[www-it] Intervista a Evan di Mobile-Indymedia sull'Argentina TO DO

[magius]

An interview with Evan Henshaw-Plath :: 03.09.2002
http://www.dru.ca/misnomer/archives/00000191.html



Evan is an activist working with Mobile ((i))
http://www.indymedia.org/mobile-i/.
He has spent several months in Argentina and Bolivia, helping local
indymedia activists set up computers, web sites, and get things started.
I asked him about the democratic activity that is emerging in
Argentina--its origins, short term goals, and long term viability.
According to various Indymedia reports, local or neighborhood-based
assemblies have sprung up, and meetings have been taking place. How
widespread is this phenomenon? Is it just in Buenos Aires, or are there
assemblies all over Argentina?
As far as i could tell there were about 80 assemblies in Buenos Aries
proper, and more in the outlining suburbs which didn't attend the BA
weekly interbarrio assembly. There are assemblies in plenty of other
cities around they country also. That said, there are plenty of barrios
which do not have assemblies also. I know sometimes that is because one or
another political party is really strong in that barrio.
How seriously are the effects of the economic trouble? Are people
desperate for food, or are things relatively stable, just generally
poorer?
First off you have to think of Argentina like you think of Spain or Italy.
BA has a subway system, commuter trains, tall office buildings, street
cafes, a broadway like theater district, etc... People buy their food from
supermarkets, and in general there is very little of the informal economy
which is dominate in poorer countries. Outside the capital people are
generally less European and more poor. About a third of the population
lives in BA. The Piqueteros the more working class and are suffering more.
One person said, they call the Cacerolas middle class (protests where they
bang pots and sometimes smash up banks), but they are really just the
people who make a few hundred dollars a month and were able to have enough
extra to put money in a savings account. The Piqueteros are going hungry
and that is why they are blocking roads. While some are advocating radical
change and revolution, their direct demands are of food and jobs.
Basically they eat some bread and drink lots of mate. There are lots of
different groups of Piqueteros with a range of politics from social
democracy to socialism on the less radical end to maoism, trotskism, and
anarchism among the radicals. Many Piqueteros groups are connected to
unions or political parties.
Even given the situation, many Argentines are still going about their
daily business. There are still people in restaurants, buying food, going
to work, and in general trying to make the best of it. The situation a
year ago when i was in BA was bad, but now it feels in some ways worse but
more hopeful. Last year everybody just seemed like they were depressed.
Today there is some hope of kicking the IMF out. Everywhere you go people
denounce the IMF. It is like the national pastime to berate the IMF. The
reason is that when push comes to shove everybody knows that the IMF has
WAY more power in Argentina than anybody else.
Who is organizing the assemblies? Are they truly "spontaneous", or is
there an organizing force behind them?
Basically they organized like this. People were pissed off over the
corilitos (restrictions on banking), so they started going out in the
streets and banging pots. For the most part this wasn't organized by any
group, but when people heard pots banging they went out in the streets and
joined them. After December 20th when they overthrew the De La Rua they
continued to hold protests. People were able to find other of their
neighbors who were also upset due to the loud pot banging. From there
people just started talking. As far a i can tell the assemblies where
truly spontaneous. There were lots of organizers who took up working on
them but they are not the project of any preexisting group. In fact there
has been a lot of tension within the assemblies where they are trying to
force out any leftist parties and potential leaders who might coopt the
assemble movement.
People elsewhere seem quick to refer to the assemblies, El Treuque etc. as
forms of anarchist activity. Is the direct democratic activity that is
going on considered to be radical by the people participating, or are
people just doing what they can to respond to the economic problems?
They do seem to be anarchist forms of organizing but they are most
definitely NOT anarchists who are organizing things. The anarchists i met
were very interested in what was going on, and they participated in their
local assembles but they were not the driving force either
organizationally or ideologically. The direct democracy comes from a
different source. Basically the assemblies see implementing a system of
direct democracy as a way of rejecting politics. Politics in Argentina is
in some ways similar to the US. You have two major parties which run
expensive media saturated campaigns but have no substantive policy
differences between them. Unlike the US the political and economic system
is held up by a much stronger system patronage and corruption. They are
very much political machines. There have been many very strong political
movements in Argentina and all of them get subverted by this coopation of
the leaders and the organization in to the system of privilege. The people
of Argentina are rejecting representative democracy because there is no
option for change within that system. This isn't a theoretical debate. You
can read editorials in the paper about how Dualde (current president)
needs to just find the leaders so he can buy them off. This is what
happened to the three major unions, and many other groups in the past.
So, the people didn't come to direct democracy through a intellectual
critique of the coercion of systems of representation but rather because
they want and need real change and they see this as the only way out.
Do participants in assemblies come from a large range of incomes?
Yeah, assemblies are based in neighborhoods so in wealthy neighborhoods
the participants are wealthy and in poor neighborhoods they are poor. In
general the Cacerolas are considered 'middle class' and the Piqueteros are
working class but the assemblies are both.
What role (and how large of a role) is Indymedia Argentina playing in
this? How many people does it reach? Is there a print publication?
It's a little hard to tell exactly how large a roll indymedia Argentina is
playing. First off the situation with imc ar is a bit complex. I was down
here last year working with the anti-ftaa coalition and trying to help
start an imc. It's a long history but there ended up being two imc's one
which was funded by Alternatives (the canadian ngo) and one of which has
gone on to become the Argentina imc. The one that survived initially had
to groups involved, both pro-direct action internationalist radicals. One
was connected to the PTS, a trotskist party which advocates direct
democracy (similar to the assembles we see now), an other group was
Primavera de Praga (an anarchist / autonomist group which had be a core to
organizing argentine participation in the PGA global days of action).
Unfortunately the PTS folks put more time in to the project and it became
known as associated with PTS. They have done an honest job at combating
that reputation and become an open non-sectarian organization. After
December 20th the Argentina indymedia folks pushed to create a broader
coalition, Argentina Arde, (arde means burns and it's a reference to a
radical media / arts coalition from the 70's). Argentina Arde has about
120 people showing up to their weekly meetings and has a number of working
groups. Arde produces a pretty good paper which they sell to cover costs.
There are also a number of video collectives that work with both indymedia
and arde. Honestly the line is a little blurred, and there has been some
debate back and forth about whether or not Arde is a broad coalition of
media activists and artists or a trotskist coalition.
That said, the Argentina indymedia site gets a HUGE number of posts. Just
from looking at it i'd say they get more posts than the global indymedia
site per day. All the resolutions and notes from the assembles are posted
to the site and if they don't get typed up and posted within a few hours
the indymedia people start getting angry emails. So by that rather
unscientific measure i'd say that indymedia is pretty well used by the
movement.
Apart from local assemblies, barter markets, and strikes, what other kinds
of direct democratic activity are taking place?Well there is the occupying the factories and running them without the
owners. There are definitely parts of the movement which are being
stratigitic and targeting the oil industry to shut down the government. I
know one of the assemblies is working on building a coalition with the
hospital workers in their neighborhood to create alternate systems of
providing health care. I think in some ways what Argentina needs for
things to move forward with the project of radical change is a combination
of continued IMF imposed insanity and the assemblies and other political
forms to start developing their own systems for providing the functions of
government which the government is failing to do. This process takes time,
and is driven by the government's continued attacks on the social and
economic system. Given that the IMF is totally unwilling to consider an
alternate model and the government is the IMF's lapdog, it looks like
there is a possibility for a positive outcome. :)
How is militant activism perceived by the mainstream media or the general
population?
Well it's interesting. Basically every day you can see in the news people
in business suits attacking and smashing banks. The TV sucks and is right
wing, but they are covering what is going on. In the papers they have
articles about the barter systems. They cover the weekly interbarrio
assembly, but they of course aren't supportive. I think that although the
media system is fundamentally corporate and right wing many of the
journalists are hit by the same problems as everybody else.
When i asked a cab driver what he thought of of the Piqueteros he said
'what else are they supposed to do' and that blockading the roads 'was an
important part of the struggle.' There are large portions of the
population which are basically ignorant of the political world around
them. One guy in the park just a few hundred feet from interbarrio
assembly when asked didn't even really know what assembles were.
Central to the assembles agenda is the rejection of representatives. In
this way they are really supported by the general population. The center
left paper, pagina 12, did a poll where they found that %61 of the
population didn't believe in representative democracy. That's a big deal.
Of course the neoliberals are saying it means people want a dictatorship
or some chavez/castro type, but that's not true. People are demanding
democracy and representative democracy has failed and that is why they are
looking to other options.
How are assemblies organized? Is decision making reached by consensus or
vote, or does it vary?
Each assembly is 'autoconvacado' meaning self convening. They generally
have something like working groups which meet separately from the bario
(neighborhood) assembly. The working group's (again an English term that
doesn't directly translate), meet once a week and report back to the
assembly. The assembly is where proposals for other assemblies to adopt
are created. Basically the way it works is a barrio assembly with come up
with a proposal. Usually to have a protest on this or that day, take some
sort of action in solidarity with Piqueteros, or to denounce neoliberalism
and demand the approiation of all foreign capital and investments in the
country. The barrio then votes on it. People can vote three ways. Yes, No,
or abstain. If the no's win the the proposal is dropped. If the Abstains
count for a large portion of the votes then it goes back to be reworked
and can be presented next week. If the Yes's win then it is adopted. My
understanding is the similar processes work at the local barrio
assemblies, interbarrio's, and the national (although they had their first
of these while i was in BA). None of the proposals are binding. Votes are
based on everybody in attendance not on a one assembly one vote system.
It's a rough majority system although to be honest it is in flux and
nobody counts the votes very closely. In the interbarrio i saw people
contest a vote. Basically they do that by yelling and getting upset. Then
they redo the vote and the vote counters count more closely.
The interbarrio is organized by a rotating group three local assemblies
each week. Each assembly gets a person to speak, first to give a little
political polemic speech then to give their assemblies proposal. Somebody
writes them down and after a few hours of this they get to voting. The
indymedia folks (and others) write them down and post them to the web for
people who weren't there. Many local assemblies also post their
minutes/notes/decisions to indymedia.My feeling was that there was a fair degree of variation within the
assemblies and that they are very much a forming thing.
How much of the overall population is involved in direct democratic activity?

Hard to tell. Greater Buenos Aries has a population of about 10 million
and there are about 1000 to 3000 people at the interbarrio's. There is
very clearly widespread opposition to the government and especially the
IMF. I read recently an article where it talked about politicians getting
attacked when they were seen and identified in public. The people in the
assemblies are for the most part taking their first step in to politics.
They really do represent somewhat of an awakening of the apathetic silent
majority. People who had been working hard, thinking about their families,
and letting politicians be. Now they are pissed and they don't think that
any sort of politician or party can fix things. I think i heard there were
60 to 80 assemblies in Buenos Aries with more starting all the time. I did
hear that the numbers of people participating had been declining some even
though the number of assemblies was growing and their political commitment
was deepening. This is why if the assembly movement is going to continue
to grow they need to be fueled by the fire of collapsing neoliberalism.
On voting and police activity:

In Argentina you are required to vote, but in the activist have a campaign
to 'vota lista blanca' which is basically voting for nobody. The army /
police are nasty at some demonstration and are seriously repressive, but
other times they aren't. Like at one blockade of the major road in to BA
there was only half a dozen cops and they stayed a mile down the road. One
time i was sitting in a restaurant and a small protest, maybe a 1000
people, was blocking traffic outside. They were just marching around the
city blocking major intersections, sitting down for a while then moving
on. All the police did was work to redirect traffic. Plenty of time the
cops basically just let people attack the banks. Sometimes when they felt
they had the upper hand they did push people away from the banks. There
was a blockade of the a major oil refinery which there were 2000 cops that
showed up when the finally wanted to clear it. In general there is not
apparent police presence at any of the assemblies. In congress when we
interviewed people the congress people seemed to not take the assemblies
very seriously.
I think the police have orders not to start confrontations unless they
really have to because they are worried things will get out of hand.
On Bolivia:

There are towns here in Bolivia where they have also kicked out the
police, army, and government and are running things using traditional
indegenous democratic assemblies. They have some problems like only
married adults are allowed to particpate. Also the blockades here in
Bolivia, there are always at least three or four higways blocked are
defended at times with arms. Yesterday i heard a report on teh radio about
a blockade that the police tried to clear, 31 police were hurt and only
three piquateros. If the government does what the US wants and really goes
after the coca growers then many comentators are saying as much as half
the country could cease to be under government control. The activists i
meet say that if the cocaleros and other social movements had guns there
would be a revolution. It feels like the government knows this too, as the
places feels like a police state, military checkpoints and cops carrying
uzis all over the place. On one 14 hour bus trip i think we must have gone
through half a dozen or more checkpoints.