Resurrected Enterprises and Social Mobilization in Argentina1

RESURRECTED ENTERPRISES AND SOCIAL MOBILIZATION IN ARGENTINA1

Laura Collin Harguindeguy2

Introduction

Argentina, more than any other country, became immersed in a neoliberal economic model that led to an economic and political crisis, resulting in the removal of four consecutive presidents over a three month period. In response to the implementation of the neoliberal model and the resultant recession and crises, new and diff erent kinds of social reactions and social movements began to emerge. Although this article will touch on a variety of these new social movements, it will particularly focus on the experience and transformation of workers as they took over bankrupt factories and put them back into production. Once workers control is exerted over enterprises, their organized activities just like other forms of popular mobilization give rise to a new kind of political behavior—bottom-up organization, participatory democracy, autonomy and self-management, that analysts Kennedy and Tilly (in this volume) qualify as third left . To understand the context in which workers could take production under their control, I present a brief analysis of the economic and social crisis in Argentina, followed by a description of the varied social reactions over the last decade of the twentieth century, with emphasis on the vast mobilization that forced more than one president to resign. In so doing, I point to novel charac- teristics of social mobilization that diff er from more traditional forms. Aft er a succinct description of the enterprise recuperation process, I argue that the new relations described were a result of social practices more than a consequence of ideology. Similarly, I show in the following section how these emerging social practices introduced a new discussion inside of the academic left . It

1 My recognition and thanks to Marie Keneddy and Chris Tilly who helped me in the translation of this paper. 2 Research professor at the Colegio de Tlaxcala A.C. in Mexico and member of the National System of Researchers. 254 laura collin harguindeguy stimulated the desire not only to understand what was going on, but to recognize their importance and to theorize about these new ways of practicing social agency. It suggested the development of new types of relations between the vanguard and the people, learning “how to accompany”, instead of trying to coerce them. I conclude the chapter by refl ecting on what may happen with this new left in the context of a retreat of social mobilization.

Neoliberal Policies and Crises in Argentina

If the origins of the crisis can be traced to the Argentine military dictatorship when Martinez de Hoz,3 a member of the cattle export sector, began to impose the idea of a fi nancial model of development in place of an industrial one, the complete application of the model took place during the two administrations of President Carlos Menem,4 when: Argentina, more than any other developing country, bought into the promises of U.S.—promoted neoliberalism. Tariff s were slashed, state enterprises were privatized, multinational corporations were welcomed, and the peso was pegged to the dollar . . . (Krugman, 2002: 2). During Menem’s administration, almost all public services were priva- tized5 and fi nancial speculation was rampant, resulting in massive deindustrialization and a horrifying loss of jobs. Th e impact of public services privatization was extensive. It impacted the market such that prices increased dramatically for services such as water, energy, and telephone while those services that could not be easily privatized, such as schools and healthcare, suff ered a loss in quality and covered ever fewer people. Th e increasing costs of public services thrust groups who had never previously been poor into poverty as people were forced to spend almost all of their income on services that the government used to provide. As the peso was pegged to the dollar, contracts that allowed an

3 José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz was an Argentine policy maker and executive, best known as the Minister of Economy under de facto President Jorge Rafael Videla between 1976 and 1981, during the military dictatorship that called itself the National Reorganization Process. 4 Menem was from the Partido Justicialista, by their own defi nition, the “party of pizza and champagne”. 5 Th e plan included the privatization of 93 governmental enterprises, tax exemption, deregulation of labor and fi nancial markets, and the cooptation of unions (Dinerstein, 2002).