per group

1995 1 20 (May) 10-20

1996 17 400 10-30

1997 40 2,500 10-100

1998 83 5,500 20-300

1999 200 20,000 40-400

2000 400 85,000 50-1,500

2001 1,800 800,000 150–4,000

2002 5,000 2,500,000 150–20,000

Source: Ana Luz Abramovich and Gonzalo Vázquez, ‘Experiencia del trueque en la Argentina: Otro
mercado es posible’, Universidad de General Sarmiento, 2003, p. 13
< http://biblioteca.municipios.unq.edu.ar/modules/mislibros/archivos/41-Laexptrue.pdf> [accessed 7
October 2009]

A further positive aspect of participation in trueque clubs is indicated by substantial

empirical evidence which supports the view that participants derived psychological
non-material benefits. Prosumidores regained self-esteem and the opportunity to

17
Research by Lescaro and Altschuler (2003) cited by Hintze, Sabaté and Coraggio in Hintze, p. 26.

230
re-establish social bonds with their peers, as noted by Inés González Bombal and
Hintze respectively:

El trueque como práctica contenía la posibilidad de recreación de lazos

sociales. 18

…un instrumento para evadir el aislamiento en que los sumerge la

desocupación y un ensayo de recomposición de una identidad social que
se ha quebrado ante la privación de los vínculos sociales expresados en la
relación laboral.19

As noted, the RGT founders’ intention in creating this alternative barter/exchange

economy, which they termed economía de amor, was cultural transition.20
However, it is doubtful, in the absence of strict controls, that either participant
motivation or practice can be monitored, particularly in situations of depth and
profusion of need, as experienced in the period in question. Clearly, the
chronological correlation between increased economic hardship, lack of money and
increased membership suggests some degree of instrumentalism or pragmatism
rather than ideological motivation as the reason for attendance at trueque events.21
Furthermore, increased access to traditional money from government payments
from the Planes Jefes y Jefas de Hogar programme, saw a decline in attendance at
trueque markets.22 Finally, empirical evidence supports the view that satisfaction of
material needs, rather than ideology, was a key factor in attendance of trueque
events:
El grado de inmersión discursiva que llega a generar una convicción
ideológica parece estar directamente relacionada con el grado de
cercanía a este centro de irradiación: ...esta impronta ideológica que nos
habla de un nuevo estilo de vida parece ir debilitándose a medida que nos
alejamos del centro y que aumenta la necesidad con la que la gente se

18
González Bombal, ‘Comentarios’, in Hintze, pp. 229-31 (p. 231).
19
Ford and Picasso cited by Hintze, Sabaté and Coraggio in Hintze, p. 30.
20
José Luis Coraggio, ‘Las redes de trueque como institución de la economía popular’, in Hintz,
pp. 259-74 (p. 266).
21
Attendance at trueque events was at its highest during the period when access to private funds was
limited by the corralito ceiling on withdrawals.
22
For an analysis of the negative aspects of Argentina’s trueque experience, see Abramovich and
Vázquez.

231
 acerca a esta práctica y hace de ella ... un mecanismo para la
subsistencia.23

Detractors have tended to dismiss trueque as ‘petty capitalism strengthening

marginalization by bringing together the dispossessed’.24 Coraggio highlights
contradictions in creating a thriving social economy, specifically trueque, during
times of need such as those affecting vast numbers of Argentines in the period in
question. To this he adds the necessary reliance on the mainstream economy for
supplies of raw materials and technological input, a factor which empirical studies
revealed as a key problem for prosumidores.25 In addition, nationally established
legal restrictions on, for example, medicines and food preparation applied to the
mainstream economy impacted on the trueque market. Controversially, the
heightened presence of cultural capital embodied in the ‘New Poor’ prosumidores
in trueque fairs leads to a system which, in fact, mirrors the inequality and social
hierarchy of mainstream society, creating a class structure within nodos or
markets.26

Splits in the network and decreased membership in the trueque system from 2002
have been attributed to disillusionment with improper practice, such as stockpiling,
speculation, clientelism and fraud reflective of the traditional capitalist market.27
Incidences of corrupt and/or profiteering practice, political clientelism, fraud and
corruption of the initial founding ideology of trueque developed as the initiative
expanded and adopted characteristics of conventional economies:

...la ampliación de la escala, a la vez que posibilitaba la participación de

más personas que se encontraban excluidas de los mercados
convencionales, reintrodujo la posibilidad objetiva de que se
reprodujeran los mecanismos propios del mercado capitalista,tanto de los
organizadores como de los participantes desde las bases sociales. Entre

23
Inés González Bombal and Maristella Svampa, ‘Movilidad social ascendente y descendente en las
clases medias argentinas: Un estudio comparativo’, Instituto de Ciencias: Universidad Nacional de
General Sarmiento, 2000, pp. 27-8 <http://www.maristellasvampa.net/archivos/ensayo28.pdf >
[accessed 12 December 2011]
24
Powell, p. 621.
25
Hintze, Sabaté and Coraggio, p. 25.
26
Coraggio notes the fact that products available to the structural poor may not be of sufficient
quality to exchange with products offered by ‘New Poor’, which leads on to the topic of status value
of products. Coraggio, p. 270.
27
An example of this is the RTS, which split from the RGT accusing PAR of encouraging
‘enormous lumpen markets where the primacy of intimate social relations has been lost’. Powell,
p. 625.

232
 ellos: alienación, inmediatismo, comportamientos no solidarios, falta de
correspondencia entre el discurso y la práctica, separación entre
organizadores y organizados, especulación y lucro con las necesidades de
las personas, introducción de relaciones de explotación del trabajo
ajeno...28

Nevertheless, in a context of extreme need, and faced with institutional

abandonment, for numerous Argentines, trueque proved beneficial as a temporary
survival mechanism from which they were able to achieve a level of personal
dignity through increased control over their lives. Additionally, a significant
number of people, whilst it is unlikely that they shared the ideological commitment
to social economy expressed by the core participants, clearly felt that the practice
had brought unexpected psychological benefits.29 Non-material benefits of
participation in trueque activity include: opportunities for interpersonal
connections, new friendships and the reversal of feelings of isolation. Finally, and
of equal significance, is that trueque has been assimilated into a repertoire of
experience or ‘stock of knowledge’ to use in self-defence, as indicated by the
significant resurgence in trueque activity reported as a response to economic
hardship in 2008.30

no es “el trueque” lo novedoso en esta historia. Ni siquiera se puede

decir que fue “trueque” lo que masivamente se utilizó y se sigue haciendo.
Lo verdaderamente innovador creemos que fue el redescubrimiento de
que la Moneda y los Mercados son construcciones sociales. Y que, si en
este sistema se delegó en el Estado la responsabilidad de construir y
preservar estas herramientas, en la medida de que una parte importante
de la población no se encuentre incluida en ellas, es posible organizarse y
construir nuevos mercados y monedas que sí los incluyan.31

The following section considers the salient aspects of a further key defence
mechanism deployed by predominantly middle-class Argentines, the asambleas,
which developed as expressions of solidarity and action in the wake of the popular
mobilisations of 17 and 18 December 2001. Despite their brief prominence,
asambleas are important for the crucial role they played in effecting necessary
practical solutions to problems in the immediate local, and at times cross-class

28
Abramovich and Vázquez, p. 22.
29
González Bombal, in Hintze, pp. 229-31.
30 Oliver Galak, ‘Vuelven los clubs de trueque en el GBA’ La Nación, 7 July 2008
<http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1028084-vuelven-los-clubes-de-trueque-en-el-gba> [acccesed 9
August 2010]
31
Abramovich and Vázquez, p. 3.

233
panorama, enabling sectors of the population to unite in protest at national
government policy, and also on the basis of the innovative and arguably
revolutionary form of horizontal direct democracy central to their organisation. 32
Developed by middle sectors to confront the negative results of the economic and
political crisis was the asamblea barrial or vecinal, that is the ‘open group
assembly’. These assemblies, although most prevalent in Buenos Aires City, were a
nationwide phenomenon with assemblies in every province in the country
throughout early 2002.

Such was the scope of the asamblea movement that one in every three citizens in
Buenos Aires had participated in either an asamblea meeting or activity.33 In mid-
January 2002, the Buenos Aires Parque Centenario was the venue for the first
meeting of the Asamblea Interbarrial. Weekly meetings held by the Asamblea
Interbarrial network provided local groups with an opportunity to unite in open
discussion and despite its limited duration, at its peak it drew some 3,000
members.34 By 2003, the movement had declined: asambleas, which in early 2002
had memberships of between 200 and 300 individuals, saw their numbers reduced
to as few as 15 to 25 within the year.35 Nevertheless, Argentina’s asambleas,
although no longer the mass movement which generated such optimism and interest
in their early years, have survived to coordinate heterogeneous projects in the local
and wider social context.36

32
It is impossible to identify the exact extent to which asamblea activity resulted in government
policy change. However, government attempts at co-optation of the asamblea movement indicate
that the movement constituted an effective source of pressure.
33
Matías Triguboff, ‘Cuando Buenos Aires parecía una gran asamblea: Procesos sociales y prácticas
políticas tras la crisis de 2001’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Buenos Aires, 2008).
34
Modesto Emilio Guerrero, ‘Emergencia y desafíos de las asambleas barriales’, Herramienta, 19
(2002) <http://www.herramienta.com.ar/revista-herramienta-n-19/emergencia-y-desafios-de-las-
asambleas-barriales> [accessed 3 September 2013]
35
Mabel Grimberget al., ‘Identificaciones y disputas de sentido en asambleas barriales. Análisis de
la construcción política de la categoría ‘vecino’’, Intersecciones en Antropología, 5 (2004), 167-75
(p. 170).
36
Anecdotal examples of valuable current asamblea activity abound. For a brief tour of some of
Argentina’s asambleas’ recent projects and communications, visit: Argentina Indymedia
<http://argentina.indymedia.org/features/asambleas/>[accessed 13 July 2015] Svampa and Corral
note the high level of politicisation of the Villa Crespo asamblea, which in fact led to decline in
membership as original members became frustrated at the infiltration by left-wing political party
affiliates. Maristella Svampa and Damián Corral, ‘Political Mobilization in Neighborhood
Assemblies: The Cases of Villa Crespo and Palermo’, in Broken Promises? The Argentine Crisis
and Argentine Democracy, ed. by Edward Epstein and David Pion-Berlin (Lanham, MD: Lexington
Books, 2006), pp. 117-39.

234
Before continuing, it is important to note that the asambleas under specific
consideration here are asambleas vecinales or barriales rather than their more
partisan counterparts, the asambleas populares. Asambleas populares differed from
the asambleas barriales/vecinales in terms of their formation and ideology. The
asamblea popular’s origins were opportunistic and based on pre-established
ideology, often Trotskyite or anarchist, whilst the origins of the non-partisan
asamblea barrial were spontaneous, ideologically flexible, locally focused and
tending towards ‘patriotic’ national ideology. 37 In a context of widespread
perception of abandonment by, or ineptitude of, political representatives, the
asambleas identified the role of the asamblea as the need to save the country by re-
establishing its original principles considered to have been corrupted by neoliberal
policies.38 Nevertheless, despite the fundamental differences in the ideologies of the
asambleas, in practical terms, the projects and activities they carried out frequently
took similar forms.39

In explaining the formation of the asambleas, the rich repertoire of contention in the
politics of Argentine society provides crucial references for the protesters. Roberta
Villalón traces this legacy of contentious politics to the history of social
mobilisation at the turn of the century, during which civil rights were expanded
beyond the oligarchic elite, and the popular mobilisations of the 1940s, noting also
the alternative political groups of the 1960s and 1970s as well as the activism which
challenged the military regime in the early 1980s. 40 Hernán Ouviña points to the
historic context of local activism, identifying the fomentismo of the Juntas
Vecinales and Consejos Comunitarios del Gran Buenos Aires as tentative
precedents to inform local self-organisation and, more recently, to the piquetero
organisations established in 1996, which functioned by the process of direct

37
Federico Matías Rossi, ‘Crisis de la república delegativa. La constitución de nuevos actores
políticos en la Argentina (2001-2003): Las asambleas vecinales y populares’, América Latina
Hoy, 39 (2005), 195-216.
38
Rossi, ‘Crisis de la república delegativa’, p. 202.
39
Federico Matías Rossi cites the example of asamblea support for workplace occupations of both
Bruckman Fashion Creations factory and the abandoned Grisinopoli food processing plant.
Bruckman workers received support from the Asamblea Popular el Cid Campeador on ideological
political grounds, that is, the struggle against a common enemy. Rossi, ‘Crisis de la república
delegativa’, p. 207. Grisinopoli factory was supported by the Asamblea Palermo Viejo on a
territorial viewpoint on the grounds that its struggle was taking place in the local community. Rossi,
‘Crisis de la república delegativa ’, p. 210.
40
Roberta Villalón, ‘Neoliberalism, Corruption, and Legacies of Contention: Argentina’s Social
Movements, 1993-2006’, Latin American Perspectives, 33 (2007), 139-56 (p. 141).

235
democracy of the asamblea. 41 However, acknowledging historic precedents, it is
generally agreed that the asambleas barriales developed relatively spontaneously
from casual meetings and links formed during the December 2001 mass
cacerolazos, which occurred in Buenos Aires and other large towns. 42 Asamblea
members describe how their organisations sprang up as a direct result of chance
meetings during the demonstration in which masses of people, angered by
restrictive measures imposed on cash withdrawals during the corralito,
spontaneously took to the streets to join in protest activity sparked by President
Fernando de la Rúa’s declaration of a state of siege on 19 December 2001.

A popular conception of Menemist neoliberalism is of individualist, economic and

political policy which fostered a climate of sálvense quien pueda, with the result
that many Argentines’ experience was one of socio-political isolation, insecurity
and intimidation.43 Through the practice of direct democracy and collective action,
the asamblea represented a means by which to organise against the impotence of
individualism and isolation:

Así pues, aquello que tanto desde el Estado como desde el mercado es
considerado un problema individual, emerge como una cuestión colectiva,
a resolver en el ámbito de la comunidad… Se quiebra así uno de los
pilares básicos para el triunfo del neoliberalismo.44

Svampa identifies the asamblea’s role in rebuilding identity with specific reference
to Argentina’s middle sectors, noting that the asamblea represented, ‘un lugar de
reconstitución de la identidad política de las clases medias, un espacio de

41
Hernán Ouviña, ‘Las asambleas barriales y la construcción de lo “público no estatal”: La
experiencia en la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires’, in La política en movimiento: Identidades
y experiencias de organización en América Latina, ed. by Bettina Levy and Natalia Giantelli
(Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2008), pp. 65-108 (p. 69). Fomentismo refers to petitioning for
improvements to the local area specifically in the barrios de emergencia set up during the 1940s
industrial boom.
42
Guido Braslavsky, ‘Capital: fuerte cacerolazo nocturno y masiva marcha a Plaza de Mayo,
estallido social: Ruidosa reacción espontanea de la clase media’, Clarínonline, 20 December
2001<http://edant.clarin.com/diario/2001/12/20/p-02601.htm> [accessed 6 February 2012]
43
Rafael A. Bielsa, ‘Asambleas: ¿De la barbarie de la política a la civilización de los
habitantes?’, in ¿Qué son las asambleas populares?, ed. by Rafael Antonio Bielsa, Miguel
Bonasso and Stella Calloni (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Continente, 2002), pp. 9-13; Dinerstein,
‘¡Qué se vayan todos!’, p. 190.
44
Hernán Ouviña, ‘Las asambleas barriales: apuntes a modo de hipótesis de trabajo’, Revista
Theomai, 99 (2002) <http://www.redalyc.org/comocitar.oa?id=12490106> [accessed 12 September
2012]

236
organización, deliberación, creación de solidaridad y de confianza’.45 On the basis
of solidarity and confidence generated by the asamblea organisation, groups of
asamblea members, self-proclaimed vecinos, devised practical responses to address
the numerous immediate problems facing local communities and effectively
articulated criticism of national and international political abuse. In a climate of
lack of trust in the integrity and/or competence of elected political representatives
and the warning issued to the national and international authorities in the form of
¡Qué se vayan todos! , it is unsurprising that asamblea members or vecinos adopted
a pragmatic focus towards the local and familiar and practically achievable.

The asambleas were comprised of predominantly middle-class members and

were located in traditionally higher income areas, with no asambleas recorded in
the lower-income neighbourhoods. 46 A particularly significant aspect of the
asambleas’ activity was their frequent practice of re-appropriation of redundant
privatised and state-owned public space to use for community needs such as
diverse local self-help projects, including free community kitchens, classes, day
care and other needs-based services for their communities.47 Asambleas have
established links with, and participated in, the protest actions of other social
movements on human rights issues, factory takeovers and unemployed workers’
groups.48 With regard to asamblea-cartonero activity, a formal link between the
Buenos Aires City asambleas and the cartonero population was initially
suggested during a meeting of the Asamblea Barrial in Parque Centenario and
established as the Comisión de Vecinos y Cartoneros under the Interbarrial de
Asambleas Autónomas. 49 Support for cartoneros from the capital’s asambleas,
particularly well-established in the city’s northern zone, has taken multiple
forms. These range from the political, such as repudiation of cases of police
brutality and mobilisation of pickets to lobby the railway to implement
alterations to schedules and policy favourable to cartoneros, to the practical,

45
Svampa cited by Matías Triguboff, ‘Acción colectiva, vida cotidiana y trayectorias. El caso de las
asambleas de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires (2001-2007)’, Runa, 32: 1 (2011), 45-62 (p. 47).
46
Villalón cites the sources La Nación, Clarín, Página/12 and her personal field research as
supporting this point. Villalón, pp. 146-53.
47
Ouviña, ‘Las asambleas barriales y la construcción’, p. 17.
48
From my own personal experience, whilst visiting the Chilavert Printing Factory, I was invited to
join the co-operative members for lunch, which I found was provided on a daily basis as a gesture of
solidarity by a local asamblea communal kitchen.
49
The commission was in fact established after the disbandment of the Interbarrial in 2003.

237
such as organising meals in ollas populares, provision of recreational activities
for cartoneros’ children as well as addressing the pressing need for evening
childcare facilities.50 Both the Bajo Belgrano and Colegiales asambleas have
been particularly active in providing anti-tetanus, diphtheria, smallpox and even
measles vaccinations for younger cartoneros.51

The preferred term vecinos, meaning neighbours, used by asamblea members in the
initial stages of the movement’s development, was chosen to emphasise the local
and non-partisan inclusive identity of members and asambleas. It could be
suggested that use of the term vecino, which avoids the issue of class, denotes a
petit bourgeois organisation.52 However, Dinerstein highlights the positive function
of use of the term vecino as indicating rejection of traditional political identities in
favour of a classless identity, based on inclusion and diversity.53 As such, she
pinpoints the transversal nature of the asamblea, which she identifies as a key factor
in determining an organisation’s ability to develop ‘creative political action’.54 The
fact that the asamblea organisation does not seek to replicate traditional
twentieth-century leftist strategy is identified by Ouviña as indicating not a lack of
consciousness but rather the reverse. For Ouviña, that asambleas aim to effect
societal transformation by focusing on the concrete and immediate represents a
popular counter-power or an alternate revolutionary means of asserting power.55

It must be noted that it would be an error to excessively homogenise the asambleas

on the basis of their predominantly middle-class composition, as asamblea
membership comprised a heterogeneous membership in terms of age, sex, political
experience and specific actions and projects adopted by individual asambleas. 56
The relationship with the state sought by the various asambleas is a further aspect
of divergence, ranging from close links and patronage or tolerance of tenuous links

50
Svampa and Corral, pp. 132-3.
51
Anecdotal evidence of support from asambleas for the cartoneros active in their zone
abounds; see Muleiro. For an account of a joint anti-tetanus campaign organised by the
Colegiales and Palermo Viejo Asambleas, see Asamblea de Palerma Vieja, ‘Solidaridad entre
asambleas y cartoneros. Para que se vayan todos’
<http://argentina.indymedia.org/news/2002/10/55033.php> [accessed 28 September 2012]
52
Ouviña, ‘Las asambleas barriales: apuntes’.
53
Dinerstein, ‘¡Qué se vayan todos!’, p. 196; Dinerstein, The Politics of Autonomy, p. 115.
54
Dinerstein, ‘¡Qué se vayan todos!’, p. 196.
55
Ouviña, ‘Las asambleas barriales: apuntes’, p. 7.
56
Triguboff, ‘Acción colectiva’, p. 49.

238
to complete rejection of state involvement in asamblea projects. The level of
conflictual politics deployed by asambleas also varies between individual units,
with asambleas barriales being less likely to take part in conflictual activity than
their counterparts in the asambleas populares.57

The decline of the asambleas witnessed from late 2002 has been attributed to a
variety of factors. The high level of votes registered in the 2003 presidential
elections suggesting considerable numbers of asamblea members returning to
mainstream political activity, indicating the successful re-legitimisation of the
institutions of mainstream politics, initiated during the Duhalde administration and
consolidated by the subsequent regime under popular president, Néstor Kirchner.58

Central aspects of social movement theory specific to decline of the movement are
polarisation, institutionalisation and facilitation. Polarisation refers to the
inevitability of fragmentation due to lack of impact of collective action as members’
response diverges between routinisation and radicalisation.59 The supreme example
of the undermining effects of polarisation is the swift dissolution of the Asamblea
Interbarrial in April 2002 due to ideological divergences between the left-wing
parties, independent assembly members and non-partisan vecinos on goals and
strategies.60 An emblematic case in point concerned the discussions at the 21 April
Interbarrial meeting to decide upon the format that the 2002 May Day activity
would take. Tensions were such that discussions ended in violence and a failure to
arrive at a consensus, with the consequent loss of potential impact that a hegemonic
display of unity would have provided.61

Institutionalisation of the movement took the form of state sponsorship. A case in

point was the Centros de Gestión y Participación del Gobierno de la Ciudad

57
Federico Matías Rossi, ‘Aparición, auge y declinación de un movimiento social: Las asambleas
vecinales y populares de Buenos Aires, 2001-2003’, Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos
y del Caribe, 78 (2005), 67-87 (p. 83).
58
Kirchner’s popularity ratings were 75 percent a mere two-and-a-half years after the popular
uprising. James Petras, ‘Argentina: From Popular Rebellion to “Normal Capitalism”’, Centre for
Research on Globalisation, (2004), p. 2
<http://global research.ca/articles/PET406A.html>[accessed 18 September 2014]
59
Rossi, ‘Aparición, auge y declinación’, p. 82.
60
Matías Triguboff, ‘El problema de la articulación en los movimientos sociales: La interbarrial de
la ciudad de Buenos Aires’, Revista Pilquen, 10 (2008), 1-13 (pp. 4-6).
61
Triguboff, ‘El problema’, p. 7.

239
Autónoma de Buenos Aires (CGPs). The centres, located throughout the capital,
sought links with the asambleas, offering training, education and advice services
and material benefits, specifically paid work assignments in the form of the
government sponsored Planes Trabajar. The first meeting of the Asamblea
Interbarrial indicated a clear intention to resist institutionalisation. At the meeting, a
resolution was approved to demand that control of CGT resources be handed
directly to the asambleas rather than by the medium of mainstream political parties.
In this way, the asambleas were immediately in charge of their finances rather than
having to establish contact with, and perhaps fall under the influence of,
mainstream political structures.62 However, as Dinerstein notes, despite the fact that
the overall consensus of the asambleas was to reject government co-optation in the
form of CGT participation, several did engage with the project.63 Institutionalisation
also took the form of direct co-option by political parties from either the left or
mainstream.

Facilitation and repression were further government tools used to discourage

independent organisation and conflictual behaviour by social movements. However,
given Argentina’s pronounced rich legacy and repertoire of political contention,
acts of state-sponsored repression of the asambleas, such as forced eviction of
recovered public spaces, may have been counterproductive.64 In fact, it could be
suggested that state facilitation of certain of the asambleas’ demands, such as the
cancellation of the corralito, freeze on bank withdrawals, and the introduction of
state-sponsored planes trabajar, assigned to the Movimientos de Trabajadores
Desocupados (MTDs) and asambleas, may have led to a significant reduction in
asamblea participation.

62
Ouviña, ‘Las asambleas y la construcción’, p. 32.
63
Dinerstein, The Politics of Autonomy, p. 118.
64
The deaths of unarmed MTD piquetero demonstrators Darío Santillán and Maximiliano Kosteki
on 26 June 2002, at the hands of the Buenos Aires police, engendered a wave of protest. This clearly
indicates that in Argentina state repression and violence, rather than quelling popular reaction, can
produce the opposite effect, fuelling widespread and in this case, inter-class protest.

240
The Piquetero or unemployed workers’ movement.
A further social movement that began as a result of 1990s hardship were the novel
piquetero organisations, also known as MTDs. On the MTD movement, Paul
Chatterton notes:

The strength of the MTDs… has been in their commitment to

disengagement with the formal economy and the creation of a local,
independent economía de solidaridad (the solidarity economy) oriented to
meeting community needs while reducing dependence on the state and
exposure to the market.65

Between 1991 and 1992, as part of Menem’s privatisation process, YPF, the
State oil company, located in Neuquén and Salta provinces, was transferred
from state control. The Neuquén towns of Cutral-Co and Plaza Huincul saw
their workforce reduced from 4,000 to 400. Workers, as employees of YPF, had
benefited for over four decades from salaries above the regional and national
average, from cradle-to-grave welfare, and from social and leisure facilities
which extended into the wider local community.66 In short, ‘YPF was everything
for both towns: work, health, education, sports and leisure’.67 Despite the knock-
on effect of the job losses on the wider population of the interior provinces,
which resulted in 20 percent unemployment, due to redundancy payments, the
full effects of the privatisation was not felt until some years later.68

In 1992, negotiations, which were aimed at establishing a carbamide plant in the

region, were opened between local government and the Cominco/Agrium Ltd
fertiliser company. When these negotiations were cancelled in 1996 on the grounds

65
Paul Chatterton, ‘Making Autonomous Geographies: Argentina’s Popular Uprising and the
Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados’, Geoforum, 36: 5 (2005), 545-61 (p. 555).
66
Javier Auyero, ‘Protest in Contemporary Argentina: A Contentious Repertoire in the Making’,
in Out of the Shadows: Political Action and the Informal Economy in Latin America, ed. by
Patricia Fernandez-Kelly and Jon Shefner (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State
University Press, 2006), pp. 165-95 (p. 173).
67
Auyero, ‘Protest in Contemporary’, p. 173; Equipo de investigación de Neuquén, ‘Los efectos de
la privatización de YPF en Cutral-Co y Plaza Huincul’
<http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/laoap/claspo/rtc/0014.pdf> pp. 2-3. [accessed 14 April 2012]
68
Equipo de investigación de Neuquén, p. 3. The majority of businesses set up using severance
payments eventually failed. Daniel Campione and Beatriz Rajland, ‘Piqueteros y trabajadores
ocupados en la Argentina de 2001 en adelante: Novedades y continuidades en su participación y
organización en los conflictos’, in Sujetos sociales y nuevas formas de protesta en la historia
reciente de América Latina, ed. by Gerardo Caetano et al.(Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2006),
pp. 297-330 (p. 306).

241
of insufficient funding, hopes for the regeneration of regional employment were
dashed. Public reaction in Cutral Co and Plaza Huincul was to air their anger in
protest by mounting a blockade of burning tyres on Ruta Nacional 22, a key
communications link between Neuquén and Rio Negro Provinces.69 Similar protest
occurred in Jujuy province, which had seen a gradual deterioration of Perón’s
protected state-run tobacco, sugar, mining and steel companies, culminating in the
reorganisation in 1992 of the Aceros Zapla resulting in job losses of 65 percent. The
poverty rate in 1991 was 35 percent, reaching 55 percent by 1999.70 Frustration at
government and labour union lack of support and the ineffectiveness of
conventional protest activity led Jujuy residents to organise piquetero activity on 7
May 1997, blockading the Horacio Guzmán bridge, Argentina’s main transportation
route to Bolivia.71

The action of preventing the transportation of goods became known as a piquete.

The piquete, which became a widely used tool to express demands and protest,
exists in various forms to the present time. 72 Although unable to strike and halt
production at source, by blocking transportation routes, the piqueteros effectively
mirrored the actions of striking employed workers by instead preventing delivery of
goods and services to similar effect.

As noted, road blocks and contemporary piquetero activity originated in the former
industry-based communities of the interior; however, piquetero mobilisation was
subsequently initiated in the large towns and cities of the coastal area and Buenos
Aires city and province, particularly post-December 2001. Córdoba, Rosario,
Neuquén and Buenos Aires all saw roadblocks. The largest roadblocks in the capital
city were in La Matanza, a former industrial neighbourhood to the west of Buenos

69
Auyero, ‘Protest in Contemporary’, p. 172.
70
James Petras, ‘The Unemployed Workers’ Movement in Argentina’, Monthly Review, 53: 8
(2002), 32-45.
71
James Petras, ‘Road Warriors’: The Unemployed Workers Movement in Argentina’, Rebelion.org,
27 January 2002 <http://www.rebelion.org/hemeroteca/petras/english/unemplyed270102.htm>
[accessed 23 April 2012]
72
Piquetero activity has developed to include tactics other than road blocks, such as demonstrations
and media exposure to express demands.

242
Aires.73 In addition, the southern portion of GBA is also identified by Svampa and
Pereyra as particularly high in territorial-based piquetero organisation.74

Table 6. 2: Instances of piquetero activity/action per year 1997-2002 in GBA.

1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002

140 51 252 514 1,383 1,609

Source: Matías Artese, ‘Violencia política y protesta social en la Argentina de fin de siglo. Un
estudio aplicado a los cortes de ruta’, Espiral, 19: 54 (2011), 171-93 (p. 174).

The novel adaptation of a traditional working-class tool, the picket line, attracted
considerable media attention. Initially piquetero activity was not well received by
broader society. However, on 26 June 2002, two young piquetero demonstrators,
Dario Santillán and Maximiliano Kosteki, died at the hands of the Buenos Aires
police.75 This event provoked widespread indignation leading to protest marches on
28 June and 3 and 9 July. The slogan, ‘¡Ya lo veo, ya lo veo, esta noche somos todos
piqueteros!’, chanted by the demonstrators, reflected feelings of cross-class
solidarity.76 The fact that individuals who would not normally be involved in
political protest activity should take to the streets en masse can be understood in
terms of a response explained by Olga Onuch. On the dynamics of mass
mobilisations, Onuch identifies a trigger which is based on participants’ adoption of
a ‘collective’, rather than an individual, ‘lens’ through which to view events.77 By

73
Petras, ‘Road Warriors’; Maristella Svampa and Sebastián Pereyra, ‘Dimensions of the Piquetero
Experience: Organisations of the Unemployed in Argentina’, Academia.edu, (2003), p. 6.
<http://www.maristellasvampa.net/archivos/ensayo18.pdf > [accessed 6 September 2013]
74
Svampa and Pereyra, p. 6.
75
Kosteki and Santillán were members of the MTD Lanús and MTD Guernica respectively.
These MTDs were members of the Coordinadora de Trabajadores y Desocupados Aníbal Verón
(CTDAV). The CTDAV, not to be confused with the guevarist Movimiento de Trabajadores
Desocupados Aníbal Verón (MTDAV), was formed in 2002 as an umbrella organisation of
various MTD groups. Paula Klachko, ‘Análisis del llamado “movimiento piquetero” de la
Argentina: los objetivos de sus acciones de protesta’, Lutas & Resistências, 2: 1 (2007), 98-111
(p. 99) <http://www.uel.br/grupo-pesquisa/gepal/revista2aedicao/lr2-98-111.pdf > [accessed 2
February 2017]
76
Dinerstein translates this slogan as,‘I can see it… I can see it… tonight… all of us are
Piqueteros!’, Ana C. Dinerstein, ‘Beyond Insurrection: Argentina and New Internationalism’,
The Commoner, 5 (2002), 1-18 (p.13).
77
Olga Onuch, Mapping Mass Mobilization: Understanding Revolutionary Moments in
Argentina and Ukraine (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), p. 184.

243
adopting this collective view, she notes, ‘their decision to join in protest may reach
beyond self-centred calculi or emotions’.78

In the long-term, however, as in the case of the asamblea movement, negative

media influence and government co-optation of the less ‘radical’ piquetero
organisations, combined with the positive effects of reduced unemployment in the
post-convertibility period, reduced sympathy for, and diluted the impact of, the
piquetero organisations.79

Piquetero or unemployed workers’ organisations present a fluid panorama in which

alliances have been formed and/or dissolved over time. Nevertheless, a central
constant tenet of all piquetero organisations is their rejection of unemployment.
Poverty, the neoliberal economic model and the system of political representation
and participation are further common targets of Argentina’s piquetero
organisations.80 The fact that the piquetero groups have chosen to describe
themselves as trabajadores desempleados is significant in that the term constitutes a
dual criticism of the system, which is effectively denying the individual, whose
principal identity is that of a worker, the option to work.81 Furthermore, the
majority of piquetero groups share a common form of organisation, the asamblea,
and all demand or have demanded government financial assistance (planes) as well
as establishing social projects, particularly in the areas of education and medical
provision.82

Despite its common targets, ‘From its very beginning the piquetero movement was
never homogeneous; rather it represented different traditions and political and
ideological currents.’83 This heterogeneity has generated concern among academics

78
Onuch, Mapping, p. 184.
79
Svampa and Pereyra, p. 17.
80
María Antonia Muñoz, ‘La difícil construcción de una identidad colectiva: Los piqueteros’,
Revista de Antropología Iberoaméricana, 43 (2005), p.11
<http://www.aibr.org/antropologia/43sep/articulos/sep0504.pdf >[accessed 13 September 2014]
81
Campione and Rajland, pp. 306-7.
82
An exception to this is the FTV organisation, which does not take decisions by asamblea and has a
relatively vertical organisational structure. Laura Vales, ‘Los proyectos piqueteros’, Página/12, 23
June 2002 <http://www.pagina12.com.ar/imprimir/diario/elpais/1-6652-2002-06-23.html> [accessed
5 May 2012]
83
Svampa and Pereyra, p. 5.

244
and activists on the basis of the risk ideological fragmentation presents to the
stability and durability of the piquetero ‘movement’ as a whole.

Godio categorizes the piquetero organisations as dialoguistas, moderados and

duros, on the basis of their willingness to engage in negotiation and compromise
with the government.84 Dialoguistas, such as the Federación Tierra y Vivienda
(FTV), affiliated to the Central de Trabajadores de la Argentina (CTA), are in
favour of negotiation with the government and supported President Néstor
Kirchner. Moderados such as the Corriente Clasista y Combativa (CCC) maintain
distance from central government, but are prepared to temper their actions, for
example, implementing partial roadblocks and allowing vehicles transporting
workers to pass blockades. Groups of Duros, the best-known of which, the
Movimiento Independiente de Jubilados y Desocupados (MIJD) and the Polo
Obrero (PO), were involved in violent clashes during protests against Néstor
Kirchner’s government. Svampa and Pereyra identify the divergent currents within
the piqueteros on the basis of trends in affiliation. Firstly, there are organisations
that have strong links to trade union practice, particularly the FTV, which
subscribed to the formula ‘Shock Distributivo, Autonomía Nacional y
Democratización’, achievable by replacing the government with a unified popular
alternative.85 Other organisations developed under the guidance and patronage of
left-wing political parties, for example, Barrios de Pie affiliated to the left-wing
populist Patria Libre party and those of the revolutionary Bloque Piquetero, which
includes the Movimiento Teresa Rodríguez (MTR) and the Trotskyist PO. Finally,
there are those organisations which developed from territorial ties, such as the
CTDAV and the Salta-based Unión de Trabajadores Desocupados de General
Mosconi (UTD Mosconi).

Piquetero action is ideologically driven and Dinerstein identifies trends of piquetero

ideology on the basis of those seeking power and those seeking counter-power.86

84
Godio cited by Luis Ortolani Saavedra. Luis Ortolani Saavedra, ‘Crisis y reorganización de los
movimientos piqueteros argentinos’, Revista Pueblos, 19 (December, 2005)
<http://www.revistapueblos.org/old/spip.php?article327> [accessed 6 September 2013]
85
Svampa and Pereyra, pp. 6-7.
86
See Ana C. Dinerstein, ‘Power or Counter Power?: The Dilemma of the Piquetero Movement in
Argentina Post-Crisis’, Capital and Class, 27: 1 (2003), 1-8. The concept of anti-power is discussed

245
The former group, represented by FTV and CCC, focuses on leadership change
enabling the construction of new working-class power, engendering unemployed
workers’ reinsertion into the mainstream economic process and the reduction of
extreme inequalities caused by income redistribution. In the words of Juan Carlos
Alderete (CCC) and Luis D’Elia (FTV), ‘La protesta sirve para conseguir planes
de empleo, pero si se quiere reabrir las fábricas hay que cambiar el modelo. Para
cambiarlo hay que estar en el gobierno.’ 87

In the world of anti-power, the creative tools are desertion, exodus and nomadism.88
As such, piquetero groups which adopt a counter-power solution have eschewed
liaisons with political parties and trade unions and focused instead on their local
community to construct a new subjectivity and ways of doing politics. This group,
comprised in large part by the independent piquetero groups forming the CTDAV,
stress the importance of dignity as a means of attaining social change and seek to
develop an alternative, locally-focused solidarity system by which to ‘change the
logic of power and capitalist work’.89 From this comes the slogan of the MTR
bulletin El Corte, ‘Por Trabajo, Dignidad y Cambio Social’.90 Piquetero Andrés, a
proponent of the counter-power stance comments:

Unemployment is something that has motivated us to organise, the

objective is to one day have a more dignified life, we won’t find real work
within the capitalist system, we have to create our own sources of
work…for us governments are something we are struggling against.91

All piquetero organisations take government subsidies in the form of the Planes
Trabajar (later Planes Jefes y Jefas de Hogar) and are, in many cases, responsible
for the distribution of the funds.92 However, the form of the distribution of funds
differs. Sums can be apportioned as payments to individuals and, as organisations
are frequently responsible for the distribution of the payments, this gives rise to

by Holloway with reference to the Mexican Zapatista Movement. John Holloway, Change the World
without Taking Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today (London, UK: Pluto Press, 2010).
87
Vales.
88
Hardt and Negri quoted in Chatterton, p. 547.
89
Dinerstein, ‘Power or Counter Power’, p. 1.
90
MTR website <http://www.teresarodriguez.org.ar/> [accessed 12 May 2012]
91
Chatterton, p. 555.
92
All of the participants in this study identified this aspect as a very negative characteristic of the
piquetero movement.

246
accusations of clientelism. In the case of organisations whose focus is on creating
an alternative or counter-power system, the money is used to fund projects such as
bakeries, vegetable gardens and child-care facilities for the community by the
community, thus creating ‘dignified’ non-exploitative work, in the Proudhonian or
Marxist sense.93

The challenges facing the piqueteros are, in fact, those which affect all social
movements, most notably fragmentation due to differing perspectives between
groups. This makes solidarity or joint co-operative policies and activity difficult
given the ‘divide-and-rule’ tactics employed, particularly during Néstor Kirchner’s
government: limited concessions in the form of material benefits and co-optation of
more tractable groups versus criminalisation of the activities of their intractable
counterparts with the additional support of the mainstream media. A further
challenge is exhaustion of membership, often related to the need for the
organisations to maintain relevance by reformulating and extending their discursive
platforms to reflect and confront alterations to the challenges which face them.
Added to this was the temptation of, or pressure on, individual members to resume
more predictable conventional work practice when employment opportunities
increased with conditions of economic improvement.94

Nevertheless, the piquetero organisation represented, and continues to represent, a

significant social and political force, which has challenged conventional views of
the unemployed as isolated, fragmented and politically ineffective, ‘Cuestionan el
punto de vista tradicional de la clase obrera industrial como el sujeto más
importante de la lucha de clases’.95 The negative identity of reserve labour
attributed to the unemployed in traditional Marxism is negated by the effective
actions of the piqueteros.96 In contrast to the anti-capitalist groups of the Bloque
Piquetero, the refusal of other MTDs to engage in a relationship of wage labour is
viewed by Chatterton as transcending the critique of capitalist social relations.97
However, irrespective of ideological debate or partisan analysis, it is undeniable
93
The projects are based on creating ‘use value’ and not producing ‘alienating surplus value’.
94
Svampa and Pereyra, p. 20.
95
Ana C. Dinerstein ‘Roadblocks in Argentina: Against the Violence of Stability’,
Capital and Class, 25: 2, 2001, 1-7.
96
Chatterton, p. 558.
97
Chatterton, p. 558.

247
that each of the various piquetero factions has shown itself capable of uniting to
exert collective pressure in its own defence to the extent of effectively curbing
neoliberal political economic and social excesses which would deny them their very
right to existence.

Workplace recoveries. 98
CUC co-operative.
CUC, located in the General San Martín industrial belt, GBA, as the former Gatic
(Adidas) factory, was a major producer of sporting equipment and footwear. Gatic
employed some 7,200 workers in over twenty factories countrywide and boasted an
annual production rate equating to 320m US dollars. In 2000, however, after a
management transfer, workers saw alterations in their working conditions including
delays in salary payments and actual pay cuts. When, in late 2001, the workforce
was dismissed and machinery removed, Gatic’s workers set up a carpa lasting for
twelve months.99 At this point, the workers, who had decided to form a co-
operative, were rehired and worked until September 2003 when employment
conditions reverted to those of 2000. Unwilling to relive the same situation, on 17
October 2003, members of the workforce took the decision to ‘take’ the plant,
resisting several eviction attempts. In April 2004, the CUC co-operative was
authorised to initiate production and, on 22 December 2004, the former Gatic
factory was expropriated legally and became the property of the CUC co-operative.
Since its inception, CUC has provided a living ‘wage’ for members, created new
work and training aimed, in particular, at younger Argentines and endeavoured to
create meaningful links with the local community.

Retrospective investigation has revealed varied, hitherto unreported, isolated,

sporadic popular projects initiated in response to job loss and economic uncertainty.
An anecdotal example of one such endeavour, which has fortunately withstood the
passage of time remaining operational to the present, is the rope and textile
manufacturing co-operative, Inimbo. Inimbo was set up by long-term workers in

98
The term ‘recovered workplace’ or fábrica recuperada is the most widely-used term to describe
the phenomenon, being the term elected by the majority of workers involved in the process, various
movements (MNER, MNFRT) and the majority of academics documenting the phenomenon.
99
The term carpa refers to a blockade which is set up in a key location, in this case, the factory
entrance.

248
Resistencia, Chaco Province, on the announcement of their workplace closure
during the early/mid-1980s.100 However, it was in the 1990s that workers co-
operatives began to achieve recognition. A salient effect of Menemist economic
policy on national industry was the closure of numerous Argentine workplaces,
businesses affected being the older PYMES.101 By 2001, insolvency and bankruptcy
claims presented by these businesses registered record levels of 10,109 petitions,
with 3,359 actual bankruptcy decrees in Buenos Aires City alone.102

Workplace recovery or the fábricas recuperadas, a truly novel phenomenon on

a variety of levels, has sparked interest in academic, activist and political circles
both nationally and internationally. The re-established workplaces garnered
widespread multi-class support, both moral and practical, from a variety of
social actors, as Peter Ranis notes:

the worker-occupied enterprises … received a positive response from

the participatory sectors of Argentine society, particularly…The
piquetero movement, the immediate neighborhoods themselves in
which the cooperatives are located, …Popular Assemblies, political
parties of the left, civil and human rights groups, and university and
secondary school faculty, teachers and students have been very
supportive of the cooperative movement and its various takeovers and
occupations of factories and enterprises. Public opinion has been
generally favorable.103

Response from trade unions has been varied: a minority of unions have actively
supported workers’ efforts; however, the majority completely abandoned their
members. Notable examples of unions which supported workers’ efforts are the
Asociación de Trabajadores de Rosario and the UOM Quilmes branch, which
supported the struggle of emblematic Industrias Metalúrgicas y Plásticas

100
Ramón Ayala, Interview, University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires City, 11 July 2007.
101
The workplaces tended to be some forty years old. Gabriel Fajn and Julián Rebón, ‘El taller ¿sin
cronómetro?: Apuntes acerca de las empresas recuperadas’, Herramienta, 28 (March 2005), p. 3
<http://www.herramienta.com.ar/revista-herramienta-n-28/el-taller-sin-cronometro-apuntes-acerca-
de-las-empresas-recuperadas> [accessed 23 January 2011] Anecdotal evidence provided by workers
detailing fraudulent bankruptcy and removal of capital assets from premises abounds.
102
Mariana A. Briner and Adriana Cusmano, ‘Las empresas recuperadas en la Ciudad de Buenos
Aires: Una aproximación a partir del estudio de siete experiencias’, in Empresas Recuperadas
Ciudad de Buenos Aires’, Secretaría de Desarrollo Económico, Gobierno de la Ciudad de
Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires: CEDEM, 2003), pp. 21-83 (p. 26).
103
Peter Ranis, ‘Argentina’s Worker-Occupied Factories and Enterprises’, Socialism and
Democracy, 19:3 (2005), 1-23 (p. 13).

249
Argentina (IMPA).104 Salient examples of union abandonment of members
include: Bruckman Designs, Chilavert Printing Press, and Grissinopoli Foods,
which saw the Clothing Workers’ union, Federation of Graphic workers of
Buenos Aires and the Union of Food Workers respectively, withdraw their
support from workers on the basis that, in occupying their workplace, their
actions were outside the traditional institutional channels.105

It is difficult to characterise the phenomenon of workplace recovery given the

diversity of workers’ experiences and strategies deployed during the process. In
general terms, the process ranged from an agreement between workers and the
former owner, to unauthorised entry or occupation of the premises, either peaceful
or otherwise.106 Workplace recovery is not unique to Argentina, having occurred in
other Latin American countries, notably Uruguay, Brazil and Venezuela. In
Argentina, the numbers of actual workplaces involved represent only a small
proportion of Argentina’s economically active population. Figures for 2002 set the
percentage of workers’ co-operatives that were formed from recovered workplaces
at 1.5 percent.107 Much of the interest in the phenomenon is based to a large extent
on the symbolic dimension of the phenomenon. That is, the fábricas recuperadas
phenomenon questions the traditional acceptance of automatic private property
rights and also represents a practical, tangible metaphor of the right to work. In
addition, a further point of significance to this work is the focus on the theme of
‘genuine’ work as expressed by workforces of the fábricas recuperadas.

The following section will present a brief overview of the aspects of the
phenomenon in terms of historical precedents, insights into the workers’ decision to
establish co-operative ventures and the institutional response to workplace
recovery.

104
Carlos Ghioldi, Supermercado Tigre: crónica de un conflicto en curso (Rosario, Argentina:
Prohistoria, 2004).
105
Héctor Palomino, ‘The Workers’ Movement in Occupied Enterprises: A Survey’, Canadian
Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 28: 55 (2003), 71-96 (pp. 81-2).
106
See Heller, pp. 187-229.
107
Marcelo Vieta and Andrés Ruggieri, ‘Worker Recovered Enterprises as Workers’ Cooperatives:
The Conjunctures, Challenges, and Innovations of Self-Management in Argentina’, in Cooperatives
in a Global Economy: The Challenges of Cooperation across Borders, ed. by Daryl Reed and J. J.
McMurty (Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), pp. 178-225 (p. 188).

250
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, workplace closure generated several attempts by
workers to resist unemployment by reviving their former workplace, either in the
form of associations or co-operatives. This activity was, however, restricted to
workers in the south of Gran Buenos Aires and linked uniquely to the Quilmes
section of the UOM. Furthermore, of the approximately 15 co-operatives set up at
this point, not all initiated production. Subsequently, several relatively dispersed,
isolated, pioneering cases of workplace recovery occurred in the late 1990s,
including IMPA and the Frigorífico Yaguané meat processing plant. Workplace
recovery gained a clear public profile with the formation of the first workplace
recovery movement MNER in 2001.108 By December 2001, the point at which any
vestige of public confidence in mainstream solutions had virtually evaporated, over
200 workplaces, closed and/or abandoned by their owners nationally, had been
established under worker control, a figure which continued to grow, peaking in
2002.109

Profiles compiled of workers involved in recoveries revealed their tendency to

be less well-qualified and older than the average.110 Additionally, they tended
to be long-standing employees with financial responsibility for other family
members, in many cases being the family ‘breadwinner’. It was often the case
that these individuals had remained with the company, agreeing to work extra
hours at either reduced salaries or without pay in the hope of maintaining a
functioning workplace.111 A key focus of the workers was to retain a trabajo
digno, that is, an honest meaningful job.112 Additionally, they were keenly
aware of the experiences of their former, less fortunate co-workers and,
indeed, of a vast section of the population. Recognising the absence of

108
Rebón and Saavedra, pp. 11-13.
109
María Gabriela Ensinck, ‘Empresas recuperadas, una década después’, Cronista.com, 22
March 2012 <http://www.cronista.com/contenidos/2012/03/22/noticia_0001.html> [accessed 25
May 2012]
110
The research team from Lavaca set the age of workers at an average of 40 years. Lavaca, Sin
Patron: Fábricas y empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores. Una historia, una guía (Buenos
Aires: Lavaca, 2004), p. 19.
111
C. Roberto Meyer and José E. Pons, La gestión en las empresas recuperadas (Buenos Aires:
Centro Cultural de la Cooperación-Ediciones del Instituto Movilizador de Fondos Cooperativos,
2004), p. 24.
112
Trabajo digno contrasts to living from state handouts or ‘planes’ which the workplace recoverers
rejected wholeheartedly. Interestingly, these workers, although they obviously did not want to join
the ranks of the cartoneros, valued the efforts made by them as an honest means of shouldering their
responsibilities.

251
attractive options open to them, unlikely to find another job and faced with the
real possibility of becoming a cartonero, one worker commented: Ésta es
nuestra última oportunidad como trabajadores; después de acá no hay nada,
es el vacío total.113

Workplace recovery was often not a spontaneous act, nor was it necessarily
the workers’ aim when occupying a workplace to usurp the premises and
reinitiate production.114 Rebón and Saavedra highlighted the fact that, in 90
percent of the cases they studied, external bodies were involved in promoting
occupation and recovery and the workers’ action was less proactive than is
often portrayed.115 Two key support organisations of the fábricas recuperadas
were the MNER and the MNFRT. It appears that, in the majority of cases,
workplace recovery was a defensive action taken by workers to protect their
families, dependants and personal self-esteem, rather than a partisan or overt
political statement or act. Of the ‘options’ on the legal framework on which to
establish their fledgling enterprise, that is as a nationalised concern under
workers’ control, a limited company (sociedad anónima), a private limited
company, or a co-operative, in almost all cases of workplace recovery, the
workforce elected to form a co-operative as their legal form of organisation.116

Historically, Argentina has a tradition of co-operative organisation, largely

adopted by immigrants with European, particularly Italian, descent.
Furthermore, as noted in the previous chapter, co-operative organisation had
achieved a high profile under Perón.117 However, the decision by the
contemporary workforce to recover their workplaces under the legal
framework of a co-operative, rather than being based on ideology as was

113
Rebón and Saavedra, p. 18.
114
Rebón and Saavedra, p. 33. Workers often occupied a workplace as a form of protest, their aim
being to recover their unpaid earnings and/or severance payments rather than to usurp control of the
premises and begin production.
115
Rebón and Saavedra, p. 34.
116
93 percent opted for a co-operative legal framework, 4.7 percent elected a limited company
and 2.3 percent chose nationalisation under workers’ control. Fajn, Fábricas y empresas, p.105.
Notable, well-documented cases which initially sought nationalisation with workers control are
the 18 de Diciembre (ex-Bruckman) factory and the FaSinPat (ex. Zanón, Neuquén).
117
Ricardo César Bazán, ‘Perón: “El cooperativismo es un tipo de organización popular que está en
la médula del Justicialismo”’, Portalcoop.com, 14 April 2012 <http://airelibre.bligoo.com.ar/peron-
y-el-cooperativismo> [accessed 29 May 2012]

252
traditionally the case, was taken for purely pragmatic reasons.118 Establishing
a worker-run co-operative organisation represented the most expedient and
least risky means to reinitiate production in both legal and financial terms
according to Argentine labour law.119

For the vast majority of workers involved in ‘recovering’ their workplace, the actual
experience was fraught with emotional and related financial considerations in which
they were invariably assigned a disadvantaged position.120 Pressure on the political
institutions resulted in reforms of the bankruptcy laws in February 2002. However,
the resultant legislation was discretionary, temporary and in no sense afforded the
workers any special considerations at the time of auction.121 As such, commenting
on the process, Heller notes, ‘estas leyes lo único que hacen es patear la pelota
adelante’.122 Championing the workers’ cause, independent progressive legal
advisers and local legislators identified an opportunity to benefit workers in the
form of a temporary expropriation law passed in 1977, which allows for the
expropriation of property for the common good, either material or spiritual, or for
reasons of public utility. In November 2004, the law was adapted and made the co-
operative workers’ rights over their workplace permanent, thereby enabling 13
Buenos Aires’ co-operatives to begin production with three years’ grace and the
right to purchase through a twenty-year repayment of the bankruptcy value. 123
Nevertheless, in practice, the process of recovery remained subjective and
discretionary.124

118
In 91 percent of the cases of workplace recovery, workers indicated that they had no idea what
the theoretical, ideological or pragmatic implications of co-operative organisation were, whilst the
remaining 9 percent had only a vague idea. Meyer and Pons, p. 25.
119
Fajn, Fábricas y empresas, pp. 105-6.
120
For in-depth analysis of the legal situation facing workers, see Magnani, pp. 73-101. For
anecdotal content, see Heller, pp. 145-48.
121
Magnani, pp. 73-101; Ranis, p. 11. In addition, the scarcity of capital and/or credit facilities often
resulted in à façon work, leaving workers subordinate to or at least dependant on external bodies.
Lavaca, p. 24. My personal empirical research at the CUC footwear factory (July/August 2007)
revealed that several contracts were being carried out à façon.
122
Heller, p. 148.
123
Ranis, p. 12.
124
Laura Collin-Harguindeguy, ‘Fábricas resuscitadas: Respuestas de los trabajadores argentinos
ante el desempleo’, Economía y Sociedad, 14: 23 (2009), 13-44 (pp. 31-2).

253
In the context of tremendous financial and psychological obstacles facing the
potential workforces, numerous workplace recoveries did not succeed.125
Alternatively, others, such as the aforementioned CUC, not only flourished to
provide an adequate income for members but in fact surpassed expectations by
attaining levels of production which enabled not only job creation but also the
formation of links with local organisations and provision of community services.126
Furthermore, the practice of workplace recovery has persisted to the present time as
a viable option for workers threatened by workplace closure, apparently receiving a
moderately positive response from the government in the form of a modification to
the Bankruptcy Law passed in June 2011, affording direct authority to the
workforce to request the continuance of the business.127

Cirujeo and Cartoneo: The gathering of discarded recyclable material.

By the mid-1990s, entire communities had fallen victim to underemployment

and unemployment.128 The result of this was that significant increases were
registered in the numbers of people involved in informal work.129 Between 1998
and 2002, the most significant growth in informal work was in the area of
scavenging for discarded recyclable materials, an option facilitated by a
combination of economic and infrastructural factors. As such, the period saw
large numbers of Argentines, divested of their former personal, working and
institutional relationships and links, enter the informal, initially illegal, highly
stigmatised, precarious, exploitative and often dangerous work of cartoneo.

125
Javier Echaide, ‘Debate sobre Empresas Recuperadas: Un aporte desde lo legal, lo jurídico y lo
político (Buenos Aires: Centro Cultural de la Cooperación, 2004), pp. 11-12.
126
On visits to both the San Martín-based CUC footwear factory and the 19 de Diciembre, former
ISACO auto parts factory workers informed me of their co-operatives’ firm commitment to setting
up free adult literacy and numeracy evening classes on their premises. A further high profile
example of success in this area is the FaSinPat (former Zanón) ceramics factory in Neuquén, which
was occupied by the workforce in 2001. Within four years, the co-operative had created 170 new
jobs and was promoting projects such as fair-trade links with the indigenous Mapuche community
and cultural activities and educational and training provision on the premises. For more on this, see
the FaSinPat website, Obreros de Zanón
<http://www.obrerosdezanon.com.ar/html/index1.html>[accessed 12 September 2009]
127
Ignacio Chausis, ‘Cristina promulgará mañana la nueva Ley Nacional de Quiebras’, Tiempo
Argentino Online, 22 June 2011
<http://tiempo.infonews.com/notas/cristina-promulgara-manana-nueva-ley-nacional-de-quiebras>
[accessed 5 September 2012]
128
Themis Chronopoulos, ‘Neo-liberal Reform and Urban Space. The Cartoneros of Buenos
Aires 2001-2005’, City, 10: 2 (2006), 167-182 (p. 171).
<http://themis.slass.org/images/cartoneros/chronopoulos-cartoneros-article.pdf > [accessed 4
June 2012]
129
Whitson, p. 1408.

254
In the majority of cases, individuals had recourse to cartoneo due to the fact that
this was generally their only viable option and a last resort. Gathering
recyclables often represented the difference between life and death by starvation
as 42-year-old Beatriz Escobar explained, ‘Cuando enviudé, hace dos meses, no
tenía muchas opciones: Me dije: me muero de hambre o salgo a cartonear.130
Ironically, however, Ignacio, a 34-year-old cartonero, justified his decision to
work as an informal waste gatherer on the basis that it was a more reliable
option than the formal work available. His reasons were wage instability in the
form of protracted periods of salary underpayment and/or suspension, or even
non-payment.131

The majority of good-quality waste produce is to be found in the central

commercial and business areas: Belgrano, Nuñez, Barrio Norte, Micro Centro
and the city’s most affluent residential neighbourhoods.132 Unsurprisingly, it is
in these areas that the highest concentration of cartonero activity has been
registered. See Figures 6. 1 and 6. 2. (p. 256).
Figure 6. 1: Socio-economic brackets in Buenos Aires city.

Source: Carré, ‘Trier et récupérer’, p. 27.

130
Francesc Relea, ‘Cartoneros y cirujas en la noche de Buenos Aires’, El País, 25 July 2002
<http://elpais.com/diario/2002/08/25/opinion/1030226408_850215.html> [accessed 1 July 2012]
131
Muleiro, p. 2.
132
Perelman and Boy, p. 407.

255
Figure 6. 2: Streets of Buenos Aires city most frequented by Cartoneros 2002-
2004.

Source: Perelman and Boy, p. 409.

Estimates set the number of people working in cartoneo in 2001 at 10,000.133 By

early 2002, the number of people entering Buenos Aires city centre was set at
between 25,000 and 30,000, peaking at 40,000 in late 2002 at the height of the
economic crisis.134 By 2006, Greenpeace Argentina, estimated the number of
individuals working in cartoneo to have declined to 12,000.135 By 2008, this had

133
Whitson, p. 1409.
134
Whitson, p. 1404.
135
Greenpeace.Org Argentina, ‘Sin centros verdes’, p. 2. Greenpeace Argentina states its
mission as ecological and in general terms the NGO does not campaign on ‘social’ issues.
Greenpeace Argentina, ‘Sobre Nosotros’ <http://www.greenpeace.org/argentina/es/sobre-
nosotros/> [accessed 21 December 2016] However, Greenpeace Argentina’s campaigns,
surrounding Ley 1.854 ‘Basura Cero’ legislation, and the organisation’s support for the ‘Centros
Verdes’, considered crucial for the effective reduction of waste assigned to landfill, have
brought the NGO into direct contact with certain Buenos Aires cartonero organisations. Pre-
2006, Greenpeace co-operated with the El Ceibo co-operative, organising joint activity and
providing the co-operative with practical support. Greenpeace.org.ar, ‘Greenpeace y la
cooperativa el Ceibo dan una clase pública para enseñarle al gobierno de la ciudad qué hacer con
la basura’, 24 febrero, 2005
<http://www.greenpeace.org/argentina/es/noticias/greenpeace-y-la-cooperativa-el/> [accessed
12 December 2016]; Greenpeace.org.ar, ‘Greenpeace y “El Ceibo” presentaron programa
alternativo de recolección de residuos: “Basura Cero en Palermo”’, 2 December 2004
<http://www.greenpeace.org/argentina/es/noticias/greenpeace-y-el-ceibo-presen/> [accessed 12
December 2016] Since the introduction of the ‘Basura Cero’ legislation Greenpeace Argentina
has adopted both a monitoring and a ‘tutorial’ role towards Buenos Aires government recycling
policy. 2008 saw Greenpeace protest against government proposals for the reintroduction of
waste incineration in CABA and oppose the payment by weight system of waste collection.
Further action included lobbies for differentiated waste collection, and the expedition of
installation of the proposed centros verdes. Mariana Díaz Vaccaro, ‘El Proyecto presentado
plantea la incorporación de la recolección diferenciada en toda la Ciudad a través del servicio de

256
decreased to 10,000, which nevertheless constitutes a significant proportion of
Argentines working in this area. In addition, the vast majority of these workers
were carrying out their activity informally, as witnessed by the low levels of
cartoneros enrolled on the formal government register and the reduced
opportunities for working in state-funded recycling centres.136

Evidence from empirical research carried out on 100 active cartoneros indicates
the following: the majority of the research subjects are members of what would
normally be considered the age of the active working population. See Table 6. 3.

Table 6. 3 Age groups of cartoneros working in 2008.

Age 14-18 19-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 >55 Total
Percentage 15 19 28 18 15 5 100

Source: Valeria Escliar et al., Cartoneros: ¿Una práctica individual o asociativa?; Ciudad de
Buenos Aires, año 2004-2005 (Buenos Aires: Centro Cultural de la Cooperación Floreal Gorini,
Dep. de Economía Política, 2007), p. 30.

Furthermore, of those studied, 94 percent were Argentine citizens, living in

municipalities of GBA rather than CABA itself, and thus requiring transport into
the city centre. The proportion of males to females involved in active on-the-
street cartoneo, was higher, with 65 percent males to 35 percent females.137 Of
the cartoneros interviewed, 54 percent were directly responsible for supporting

las empresas y de las cooperativas’, 8 October 2008

<http://www.greenpeace.org/argentina/es/fotos-y-videos/fotos/el-proyecto-presentado-plantea/>
[accessed 12 December 2016]; Greenpeace.org.ar, ‘El plan propuesto por el gobierno de Macri
producirá más contaminación’, 10 septiembre 2008
<http://www.greenpeace.org/argentina/es/noticias/greenpeace-el-plan-propuesto/> [accessed 12
December 2016]. From 2012, the organisation has reported consistently positive results in
reduction of waste assigned to landfill. Greenpeace.org.ar, ‘Greenpeace: Los logros de la Ley de
Basura Cero empiezan a aparecer’, 24 July 2014
<http://www.greenpeace.org/argentina/es/noticias/Greenpeace-los-logros-de-la-Ley-de-Basura-
Cero-empiezan-a-aparecer/>[accessed 11 December 2016] However, they advise that the
continued success of the Basura Cero law is reliant on the continued vigilance and intervention
on the part of ecological groups identifying key requirements as, ‘extender el servicio de
recolección diferenciada, mantener en el tiempo las campañas de comunicación para lograr un
cambio cultural y comenzar a dar tratamiento a la fracción de residuos orgánicos’.
Greenpeace.org.ar, ‘Greenpeace: Los logros’
136
2006 figures indicated only 1,000 cartoneros had been registered as formal workers in waste
collection. See Chapter Seven. Additionally, the inadequate opportunities to work in centros
verdes translated into high numbers of cartoneros working in informal conditions. Gustavo
Barco, ‘El negocio de la basura’, LaNacion.online, 25 June 2006
<http://www.lanacion.com.ar/817616-el-negocio-de-la-basura> [accessed 23 August 2012]
137
Escliar et al., p. 30.

257
an average of four children. Many individuals in the sample had a low level of
academic achievement, having left school without completing a basic leaving
certificate.

Although the sight of individuals scavenging for waste in plain view on Buenos
Aires City streets constituted a discordant panorama at the turn of the twenty-
first century, the practice of waste scavenging in Buenos Aires Province can be
traced back to the mid-1860s. As such, two very distinct types of cartonero
exist: the ‘structural’ and the ‘new’. Structural cartoneros which, for the purpose
of distinction, may be termed cirujas, are those Argentines whose family
tradition is to live by gathering recyclable materials, either for resale or home
use, and who were involved in this type of work before the 1990s. New
cartoneros, which again, for distinction, I will refer to as cartoneros, are people
who were previously involved in stable or informal work and who were forced
to turn to alternative activity as a means of survival. In practice, however, the
individuals themselves make indiscriminate use of the terms cartoneo and
cirujeo to refer to the action of waste gathering, and cartonero and ciruja to
refer to the individual waste gatherer. At the height of the economic crisis
between 2001 and 2002, only some 25 percent of people involved in gathering
non-organic recyclables were historic or structural cirujas, the vast majority
being ex-employees or new cartoneros.138

The main protagonists of this study can be said to belong to the second category.
Prior to becoming cartoneros, several of the co-operative’s older members had
worked in stable employment for many years. One of the members had pursued
a skilled trade. The younger members, although they were not from families
which would be classed as structural cirujas, had extended experience of
working in cirujeo as a family group. Therefore, there is a fine line and merging
between experience and lifestyles of the traditional and the non-traditional
ciruja.

138
Muleiro.

258
Although, in terms of current practice, there is ostensibly little difference
between the work activity of the ‘structural’ and the ‘new’ gatherers, research
has focused on the new cartoneros, with scant interest in the cirujas. A
qualitative comparative study of structural cirujas and modern-day cartoneros
conducted by Perelman provides interesting insights into the significantly
divergent natures of these two groups. 139 Perelman’s work is valuable, not only
on the basis of the paucity of documentation on the subject of cirujeo and as a
reference point from which to better comprehend the contemporary situation,
but also as a platform for subaltern voices whose historia sin historia would
otherwise go unrecorded.

Several key differences exist between the structural and the contemporary waste
gatherer in the specific areas of public profile, remuneration and public and
personal perception. A key aspect of divergence between the early cirujas and
the modern cartoneros is the geographic location in which their work took
place. In the case of the former, relatively low numbers of individuals were
involved in cirujeo and, in addition, Argentina’s early tradition of locating waste
disposal facilities in peripheral areas afforded the ciruja the ability to work
relatively unnoticed and undisturbed, out of the public view and exclusively
outside of the residential areas. Ironically, this was not the case for the
cartoneros, whose aspirations were towards invisibility but, who, in order to
work effectively, needed to contravene the law, enter Buenos Aires City centre
and maintain a highly visible profile in the community, establishing routes and
timetables and forming relationships with potential clients to ensure support and
gain access to the material they required.140

Retrospective oral history suggests that life was good for the early cirujas, who,
operating in a thriving industrial climate, had access to abundant, high quality
waste and wanted for nothing.141 As structural ciruja Juan Carlos notes ‘En la
Quema, me casé, junté mi dinero para hacerme mi fiesta, por iglesia, por civil,

139
Perelman, ‘Haber sido y ser’, p. 11.
140
Until late 2002, when the practice was decriminalised, cartoneo was an illegal activity as
established under the Proceso Military government.
141
Perelman recognises that these memories contain an element of nostalgic romanticism.
Perelman, ‘Haber sido y ser’, p. 12.

259
yo me pagué mi ropa, yo me pagué mi fiesta, todo, todo de mi bolsillo gracias a
la ciruja. Crié a mis hijos’. 142 However, contemporary cartoneros are,
generally, only able to effect day-to-day survival from the proceeds of their
work.

Perelman reports that the cirujas displayed a high sense of personal pride,
despite the fact that their work was carried out outside the formal economy and
involved handling waste products. Traditional cirujas themselves speak in terms
of pride in their work, identifying in it, as well as a ‘lucrative’ source of income,
several premises for positive self-esteem. Describing a working environment
characterised by hard, dangerous work due to topographical features of the work
area, exposure to smoke, disease, harmful objects and the actual social
composition of the quemeros themselves, cirujas highlighted requirements of
the job in terms of personal qualities such as physical strength, resilience,
dexterity, problem-solving ability and physical and mental courage.143

Contrary to the cirujas’ positive attitude to their subjectivity, public perception

was predominantly negative. The context of greater employment opportunities
in the pre-Proceso period, a period when wage labour constituted a cornerstone
of socio-political relations and personal identity, the generalised public
perception of those not working in mainstream employment was that they did so
out of choice that is, ‘no trabaja quien no quiere’.144 Thus it follows that the
popular image of the structural ciruja was that of people marginalised due to
personal failings, particularly indigence, insanity or alcoholism.145 As Sabina
Dimarco notes, the perception of the ciruja was virtually exclusively negative,
cirujas being viewed in similar terms to the items they handled, that is unwanted
and unclean:

la “quema” y sus habitantes se veían afectados por las mismas

representaciones asociadas a la basura y lo residual en
general…correspondían a una imagen global y unánimamente
142
Perelman, ‘Haber sido y ser’, p. 7.
143
Perelman, ‘Haber sido y ser’, p. 5. The term quemero is used by the original cirujas to signify
a worker at an open incineration site or quema.
144
Perelman, ‘Haber sido y ser’, pp. 3-4.
145
Verónica Paiva and Martín Boy, ‘El sector informal en la recolección y recuperación de
residuos en la ciudad de Buenos Aires. 2001-2008’, Quivera, 11: 1 (2009), 2-12 (p. 4).

260
 negativa: la suciedad y la pestilencia, la contaminación y el peligro, la
sombra y la nada...146

In contrast to the generalised negative public view of the ciruja, the specific
socio-political context of the early post-crisis generated a predominantly
favourable climate of public opinion towards the contemporary cartoneros; their
efforts were generally met by high levels of tolerance and respect.147 Cartoneros
garnered considerable support from a broad sector of porteños, who, in the
context of generalised hardship of the post-2001 period, were able to empathise
with the plight of the much less fortunate cartoneros. As such, in addition to
moral support, contemporary cartoneros were also afforded a certain level of
practical support from sectors of the Argentine public, most specifically the
asambleas.148 In addition, the discourse accompanying public policy presented
the figure of the cartonero in positive terms, such as pobre pero digno and
trabajador y honrado.149 Conjointly, sectors of both the media and the artistic
world showcased a variety of aspects of the cartonero experience in a
favourable light.150 Examples of this supportive stance include theatrical works
in which the central characters are cartoneros and publication of books in
jackets made from materials gathered by cartoneros.151

However, it should be noted that the initial public tolerance and support from
various quarters for Argentina’s cartoneros was neither unanimous nor
universally enduring. An early opponent of cartonero activity, current Argentine
president Mauricio Macri, is remembered for an interview in 2002, in which he
accused the cartoneros of waste theft, ranking them alongside street thieves and

146
Sabina Dimarco, ‘¿Podremos mirar más allá de la basura?: Ranuras, cirujas y cartoneros:
Historias detrás de la basura’, CEIC, 1: 33 (2007), 1-29 (p. 8)
<http://www.identidadcolectiva.es/pdf/33.pdf> [accessed 22 September 2014]
147
Raúl Kollmann, ‘La batalla que ganaron los cartoneros’, Página/12, 23 October 2002
<http://www.pagina12.com.ar/imprimir/diario/elpais/1-11885-2002-10-23.html> [accessed 29
July 2010]
148
Anecdotal evidence of asamblea support for cartoneros abounds. For one such example, see
Irina Hauser, ‘Para que se vayan las enfermedades’, Página/12, 23 October 2002
<http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-10326-2002-09-18.html> [accessed 29 July 2012]
149
Paiva and Boy, pp. 6-7.
150
Whitson, p. 1405.
151
See the Eloisa Cartonera publishers’ website. Eloisacartonera <www.eloisacartonera.com.ar>
<http://www.eloisacartonera.com.ar/historia.html>
[accessed 20 July 2012]

261
suggesting they warranted incarceration.152 Macri’s comments were generally
badly received, and he has since attempted to exonerate himself. However,
improved economic conditions and various other factors combined to reassign
the high visibility and presence of cartoneros in the capital as a major source of
vociferous dissent from a broad spectrum of previously sympathetic sectors.
Within five years, La Nación reporter Ángeles Castro was reporting filth
(suciedad) left behind by the cartoneros as the predominant concern of the
Buenos Aires residents as well as a key aspect of dissatisfaction on the part of
even the most progressive politicians.153 Research into the discourse on the
cartoneros in major newspapers, Clarín and La Nación, identified an increasing
trend of negative portrayal of the cartonero, whereby cartonero activity was
increasingly presented in predatory terms: invaders appropriating public space,
impeding legitimate city activity, disease carriers, non-porteño, alien in origin
and ‘others’ unable to conform to social norms.154

Evidence indicates that new cartoneros felt high incidence of shame,

particularly in the initial period of carrying out their work.155 My own research
supports Perelman’s findings in that certain participants, notably the older
members who had spent many years in skilled, semi-skilled or even unskilled
but regular work, described feelings of such intense shame that they were
‘unable to raise their heads’ and were ‘compelled to avoid the gaze of passers-
by’.156

In seeking to explain the generalised sense of shame expressed by numerous

contemporary cartoneros, Perelman refers to the legacy of early Peronism.
Informed by early to mid-twentieth-century Peronist ideology, work, as wage
labour, emerged in popular culture as a central referent of identity and self-
esteem. Clearly, scavenging waste does not conform to the positive image of

152
The full text of the interview can be found in Alejandra Rey, ‘A los recolectores informales
de basura los vamos a sacar de la calle’, La NaciónOnline, 27 August 2002.
<http://www.lanacion.com.ar/425929-a-los-recolectores-informales-de-basura-los-vamos-a-
sacar-de-la-calle>[accessed 16 August 2012]
153
Angeles Castro, ‘En jaque por el "cartoneo"’, La NaciónOnline, 20 March 2007
<http://www.lanacion.com.ar/892942-en-jaque-por-el-cartoneo> [accessed 28 August 2012]
154
Tufró and Sanjurjo.
155
Perelman, ‘Haber sido y ser’, p. 3.
156
Older members of the Tren Blanco co-operative, Mirta, Don Héctor and Cecilia expressed
feelings of profound shame at working as cartoneros.

262
work as commonly perceived and valued in Argentina and, as suggested by the
traditionally negative public perception of the structural ciruja, as intentionally
aberrant. Additional to this, the enduring Peronist discourse of the ideal family
structure with the male as head of, and provider for, the household is identified
by Perelman as a further underlying cause of shame and low self-worth
experienced by Argentine males when unable to fulfil their role as family
breadwinner.157

La idea de ser trabajador, en una Argentina que durante décadas fue

considerada como de casi pleno empleo, estuvo ligada a los procesos
de construcción de la relación ciudadanía-empleo y a las del
desarrollo del ideal de familia organizada en torno al trabajo de un
jefe varón proveedor de los ingresos familiares.158

It is likely that this would be particularly the case for men from working-class
backgrounds, who maintained a close relationship with Peronist ideology.

It would appear that the typical cartonero experience consists of an emotional

journey during which the initial shame experienced by cartoneros eventually
yields to reconciliation with the recognition by individual waste workers that
cartoneo is ‘a job like any other’, not a charitable handout, and legitimate in that
it is preferable to the only other viable options of delinquency and theft.159

Las estaciones emocionales de los cartoneros suelen transitar por una

primera etapa de profunda vergüenza, propia de quien ha estado
mejor y nunca antes se había pensado a sí mismo cartoneando. Luego
sobreviene el orgullo: a pesar de todo, jamás pierden la dignidad.
Porque frente al limitado abanico de opciones, ésta resulta la más
digna. Porque en el ánimo de quien toma un carrito para recuperar
residuos está hondamente arraigada la cultura del trabajo. Pese a que
el trabajo no exista y haya que inventarlo recuperando materiales que
otros descartan.160

157
Mariano Daniel Perelman, ‘La construcción de la idea de trabajo digno en los cirujas de la
ciudad de Buenos Aires’, Intersecciones en Antropología,12: 1 (2011), 69-81 (p. 71).
My personal empirical research revealed that male participants were very much driven by the
desire to provide for their dependants.
158
Perelman, ‘La construcción de la idea de trabajo digno’, p. 71.
159
Mirta Belizán, Don Héctor, Cecilia and Doña Ramona, Roberto Quiroz.
160
Anguita, p. 17. Lynne Chrisp personal research.

263
As cartonero, and occasional construction worker, Roberto Quiroz notes…para
no ser un delincuente más o un pibe que está tirado en la calle ¿qué tiene que
hacer? Agarrarse un carrito y ir a cirujear ¿Qué vergüenza va a dar ¿no?.161

Of further interest are the nuanced findings of research conducted by Dimarco in

2007. Whilst recognising that her findings are based on a limited subject sample,
Dimarco identifies three distinct trends in the way that individuals perceive their
work as cartoneros which appear to be related to their prior employment history.
Dimarco’s research indicates that subjects whose background was a stable,
formal, wage labour experience difficulty accepting their new circumstances,
viewing cartoneo as a temporary activity, suffering extreme levels of shame and
self-reproach with difficulty relating to other cartoneros and other social actors
required to provide support. In contrast, individuals for whom informal unstable
working conditions were the norm, and who may in fact have another job
additional to cartoneo, tend to suffer less from feelings of low self-esteem but
identify themselves in terms of their other job.162 The third group, the cirujas
structurales, reflect Perelman’s findings in that they do not suffer mental
anguish as a result of the nature of their work but rather construe it in positive
terms. 163

Reflecting the broader trend of the period towards workers’ co-operative

organisation, cartonero co-operatives were also established. Paiva traces the
inception of the cartonero co-operatives to the mid-1990s. 164 In a legal context
under which the practice of cartoneo was either severely restricted or wholly
illegal, several groups of carreros, that is, waste gatherers working with horse-
drawn carts, who, in a bid to improve their working conditions, initiated
associative working patterns such as syndicalism or co-operative organisation.165

161
Roberto Quiroz, WorkingWorld.Org: Case study: Tren Blanco Co-operative. The term pibe
(fem. piba) is Argentine slang for a young person.
162
Dimarco, ‘¿Podremos Mirar?’, p. 23-4.
163
Dimarco, ‘¿Podremos Mirar?’, pp. 23-4; Perelman, ‘Haber sido y ser’.
164
Verónica Paiva, ‘Las cooperativas de recuperadores y la gestión de residuos sólidos urbanos en el
area metropolitana de Buenos Aires, 2003’, Revista Theomai, 99 (2004), p. 2 <http://revista-
theomai.unq.edu.ar/numespecial2004/artpaivanumespec2004.htm> [accessed 7 May 2015]
165
Paiva, ‘Las cooperativas’ , p. 3. Buenos Aires City Pliego 14/97 allowed for 10 percent of
discarded materials to be recycled. Decreto No. 9111/78 in force in the rest of the partidos of
GBA made any recycling illegal, with all waste to be transported to the CEAMSE landfills. See
Chapter Seven.

264
The first cartonero co-operatives were formalised between 1999 and 2000, these
being El Ceibo in Palermo, Reconquista in Tres de Febrero, El Orejano in San
Martín and RENASER- (Recuperar Naturalmente y Servir) in La Matanza. 166
By 2003, 14 cartonero co-operatives were functioning in GBA.

Paiva highlights the fact that local government response to the early co-
operative projects in her study was virtually inexistent. 167 The Instituto
Movilizador de Fondos Cooperativos (IMFC), to which the majority of these co-
operatives were linked, played an important role. In addition to providing
advice, the IMFC provided a short-term, limited credit service known as
créditos blandos. 168 These loans, which were limited to a maximum duration of
48 hours, operated on a constantly renewable system, thus enabling co-
operatives to finance their daily operational costs.

The heterogeneous composition of the co-operatives’ memberships, notably in

terms of the social group to which they belonged, related educational levels, and
employment history, as well as the support and resources available to each
group, resulted in projects which diverged considerably, not only in the
fundamental reasons for establishing the co-operative but also in the scope of
work and operating methods eventually undertaken.169 All ventures identified
the factors of provision of work and social potential in that they all shared the
commitment to community enrichment central to co-operative ideology, albeit
that in the majority of cases this was predominantly aspirational. Significantly,
environmental considerations were not expressed as a priority by any of the
members.170

166
Paiva, ‘Las cooperativas’, p. 3.
167
Paiva, ‘Las cooperativas’, p. 14.
168
See Instituto Movilizador de Fondos Cooperativos, ‘Quienes Somos’
<http://www.imfc.coop/modules/contenido/> [accessed 8 May 2015]
169
For an anecdotal review of the divergent nature of these projects, see Paiva’s, ‘Las
cooperativas’, in which she presents cameos of five divergent cartonero co-operatives.
170
The members of the Tren Blanco co-operative reflect Paiva’s findings in that their priorities
were predominantly to provide work and social benefits. Nevertheless, they did demonstrate a
clear knowledge of environmental issues and identified the benefits of the co-operative’s
recycling role.

265
The following section focuses on further aspects of organisation by cartoneros
and comments on cartonero mobilisations surrounding the installation and
withdrawal of the iconic cartonero ‘white’ train service and provides a brief
review of the establishment of the MTE and the cartonero role in the
organisation.

El Tren Blanco or El Tren Fantasma.

El convoy de seis vagones desnudos traslada diariamente como único

pasaje a casi un millar de cartoneros con 400 carretas. Finalmente la
empresa Trenes de Buenos Aires (TBA) puso en circulación lo que hoy
es un ferrocarril destartalado sin asientos (para dar cabida a más
carretas), sin luz, puertas, ni cristales en las ventanas. Nadie se ha
preocupado de frenar el deterioro. Para viajar en estas condiciones el
precio del abono quincenal es de 10,5 pesos, lo mismo que cuesta un
tren en buen estado.171

The train, generally referred to by cartoneros as the tren blanco on account of

its colour, has also been designated the tren fantasma by its passengers.
Significantly, Zarwan attributes the cartoneros’ ethereal metaphor as denoting
an awareness of their personal figurative invisibility.172

Numerous cartoneros located in municipalities in GBA and required

transportation, with their trolleys, to and from Buenos Aires City centre. In the
early 1990s, the main means of travel to the city was the train and small
numbers of cartoneros using the trains at this time was generally tolerated at the
discretion of the guards. By 1995 and 1996, some 100 cartoneros were
travelling with their trolleys by train to Buenos Aires City causing disruption in
the carriages and leading to a refusal to transport cartoneros. By organising and
appointing a spokesperson, Lidia Quinteros, the cartoneros of the José León
Suárez line were able to negotiate agreements with the TBA transport company.
Mirroring the piqueteros direct action of the road block, 1997 saw a cartonero
‘trackblock’ at José León Suárez followed by several further 200-250-strong
trackblocks in Buenos Aires City stations. Significantly, the action taken was

171
Relea.
Elijah Zarwan, ‘Buenos Aires the Ghost Train of the Cartoneros’, Worldpress.org. August
172

2002 <http://www.worldpress.org/photo_essays/cartoneros/ > [accessed 17 September 2013]

266
coordinated between cartonero groups and other groups, particularly asambleas
and political activists.173

Subsequent to ‘trackblocks’, in 1999, the cartonero activists reached an

agreement with TBA by which a train was supplied for the use of the José León
Suárez cartoneros. The carriages in these white trains had no seats in order to
accommodate the trolleys, alongside which the cartoneros travelled. Via
coordinated solidarity, mobilisations between the well-organised José León
Suárez cartoneros and cartoneros on the Tigre-Retiro and Bartolomé Mitre-
Retiro lines saw similar dedicated trains added to their branch lines. Additional
journeys were negotiated over time. As of 2002, certain lines which did not
provide an entire train for cartoneros set aside several carriages for use by
travellers with trolleys. 174 As noted above, the trains were in poor state of repair
and the journey was paid for at the standard rate. During 2003, a total of 4,784
cartoneros, which equates to 77 percent of the total GBA population, were using
the train as transport to and from their place of work.175

Each train station had a representative responsible for the safety and payment of
fares (10.5 pesos per fortnight, 18.50 for a monthly pass). Representatives were
also responsible for the behaviour of travellers as well as preventing minors,
children under 14 years of age, from travelling. Despite the efforts of these
representatives, it would appear that acts of vandalism occurred.176 Vandalism to
trains and safety issues due to the physical conditions of the ‘white trains’ were
identified by TBA to account for the eventual termination of the cartonero train
services. Cancellation of the Sarmiento service in 2006 and the Mitre line trains
in August 2007 had profound ramifications for individual cartoneros reliant on
the service, as well as certain co-operatives operating in GBA municipalities,
specifically the Tren Blanco co-operative.

173
Nicolás Villanova, ‘Un tren piquetero, la lucha de los cartoneros del tren blanco y el
argentinazo’, El Aromo, 64 (2012)
<http://www.razonyrevolucion.org/ryr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1768:
un-tren-piquetero-la-lucha-de-los-cartoneros-del-tren-blanco-y-el-argentinazo&catid=233:el-
aromo-nd-64-qa-confesion-de-partesq&Itemid=110> [accessed 17 September 2013]
174
One such example is the F. Varela and Korn stations on the Roca line.
175
Villanova, ‘Un tren’, p. 2.
176
Cecilia of Tren Blanco co-operative, who was a carriage delegada for the José Leon Suárez
run, noted her difficulties in moderating the behaviour of some of the younger cartoneros due to
their alcohol and drug consumption.

267
Orders from Buenos Aires judge, Roberto Gallard, to reinstate the Tren Blanco
Mitre service were disregarded by TBA on the basis that TBA, a national
company, was not bound by legislation restricted to the capital area. Buenos
Aires Ministry for the Environment and Public Space adopted a policy of non-
involvement, disclaiming any responsibility for the decision on the grounds that
the Tren Blanco service was the responsibility of TBA and the provincial
government. Protest by cartoneros was robustly curtailed by police.177
Furthermore, support for the cartonero demands for the reinstatement of the
Tren Blanco from asambleas and political parties proved ineffective and GBA
cartoneros were obliged to use the alternative lorry transportation supplied by
TBA to replace the train service.

The system of using TBA lorries proved unpopular and ineffective as the
cartoneros’ trolleys and recyclables collected were transported by lorry, while
the individual cartoneros were required to travel by train. This led to loss of
time and items resulting from inefficiency and theft.178 Unofficial trucks are a
further means of transportation used by cartoneros in the absence of an
alternative means to travel to the city centre. These trucks function as people
carriers and trolley transportation and hire service. Many are equipped with a set
of scales to facilitate the purchase of raw collected recyclables from individual
cartoneros. Unofficial lorry services often facilitate exploitation of the
vulnerable cartonero population. Exploitative practice often consists of enforced
sale of material to truck owners, under-weighing of the recyclables and
payments significantly below the going rate. 179

177
Perfil.com., ‘Cartoneros protestaron por suspensión del Tren Blanco’, Perfil.com. 31
December 2007<http://www.perfil.com/contenidos/2007/12/31/noticia_0025.html> [accessed 22
July 2012]
178
Prensa de Frente, ‘Y trás cartón sacaron el tren blanco: Entrevista con recicladores
acampados en capital’, Prensa de Frente, 20 Feb 2008
<http://www.prensadefrente.org/pdfb2/...08/02/20/p3499>[ accessed 13 July 2012]
179
Alejandra Dandan, ‘Un negocio sin desperdicio’, Página/12, 26 May 2002
<http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/sociedad/3-5566-2002-05-26.html>[accessed 13August
2010]

268
CLIBA refuse management company, whose operation was clearly prejudiced
by these informal waste enterprises, decried these ventures, disguised as concern
for the individual cartonero, describing the informal lorries as, ‘una
organización de recolleccion paralela y clandestina’, adding, ‘los camiones no
son parte de la pobre gente que vive de la basura’.180 In fact, CLIBA
experienced a 23 percent drop in the quantity of tons collected between 2001
and 2002.181 Alleged collusion between police and truck operators enabled
individual drivers to negotiate exclusive ‘rights’ to operate in specific areas by
means of bribery, whereby the highest payer gets the best pitch for their
operation. Cartoneros must work in affiliation with a lorry, as working
individually results in police harassment, keeping these individuals in
circumstances of double dependence.182 This situation is described by Fajn as:

Intermediarios, “capitalistas sin papeles”, jefes de cuadrillas,

cirujas con sus familias, forman parte de un negocio que combina
pobreza, ilegalidad e informalidad, con altos componentes
“mafiosos” y con una fuerte dosis de violencia. 183

Both as a means of protest and also out of necessity, cartoneros from the
outlying GBA no longer able to travel to and from work by train, set up camps
in Buenos Aires City. The view from a train carriage window reveals a number
of small makeshift cartonero encampments on areas of wasteland on the
outskirts of Buenos Aires City. Numerous more conspicuous cartonero camps
were set up in public squares and under motorway bridges but the topic received
scant comment in the press. Residents’ reaction to these informal camps was
divided; whilst several vecinos organisations provided moral and practical
support to the cartoneros, other residents of neighbourhoods in which camps
had been established reported discontent specifically due to the unsanitary
conditions created in the street and fears for their personal safety.

Perhaps the most polemic example of these ‘occupations’ was a cartonero

encampment set up in early January 2008 in the city’s upmarket Belgrano

180
Dandan.
181
Dandan.
182
For an anecdotal account of this process, see Dandan.
183
Fajn, Cooperativa, p. 17.

269
district with the dual purpose of enabling the cartoneros to access the city’s
recyclables and, given the high profile of the location, providing an effective
tangible political statement. After a failed attempt on 29 January 2008, the early
hours of 22 February saw the cartoneros finally evicted from the camp by
official forces. The fact that orders were issued at both provincial and national
level indicates the compliance of the Kirchner government in the aggressive
eviction.184

In addition to the previously noted inter-cartonero solidarity activity, links were

forged between cartoneros and various actors, including asamblea members,
academics and left-wing political parties, notably the Polo Obrero. In 2001, the
MTE was founded by lawyer Juan Grabois to combat the exploitation of Buenos
Aires’ vulnerable marginal population. Although the MTE is a joint action
group comprised of militant professionals such as lawyers, accountants,
translators and teachers who aim to support various marginalised sectors, the
organisation’s most visible success proved to be with GBA cartoneros. In
noting the specific relevance of the MTE to the cartonero population, its website
highlights the context of exploitation mentioned earlier in this chapter as:

(una)...herramienta de los cartoneros para enfrentar al

régimen mafioso (político, policial y empresarial), que se había
enquistado sobre nosotros, para llenarse los bolsillos, sobre la
base de la corrupción, la coima y la sobreexplotación.185

Under the slogan, ‘Por una patria, sin esclavos, ni excluidos’, the self-affirmed
apolitical organisation, which comprises 2,000 cartoneros from both the capital
and the broader GBA area, in particular Lanús and Lomas de Zamora, identifies
its significance in terms of its positive social, productive and ecological
impact.186 The MTE website documents positive achievements attained by
solidarity and co-operation in improving working conditions for their members
by negotiations with the state and NGOs. The benefits, mirroring those in

184
Liliana Schwartz, ‘Macri y Los Kirchner, contra los cartoneros’, PartidoObrero.org. 28
February 2008 <http://64.22.103.243/articulo/po1027063/macri-y-los-kirchner-contra-los-
cartoneros> [accessed 2 July 2001]
185
MTE, ‘Quienes somos’, Movimiento de Trabajadores Excluidos
<http://www.cartoneando.org.ar/quienes> [accessed 12 June 2012]
186
MTE.

270
normalised formal employment, include improved steady income and pension
and social security cover as well as vital child care facilities. Given that
cartoneros’ collecting hours were by necessity in the evening between
approximately 8 pm, (business closure) to the municipal waste collection around
11 pm, a key point of concern expressed by cartoneros with young children was
the need to have their children accompanying them whilst working.187 The
emblematic Amanecer De Los Pibes nursery eventually founded in 2009 in
conjunction with the NGO Ché Pibe, is clearly relevant as tangible economic
improvements. However, despite the fact that some progress has been made in
the area of childcare, the problem is by no means resolved, with reports in 2012
which indicate that 30 percent of contemporary cartoneros are still obliged to
take children with them to work. 188

To conclude, this chapter has considered aspects of the various multi-class

responses to unemployment, impoverishment and social isolation experienced most
acutely during the latter part of the 1990s and early years of the 2000s. It would
appear that the perceived failure of traditional forms of representation and the
context of economic policy, which has been widely identified as a process of
prolonged social disciplining, led a broad sector of Argentina’s popular and middle
sectors to unite as a negative power in a collective ‘¡Basta!’. Traditional
institutions, broadly perceived as having ceased to reflect reality and thus regarded
as illegitimate, were either circumvented or directly contested. A salient example of
the latter is the rejection of the automatic inviolability of private property, which
was represented by the appropriation of space and premises either for community
use or employment.

For various reasons, many individuals returned to mainstream solutions when

improved economic circumstances made these available. This was notably the case
as of the economic upturn which coincided with Néstor Kirchner’s mandate.
Predictably, incidences of solidarity activity, particularly of an inter-class nature,
did not always prove enduring. With economic regeneration came reduced tolerance

187
This point was noted as a key cause for concern by the female cartoneras participating in my
study, whether or not they had young children themselves.
188
Graylyn Roose, ‘Waste Pickers Help Clean up Buenos Aires’, Institute for International
Journalism, 16 March 2012 <http://next.upi.com/archive/2012/03/16/In-Buenos-Aires-
scavengers-help-recycle-city-waste/7571328924853/> [accessed 20 August 2012]

271
and even hostility, notably from the middle sectors, towards more radical disruptive
actors, most specifically the piquetero organisations, whose uncompromising road
blocks created serious disruption of quotidian activity.

Nevertheless, the institutional challenge represented by the new social movements,

created as Argentines adapted conventional forms or innovated new forms of
protest action, provided clear evidence that the metaphorical ¡Basta!, vociferously
articulated in December 2001, had evolved to constitute a tangible challenge which
could not go unheeded by the country’s leadership. That is, by manifesting their
refusal to further accept conditions of socio-economic degradation incurred
predominantly as a result of laissez-faire, neoliberal economic policy, Argentina’s
popular and middle sectors forced a government response.

Years of state withdrawal from the economic and social panorama were reversed as
Duhalde’s caretaker Peronist government introduced clear state socio-economic
regulation, pro-active in certain key areas of the economy and in the delivery of
social services.189 This approach continued under the subsequent Peronist
government led by Néstor Kirchner, who was generally successful in promoting the
image of a socially responsible state. However, it can be argued that, in practical
terms, state response to the new social movements was incoherent and ill-
coordinated. The disappointing state response has been attributed to ineptitude
resulting from the protracted erosion and corruption of state structures.190

An alternative interpretation of the state’s response, which is favoured by the

researcher, is the dual role required of an executive constrained by the need to
satisfy commitments to business elites and international financial bodies, whilst at
the same time containing popular protest. As such, expedience rather than coherent
and effective action would no doubt constitute the main informant of state policy. It
would certainly appear that, in the post-December 2001 period, the predominant
rationale informing state policy towards the various popular initiatives was
invariably to provide sufficient level of support to achieve co-optation of

189
Grugel and Riggirozzi, ‘The Return’, p. 95.
190
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Las empresas recuperadas en la Argentina: Informe del
Segundo Relevamiento del Programa Facultad Abierta (Buenos Aires: SEUBE, Universidad de
Buenos Aires, 2005), p. 87.

272
moderates, thus enabling repression of, and marginalisation of, the most militant or
‘extreme’ groups.191

191
Ana Cecilia Dinerstein, ‘Workers’ Factory Takeovers and New State Policies in Argentina:
Towards the Institutionalisation of Non Government Public Action’, Policy and Politics, 35: 3
(2007), 529-50 (pp. 537-8).

273
Chapter Seven

Official response to the cartoneros in post-neoliberal Argentina.

Waste management in GBA and the question of landfill in José
Léon Suárez’s Relleno III: Legislation to respond to twenty-first
century challenges?

In the previous chapter, it was posited that public discontent was such that a
government response was required which would indicate a positive commitment
to addressing issues of degraded social wellbeing, notably in the areas of
poverty, unemployment, exclusion and provision of support for self-help
initiatives. However, constrained by pressures from domestic and foreign elites,
notably international finance bodies, government response, heavily reliant on
cooptation, informed by expedience and accommodation, proved arbitrary and
as such, either inaccessible and/or unappealing to a significant proportion of
those involved. This chapter provides comment on the revisions specific to the
process of waste management, implemented in GBA at both provincial and
departmental levels. The content of the chapter catalogues a compromised,
inadequate government response to the question of waste disposal in general,
and to the cartoneros’ needs in particular. It is the author’s contention that in
failing to provide a coordinated effective resolution to the issues of material
necessity and exclusion affecting an extensive sector of the cartonero
population, Argentina’s leaders nurtured the widespread perception of the
political class’s personal incompetence and/or lack of willingness to encourage
popular sector advancement, in this case with specific reference to the cartonero
community. Scepticism surrounding the viability of a political solution to the
problems of exclusion and poverty can be viewed as a central cause of the focus
on self-sufficiency and tendency towards political desertion of numerous
popular waste recycling initiatives, including the Tren Blanco co-operative.

The chapter begins with a brief note on historic and economic traditions in waste
disposal, providing the context for the proliferation of cartoneo in contemporary
Argentina. Following this, a brief description of the historic roots of informal

274
waste collection or cirujeo provides a contextualisation of the contemporary
ecological and social issues. The chapter then continues to comment on
alterations to provincial legislation directed towards the cartoneros. The
subsequent section discusses innovations introduced in the specific setting of the
Relleno Norte III landfill site. The site, located in José Léon Suárez and known
to the local villero/cartonero population as La Quema, played a significant role
in the lives of the members of the Tren Blanco co-operative. In fact, La Quema
had provided them with items for resale during their time working as cartoneros
and, later, with clients who chose to bring items, gathered at the site, for resale
at the co-operative’s Villa Independencia premises.

Argentina has no formal tradition of salvage of potentially reusable waste

material. This is due in part to the fertile quality of the country’s soils, obviating
the need for fertilisers, which in other countries in the region were produced for
domestic use as by-products of their waste processing procedures. Added to this
were the country’s extensive expanses of land available for use in waste disposal.
Protracted reliance on the system of waste disposal by landfill, established in the
mid-1970s by the Proceso Militar Government, saw Argentina enter the twenty-
first century with an outdated official waste disposal infrastructure which lacked
any salvage facilities.

In 2001, it was reported by the body responsible for waste management in Gran
Buenos Aires, the CEAMSE, that over 1.5 million tons of unclassified waste had
been assigned to landfill at a cost of over 186 million pesos to Buenos Aires city
and the municipalities.1 The same year saw 100 million dollars spent on imports
of paper in preference to recycling native resources.2 In a similar vein, almost 50
percent of the waste produced in 2002 consisted of potentially recyclable
material.3

The cancellation of convertibility and subsequent decrease in purchasing power

of the Argentine peso in the international market led to reductions in imported

1
Escliar et al., p. 19.
2
Dandan, p. 1.
3
Muleiro.

275
goods. This, in turn, had the effect of raising the demand for and cost of
recyclable material. In fact, post-convertibility saw the previous market value of
commodities triple and even quadruple: the price of cardboard, for example,
rose from six centavos a kilo in December 2001 to thirty centavos a kilo by May
2002. In the same period, recyclable materials sold by Buenos Aires’ six major
recycling companies increased by 490 percent.4

Added to the above was the potential represented by recycling as a solution to

evident failures arising from exhaustion of the traditional waste disposal
infrastructure. Exacerbated by inordinate consumerism and excessive waste
production in the 1990s, the outdated, inadequate and increasingly hazardous
GBA landfill facilities had become targets of fervent public criticism on the
basis of the evident health and ecological risks they posed. So it was that, in the
above context of contention and economic crisis, numerous Argentines
identified working as cartoneros as a viable or even the only means of daily
survival, although this meant breaking the law and risking legal penalties.

Cirujeo: historic antecedents.

Early waste disposal in GBA took the form of tipping on small areas of
wasteland or huecos interspersed around the central area. As the city expanded
around the late nineteenth century, increases in the amount of waste generated
led the municipality to relocate disposal facilities to the outskirts of the city and
to replace tipping with open-air incineration, ostensibly on the grounds of
hygiene and coincidentally at a significant distance from more affluent middle
and upper class barrios.5 Under the system of open-air incineration, officially
inaugurated in 1873, waste was collected from premises by private companies
and transported to the Buenos Aires City rubbish dump, a twenty-minute train
journey from the city centre. This open-air waste incineration site, which came
to be known as la Quema, was located in Riachuelo, between Nueva Pompeya

4
Whitson, p. 1419.
5
Schamber and Suárez, ‘Actores sociales’, p. 2.

276
and Barracas, an uninviting area in what is now the Nueva Pompeya district of
Buenos Aires city.6

At this point, a number of individuals were observeded sifting through the city’s
rubbish containers prior to their collection in search of saleable items. In the
1877 Municipal Annual Report, these individuals, referred to as rebuscadores
de residuos, were noted to have increased in number, as did prosecutions by
public authorities for their activity.7 Additionally, in the area surrounding La
Quema, a barrio grew up referred to as Las Ranas or Las Latas. Ranas, or frogs,
refers to the fauna common to the area, whilst latas is a reference to the large tin
cans, which the population filled with soil and used to construct housing. The
residents of this barrio, marginal individuals described as ‘los negros criollos,
los veteranos de la Guerra del Paraguay y los criollos sudamericanos que no
encontraban oportunidades dentro de la (sic) opciones laborales que ofrecía la
ciudad’, survived from the sale and personal use of items they recovered from
the nearby Quema.8 By 1899, an estimated 3,000 men, women and children
were working as cirujas at La Quema.9 The turn of the century, 1904, saw
cirujeo officially declared illegal and an inspectorate established, funded by the
official waste processing companies, to ward off cirujas from the incineration
sites.10 The Barrio de las Ranas was finally eradicated around 1917 and the
inhabitants were transferred to a facility under police control. 11

The inadequate capacity of the La Quema facility to absorb all of the waste or
prevent the establishment of illegal dumping sites in other parts of the city
combined with scientific advances in the early twentieth century to create an

6
Francisco M. Suárez, ‘Breve historia de la gestión de residuos sólidos en la Ciudad de Buenos
Aires’, in Lo local y lo global: La antropología social en un mundo en transición, V Congreso
de Antropología Social (Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de La Plata-Argentina, July-
August, 1997) <http://www.naya.org.ar/congresos/contenido/laplata/LP3/38.htm> [accessed 17
June 2012]
7
Pablo J. Schamber, ‘A Historical and Structural Approach to the Cartonero Phenomenon in
Buenos Aires: Continuity and New Opportunities in Waste Management and the Recycling
Industry’, International Journal of Urban Sustainable Development, 2 (May 2010), 6-23 (p. 10).
8
Verónica Paiva, ‘De los “Huecos”al “Relleno sanitario”: Breve historia de la gestión de residuos
en Buenos Aires’, Revista Científica de UCES, 10: 1 (2006), 112-34 (p. 132)
<http://dspace.uces.edu.ar:8180/dspace/bitstream/123456789/327/1/De_los_huecos_al_relleno_sanit
ario.pdf > [accessed 4 June 2012]
9
Dimarco, ‘Experiencias’, p. 1.
10
Dimarco, ‘Experiencias’, p. 1.
11
Dimarco, ‘Experiencias’, p. 1.

277
enclosed incineration system of waste disposal. Incinerators were installed into
large industrial, government, commercial and residential buildings; domestic
premises were served by enclosed incinerators known as the Gran Usina, later
the Hornos Provisionales, according to a weekly timetable. However, despite the
convenience of on-site waste disposal offered by this system, it proved
short-lived due to inefficiency and inadequate infrastructure.

In areas not equipped with waste incineration facilities, both municipal and
informal illegal open-air waste burning sites not only survived but, in fact,
increased.12 Around these sites, informally annexed villas or shanty towns were
established, populated by cirujas from the country’s interior provinces.13 During
the 1940s and 1950s, cirujas tended to be concentrated in villas which expanded
in the southern area of Buenos Aires city, the most well-known being Villa
Piolin, later Barrio Churúa.14

On 24 April 1942, an unprecedented decree was passed, which sought to

incorporate the cirujas as municipal waste disposal employees by entrusting the
Ente Autónomo de Industria Municipal (EAIM) to employ cirujas as jornaleros,
working on a day-to-day basis, in the official facilities.15 Waste gathering in
public places continued to be illegal, and the work, consisting of the selection
and classification of waste products, was conducted on a semi-informal basis.
The step was significant, constituting a tentative, but hitherto and subsequently
isolated, step by local government to recognise and attempt to formalise a sector
of the country’s marginalised informal workers by incorporating them into the
official system of waste processing and disposal. Over the next two decades,
villas de emergencia or villas miseria, established in close proximity to waste
dumps and providing residents with various items of subsistence, continued to
proliferate. A case in point was the Quema de Bajo Flores, recognised in 1970

12
Schamber and Suárez, ‘Actores sociales’, p. 3.
13
Paiva, ‘De los “Huecos”’, p. 132.
14
See Susana María Sassone and Carolina Mera, ‘Barrios de migrantes en Buenos Aires:
Identidad, cultura y cohesión socioterritorial’, in ¿Las relaciones triangulares entre Europa y las
Américas en el siglo XXI: Expectativas y desafios?, V Congreso Europeo CEISAL de
latinoamericanistas. (Brussels: Université libre de Bruxelles, 11-14 April 2007),
pp.7-8 <http://www.reseau-amerique-latine.fr/ceisal-bruxelles/MS-MIG/MS-MIG-1-
Sassone_Mera.pdf > [accessed 11 July 2012]
15
Schamber and Suárez, ‘Actores sociales’ p. 3.

278
as the second largest rubbish dump in the world.16 However, any progress
towards legalisation and promotion of informal waste recovery, such as occurred
in 1942, would be unconditionally reversed under the Proceso military regime.

A salient aspect of the Proceso’s policy was the city planning project, which was
aimed at restoring the ornamental elitist ethos of Buenos Aires city, somewhat
tarnished by industrialisation and widespread migration during Perón’s 1940s
and 1950s mandates. Central to the city’s cleansing and modernisation
programme were issues relating to waste processing. The waste management
process was centralised under The Proceso. Buenos Aires mayor, Osvaldo
Cacciatore, enacted a series of reforms aimed at regionalising waste
management with the purpose of transferring waste disposal outside of Buenos
Aires City. Provincial laws 9.111 and 8.782 revised the regulations for the
processing and disposal of waste in GBA, establishing what would become the
CEAMSE. According to CEAMSE legislation, informal open rubbish tips were
strictly prohibited. An ‘Ecological Belt’ was constructed on 30,000 hectares of
expropriated land surrounding Buenos Aires centre and sanitary landfill was
declared the only legal means of waste disposal.17

Given the Proceso government’s drive towards the liberalisation of the

economy, waste management, collection and disposal was placed for the first
time in the hands of private companies, notably Manliba, a joint US-Argentine
company. Payment by weight made the waste disposal business very
competitive. Collection was organised on a daily basis, with the exception of
Saturdays. A tight schedule applied to the depositing and removal of waste
hindered recovery of items by private individuals.18 It is therefore ironic that the
introduction of the CEAMSE and the closure of open-air disposal facilities drew
the previously inconspicuous, peripherally located cirujas or quemeros to the
city streets and into public view. Unsurprisingly, a concurrent ban passed in
June 1977 (Ordenanza 33581/77) was placed on the practice of cirujeo.19 The

16
Perelman, ‘De la vida en la Quema’, p. 122.
17
Schamber and Suárez, ‘Actores sociales’ p. 3.
18
Perelman, ‘El cirujeo en la ciudad de Buenos Aires’.
19
Perelman, ‘El cirujeo en la ciudad de Buenos Aires’, p. 105.

279
villas miseria, home of numerous cirujas, were forcefully erased.20 The
following testimony provided by Juan Carlos, a ciruja operating during the
period, is illustrative:

Cuando ya estaban los militares, te agarraban (…) te llevaban, te

pegaban, te tiraban al río, al agua podrida, te cortaban el pelo con
vidrio, te hacían infinidades. Como si fueras un extremista ¡No! eras
un ciruja.21

During the military Proceso government, four sanitary landfills, Villa Dominico,
los Complejos Norte I, II y III in José León Suárez, Ensenada and González
Catán, had been established in the Greater Buenos Aires CEAMSE area. Over a
25-year period, these facilities received in excess of 65 million metric tons of
municipal solid waste.22 Unsurprisingly, by the year 2000, it had become
evident that the established CEAMSE landfill facilities were running out of
physical capacity to accept waste.23 To compound the problem, between 2003
and 2004, clear evidence emerged that toxic by-products were increasingly
leaching from the saturated landfill sites.24 The response to the problem of
inadequate physical space in the landfill sites leading to unsightly mountains of
exposed waste took the specific form of vociferous expressions of concern from
NGOs and from neighbourhood associations, which identified the landfill sites
as health hazards to the local populations.25

In this context of urgency, implied by exhaustion of the traditional waste

management infrastructure and related environmental issues, no viable
20
Chronopoulos, p. 180.
21
Juan Carlos, ‘career’ or traditional ciruja, quoted in Perelman, ‘Haber sido y ser’, p. 8.
22
A. J. Sarubbi and G. Sánchez-Sarmiento, ‘Leachate Abatement inside Solid Waste Landfill’,
Latin American Applied Research, 39: 4 (2009), 307-15.
23
Pablo Morosi, ‘Los rellenos sanitarios están colapsados’, La NaciónOnline, 2 October 2001
<http://www.lanacion.com.ar/339819-los-rellenos-sanitarios-estan-colapsados> [accessed 22
September 2013]
24
Morosi.
25
Anecdotal evidence abounds. Greenpeace.org.ar has produced numerous documents on the
topic of pollution emanating from the CEAMSE landfill sites. See Verónica Odriozola, ‘Plan de
basura cero para Buenos Aires’, GreenPeace.org.ar., p. 2
<http://www.greenpeace.org/argentina/Global/argentina/report/2006/8/plan-de-basura-cero-para-
bueno.pdf> [accessed 17 September 2013] The vecinos of the González Catán area have been
particularly active in protesting against the danger represented by the town’s landfill facility
established in 1977. See Vecinos González Catán, ‘Vivir en González Catán implica respirar
irrespirables gases y beber aguas tóxicas. Vecinos autoconvocados González Catán, ‘Nuestro
objetivo la vida’, 2006 <http://www.vecinoscatan.com.ar/objetivo_vida.html> [accessed 17
September 2013]

280
alternative waste disposal facilities and the socio-economic and political
implications of disproportionate numbers of people gathering waste material, the
state was left with limited options. With specific reference to the cartoneros,
Fajn identifies four possible state responses: to punish them as criminals, to
adopt a non-intervention policy, to mirror the Mexican experience by fomenting
an unofficial, locally focused model affording waste gatherers limited
concessions or, finally, to attempt to provide workers with practical official
support.26 Reflecting the final option, late 2002 saw legislation passed in Buenos
Aires city which reversed the earlier laws prohibiting ‘non-conventional’
recovery and recycling of waste material.

The law, No. 992, referred to as the cartoneros law, recognised and legalised the
work of the cartoneros. The law constituted an attempt to absorb, normalise and
identify the value of cartoneros’ activities by affording them official recognition
under the more prestigious title of recuperadores urbanos, as participants in an
extensively publicised public project. However, it would appear that, in practice,
instances of Fajn’s suggested option of repression have also been applied. This
may be due to the government’s urgent need to restore at least a guise of order
and stability. This required a balancing act between various conflicting interests,
from the subaltern cartoneros and popular pressure groups, on the one hand, to
powerful élites from the business and private sectors on the other.

In a move to formalise the practice of cartoneo, Article 4 of Law 992 announced

the introduction of a register of individuals working in the business of informal
recycling. Subscribed individuals were to be provided with identity cards and
appropriate personal protection equipment. In a further effort to raise the profile
of cartoneo, weekly liaison meetings, mesas de diálogo, between government
and cartonero organisations were to be scheduled to discuss policy decisions.27
In more general terms, Law 992 mirrored international trends in waste
management in that not only did it decriminalise the recovery of recyclables in
Buenos Aires City, it also clearly committed to introduce recycling as an

26
Fajn, Cooperativa, pp. 30-1.
27
Corina Aimetta, ‘Salir a carrear: ¿Trabajo o rebusque?, Trabajo y Sociedad, 12: 11 (2009),
p.10 <http://www.scielo.org.ar/scielo.php?pid=S1514-68712009000100006&script=sci_arttext>
[accessed 25 July 2012]

281
integral aspect of the waste disposal process, thus reversing the country’s
longstanding indiscriminate use of landfill.28 A further section of the law refers
to the need for separation of domestic waste at source, fundamental to the
success of any wide-scale recycling project. This was accompanied by an
associated commitment to implement an ongoing public education campaign to
promote citizens’ awareness and involvement.29

The subsequent introduction of Pliego 6/03 in October 2003 was aimed at

improving economic and social conditions for the cartoneros, by introducing
community-related organisation and affording ecological and environmental
improvements, primarily in terms of improved urban hygiene and a reduction of
waste to be assigned to landfill.30 The Pliego proposed a system of waste
collection which assigned specific roles for private companies in charge of
various zones in the city. A minimum of one centro verde, or centro de
selección responsible for sorting, cleaning, compressing and cutting materials,
was to be located in each of the six sections of town corresponding to the waste
collection zones. According to this system, cartonero co-operatives would be in
charge of operating the centros verdes. This, in turn, would benefit independent
cartoneros working in the area by enabling them to deposit their recyclables at
the local centro verde. In August 2004, Decree 1390 was passed, approving
contracts for five private waste disposal companies, CLIBA, AESA, URBASUR,
NÍTTIDA, and INTEGRA, to serve five of the six zones, leaving responsibility
for waste management of one zone to CABA government, Ente de Higiene

28
Ley 992 Art. 3: A. It may be noted that the fact that Ley 992 was passed in a proximate
timeframe to the World Summit on Sustainable Development which was attended by an
Argentine delegation. United Nations, Report of the World Summit on Sustainable Development:
Johannesburg, South Africa, 26 August-4 September 2002 (New York, NY: United Nations,
2002), p. 79. As such, it could be suggested that Argentina’s participation in the World Summit
on Sustainable Development had some bearing on the approval of the law. However, it is
probable that the law was predominantly brought into effect as the result of pressure exerted
from ‘below’ on the social and ecological issues of burgeoning numbers of individuals working
informally as cartoneros and the toxic effects of failing landfill infrastructure.
29
Ley 992 Art. 3: E.
30
FARN.Org, ‘Centros verdes’, (2007)
<http://www.farn.org.ar/investigacion/codigo_ambiental/informe_final_dic07/parte_especial/res
iduos_farn.pdf > [accessed 12 August 2013]. Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales
Organisation (FARN) is an Argentine NGO which states its aim as, ‘promocionar el desarrollo
sustentable a través de la política, el derecho y la organización institucional’.

282
Urbana (EHU).31 The fees assigned to these companies included a clearly
stipulated sum dedicated specifically to the creation of the aforementioned
centros verdes. See Figures 7. 1 and 7. 2.

Figure 7. 1: Waste collection zones in CABA.

Zona 1 CLIBA
Zona 2- AESA
Zona 3- URBASUR
Zona 4- NITTIDA
Zona 5- Ente de Higiene Urbana GCBA
Zona 6- INTEGRA
Source: Greenpeace Organisation Argentina, ‘Sin centros verdes no hay basura cero’,
Greenpeace.org (2007)
<http://www.greenpeace.org/argentina/Global/argentina/report/2007/6/sin-centros-verdes-no-
hay-ba.pdf > [accessed 27 July 2012]

Figure 7. 2: Waste Management zones and attendant companies as per the terms
of Decree 1390.

Zone Company Monthly Amount of monthly

Payment (in Pesos) payment for funding of a
Green Centre (in Pesos)
1 CLIBA 5,527,891.38 1,419,741.25
2 AESA/ASEO / 3,600,821.77 1,519,970
Ecologia S.A.
3 URBASUR 3,9797,789.08 1,457,179
4 NITTIDA 3,950,000 1,450,000
5 EHU
6 INTEGRA 3,590,000 1,403,000
Source: Greenpeace Organisation Argentina, ‘Sin centros verdes no hay basura cero’,
Greenpeace.org (2007), p. 4
<http://www.greenpeace.org/argentina/Global/argentina/report/2007/6/sin-centros-verdes-no-hay-
ba.pdf > [accessed 27 July 2012]

31
For the full terms of this decree, see
<http://boletinoficial.buenosaires.gob.ar/areas/leg_tecnica/boletines/20040811.htm> [accessed
10 October 2011]

283
The decree came into full effect in February 2005. At that point, no legislation
pertinent to separation at source in the private sector existed, despite the fact that
this practice is fundamentally necessary for the effective functioning of a centro
verde processing facility.32 Local law 1687/50 de Educación Ambiental
resolution 50/005, effective from 20 February 2005 sought to address this
problem. The resolution, passed by the Secretaria de Producción, Turismo y
Desarrollo Sustenible, declared four- and five-star hotels, all government
buildings in the CABA, the Puerto Madero Corporation complex and private open-
access residential high-rise blocks over 19 storeys high, responsible for separation
at source of domestic waste.

November 2005 saw the introduction of a further law passed at the national level.
Reflecting international trends in waste management, the law number 1.854/05,
Estrategia Nacional para la Gestión de Residuos Sólidos Urbanos (ENGIRSU),
commonly referred to as the Zero Waste law, was aimed at addressing the
problem of the use of landfill and unofficial open-air disposal areas. Introduced
by the Secretaria de Ambiente y Desarrollo Sostenible, the stated objective of
the law was to replace the conventional use of large-scale landfill and open-air
rubbish dumps by means of extensive practice of a combined process of
minimising initial waste production, recovery and recycling.33 The terms of the
law are extremely ambitious, calling for the gradual reduction of waste sent to
landfill. During the period up to 2020, using figures for tons of waste sent to the
CEAMSE facilities 2004 as a base, waste processed was to be reduced by 30
percent in 2010, 50 percent in 2012 and 75 percent in 2017; by 2020 the use of
landfill for waste disposal would be prohibited.34 The law requires public
participation in the process by separation at source and mandatory preferential

32
This did not apply to official government premises in Buenos Aires City as Decree Nº
1.258/002 stipulated that all Government establishments in CABA must separate paper and card
products. Gobierno de Buenos Aires Medio Ambiente, ‘Circuito del Reciclado en la Ciudad
Autónoma de Buenos Aires: Informe 2006’
<http://estatico.buenosaires.gov.ar/areas/med_ambiente/dgpru/archivos/informe_circuito_del_re
ciclado.pdf > [accessed 26 August 2012]
33
Ministerio de Salud y Ambiente Secretaría de Ambiente y Desarrollo Sustentable, ‘Estrategia
Nacional para la gestión integral de residuos sólidos urbanos, ENGIRSU: Resumen Ejecutivo’,
<http://www.ambiente.gov.ar/archivos/web/ENGIRSU/File/Resmen%20Ejecutivo%20de%20la
%20ENGIRSU.pdf>[accessed 20 October 2011]
34
Clarín La Ciudad, ‘Abrirán nuevos centros de reciclado’, ClarínOnline, 16 August 2007
<http://edant.clarin.com/diario/2007/08/16/laciudad/h-04801.htm> [ accessed 12 December
2010]

284
selection of recyclable and reusable products for use in public contracts.
Although not specifically aimed at cartoneros, the law bore clear relevance for the
marginalised population of waste recoverers in that Article 28 Section vii makes
specific reference to the intrinsic role of the sorting centres or centros verdes in the
proposed new waste management system.

In evaluating the correlation between the proposals established by the new laws
and the actual practical experience, it is undeniable that the tangible results were
somewhat disappointing for the majority of the cartonero population. First and
foremost, the content of the relevant article of Law 992 did not appear to have
reached the majority of the cartonero population. Escliar et al. noted that a
disturbingly high percentage of cartoneros indicated that they were either
unaware of the content of Article 4 of Law 992 or even of the law’s existence. 35
Of the workers actually registered on the programme, a significant proportion
reported never having been supplied with the identity cards or personal
protective equipment promised in the legislation.36 The following comment on
Law 992 made by Greenpeace in 2007 is revelatory:

Si bien esta ley apuntaba a responder a la emergencia social y buscar

a formalizar progresivamente al sector cartonero y mejorar sus
condiciones de trabajo, fue mayormente incumplida y la informaldad y
la precariedad prevalecieron hasta ahora.37

Additionally, despite the apparent commitment by the government to the

establishment of centros verdes, results were disappointing. By May 2007, a
single functioning centre had been established, managed by the El Ceibo co-
operative in CLIBA-managed Zone One. This centre was running ineffectively
due to the fact that the material delivered to the centre was inadequate in both
quantity and quality.38 Additionally, it was also providing emergency cover for
AESA-managed Zone Two. Delays in establishing centros verdes can be
attributed to a variety of causes. A key factor was government fear of public
rejection of the location of centros verdes in specific districts. In August 2007,
35
Escliar et al., p. 42.
36
Escliar et al., p. 42.
37
Greenpeace, ‘Sin centros verdes’, p. 3.
38
For an account of the specific complications affecting the establishment of centros verdes in
individual districts see Greenpeace ‘Sin centros verdes’, p. 8.

285
the newspaper Clarín noted government delays in releasing details of proposed
locations for fear of public reaction.39 A high profile case was the resistance of
the vecinos to the establishment of a centro verde in Avenida San Isidro in the
Saavedra district, which saw public demonstrations and road blocks mounted in
protest against the proposed location of the centro verde. 40

Given the above noted public pressure, the centres were necessarily located in
low density neighbourhoods. In practical terms, this assigned the processing
plants to peripheral locations. The effect of this was that access to the centres
was difficult for the working cartoneros. However, in addition to the negative
consequences for individual workers, the centres also suffered as the quality and
variety of material brought to the centres for processing was reduced.
Furthermore, the private companies were not obligated to transport their entire
load to centros verdes, which led to selective low quality deposits being made at
the centros. Moreover, assigning centros verdes to isolated peripheral locations
of the city, in addition to reinforcing the division between the affluent northern
section of Buenos Aires City and its more humble southern section, produced a
marginalising effect on the members of the facility’s workforce, thereby
militating against integration into the mainstream as proposed by the legislation.

A further factor affecting the successful installation of centros verdes was

bureaucratic incompetence, or possibly sabotage, leading to delays in processing
the relevant legal requirements for the establishment of the centre; this was the
case of government-managed Zone Five resulting in significant under-
production of the centre and Zone Six, which saw the El Álamo co-operative

39
Clarín La Ciudad.
40
Elbarriopueyrredon, ‘Escandalosa asamblea por el centro verde de Saavedra’, El
barriopueyrredon, 51, November 2007 <http://www.elbarriopueyrredon.com.ar/notas/ano-
2007/escandalosa-asamblea-por-el-centro-verde-de-saavedra.php> [accessed 3 September 2013];
Nora Sánchez, ‘Fuerte oposición a centros verdes en Chacarita y Villa Pueyrredón’,
ClarínOnline, 15 February 2008<http://edant.clarin.com/diario/2008/02/15/laciudad/h-
04302.htm> [accessed 1 August 2012]; Daniel Artola, ‘¿Centro Verde o basurero gris? Polémica
por la instalación de un depósito de residuos en Saavedra’, El Barrio, 105, December 2007
<http://www.periodicoelbarrio.com.ar/auxdiciembre2007.asp?url=N105nota2.asp&anio=9&nro
=105&mes=DICIEMBRE&fecha=2007> [accessed 20 August 2012];Página/12, ‘Fuera
Cartoneros’, Página/12, 30 October 2007 <http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/ultimas/20-
93795-2007-10-30.html> [accessed 10 August 2012]

286
without premises as late as 2007.41 Additionally, allegations of illegal collusion
between the elites of the municipal government, the cleaning services
contractors and the central office of the waste management service in favour of
the private companies were expressed. A final point, noted by Lucas Schaerer, is
that the Buenos Aires Dirección General de Limpieza was believed to be
diverting waste produced by large generators to private waste companies despite
legal stipulations assigning the right to this material to the centros verdes.42
Unsurprisingly, empirical research specific to the Centro Verde projects
indicated generalised low levels of confidence on the part of members of the
various co-operative recovery teams as to the depth of the government’s
commitment to develop the new waste processing facilities.43

The effectiveness of a recycling programme is closely bound to the willingness

of waste producers to co-operate in the process by separating their waste for
collection. During the course of 2007, the government ran the ‘Separación en
Origen’ publicity campaign, aimed at promoting public involvement in the
recycling process. In addition, the Registro de Vecinos Voluntarios was
introduced in neighbourhoods which fell outside the main collection areas. By
signing on to the register, individuals received information and assistance to
recycle their waste.44 However, response from private individuals to government
initiatives could best be described as lukewarm, a fact which Carré identified as
the result of the inefficacy of the government campaign.45 Whitson further
suggests that instances of the private waste companies openly mixing pre-
separated waste may have dissuaded individuals from continuing to separate
their domestic waste. 46

41
Greenpeace, ‘Sin centros verdes’, p. 8.
42
Lucas Schaerer, ‘Disputa por la basura’, Noticias Urbanas, 2 July 2008
<http://www.noticiasurbanas.com.ar/info_item.shtml?sh_itm=71e5d4a50ac5050eb408f4feaed04
a18 > [accessed 22 August 2012]
43
Carré, ‘Trier et récupérer’, p. 30.
44
Clarín, ‘Un plan para que más vecinos separen la basura’, ClarínOnline, 18 August 2007
<http://edant.clarin.com/diario/2007/08/18/laciudad/h-06501.htm>[accessed 6 February 2012]
45
Carré, ‘Trier et récupérer’, p. 48.
46
Whitson, p. 1424.

287
Further cause for concern was that many large organisations failed to comply
with the regulations governing separation at source.47 In 2008, in the upmarket
Puerto Madero district, reminders issued by the Buenos Aires Ministry of the
Environment and Public Space went unheeded by over half the businesses.48 In
theory, sanctions for non-compliance with the separation at source legislation
include fines of up to 30,000 pesos, suspension of the business for up to a year
or even closure.49 However, FARN reported that sanctions for non-compliance
with legislation were rarely implemented against these large-scale waste
producers.50

From 2008, CABA waste legislation increasingly sought to formalise the

cartoneros’ work. A report by the committee established to advise and support
the implementation of Law 1.854 identified a number of shortcomings in the
performance of the private waste companies.51 Additionally, in the first trimester
of 2008, a Ministerio de Ambiente y Espacio Público (MAyEP) report noted the
inefficiency and high costs of the formal waste companies. The report also
highlighted the fact that by failing to liaise with the informal system the private
companies were violating the tenets of laws 992 and 1.854. In July 2008, CABA
government signed an agreement with cartonero co-operatives registered with
the MTE. The agreement provided cartoneros working in CABA with uniforms,
a monthly subsidy and the right to keep the proceeds from the sale items they
had collected.52 In addition, vehicles were to be provided to the cartonero co-
operatives and pledges were issued that the infrastructure in the plants would be
completed.53 However, it should be noted that by 2010, only three centres had
been established: in Zone One, under the management of the el Ceibo co-
operative, Zone Five managed by the co-operatives Ecológica Reciclando

47
Eduardo Videla, ‘El largo y sinuoso camino hacia la basura cero’, Página/12, 3 June 2008.
48
Pablo Novillo, ‘En Puerto Madero no cumplen la ley que los obliga a separar los residuos’,
ClarínOnline, 17 March 2008 <http://edant.clarin.com/diario/2008/03/17/laciudad/h-
03615.htm> [accessed 25 July 2012]
49
Novillo.
50
FARN.Org.
51
This committee comprised cartoneros working in co-operatives, members of CABA
government, ecological organisations and members of the two business associations la
Asociación de Fabricantes de Celulosa y Papel y la Cámara Argentina de la Industria Plástica,
and monitor presented a report. However, Villanova notes the central role played by the
cartonero co-operatives. Villanova, ‘Los Cartoneros’, p. 75.
52
Paiva ‘Cartoneros, recolección’, p. 155.
53
Villanova, ‘Los Cartoneros’, p. 77.

288
Sueños and Cooperativa de Oeste, and Zone Six jointly managed by El Álamo
and Los Ecoguardianes.54

In 2010, Pliego 6/03 was replaced by legislation which transferred sole

responsibility for collection of recyclables to the cartonero co-operatives and
left private companies in charge of non-recyclable waste.55 Co-operatives
interested in being considered for tenders with CABA government were
requested to make formal applications with the result that 13 new co-operatives
were issued government contracts.56 In the wider GBA, however, municipalities
were not required to address the issue of inclusion of informal recycling activity
into their waste management systems.

José Léon Suárez Relleno III ‘La Quema’.

Alterations to the process of waste disposal initiated by the Proceso as a means
of, among other things, reducing smoke pollution in the city, had resulted in the
introduction of landfill sites in low-lying areas in the peripheral departments of
Buenos Aires City.57 The decision to locate waste facilities outside of Buenos
Aires City is replete with cultural and socio-economic implications of central
power, dominance and peripheral subalternity or, with specific reference to
waste disposal, colonialismo intrametropolitano.58 The irony of the situation is
further highlighted by the following, ‘una particularidad que debe tenerse en
cuenta es que la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires es la mayor urbe
productora de basura de la Argentina, pero no tiene ningún relleno sanitario en
su territorio’.59

The first landfill sites were assigned to Balancari, now José León Suárez and
Villa Domenico, at which point the stated expectation was that the landfill area

54
Atlas Ambiental de Buenos Aires, ‘Circuitos de recuperadores urbanos. Centros verdes de la
ciudad de Buenos Aires’
<http://www.atlasdebuenosaires.gov.ar/aaba/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=40
3&Itemid=73&lang=es> [accessed 7 September 2013]
55
Paiva, ‘Cartoneros, recolección’, p. 155.
56
Paiva, ‘Cartoneros, recolección’, p. 155.
57
Raúl N. Álvarez, ‘Relaciones políticas en el terreno de la basura. El caso de los quemeros y
los emprendimientos sociales en el Relleno Norte III del CEAMSE’ (unpublished master’s thesis,
San Martín University, Argentina, 2010), p. 4.
58
Álvarez, ‘Relaciones políticas’, p. 7.
59
Álvarez, ‘Relaciones políticas’, p. 7.

289
would benefit the community by raising the level of the land and thus reducing
the possibility of flooding.60 In addition, the long-term project for the area was
its eventual conversion into grassed recreational open spaces, thus improving air
quality. Although the initial decision by the Proceso Militar to locate the
landfills in the peripheral conurbano was probably based less on considerations
for the populations of these areas than those of the capital, it is doubtful that the
possible negative ecological side effects of overfill and toxic waste dumping in
landfill projects were envisaged at the time.

In recent years, the negative effects caused by emissions from the various
landfills have become apparent, with instances of breathing difficulties and skin
conditions affecting residents, particularly children, in the areas surrounding the
sites. In 1996, a doctor from the Estación Sanitaria in José León Suárez reported
cases of breathing conditions, allergies and skin conditions in 70 percent of
patients.61 As the negative human and environmental effects caused by the
various landfills became evident, so did public pressure demanding the closure
of sites in each of the communities containing landfills.62 Some limited concern
regarding the damage caused by landfill in León Suárez has been expressed by
the town’s residents.63

Ironically, opposition and protest on the grounds of ecological and health issues
by José León Suárez residents were by far outweighed by demands from the
region’s quemeros for access into the waste dumps for the purpose of seeking

60
Further sites were later added in Ensenada (Punta Lara) and González Catán (La Matanza),
Álvarez, ‘Relaciones políticas’, p. 4.
61
María Guisela Masarik, ‘Malos aires en José León Suárez’, LaNaciónOnline, 3 November
1996 < http://www.lanacion.com.ar/169763-malos-aires-en-jose-leon-suarez> [accessed 9
September 2013]
62
Nora Sánchez, ‘Después de 25 años finalmente cerraron el relleno sanitario de Villa
Domenico: La basura del conurbano sur ya tiene nuevos destinos’, ClarínOnline, 23 May 2003
<http://edant.clarin.com/diario/2003/05/23/s-03901.htm> [accessed 20 July 2010]
63
It is not only middle-class Argentines who express concerns about the toxic effects of the
seepage from the landfill. A young mother, member of the Tren Blanco co-operative, advised
me that her son was suffering extreme difficulties with his breathing and had required
hospitalisation on more than one occasion, a fact which she attributed to the proximity of the
landfill Relleno Norte III. She was delighted to have been able to transfer from José León Suárez
to the co-operative’s San Martín warehouse, where she and her husband were living as worker-
caretakers.

290
recyclables.64 A further point of interest is that testimony provided by quemeros
or cartoneros who visited the Quema revealed that not only used and unwanted
items from private consumers were deposited, but also large quantities of brand
new and/or serviceable items. Companies and suppliers, being unable to exploit
these items for profit, preferred to dispose of than allow them to be sold at a loss.
As such, it could be suggested that the struggle to retain ownership of discarded
goods in the microcosmic setting of the León Suárez landfill provided a
metaphor for the essentially wasteful, erratic and profit-oriented drive of
neoliberal capitalism.

Visits to the Quema, although illegal, had traditionally been restricted to an

insignificant marginal population. However, as poverty and unemployment
increased in the region, so did the recourse to scavenging on the Relleno Norte
III site:

Durante la década de 1990, el fenómeno quemero dejó de ser una

anécdota y pasó a ser un problema importante para el CEAMSE. Ya
no se trataba de una que otra persona cirujeando en el basural
inmenso, sino cientos de pobladores que concurrían diariamente a
rebuscar basura.65

Estimated figures for this period place the number of people seeking recyclables
at an average of 700 per day.66 It is estimated that 20 percent of the inhabitants
of the zone surrounding the Relleno Norte III were actively seeking recyclables
in 2005, whilst 13 percent of homes had at least one family member who
accessed the landfill site in search of material to use themselves or to sell.67 The
increase in numbers of people accessing the landfill led to the introduction of
increased security controls. By the late 1990s, a team of some seventy
unregulated state police officers was assigned to guard the facility. In the
ensuing conflict between guards and the ‘intruders’, reports of extreme and

64
‘Quemero’ is the term applied to individuals who go to gather recyclables at the Relleno III
site referred to as La Quema, despite the fact that no burning of refuse is carried out there.
65
Raúl Néstor Álvarez, La basura es lo más rico que hay (Buenos Aires: Editorial Dunken,
2011), p. 26.
66
Álvarez, La basura es lo más rico, p. 26.
67
Data from a joint research project by members of the Universidad Nacional General
Sarmiento and the Universidad de Buenos Aires coordinated by Francisco Suárez. Cited in
Álvarez, La basura es lo más rico, p. 26.

291
indiscriminate police brutality and mistreatment abounded.68 Tren Blanco co-
operative member, Cristian, reported first-hand experiences of the physical and
mental cruelty to which the quemeros were subjected as a matter of course by
CEAMSE officials as follows:

…aumentó más, más gente pobre, hubo más cartoneros. Más gente
pobre que cuando se iba a la quema la vigilancia que estaba allí en el
CEAMSE jugaba con la gente que iba a buscar comida. Iban la gente
ellos decían entren ahora o salgan ahora y ya. Si te agarran por allí
te pegaron, te maltrataron pero vos ibas a buscar algo de comer es
como si ellos jugaban con la gente en el gobierno pasaba eso. En el
gobierno anterior…69

A further source of conflict was generated by accusations of profiteering and

corruption on the part of the landfill police, who, there is evidence to suggest,
were accessing items from the landfill which, according to a ciruja active at the
Relleno Norte III, they would then sell on to the impoverished local population:

los mismos policías, que estaban haciendo adicionales, dejaban que la

gente entre, recoja todo lo que pudiera y una vez que ellos iban
saliendo, los apretaban, les sacaban todo, cargaban su camioneta,
iban y los vendían en los mismos barrios… y encima los golpeaban.70

Despite the very real physical danger an illegal visit to the landfill site implied,
the absence of alternative means of survival continued to drive the region’s
numerous poor to return to the facility. On the night of 14 March 2004, Diego
Duarte and his twin brother Federico managed to bypass the security and gain
access to the Relleno Norte III. According to Federico’s account, on seeing the
security officers, both boys hid. Federico concealed himself in trees and Diego
close to a pile of rubbish. When, minutes later, Federico looked out of his hiding
place, he saw the area where his brother had concealed himself had been
covered with a consignment of waste. In an official witness statement Federico
declared that in response to his plea for help the machine operator who, after
commenting, ‘tapamos a un ciruja’, to his co-worker, advised him that they
could do nothing and to speak to the supervisor or the police, who in turn

68
Álvarez, La basura es lo más rico, pp. 26-7.
69
Cristian Valenzuela, Interview, San Martín, 12 July 2007.
70
Álvarez , La basura es lo más rico, p. 31.

292
ignored his report. 71 At a later stage Diego’s disappearance was reported to the
landfill police by his sister. However, in a facility in which 30,000 tons of waste
of various types are deposited in each 24-hour period, the search conducted for
the missing boy’s body proved fruitless.72

Clearly, it will never be known with complete certainty what happened to cause
Diego Duarte’s disappearance. However, the strength of popular protest to the
news of the boy’s almost certain death on the landfill, and perceived official,
indifferent, tardy response, engendered a turning point in government policy.
Mobilisations of community asambleas, which cut off the Camino de Buen Aire
motorway and entry to the landfill, and arson attacks on the facility itself, led the
CEAMSE president, Carlos Hurst, to take steps to evitar la intrusión y
descomprimir el conflicto social.73

The protesters’ modest demands were for freedom to enter the landfill and
remove useful items, and job creation by the provision of basic work premises
on the landfill ground. Carlos Hurst, CEAMSE director, responded to these
demands by introducing two initiatives. These were permission for the local
ciruja population to enter and remove items from the landfill site for a specified,
monitored, daily one-hour period and the establishment of onsite recycling
facilities. These recycling facilities, known as plantas sociales, devised in
negotiation between Hurst and local ciruja leaders, were aimed at affording the
opportunity for a more structured and/or formalised working pattern and
environment for members of the local ciruja population.

In fact, in the seven years between 2004 and 2010, nine plants were opened on
the landfill site premises. The Resiparque, as it is known, has been officially
recognised as Argentina’s most important recycling complex: el complejo de
reciclado más importante de la Argentina. The plants, which have a guaranteed
10-year lifespan, operate on a variety of hierarchical and non-hierarchical

71
Declaración de Federico Esteban Duarte, del 3 de Mayo de 2004, Álvarez, La basura es lo
más rico que hay, p. 32.
72
Maricel Seeger, ‘Un chico desapareció en el Ceamse y ahora lo buscan entre la basura’,
Página12, 18 March 2004 < http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/sociedad/3-32854-2004-03-
18.html>[accessed 28 June 2013]
73
Carlos Hurst, during negotiations with the Cinco de Mayo recycling co-operative in 2005.

293
systems of management and salary distribution.74 Facilities, such as equipment
and buildings available, vary from plant to plant. In all cases but one, the plants
process domestic waste. However, as a means of ensuring the facilities make a
level of profit, each plant is provided with several loads of industrial waste,
basura rica, which has a greater quantity of items with use value, or recycling
capacity, than the usual domestic waste. As an added incentive, the workers are
also allowed to take a selection of the food stuffs from industrial depositors. The
plants are provided with some equipment, electricity and free removal of
unserviceable products.

Operating, at least theoretically, as profit-making ventures, the plants,

established as asociaciones civiles, are not eligible to receive the state subsidies
which are available to co-operative organisations. However, in 2009, one of the
plants, Ocho de Mayo, was able to establish an annexed co-operative, Eco Mayo,
enabling it to access subsidies denied to the other plants. On 17 and 18
December 2009, the plant workers whose demand was for inclusion in the
Argentina Trabaja co-operative programme erected roadblocks.75 Subsequent to
this action and with the support of Peronist politician Jorge Mancini, from May
2010, all plants were progressively registered on to the Argentina Trabaja
programme.76 In financial terms, figures for 2010 indicated workers in the
plants to be in receipt of monthly earnings and benefits in line with the
minimum wage, whilst others were in receipt of considerably more.

Furthermore, the central role of the plants in the social sphere is recognised by
all plants. A clear example of this is the La Piletas plant’s commitment,
identified as integral to the duties and role of the plant, to the rehabilitation of
youngsters involved in drugs and crime.77

74
Carlos A. Ruggerio, ‘Cluster de plantas sociales de recuperación de residuos: ¿Una
oportunidad para propender a una gestión integral de residuos sólidos urbanos? El Área
Metropolitana de Buenos Aires como caso de estudio’, in Recicloscopio II: Miradas sobre
recuperadores, políticas públicas y subjetividades en América Latina, ed. by Francisco Suárez
and Pablo J. Schamber (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Ciccus; Remedios de Escalada, Partido de
Lanús, Prov. de Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de Lanús; Los Polvorines, Prov. de Buenos
Aires: Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento, 2011), pp. 155-183.
75
For ‘Argentina Trabaja’ co-operatives, see Chapter Five.
76
Álvarez, ‘Relaciones políticas’, p. 72.
77
Álvarez, ‘Relaciones políticas’, p. 52.

294
Nevertheless, cirujas and cartoneros making daily visits to the site claim to have
experienced covert practices which undermined their ability to work effectively.
For example, deposits were made in the area of the waste facility furthest away
from their point of entry, thus hindering their ability to access and remove items
in the time allowed. Selective use of waste deposit schedules enabled specific
consignments to be carried out prior to the appointed hour of entry. It could be
speculated that this tactic is used to prevent access to the aforementioned new
‘unsellable’ goods, which could be used to generate profit on the ‘black’ market.
To these less obvious obstructive measures can be added sporadic episodes of
police violence towards the cirujas, and selective preferential treatment of
individual cirujas considered able to exert a level of coercive influence over the
others. In addition to this, a hierarchy of cirujas has been created by the
introduction of the plantas sociales as the daily visitors to the facility enjoy
notably inferior working and economic conditions than their semi-formalised
counterparts, the majority of whom, it must be noted are themselves assigned
relatively marginal formal status.

Undoubtedly, in addition to their stipulated aim of calming community protest,

the plants have produced certain socio-economic benefits for a number of
individuals in the ciruja-cartonero community. However, given the high profile
of the complex as Argentina’s key recycling site, it is abundantly clear, even in
the absence of official data, that the quantity of waste provided to the plants,
combined with the limited handling capacity of the individual units, is
inadequate to produce any significant ecological impact. According to Carlos A.
Ruggerio, from 2007-2008, when six of the ten plants were operational, they
were processing a mere 3.2 percent of the total waste deposited.78 Individualised
records are not kept of the plants as such, Álvarez, using estimated data,
suggests that in 2010 only 0.5 percent of the total waste arriving at the landfill
was processed in the plants.79

78
Ruggerio, p. 173.
79
Álvarez, ‘La basura es lo más rico’, p. 99.

295
A recurrent theme in this thesis has been the official response to popular protest,
which has taken the form of isolation of more militant ‘extreme’ groups by co-
optation of the less organised or more ‘moderate’ groups, using the introduction
of ‘inclusionary’ state policy and certain limited concessions. Álvarez notes a
similar response applied to the conflictual situation at the Relleno Norte III site.
As such, despite clear improvements in co-operation between officials and the
ciruja population, Raúl Néstor Álvarez describes an underlying system of co-
optation and coercion in place on the José León Suárez Relleno Norte III site in
the following terms:

Que hablemos de consenso no quiere decir que hayamos llegado al

reino de la libertad…el escenario del consenso se configura como una
situación de fuerzas, en la que subyace la violencia latente. La policía
continúa vigilando el basural y los quemeros son controlados en todo
momento, mientras permanecen dentro del CEAMSE. El dispositivo
policial en torno al relleno y a las plantas de separación, continúa
insumiendo unos cincuenta o setenta efectivos policiales, con sus
respectivas armas, móviles y medios de comunicación. El trato del
CEAMSE con los quemeros, los grupos territoriales y las plantas
sociales en conformación, durante estos años trató de minar el poder
de lucha de estos actores, mediante todos los recursos a su alcance. La
manipulación política y la discrecionalidad, orientadas a cooptar a los
segmentos más activos de los recuperadores, han sido una constante
de parte de la empresa.80

To conclude, ostensibly positive political response to Argentina’s cartonero

phenomenon, as an integral part of a wider response to infrastructural and
ecological antecedents, can be viewed as somewhat arbitrary or, at times,
contradictory. This is the case both in the provincial and local context of José
CEAMSE’s Relleno Norte site in León Suárez. Official government legislative
policy pertaining specifically to cartoneros was apparently positive in that it
recognised the value of their contribution to a national project, a central aim of
which is to raise the status of their work by normalisation, integration and
formalisation. However, in real terms, the project has been demonstrated to have
fallen short of its stated aims.

80
Álvarez, ‘La basura es lo más rico’, p. 36.

296
Cartoneros and cartonero co-operatives enrolled on the official government
register represent only a small proportion of the total cartoneros active on the
streets and the much vaunted centros verdes are functioning below capacity.81
The term recuperadores urbanos is not in common usage and waste workers
continue to be referred to in general parlance as cartoneros, suggesting that
popular perception of their work continues to be that of informality and
marginality.

The disappointing results of recent legislation have been attributed to both

political ineptitude and the subordination of the socio-economic subaltern
cartoneros’ interests in favour of those of socio-economic and business elites.
As such, general scepticism and mistrust towards government commitment to
GBA cartonero projects predominates amongst cartoneros and supporting
NGOs.82 The study of the Relleno Norte at José León Suárez reveals equally
disappointing results for the area’s cartoneros working either on site or as daily
visitors as neither group is able to work to maximum potential. Subordination of
cartoneros’ interests to those of business elites has again been identified as a
possible cause. However, real questions arise as to whether the official stance
towards the projects is more reflective of a cynical exercise in coercion and co-
optation than a serious commitment to developing an effective, inclusionary,
and socio-economically and environmentally valuable system on the site.

Pepe Córdoba, a member of the Nuevo Rumbo recycling co-operative, possibly

reflects the feelings of a majority the cartonero population in commenting,
‘Nosotros llegamos a meter las manos en la basura por los políticos pero ellos
muchas manos no nos dieron, más bien nos las pusieron encima’.83

It is probable that the inadequate government response to the cartoneros’

situation described in this chapter led dissatisfied cartoneros to seek effective
self-help alternatives both for themselves as individuals and also for the broader

81
Despite the vital significance of these centres to the Zero Waste legislation, it must be
recognised that, even if more prolific and located and operating to their optimum potential, these
centres would address the needs of a very limited section of the cartonero population.
82
Carré, ‘Trier et récupérer’, p. 30.
83
Muleiro.

297
cartonero community. Evidence from this research project suggests that this was
certainly the case for the Tren Blanco co-operative cartoneros, whose shared
aim was to create a project by cartoneros for cartoneros which could satisfy the
needs of both the individual members and those of the broader local cartonero
communities.

298
Chapter Eight

The research site: San Martín municipality, José León Suárez

town, Villa Independencia and Tren Blanco co-operative.

The Tren Blanco co-operative operated on a split site. The headquarters, a

depository and basic processing area for cardboard and plastics, was located in Villa
Independencia, José León Suárez. A warehouse, galpón, which was in the process
of being converted into a mechanised processing plant, was located in San Martín
town, a short distance from the railway station and next to the railway line,
affording a view of the platforms from which hundreds of local cartoneros boarded
and descended from the Tren Blanco.

The focus of this chapter is to provide an introduction to the historic and

geographical aspects of General San Martín Province, José León Suárez town and
Villa Independencia as the principal settings of the Tren Blanco co-operative’s
activity. The chapter traces the decay of San Martín Province and José León Suarez
town from a thriving centre of small and medium industry, established under Perón
with a strong middle- and working-class presence, to its early twenty-first-century
status as one of the poorest provinces of GBA. After a brief comment on José León
Suárez town, the chapter then turns to a brief consideration of the origins and
development of the informal land settlements, villas and asentamientos, in which
the majority of the area’s cartonero population live and work. The final section
provides some insight into the specific everyday experience of the inhabitants of
Villa Independencia, and traces the origins and virtual demise of the Tren Blanco
cartonero co-operative.

In geographical terms, the municipalities of GBA surrounding Buenos Aires City

can be divided into belts (coronas or cordones). The municipalities immediately
surrounding the capital, that is, Avellaneda, Lanús, Lomas de Zamora, Morón, Tres
de Febrero, San Martín, Vicente López and San Isidro, constitute the primera
corona or cordón industrial. Municipalities located at distances of between 40 and

299
50 kilometres from Buenos Aires city are referred to as the second corona
industrial and those at a greater distance are the third corona industrial.
Figure 8. 1: Location of San Martín municipality

San
Martín
Munic
ipality

Source: Fotosimagines.org. <http://www.fotosimagenes.org/imagenes/provincia-6.jpg> [accessed 9

September 2013]1

General San Martín Municipality.

General San Martín, formerly San Martín, county seat and county of GBA, is
located immediately northwest of the city of Buenos Aires, in Buenos Aires
province. Its current surface area of some 56 square kilometres forms part of the
interior or primera corona of the industrial belt surrounding Buenos Aires city. 2
The present-day General San Martín municipality comprises 27 towns, including
San Martín itself and José León Suárez.

The county seat and county began as an early rural settlement centred on the 18th-
century Chapel of Santos Lugares. In 1856, the settlement was formally declared a
town and eight years later the county of San Martín (named after the Argentine
liberator) was created. Until the end of the nineteenth century, the area was

1
Fotosimagines.org. <http://www.fotosimagenes.org/imagenes/provincia-6.jpg> [accessed 9
September 2013]. For an overview of San Martín Province, visit San Martín official webpage,
Sanmartín.gov.ar., ‘Datos Geográficos <http://www.sanmartin.gov.ar/LaCiudad/Paginas/datos-
geograficos.aspx> [accessed 9 September 2013]
2
Sanmartín.gov.ar., ‘Datos’.

300
predominantly dedicated to various forms of agricultural production, notably
livestock.3 The turn of the twentieth century saw San Martín’s livestock farming
decline in favour of crop cultivation and small-scale manufacturing.4 In 1911,
General San Martín town received official city status.5 However, early twentieth-
century San Martín is described as:

Una ciudad dormitorio de los que trabajaban en Buenos Aires y vivienda

de los que lo hacían en la localidad…sede de pequeñas y medianas
empresas, fundamentalmente de capital nacional que elaboraban
alimentos, el comercio minorista, predios rurales en extinción y talleres
ferroviarios.6

In the period of the World War II and consequent Argentine import substitution
policies, San Martín grew into a major industrial centre, attracting companies such
as General Motors, which established its first production plant there in 1939.7 The
area was not uniquely working class; in the early part of the twentieth century, the
municipality was identified as an area of residential town houses providing
accommodation for Argentina’s new industrial bourgeoisie. The promotion of ISI
initiated in the 1930s further encouraged industrial development of the region,
which, benefiting from its proximity and easy communications with Buenos Aires
City, went on to develop a thriving industrial community employing a qualified
resident workforce. By the 1940s, San Martín was a region in full development in
which indigenous PYMES, largely located in the region’s industrial belt or parque
industrial, predominated, in particular in the areas of textiles, metal work, and meat
and food processing.

However, from the mid-1970s, economic policy introduced by the Proceso military
government and later consolidated by 1990s neoliberal structural policy under
Carlos Menem, had the effect that the country’s small and medium business

3
Gabriel Horacio Álvarez, ‘Gran Buenos Aires, conurbano y partido de San Martín: Exclusión
social y segregación urbana’, Scripta Nova, 194: 52 (2005), p. 8
<http://www.ub.edu/geocrit/sn/sn-194-52.htm> [accessed 28 September 2013]
4
Álvarez, ‘Gran Buenos Aires’.
5
Sanmartin.gov.ar., ‘Historia’<http://www.sanmartin.gov.ar/LaCiudad/Paginas/historia.aspx>
[accessed 17 September 2013]
6
Álvarez, ‘Gran Buenos Aires’, p. 7.
7
Emerging Markets Information Service, ‘General Motors Argentina SRL.’
<http://www.securities.com/Public/companyprofile/AR/General_Motors_de_Argentina_SRL_en
_1104517.html> [accessed 9 September 2013]

301
productive capacity was progressively stifled and effectively eradicated by the end
of the twentieth century. San Martín was just one of the casualties, providing a
microcosmic metaphor for the country’s twentieth-century socio-economic historic
trajectory. The closure of the region’s PYMES forced what had once been a strong
upwardly-mobile skilled workforce into long-term unemployment. The visitor to
the municipality would notice clear evidence in certain parts of the town of the
industrial decay, as witnessed by the fading façades of closed businesses and
shuttered warehouses.8 San Martín has a high instance of recovered workplaces
representing a range of different industries, particularly in the parque industrial
area.9

Emblematic examples of fábricas recuperadas include the Forja San Martín,

subject of the documentary film La Toma and the Gatic Sporting and Footwear
factory, now operating as CUC. The latter, established in the late 1950s by the son
of Italian immigrants as a small business, supplied sporting goods for Adidas and
the Argentine national football squad.10

By the early years of the twenty-first century, the province’s economic standing had
reversed to such an extent that General San Martín was officially identified as one
of the poorest communities of GBA. In fact, INDEC statistics for 2001 indicated
that of a population of approximately 470,000, of which some 67 percent were of
economically active status, levels of unemployment had reached almost 20 percent.
The majority of the unemployed were living in marginalised settlements on the
municipality’s outskirts.11 Recalling the former industrial workers of the previous
century, Gorbán identifies the irony of the circumstances facing many family

8
The former vibrant industrial setting was described to me by the workers of the CUC, the
CUC Jardín Infantil and the 19 de diciembre recovered workplace co-operatives, in
reminiscences of times when stable working schedules were characterised by inter-worker end-
of-week meat roasts and social activities held amongst large groups of industrial workers in a
community spirit.
9
Débora Gorbán, ‘Trabajo y cotidianeidad. El barrio como espacio de trabajo de los cartoneros
del Tren Blanco’, Trabajo y Sociedad, 8 (2006), p. 3.
10
Carina Balladares, ‘Historia de CUC’, LaBase.org. <http://cuc.labase.org/?page_id=2>
[accessed 23 June 2013]
11
Gorbán, ‘Trabajo y cotidianeidad’, p. 3.

302
members of San Martín’s former upwardly mobile industrial workforce as follows:

Paradójicamente, hoy los nietos de aquellos trabajadores llegan a

instalarse en las villas miserias y asentamientos del conurbano,
expulsados por el desempleo y la pobreza. Es en ese mismo lugar donde
encontramos barrios enteros que viven de la venta de residuos sólidos que
sus habitantes recolectan todas las noches en la capital.12

CUC, San Martín.

Reflecting the success of the CUC

factory, the current façade has been
renovated since my visit, at which time,
as the workforce struggled to take the
recovery of their workplace forward, it
was crumbling, discoloured, and in a
very bad state of repair.

José León Suárez town is located in the far north of San Martín municipality.
Industrial prosperity, which continued into the 1960s, enabled José León Suárez
town to establish a significant upwardly mobile community, and as such the town
retains middle-class residential locations in the central area.

However, reflecting the trend of degeneration of the municipality, the contemporary

image of José León Suárez is of an extensive population affected by poverty and
working in informal employment, which Gorbán describes in the following terms:

José León Suárez es una localidad de origen industrial que vivió y

benefició del impulso de desarrollo de los años 60, …un lugar de
residencia de una pujante clase media…Hoy esta localidad nos muestra
una de las caras de lo que dejaron tras de sí mas de 20 años de
neoliberalismo. La pobreza, el desempleo, fábricas cerradas, grandes
edificios abandonados, son parte de la fisonomía de este rincón de la
provincia que aparece como espejo de tantos otros.13

12
Gorbán, ‘Trabajo y cotidianeidad’, pp. 4-5.
13
Gorbán, ‘Trabajo y cotidianeidad’, p. 5.

303
The town is arguably remembered first and foremost for the murder of Peronist
militants in 1956 by members of the provincial police under Argentina’s
Revolución Libertadora military government. The event which took place on one of
the town’s waste dumps is documented by journalist Rodolfo Walsh in his work
Operación Masacre.14 The memory of the deaths of the Peronist martyrs remains
firm in the minds of the Argentine people and, as such, José León Suárez rubbish
dump constitutes a nationally recognised symbol of popular political resistance. 15
The death of fifteen-year-old Diego Duarte on a José León Suárez’ waste dump in
2004, noted in the previous chapter, echoed the theme of violence, in this case in
economic form, and untimely death related to the town’s waste facilities leading
Álvarez to draw the following poignant analogy ‘José León Suárez es un territorio
signado por la basurización. Tratar a las personas como cosas desechables...’.16

Spreading south of the José León Suárez CEAMSE Relleno Norte III
compound, between the Avenida Márquez and the Buen Aire motorway, is an
area known as Reconquista. In the past, the area served as illegal dumping
ground for waste and, as such, tends to be low-lying and uneven. In this area are
a chain of peripheral settlements or villas, located either next to one another or
separated by channels of water from the Reconquista River basin.17 Amongst
these are the following settlements: Hidalgo, Curita, La Carcova, Maipú,
Liberador and Independencia, the site of the Tren Blanco co-operative’s
headquarters.

The subject of informal land settlement, notably villas de emergencia, has been
mentioned during the course of this thesis. A case in point is Chapter Three,
which contains a reference to the urban planning of the Proceso government’s

14
Rodolfo Walsh, Operación Masacre (1957) Republished in digital form 8 June 2004
<http://www.rodolfowalsh.org/spip.php?article22> [accessed 25 April 2011]
15
Raúl N. Álvarez, ‘Los basurales de José León Suárez. De los fusilamientos a la democracia
bárbara: La cuestión de la democracia en el crecimiento de las plantas sociales de separación de
basura del Relleno Norte III del CEAMSE’, in Problemas Sociales de Latinoamérica: Desafíos
al Campo Jurídico, 12 Congreso Nacional y 2 Latinoamericano de Sociología Jurídica. (Santa
Rosa: Universidad Nacional de La Pampa, 3-5 November 2011)
<www.poderyderecho.blogspot.co.uk/20110110los-basurales-de-josé-leon-suarez.html>
[accessed 9 September 2013]
16
Álvarez, ‘Los basurales’.
17
Débora Gorbán, ‘Algunas consideraciones sobre la desigualdad social y la simbolización del
espacio’, Revista Ciencias Sociales, 122 (2008), 49-58 (p. 51).

304
socio-economic policy during which the villas miseria were specific targets for
eradication. However, before continuing, it would be useful to present a general
comment on aspects of informal land settlement in GBA in order to
contextualise the experience of the Tren Blanco co-operative members as
inhabitants of an informal settlement which is officially categorised as an
asentamiento.

The villas and asentamientos of GBA.

The historic trajectory and contemporary condition of the phenomenon of the
villa is aptly captured by Javier Auyero as, ‘One can hardly think of an urban
form that was (and still is) the repository of so many (mis)representations, of so
many hopes in the past, and so many fears in the present’.18

Figure. 8. 2: Villas and asentamientos in GBA (2005)

Source: Infohabitat. UNGS cited in María Cristina Cravino, ‘La metamorfosis de la ciudad
informal en el Área Metropolitana de Buenos Aires’, Revista Lider, 15:11 (2009), 31-55 (p. 34).

It is impossible to calculate the exact number of informal settlements or their

populations which exist in GBA.19 Nevertheless, from the 1990s, by using data
for multiple sources, the NGO ‘Un Techo para mi País’ identified a significant
rise in the number of informal dwellings in GBA. See Figure 8. 3. At the turn of
the twenty-first century, informal land settlements in GBA totalled 864. By
2011, these settlements, referred to as villas and asentamientos, were estimated

18
Auyero, ‘The Hyper-Shantytown’, p. 102.
19
María Cristina Cravino, Juan Pablo Del Río and Juan Ignacio Duarte, ‘Magnitud y
crecimiento de las villas y asentamientos en el Area Metropolitana de Buenos Aires en los
últimos 25 años’, Fadu. UBA (2006), p. 1
<http://www.fadu.uba.ar/mail/difusion_extension/090206_pon.pdf> [accessed 29 September
2013]

305
to house 508,144 families.20 The villa and asentamiento are both informal
settlements; however, the differing socio-historic origins of their establishment
have resulted in certain differences, in particular to socio-spatial aspects of the
settlements. Nevertheless, before proceeding, it should be noted that, in the
contemporary context, distinction between the two forms may be somewhat
blurred, not least in the minds of the inhabitants. According to the NGO ‘Un
Techo Para Mi País’ report, Independencia settlement, location of the Tren
Blanco co-operative, is classed as an asentamiento, and the nearby La Carcova
settlement is classed as a villa. Although Independencia may benefit from
certain aspects of basic urban design that are absent in neighbouring La
Carcova, in real terms, the similarities between the two types of settlement
outweigh the differences.21 It is unsurprising, therefore, that the residents of
Independencia make no distinction between the two types of settlement,
referring to their settlement as a villa, Villa Independencia, and themselves as
vecinos or gente de la villa.

Figure 8. 3: Percentage growth of villas and asentamientos 1980-2011

11.9% 12.9% 19.6% 55.6%

Up to 1980 1981-1990 1991-2000 2001-2011

Source: Falcón and Raffo, p. 29.

The first informal settlements appeared as of the 1930s and 1940s, that is, during
the period in which Argentina accelerated its industrialisation. Rural migrants
flooded to the industrial centres in search of work, many of whom set up clusters
of makeshift shelters on unoccupied government land located in close proximity
to transportation networks and workplaces.22 These areas were termed villas de
emergencia on the, largely mistaken, basis that this precarious accommodation
was a temporary, stop-gap, ‘emergency’ dwelling until something more suitable

20
For a list of these settlements by municipality, name and designation villa/asentamiento, see
Relevamiento de villas y asentamientos en el Gran Buenos Aires, ed. by Mercedes Falcón and
María Laura Raffo (Buenos Aires: Un Techo Para Mi País, 2011), pp. 75-97.
21
From my personal observations, the facilities available in the interior of the homes, and the
general appearance of the side streets and houses, are largely indistinguishable in each of these
particular settlements: unpaved irregular dirt roads, houses of various materials in disparate
stages of construction, lack of basic infrastructure such as drains and sewerage systems, trolleys
and carts of occupants working in cartoneo in most yards.
22
María Cristina Cravino,’ Las transformaciones en la identidad villera…la conflictiva
construcción de sentidos’, Cuadernos de Antropología Social,15 (2002), 29-47 (p. 33).

306
became available to the residents. According to rural tradition, landowners
allowed their workers to set up homes on their land free of charge. Recently
arrived rural migrants to the city appear to have set up living quarters on much
the same basis. The residents of the villas indicated no interest in actually
establishing property rights to their holdings, their focus being the right to
remain and avoid eviction. The unplanned unregulated establishment of the
villas de emergencia resulted their growth in a random manner as, ‘tramas
urbanas muy irregulares …organizados a partir de intricados pasillos, donde
por lo general no pueden pasar vehículos’.23 Buildings in the villas are
generally unsafe.24 Villas are located both in Buenos Aires City and GBA, most
specifically in the municipalities of the first corona.

Under the Proceso, 28,000 families were expelled from the city.25 The urban
planning policy of the military Proceso resulted in the razing of villas miseria,
the inhabitants of which migrated to the outer municipalities of the city’s
surrounding belts or coronas, where they relocated in asentamientos. In
addition, the Proceso dismantled the country’s industrial infrastructure with the
result that economic instability grew, the real wages of the lower classes
declined, unemployment levels increased, and rents rose.26 Concurrent with the
general economic deterioration, all of which impacted on access to housing for
lower income sectors, was the introduction of Ley 8.912 in 1977. The terms of
this law prohibited the sale of land which did not have construction
infrastructure in place, preventing the sale of loteos populares, a means by
which lower-income sectors were able to access accommodation.27

The purchase of loteos populares was introduced during the first Peronist
governments, from the late 1940s to the1950s, to respond to the lack of housing
to accommodate the massive population influx into GBA.28 The loteo popular
was a portion of land, sold without any type of infrastructure or services, bought

23
Cravino, Del Río and Duarte, p. 2.
24
Cravino, Del Río and Duarte, p. 2.
25
Álvarez, ‘Gran Buenos Aires’, p. 6.
26
See Chapter Three. Also see María Cristina Cravino, ‘La metamorfosis de la ciudad informal
en el Área Metropolitana de Buenos Aires’, Revista Líder, 15: 11 (2009), 31-55 (p. 35).
27
Falcón and Raffo, p. 28.
28
Denis Merklen, ‘Un pobre es un pobre. La sociabilidad en el barrio: Entre las condiciones y
las prácticas’, Revista Sociedad, 11 (1997), 21-64.

307
through a company which managed the legal procedures and the financing for
clients to whom they sold the lots using multiple instalment payment plans.
Under this system, the buyer was able to move on to the land and begin
construction according to their budget.29 It is believed that numerous individuals
no longer able to access a loteo popular went to live in asentamientos.30 See
Figure 8. 4.

Figure 8. 4: Increase in villas and asentamientos in GBA.

Proceso
Period
1976-1983

Source: Falcón and Raffo. p. 27.

In contrast to the villas’ residents’ sojourning mentality, the inhabitants of the

asentamiento occupied the area as either a medium- or long-term housing
solution. Asentamientos were and are located predominantly in the
municipalities of GBA. Initially, these settlements developed as the result of the
gradual effect of various families setting up living quarters alongside one
another. However, from the 1980s, these occupations were more organised,
often promoted by external organisational bodies, such as the Catholic
organizaciones de base and certain political parties.31 Occupations were

29
Gabriel Lanfranchi and Raúl Zavalia Lagos, ‘Public Goods from Private Infrastructure:
Projects in Poor Neighborhoods of the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Region’, in Growing
Inclusive Markets Forum, International Forum on Sustainable Private Sector Development
(Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada: Dalhousie University, 20-21 June 2008)
<http://www.growinginclusivemarkets.org/media/publications/public_goods_from_private_infra
structure_projects_in_poor_neighbourhoods_of_the_buenos_aires_metropolitan_region_present
ation.pdf> [accessed 3 October 2013]
30
Falcón and Raffo, pp. 28-9.
31
The term organizaciones de base refers to voluntary grassroots organisations. These
organisations initiate projects in vulnerable communities. The groups are often, but not uniquely,
associated with the local church and their projects are non-profit making, socially-oriented
ventures.

308
concentrated in peripheral areas on land which would have been considered
generally unfit for construction, such as flood plains, rubbish dumps, non-arable
scrubland, near polluting industrial sites, and in the vicinity of high-voltage
towers.32 In short, they were set up in areas where their presence would be less
likely to generate significant interest in evicting them from the land.33 The
planned nature of these occupations was reflected in the physical layout of the
areas, which mirrored conventionally established housing estates. Lots were
divided into regular forms of a standard property size (300m2), and laid out in
blocks intersected by streets, with areas set aside for future recreational and
administrative constructions.34

Immediately after settling on the land, asentados sought to formalise their

situation by petitioning to purchase the land on which they had settled. Despite
the fact that such requests received a protracted official response and proved
largely unsuccessful, the asentados’ aspirations for land ownership have been
interpreted as reflecting a desire to distance themselves from the villero identity
and to establish their identity as vecinos of the community, ‘Un vecino más, que
paga impuestos, integrada a la vida social de una ciudad y cuyo barrio ya no es
más un escalón hacia un anhelado ascenso social sino el hábitat posible a
partir de su inserción productiva ciudadana’.35

However, demands surrounding land tenure and infrastructure issues received a

protracted official response and resulted in little tangible improvement.
Contemporary inhabitants of informal settlements continue to suffer tenancy
instability.36 Data compiled on a national basis in 2010 reveals extreme levels of
irregular and informal occupancy compared to mainstream tenancies, ‘más de la
mitad de los hogares que habitan villas o asentamientos precarios reconoce
abiertamente la tenencia irregular o informal frente a sólo el 3,4% en los

32
Cravino, ‘La metamorfosis’, p. 35.
33
Falcón and Raffo, pp. 35-6.
34
Falcón and Raffo, p. 38.
35
María Cristina Cravino, ‘La propiedad de la tierra como un proceso. Estudio comparativo de
casos en ocupaciones de tierras en el Área Metropolitana de Buenos Aires’, Land Tenure Issues
in Latin America, SLAS (Birmingham,UK: University of Birmingham, 6-8 April 2001)
<http://www.iade.org.ar/uploads/c87bbfe5-d937-81c6.pdf> [accessed 28 September 2013]
36
For an in-depth consideration of the alterations in organisation in informal settlements in GBA
and Buenos Aires city, see Cravino, ‘La propiedad de la tierra’; Cravino, ‘La metamorfosis’.

309
barrios dentro de la traza urbana formal de nivel socioeconómico medio’.37

Construction materials used in the villa and asentamiento vary from home to
home and, therefore, individual structures range from apparently sturdy brick-
built houses to very precarious, less fit-for-purpose constructions erected for
convenience from available material such as metal sheeting and boards.
According to criteria based on the composition of a structure’s walls, established
by the Encuesta de la Deuda Social Argentina (EDSA), over 50 percent of
homes in villas and asentamientos nationally are structurally inadequate.38 In
addition, populations of villas and asentamientos do not have access to the
goods and services available as standard to other citizens. In terms of the
individual home, the domestic services of gas, electricity, running water and
sewerage connections are lacking. In the informal settlements of GBA, only
32.4 percent of homes have officially recognised access to drinking water from
the national network, a small percentage rely on illegal tapping of water, while
others access water from wells in the district.39 Only 24.7 percent of homes have
a satisfactory electricity supply, 2.4 percent have no electricity.40 Some 42.5
percent of the inhabitants of informal settlements use the enganche system of
accessing power, that is, they channel electricity from official providers by a
clandestine connection, a practice which leads to a high instance of house
fires.41 Some 83.4 percent of homes are not connected to the national gas
supply.42 This being the case, there is some use of bottled gas for cooking.
However, open wood-burning stoves are also used.43

Goods and services accessible in GBA informal settlements as whole are

deficient. This is notably the case for community infrastructure such as

37
Dan Adaszko, ‘Las condiciones habitacionales y de acceso a bienes y servicios
urbanos en la Argentina 2010. Urbanización y desigualdad estructural’, in Barómetro de la Deuda
Social Argentina. Serie del Bicentenario (2010-2016)/ Año 1, Estado de situación del desarrollo
humano y social. Barreras estructurales y dualidades de la sociedad argentina en el primer año
del Bicentenario, ed. by Agustín Salvia (Buenos Aires: UCA, 2011), pp. 37-88 (p. 53).
38
Adaszko, p. 54.
39
Falcón and Raffo, p. 46.
40
Adaszko, p. 62.
41
Falcón and Raffo, p. 45.
42
Falcón and Raffo, p. 49.
43
This was the case in the homes of the Tren Blanco members.

310
sewerage and drainage systems, vital in reducing disease, street lighting, road
paving and surfacing and domestic waste collection. In 85.2 percent of cases,
residents of villas and asentamientos in GBA have no sewerage system and 54
percent rely uniquely on the less hygienic pit latrine and septic tank systems,
79.9 percent have inadequate or no flood drains, 79.4 of the surface areas have
no street lighting and in 18.4 percent of cases there is no waste collection.
Where waste collection does take place, it is irregular, and in 42.7 percent of
cases, it is not a door-to-door service.44

Further indicators of basic human rights identified by the EDSA-Bicentenario

(2010-2016) include access to schools and health centres.45 In the case of GBA
villas and asentamientos, using the criteria of a range of ten blocks, Mercedes
Falcón and María Laura Raffo indicate that 84.3 percent of settlements have
access to primary education, 57.6 to secondary education and 67.7 percent have
access to a primary health care centre in a similar area. However, on the topic of
secondary education, few residents from informal settlements are able to pursue
secondary studies due to economic constraints. Furthermore, the secondary
education facilities which are available to them are not necessarily of adequate
quality.

A related and repeated area of concern expressed by the participants in this

study, and reflected in others, is the lack of educational opportunity afforded the
children in the villas.46 In fact, the school which serves Villa Independencia
suffers a variety of inadequacies, ranging from dilapidated, unsafe buildings
and related maintenance problems to lack of staff, each of which leave the
premises closed for extended periods or, at the very best, functioning under

44
Falcón and Raffo, pp. 40-4.
45
Adaszko, p. 38.
46
Auyero, ‘The Hyper-Shantytown’, pp. 107-8.

311
substandard conditions.47 The situation is described by the Tren Blanco co-
operative’s treasurer as follows:

…Acá tenemos un colegio que es la escuela número 33. Los chicos

salen de allí y no son recibidos en otro colegio, están en quinto grado
y no saben leer. No saben leer. No se los atiende y como ese colegio
hay muchos colegios que no están dando clases porque no tienen
gas…48

In Argentina health care is provided free of charge. During the economic crisis,
devaluation created an acute shortage of necessary imported medical supplies.
Added to this, the number of people requiring treatment was elevated. However,
the service provided by the public sector continues to be inadequate.49

It is undeniable that, historically, people living in villas suffered a level of

discrimination and were perceived in terms of ‘otherness’. Attesting to this is the
fact that the epithet cabecitas negras or negros villeros was frequently used to
refer to inhabitants of informal settlements. In fact, this derogatory term persists
in contemporary usage.50 Nevertheless, in the past, the early populations of the
informal settlements did achieve a level of acceptance by the wider community
due to their regular contact with the community as workers, either formal or
informal, and/or occasional consumers. However, the contemporary context of
rising unemployment has effectively severed contact between the two
communities, confining the populations in the informal settlements to extreme
levels of both metaphorical and physical marginalisation.51 In the contemporary

47
Personal conversations with Doña Ramona and Mirta, members of the Tren Blanco co-
operative.
48
Mirta, Interview (I), José León Suárez, 12 July 2007.
49
See Victor B. Penchaszadeh, Francisco Leone and Mario Rovere, ‘The Health System in
Argentina: An Unequal Struggle between Equity and the Market’, The Italian Journal of Public
Health, 7:4 (2010), 350-58; FSD, ‘Child and Maternal Health Issues in Argentina, Foundation
for Sustainable Development’ <http://www.fsdinternational.org/country/argentina/healthissues>
[accessed 22 December 2014]
50
Cravino, ‘Las transformaciones’, p. 34. The terms originated due to the fact that the physical
characteristics of Argentines drawn to GBA from the interior provinces in search of work
reflected their ethnic mix of European and indigenous features. Ironically, use of these
pejorative terms based on ethnic characteristics, which may or may not apply to contemporary
villa inhabitants, persists.
51
Auyero, ‘The Hyper-Shantytown’, p. 99.

312
context, the presence of an inhabitant from a villa in town appears to provoke
fear, suspicion or, at best, curiosity.52

In the villas themselves, organic organisation, which created strong intra- and
inter-villa relationships in past decades, appears to have become fragmented and
relationships have weakened in the contemporary setting.53 Nevertheless,
weakened does not mean not broken and it should be noted that interpersonal
and community organisation, such as led to the establishment of the Tren Blanco
co-operative in Villa Independencia, continues to exist, albeit with a different
focus. Land tenure and infrastructure issues have been replaced by organic
organisation aimed at addressing more routine day-to-day concerns; child
nutrition and day-care programmes constitute a key focus of these initiatives.54

A key cause of the decline in interpersonal bonds and trust identified by

inhabitants of the villas themselves are new arrivals to the area and the context
of rising interpersonal violence. In fact, in the 1990s, levels of interpersonal
violence and aggravated crime, attributed to the effects of neo-liberal policy,
rose significantly in the setting of the villas.55 The shanty towns of José León
Suárez would appear to conform to this trend. Certain isolated kidnappings of
prominent people and their offspring have reportedly occurred in Villa La
Carcoba. However, crimes of aggravated theft and the dealing and/or
consumption of drugs are reportedly endemic in Independencia, in particular
amongst the population of older children and adolescents, whose life experience
lacks the structure, and indeed hope, of at least a level of social mobility
attainable by many of the previous generation.

52
Tren Blanco members, specifically Liliana, Cristian and Roberto, told me about feeling
uncomfortable and out of place in town and felt that their presence drew the (negative) attention
of the town’s inhabitants, who they believed viewed villeros as violent and prone to theft. My
personal observations made whilst in the company of co-operative members and their fellow
villeros seemed to support their opinion. However, given my presence as an obvious ‘outsider’ it
is impossible to identify the exact cause or intent of the evident public attention with any
certainty.
53
Cravino, ‘La propiedad de la tierra’, p. 5; Cravino, ‘Las transformaciones’, pp. 40-1.
54
Falcón and Raffo, p. 62.
55
Auyero, ‘The Hyper-Shantytown’, p. 96; Gorbán, ‘Trabajo y cotidianeidad’, pp. 3-5.

313
It is widely believed that the drugs are supplied as a result of collusion between
corrupt political institutions and the forces of law and order. Claims of official
involvement in the local drug trade cannot be summarily dismissed, given that at
the time this research was conducted, former president Carlos Menem was under
house arrest on charges of arms and drug trafficking.56 Auyero notes that the
problem of escalating crime is compounded by the fact that members of the
villas feel helpless and unable to tackle the problem due to abandonment by both
the political institutions and the forces of law and order.57

On the specific subject of law enforcement, Auyero, Agustín Burbano de Lara

and María Fernanda Berti identify the pattern of policing practiced in low-
income populations as ‘intermittent, selective and contradictory’. 58 In fact, they
make the point that police practice in these areas nurtures inter-personal
violence. Their findings on police corruption are supported by Matías Dewey. 59
Dewey’s empirical research, which focuses on police involvement in the car
theft operations in GBA, indicates endemic levels of highly co-ordinated active
police participation.60 Dewey identifies specific practices employed by the
police notably failure to attend crime scenes, facilitating zonas libreradas and
falsification of records.61 A further sinister practice which he notes is the co-
option of children and younger members of the vulnerable populations into

56
Cristian Sanz, ‘El rey desnudo: Béliz y sus tardíos descubrimientos sobre narcodemocracia’
Tribuna, 8 October 2003 <http://periodicotribuna.com.ar/279-el-rey-desnudo.html> [accessed
l0 June 2013]
57
Auyero, ‘The Hyper-Shantytown’, pp. 96-7. See also Javier Auyero, Agustín Burbano de Lara
and María Fernanda Berti, Violence and the State at the Urban Margins, Journal of
Contemporary Ethnography, 43: 1 (2014), 94-116 (p. 95); The relationship between the police
and drug traffickers and fear of police brutality towards villeros were recurrent themes noted by
the residents of Villa Independencia with whom I had conversations. See Chapter Nine.
58
Auyero, Burbano de Lara, and Berti, p. 95.
59
For political corruption, see Matías Dewey, ‘Fragile States, Robust Structures: Illegal Police
Protection in Buenos Aires’, German Institute for Global and Area Studies, Research Unit:
Institute of Latin American Studies Working Paper, 169 (2011); Matías Dewey, ‘The Making of
Hybrid Stateness: Sources of Police Performance in the Conurbano’, Revista de Ciencia
Política, 32: 3 (2012), 659-72. On the role of police in organised crime in GBA, see Matías
Dewey, ‘Illegal Police Protection and the Market for Stolen Vehicles in Buenos Aires’, Journal
of Latin American Studies’, 44: 4 (2012), 679-702.
60
Dewey, ‘Illegal Police Protection’.
61
Zonas libradas are areas where police surveillance is deliberately suspended, see Matías
Dewey, El orden clandestino: Política, fuerzas de seguridad y mercados ilegales en la
Argentina (Buenos Aires: Katz, 2015), pp. 45-6.

314
illegal activity. Refusal to co-operate or error by the minors may result in the
murder of the young person.62

The form of political presence most common in the lower-class barrios is that of
political clientelism. Political clientelism is defined as: el intercambio de bienes
particulares, como planes sociales y empleo público, a cambio de apoyo
político.63 That is, rather than by promoting universal community rights,
political parties expand their coercive network by means of intermediaries, local
leaders known as punteros attached to political parties, who offer assistance as
gifts or personal favours to the villas’ vulnerable populations. These gifts and
favours cover a wide range of products and services from basic food items to
medical and social care, which poor populations would otherwise be unable to
access.64 In return, the recipients of favours are expected to support the political
party when advised by the puntero, possibly in the form of attending rallies or
casting votes. The context of extreme poverty and need in Argentina’s marginal
communities, to which Villa Independencia belongs, accounts for the endemic
existence of political clientelism.

Villa Independencia.
Villa Independencia is located close to the railway tracks within walking
distance of José León Suárez railway station. The outer edge of the villa, which
runs parallel to the railway line, is bordered by a channel from the Reconquista
River. At the time of my fieldwork, the water was very low and the dry river

62
Dewey, ‘Illegal Police Protection’, p. 696.
63
Mariela L. Szwarcberg, ‘Clientelismo en democracia: lecciones del caso argentino’, Revista
Nueva Sociedad, 225 (2010), 139-55 (p. 139)
<http://www.nuso.org/upload/articulos/3677_1.pdf> [accessed 26 September 2014]

64
For an in-depth account of the dynamics of this practice, see Javier Auyero and Claudio
Benzecry, ‘La lógica práctica del dominio clientelista’, Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Políticas y
Sociales, 26 (2016), 221-46; On the coercive use of the ‘Planes Trabajar’ during the Menem, De
La Rua and Duhalde presidencies, see Rebecca Weitz-Shapiro, ‘Partisanship and Protest: The
Politics of Workfare Distribution in Argentina’, Latin American Research Review, 41: 3 (2006),
122-47. For an analysis of the mechanisms of and a prescription for the challenge of clientelist
practice, see Rebecca Weitz-Shapiro, Curbing Clientelism in Argentina: Politics, Poverty, and
Social Policy (Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

315
banks were strewn with plastic rubbish sacks, many of which were torn,
presumably by the dogs and children playing amongst them. This side of the
villa or asentamiento is edged by a broad earth pathway. In the interior, the
walkways are uneven, compacted soil. In a bid to make walking easier, boards
have been laid down on particularly uneven pitted sections. In this area, houses
are closely set and appeared to be connected to the electricity supply by a series
of cables informally attached to the main system and then draped and
interwoven over the roofs and into homes. In many homes, access to electricity
or running water is gained via informal conduits. Most homes have no
connection to a gas line and use gas cylinders for cooking and heating if they
can afford them and have the necessary facilities for their use. Numerous others
use open fires. Such was the case in each of the houses I visited, which, it being
winter and exceptionally cold, were burning wood in containers to heat the
rooms and boil water to make mate and tea.

Given its position in the river basin, areas of José León Suárez town are subject
to regular flooding. This is particularly the case for the villas, the majority of
which are concentrated in the lowest lying area in immediate proximity to the
river channels. The propensity of this specific area to severe flooding is a
particular cause for concern for its residents. In December 2012, two male adults
were drowned during a storm, one having fallen into the river, the other having
been swept into a drain.65 The following year saw eight separate incidences of
major flooding.66 Flooding poses specific problems for cartonero populations as
paper and card, often stored in exterior yards, are destroyed during heavy rains
and flooding. In addition, the villa’s unpaved streets turn to mud, making
transportation of items to and from the premises impossible.

Independencia has a tradition of militancy and community solidarity activity,

and it is unsurprising that Independencia and the neighbouring Villa La Cárcoba
were the villas which united to initiate the protests that led the TBA Company to

65
Día a día Editorial, ‘Dos muertos por temporal en Buenos Aires’ Día a Día 7 December 2012
<http://www.diaadia.com.ar/policiales/dos-muertos-temporal-buenos-aires> [accessed 23 June
2013]
66
‘Vecinos de José León Suárez afectados por inundaciones’, Protagonistas, Canal 7 de
Multicanal, 27 May 2013.

316
inaugurate the Tren Blanco cartonero train.67 In addition to the provision of the
Tren Blanco service, the villas have successfully lobbied local government for
support to establish communal dining halls for young people and childcare
facilities to enable parents to leave children of up to eight years of age in a safe
environment whilst working in the evening. Reflecting the needs of the
population, Independencia also has a centro de madres, largely funded by a
German NGO. The centre was established according to Tren Blanco co-
operative treasurer’s vision, that is, with a view to providing educational classes
and access for the community’s female population to professional mental health
and legal advice. In her words:
es para ayudarnos entre nosotras para levantar nuestra estima porque
… no sabemos que valemos y que es importante que estemos bien… y
eso es importante en una mujer acá las mamás son muy jovencitas a
las doce trece años ya tienen hijos en este país …También muy
chiquitas y están con los bebés allí en la esquina o sea el futuro
desperdiciado porque todas esas jóvenes es nuestro futuro… No hay
continuación así en los barrios bajos…El centro de madres apunta
hacia eso ayudar enseñar y evitar. 68

One sexagenarian female resident of Villa Independencia recalls her arrival in

the area as a young child. Attracted from Santa Fé by the government’s offer of
land, her family had settled in the area with hopes of a better future. The lady
recalls her childhood as one of material poverty exasperated by repeated floods
which progressively damaged all of the family’s possessions. Having abandoned
her adolescent dreams of studying for a career, as an adult with small children,
her accommodation was a metal house, which she describes as: un ranchito, que
era una piecita y una cocina que era todo de lata – de lata de eso que es frío.
Along with many other residents of the villa, the lady contracted the debilitating
Chagas disease. This life-threatening disease is endemic in the world’s poor and
rural areas, being recognised as a disease of the poor, due to the correlation
between unsanitary, dilapidated housing conditions and contraction of the
disease.

67
Gorbán, ‘Trabajo y cotidianeidad’, p. 7.
68
Mirta, Interview (II), José León Suárez, 14 July 2007.

317
Despite her medical condition, for most of her adult life, she was employed in
José León Suárez town as a cleaner in both private and public buildings.69 Life,
she recounts, was characterised by constant deprivation, a permanent struggle to
make ends meet and bring up her children and, later, grandchildren. In her own
words: Cuando me acuerdo, es todo tristeza. Yo creía que las vacaciones y un
baño con inodoro eran cosa de ricos. Abandoned by her partner, the mother of
seven managed to provide for her family, until the point when the family’s
economic situation deteriorated to such an extent that her eldest son decided,
despite her protests, to go to the capital to collect newspapers. This he did, with
the result that the family could, once again, afford basic necessities. When one
night the young man failed to return from his trip to the capital until the early
hours of the morning, his mother, having been terrified that something dreadful
had happened to her son, decided that she would join him rather than allow him
to go alone. Her personal journey to acceptance of working as a ciruja she
describes thus: …primero yo tenía mucha vergüenza, mucha vergüenza. No
quería levantar la cabeza porque me parecía que era horrible. Y después con el
tiempo fue pasando ya fui mirando de frente de que era un trabajo también…70

Unlike many of the villa’s residents, who are forced out of education at primary
level, many of whom having been unable to complete even this basic course of
instruction, the young man had been able to remain in school for three years of
secondary education. When he decided to follow his dream of continuing his
studies to pursue a career in law, the lady, as well as two other children,
continued as cirujas, accessing items from the local Quema and Buenos Aires
City centre until her illness made it impossible for her to continue carrying out
the heavy work on the streets: yo ya no pude porque estaba enferma, empezaron
mis hijos, siguieron sus hijos y siempre en la misma historia, siempre en lo
mismo.71

69
Mirta, Interview (II).
70
Mirta, Interview (II).
71
Mirta, Interview (I).

318
Tren Blanco co-operative origins.
Other members of the Villa’s community, all of whom for various reasons were
working as cirujas, recognised that their work left them open to exploitation
and, indeed, deception from other social actors. In order to confront the
conditions of exploitation to which they were subject and to provide an honest
service for local cirujas reliant on the exploitative profiteering intermediary, a
group of regular travellers on the Tren Blanco, proposed the idea of setting up a
cartonero co-operative as a possible solution. It is probable that awareness of
the increasing numbers of workplaces being reopened as co-operative
organisations by their former workforce after closure played a role in the
group’s decision. In addition, Independencia resident, local activist, and former
ciruja, Ernesto ‘Lalo’ Paret, assumed an advisory role for the group. 72 An
active MNER member, ‘Lalo’ had participated in numerous factory recoveries,
including that of the emblematic Forja San Martín. Certainly, the idea to set up a
co-operative stemmed not from any ideological predisposition towards co-
operative management but rather practicality and need.

The group secured a commitment from local government to fund their project by
a Desarrollo Social grant dependent on the submission of a coherent proposal.
The proposal was submitted, prompting Independencia’s potential co-operative
members to engage in meetings and discussions to plan the project. After a
protracted period of discussion and waiting of between ‘one year’ and ‘three
years’, many potential members gradually abandoned the project, leaving a
small group of 13 hopefuls. 73 When the grant finally arrived, the remaining
group of thirteen were in receipt of 30,000 Argentine pesos to launch their
business in 2004.74

Finding an appropriate name for the co-operative formed the basis of

considerable discussion and the ultimate selection of ‘Tren Blanco’ is attributed

72
Don Hector, Interview 20 July 2007 José León Suárez.
73
The members interviewed differed in the time scale they attributed to the length of time taken
to initiate production. However, as well as the fact that the discussions were fluid in terms of
entry and withdrawal of potential members, it is also the case that grants were accessed from
various sources, including San Martín University, local government and the WorkingWorld,
microcredit organisation.
74
30,000 pesos is equivalent to approximately 5,400 United States dollars.

319
to varying considerations. According to co-operative member Cecilia, their
choice was made as a means of substituting the negative connotations
associated by the members with the term cartonero for a more positive image
associated with the train and the colour white:

Porque el tren que llevaba a los cartoneros era un tren viejo y era
blanco. Entonces muchos dijeron cartonero cuando llegaba el tren
hasta que un día le dijimos que ¡no! es el Tren Blanco. Yo era
delegada del tren. Cada delegado tenía un furgón y estaba a carga de
toda la gente que subió allí. Entonces cuatro o tres de los
delegados…¿por qué cartonero? vamos a ponerle el Tren Blanco.¡Es
el Tren Blanco! Hoy el tren no es blanco porque ahora cambió el tren.
Pero era blanco. Era el Tren Blanco.75

Dani, however, attributes the choice of the co-operative’s name to the fact that it
was established to support the workers who travelled in the Tren Blanco and,
consequently the name was chosen to establish a clear link between the
cartonero population and the co-operative:

Entonces es como el Tren Blanco también fue una cosa y la

cooperativa Tren Blanco hace lo mismo. Es un principio pero cuando
esté terminado va a ser lo mismo… Por una vez que estén funcionando
mucho beneficio para ellos …entonces es la cooperativa del Tren
Blanco.76

The private house, which is where the depository of the Tren Blanco co-
operative was located, is relatively close to the outer edge of the villa and
benefits from an enclosed, partially covered, large front yard into which
cartoneros could bring even large carts. The road at the front of the house is
relatively wide and, unless the mud surface has been flooded, in which case
vehicles cannot pass, allowed access for the co-operative’s truck to be loaded
with the recyclable materials. The front yard contained the items for sorting and
packaging ready for transportation initially to various private purchasers and
later to the San Martín processing warehouse. In the initial stages, the co-
operative, now officially operating as the Tren Blanco, purchased and sold only
paper and cardboard.

75
Cecilia, Interview, 14 July 2007.
76
Dani, Interview, 15 July 2007.

320
The co-operative’s popularity with the local cartonero population grew as, in
contrast to the majority of the purchasing facilities, it paid a fair rate, above that
of other intermediaries. In addition, the co-operative was recognised for the fact
that the weighing process was conducted honestly and accurately.77
Furthermore, the co-operative took pride in offering a polite, respectful service
to clients.78 These points, made by co-operative members, were reiterated by
local cartoneros carrying out transactions at the José León Suárez co-operative
depository.79

However, as stock increased, exceeding the yard’s capacity, the members voted
to hire a warehouse close to the railway station in the neighbouring town of San
Martín. Two years later, in addition to processing card and paper, the co-
operative now compacted metals and plastics, and had begun processing
computer parts. The warehouse had acquired an operational press and washing
machinery for the materials. This was due to be connected to the water supply.

Galpón at San Martín: The plastic press in operation.

Source: Lynne Chrisp, personal photograph collection. To the right of the press, a tiny pink shoe
hangs from the main cable. The shoe belonged to the operator’s daughter and had been hung
there for good luck and also to symbolise the hope that the co-operative would provide a stable
future for the co-operator’s two young children.

77
This point was made by co-operative members and also local cartoneros who arrived at the
José León Suárez co-operative depository and were happy to discuss the reasons for their choice
to use Tren Blanco co-operative with me.
78
Doña Ramona, Interview, 18 July 2007.
79
Private informal conversations with several cartoneros using the Tren Blanco co-operative
supported this point, highlighting the honest, friendly service and convenient location of the co-
operative as reasons for their choice.

321
The co-operative members who participated in this study are all from
Independencia and all belong to the social group which would be considered as
‘structural poor’, descendents of marginal populations. Nevertheless, the older
members of the co-operative had, in the past, benefited from stable, albeit often
unregistered, jobs. One older male member, who continued to identify himself
in terms of his former skilled trade, described his former post as a fully trained
carpenter working in industry. As the business in which he was working began
to fail in the 1990s, he was dismissed from his job, and, with numerous others,
particularly amongst workers from the fábricas recuperadas, found his age a
major obstacle to finding work elsewhere in the ever-decreasing employment
market. He subsequently tried to earn a living as a freelance carpenter and,
unable to secure enough work, began cartoneo. Younger members of the co-
operative, on the other hand, identify informal casual work, changas, in
construction, for example, or a family business and/or an occasional plan
trabajar as their only experience of working. By a family business, it should be
noted, the participants are referring to a very small concern such as a vendedor
ambulante, that is, a salesperson who sells goods from a handcart working either
on local streets or door to door. In the case of one of the members, the family
had run a small vegetable stall. The youngest member, although not a structural
ciruja as such, had begun his working life as a cartonero, assisting his father,
who had begun working in recycling when he could no longer find employment
in the construction industry. In addition, an extended spell in prison, for what
can only be described as a minor non-violent crime, had kept one of the
members out of work for several years.

The group of co-operative members who took part in this work consisted of five
males and five females amongst whom were founder members and new
members. One female and one male were in their sixties. Three females were in
their forties and one in her twenties. Of the four remaining males, the oldest was
thirty, three of these being heads of household with responsibility for children.
Four of the females were also responsible for children; of these, two were in
stable relationships, whilst the other two were single parents with sole
responsibility for the economic and social care of their children.

322
To conclude, this chapter has traced the process of provincial decay by which
entire semi-marginal communities were forced into unprecedented conditions of
poverty and of definitive or hyper-marginality. Conditions of unemployment,
poverty, crime, lack of access to adequate health and educational provision,
political abandonment and inequality, experienced by a majority of the
Argentine population, most specifically at the turn of the twenty-first century,
constituted hyper-intense experiences in the microcosmic setting of the villa.

However, the ultimate focus of the chapter was to introduce the Independencia
residents who formed the Tren Blanco co-operative. The members, having been
abandoned by traditional socio-political institutions and left reliant on
clientelistic relationships with political punteros, bucked the trend of declining
organic organisation, which was becoming increasingly prevalent in
marginalised communities, by uniting to discuss a community cartonero co-
operative project. As much by fortune as by design, after a protracted waiting
period, a small business community grant from San Martín local government
was authorised, enabling the establishment of the Tren Blanco co-operative. In
the following chapter these individuals share their experiences of work and
co-operative organisation as members of Tren Blanco.

323
Chapter Nine

Tren Blanco success and failure: The members share their

experiences of life, co-operative organisation and work.

To the casual observer, the empty yard and somewhat faded façade of the Tren
Blanco co-operative’s José León Suárez depository indicate no more than the
business’s demise, the closure of one of innumerable grassroots initiatives
established during the country’s economic crisis. However, for resident villeros, this
same façade will no doubt rekindle memories of a not-too-distant past, in which the
cheerful newly-painted entrance indicated an upturn in the co-operative’s fortunes,
perhaps generating hopes that the venture would come to be a very valuable
community resource. At the time the empirical research was carried out, this
continued to be a possibility. The initial setbacks had been overcome; the entrance
to the José León Suárez had been freshly painted to ‘improve the business’s image’,
the San Martín warehouse was now a processing plant with functioning equipment
and the remaining members were resolute that the project was going to succeed.
However, several months later, the co-operative suffered a serious setback that
would lead to its gradual demise. In the introductory chapter, I stated my position as
being ‘for’ the Tren Blanco venture and it was my hope that the project would
become a source of income and learning for both the community and the members
according to the aspirations of each participant. This was not the case. Therefore,
we must consider the Tren Blanco co-operative project in terms of both success and
failure.

As a subaltern study, a central focus of this section is to present the experience of

the Tren Blanco members in their own words. With this in mind, the present chapter
opens with a section in which the members express their concerns regarding the
political situation at both national and local levels. Next, members discuss the
aspects of co-operative organisation which they found to be most positive.
Following this, members discuss their opinions on the beneficial aspects of their
experiences of working, both in general terms and with specific regard to the Tren
Blanco co-operative environment. The final section considers the less positive

324
aspects of the Tren Blanco story, identifies the causes of the project’s eventual
failure and offers a comment on possible alternatives.

Tren Blanco: On national and local government.

With the exception of Daniel, the Tren Blanco members described themselves as
patriots and expressed their love of the country and desire to see its
regeneration. For Cristian, this could only be achieved by social consensus and
sacrifice:

Hay un problema: lamentablemente la gente cuando tiene un problema

se retira para otro país a buscar la buena suerte. Yo pienso que no,
que hay que afrontarlo… lo que pasa en el país, si uno en realidad
quiere que salga adelante, uno tiene que pelearla acá…en su lugar de
nacionalidad.1

However, Liliana reflects the general consensus, placing the country’s failure
firmly at the feet of the leadership:

Sí, yo amo mucho a mi Argentina: o sea, me gusta sobre todas las

cosas. No comparto los hechos de los gobernantes y todo eso, pero yo
particularmente a mi país lo amo, me gusta.2

Tren Blanco members’ perceptions of the political system were reflective of

aspects of wider trends which had been most evident during the first years of
the twenty-first century. Salient aspects of contention revealed by the group
included the general lack of integrity and effectiveness of the political class,
abuse of privilege, and absence of government transparency. The consensus
references of the participants to politicians centred on dishonesty, clientelism,
corruption and impunity, and generally inept performance, noting the fact that
the devastating results of political policy and conduct were concentrated on
the most vulnerable popular sectors. A further criticism was that the position
of privilege enjoyed by the country’s professional politicians rendered them
detached and incapable of relating to or empathising with the suffering, needs
and desires of the popular sectors.

1
Cristian, Interview.
2
Liliana, Interview, José León Suárez, 14 July 2007.

325
Indicative of the widespread general climate of distrust and cynicism towards
the established political system and leadership felt by Argentines, founder-
member of the Tren Blanco, Daniel notes the following:

Hay mucha gente que no sabe para dónde mirar. No sabe qué creer,
¡no sabe! Ya están en este país y ya no hay más esperanza en nada, o
sea, nadie cree en nada. Éste es un país en que la gente está viendo
qué viveza puede haber. Le dicen algo y ¿qué es? ¿por qué? No hay
ya más, no le puedo decir nada, no sé que palabra usar, no hay más,
decir, confianza, por así decir. 3

As a group, the members of the Tren Blanco attributed the country’s economic
problems to the performance of the politicians most recently in office.

Q ¿A quién responsabilizas por los problemas económicos que ha sufrido el

país?

Menem tiene mucho que ver con eso. Él y el otro, de la Rúa también,
que estuvo muy poco,¡por suerte! 4

Yo pienso que el presidente y los ministros, porque siempre salen

ellos beneficiarios en todo. Y el pueblo sufre las consecuencias, ¿no?
de que ellos se benefician. Ellos salen ganando siempre y nosotros…
hoy en día no se puede, ya no se puede comer nada.5

Para mí, echo la culpa a los radicales y al peronismo del señor

Menem. …Entre el peronismo y los radicales nos dejaron así como
estábamos, sin creer en nadie, sin tener un trabajo. Para mí fue el
gobierno, de que no tengamos ningún beneficio, bueno, a través de
ellos.6

Los políticos realmente; esto viene de hace mucho, de muchos años.

Siempre hubo pobres, yo vengo de allí. La culpa la tienen desde hace
rato. No uno, varios, pero bueno, sabe, el sistema nuestro es así. A lo
último que pasó un desastre acá en los últimos años… Saqueaban,
no había control por nada acá, andaban con las armas en la mano,
robando, esto es loco. Ahora, si tengo que echar la culpa, creo que
la culpa, la responsabilidad es de los políticos, de estos funcionarios
que estaban en ese momento.7

3
Daniel, Interview.
4
Doña Ramona, Interview.
5
Liliana, Interview.
6
Cecilia, Interview.
7
Daniel, Interview.

326
As noted in the previous chapter, drug-related crime is particularly common in
Villa Independencia. As such, it is unsurprising that a specific form of corrupt
practice identified by the co-operators should be political involvement in the
rapidly rising drug trade. On political involvement in drug trafficking, Liliana
makes the following comment:

El tema de la droga es el manejo más grande que hay en la

Argentina y yo pienso que todo eso, el tema de la droga. Hay tanto
por ahí. Yo pienso que primeramente los políticos son los que hacen
entrar la droga. Son ellos y es todo manejo, entre políticos, la
policía y los narcotraficantes, que son los que tienen la droga. 8

Added to the perception of corruption and lawlessness was their firm

conviction that the justice system was elitist and flawed, enabling Argentina’s
political and privileged classes to operate under conditions of impunity and/or
preferential, lenient justice. Mirta presents the theme of inequality in the
justice system in the following terms:

Porque yo opino esto. Acá un chico roba una moto porque la tiene
que vender porque necesita zapatillas y tiene que pagar cuatro años
o cinco de cárcel. Lo mismo que el chico que va y roba… los
adolescentes, la mayoría van a robar porque han crecido en la
carencia y cuando llegan a la adolescencia quieren ser diferentes y
el gobierno no les ofrece nada. Entonces, busca sacarla, por la de él,
poniendo el pecho y va a robar. Eso, ese chico es castigado, bien
cometió un crimen, tiene que pagar. Ahora yo pregunto, los
dirigentes políticos que robaron tanto al país, María Julia
Alsogarray, Carlos Menem, Alderete y no sé cuántos más ¿Dónde
están? Yo creo que es un castigo ideal. Si yo me robo toda la plata
de la cooperativa que va a llegar a tener mucha plata, me compro
casa, me compro coche, me compro no sé, departamentos en otro
país, y por eso dos o tres años preso con todas las comodidades, y
después salgo. Le robé al pueblo, la sangre del pueblo y pagué muy
cómoda encerrada, en cárcel, pero cómoda, no como otros presos.
Después salgo, y salgo a disfrutar de todo lo que les robé. En vez de
ponerles preso,¿por qué no les retiran todos los bienes que ellos
tienen, ¡todos!, y hasta el título, para que comiencen desde abajo.9

8
Liliana, Interview.
9
Mirta, Interview (I).

327
Daniel presents the relative impunity afforded to the political class under the
Argentine justice system, as indicative of a wider elitist alliance in the form of
an anecdote:

Estuve viendo un juicio. Un juicio de María Marta Belsunce que la

mataron. Tienen mucha plata, son gente poderosa. La mataron, le
dieron tiros en la cabeza. Le taparon los agujeros el marido, la
hermana, la familia. Le taparon los agujeros con col y la
maquillaron. Los médicos mintieron todos que había muerto en un
accidente. Hasta que en un momento se dieron cuenta de que ¡no!,
¡que la habían matado!. Le dieron no sé cuantos tiros en la cabeza.
Todo mentira y los metieron todos presos, por juez a todo eso. Al fin
el juicio por encubrimiento y no sé qué más ¿sabe qué les dieron?
¡Cinco años! Así que allí con mirar ése no más, uno se da cuenta de
qué clase lo que es acá. Yo le puedo asegurar, si yo paso y hay un
perro muerto, yo tengo que pagar tres o cuatro años. Cinco años.
…Sin poder decir más.10

A further perception expressed by members of the co-operative is that

Argentina’s political class is completely out of touch with and lacking in
empathy for the popular and marginal classes. Mirta expresses this sentiment
as:
Esta gente (los políticos) se crió rodeada de todo…yo creo que la
señora (Cristina Fernández de Kirchner) no debe conocer lo que es,
jamás habrá conocido lo que es el frío, ni el hambre. Yo no la veo a
ella como figura presidencial. Pero ¡como acá todo se arregla! Yo
creo que jamás hubiese en la vida sufrido lo que es frío, ni el dolor
del estómago del hambre. Ellos no saben. Entonces nosotros les
servimos para que ellos estén allí porque somos analfabetos y
porque tenemos necesidades, y bueno, y me dieron una cama y me
dieron una bolsa de mercadería, voy y lo voto.11

Reflected in the above comment is a further aspect of negative political

practice which Tren Blanco members firmly reject, namely, clientelism, which
they identify as an unhealthy and offensive method of popular control and
fraudulent appropriation of support. As Daniel explains:

A mi forma de ver se vé claramente cómo está armado el sistema

¿no? Allí se vé claramente cómo más o menos se va yendo el sistema
del país nuestro, porque también está el plan, que les dan leche a
las mujeres que tienen familia. Las anotan y les dan leche lunes,

10
Daniel, Interview.
11
Mirta, Interview (I).

328
 miércoles y viernes y un poco de mercadería, que es mercadería de
segunda siempre, y también a algunas les dan para que cobren un
plan, que también cobren 150 por mes. ¿Pero qué pasa cuando
vengan las elecciones? Todas ésas tienen que votar y yo creo que eso
se lo vemos bien; para mí llega a ser como una especie de secuestro
intensivo. Porque hay mucha gente que no tiene forma, no hay
trabajo y están sujetos a eso. Porque usted no lo crea, va y ve y le
dicen, no me queda otra. 12

Mirta, on the other hand makes the following comment,‘Voy y la voto y eso no
sirve porque después, durante los cuatro años que están, no se acuerda más
de nadie’.13

On a related theme, the Tren Blanco members’ perception of the piquetero

organisations was unanimously negative, being expressed by some as a form
of clientelist relationship between the government and the piquetero
leadership:

Hacer un piquete y que haya represión para que la gente cobre la

garroteada por un sueldo de 150… Yo pienso que no tendría que ser
piquete…pelear por algo, no por un sueldo sino por una fuente de
trabajo, que no haya más pobreza, pero no siempre que pase
conmigo, y vamos a hacer un piquete. Y los dirigentes que se llevan
todo, los dejan a la gente que cobre. O sea, los organizadores en
hacer piquetes se retiran y dejan a la otra gente en el momento en
que hay represión.14

El piquetero tiene sueldo. El estado le da un sueldo. Le da un sueldo.

Le da 200 pesos por mes. Pibe, piba, sea quien sea, y es así cuando
tiene que ir a cortar un puente o lo que sea te vienen a buscar para
que hagas esto. Y yo creo que él que tiene que protestar tiene que
protestar bien desde adentro lo que siente, no por 200 pesos. ¡Yo ni
loco voy!15

Los piqueteros, para mí, es algo como - no sé, no me gustan. Sé que

nosotros tenemos el derecho de reclamar, de protestar, pero no me
gusta que mucha gente ¿como le diríamos?... dirigente, usa a la
gente. Porque hablo siempre por lo que veo y por lo que escucho.
Mucha gente, personas ancianas están pasados del frío, del hambre
y a ellos les dan 150 pesos por mes y después les llevan a cortar

12
Daniel, Interview.
13
Mirta, Interview (I).
14
Cristian, Interview.
15
Daniel, Interview.

329
 rutas, como también a mujeres con chicos, y yo creo que eso no es
una solución.16

A negative perception of the piquetero organisations extended beyond the

theme of clientelism is the disruption created by piquetes for fellow workers:

Pero de repente me pone mal cuando crean tantos problemas. En

esto de los piqueteros la mayoría de las veces hay muchos
problemas.17

No me gusta lo que hacen. Que corten la calle porque hay mucha

gente que va a trabajar. Es lo mismo que si yo voy a trabajar a la
capital y están cortando la avenida a cada rato. No me parece bien.
Tendrían que tener otra manera de protestar.18

Deterioration in the provision of essential services for the marginalised José

León Suárez population was identified as the direct result of political
mismanagement and apathy. Two key areas of concern were health care and
educational provision:

Esto me duele porque gracias a ellos también mis nietos están

pasando necesidades. Porque ellos no tienen ni escuela… Acá en
este partido vivimos en huelga de los médicos. Viven de paro, viven
de paro. Tenemos un hospital municipal que tiene unos cirujanos
muy espectaculares, pero tienes que llegar ya muriéndote. ¿Por qué
no hay renovación en esas cosas?19

Given the above, it is unsurprising that the consensus was that of the futility
of, and consequent reluctance to participate in, the electoral process.
Members’ responses to participation in elections were varied but in only one
case was there any indication of a real conviction and firm belief in the
integrity of the candidate. The willingness of several members to enter into
some anecdotal and political discussion may indicate a level of openness,
albeit tepid, of the possibility of at least a partial political solution. Others, no
doubt reacting solely to abundant empirical experience, brooked no such
discussion and summarily dismissed any promise of a solution from the

16
Mirta, Interview (I).
17
Liliana, Interview.
18
Micaela, Interview, San Martín, 20 July 2007.
19
Mirta, Interview (I).

330
political class, ‘Si los políticos a mí no me ayudan en nada. A mí no me
trajeron políticos acá. Yo vine sólo a preguntar. A preguntar por el
trabajo.’ 20

Voting is mandatory in Argentina. However, non-document holders,

Argentines whose birth went unregistered, are not able to vote. Ernesto
considers not having documents advantageous when it comes to election times
as he is spared making a ‘futile’ trip to the electoral booths. Daniel laments
the fact that his documents, acquired with the sole purpose of enabling him to
register his daughter, now require him to vote. Don Héctor, a document
carrier, notes his dilemma thus:

Te mienten tanto los políticos que usted no sabe ni a quién votar. A

veces yo voy a votar por obligación… si no votas te meten preso…
revisan los votos… pero mienten tanto, ‘yo voy a hacer esto, voy a
hacer eso’ pero nunca cumplen…
Q. Y, ¿si votar no fuera obligatorio?
R. ¡No voto!21

Roberto describes his attitude to voting in similar, if less delineated terms:

Yo soy ciudadano y si tengo que ir a votar, voy y voto. Los políticos

no me llaman mucho la atención, sabes… porque todos son iguales,
cada uno busca lo suyo; no me gusta políticamente el sistema.22

In addition to the apathy towards the political process, two formerly politically
committed women, Cecilia and Liliana, were so disheartened by the failure of
traditional politics to provide resolutions that they had relinquished their
political former affiliations:

Siempre me gustó ser peronista, de chica me gustó el peronismo

¿no? Pero hoy, si a me preguntan por algún partido, no estoy de
acuerdo con ninguno.23

Ahora en el momento, no, antes sí, pero como le dije en el principio,

los políticos mienten muchísimo. Prometen muchas cosas y no se

20
Ernesto, Interview, San Martín, 15 July 2007.
21
Don Héctor, Interview, José León Suárez, 19 July 2007.
22
Roberto, Interview, José León Suárez, 15 July 2007.
23
Cecilia, Interview.

331
 cumple con nada. Entonces, en el momento, no, no tengo ninguno.
No soy partidaria de ningún partido.24

Micaela, although remaining undecided, expressed a tentative plan to vote for

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner on the basis of outgoing husband, Néstor
Kirchner’s, ‘not bad’ performance.25 However, only one Tren Blanco member
continued to demonstrate a tangible level of faith in the electoral process as
indicated by her plans for the upcoming October presidential elections. Mirta
expressed real confidence that the Alternativa por una República de Iguales
(ARI), under the leadership of Elisa Carrió, would in fact provide effective
transparent government with specific benefits for Argentina’s female
population:

Me simpatiza en la ARI … porque lo representa una mujer y la he

oído muchas veces. Creo que así sería…en mi opinión personal, yo
creo que ella sería la presidenta que necesitamos todas las mujeres,
las madres en este país, porque veo cómo ella valoriza a la mujer
desde abajo hasta arriba, o sea, todas las mujeres, de una villa hasta
la alta sociedad. La valora como mujer. Entonces me gusta. Ya le
digo que hablo dentro de mi ignorancia porque ni siquiera tengo la
primaria terminada...Son mis opiniones, lo que yo siento y lo que yo
he visto.26

Significantly, in the opinion of one member, it is not only members of the

political class, but political ideology in general, that he finds ineffective and
even dangerous. Having discounted the possibility of an imminent popular
solution, his desire is that the co-operative will afford him the option of
avoiding all political machinations and involvement in partisan activity of any
shade enabling him to live his life as far removed from organised politics as
possible:

Me dan miedo todas estas palabras. Nacionalista, comunista,

peronista, radical, todo esto. Yo simplemente soy una persona que
soy muy pobre y que no quiere que sus hijos pasen esto, primer
punto. Segundo punto, soy una persona que me gusta vivir. Me gusta

24
Liliana, Interview.
25
Micaela, Interview.
26
Mirta, Interview (I). The ARI was a progressive party under the leadership of Elisa Carrió.
Initiated in 2001, the ARI subsequently formed an alliance with the Coalición Cívica para la
Afirmación de una República Igualitaria (CC-ARI). In 2007, Carrió ran in presidential
elections as leader of this coalition.

332
 la vida, sufrí mucho, sufrí mucho. Tengo 30 años y la mayoría de mis
años sufrí mucho, y bueno, estoy cansado de sufrir. Entonces me
gusta la vida, me gusta tener animales, me gusta tener lo que pueda.
Tengo patos, gallinas, me gusta algo de comer, me gusta tener un
perro, me gusta ver a los chicos jugar, me gusta vivir y no molesto a
nadie, y trabajo y nada más.27

Despite the above overwhelmingly negative perception of the various recent

political leaders, two Tren Blanco members indicated a level of cautious
endorsement of President Néstor Kirchner, who was in the final stages of
office at the time of the research. However, this support should not be
overstated. Both appraisals were expressed in terms conspicuously relative to
Kirchner’s deeply discredited predecessors, and did not equate to the levels of
enthusiasm for Kirchnerism attributed to the mainstream population:

A lo que había, me parece que más o menos. Por lo menos no robó

de golpe, pero él también es un político y no creo que sea tan limpio.
Pero bueno, por lo menos el país, cuando él agarró el país ahora
está mejor. Para mí es mejor- no le digo que es de diez porque
también hay muchos problemas. Todavía hay pobres, hay muchos
problemas acá. Hay pobres en Buenos Aires, y en las provincias hay
muchos más que acá.28

However, for the rest of the group, Kirchner’s presidency was characterised by
the same mistrust and lack of expectation as previous administrations, ‘Yo le
hablo siempre de lo que me rodea… ¿Presidente Kirchner? Parece que es una
persona muy inteligente. No sé si será bueno’.29 An explanation for the
predominantly negative attitude demonstrated may reside in the perception of
the fundamental continuity of the process. As Daniel notes, many of the
politicians active under previous governments are still involved in the present
political environment, ‘¡No puede ser! Están siempre los mismos. Acá, si usted
se pone a ver, están siempre los mismos.’30

However, no member demonstrated any level of anti-imperialist feelings nor

was any spontaneous mention made of the possible detrimental role of

27
Daniel, Interview.
28
Daniel, Interview.
29
Cristian, Interview.
30
Daniel, Interview.

333
international financing institutions in the country’s economic deterioration.
This continued to be the case even when presented with specific questions on
the subject.

Co-operative organisation: the basis of the choice and benefits afforded.

The central tenets of official co-operative ideology are: self-help, personal
responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity… honesty, openness,
social responsibility and caring for others.31 It is the author’s contention that
the Tren Blanco co-operative was formed by the propitious combination of the
relatively high profile of co-operative organisation in the area, certain
informed advocacy and, most specifically, an organic inclination towards the
central principles of co-operation noted above and the implications of these
principles, in contrast to the predominant individualist ideology of 1990s
Argentina.

As previously noted, negative economic circumstances and favourable

legislation, rather than ideology, constituted the central motivation behind the
formation of the myriad empresas recuperadas, phoenix co-operatives.
Nevertheless, it appears that only a minimal number of these co-operatives
actually usurped co-operative identity for fraudulently lucrative purposes. In
fact, research suggests that the vast majority operated according to traditional
co-operative ideology. This pattern, as will become apparent, is true of the
Tren Blanco co-operative. In the early stages, members of the Tren Blanco co-
operative attest to the fact that they initiated their enterprise in the absence of
any significant prior knowledge of the traditional ideals and practices of co-
operative organisations:

No sabíamos lo que era una cooperativa, un grupo que se junta, que

se forma, se come juntos, ¡Dios mío!. 32

¿Una cooperativa?Un lugar de trabajo que da ayuda a la gente. 33

31
CICOPA, ‘World Declaration on Worker Cooperatives’, CICOPA (Cartagena, Columbia 23
September 2005) < http://www.cecop.coop/IMG/pdf/declaration_approved_by_ICA_-_en-
2.pdf> [accessed 16 September 2013]
32
Mirta, Interview (I).
33
Ernesto, Interview.

334
This raises the question of the reasons behind the members’ eventual decision
to form a co-operative. Political abandonment and personal marginalisation
had resulted in a clear desire of a significant element of the Independencia
community to amalgamate their efforts to respond to the crisis at the local
level. However, their discussions did not immediately steer them in the
direction of forming a co-operative.34 The shared background of the villeros,
prior to becoming cartoneros, as marginalised, poor, predominantly informal,
and/or unorganised workers in practical terms implied restricted options. In
fact, various factors combined to influence the final decision. Increasing
evidence of workers having recourse to co-operative organisation was
apparent in the Parque Industrial area of the neighbouring town of San Martín.
The role of organisations such as the MNER and MNFER in establishing
fábricas recuperadas as co-operative ventures was becoming increasingly
common knowledge.

With specific reference to the cartonero community, from early 2002, the
MTE had been in operation, affording support, raising the profile and
championing the cause of independent cartoneros and cartonero co-
operatives.35 Furthermore, government policy was seen to be increasingly
providing a certain level of official financial and legal support to micro-
projects in lower-income communities. These community micro-projects
included small businesses and co-operative ventures. In the above context, it is
unsurprising, therefore, that discussions amongst the cartonero population of
Villa Independencia should include the possibility of organising a co-operative
venture. As noted in the previous chapter, the final decisive influence came as
a result of the advice and support of fellow villero and MNER member,
Ernesto ‘Lalo’ Paret.

34
Don Héctor, Interview.
35
Cooperativa de Trabajo: El Andamio, ‘Tu basura es mi trabajo: La lucha de los
recicladores urbanos’, Portal de La Economía Popular Social y Solidaria, 16 August 2012
<http://www.economiapopular.coop/tu-basura-es-mi-trabajo-la-lucha-de-los-recicladores-
urbanos> [accessed 28 July 2013]

335
Nevertheless, I would restate the significance of the micro-asambleas and
community discussion which developed to resolve the critical situation facing
the members of the predominantly cartonero community and to create a
solution ‘for the people by the people’. It is my belief that these micro-
asambleas constituted an organic, embryonic form of and desire for a system
based on the broad principles of co-operation, the theory of which was, as yet,
unknown to them. In support of this, I would note that the proportion of
inhabitants of Independencia who demonstrated interest in forming a co-
operative, although significantly higher than those who saw the project to
completion, did not constitute a majority of villeros favouring a group
initiative, co-operative or otherwise. 36 As Roberto notes, discussions on the
cartonero train and in the community among cartoneros and villeros, which in
most cases were one and the same, often met with hostile and/or sceptical
responses.37 Therefore, I suggest that all of the individuals who eventually
formed the co-operative, and also those who wished to be involved but were
ultimately unable to do so, were fundamentally seeking a practical solution to
personal and local material need, which would at the same time afford them an
alternative experience to the ¡sálvese quien pueda! ethos of neoliberal
individualism.

Hopes and dreams for the future shared by the members identified varied
aspirations, including security for dependents, social inclusion and acceptance,
reduced marginalisation, completion of unfinished secondary education, and
increased independence. Although varying in focus, each of the members’
future desires were all firmly rooted in the potential afforded by the co-
operative’s successful development. However, the following section considers
the more proximate positive effects of participation in co-operative
organisation as common factors identified by members of Tren Blanco. As
noted in Chapter Two, co-operative organisation in Argentina conforms to the
European Rochdale formula. The central tenets of this formula endure in the
contemporary context as political autonomy and independence, non-profit
orientation, democratic, non-discriminatory and egalitarian participation for

36
Don Héctor, Interview.
37
Roberto, Interview.

336
members, inter-co-operative co-operation, and a clear responsibility for the
promotion of education and socio-economic enrichment in the community.38
The worker-specific co-operative organisation, CICOPA, adds the central
objectives of creating and maintaining sustainable jobs, generating wealth,
improving the quality of life of the worker-members, and dignification of
human work.39 Positive aspects specific to co-operative organisation which
afforded most comment from Tren Blanco members as sources of satisfaction
were democratic decision-taking, inter-co-operative solidarity activity, and the
co-operative’s community role.

Co-operative democracy.
At Tren Blanco co-operative, decisions were discussed and voted on in
democratic, full-member meetings according to the traditional co-operative
process of ‘one person one vote’. The organisational structure of the co-
operative is horizontal and egalitarian. As such, founding member Daniel
identifies himself as, ‘uno más de acá, uno de los primeros, uno de los
primeros que empezamos acá.’40 Democratic functioning, Roberto notes, is a
fundamental element of co-operative organisation:

¿Jefe? No, no, en esta cooperativa no hay jefe. Nosotros somos diez,
somos diez y de los diez tomamos acá la opinión de cada uno que se
llega a un resultado o hace tal cosa. Bueno, decidimos hacer tal cosa
y hacemos tal cosa. ¿Pero jefe?¿Para qué? ¿Para qué es mandar si
somos todos compañeros? Por eso somos una cooperativa. Decimos
que yo soy jefe y que mande y mande y yo estoy sentado en una silla.
¿Comprende? Eso es fundamental, lo hablamos entre nosotros.41

Mirta points to the bureaucracy which required the co-operative to appoint

specific roles to members was based on expedience, noting that the everyday
running of the organisation is egalitarian and transparent:

Estamos formados y tenemos una comisión directiva que es

presidente, secretario y tesorero. Y los compañeros son todos
iguales. Tenemos eso como título, pero después todos trabajamos

38
ICA.
39
CICOPA, p. 2.
40
Daniel, Interview.
41
Roberto, Interview.

337
 igual. Todos. Todos sabemos cuánto pagamos y cuánto compramos.
Y fue necesario formar esa comisión porque están los fiscales, los
síndicos todos para componer la cooperativa.42

The democratic aspect of the co-operative’s organisation and equal status of

the members were identified as the most attractive aspects of work at the Tren
Blanco Co-operative. Members identified participation in decision-making and
mutually respectful acknowledgement of everyone’s individual opinions as a
key aspect of satisfaction, ‘Podemos decir algo, una opinión. Podemos decir
opiniones, si esto está bien o si esto está mal. Acá somos todos dueños.’43 In
addition, further aspects of the co-operative organisation’s democratic
approach recognised as important to members were the freedom to use
personal initiative and motivation, lack of external control and the respectful,
yet more informal, relationship between workers:

En otro trabajo te mandan y nada más, bueno, acá no.44

Es que no te mandan como en otros lados. Te dejan trabajar

tranquilo. No te apuran.45

Es diferente primeramente porque no tienes un patrón. No te está

mandando, vos sabés que eso es tuyo y que cuanto más trabajas
mejor para vos, ¿no?.46

A particular anecdote comparing the co-operative democratic system of

organisation with his experience of maltreatment whilst working in a grocery
store as a boy is provided by Daniel:

Ya me acostumbré acá … cuando era chico trabajaba en una

verdulería y trabajé tres días una semana. Me trató mal el dueño
cuando era chico, entonces tengo una mala imagen con los patrones
y los jefes y acá no hay jefe. Por eso me siento bien.47

A central theme of this study is the institutional crisis and perception of the
democratic political system in terms of irrelevance or antagonism by large

42
Mirta, Interview (I).
43
Micaela, Interview.
44
Micaela, Interview.
45
Ernesto, Interview.
46
Liliana, Interview.
47
Daniel, Interview.

338
sections of Argentines, notably those in marginal populations. As such, I
would suggest that the probable basis for the unanimous expressions of
satisfaction and sense of empowerment afforded by the truly democratic form
of co-operative organisation resides in the wider antithetic socio-political
context.

In keeping with freedom of member affiliation and withdrawal central to co-

operative principles, Tren Blanco had seen several changes to the original
membership due to registrations and resignations. The overarching impression
generated was that the members who took part in this study, los que estamos
ahora, having weathered difficult times and survived by solidarity and
sacrifice, were all the more determined to ensure a successful result for the co-
operative.48 As a result, the members recognised the need to work together in
solidarity as a team in order to make progress:

Yo pienso que ahora que somos pocos, todos tenemos la misma

opinión: que hay que sacarla y la vamos a sacar. Todos tiramos
para el mismo sitio… ¿No?49

… los que estamos ahora estamos todos mirando hacia el futuro,

mirando a que esto nos está abriendo caminos.50

In addition to the solid interpersonal bonds which had developed between the
members was a desire for increased intra-co-operative cohesion. Liliana
identifies the mutually valuable interaction in terms of both practical and
educational solidarity action:

Nos juntábamos diferentes cooperativas para ¿cómo le puedo decir?

para intercambiar ideas del trabajo, porque no todas hacemos lo
mismo y, bueno, en eso nos han ayudado bastante también ¿no? De
repente hay cosas que si necesitábamos una mano en el trabajo ellos
también estaban dispuestos a venir a ayudarnos. Hubo un momento
en que nosotros teníamos mucho trabajo en San Martín y bueno la
cooperativa estaba allí apoyando a prestar una mano para sacar el
trabajo más rápido. Es muy bueno tener relación con otras
cooperativas, es muy lindo. Porque aparte se puede tratar de hacer
diferentes cosas ¿no? El trabajo nuestro es uno, pero de repente,
48
Cristian, Interview.
49
Cristian Interview.
50
Micaela, Interview.

339
 juntando con otras cooperativas puedes hacer otras cosas que
también ayudan al barrio, ¿no?.51

Community Focus.
Given that the co-operative origins were firmly rooted in the concept of
developing a project with a community purpose, it is unsurprising that the
Tren Blanco co-operative members demonstrated a clear conviction that the
co-operative had the potential to have a very positive effect on the local
community.52 As a tool of community enrichment, either actual or projected,
the members identified several clear beneficial roles of the co-operative. The
areas identified were practical and material benefits, educational opportunities,
extremely significant positive psychological functions, and positive effects on
the local environment.

The most obvious practical and material benefit afforded to the community by
the co-operative was that it provided members of the community with a means
of evading the economic violence and possible actual physical violence
commonly experienced by cartoneros. The co-operative provided cartoneros
with an alternative outlet for their recyclables rather than that of exploitative
dependency in which they were prey to chicanery of unscrupulous middle-men
and mafioso-style entrepreneurs:

Sea el sacrificio de ellos, la sangre de ellos se la llevaban otros

porque fue fundamental; acá nosotros, si ese hombre trae treinta
kilos en ese bolsón y esa balanza le pesa treinta kilos exactos y este
otro intermediario que el bolso pesa treinta y la balanza le pesa
veinticinco o veinte, le roba diez kilos. Entonces le está robando la
sangre de ellos, porque ellos pasan el frío, así de frío para tomar
unos mates porque no hay para comer y en el verano empapados,
para que otros lleven, entonces por eso surgió esto de que se podría
formar una cooperativa.53

51
Liliana, Interview.
52
In the case the co-operatives with which I had personal contact, namely the Bauen Hotel,
CUC, Jardín Maternal del CUC, 19 de Diciembre, La Cacerola and Inimbo the community
focus represented a clear aspect of each co-operative’s current operation or projected itinerary.
53
The reference to ese hombre is to a customer who arrived to sell recyclables. Mirta,
Interview (II).

340
A further key aspiration, expressed by all the co-operative’s members, was for
the co-operative to provide a source of work for the local population, which, in

fact, did happen in a limited number of cases:

¿Cómo si acá al barrio le favorece que haya una cooperativa? Sí,

para muchos es bueno. Para mucha gente es bueno que exista la
cooperativa. Porque muchos también han venido a buscar auxilio si
necesitan algo de la cooperativa. En un par de veces, cuando se
pudo, estuvimos inclusive para algunos que necesitaron trabajo
porque por eso es la cooperativa. Entonces para muchos les sirvió.54

La cooperativa…algo bueno que dé trabajo para mucha gente. Sea

toda la gente que va en el Tren Blanco que le demos la posibilidad
de que estén trabajando, que no vayan a romper bolsas, a cortarse
las manos o a pincharse con algo.55

Nosotros proponemos trabajo para la gente, para más. Yo ahora no

voy a la capital, pero la gente…hay mucha gente que va a la capital,
y si nosotros estamos bien podríamos tomar más gente. Hay mucha
gente que quiere trabajar.56

Finally, Daniel notes the destructive potential of unemployment and the

potential value of the co-operative, ‘Estar sin empleo, es otro mundo, es una
cosa que la cooperativa también puede salvar a mucha gente. A mí me salvó y
a muchos también.’57

Several workplaces which reopened as co-operatives have established training

facilities such as community adult education centres offering classes in basic
literacy and numeracy.58 With the exception of Cristian, none of the members
of the co-operative had completed their basic primary education. However, as
a group, they recognised the value of education and were attending classes to
improve their skills, notably in order to work more effectively as business
people. Significantly, Liliana noted the increasing trend toward the

54
Liliana, Interview.
55
Cristian, Interview.
56
Micaela, Interview.
57
Daniel, Interview.
58
Of the fábricas recuperadas which I visited, both CUC and 19 de diciembre had initiated
discussions regarding organising staff and offering free adult evening classes on the premises.
Chilavert Printing Press, which benefits from widespread support from UBA students and
staff and the local asamblea, has a well-developed link with the community and hosts
numerous cultural and community activities.

341
requirement of formal qualifications for even basic posts.59 The Tren Blanco
members’ interest in advancing their own education was complemented by
their desire for the co-operative to develop educational opportunities for the
local residents. The theme of missed opportunity and/or frustrated ambition
was clearly salient to the experience of Mirta, an evidently able woman, whose
dream to study law was never accomplished, in all probability due to the
legacy of her childhood circumstances of extreme poverty.

The Tren Blanco co-operative had not actually initiated any community
projects but co-operative president Cecilia expressed her dream that the co-
operative would perform the role of funding a very specific youth training
project:

De la cooperativa… yo sueño de tener como un taller, pero de

carpintería. Y yo lo voy a hacer para - hay muchos chicos acá - que
consigan una laborcita. Chicos, chicas, entonces esto es lo que a mí,
más me gustaría llegar a hacer, a través de la cooperativa. Armar
este taller que sea como para varón y para la mujer porque hay
muchas muchachitas … eso es lo que me gustaría poder armar a
través de la cooperativa.60

Cecilia’s idea was supported by fellow co-operative member, experienced

carpenter Don Héctor, who still owns tools and machinery from his time as a
carpenter, which he states would be used to support the carpentry training
programmes.61 Unfortunately, these plans were never carried out because of
the co-operative’s lack of economic success.

In terms of psychological benefits, a further aspect of the importance of the

co-operative in the community was as a source of inspiration from which the
marginalised and unemployed members of Villa Independencia could draw
inspiration, hope and confidence. Working in solidarity, the villeros could
provide their own solution, circumventing the need to rely on institutions

59
Liliana, Interview.
60
Cecilia, Interview.
61
Don Héctor, Interview.

342
which had apparently lost legitimacy and failed them:

(La cooperativa) es muy importante porque allí demostramos a la

gente también que se puede hacer algo desde abajo, se puede
arrancar de cero. Lo que pasa es que arrancar de cero cuesta
mucho. Cuando arrancas siempre haces uno y bajas dos pero hay
que seguir, no hay que bajar los brazos…nosotros somos desde
abajo, que salimos de la montaña de la mugre y estamos
progresando. La mayoría no tenemos estudios, nunca tuvimos, nunca
tuvimos nada, siempre la mayoría íbamos en carreta a la capital o a
la quema y …nosotros que no tenemos estudios estamos haciendo
una empresa grande.62

…en grupo y en grupo hacemos el esfuerzo también y de esa manera

comenzamos y de esa manera muchos se pueden dar cuenta que si se
juntan se puede hacer muchas cosas, muchas, muchas…63

With specific reference to the younger population, Daniel, as a former young

offender himself, believes he has an insight into the thoughts of, and tensions
affecting, his fellow younger villeros and the related potential dangers, such as
drug and alcohol abuse and criminal activity, and the lack of hope for those
who perceive their future as holding no real promise. However, he identifies
the significance of the co-operative as a positive point of reference, as an
inspiration and place of welcome and refuge for the villa’s vulnerable younger
adult population:

Estoy tranquilo, antes mi vida era distinta. Vivía mal, vivía

intranquilo, vivía atensionado. La vida de la calle es muy triste,
jodida. Y eso es lo que pasa hoy, yo tengo 30 años y estoy en mi
barrio veo a los chicos de mi edad y yo veo, sé lo que están
pensando, sé lo que van a hacer. Pero hay una cosa, hay una
cooperativa y saben que los pibes pueden venir a trabajar y saben
también que hay muchos pibes que fueron como ellos. Entonces es
como una oportunidad más que hay, antes no había. No había
entonces, por allí uno no sabe dónde va a terminar. Pero hoy ¡sí!.
Hoy vamos nosotros con el camión por la villa todos los días nos
saludan los chicos y se suben al camión.64

62
Cristian, Interview.
63
Daniel, Interview.
64
Daniel, Interview.

343
Several members noted the potential environmental benefits of the co-
operative’s recycling role in both the local and the broader contexts. Lack of
provision of public services and basic amenities in the villas leads to the
dumping and unofficial burning of items, which in other areas of the city
would be collected by refuse management companies. In addition to the
possible noxious effects caused by burning solid waste, there is the potential
for causing fires, which are common and particularly hazardous in the villas
due to the type of materials used for construction and the cramped layout of
their construction. Ernesto noted the role the co-operative plays in reducing
the health and safety risks in the villa, ‘Compramos todo el plástico y la gente
no lo quema no lo prende fuego. Nosotros lo reciclamos.’65 Mirta, on the other
hand, identified the broader potential environmental cost of irresponsable
waste management practice.

The preceding section considered aspects of co-operative organisation

identified by the members as particularly valued features of organisation and
ideology which afforded the psychological benefits of self-esteem and sense of
purpose. A further central measure of the success of a workers’ co-operative is
improvement of the ‘quality of life’ of its members. Of course, defining and
quantifying this term is not straightforward. As George and Bearon note:

On the whole, social scientists have failed to provide consistent and

concise definitions of quality of life. The task is indeed problematic,
for definitions of life quality are largely a matter of personal or group
preferences; different people value different things.66

As such, perceptions of life quality can be expected to differ according to

multiple variables such as age, group, cultural background and gender.67

Farquar divides quality of life into two types of definitions: expert definitions
and lay definitions.68 Expert definitions vary in basis from extremely general,

65
Ernesto, Interview.
66
George and Bearon 1980, quoted in John Bond and Lynne Corner, Rethinking Ageing:
Quality of Life and Older People (Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press, 2004), p. 1.
67
Bond and Corner, pp. 4-5.
68
Bond and Corner, p. 4.

344
expressed in broad terms of happiness or dissatisfaction, to highly discipline-
specific definitions limited to a specific aspect of life quality. The lay
definitions interpret the concept of quality of life from the viewpoint of the
respondent. Given the specific focus of this study as a history ‘from below’,
the lay definition is more appropriate. This poses the question of what Tren
Blanco members identify as factors indicating life quality.

Given the extreme conditions of poverty in which members of the villa live,
the relationship between available money and good life quality may be more
closely linked than would probably be the case for members of less needy
populations. Certainly, following Bond and Corner, it would be reasonable to
say that quality of life was perceived in more modest terms by Tren Blanco
members. Even so, it is impossible to isolate financial issues from more
subjective considerations. For example, in Cristian’s view, a better quality of
life is expressed in terms of, ‘un plato de comida en la casa… tener para mi
familia y que no les falte para comer y no falta ropa para los chicos …tener
para salir un fin de semana con la familia, es algo muy importante también’.69
Clearly, Cristian’s concerns, although based on the need for money, are not
purely financial, and indicate other aspects of the young man’s central
considerations, such as his psychological need and desire to fulfil his role as
family breadwinner.

Concrete anecdotal evidence of improved life quality afforded by membership

of the co-operative was provided by several members. Ramona explained that
in the past she had been reduced to begging on the streets with her children.
Furthermore, as an individual cartonera, she had no option other than to take
her children with her until late at night, with the result that they were tired and
regularly missed school. Her work as a member of the co-operative meant her
children were no longer forced to gather recyclables at night and they could
better enjoy their childhood and school days:

… que yo pueda mantener a mis hijos, que mis hijos hagan vida de
chicos y que no anden en la calle como yo… Los tengo realmente y

69
Cristian, Interview.

345
 yo estoy acá por esa razón: el día de mañana ganar un buen sueldo y
que mis chicos se queden en casa y hagan vida de chicos. Eso es lo
que me importa más.70

For young married couple, Daniel and Micaela, as caretakers of the San
Martín processing warehouse, the co-operative had provided them with a
home of their own with the added benefit that it was at a distance from the
toxic environment of the José León Suárez landfill. As she explains:

Mis ambiciones eran y son, bueno, yo siempre yo y mi marido

siempre vivimos en la casa de mi suegra. Y bueno siempre quise
tener una casa. Gracias a Dios ahora estoy acá con mis hijos y
gracias a la cooperativa que hicieron esta casa y estoy con mis hijos
porque después quedé yo embarazada de él (Franco). Mi nene es
muy enfermo, es alérgico y él siempre se me enferma. Vivo más
internada y, bueno, quería tener una casa y ahora la tengo. Mi
futuro es seguir con la cooperativa adelante porque si esto sale mal
yo sé que también lo hacemos nosotros que somos yo y Daniel,
somos los que no tenemos casa, ésta es de la cooperativa pero bueno
ahora viene a ser de nosotros.71

Several members preferred the fact that working in the co-operative enabled
them to work in the more familiar setting of the villa. For Micaela, it is the
inter-personal familiarity of the barrio setting which she prefers:

Nosotros sí en el barrio sí siempre de que empezamos somos todos

del barrio y nos conocen todos. Ya nosotros nombramos y ya saben
que somos de la cooperativa… Más nosotros que somos de hablar
con todos del barrio. Yo hace igual… hace dos semanas que vine a
vivir acá, no hace mucho, hace poquito. Igual los vecinos todos
vienen a llevar los plásticos, no tenemos que recorrer, nos conocen
todos.72

For Ramona and Cecilia, working in the local area was also an improvement,
but on the basis that it enabled them to avoid work in the hostile environment
of Buenos Aires city streets. Ernesto, a young man from a dysfunctional
family background, took up residence in the San Martín co-operative premises

70
Doña Ramona, Interview.
71
Micaela, Interview.
72
Micaela, Interview.

346
and, in addition to benefits of basic accommodation and regular meals, found
supportive companionship in the co-operative environment.73

Work in co-operative theory, work as a positive value and Tren Blanco

members on work.
As noted in Chapter Two, co-operative theory, specific to worker/producer co-
operatives, highlights two of the central purposes of a worker co-operative as
to create dignity in human work and to enable members to make a living and
improve their material living standards. Chapter Two also included a brief
résumé, which considered conceptions of work as applied to several differing
cultures and time junctures. A central aspect of this was that, in addition to its
evident instrumental material purpose, work also fulfils other functions. These,
being broadly universally applicable, provide support for an individual’s
psychological wellbeing. Whilst not adhering rigidly to the criteria identified
by said research, the following section, which focuses on the subject of work
in the Tren Blanco co-operative, does, in fact, appear to broadly reflect the
conclusions of these earlier works.

Before considering the topic of work, it would be useful to comment briefly on

unemployment, both generally and also as experienced by the co-operative
members. Just as work affords the opportunity for satisfaction of
psychological needs, unemployment usually results in the stifling of the
benefits derived from its latent functions. Particularly in circumstances of
protracted unemployment, the latent functions of well-being derived from
work are no longer effective and money shortage is likely to impact on the
possibility of developing valid alternatives. In addition to reduced social
integration, unemployment, unlike retirement, often carries a stigma.74 The
Tren Blanco co-operative project was initiated by villeros who had moved into
cartoneo as a means of obtaining a living after having endured varying
extended periods of unemployment. Unemployment for the members of the
Tren Blanco is expressed in terms of feelings of depression, shame, lack of

73
Ernesto, Interview.
74
Warr, pp. 75-6.

347
personal value, boredom, frustration and, above all, humiliation related to the
conditions of impotence in which they found themselves:

Me inspira sentimientos de bronca de impotencia tristeza e

impotencia.75

No tengo para comprarme nada. No puede salir por ningún lado. Me

aburro.76

…Si uno no tiene trabajo es como si no tiene nada, porque usted se

pone mal. Yo soy una persona que es muy depresiva, entonces
cuando no tenía un trabajo no tenía nada. Iba a la capital y veía que
no tenía nada.77

Tren Blanco members viewed their work in instrumental terms and, for them,
earning money was necessarily the principal object of their activity. However,
in addition to providing income, members noted that their work also provided
additional beneficial psychological functions. Members afforded a variety of
significances to the concept of work in general. Cecilia and Liliana viewed it
in terms of obligation and responsibility:

Yo creo que el trabajo es todo para mí, tener un trabajo es una

obligación.78

El trabajo para mí es lo mejor porque trabajar te da vida. Yo por lo

menos trabajando me siento feliz. Soy una mujer que me gusta
trabajar, me gusta cumplir con los horarios y me gusta ser muy
responsable.79

Daniel, on the other hand, described work in terms of a revelatory or

illuminatory experience and an integral, vital aspect of the life process:

Y para mí…aprendí a vivir, aprendí a vivir trabajando. Aprendí lo

que es la vida, el sistema, como se ven de otra manera las cosas:
antes yo no entendía nada, veía las cosas de otra manera, totalmente
diferente a lo que es, ¿no?, la realidad. Es muy lindo. Es muy lindo

75
Mirta, Interview (I).
76
Ernesto, Interview.
77
Cecilia, Interview.
78
Cecilia, Interview.
79
Liliana, Interview.

348
 porque mucha gente hace lo mismo que hago yo, mucha gente. El
sistema es así; es trabajar, otra cosa no hay. Trabajar proyectar es
muy lindo.80

Tren Blanco members identified the benefits of their work as a means of

achieving increased self-esteem and status, the opportunity to advance their
personal intellectual development, social integration and contact with others,
environmental clarity and structure, and remaining physically active.

Several aspects of the specific nature of their work were identified by

members as contributing directly to feelings of raised self-esteem.81 Firstly,
the fact that their work in the co-operative represented a potential benefit to
the vecinos of the immediate community constituted a source of pride for
members. In addition, as co-operative members, they were afforded a high
level of recognition in the community setting. Secondly, the nature of their
work as recyclers constituted a further source of self-esteem. The villa’s close
proximity to the Relleno III landfill ensured members were privy to the
ecological focus of the heated debate taking place in José León Suárez on the
specific dangers of the site. The ecological profile reflected in both national
and international discourse further confirmed the altruistic aspect of their
work. Compounding the members’ awareness of the central role organisations
such as theirs played in increasingly significant green politics was the visit
paid by a group from a German ecological charity organisation to the co-
operative’s José León Suárez site.

However, Liliana speaks in less altruistic terms; the self-esteem she feels is
also a means of moving from social marginality to inclusion:

Llegar a ser alguien, llegar a ser alguien mejor, ¿no? Yo pienso que
al decir ‘querer ser alguien’, no sé, ¿cómo le puedo explicar?, ser
alguien bienvenido, hemos llegado a otros lados, ¿no?, por el tema
de la cooperativa …Conocer a gente, que no nos maltraten, que no
nos discriminen porque nosotros trabajamos con la carreta … si vos
querés hablar con alguien es como que no porque vos sos cirujano

80
Liliana, Interview.
81
The exception to this was Don Héctor.

349
 no podés hablar con otra persona. Pienso que me refería un poco a
esto.82

A further widely recognised benefit members identified was the opportunity

afforded by their work to practise and/or learn new skills. Roberto refers to
experience in problem-solving and inter-personal skills he gained in his daily
work:
Empecé a relacionarme con mucha más gente, …Relacionarme con
la gente que tenía otro vocabulario por allí y acá…y yo es como ir a
otro país y que tienen otro idioma. Lo mismo de un barrio y una
ciudad son como dos idiomas distintos y adaptarse a eso, conocer a
gente…me gusta. Además, ayudar a mis compañeros porque tanto
los pibes como yo, que todavía hacen en la capital, quiero que
tengan lo mejor. Tienen hijos y todo…gracias a eso… puedo pensar
racionalmente lo que puede ya pasar, uno se pone a pensar, por allí
eso no funciona, pero por allí eso sí funciona…83

Although Roberto did not mention it specifically, other members noted that he
had gained particular experience in the subject of plastics and it was Roberto
they would consult if they had any specific queries regarding plastic goods.

Don Héctor could be described as a prototype of the man who ‘lives and
breathes’ his work. In the case of Don Héctor, as a carpenter and the most
highly skilled worker/member of the Tren Blanco, his sense of identity and
passion were firmly rooted in woodwork. As such, it should be noted that Don
Héctor did not appear to share the sense of self-improvement that the recycling
project afforded other co-operative members, and his personal aspiration was
to be an instructor in a community carpentry project.

A further aspect of work which the members identified as positive and

valuable to them was the increased social integration and contact it created.
Ernesto identifies the value of the relationship with fellow co-operative
members as,‘divertido, a veces sí, nos reímos bastante’. Liliana, Micaela and
Roberto, however, all identify a positive aspect of their work, in the specific

82
Liliana, Interview.
83
Roberto, Interview.

350
context of the co-operative, offering the opportunity to enjoy a certain variety
of activities and contact with others outside the confines of the co-operative:

Porque el tema de la cooperativa es una puerta que se abre

grande¿no? para conocer gente. Porque gracias a la cooperativa
nosotros conocimos gente, conocimos lugares que jamás íbamos a
conocer, por intermedio de la cooperativa. Y es muy lindo conocer a
otras personas. Y que no te discriminen porque si no hubiera sido
por la cooperativa, hay mucha gente que nunca se hubiera podido
llegar a hablar con nosotros.84

Tren Blanco members were unanimous in identifying the value of work as a

means of providing clarity and structure to their lived experience. This could
take the form of adherence to timetables and the need to meet unexpected
deadlines in order to provide quality service or even a clearly defined job
description:

Mantenerme en un lugar fijo en una máquina fija. 85

El trabajo es algo que tenía que ser rutinario.86
Podemos tener algo ¿qué sé yo? una fuente de trabajo y trabajar
todos horarios fijos.87

It could also be the broader interpretation of clarity in one’s personal

circumstances, which work can afford. For example, the more complex issue
of a vision of the future, which, for those with dependants, extended to the
assurance of wellbeing and improved life quality for their children, ‘¡Qué es el
futuro de ellos! Esto es el futuro de ellos. La cooperativa, nosotros vemos,
ellos van a ser dueños si seguimos.’88

Finally, the fact that work was a means of enabling physical activity was of
central importance to several members, most specifically Ernesto, Micaela, and
Roberto. Ernesto equates not working with boredom. Michaela expresses a
natural, possibly inherited, disposition towards activity, ‘Desde que era chica

84
Liliana, Interview.
85
Ernesto, Interview.
86
Cristian, Interview.
87
Cristian, Interview; Liliana.
88
Micaela, Interview.

351
siempre hacía algo. No es que fuera una chica de no hacer nada. Mi papá es
muy activo, todo eso, y entonces siempre hacíamos algo.’89 For Roberto, work
affords physical well-being, ‘Me gusta el trabajo, cualquier trabajo, cuando
trabajo lo hago bien, cuando no trabajaba el cuerpo no me daba, el cuerpo
dolía mucho ahora tengo más fuerza, me levanta más el ánimo y la salud.’ 90

The demise of the Tren Blanco co-operative.

In the early stages of the project, the co-operative experienced several setbacks.
These can be attributed to two main factors. Firstly, members were
disadvantaged by their general lack of business knowledge and confidence. This
was exemplified by the anecdotal example provided by the co-operative’s
treasurer, who, accustomed to the cash and exchange villa transaction system,
admitted to feeling daunted and overwhelmed at the prospect of writing out a
cheque.91 Secondly, there was the members’ lack of basic technical training, for
example, in the area of the specific composition and resale value of recyclables,
which led to a costly error.92 This raises the question of whether micro-project
grants should be accompanied by access to training and support for the
recipients.

Having achieved a level of success and gained confidence, the co-operative

decided to add the purchase and preparation of plastics to their range. However,
lack of training in the basic properties of plastics led them to acquire a
considerable amount of non-recyclable material, leading to double financial loss,
as not only was the co-operative responsible for the initial cost of the plastics
but also for removal and disposal of the unwanted material.

Further problems occurred due to inadequate access to finance to enable the

purchase of reliable equipment and inexperienced decision-making. A key aim
of any co-operative is to increase earnings by removing middlemen. In an
attempt to mirror the practices of the larger processing co-operatives, which use
machinery to increase the density of the recyclables by grinding and milling

89
Micaela, Interview.
90
Roberto, Interview.
91
Mirta, Interview (II).
92
Don Héctor, Interview; Mirta, Interview (II).

352
themselves, the co-operative elected to request a loan from the Banco Nación to
purchase a second-hand industrial compacting machine, which suffered repeated
breakdowns and required costly repairs. The co-operative’s truck, purchased as
a means of cutting out costly transportation services, suffered a similar fate,
being in bad mechanical and structural condition and requiring repeated repairs.

After three years in operation, the members were able to make a single
significant withdrawal of 600 pesos.93At the time of the fieldwork for this study
(July-August 2007) members were receiving a withdrawal of 20 pesos per
week.94 To put this into perspective, in a trend of constantly increasing prices,
the estimated cost of a weekly basic shopping basket for 2006 was 197 pesos.95

The cancellation of the Tren Blanco service.

In December 2007, having made certain progress, the co-operative was to suffer
a further serious misfortune causing the collapse of the organisation, namely, the
TBA decision to withdraw the Tren Blanco service. The significance of the
withdrawal of the Tren Blanco service for the individual cartonero is described
thus: ‘By taking away the trains they take away our lives. When I left today I
had only five pesos to give to my wife to buy food for ourselves and our child.
This is already nothing. What do we do now when I lose the possibility to
work?’96

The effects of the withdrawal of the Tren Blanco service have been noted in
Chapter Five. However, it bears restating that, for José León Suárez’s
cartoneros, options were limited. The local area and the Quema could not

93
Mirta, Interview (II).
94
Mirta, Interview (II).
95
INDEC, ‘Canasta básica alimentaria y canasta básica total: Historia, forma de cálculo e
interpretación’, October 2012, p. 4
<http://www.dippec.jujuy.gov.ar/canasta/informe_canastas_basicas-oct2012.pdf > [accessed 6
July 2013].
96
Baz Bijilsma-Niza and Michaela Hordijk, ‘Open Streets but Closed Minds: Differentiated
Exclusion of Buenos Aires Cartoneros’, in Challenges to Open Cities in Africa, Asia, Latin
America and the Middle East: Shared Spaces Within and Beyond, Network-Association of
European Researchers on Urbanisation in the South (N-AERUS) (Rotterdam: Erasmus
University,1-3 October 2009)
<http://www.naerus.net/web/sat/workshops/2009/Rotterdam/Rotterdam_2009.htm> accessed [
25 September 2012]

353
provide sufficient material, which left transportation to the city centre by private
or official lorries as their only other option. The impact on the co-operative was
twofold; not only were co-operative members unable to access the city streets to
seek recyclables themselves, but also the independent local cartoneros, on
whose business they relied, found themselves with no other option than to either
sell their collection to a dealer in the city centre or to the actual owner of the
transportation, often, as noted previously, under extremely exploitative terms.

The cancellation of the Tren Blanco service had made running the co-operative
unviable. Members were forced to acknowledge the need to seek alternative
employment. In January 2008, a full assembly was called to discuss the situation
and, although their decision was to leave the co-operative legally registered, in
reality, it ceased to function from that point. Following the demise of the co-
operative, members moved on to other options.
Ernesto has left the area and his current circumstances are unknown.

Roberto went on to combine informal construction work with cartoneo. For a

period he was signed on to a government scheme, which afforded him a small
income on the condition that he worked three days a week. The terms of the
scheme allowed him to sell the items he had gathered and, as a result, he is now
in a nominally more secure financial situation.97

Daniel, an individual completely jaded by political treachery, nepotism and

impunity, whose main hope was that the co-operative would provide him a level
of independence, went to work as a member of the cartonero co-operative which
now occupies the former Tren Blanco San Martín co-operative warehouse.

Micaela, an active individual who enjoyed co-operative work on account of the

mental and physical stimulation it provided, began working in an informal
capacity as carer to an aged invalid lady.

97
This programme is discussed in Chapter Ten.

354
Doña Ramona became a member of a cleaning co-operative working only four
hours a day. This provided her with barely sufficient income to provide for her
family and her handicapped granddaughter.

Liliana and Cecilia did not find work and became dependent on the income
earned by their partners.

Both Don Héctor and Mirta retired and receive state pensions, which enables
them to survive in terms of basic requirements. However, the difficult physical
conditions of life in the villa persist. This is a cause of particular concern to their
families due to their age and, in Mirta’s case, her debilitation from Chagas
disease.

However, most disappointing of all is that Cristian was sent to prison and served
a four-year sentence for drug-related crime. For this young man, his hope was
that the co-operative would enable him to provide for his dependants and to
complete his own secondary school studies.

To conclude, the Tren Blanco co-operative was formed as a result of a

combination of circumstances: extremes of poverty, economic desperation,
institutional abandonment, existence of a high-profile wider co-operative
movement, a level of state receptiveness to popular projects and, finally,
support from a local activist. The co-operative members’ attitude towards the
significance of the project showed not only aspects of instrumentalism and
pragmatism but also altruism and community spirit. In addition to providing
community benefits, working in the co-operative also provided the members
emotional and intellectual benefits. However, their contribution revealed an
overarching desire that their work would afford them future independence,
self-determination, and control over their lives. This is synthesised by Mirta as
follows:
Mi mayor ambición para el futuro es ésta, completar esta obra …
dejar para mi familia, para mis nietos, un lugar del trabajo digno…
Me gustaría tener una casa chiquita con mis comodidades,… tener
mi propio sustento. No depender de nadie más que de Dios.98

98
Mirta, Interview (I).

355
Chapter Ten

Conclusion

The focus of this thesis is the presentation of insights into the worldviews of a
small group of marginalised Argentine shantytown inhabitants who, in the
context of severe economic necessity, took the decision to establish a co-
operative to benefit themselves and their community. This was a modest project,
which, during its early operation, barely provided subsistence levels of cash
withdrawals for members, whose dreams that the venture would flourish and
provide employment and funding for community educational projects were not
realised. Therefore, if the project were considered in purely pragmatic terms, it
would be branded a resounding failure. However, this reading, which did not
present the account from the viewpoint of an economic lens, identifies the Tren
Blanco members (hi)story related in Chapters Eight and Nine in terms of
success. Rather than remain passive, Tren Blanco’s members joined numerous
other Argentines in rejecting the ‘¡sálvese quien pueda!’ mentality of neoliberal
hegemonic discourse in favour of constructing an alternative form of working
and lifestyle based on co-operation, solidarity, organic, democratic practice and
community responsibility. It could be suggested that their actions reflected a
microcosmic expression of Dinerstein’s literary metaphor of ‘disagreement’ and
‘hope’ expressed as the ‘emancipatory poetry’, ‘No to what exists, Yes to what
is not yet’.1

What follows are some concluding remarks. First, the subject of the thesis as an
original contribution to knowledge is considered. Second, some final thoughts
on the topic of the work’s subaltern perspective are presented. Third, the key
points made by the Tren Blanco co-operative members are revisited. After this,
recent waste-management legislation related to the topic of cartoneo is
considered. Finally, some thoughts on Argentina’s recent government, the
implications for the future of grassroots social organisation and the country’s
broader political development are offered.

1
Dinerstein, ‘Disagreement’, p. 117.

356
The thesis as an original contribution to knowledge.
Chapter Two noted that limited research has been conducted on the phenomenon
of Argentina’s cartoneros, whilst highlighting the fact that studies of cartonero
co-operatives are even sparser. Undoubtedly, this research shares parallels with
several other works, in terms of the topic, the choice of methodology and, to
some extent, the chronological and geographical contexts represented. This is
notably the case in Fajn’s pioneering study and Paiva’s comparative project.2
However, this study has focused on three key areas of investigation: the
participants’ perception the subjects of work, co-operative organisation and
contemporary politics. By presenting these in the participants’ own words, the
reader is afforded a more authentic, personal and nuanced understanding of their
views. Therefore, this thesis can be deemed to provide an original contribution
to the current literature on the subject of grassroots organisation and organic
responses in the circumstances of Argentina’s post-2001 economic meltdown
and socio-political crisis.

The subaltern perspective.

A central aspect of this work is its subaltern focus. Indeed, Argentina’s twentieth-
century history can be viewed in terms of expressions of subaltern identity at the
national, inter-provincial and inter-class levels, each of which has formed the basis of
revisionist interpretation and/or counter-hegemonic discourse. As we have seen, the
country’s early twentieth-century trade relationship as primary producer was
reinterpreted in terms of imperialism and dependency. The civilisation-barbarism
paradigm, which was initially challenged by new nationalist discourse, transferred
into the urban setting, finding expression in the unequal socio-economic relationship
between the predominantly autochthonous working-class population and the
Eurocentric porteño elite. It was to each aspect of this tripartite vision of subalternity
that Perón presented his counter-hegemonic discourse, which, it has been argued,
continues to influence contemporary politics and culture.

2
Fajn, Cooperativa; Paiva, Cartoneros y cooperativas.

357
In respect to the case study presented here, the subaltern focus was selected to offer a
contrast to traditional elitist recording of history ‘from above’. It is hoped that by
affording a voice to the Tren Blanco members, the work constitutes a contribution,
albeit minuscule, towards more balanced representation. The selection of a lead for
the subaltern interpretation of the work was taken from Gramsci’s Marxist concept of
subaltern identity. However, as was previously noted, Gramsci’s interest in
representation of subaltern protest activity was geared towards entirely political ends.
This explains the tendency of students of the subaltern to favour representation of
initiatives which had achieved greater levels of maturity according to the Gramscian
criteria of subaltern organisation. That is, initiatives which articulate progressive
narratives with the perceived potential to replace those of the reactionary hegemonic
power.3 In the Argentine context, one example of such an organisation is the MTE,
which enjoys broad-based support and an international profile.4 Clearly, the Tren
Blanco initiative cannot be compared to this organisation in quantitative terms.
However, it should be emphasised that Gramsci highlighted the value of recording
every trace of independent initiative by subaltern groups, irrespective of their size and
apparently minimal influential capacity. 5 Furthermore, the results of the interviews
indicate that regarding their level of consciousness, or ‘buon senso’, the members had
achieved a high level of critical perception of recent hegemonic discourses presented
in Menemist neoliberalism and Kirchner’s national popular model, which also
extended to hegemonic political discourse in general.

The case-study presented in this thesis constitutes an integral history in Gramscian

terms. It is, a recording, which, rather than documenting historical developments in
purely positivistic terms, reflects the socio-economic, political and cultural
implications of subaltern developments by relating particular historical events to
broader socio-political contexts. The central aim of this type of presentation is ‘the
analysis of particular events, in order to conceptualize processes of historical

3
Projects chosen for study by researchers who seek to adopt a Gramscian subaltern approach
include The Occupy Wall Street Movement. Crehan; Marcus E. Green, ‘Gramsci and Subaltern
Struggles Today: Spontaneity, Political Organization, and Occupy Wall Street,’ in Antonio
Gramsci, ed. by Mark McNally (New York, NY: Palgrave, 2015), pp. 156-78.
4
See Chapter Six and the MTE website <http://mteargentina.org.ar/> [accessed 17 January
2017]
5
Antonio Gramsci, ‘Quaderno’, 25: 2
<https://quadernidelcarcere.wordpress.com/2015/06/12/criteri-metodologici-3/> [accessed 16
January 2017]

358
development, and understand the way in which the processes relate to people’s lived
experiences.’6 To this end, this thesis has explored aspects of Argentine socio-
economic and political history, providing a contextualisation of the subaltern history
presented in Chapters Eight and Nine. The introduction to this work outlined the
immediate conditions of socio-economic hardship in which the co-operative was
established. Chapter Three presented the economic models and hegemonic discourses
from early-twentieth-century liberalism to Kirchner’s ‘neo-desarrollismo’, including
a parallel account of popular-sector experience under these models. This provided an
insight into the various accompanying perceptions and counter-hegemonic discourses
discussed in greater detail in the following chapter. Meanwhile, Chapters Five, Six
and Seven provided contextualisation more specific to the subjects of Argentine co-
operation, contemporary social organisation and marginal communities.

The Tren Blanco members’ message: politics, work and co-operative work.
The following section offers some final words on the messages conveyed by the
results of the field study. A repeated theme which arose was the general level of
affection Argentines expressed towards their native land.7 This affection, generally
described in terms of patriotism, also emerged as a key theme in conversations with
Tren Blanco members. It appears that despite their marginal and humble social
status, the Tren Blanco members had a strong sense of duty towards the country.
They clearly indicated that they regarded themselves and other Argentine citizens as
being responsible for curbing any excesses resulting from self-serving irresponsible
governance by the political class. One member in particular revealed a clear
awareness of the capacity of Argentine people for political renewal, expressing his
support for direct political action and highlighting the fact that it was the duty of the
Argentine people to depose inadequate corrupt leaders, as ‘El pueblo mismo tiene
que cansarse un día y decir ¡basta!,¡No puede ser! .8 Whilst recognising the
tenuous speculative nature of the following assertion, I would nevertheless hazard
the suggestion that the apparent perception of the role demonstrated by the popular

6
Green, ‘Gramsci Cannot Speak’, p. 10.
7
Expressions of national pride and affection for the country occurred on a regular basis during
conversations with co-operative members of the recovered workplaces. However, it was also the
case that in conversations with members of the general public, similar sentiments were
expressed.
8
Daniel, Interview.

359
sectors in the national stewardship echoes traditions established in the mid-
twentieth-century Peronist experience.

Remaining with the political, Tren Blanco members retained the lack of trust in the
integrity and/or competence of the political class and demonstrated the anti-political
sentiment characteristic of an extensive sector of the population during the
post-2001 '¡Qué se vayan todos!' period. That is to say, the approval and acceptance
which Kirchner’s socio-political model had succeeded in garnering from
mainstream society was not reflected in the attitudes of the Tren Blanco members.
As noted in the previous chapter, certain of the co-operative’s members did afford
Kirchner a level of cautious endorsement on the grounds of perceived
improvements in the broader socio-economic climate during his mandate. However,
the majority view was negative. One member explained that this was due to the
simple fact that he was a politician.9 However, there can be little doubt that their
opinions were based on their day-to-day lived experience. Whereas sectors of the
population had witnessed concrete improvements under Kirchner both in terms of
their personal economic circumstances and broader issues, notably in the area of
human rights, this was not the case for the participants of this study. Empirical
evidence demonstrated that the Kirchner government had failed to address the
problems faced by the marginalised Villa Independencia population. Reflecting the
neoliberal experience, the conditions of social marginalisation, inadequate basic
living standards and exposure to economic and physical violence, including
conspicuous abuse and coercion perpetrated by political representatives and law
enforcement agents, continued unabated within the confines of the villa.

The theme of anti-imperialism punctuated Argentina’s twentieth century, gaining a

particularly high profile in the mid-1940s when it constituted a central pillar of
Perón’s political discourse. In the context of the historic antecedents in international
relations and the vehement accusations of foreign imperialism directed against the
internationational financing agencies accompanying the protests of 2001, researcher
expectations were that expressions of anti-imperialism would be included in the
political opinions of the Tren Blanco members. Certainly, a number of co-operative

9
Daniel, Interview.

360
members from recovered workplaces visited during the fieldwork indicated
antagonism towards the conduct of international financing agencies and highlighted
their role in the country’s economic troubles. The topic of land appropriation by
foreign finance also arose as a concern.10 However, no member of the Tren Blanco
co-operative demonstrated any level of anti-imperialist feelings, nor was any
mention made of the possible detrimental role of international financing institutions
in the country’s economic deterioration. This echoes Spivak’s point regarding
learning ‘from below’ and the need to relinquish Eurocentric value judgements and
remain open to responses which often run contrary to researcher expectations For
Tren Blanco members, their interest was in the local and practically
accomplishable. However, it would be an error to imagine that their local focus was
the result of insular perceptions for, in fact, the group demonstrated a clear
awareness that the relevance of their struggle extended far beyond the confines of
the villa and into the national and international panorama. Their personal
experience of international intervention at the local level had been favourable,
having taken the form of solidarity activity expressed at both the co-operative and
community levels.

A brief consideration of the subject of work was presented in Chapter Two of

this thesis. At that point, the contrasting perceptions of work in the Catholic and
Protestant Christian traditions were noted. Argentina’s population is
predominantly Catholic; however, it should be noted than only a very small
percentage of Argentines practise their religion.11 Furthermore, it appears that
the view of work adopted by many Argentines is, in fact, closer to the positive
perception of work as expressed by the Protestant form of Christianity noted in
Chapter Two. However, it appears that, for a significant sector of Argentines,
perceptions surrounding the subject of work are, in fact, based on cultural rather
than religious guidelines. Chapter Three identified Perón and the early Peronist

10
Enrique Iriarte, president of the 19 de diciembre co-operative noted a specific example of this,
expressing anger at the purchase of expanses of Patagonia by the Benetton ‘family’. The reason
for his concern was the fact that the dimensions of the purchases prohibited access to areas of
the land, effectively representing a ‘privatisation of sections of the country or the creation of
small independent states’. Enrique Iriarte, Conversation 2 August 2007.
11
According to a very recent CIA report, updated in January 2017, 92 percent of the Argentine
population are nominally Roman Catholic, of which under 20 percent identify themselves as
practising Catholics; the Protestant component represents a mere two percent. CIA, ‘The World
Fact Book’, January 2017<https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-
factbook/geos/ar.html> [accessed 17 March 2017]

361
movement as a crucial turning point in contemporary Argentine history. It was
also noted in this chapter that the author’s empirical experience supports the
belief that cultural trends and political beliefs adopted and internalised during
Perón’s first presidencies persist in the contemporary context. It could be
tentatively suggested that the persistence of elements of Perón’s discourse,
notably those related to socio-economic rights of inclusion and universal well-
being, can be translated into Gramscian terms on two levels as they apparently
echo the ‘senso comune’ of early to mid-twentieth century. However, in doing
this they also provide the basis of forward-looking, revolutionary ‘buon senso’.

However, the specific element of Perón’s early discourse and politics of interest
at this particular point relates to the topic of work. The enduring bond which
Perón established with the popular classes was founded to a significant extent on
their identity as workers, an identity which they shared with Perón himself,
Argentina’s, self-proclaimed ‘Number One Worker’. The perception of work as
a right, a responsibility and a source of dignity whereby worker identity was
synonymous with positive status, established under mid-twentieth-century
Peronism, appears to have persisted.12 The results of this research appear to
support this in that the members’ claim to worker status was central to their
sense of personal worth and self-esteem. A further indication of the persistence
of this perception was the fact that the feelings the members associated with
their experience of unemployment were anger and frustration at the denial of
what they viewed as a fundamental right at both a personal and a community
level.

Several younger members noted the fact that cartoneo, if not work in the
conventional sense, was nevertheless a decent means of earning money as
opposed to the options of theft or other lucrative criminal activity. However, the
persistence of the importance of work and a claim to worker identity as
fundamental to self-esteem in the conditions of unemployment and paucity of
formal work created the need for a redefinition of what constituted work.

12
Perón used the term primer trabajador argentino during his iconic address October 1946 to
the crowd, which, significantly, he addressed as ‘trabajadores’ in the Plaza de Mayo following
his release from arrest and retirement from the army. However, the term was subsequently used
by others, including ‘Evita’.

362
Members who identified having battled with feelings of shame in the early
stages of making their living from cartoneo explained that these feelings were
overcome when they accepted and redefined their activity as work, ‘un trabajo
como cualquier otro’.13 Furthermore, the fact that their workplace was a legally
registered formal business with the additional status of belonging to the high-
profile field of conservation and sustainability also appeared to be significant.

The positive value attributed to work demonstrated by the members has been
explained by the author in terms of aspects of historical hegemonic discourse.
However, the subject of work was also discussed in more general terms by
Tren Blanco members. As noted in Chapter Two, work is generally carried out
primarily for its pragmatic value. The fact that the majority of the members
began the work against their will due to the absence of alternative means of
effecting their survival attests to their supremely pragmatic attitude. However,
they also spoke in more abstract terms of the positive value of work for them
at the personal level. To a large extent, the members’ responses reflected those
identified in studies carried out in different time frames and locations,
suggesting a significant degree of inter-temporal and inter-spacial
transferability. The latent functions of work identified by Jahoda and Warr
were all recognised by the various members as aspects of invovement in work,
which they regarded as positive and contributing to their emotional wellbeing.
On the specific topic of co-operative work, members identified equality,
camaraderie or solidarity and independent and democratic decision-taking as
attractive aspects of co-operative organisation.

This thesis has argued that the particular forms of mobilisation adopted by
Argentines at the turn of the twentieth century constituted a clear rejection of
and alternative to the individualist values promoted by the preceeding
neoliberal government. The values of co-operative work identified by the
members noted in the preceeding paragraph reflect the broader trend towards
organisation and working patterns based on social responsibility and greater
self-determination.

13
Cecila, Don Héctor, Mirta and Liliana expressed this sentiment.

363
Cartoneros.
The introductory chapter of this thesis documented soaring levels of
unemployment, which plunged unprecedented numbers of Argentines into
poverty and struggling to find alternative means of survival, often in the areas of
unregulated or informal sector work. Amongst the most unfortunate were those
citizens ‘forced’ work in the physically challenging, often dangerous, illegal and
highly stigmatised activity of cartoneo. The subject of official response to the
cartoneros in the period during which the Tren Blanco co-operative was
operational was discussed in Chapters Six and Seven. It was argued that CABA
government legislation, introduced in 2003 and 2005, which was aimed at
regulating the cartoneros’ activity and ameliorating the process of waste
treatment respectively, had proven largely divisive and ineffective.

Subsequent measures introduced in late 2008 during the renegotiating of the

city’s formal waste contracts benefited a small proportion of the cartonero
population who were subscribed as members of selected co-operatives. By 2010,
some 2,000 cartoneros were registered on the programme and in receipt of
certain benefits, including a modest monthly fixed-sum payment and social
security entitlement.14 However, recruitment on the government programme in
the post-2010 period was reportedly difficult and, unsurprisingly, minimal.15
Furthermore, it should be emphasised that the benefits of the programmes did
not imply formalised workers’ rights, with full salaries and regulated working
conditions; ultimately cartoneros on the programme remained largely
responsible for their personal survival. Additionally, risk of marginalisation was
exacerbated for the majority of the cartonero population who were unable to
join the programme.16

As noted above, in practical terms, government response to the cartoneros

appears to have constituted an arbitrary and partial solution. The failure of
official programmes to provide an effective comprehensive solution to the
14
The payment was equivalent to approximately 66 US dollars, which was less than half of their
living wage. Parizeau, ‘Formalisation’, p. 504. For a detailed account of the concessions
afforded to the cartoneros inscribed on the government programme, see Villanova, ‘Los
Cartoneros’, pp. 77-81.
15
Parizeau, ‘Formalisation’, p. 505.
16
Parizeau, ‘Re-representing’, p. 294.

364
material needs and social marginalisation suffered by the majority of cartoneros
has been interpreted from several viewpoints. Less censorious appraisals of
early legislation point to a hasty, stop-gap government response introduced in an
attempt to placate both disenfranchised citizens and business elites amidst the
chaotic socio-economic conditions inherited from 1990s neoliberal policy. More
critical interpretations of government policy towards the cartoneros, and other
grassroots survival projects, identify the government response as a deliberate
divide-and-rule package based on the tactics of co-optation and repression.
Hence Lo Vuolo’s claim that government policy constituted a form of ‘static
regulation’, that is, policy deployed not with the aim of seriously addressing
critical socio-economic problems but rather to maintain government dominance
and control of the socio-economic status quo.17 Finally, Villanova’s in-depth
study into the post-2008 initiatives strongly supports the suggestion that the real
purpose of the measures was, in fact, much more economic than social.
Purportedly aimed at providing material support, social inclusion and dignified
working conditions for the marginalised cartoneros, they were actually a means
of achieving an extremely cost-effective recycling service by exploiting the
cartoneros’ need and vulnerability.

Of interest is the fact that Argentina’s current president, Mauricio Macri, was
CABA governor from 2007 onwards and, as such, oversaw post-2008
programmes for the restructuring of Buenos Aires city. The regeneration, which
aimed to foster heightened capital accumulation, has been defined in terms of
neoliberal urban governance.18 Although case-specific, the basis of all neoliberal
governance is negotiation; this applies to cultural norms, identity configuration,
the physical environment and, most significant to this topic, resistance and
political mobilisation.19

An interesting perspective from which to consider the CABA government

programmes aimed at the cartoneros is that of Foucault’s concept of neoliberal
‘governmentality’. In brief, neoliberal governmentality, or the ‘conduct of

17
Lo Vuolo. Also, see Chapter Five.
18
Sternberg; Parizeau, ‘Re-representing’.
19
Sternberg, p. 187.

365
conduct’ is the process that promotes social conditions which encourage the
creation of a form of subjectivity which is a ‘free and autonomous “atom” of
self-interest’.20 The formalisation or disciplining of the body of independent
marginal cartonero workers as an aspect of the city’s neoliberalisation project
can be viewed as a concrete example of this process of ‘governmentality’. As
they formed co-operatives and bid for contracts, the formerly disorganised,
independent cartoneros, now uniform-wearing, personally responsible, waste
management small business entrepreneurs were recast as neoliberalised subjects.
Furthermore, remaining with Foucault but shifting to the wider theme of
biopolitics, the effect of the normalisation of a group of cartoneros was that
individuals who failed to integrate themselves into the system were open to
perceptions of inadequacy and otherness, leaving them vulnerable to official
neglect and/or violence.21

Final words.
During the period the co-operative was operational, and at the time the
fieldwork for this research was conducted, the country was under the
government of President Néstor Kirchner. Kirchner had made significant
progress in redressing the damaged credibility of the political system on the
basis of his perceived firm stance and successful performance in areas of
economic and political independence and sovereignty. Added to this was his
commitment to socially-aware governance. In reality, however, a fact eclipsed
by the government’s ostensibly positive performance was that improvements
often failed to reach the most vulnerable unregulated sectors of the population.22
Following Kirchner’s presidency, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner assumed the
presidency with high popularity ratings. Despite re-election in 2012, her
popularity declined. Salient criticisms of her presidency were rising inflation,
corruption, data manipulation, escalating violent crime and authoritarianism.
However, the government’s social policy was commended, notably the

20
Trent H. Hamann, ‘Neoliberalism, Governmentality, and Ethics’, Foucault Studies, 6 (2009),
37-59 (p. 37).
21
See Chapter Two p. 52, fn. 100.
22
Levitsky and Murillo, p. 28.

366
Universal Child Allowance initiative, introduced in 2009 and directed at
households outside the formal labour market.23

Clearly, programmes such as the Universal Child Benefit initiative provide a

level of support for poorer parents. However, this does not prevent the members
of vulnerable populations from appreciating the broader picture. As such, Tren
Blanco co-operative treasurer Mirta, now retired, identified the payments as no
more than a palliative measure which did not address the crucial need of
younger members of marginalised populations for stable work and genuine
social inclusion, ‘¡Por qué no les dan un trabajo real!’ 24

At the time of writing, Argentina’s president is Mauricio Macri, the former

CABA governor who assumed office in December 2015 and introduced a swift
return to neoliberal policy. However, Macri’s popularity is waning as socio-
economic ills associated with the 1990s Menemist model are on the increase.
Poverty, unemployment, informal working patterns and income distribution
inequality are all rising.25 As such, for the foreseeable future, grassroots
initiatives and projects, such as the Tren Blanco co-operative as well as
organisations and networks from the local asambleas to the more high-profile
MTE will remain vital to provide support and alternative visions for the
cartoneros and other marginalised and impoverished Argentines.

General elections are scheduled for 2019 which may result in the return of a
variant of peronist style governance. However, as noted by Levitsky and
Murillo, when government fails to address the issues of marginality and
inequality levels of social polarisation and conflict are created, implying a real

23
Sebastián Etchemendy and Candelaria Garay class the law as the most important social right
since the return of democracy in 1983. Sebastián Etchemendy and Candelaria Garay, ‘Argentina:
Left Populism in Comparative Perspective, 2003-2009’, in The Resurgence of the Latin
American Left, ed. by Steven Levitsky and Kenneth M. Roberts (Baltimore, Maryland: John
Hopkins University Press, 2011), pp. 283-305 (p. 296).
24
Mirta, telephone conversation, 12 July 2013.
25
Ismael Bermúdez, ‘Creció el desempleo y el trabajo en negro en la Ciudad de Buenos Aires’,
Clarín, 3 March 2017<https://www.clarin.com/ieco/economia/crecio-desempleo-trabajo-negro-
ciudad-buenos-aires_0_r11ZkPPce.html>[accessed 31 March 2-17]; Roberto Lampa,
‘Argentina’s Honeymoon with Macri is Over’, Open Democracy, 13 June 2016
<https://www.opendemocracy.net/democraciaabierta/roberto-lampa/argentina-s-honeymoon-
with-macri-is-over>[accessed 12 February 2017]

367
threat to democratic governance.26 It is unlikely that the country will return to a
military solution. However, if the problems of rising poverty and
marginalisation under Macri’s government continue to go unresolved the future
of governance of Argentina indeed represents an open question.

26
Levitsky and Murillo

368
 Appendices
Appendix 1: The Rochdale Principles of cooperation

1st Principle: Voluntary and Open Membership

Co-operatives are voluntary organisations, open to all persons able to use their services and
willing to accept the responsibilities of membership, without gender, social, racial, political or
religious discrimination.

2nd Principle: Democratic Member Control

Co-operatives are democratic organisations controlled by their members, who actively participate
in setting their policies and making decisions. Men and women serving as elected representatives
are accountable to the membership. In primary co-operatives members have equal voting rights
(one member, one vote) and co-operatives at other levels are also organised in a democratic
manner.

3rd Principle: Member Economic Participation

Members contribute equitably to, and democratically control, the capital of their co-operative. At
least part of that capital is usually the common property of the co-operative. Members usually
receive limited compensation, if any, on capital subscribed as a condition of membership.
Members allocate surpluses for any or all of the following purposes: developing their co-operative,
possibly by setting up reserves, part of which at least would be indivisible; benefiting members in
proportion to their transactions with the co-operative; and supporting other activities approved by
the membership.

4th Principle: Autonomy and Independence

Co-operatives are autonomous, self-help organisations controlled by their members. If they enter
to agreements with other organisations, including governments, or raise capital from external
sources, they do so on terms that ensure democratic control by their members and maintain their
co-operative autonomy.

5th Principle: Education, Training and Information

Co-operatives provide education and training for their members, elected representatives,
managers, and employees so they can contribute effectively to the development of their co-
operatives. They inform the general public - particularly young people and opinion leaders - about
the nature and benefits of co-operation.

6th Principle: Co-operation among Co-operatives

Co-operatives serve their members most effectively and strengthen the co-operative movement by
working together through local, national, regional and international structures.

7th Principle: Concern for Community

Co-operatives work for the sustainable development of their communities through

policies approved by their members.

Source: ICA < http://ica.coop/en/what-co-op/co-operative-identity-values-principles>

369
 Appendix 2 (a): Purchase of Utilities and Assets by the Peronist
Regime.

Asset Owner Cost in pesos

Railways Britain 600 million
River Plate telephone company 95 million
American and Foreign Power USA 14.6 million
Company
Subway system Britain 50 million
Gas companies Britain 37.5 million
Port facilities Rosario Britain 8.8 million
Port facilities Buenos Aires Britain/ France 19 million
Foreign debt 246 million
Source: Peter Winn, Americas: The Changing Face of Latin America and the Caribbean, 3rd edn
(Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 2006), p. 146.

Appendix 2 (b):
‘Disappeared’ Argentines according to profession or social status .
Obreros /workers 30%
21%
Estudiantes /students
17.8%
Empleados /employees
10.7%
Profesionales /Professionals
5.7%
Docentes /Teachers
Conscriptos y personal 2.5%
subalterno de las fuerzas de seguridad /
Conscripts and lower ranking
members of the security forces
3.8%
Amas de casa / Housewives
5%
Autónomos y variados /
various independents
1.6%
Periodistas /journalists
1.3%
Actores y artistas / actors and artists
0.3%
Religiosos /Clergy
Source: CONADEP, Nunca Más (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 1984).

370
 Appendix 3: PRINCIPIOS DEL CLUB DEL TRUEQUE

DECLARACIÓN DE PRINCIPIOS DE LA RED GLOBAL DE TRUEQUE

1. Nuestra realización como seres humanos no necesita estar condicionada por el dinero.

2. No buscamos promover artículos o servicios, sino ayudarnos mutuamente a alcanzar un sentido de vida
superior, mediante el trabajo, la comprensión y el intercambio justo.

3. Sostenemos que es posible remplazar la competencia estéril, el lucro y la especulación por la reciprocidad
entre las personas.

4. Creemos que nuestros actos, productos y servicios pueden responder a normas éticas y ecológicas antes que a
los dictados del mercado, el consumismo y la búsqueda de beneficio a corto plazo.

5. Los únicos requisitos para ser miembro de la Red Global de Trueque son: asistir a las reuniones grupales,
capacitarse y ser productor y consumidor de bienes, servicios y saberes, en el marco de las
recomendaciones de los Círculos de Calidad y Autoayuda.

6. Sostenemos que cada miembro es el único responsable de sus actos, productos y servicios.

7. Consideramos que pertenecer a un grupo no implica ningún vínculo de dependencia, puesto que la
participación individual es libre y extendida a todos los grupos de la Red.

8. Sostenemos que no es necesario que los grupos se organicen formalmente, de modo estable, puesto que el
carácter de red implica la rotación permanente de roles y funciones.

9. Creemos que es posible combinar la autonomía de los grupos, en la gestión de sus asuntos internos, con la
vigencia de los principios fundamentales que dan pertenencia a la Red.

10. Consideramos recomendable que los integrantes no respaldemos, patrocinemos o apoyemos

financieramente - como miembros de la Red - a una causa ajena a ella, para no desviarnos de nuestros
objetivos fundamentales.

11. Sostenemos que el mejor ejemplo es nuestra conducta en el ámbito de la Red y en nuestra vida fuera de
ella. Guardamos confidencialidad sobre los asuntos privados y prudencia en el tratamiento público de los
temas de la Red que afecten a su crecimiento.

12. Creemos profundamente en una idea de progreso como consecuencia del bienestar sustentable del mayor
número de personas del conjunto de las sociedades.

Source: Hintze, Trueque y economía solidaria.

371
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