| Written by Marie Trigona for TOWARD FREEDOM | |
| Thursday, 29 October 2009 | |
 Worldwide, industrial mono-culture farming has displaced traditional food production and farmers, wreaking havoc on food prices and food sovereignty. This is particularly true for the global south, where land has been concentrated for crops destined for biodiesel and animal feed. In response, peasants and small farmers organized actions in more than 53 countries on October 15 for International Food Day as an initiative of Via Campesina, one of the largest independent social movement organizations, representing nearly 150 million people globally. The National Indigenous Campesino Movement of Argentina joined the protests taking place on around the world by organizing a march in Hundreds of campesinos marked the day with protests against this agricultural model outside of Evicted Farmers According to Land access and disputes over land titles has become one of the central issues for traditional farmers being replaced by machinery and high tech mono-culture farms. The National Indigenous Campesino Movement of Argentina (MNCI) reports that 82 percent of farmers live off of 13 percent of the nation’s land used for agriculture, while 4 percent of large land holders or “growing pools” financial investors in the agro industry own more than 65 percent. The disparities in land titles have lead to violent evictions. On “They have been evicting farmers and members of the indigenous community from lands. People have been killed in the evictions,” says Ricardo Ortiz is an indigenous representative from The Campesino Movement of Santiago del Estero (MOCASE). More than 9,000 families make up MOCASE, a grassroots movement of traditional farmers and indigenous groups. “Now they killed a farmer in Tucuman, a brother. He was in a march to demand their rights and the man who bought the lands took out a gun and shot the man and injured four more. The government has been blind, deaf and mute; this is why we are worried.” Police Repression In 2008 alone more than 35 campesinos were arrested and arrest warrants issued for 95 more, in Mendoza, Formosa and Santiago del Estero, in communities rejecting the agro-industrial model. Santiago del Estero is a province once rich in forest land and untouched by soy. This changed as the boom in soy prices has made these remote areas now profitable for soy growers. This is a “witch hunt,” as the MNCI has described the situation for campesinos resisting land evictions, and defending traditional cultures. Local police enforce eviction orders and meet any resistance with police force, clubs and many times bullets. “Campesinos resisting are suffering a violent political persecution. We demand that detained farmers are released, that officials, judges and police that violate human rights be investigated and that evictions are stopped,” declared the MNCI. Agro Industry Creates Joblessness The shift to mono-culture crops and land concentration has stretched into cultivations traditionally employing small farmers such as vineyards. Argentina’s wine industry has boomed in recent years, with the total value of Argentine wine in the US increasing from 75 million to 146 million dollars between 2006 and 2008. Mendoza is Argentina’s largest wine producing region, with a micro climate perfect for the Malbec grape. Access to water is a major issue for rural and indigenous communities there. Marcelo Quieroga from the Union of Rural Workers (UST) says that much of the vineyards in Mendoza have been monopolized by French and Swiss investors, who buy land and mechanize wine production. “They are using machinery to replace workers. By producing high quality wines for export the wineries have essentially monopolized the production. Who suffers is the rural worker who can’t find work, and ends up living in a shanty town due to rural unemployment.” Rural displacement results in poverty and joblessness; the poorest provinces in Argentina have ironically hosted a boom in soy industry, with soy fields replacing forests and even cattle grazing land. The MNCI has reported that the soy model creates only one job post for every 500 hectares cultivated. Meanwhile, traditional agriculture provides 35 job posts for every 100 hectares cultivated, while also guaranteeing food diversity, production or local markets and sustainable use of resources such as land and water. Food Sovereignty Industrialization and the globalization of Argentina’s food system has led to spikes in food prices, and increasing rural poverty. This has become a global trend. “A billion people are without food because industrial monocultures robbed them of their livelihoods in agriculture and their food entitlements,” writes Vandana Shiva in the Nation Magazine. Via Campesina does have an alternative to the agro industry, pushing for governments to promote local, traditional farming which provides communities with real food. “It’s time for all civil society to recognize the gravity of this situation, global capital should not control our food, nor make decisions behind closed doors. The future of our food, the protection of our resources and especially our seeds, are the right of the people,” said Dena Hoff, coordinator of Via Campesina North America. Food sovereignty as defined by Via Campesina is the peoples’ right to define their agricultural and food policy, and the right of farmers and peasants to produce food. Worldwide communities are seeking an alternative to a model controlled by Cargill, Monsanto, General Foods, Nestle and Kraft foods. Starved by industrialization and concentration, citizens are now hungry for traditional production methods and diversity in the food system. *** Marie Trigona is a writer, radio producer and filmmaker based in Argentina. She can be reached at mtrigona@msn.com |
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Argentina: Disappearing Farmers, Disappearing Food
Monday, October 19, 2009
Community on the Airwaves: End to Dictatorship Media Law in Argentina
| Written by Marie Trigona | |
| UpsideDownWorld |
Like the United States, media laws in Argentina favor big corporations over small community groups. But this changed recently when Argentina passed a media law which will radically transform media ownership regulations. Senate approved the bill, which could open the airwaves to community groups with a 44 to 24 vote. Media conglomerates have been fighting the bill in an attempt to preserve their control over news and information. The passage was met with celebrations outside of congress, where thousands of government supporters, union representatives, human rights groups and artists converged in support of the law.
This law overturns dictatorship era legislation which limited media ownership to private corporations. President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner presented the law in June. At a televised conference at the government palace, the president outlined the project: “Today the media is controlled mostly by private commercial groups. The bill will change this. One third of licenses will be for commercial groups, a third for government and public use, and a third for non-governmental organizations. Freedom of press can’t be confused with freedom for private media owners.”
The law was spearheaded by the Coalition for Democratic Broadcasting, a coalition of more than 300 groups, including unions, community media organizations, and human rights groups like the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo. For more than two years the coalition acted as an advisory committee to develop the bill.
Media in the Dictatorship
This is the first attempt to revise broadcasting legislation since 1980, when a law passed by the military dictatorship banned community associations from accessing broadcast licenses. Dictator Jorge Rafael Videla sanctioned the law, which guaranteed private media holders large profits, promised support for the dictatorship from media outlets, and silenced journalists from reporting on the systematic genocide taking place in the nation. During the dictatorship 84 journalists were disappeared and 12 were assassinated, adding to the long list of over 30,000 disappeared by the bloody junta.
That law placed the few TV stations existing at the time in the hands of the military. Article 96 of the law, which was still in effect until new legislation was passed in October, states that the Federal Broadcasting Committee (COMFER) falls under the control of the State Intelligence Agency. In a Big Brother paradox, the law essentially allowed only private media conglomerates, the Intelligence Agency, and the military to control and regulate the media.
Since Argentina's return to democracy in 1983, only minor reforms have been made to the law, but always to promote private media ownership and concentration. According to the law, only an individual or commercial group established in the country has the right to acquire a license to broadcast a television or radio signal. Non-profit groups, universities, cooperatives, or community associations do not have the right to apply for a broadcast license. For community radio and television stations, this law is a holdover from the days of authoritarian rule that has literally blocked any possibility of gaining legal permission to broadcast.
Media Consolidation
Claudio Caussandier is a regulator at COMFER, the state agency that regulates media broadcasters. “There has been a tendency toward media concentration since the 1990’s when the regulations were modified. The current law was passed in 1980 by a military dictatorship. Media conglomerates haven’t had any competition, so now it’s a big fight. The few companies that have broadcast licenses have been pressuring the government to not open access to the airwaves.”
This led to media concentration. Two media conglomerates control most of Argentina's airspace: Grupo Clarin and Telefonica. Clarin holds more than 264 broadcast licenses nation-wide. The media group also owns more than 50 percent of cable television, more than a dozen print publications, 2 national radio stations and shares in telecommunication and internet providers. Clarin has attracted international investors, including Goldman Sachs which holds 18 percent of shares in Grupo Clarin. Media concentration is reflected in the lack of diversity in programming. Clarin owns two of the three nation-wide television networks.
As the main beneficiary to the dictatorship’s media law, Clarin reported that the 1976 military coup was “inevitable.” In addition to annihilating all competition for Clarin, the military junta also allotted the sale of Papel Prensa, the largest paper producer and supplier in Argentina in 1977.
The heiress to Clarin, Director Ernestina Herrera de Noble, has been investigated since 2004 in connection with the appropriation of two children born to parents held in captivity during the dictatorship. Human Rights group Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo has issued legal requests for Noble’s children to have DNA tests, following evidence of irregularities in the adoption of her two children in 1976.
Clarin has attacked the president and the bill, accusing Fernandez de Kirchner of violating freedom of the press. Other opponents of the bill include other media leaders such as Telefonica and the Argentina’s Association of Cable Television providers, Kirchner’s political opposition and The International Association of Broadcasting. Opponents of the new law have criticized the President for trying to turn Argentina's privately controlled media landscape into a model like Venezuela's state supported community media stations, linking Argentina’s decision to a regional trend in democratizing media. Leading up to the October Senate vote, television stations aired apocalyptic ads describing the law as “death of freedom of press” and “end of our stations.” The campaign didn’t end there, for months the media has included coverage of all protests against the president, attacking progressive policies, while favoring the opposition.
The International Association of Broadcasting (IAB) opposed the newly passed law saying that the law would put freedom of the press in the South American nation in jeopardy. The IAB criticized Argentina's government, saying that the project creates "more vulnerable and dependent" media, during a meeting in Washington with the head of the Organization of American States earlier this year. In an alarmist editorial in Clarin, Argentina's largest national news daily and media conglomerate, titled "Don't Violate Freedom of Expression," Luis Pardo Sainz warns that Argentina may be at risk for a state takeover of the media, saying that the state would be a worse monopoly than the corporate media monopoly.
In his editorial, Sainz also said that the IAB was right to warn of weakening the media, and accused Venezuela of controlling media editorial lines under the guise of community purposes by building a wide network of media that seem diverse but only have one ideological tendency. Ultimately, Sainz’s protests seem to make a paradoxical claim that the building of community media for and by the people is dangerous for diversity.
New Space for Community Media
Despite opposition, community groups' efforts paid off. A coalition of more than 300 groups, including unions, community media organizations, and human rights groups like the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo participated in the advisory committee that developed the bill. President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner presented a bill to change the current dictatorship law on March 18, 2009. Many journalists, actors, and media figures have supported the president's imitative, called the Audiovisual Communication Service law (SCA, by its Spanish initials). The law states: "Airwaves belong to the community, they are the patrimony of humanity ... they should be administered by the State with democratic criteria."
The SCA law calls for several fundamental changes to media legislation. The most important aspect of the law is the mandated 33% of airwaves reserved for non-profit groups. This would ensure that community associations, non-profits, and universities have guaranteed access to broadcast licenses.
COMFER Vice President Sergio Fernandez Novoa said in an interview with the state press agency Telam that "the previous law only allowed individuals or commercial businesses to apply for licenses, meaning that any individual without commercial purposes couldn't have a television or radio station in Argentina, like cooperatives, civil associations, or community radios. Now not only can they, but they should be guaranteed a third of the broadcast airwaves currently controlled almost completely by private commercial companies."
Now, however, community media and grass roots organizations will have to compete with all “non-profit entities” to win the spaces opened by the law. The term “all non-profit entities” opens the door for private associations, funded by corporations and church groups to compete with community media groups. Other criticisms of the law include the lack of legislation for funding for community media and guarantees for indigenous representation in local media.
Outside of Congress, community media groups from the National Network of Alternative Media broadcast live video and radio programming. They have hung a banner that reads: “Even though we’re not inside the law, we exist.”
“The new legislation recognizes communication as a right, which is a move in the right direction,” says Fabiana Arcencibia from the media collective Red Ecco, “b
ut the current bill does not recognize us as community broadcasters, as alternative media outlets, and we’re demanding that the bill include us.”
Many hope that the new legislation will foster local media to cover issues which have been ignored by the corporate media for decades. Time will tell whether this shift to local, non-corporate media will foster a new age of free press in Argentina, or if the law was only the government’s attempt to quiet opposition. Either way, the legislation opens new doors for Argentina’s community media groups to legally access to the airwaves.
Marie Trigona is a journalist, radio produce and filmmaker based in Argentina. She can be reached through her blog www.mujereslibres.blogspot.com
Friday, October 16, 2009
Argentina farmers fight soy industry monoculture
And now we go to Argentina, a country that has often been described as South America’s bread basket because it once produced grain and beef for much of the region. But with the transgenic soy boom the nation has shifted to a mono culture production that has displaced traditional food production and small farmers. FSRN’s Marie Trigona reports from Buenos Aires.
Friday, October 09, 2009
Argentina lawmakers vote on media reform; community radio stands to gain
Listen to Radio StoryIn Argentina Friday, lawmakers are expected to vote on a media reform bill that could open the airwaves to community groups. Media conglomerates have been fighting the bill in an attempt to preserve their control over news and information. FSRN’s Marie Trigona reports from Buenos Aires.
http://www.fsrn.org/audio/argentina-lawmakers-vote-media-reform-community-radio-stands-gain/5575
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Kraft Firings Feed Protests
Americas Program, Center for International Policy (CIP)
Mass firings at Kraft Foods' plant in Argentina sparked protests throughout the nation, and ignited a new wave of worker organizing. In August, Kraft fired 160 workers after they went on strike to demand proper health measures at the company's factory in suburban Buenos Aires during the swine flu epidemic in Argentina. Most of the fired workers were active union members; almost all of the factory's union delegates were fired.
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| Kraft workers carry out a series of road blockades and a total work stoppage for more than 40 days. Photo: Marie Trigona. |
Kraft workers responded by taking over the plant. They staged a 40-day work stoppage, with the majority of the 3,000 workers participating in the strike. The U.S.-based company has accused protesting workers of prohibiting personnel from leaving the plant, but the union says that they were camping inside the plant peacefully to demand their jobs. On Sep. 25, police attacked the workers and removed them by force so Kraft could resume plant operations.
The factory looks more like a prison than a factory. Barbed wire borders the gates, guards walk the perimeter with attack dogs, and police patrol on horseback. Union members are barred from entering.
"There are police inside the plant. The inspectors are going to the lines and forcing people to work. Outside the plant, there are police surrounding the factory," says Carlos Mores, a union delegate fired from Kraft.
Kraft: King of Consolidation
Kraft's history is laden with acquisitions, buyouts, consolidations, and the raw concentration of market power. The company dates back to 1903 when James L. Kraft opened a cheese distributor in Chicago, Illinois. In 1913, Kraft opened its first plant to manufacture cheese. Kraft's claim to fame came through consolidation and following Andrew Carnegie's motto: "Put all your eggs into one basket and then watch that basket, do not scatter your shot. The great successes of life are made by concentration."
By World War II the cheese giant was sending 4 million pounds of its patented pasteurized processed cheese to Britain weekly. Founding itself on the coattails of the military-industrial complex, its next frontier was the American housewife's modern kitchen, encouraged to cook easier, tastier, faster foods with a much lower nutritional value.
Kraft grew to become one of the largest food companies in the world after acquiring Nabisco Brands in 2000. Soon after, the Marlboro Man purchased Kraft in 1992. Altria (the new name for tobacco and food giant Phillip Morris) by 2000 planned to spin off control of Kraft Foods, which now is the second largest food company in the world, after Nestle.
The company produces in more than 70 countries, and distributes in more than 150 countries. In many countries, like Argentina, the food processing leader quietly buys out local brands and markets the brand under the same name. Consolidation of market power throughout the food industry has been a creeping trend, and Argentina's food market is no exception. Kraft's largest gem in Argentina is the Terrabusi cookie brand.
In 1994 Nabisco foods purchased Terrabusi, the nation's largest cookie/cracker manufacturer. At the time, the factory employed 8,000. By 2009, that number shrunk by half to only 4,000 workers. The company cornered nearly 50% of the nation's cookie market, making Kraft's plant in the working class suburb of Pacheco one of the most important outside the United States.
The U.S. multinational reaped record profits in 2008, taking in $42 billion dollars in revenue. "Kraft is one company that has managed to do well in spite of the economic downturn, because hey, people have to eat," boasts a Kraft online video. With skyrocketing food prices, many consumers turned to more economical, processed food, helping Kraft's stocks peak at an all-time high on Sep. 18, 2008 at $34 a share.
Anti-Union Practices
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| Around the country people organized actions in solidarity with the workers of ex-Terrabusi, today Kraft Foods, Inc. Photo: Marie Trigona. |
During the swine flu outbreak in Argentina in July, the health ministry issued guidelines for workplaces. These included providing anti-bacterial soap, alcohol gel, and paper towels for increased hygiene and granting leave to pregnant women working in enclosed spaces, who are known to be at greater risk from the virus.
"The conflict started during the H1N1 epidemic," says Fernando, a worker fired from Kraft. "We were demanding improvements like paper towels, toilet paper, alcohol gel, and other health measures. Because we made our demands, they fired 160 workers."
In addition, the company refused to give pregnant women and women with children maternity leave. The Labor Ministry requested that Kraft Foods take health precautions, as schools, public spaces, and workplaces were shut down throughout the country to prevent the H1N1 virus from spreading, but the corporation refused. In addition, the company shut down the company daycare center offering women 200 pesos (70 dollars) to find their own private child care. The Labor Ministry or Food and Beverage Union did not intervene, but the ministry described Kraft as a "hard company" in respect to the labor conflict.
During this time, the company brought in police to guard the factory. According to union representatives, the company went so far as to bring in managers to interrogate workers with the police present, but without the workers' labor lawyers. The workers decided to hold a work-stoppage, showing up for their shifts and then camping inside the factory.
The U.S. company accused protesting workers of prohibiting personnel from entering the plant and threatening managers, but the union says that they were peacefully protesting to assert their demands. After striking workers went to the factory administrative offices, Kraft decided to fire 160 of the workers inside the plant.
A month-long campaign followed, to demand that the workers be rehired and persecution of union activists be halted. Workers carried out a series of road blockades and a total work stoppage for more than 40 days. Around the country, students, union activists, unemployed workers, and human rights groups organized actions in solidarity with the workers of ex-Terrabusi, today Kraft Foods, Inc.
For Kraft Foods, unionists and strikes blemish the company's public image. According to Sara Jones from the Say No to Kraft campaign in the United States, Kraft's headquarters have been following developments in Argentina closely. "One of the main reasons we're creating a solidarity campaign from here in Chicago is because the headquarters is located in Illinois and we are well aware that they are managing this 'operation.' On websites dedicated to news about the struggle we have seen the IP addresses of 17 computers that are connected from EDS/Kraft Glenview, IL."
Activists in Kraft's home state Illinois began the campaign in solidarity with the Argentine workers following the firings and have led a boycott campaign against the food leader, with products in 98% of American homes.
In the midst of a global economic crisis, job losses can literally destroy a family. At a time when Kraft has reported record profits, it decides to fire workers. Kraft has admitted that it fired the workers for participating in protests against the company. However, many of the delegates say that in addition to purging union activists from the company, Kraft planned to restructure shifts by cutting an entire shift and imposing extended hours on the others.
"The company wants to implement 12-hour shifts, but they need to cut personnel. First they had to remove all of the labor organization inside the plant—our elected union delegates and internal commission at the factory," says Fernando.
Signs point to a premeditated decision to fire the workers, with Kraft using the protests as an excuse to lay-off 160 workers en masse and rid themselves of union activism. In an interview published in Pagina/12 Labor Minister Carlos Tomada said that the conflict at the Kraft factory was "a conflict where the company made a decision to get revenge on its workers."
Kraft's Hopes for a Banana Republic
Following failed negotiations between the Labor Ministry, Kraft, and union delegates late on Sep. 25, police surrounded the plant and attacked protestors. They arrested 60 people and injured 12, police shot tear gas and rubber bullets, beating others and attacking protestors while on horseback. "Kraft is a North American multinational that has the money to finance repression and pay fines to the Labor Ministry when they violate Argentina's labor laws," says Fernando. The corporation has violated the Obligatory Conciliation period ordered by the Labor Ministry which would enforce the temporary rehiring of all fired workers until both sides of the conflict reached an agreement. Kraft even called for the U.S. embassy to take its side in the increasingly costly labor conflict.
Since the strike, the company has only reinitiated normal production on five of its 36 product lines. During the 40-day work stoppage, the production lines were paralyzed, including the Oreo line, clogging pipes with the white cream used in the cookies. The factory's silos have accumulated bugs contaminating flour supplies. Kraft's Director of Corporate Affairs Pedro Lopez Matheu said that the company has seen "significant losses," compared to 2008 sales in Argentina topping 370 million dollars.
During the eviction, police detained protesters inside the factory in a scene reminiscent of when unions were persecuted, detained, and disappeared inside the Ford factory during the nation's 1976-1983 military dictatorship. Human rights lawyer Maria del Carmen Verdu says Kraft is in violation of Argentina's criminal code because it used the plant as a detention center. "Instead of being taken to the police stations, prisoners were detained inside the factory, in an unprecedented circumstance where lawyers couldn't even enter the place where the prisoners were being detained."
Business leaders of the Industrial Union of Argentina (IUA) are pushing the government to get tough on rising protests. They fear the protests could interfere with their plans for massive layoffs using the economic crisis as an excuse. The UIA reports that since 2008 there have been more than 220,000 layoffs in Argentina.
"Here in Argentina the economic crisis is getting worse. Many companies need to 'restructure' and cut labor costs to maintain profits," says Carlos Mores, another union delegate fired from Kraft who witnessed the police attacks on Sep. 25. "Kraft Foods, and other multinationals that have the UIA's support, are seeking to restructure personnel. This is why the government allows violent repression against workers, in scenes we haven't seen since the military dictatorship. Because they want the workers to carry the burden of the economic crisis."
Violating its promise to stop the firings, on Sep. 26 Kraft suspended 100 more workers who they suspected of participating in protests. On Sep. 28, thousands of workers and supporters marched in Buenos Aires to demand that the workers be rehired. The Kraft case quickly became emblematic of a larger battle over who would pay for the economic crisis—workers or the companies who skimmed off record profits before the fall.
"When the conflict started over health measures for the swine flu, Kraft already had a plan to fire the union delegates in order to make cut backs, adding to poverty and unemployment throughout the region," said Nora Cortinas, from the human rights organization Mothers of Plaza de Mayo at the massive march in support of the Kraft workers.
In the end, Kraft agreed to review the dismissals "on a case-by-case basis." The only offer the company has made was to 50 of the workers, saying that the fired workers are dangerous to the company, according to Kraft's Lopez Matheu. The union delegates have refused this offer at the latest round of talks at the Labor Ministry.
The U.S. Embassy has not intervened directly. However, it issued a statement that contained the veiled threat of reduced foreign investment flows. "The embassy has been following the conflict based on our interest in promoting U.S. investments in Argentina, which have helped generate jobs for over 150,000 Argentine workers."
"Inside and outside, the plant has been militarized," says Mores. The company's most direct violation of Argentina's labor code has been to prohibit union delegates from entering the plant. According to the law, companies must allow even suspended delegates to fulfill their roles inside the plant. The Labor Ministry has reiterated the delegates' right to fulfill their duties, but provincial police and barbed wire protecting the factory has made this an impossible feat.
Kraft's Anti-Union Practices Across the Globe
"Kraft has a history of getting rid of the organized workers and union organizers that are not under their control," says Jones, from the campaign to boycott Kraft in the United States. Colombia's Food Union, Sinaltrainal, has reported persecution of union members at Kraft factories in that country.
Kraft closed five factories in South America after the acquisition of Nabisco brands. Since 2003, the company has fired hundreds of workers, cutting personnel by 37%. When firings weren't enough to stave off union activity, the company has resorted to direct threats, as in the case of a group of 30 workers who were locked inside a lunch room and told to sign letters of recognition. After workers realized that they were locked inside, they refused to sign and held a protest in front of the Colombian factory. Similar to the Argentine case, in Colombia Kraft has also used the police to forcefully remove protesting workers from factories.
"The plant managers that have passed through this company over the last six years have had rising careers, climbing through various posts and seeking promotion by strictly applying the company's anti-union policies and using coercive measures against the workers," states the Sinaltrainal union in Colombia.
The U.S. boycott campaign states that Kraft has also played a role in the recent Honduran coup. "Kraft Foods has ties with the coup in Honduras," says Jones. "The Kraft Foods Company is a member of the Honduran American Chamber of Commerce—AMCHAM Honduras, which strongly supports the coup in Honduras and has stated its support for Micheletti." Kraft joined CitiBank and Wal-Mart, also members of AMCHAM, in a public statement of support for the "new president of Honduras, Roberto Micheletti."
The Honduran National Business Council, of which AMCHAM is a member, issued a press release on the day the Honduran Armed Forces kidnapped the democratically elected president, Manuel Zelaya, and forced him onto a flight bound for Costa Rica. "President Zelaya's departure comes as a result of a systematic violation, by the government he headed, of the constitution and Honduran laws … What occurred today was the not changing of one president for another; today, framed in national unity, respect for the constitution, national laws, and institutionalism was achieved," states the press release.
The Kraft conflict in Argentina may be the straw that breaks the camel's back. It has already sparked massive protests as an outcry against further firings throughout the country. Many have said that if Kraft gets away with firings, it's a green light for companies in Argentina to follow suit. Other groups including the FUBA university student association, human rights group Mothers of Plaza de Mayo Linea Fundadora, Subway Workers, hospital employees throughout the nation, neighborhood assemblies, and unions are fighting for representation in their locales throughout the country to demand an end to repression of union activity and firings. The broad-based citizen response shows the resentment that has built up against transnational corporations that violate national sovereignty by breaking labor norms and laws, and unresponsive unions and governments unwilling to defend workers.
Kraft may have met its match in Argentina. The country has a long tradition of labor organizing and strong and active social movements. The current crisis has heightened demands for a new economic model less dependent on foreign investors and companies that use mobility as a way to control workers in developing countries.
Marie Trigona is a journalist based in Argentina and writes regularly for the Americas Program (www.americaspolicy.org). She can be reached at mtrigona(a)msn.com.
To reprint this article, please contact americas@ciponline.org. The opinions expressed here are the author's and do not necessarily represent the views of the CIP Americas Program or the Center for International Policy.
Sources
Honduran Chamber of Commerce Press Release: Say NO to Kraft Campaign Facebook Campaign Sinaltrainal "Kraft Foods genera desempleo, hambre y miseria en Colombia"
http://www.cohep.com/pdf/Press%20Release%20June%20the%2029th%202009.pdf
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=124299898146
http://www.sinaltrainal.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=620&Itemid=93
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Mourning Mercedes Sosa
Legendary folk singer Mercedes Sosa died on Sunday at the age of 74.Listen to Audio
Argentina mourned “La Negra” as the folk icon was called in her home country, at the national congress where thousands came to say goodbye. The folk singer shaped the consciousness of many Argentines as a voice for the voiceless, criticizing Latin America´s military regimes and speaking on behalf of the poor. In today´s edition of Streetbeat, FSRN'S Marie Trigona joined the residents of Buenos Aires as they mourned and remembered this Latin American icon.
http://www.fsrn.org/audio/streetbeat-thousands-mourn-argentine-folk-singer-mercedes-sosa/5545
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Kraft firings sparks protests
FSRN Radio Reportclick to listen
A Kraft Foods factory has reopened in Argentina after workers shut it down for more than a month to protest massive layoffs and anti-union measures. The Illinois-based corporation denies it was trying to break up unions and last week it obtained a court order to dislodge more than 60 workers who were blocking operations at the factory. The incident sparked street demonstrations yesterday and a response from the US embassy. FSRN´s Marie Trigona has more from Buenos Aires.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Julio Lopez: Impunity Yesterday and Today in Argentina
Lopez’s testimony during a historic human rights trial in 2006 led to Etchecolatz’s conviction. The police chief was sentenced to life in prison for crimes against humanity and genocide during the dictatorship. Absent from the courtroom following his forced abduction, Julio Lopez missed seeing the face of his torturer, Etchecolatz, dressed in police clothing and a bullet proof vest, kissing a rosary as he was sentenced to life in prison.
Three years after the key witness’s disappearance, thousands marched in Buenos Aires, La Plata and other cities to demand an end to impunity and that Julio Lopez reappear alive. Protestors marched in cold rain and under gray skies, which further clouded remaining hope that Lopez will be found alive. Investigations have led to no answer as to where Lopez could be located, alive or dead. “Three years after the disappearance of Julio Lopez, the investigation into his whereabouts is practically paralyzed,” said Myriam Bergman, attorney who represented Lopez during the trial against Etchecolatz. “We feel as if there’s been an absolute negation of justice.”
Human rights groups presented a formal letter to the Supreme Court accusing authorities of delaying the investigation into Lopez’s forced disappearance. These groups suspect police and court authorities with ties to officials who participated in rights abuses have disrupted the investigation into Lopez’s disappearance. “Three years after the second disappearance of Julio, we have denounced that the investigation has been tied up by corrupt judges and authorities with affinity to impunity for the military,” said Margarita Cruz, torture survivor and human rights activist. “Today, September 18, marking 3 years since Lopez’s disappearance, is a very painful day because once again we are condemned to live with impunity.”
A Legacy of Impunity
Impunity is an all too long living legacy for Argentines. And justice for the crimes committed during the bloody dictatorship has been slow. Immediately following the dictatorship’s end in 1983, several junta leaders were tried and sentenced. However, former President Carlos Menem passed an amnesty law in 1990 that released jailed leaders of the former junta and other military and police jailed for rights abuses. Following the Due Obedience and Full Stop laws, all doors to justice were closed, providing blanket amnesty for officers until 2003 when the Supreme Court cancelled junta pardons. Miguel Etchecolatz was one officer who was formerly pardoned. He had been sentenced to 23 years in prison for 91 cases of torture, but was released when the Due Obedience law went into effect. In the years since the Supreme Court revoked amnesty, ruling that immunity for former officers was unconstitutional, several high profile human rights cases have begun.
The trials were made possible by the work of human rights activists who have endlessly demanded justice for the crimes committed against their loved ones. One such group is HIJOS, ‘Children for Identity and Justice,’ which developed the escrache or “exposure” protest held at the home or workplace of an unpunished criminal, as a method to deliver justice. Eduardo Nachman is a part of HIJOS. “Justice is not only slow, but the courts have organized the trials to take years,” says Nachman. “This favors impunity: the suspects who are not held in jails while awaiting trials can enjoy freedom and the witnesses who must wait to testify are dying before they have information as to the whereabouts of their loved ones and seeing the murderers go to jail.”
CONADEP (The National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons) held an investigation into human rights abuses in 1984. The government gave the commission only 9 months to complete its report about fate of thousands who were forcefully disappeared. CONADEP put together a 50,000 page document, published as an official document Nunca Mas (Never Again). From the testimony of survivors, the document details crimes committed in a network of over 370 clandestine detention centers. Logically, thousands must have been involved in the illegal detention and disappearance of tens of thousands of activists, students and union organizers. “The reports from 25 years ago documents 1,600 repressors involved in crimes. If there were more than 400 clandestine detention centers, each center would have needed many people to operate, so it’s logical to conclude that several thousands were involved,” says Nachman.
Despite concrete evidence concluding that thousands of officers were involved, only 280 are facing trial, and many of those charged with crimes are under house arrest rather than waiting for trial in jail. Only 58 people have been sentenced, most are under house arrest. Three have been pardoned and Hector Febres, who worked at the infamous ESMA Navy Mechanics School, died in his jail cell from cyanide poisoning just days before he was to be sentenced. Rights groups believe that he was murdered so the former officer wouldn’t break a pact of silence and release information as to the whereabouts of children born in captivity and appropriated by military and raised with a false identity. In another case of impunity, Juan Miguel Wolk, who ran the Pozo de Banfield detention center where hundreds perished, lives in a beach home in Mar del Plata. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison but was later pardoned. When judges ordered him to appear in court, following the Supreme Court’s decision, they were informed that he had died. But Wolk, alias “the Nazi” lives pretty well for a dead man in his home, just blocks from his neighbor, Etchocolatz , who recently moved to a jail following his 2006 life sentence according to journalist Roberto Garron from Miradas del Sur newspaper.
The disappearance of Lopez has reopened painful wounds of impunity and fears about the possibility of violent repercussions against survivors and witnesses participating in human rights trials. “Julio Lopez had the courage to identify Etchecolatz as a torturer,” said Nachman. “His disappearance isn’t a coincidence. He was disappeared to scare off and threaten many people who must testify.” Evidence that has surfaced leads to Etchecolatz and his connections with the Buenos Aires provincial police. “When the investigation made progress, all clues led to the provincial police,” says Bergman. At the time of Lopez’s disappearance more than 70 police officers in the ranks of the provincial police served during the dictatorship, many have been “forcefully retired” following pressures from human rights groups. Bergman adds, “There is a lack of political commitment to investigate the police. The investigation was interrupted right after they investigated a doctor with ties to Etchecolatz and detectives found out that Lopez was in his car.” Investigators have gathered evidence from Etchecolatz’s cell in Marcos Paz, where another 100 officers from the dictatorship are under arrest, including notebooks with information about witnesses testifying against him and telephone numbers of members of the police force.
Jose Shulman, a survivor from the Brusa detention center in Santa Fe, said that despite the threats and disappearance of Lopez, none of the 2,500 witnesses have withdrawn their testimony or refused to testify in the human rights trials. He interpreted the threats as a “sign that those dictatorship supporters feel weak from the judicial defeat that they are now facing.”
The slogan “Never Again” was adopted with the hope that Argentina and other countries in the region, including Brazil, Chile and Uruguay, ruled by violent military dictatorships would never repeat that dark chapter in history. Military dictatorships ruled the region in the 70’s under the direction of Operation Condor, a shared regional plan to suppress political activism with support from the US government. Much of the files and top-secret information has yet to be released about the crimes the military coups committed. And, without justice and with outstanding impunity, history is likely to repeat itself. “Without Lopez there can’t be a ‘Never Again,’” writes Ana Maria Careaga, executive director of the Institute for the Space for Memory. For ‘Never Again’ to become a reality, justice must be delivered.
But Julio Lopez is not just a new name inscribed on the doleful roll call of Argentina’s disappeared; he is also a reminder of the crimes against humanity still taking place in the region. Today, Lopez’s disappearance, threats and persecution against activists, an active coup in Honduras, and US military bases in Latin America are chilling reminders that “democracy” in the region has only advanced minimally since the era of bloody military dictatorships.
Marie Trigona is a journalist, radio producer and filmmaker based in Argentina. She can be reach through her blog at http://mujereslibres.blogspot.com/
Friday, September 04, 2009
FASINPAT: A Factory that Belongs to the People
Americas Program, Center for International Policy (CIP)
The workers at Argentina's largest worker-controlled factory are celebrating a definitive legal solution to a nine-year struggle for the right to work and workers' self-determination. The provincial legislature of Neuquén voted in favor of expropriating the Zanon ceramics factory giving the workers' cooperative FASINPAT the right to manage the plant definitively. Since the workers occupied Zanon in 2001, they have successfully set up a system of workers' management, created jobs, duplicated production of ceramics, supported community projects, and spearheaded a network of over 200 recuperated enterprises. Zanon, renamed FASINPAT or Factory Without a Boss, can now continue production without threat of eviction from their factory.
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| Zanon Belongs to the People, Support the Workers. Photo: radiouniversidad.wordpress.com. |
Zanon, still Latin America's largest ceramics manufacturer, is located in the Patagonian province of Neuquén, a region with rich working class traditions, history, and mystique surrounding the red desert, rich forests, and crystalline lakes. The workers officially declared the factory under worker control in October 2001 following a lockout of the factory bosses.
In Argentina, more than 13,000 people work in occupied factories and businesses, otherwise known as recuperated enterprises. The sites, which number more than 200, range from hotels, to ceramics factories, to balloon manufacturers, to suit factories, to printing shops, and transport companies, as well as many other trades. Most of the occupations occurred following the nation's 2001 economic crisis when unemployment rates soared above 25% and poverty levels hovered over 50%. Zanon, as one of the largest and foremost factory occupations, became a symbol for millions of workers who lost their jobs during the worst economic crisis in Argentina's history, in which thousands of factories shut down. The cooperative has proved that factories can produce without a boss.
Legal Victory
At a little past midnight on August 13, the legislature, controlled by the right-wing party the Popular Movement of Neuquén (MPN), voted for the law to expropriate the Zanon ceramics factory. The expropriation law passed 26 votes in favor and nine votes against the bill. Thousands of supporters from other workers' organizations, human rights groups, and social movements, along with entire families and students, joined the workers as they waited outside the provincial legislature in the capital city of Neuquén. Many activists from Buenos Aires travelled 619 miles to Neuquén to support FASINPAT's fight for the expropriation law, including workers from the worker-run Brukman suit factory, occupied Hotel BAUEN, rank-and-file union representatives from the subway system, and public hospital employees.
"When we found out that they were going to vote, we called our supporters. About 3,500 people participated in the protest including social movements, human rights organizations, teachers, unionists," said Jorge Bermuda, a veteran worker at the factory in an interview with the CIP Americas Program in Buenos Aires. Despite strong Patagonian desert winds, hundreds waited for the final legislative decision, huddled around bonfires. As the legislation voted, supporters watched from a screen transmitting outside the government building. Onlookers gathered in awe and immediately joined in to celebrate with the workers without bosses. Burly ceramists in their beige work clothes and blue jackets with the embroidered FASINPAT logo embraced each other in tears and joy, releasing the grief and happiness of the long struggle for control of the factory.
"This is incredible, we are so happy. The expropriation is an act of justice," said Alejandro Lopez the general secretary of the Ceramists Union, overwhelmed by the emotion of the victory. "We don't forget the people who supported us in our hardest moments, or the 100,000 people who signed the petition supporting our bill."
The workers credited the community's support for making the objective of expropriation become a reality. "The vote wasn't only the victory of the 470 workers at Zanon, or the original 150 who took over the plant, but the victory of an entire community that gave their support," said Bermuda. During the debate on the bill, deputy representatives took note of the fact that over half the population supports the factory expropriation in hands of the workers.
Aside from a political victory, the expropriation of the Zanon plant sets a legal precedent for terms of legislation in favor of other workers' cooperatives that have taken control of businesses closed down by their owners. The bill voted in Neuquén is the first expropriation without reimbursement by workers; the state will pay privileged creditors Luis Zanon's debt of 22 million pesos (around $7 million). The main creditors include the World Bank, which gave a loan of $20 million to Luis Zanon for the construction of the plant, and Italian company SACMY, which produces state-of-the-art ceramics manufacturing machinery and is owed $5 million. These interests were pressuring Argentina's judicial system to auction off the plant to pay off the debts.
Although previous expropriation bills have passed locally, no expropriation law has made it to vote on the national level, meaning workers' cooperatives must assume the debt left by the previous business firm. In return for this agreement, FASINPAT agreed to sell materials to the province at cost.
The Zanon workers argued that the government should not pay Luis Zanon's debts, saying that courts have proven that the creditors participated in the fraudulent bankruptcy of the plant in 2001 because the credits went directly to the owner Luis Zanon and not to investments into the factory.
"If someone should pay, Luis Zanon should pay, who is being charged with tax evasion," said Omar Villablanca from FASINPAT. The FASINPAT collective presented a previous expropriation bill, from which the current law passed was adopted, that would have cancelled the debt to creditors. More than 100,000 people signed the petition to get this bill passed.
Roots of Zanon
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| Union of ceramic workers and employees of Neuquén. Photo: Obreros de Zanon. |
The massive factory, spanning several city blocks, was built in an isolated industrial park along Route 7, a highway leading into the capital city of Neuquén. The Zanon ceramics plant was inaugurated in 1980, three years before the nation came out of the nightmare of the dictatorship that ruled the nation with terror from 1976-1983. Officers from the military dictatorship and Italian diplomats presided over the ceremony, which included blessings from a Monsignor of the Catholic Church. Luis Zanon, or Luigi, thanked the military government "for the atmosphere of security and tranquility that the Armed Forces have provided since they took charge on March 24, 1976." That fateful date in 1976 marked the beginning of one of the bloodiest eras for Argentina, in which the military terrorized the nation and forcefully disappeared 30,000 workers, activists, and students.
Conditions inside Zanon previous to the workers' occupation led to an average of 25-30 accidents per month and one fatality per year. In the years of Zanon's production, 14 workers died inside the factory. Former management enforced rules to divide workers and prevent communication among ceramists as a way of controlling union organizing independent from company interests. Many workers recount how they had to organize clandestinely to win control of the union.
Carlos Villamonte participated in the efforts to win rank-and-file union seats, organizing secretly in the late 90s. "It was very difficult to win back the internal union at the factory because we had to do it clandestinely. The company had a very repressive system. They didn't let you in another sector, talk with fellow workers, or even use the bathroom freely. Many times we had to communicate by passing notes under the tables in the cafeteria or walking through each sector making secret times and places to meet. We found ways to evade the bosses' and bureaucratic union's control." One such way was forming a ceramists' soccer team. Between practices, games, and tournaments, workers were able to strategize how to win shop-floor union representation.
After the rank-and-file workers' union movement at the factory won control of the ceramists union in 1998, the struggle culminated with a bosses' lockout in 2001. The workers were fired and the factory closed down—still owed severance pay and millions in unpaid salaries. This led to a workers' protest camp outside the plant. While the workers were camping outside the factory, a court ruled that the employees could sell off remaining stock. After the stock ran out, on March 2, 2002, the workers' assembly voted to start up production without a boss. Many at the plant believe that the rank-and-file workers' movement gaining control of the union catapulted the fired workers into occupying the factory and starting up production after the company closed the doors.
Future of Autogestión
Autogestión obrera—workers' self-management—implies that a community or group makes its own decisions, especially those decisions that fit into the process of production and planning. One of the major feats of Zanon was putting into production a massive beast of a factory with an organization based on equality and democracy without trained professional managers, punitive systems, or hierarchical organization.
FASINPAT wokers celebrate the passing of the law to expropriate the Zanon ceramics
factory. Photo: Obreros de Zanon.
The FASINPAT collective grew from 250 workers to 470. They began by producing 5,000 sq. meters of ceramics a month when they first occupied the plant in 2001. They soon managed to increase their production to 14,000 sq. meters a month. By 2008, FASINPAT produced 400,000 sq. meters a month, a record for worker control at the factory.
Although they continue to have the capacity to produce at those levels, demand has dropped lately, leading to the decision to adjust production levels. "In 2009, because of the crisis, we've dropped production to 250,000 sq. meters a month," explains Bermuda, who participates in technical planning at the plant.
Due to the crisis and slumping construction industry in the region, sales of ceramics have dropped by 40%. Unlike, their capitalist counterparts, the FASINPAT worker enterprise has taken on the task of cutting costs, not personnel. "We now have the legal aspect resolved, now we have to resolve production and fight for energy subsidies," said Omar Villablanca, a young worker at Zanon who was recently voted general secretary of the provincial-wide ceramists union. He visited Buenos Aires shortly after the victory to provide support for workers on strike at the Terrabusi cookie corporation who are fighting against lay-offs and voluntary pay cuts. "Factories that shut down are generally the result of a management that doesn't want to invest a peso of profits toward saving jobs."
A major challenge now to worker-run factories will be to devise production plans to respond to uncertain markets. Zanon's legalized status will allow the workers to focus on production and implementing technology. But they don't plan to eliminate their worker training programs. The factory assembly, which is the decision-making body at the plant, has voted to start up a primary school and high school for workers who weren't able to finish schooling. More than half of the workers at Zanon do not have their high school degrees. "We are working to train our workers. Primary and secondary school are one aspect. The next step would be to prepare a few compañeros to go to university for engineering, or whatever they would like to study."
In a 2004 article on Zanon, researcher on Latin American social movements Raúl Zibechi wrote, "The ex-Zanon workers hope that the Argentine government will decide to recognize their status and let them continue to operate under their own control." Many experts researching the role of the government and its persistent refusal to recognize that Argentina's 200 recuperated enterprises had created over 10,000 jobs, predicted that a definitive legal solution would take years, and it did. As a writer who has followed the development of workers' self-management at Zanon, I also shared the disbelief, joy, and emotion at the good news.
In over nine years of legal battles and uncertainty, the workers running Zanon were able to create more than 200 jobs; build health clinics and homes for families in need; donate ceramics to hundreds of cultural centers, libraries, and community projects; support strike funds for workers fighting for better working conditions; build a network of social movements; devise a democratic assembly and coordinating system within the factory that replaced hierarchy; not to mention successfully run a factory that the previous owner wanted to close for good, imagine what they can do now.
At Zanon, workers constantly use the slogan: "Zanon es del pueblo" or Zanon belongs to the people. The workers have gone to great efforts to ensure that the community benefits from worker control at the factory.
"I feel as if the law is our contribution to the working class, it's our grain of sand for workers to recuperate hopes that they can change things," said Raul Godoy, a worker and steadfast activist from the factory. While other recuperated enterprises are fighting eviction threats and other legal challenges, they can now look to the FASINPAT collective as a beacon of success. And other workers who are facing firings will be more inspired to follow the example of the Zanon workers of running their own factories and putting them at the service of the people.
Thursday, September 03, 2009
The Soy Republic of Argentina
 March Against Soy Argentina’s farmers have recently resumed a nation-wide strike in protest over the government’s agricultural policies. This protest is the latest episode in a long standing dispute between the agricultural sector and President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner over tax exports on soy. The fertile South American nation is now the world's third largest producer of soy, trailing behind the United States and Brazil. The boom in soy production in Argentina has reaped record profits for soy farmers and multi-nationals marketing bio-technology for the mono-culture crop in recent years, but it has taken its toll on food production, traditional farmers and the environment. Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have increasingly played a key role in the economy and in the planet’s food supply. Nearly 95% of soy grown in Argentina is genetically modified, adopting the Roundup Ready technology marketed by Monsanto. The majority of the soy grown is for export to China and the EU which use soybean grain for feed and poultry lots. Unlike the Banana Republics still intact in many parts of Central America, which exude violence to keep governments, workers and the population at large in line with big business interest, the soy model or "soy republic" adopted in many countries in South America operates by sheer market force and consolidation. Agribusiness giants Monsanto, Dow and Cargill have developed mechanisms to make dictatorships an unnecessary luxury. What Argentina and other South American nations do have in common with Banana Republics is the colonial development model, or better put anti-development model, where the nation reverts to relying on exporting a single cash crop to First World nations. However, dictatorships that used terror, torture and censorship in the 1970’s and early 1980’s are responsible for laying the ground work for privatization, liberalization of trade barriers, deregulation of environmental standards and land concentration which ripened the region for the GMO invasion. The soy republic model has led to economic dependency on transnational investments, food sovereignty risks, displacement of rural populations, degradation of soil and water systems, severe health threats from the use of pesticides and herbicides and a long list of social problems such as increased inequality and unemployment. GMO Approval GMO soy was swiftly approved for cultivation in Argentina in 1996, under former Agricultural Secretary Felipe Sola. A 180-page file report, prepared by GMO giant Monsanto was written in English, with no Spanish translation made available, and was the only document evaluated before Sola approved GM soy after only 81 days of review. The former secretary and now investor in the soy industry won a seat in the legislature in the June 2009 elections, riding in on his opposition to President Cristina Kirchner's decision to increase the export tax on soy. Many of the ministers and congressional representatives involved in the passage have since become investors in the soy market. When Argentina approved the cultivation of GMO in 1996 14 million acres were used for soy production. By 2008 that area grew to 42 million acres. In his brilliant account of the world food system in Stuffed and Starved, Raj Patel describes the consolidation that spans the entire global market. According to Patel, 10 companies control half the world’s seed supply and 10 firms control 84 percent of the nearly US$30 billion pesticide markets. Agro-chemical firms Monsanto, Dow, Bayer and Dupont lead Argentina’s market. In an ironic twist the term "The United Soy Republic" has been coined by the genetically engineering industry to describe a map of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay with increasing tracks of land dedicated to soy. Sky rocketing commodity prices for soy due to increasing demand from the EU, China and India has driven a group of eager investors to enter the countryside. "The first group that benefit are obviously agro-business corporations, other than Monsanto the export/transport companies like Cargill, Bunge and ADM that sent the soy bean to the EU and China to feed animals," says Carlos Vicente, head of information for Latin America at GRAIN, a non-profit supporting small farmers. "The second group that benefits in the short term is the ‘growing pools’ and large land owners in Argentina that have seen quick and extraordinary profits producing a concentration of wealth and land." GMO on Strike In the Republic of Soy, a major showdown between mono-crop farmers and government has taken place. Both sides are fighting over an export tax on the lucrative crop. The latest strike came after the President vetoed a farming law that would have exempted farmers from draught struck areas from paying export levies. The farmers are also angry over President Cristina Fernandez's refusal to lower the 35% tax. Cristina Kirchner’s soy export tax is a policy carried over from her husband, former president Nestor Kirchner, who upped the tax to 35% as an emergency measure to revive the economy after the 2001 crisis. Unwilling to lose profits, the agrarian sector decided to go on strike, literally freezing the sale of grain and cattle, the longer the protest the more likelihood for food price increases and food shortages. "Countries accepted the soy model mostly because many ministers, deputies, senators and mayors are investors in soy, secondly, at least in the case of Argentina, the state has received income through taxing exports," says Javier Souza, agricultural engineer and regional coordinator of the Latin American Action Network for Alternative Pesticides. It’s unlikely that the government will reverse its support of the export levies on soy, as revenue from soy exports topped nearly 16 billion dollars in 2008, bringing crucial income for the government’s treasury reserves. On the eve of the farmers’ latest strike, GMO giant Monsanto received the "Prize of Gold" as the best business in Argentina for 2008 from Fortuna Magazine. The company sold over 2.7 billion dollars in seeds and herbicides used in the Roundup Ready package, controlling 50 percent of the seed market. In an interview with Fortuna Magazine, Bernardo Calvo, President of Monsanto’s Latin American branch, said that Argentina still has exponential capacity to expand the production of GMO soy and corn. For Monsanto, the agro-government conflict "the instability caused from the conflict between the countryside and government is here for the long haul and even if this company doesn’t participate in politics, for us it is better in countries and regions where our producers and governments are successful." Losing Farmers Locally, provincial governments have eagerly set up favorable conditions for soy cultivation even at the cost of local farmers and indigenous communities. Chaco is one such province, closer to Bolivia’s border than to Buenos Aires, where traditional farmers have legally occupied land, but without land titles where farmers have lived for decades and tilled the soil. Ramon Alberto Lopez, leader of a grassroots organization of displaced farmers in the northern province of Chaco says soy has brought many social problems. "As the result of soy, more than 50 percent of the population were displaced from the countryside. Soy for some means profits, for us it is death."According to the official agricultural census, a total of 103,405 farmers closed down their farms between 1988 and 2002, which constitutes ¼ of farming businesses, while the average size of farms increased from 421 to 538 hectares. Soy cultivation is highly mechanized, requiring minimal labor. Pushed off land, rural populations have been forced to migrate to urban areas where housing and employment are scarce. Chaco is the second poorest province with 40 percent of the population living below the poverty line. Santiago del Estero, another province seeing record profits from new soy plantations is the poorest province. "Families’ land has been bulldozed with the advance of soy, now we are cornered, literally surrounded by soy fields," said Veronica Gomez from MOCASE – The Campesino Movement of Santiago del Estero. More than 9,000 families make up MOCASE, a grassroots movement of traditional farmers and indigenous groups. It is estimated that more people from Santiago del Estero live outside the province than in their native Santiago del Estero. Gomez says farmers who decide to sell their land and live surrounded by soy fields, "we aren’t direct consumers of agro-toxins but we are still affected." Poisoned Communities Throughout Argentina in rural communities there have been reports of intoxications from the herbicides and pesticides needed in the Roundup Ready seed package sold by Monsanto. Numerous studies have shown that the herbicide glyphosate and pesticide endolsufan cause serious health effects from cancer to birth defects. Glyphosate is the top selling herbicide in the world and is widely used on soy crops in Argentina, used in the Roundup Ready package as soy beans have been genetically modified to tolerate the herbicide glyphosate. More than 44 million gallons of glyphosate is sprayed annually in Argentina. MOCASE has reported has taken more than 100 accusations of agrochemical poisoning to court in Santiago del Estero. Darío Aranda, a journalist with the national daily, Página/12, has reported on numerous communities in soy-producing regions throughout the country that have faced severe health problems, including residents in the provinces of Buenos Aires, Entre Rios, Chaco, Santa Fe, and Formosa. Industry leaders have resisted regulations on the use of agro-chemicals. This issue is so sensitive, the government has remained silent. Argentina's current Secretary of Agriculture Carlos Cheppi refused all formal requests for an interview. His press secretary said Ricardo Gouna is "unwilling to talk about the use and regulation of agrochemicals in Argentina's soy industry." Guillermo Cal is the executive director of CASAFE—Argentina's association of agrochemical companies that counts Monsanto, Dow Agro-sciences, Dupont, and Bayer CropScience among its members. He said in an interview that municipal orders to restrict the distances which agro-chemicals can be sprayed near residential areas were completely ridiculous. "No one is going to have a problem with a product like glyphosate being sprayed near their home." Future of the Soy Republic GMO’s next frontier in the region will be corn, with Monsanto preparing a 200 million dollar investment for Argentina over the next three years. The company hopes that the nation’s cattle ranchers will move to feed lots, rather than grass feeding cattle. Already, cattle ranching has lost 12 million acres to soybeans in the last five years alone. And prices have been affected due to scarcity with beef prices increasing by 20 percent in the past year. According to the Sociedad Rural, Argentina’s main agricultural organization, the production of basic food staples has dropped drastically. From 1997 wheat dropped -19%, Corn dropped -31%, Oats dropped -28%, Rice dropped -23%; while soy production increased +213%. The recent strike, which hasn’t gotten much support from small landholders or farmhands, is a sign that farmers are uncomfortable with the global drop in commodity prices. Meanwhile, consumers continue to pay high prices on food with intermediaries and agribusinesses funneling profits from the global food system. As with colonial countries ravaged by imperial powers, once profits from soy dries up due to a collapse on the global market, Argentina will be left with only the devastating impact of monoculture – displaced rural populations, nutrient depleted soil, loss of biodiversity, and poisoned communities. Marie Trigona is a journalist based in South America. She can be reached at mtrigona@msn.com and www.mujereslibres.blogspot.com Photo from Prensa de Frente |
Friday, August 28, 2009
Argentine farmers protest government export taxes
Farmers in Argentina are holding a nation-wide strike against the government´s agricultural policies. FSRN´s Marie Trigona has more from Buenos Aires.Listen to report
Free Speech Radio News
Farmers camped out along highways burning tires and monitoring trucks carrying grain throughout Argentina as part of the protest that has frozen grain and cattle sales. This protest is the latest episode in a long standing dispute between the agricultural sector and President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner over tax exports on soy. Farmers say the on soy drives profits down for producers. They're also upset over the Presidential veto of a farming law that would have exempted farmers from draught struck areas from paying export levies.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Factory in the Hands of Workers (Zanon belongs to the people - FASINPAT wins definitive expropriation)
The workers at Argentina's occupied ceramics factory FASINPAT won a major victory this week, the factory now definitively belongs to the people in legal terms. The provincial legislature voted in favor of expropriating the ceramics factory and handing it over to the workers cooperative to manage legally and indefinitely. Since 2001, the workers at Zanon have fought for legal recognition of worker control at Latin America's largest ceramics factory which has created jobs, spearheaded community projects, supported social movements world-wide and shown the world that workers don't need bosses."This is incredible, we are happy. The expropriation is an act of justice," said Alejandro Lopez the General Secretary of the Ceramists Union, overwhelmed by the emotion of the victory. "We don't forget the people who supported us in our hardest moments, or the 100,000 people who signed the petition supporting our bill."
Hundreds of workers from the FASINPAT factory, factory without a boss, waited anxiously until the late hours of the night for the legislature's decision. The expropriation law passed 26 votes in favor and 9 votes against the bill. Thousands of supporters from other workers' organizations, human rights groups and social movements, along with entire families and students, joined the workers as they waited outside the provincial legislature in the capital city of Neuquén. Enduring the Patagonian winter weather, activists played drums and shouted: "here they are the workers of Zanon, workers without a boss."
FASINPAT has operated under worker control since 2001 when Zanon's owners decided to close its doors and fire the workers without paying months of back pay or severance pay. Leading up to the massive layoffs and plant's closure, workers went on strike in 2000. The owner, Luis Zanon, with over 75 million dollars in debt to public and private creditors (including the World Bank for over 20 million dollars), fired en masse most of the workers and closed the factory in 2001-a bosses' lockout. In October 2001, workers declared the plant under worker control. The workers subsequently camped outside the factory for four months, pamphleteering and partially blocking a highway leading to the capital city of Neuquén. While the workers were camping outside the factory, a court ruled that the employees could sell off remaining stock. After the stock ran out, on March 2, 2002, the workers' assembly voted to start up production without a boss. Since the occupation, the workers renamed the factory FASINPAT (Factory without a Boss).
The workers set up a stage with a giant screen for the thousands of supporters to view the legislative vote. As the decision was read, workers embraced one another in tears in disbelief that after 8 years of struggle they finally won legal control of the factory. "This decision reflects an organized struggle that won the support all of society," said Veronica Hullipan from the Confederation of Mapuche. She said that the network of Mapuche indigenous communities in the Patagonia have supported the Zanon workers' struggle and said legal decision is a "political triumph of workers' organization."
Zanon workers reminded their supporters that the struggle of Zanon, was also the struggle of Carlos Fuentealba, a public school teacher from the province of Neuquén killed by a police officer during a peaceful protest in defense of public education. The Zanon workers have not only created jobs, but they have supported workers struggles locally, nationally and internationally. Workers from FASINPAT were present at the protest where Fuentealba was shot point blank in the head with a tear gas canister, in police repression ordered by the conservative ruling coalition of Neuquén MPN, which has ruled the Patagonian province since the 1976-1983 military dictatorship.
"This is an important chapter in the struggle of the Zanon workers, who have been fighting in the streets for more than 9 years. First they tried to evict us in order to auction off the factory, the workers' struggle and the community pressured the government to expropriate the factory," Raul Godoy, Zanon worker told the national news daily Página/12. Today, the plant exports ceramics to 25 countries.
Many legislative representatives wanted to demand that the workers at the self-managed factory "guarantee a pact for social peace." But for the workers, the pact for social peace is broken when businessmen fraudulently go bankrupt and throw hundreds of workers out into the street. "The capitalists are constantly declaring war with tariff increases, by privatizing public companies and with firings. Before this situation, the workers must defend themselves; and the workers at Zanon commit to defending ourselves, in the street, however we have to."
According to the legislation passed, the FASINPAT cooperative which employs 470 workers and exports ceramics to more than 25 countries, will remain under the control of the cooperative. The state would pay off 22 million pesos (around $7 million) to the creditors. One of the main creditors is the World Bank - which gave a loan of 20 million dollars to Luis Zanon for the construction of the plant, which he never paid back. The other major creditor is the Italian company SACMY that produces state of the art ceramics manufacturing machinery and is owed over $5 million. However, the workers have resisted the state pay-off, saying that courts have proven that the creditors participated in the fraudulent bankruptcy of the plant in 2001, because the credits went directly to the owner Luis Zanon and not investments into the factory. "If someone should pay, Luis Zanon should pay, who is being charged with tax evasion," said Omar Villablanca from FASINPAT.
Victory, then an eviction
While the victory of FASINPAT brings hope to many of the 200 occupied factories currently operated under worker self-management in Argentina, many are still facing legal attacks. Early yesterday morning, jus
t hours after the Zanon victory, a police operative evicted the factory Textil Quilmes, a thread factory occupied in the new wave of factory occupations in 2009. The four workers on night guard were evicted violently. The Buenos Aires provincial government is currently debating an expropriation bill for Textil Quilmes and several other new occupations in the Buenos Aires province. The textile workers are resisting the eviction at the factory's doors, rallying support to re-enter the factory despite police presence. They also had temporary legal protection, following an expropriation bill that was approved unanimously by the lower house in the provincial legislature.The workers occupied the plant on February 11, 2009. "We camped outside the plant to avoid the bosses' liquidation of the machinery. And the workers decided to take a direct action, occupy and form a cooperative," said Eduardo Santillán, a Quilmes textile worker. With the remaining cotton left in the plant, the workers immediately began to produce cotton thread. At the time of the firing, more than 80 worked at the plant. In a common practice for business owners who file bankruptcy despite an increased demand for their product, the owner Ruben Ballani of Febatex owed the workers months of unpaid salaries, unpaid vacation time and social security. The workers also reported that the owner would force his employees to work 12 hour shifts, a practice outlawed nearly 100 years ago.
Six months after the workers were fired and the union (Sindicato Textil - AOT) failed to intervene, the workers at Textil Quilmes started up production. They claim that the union, who turned their backs on the workers once they were fired, is now negotiating on behalf of the bosses.
The occupations in Argentina continue to rise as the global economic crisis hits the South American nation. The Arrufat chocolate factory, Disco de Oro empanada pastry manufacturer, Indugraf printing press, Febatex thread producer and Lidercar meat packing plant joined the ranks of the worker occupied factory movement from 2008 to 2009. Textil Quilmes has fought along with workers from other factories occupied since the onset of the global economic crisis to demand expropriation laws; none have a definitive legal future.
Many independent analysts expect the global recession to hit Argentina's real economy. Unemployment rates have gone up and industry growth has halted, while the financial sector remains unaffected because it already took a major blow in 2001. Those who benefited from Argentina's economic recovery of course are now those who are using this crisis as an excuse to downsize and lay-off workers with the promise of public bailout packages and government credits.
The phenomenon of worker occupations continues to grow as the world falls deeper into the current recession. Nearly 20 new factories in Argentina were occupied since 2008. This may be a sign that workers are confronting the current global financial crisis with lessons and tools from previous worker occupied factories post-2001 economic collapse and popular rebellion. Today, some 250 worker occupied enterprises are up and running, employing more than 13,000. Many of these sites have been producing under worker self-management since 2002, providing nearly a decade of lessons, experiments, strategies and mistakes to learn from.
Zanon and others from the occupied factory movement have proven that they are capable of doing what bosses aren't interested in doing: creating jobs and work with dignity. This may be why government representatives, industry leaders and factory owners have remained silent and often times reacted with hostility on this issue; they are afraid of these sites multiplying and the example they have set.
At Zanon, workers constantly use the slogan: "Zanon es del pueblo" or Zanon belongs to the people. The workers have adopted the objective of producing not only to provide jobs and salaries for more than 470 people, but also to create new jobs, make donations in the community and to support other social movements. For many at the recuperated enterprises, the occupation of their workplace meant much more than safe-guarding their jobs, it also became part of a struggle for a world without exploitation. While the Zanon victory is a step in the right direction, many of the occupations are facing eviction orders. FASINPAT can now operate legally and focus their attention to producing ceramics in a faltering economy. The Zanon collective has expressed their continued commitment to defending workers' rights and self-management, which means defending all worker occupations with slogan: "si nos tocan a uno, nos tocan a todos" "if they mess with one of us, they mess with all of us."
Marie Trigona is a writer, radio producer and filmmaker based in Argentina. She is currently writing a book on Worker Self-Management in Latin America forthcoming by AK Press. She can be reached at mtrigona@msn.com
Worker-Run Businesses Flourish in Argentina
TEXT AND PHOTOS BY JAISAL NOOR
Maria Alejendra, a factory worker in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, Argentina, spends her days cutting pieces of rawhide at the Huesitos de Wilde Cooperative. Along with the 33 other original workers at the dog treat factory, Alejandra now makes twice as much money — 2,000 pesos a month — as she did under her former boss. Alejandra, 41, who has worked at the factory for 14 years, is now able to listen to music and drink maté, a South American herbal tea, while she works.
The Huesitos de Wilde Cooperative is just one of more than 250 worker-recovered businesses in Argentina, which employ a total of 13,000 workers. Part of a broader effort to recover factories, which started after the country’s economic collapse in 2001, the workers at Huesitos de Wilde first occupied the factory and took over production in January 2007.
Though Argentina’s economy has improved since the crash, the current economic downturn has caused a recent increase in factory take overs, with a significant uptick since February.
While cooperative enterprises do allow workers a greater role in company decisions, workerrecovered businesses allow employees to reclaim lost jobs, as well as receive the same wages and equally participate in management decisions, as is the case with Huesitos de Wilde.
Workers who seek to recover a business from their owners are faced with numerous challenges. In addition to often lacking management experience, the struggle to find start-up money and maintain a profitable business can often sideline reclaimed enterprises.
The workers at Huesitos de Wilde were offered guidance by an array of groups, including the Argentine Workers Center, a trade-union federation.
“Once we were taught, we came back to take over the factory,” Alejandra said.
Reclaiming factories that have been abandoned by owners provides workers with a way to counter the self-interest of some employers, according to Marie Trigona, a journalist and filmmaker who has worked with Free Speech Radio News and Z Magazine.
Businessmen often exploit crises by declaring bankruptcy so they can set up shop elsewhere and hire cheaper labor or invest their money in more lucrative projects, Trigona said.
Prior to the military coup of 1976, Argentina was one of the wealthiest nations in Latin America. It was the envy of the developing world, with strong labor laws and an unemployment rate of 4.2 percent. But after seven years of brutal military dictatorship — which were marked by widespread torture and the “disappearance” of 30,000 political opponents — followed by a string of pro-free market governments, these progressive policies were eroded.
By the 1990s, Argentina was viewed by the West as a poster-child for embracing neoliberal policies championed by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. But when the speculation- driven economic bubble of the 1990s burst in December 2001, the country’s banking system collapsed. Business owners declared bankruptcy, fired scores of workers and moved their money offshore, resulting in a capital flight of $18.7 billion in 2001.
Argentine civil society responded through popular revolt against the government and economic elite. Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets and toppled four governments in a matter of weeks. Factory takeovers were commonplace, and violent clashes with police led to dozens of civilian deaths over the next several years.
In 2002, the unemployment rate was 25 percent, with another 20 percent of workers underemployed and 60 percent of the country living in poverty. Workers began taking over factories in an attempt to reclaim their livelihoods.
Argentina’s economy began recovering from the collapse in 2003. From 2003 to 2008, for “most recovered factories, the priority was growing economically, finding capital, or raising capital through work. Most of them have done pretty well, while others have just survived,” said Esteban Magnani, who has worked extensively with the recovered-business movement in Argentina and is the author of The Silent Change: Recovered Businesses in Argentina.
By early 2007, more than 170 businesses were worker-run, though the vast majority were not recognized by the government as legal businesses.
Members of the Huesitos de Wilde Cooperative credit La Base, the Argentine-based counterpart of the U.S. micro-finance organization The Working World, as well as the broader community of groups that support worker-run cooperatives, with the factory’s continued success.
This support network proved to be invaluable when the workers returned to the factory to reclaim it and discovered that most of the plant’s machinery had been removed.
With help from the Employees and Supervisors Union and a $15,000 loan from La Base, the workers were able to buy back the equipment before it was sold at the auction block as well as purchase raw materials. But the process was far from easy. For many months, workers went without paychecks, and only 33 of the original 200 workers chose to remain in the cooperative. Of the workers that left, some have found work while many are still unemployed.
The Working World, founded by Brendan Martin in 2004, offers collateral-free loans with no enforcement mechanism for repayment. While the interest rates on the loans given to Huesitos de Wilde range from 10 to 18 percent, the repayment rate for all Working World loans is 98 percent.
According to Magnani, while the state has indicated that expropriation laws, which would provide cooperatives with legal permission to use owner assets, might be enacted, the legal support provided by this legislation would be weak.
“The future of the recovered factories, both the new and the old, is still uncertain,” Magnani said. “Of the older ones, just a few have managed to get the property of assets.”
Despite the challenges facing the workers at Huesitos de Wilde, the state of worker-run cooperatives in the United States is still far behind Argentina.
Late last year, more than 250 fired workers at the Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago held a successful six-day sit-in demanding vacation and severance pay.
While the factory remains open after recently being purchased by California-based Serious Materials, a company that manufactures green building supplies, only 15 of the workers have been able to return to work since May, as production has been slow. Serious Materials hopes that an infusion of federal stimulus funds for weatherization will increase demand for the company’s products and allow them to re-hire all 250 workers.
Though the workers did consider the possibility of taking over the factory themselves, Mark Meinster, a representative of United Electrical Workers, the union to which the Republic workers belong, told The Indypendent earlier this year that the lack of a recovered-factory movement in the United States made this an unlikely possibility.
“The fact that no real movement of worker-run enterprises exists in the U.S. makes this option much more difficult at this point,” Meinster said.
Despite the current global recession, the Huesitos de Wilde Cooperative is thriving, and has recently hired eight more employees. The workers remain optimistic, regardless of their lack of legal ownership of the factory.
“The truth is that you can work without a boss. We have learned that you can continue … and you can succeed,” Alejandra said.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Workplace resistance and self-management: Strategic Lessons from Latin America
Capitalism has taken a turn for the worse, spinning itself out of control into a ruinous downward spiral which many are characterizing as the first depression of this century. Under capitalism there are always winners and losers, even without a recession. Who are the winners? Corporations and banks showered with public bailout packages, seeking to further consolidate their power and capital. Who are the losers? The millions of workers faced with unemployment, dropping wages and inflation.
As unemployment figures creep up to 10 percent in the United States and Europe, workers are scrambling to find solutions to joblessness. Around the world, the phenomenon of worker
occupations and boss-napping has spread as desperate workers resort to direct action at the workplace to prevent companies from firing workers and liquidating assets. Workers have taken more radical measures in the fight against injustices brought on by bosses unleashing attacks against employees through voluntary pay reductions, downsizing and firings. In the past two years Serbia, Turkey, France, Spain, South Africa, England and Canada have seen worker occupations. The most well known case in the US has been the sit-down-strike at the Chicago Windows and Doors plant where workers occupied their factory to demand severance pay and benefits after being abruptly fired.Factory occupations have been used since the onset of the industrial revolution as a strategy for workers to defend themselves against deplorable work conditions, unsafe workplaces and retaliation. Recently in Latin America, workers have used factory occupations not only to make demands heard, but to put worker self-management into practice. In Argentina, and other places in Latin America, workers rediscovered the factory occupation almost a decade ago in 2000 and occupations spread as the nation faced a financial crisis in 2001. Like today, growing unemployment, capital flight and de-industrialization served as the backdrop for the factory takeovers in 2001.
The phenomenon of worker occupations continues to grow as the world falls deeper into the current recession. Nearly 20 new factories in Argentina were occupied since 2008. This may be a sign that workers are confronting the current global financial crisis with lessons and tools from previous worker occupied factories post-2001 economic collapse and popular rebellion. Today, some 250 worker occupied enterprises are up and running, employing more than 13,000. Many of these sites have been producing under worker self-management since 2002, providing nearly a decade of lessons, experiments, strategies and mistakes to learn from.
Arrufat, a chocolate factory in Buenos Aires is one such example of new occupations. On January 5, 2009, the workers got the news that they were fired. Diana Arrufat, owner and heiress to the factory, left a poster on the gate of the factory to inform the workers they no longer had jobs. The 50 workers still employed hadn't been paid their salaries for much of 2008. "They fired us without having to look at our faces. They abandoned us," says Alberto Cavrico a worker who has worked at the plant for more than 20 years. That same day they opened the factory gate and remained inside the factory. And now the workers are producing deliciously sweet delicacies without the supervision and exploitative practices of a boss. The owners of Indugraf printing press shut down operations in a similar manner to Arrufat in November 2008. The printing house workers in Buenos Aires occupied their plant on December 5, the same week that workers in Chicago decided to occupy the Republic and Windows Doors Plant - to demand severance pay and benefits after being abruptly fired. Currently, they are fighting to form a cooperative and start up production without a boss. Other occupations includ
e Disco de Oro, a plant producing the pastry dough to make empanadas, a meat filled pastry common in Argentina. Febatex, a textile plant producing thread and Lidercar, a meat packing plant are two more examples of recent worker occupations. These workers have had to collectively fight violent eviction threats and are still struggling to start up production as worker cooperatives.One part of a full societal vision is workers control, which means that production is collectively and democratically managed by workers. As historians and writers have long noted, the aspiration for direct worker management of production has culminated in many worker takeovers through the greater part of the 20th century -Russia (1917), Italy (1920), Spain (1936), Chile (1972) and Argentina (2001). Argentina offers one of the longest lived experiences of direct worker management of this century. As such, the experiences of self-management in Latin America provide an example of new working class subjectivities, self-determination and working culture while they fight against dominant institutions, including the state and capitalist bosses. Their struggle provide an libratory vision by sowing the seeds for a new society today by reversing the logic of capitalism, challenging market systems of domination and questioning the legitimacy of private property.
What follows are elements of self-management and analysis exploring what contemporary society can learn from nearly a decade of Latin America's experimentation with worker control and self-management. I would like to critically analyze the experiences of worker self-management to conceive how workers can overcome internal, state and market challenges and further promote democratic workplaces.
Self-management and new social relations
"The most important factor, and most subversive, is that the recuperated enterprises confirm that businesses don't need bosses to produce," says Fabio Resino from the BAUEN Hotel. The 19-story, 180 room hotel has been operational since workers took it over in 2003. It operates despite a court ordered eviction notice and void of legal recognition. The hotel has been a launch pad for the new occupied factories; many of the workers from the new take-overs have come to the BAUEN Hotel seeking advice and support. The BAUEN collective forms part of a network of enterprises that are building democratic workplaces, community projects and solidarity networks.
Most of the worker takeovers was an action to guarantee that the owners wouldn't be able to liquidate assets before filing bankruptcy to avoid paying workers indemnities and back salaries. Workers' demands steadily grew from a measure to safe guard their jobs to the idea implementing a system of self-management. With little hope that bosses would ever return to pay workers what they owed, workers devised plans to start up production with no boss or owner what so ever.
In many of the worker occupied factories, as soon as the workers began producing without a boss or owner, relationships at the workplace were re-invented. The workers broke with the capitalist model of hierarchical organization, alienation and exploitation. For some, this transition occurred smoothly and for others the change was a difficult challenge. The questions of what do we do next and how do we do it led to workers organizing themselves in various versions of alternatives to the capitalist business structure.
Decision-making
Within self-management the very nature of work and decision-making should be transformed into a participatory, democratic and empowering process void of exploits, inequality and authority. The recuperated enterprises have managed to devise systems to democratize decision-making in a participatory manner, while at the same time competing in the market. For example, at the Zanon ceramics factory, the largest recuperated enterprise with more than 470 workers, the factory has been transformed into a workplace model based on values like equity, liberation, mutual cooperation, participatory managing and direct democracy. Workers at Zanon have developed a coordinator system to organize production and basic functioning. Each production line forms a commission. Each commission votes on a coordinator that rotates regularly. The coordinator of the sector informs on issues, news, and conflicts within his or her sector to an assembly of coordinators. The coordinator then reports back to his or her commission news from other sectors. The workers hold weekly assemblies per shift. The factory also holds a general assembly, during which production is halted, each month, where the collective resolves actions and decisions.
Self-management implies that a community, workplace or group makes its own decisions, worker self-management is specific in the process of planning and management of production. As many of the worker recuperated enterprises move toward self-management, they develop organization that resists hierarchies and delegation of decision-making power. Centralization is a challenge for workplaces in which the assembly doesn't meet regularly or developed as an efficient decision-making/deliberator tool. When delegates or representatives make decisions for a worker controlled enterprise, that aren't explicitly delegated by the collective, there is more chance for corruption and decision-making based on personal interests rather than collective interests.
Again, Resino from the BAUEN Hotel: "Because there is no capital stock or boss, new relations are created in which the workers discuss and decide in a more or less democratic way the fate of the enterprise: how to distribute profits equitably, where to invest, how the enterprise is organized and administered." In almost all of the occupied sites, workers are paid equal salaries no matter what position or type of work they complete.
Where a capitalist business has a vertical pyramid structure, many of the recuperated enterprise structures resemble a circle structure with working teams communicating with each other in networks rather than a top-down system where capitalists and coordinator class give instructions while workers passively take orders. The cooperative model results in a more dynamic and horizontal organizational model, while being socially viable rather than exploitive.
In many of these cooperatives, the worker assembly is the only "authority" in the workplace. But not all decisions can or should be made within an assembly, or with consensus. Although, all decision-making mechanisms should be participatory and representative of the worker collective as a whole. The coordinator class or "administrative representatives" at most of the take-overs did not occupy as operators or non-managerial workers did. This meant that the workers had to learn administration and marketing, leading to challenges and mistakes but ultimately a greater opportunity for participatory planning within the workplace.
If we take for example problem solving, the self-managed enterprises need to take a different approach to classic management styles implemented by businesses where decisions are made in an authoritarian manner. The assembly should make decision, but deliberation as a collective on problem solving within an assembly can be messy, time-consuming and conflictive. Working groups with workers from the different areas of the business can meet to trouble-shoot and devise different possible solutions for a problem within the enterprise whether it be economic or administrative. They can take the report to the assembly which can then make an informed decision on which solution is best for the worker collective.
The assembly can backfire. A factor in how well workers are able to adopt new social relations at the workplace depends highly on the level of organization, class consciousness and commitment to cooperation. If there is a charismatic personality that monopolizes the assembly, while the rest of participants passively participate, the assembly can be manipulated, even if a decision is taken "collectively." If that decision is manipulated, it can't really be considered a democratic decision.
Social property
Conceptually, in a recuperated enterprise there is no capitalist, boss or owner, the enterprise is collectively owned. For some workers, the enterprise doesn't belong to the worker collective, but to society. Sometimes, when workers have the notion that the cooperative belongs to them and only that group, personal interests develop, diminishing the libratory spirit of working without a boss. This can lead to isolation and lack of long-term investing, as well as preventing community groups or allies from lending advice.
At Zanon, workers constantly use the slogan: "Zanon es del pueblo" or Zanon belongs to the people. The workers have adopted the objective of producing not only to provide jobs and salaries for more than 470 people, but also to create new jobs, make donations in the community and to support other social movements. Work is seen as a social asset, not as an imposition.
Hiring
Thousands of jobs have been created by the occupied factories. Nearly 30 workers occupied the BAUEN, when it was first taken over in 2003. Today, the cooperative employs more than 150. There are many other examples where the group of workers producing under self-management grew: Maderera Cordoba wood shop went from 8 workers to 22; Zanon from 250 to 470; Rabbione transport cooperative from 9 to 40.
How people are hired within an occupied factory varies. The workers at Zanon have had the most political approach to hiring workers. When Zanon began to produce under worker control they hired former Zanon workers who had been fired. Later they began to divide the job openings for grass roots activists working with the unemployed (piquetero) worker organizations. Some other takeovers have decided that family members of "original workers" should be hired. This has set up a system where the families of the original workers occupying their workplace were rewarded while constituents and supporters can be seen as "outsiders" that you call when you need them, but keep at a distance when it comes to internal affairs at the cooperative. Hiring workers on this basis promotes favoritism, favoring personal interests of a particular group of people, or family, rather than the community, whether that would be a geographical community or community of people fighting for social justice.
Social Economy
Many of the 200 worker occupied businesses and factories in Argentina are being affected by the crisis. But unlike their capitalist counterparts, the worker cooperatives are taking any measure possible to avoid laying off workers, something which they are opposed to doing. "We aren't like the capitalists. You can't throw workers out like they are lice," said Candido Gonzalez, a veteran worker from Chilavert worker occupied print factory in Buenos Aires, one of the first occupied plants after the 2001 crisis.
As Argentina's economy slows down, the recuperated enterprises now have to devise how to compete in a shrinking market. The social economy may be one solution to the deepening crisis. Within a social economy, cooperatives can function with greater autonomy than they can while competing in the purely capitalist market. For example, with tourism slowing down BAUEN Hotel has reached an agreement with FEDETUR, a tourist federation grouping more than 1.5 million associates from cooperatives and mutuals in the region. Associates from other cooperative can enjoy the services of the hotel at a fair price, while BAUEN can rely on a group of non-capitalist clientele that understands the complexity and importance of working in a cooperative. BAUEN can create income and solidarity network outside of the purely capitalist international tourism market. Catering to a working class clientele, also helps the collective not to forget their roots as workers who lost their jobs and led a direct
A social economy not only provides an alternative solution during an economic crisis, but also augments worker self-managed workplaces' autonomy and possibility to mutually cooperate with other non-capitalist projects. Social economy as defined here is not to be confused with micro-credit lending and social programs supported by groups like the World Bank and Inter-Development Bank to suppress the poor. Here, social economy is defined as an approach to production and product exchange outside of the capitalist market for the liberation of oppressed communities from exploitation both as workers and as consumers.
With a social economy, production chains can be complemented or even completed without having to rely on capitalists transact in the market. For example, cotton growers from Campesino Movement of Formosa (MOCAFOR), a grassroots movement made up of traditional farmers and indigenous groups can sell their product to the newly occupied FEBATEX that produces cotton thread. FEBATEX can then sell their thread to the Brukman suit factory. The process could be very extensive given the diversity and number of cooperatives/mutual associations/occupied factories and social movements producing goods. Another example could be that Zanello, a massive tractor manufacturer occupied by workers and partially self-managed by workers could reach an agreement with MOCAFOR, while another worker owned cooperative Icecoop developing green farming technology could also provide services to MOCAFOR.
Many transactions could even be in the form of swaps, a bakery cooperative could trade bread for shoes from another cooperative that manufactures shoes, like Pupure cooperative that specializes in work shoes. Cooperatives could set up a system to trade their final product for other products from other cooperatives to cover basic needs, this system could be called "auto-consumo" or producing for personal consumption. Rather than producing for a market, cooperatives could produce for the consumer and directly for their communities.
Another aspect of the social economy is selling products in alternative networks or autonomous spaces rather than a traditional market, where the buyer with more bargaining power over the seller wins. For example, ARRUFAT chocolate cooperative could set up a stand at a weekly street fair organized by a neighborhood assembly association. This could be a viable alternative to putting their product on corporate super-market shelves, something which may not be accessible given the volume and narrow profit margin needed to market products at a chain-store.
FACTA or the Federation of Worker Self-managed Cooperatives has played an important role in supporting the cooperatives. FACTA, founded in 2006, is made up of more than 70 worker self-managed coops, many worker occupied others worker owned inspired by the recuperated enterprise phenomenon. FACTA's objective is to group cooperatives together so they can collectively negotiate institutional, political, legal and market challenges together; the idea being that 70 cooperative united can better negotiate with state representatives, institutional offices and other businesses. FACTA also brings working class identity, by bringing workers together to deliberate autonomous solutions and confront state and business interests.
Gender, liberation and self-management
Many of the women working at the self-managed workplaces have triple roles as working women, mothers, and activists, with particular challenges women must face. These problems require different solutions at the workplace and a social network outside of the workplace. Infrastructural support such as childcare should be provided. Childcare is an important issue for both men and women. Day-care centers could also be part of a self-managed project, with child care professionals working in a self-managed workplace. Health care and psychological support is also an important service that self-managed workplaces should secure for the collective. As activists, women and men face many pressures, ranging from threats of state-violence and fighting for legality for their cooperative on which their jobs depend. At Zanon, psychologists and social workers have provided services for workers and their families dealing with a range of issues that comes with defending your job until the last consequence.
In most cases, women in the recuperated enterprises are outnumbered by male co-workers. Some enterprises have hired women for "non-traditional" positions in the workplace, but in my observation women fulfill mostly "traditional" roles at some of the cooperatives. There needs to be discussion and action to diversify the workplace and for women to be placed in "non-traditional" job posts. At the assembly, equal opportunity should be an agenda item for the collective to evaluate whether women have equal access to training, education and participation.
At some sites, women have formed commissions or meeting spaces to discuss the challenges women face in their workplaces, even when there isn't a boss. Within these spaces, they also plan political actions with women from other organizations and social movements against gender oppression. Self-management implies that equality and liberation should be met on all fronts, for all collective members to attain non-hierarchical, egalitarian and classless workplaces where members can freely participate in decision-making. This means adopting an anti-sexist, anti-racist and anti-homophobic agenda to promote diversity and equality.
Occupy, Resist, Produce - Tools for working class resistance
Workers from the recuperated enterprises are building new tools for action after nearly 20 years of privatization, deregulation and labor flexibility, fed up with unresponsive unions compliant with business interest. Argentine workers occupied and started up production out of necessity. In many ways, the sites in Argentina set the stage for workers around the world to follow their example, by proving that workers can produce without a boss. Argentina's recuperated emprises have renewed interest in building democratic workplaces around the globe, from Spain to South Africa to England. Sure enough, 10 years later, workers are now beginning to occupy, boss-nap and even threaten to sabotage means of production to save their jobs and dignity.By no means is this essay meant to represent a full-analysis of self-management in Latin America's occupied enterprises, it is a glimpse into the complexities of self-management and potential that these sites have for transforming society's vision of production and work. Argentina's worker occupied factories have successfully put into a practice ideas that directly challenge the logic of capitalism: Occupy, Resist, Produce.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Study Released in Argentina Puts Glyphosate Under Fire
Monsanto Soy Herbicide Could Pose Health Risks Americas Program, Center for International Policy (CIP)
Argentina has seen an explosion in genetically modified (GM) soy bean production with soy exports topping $16.5 billion in 2008. The fertile South American nation is now the world's third largest producer of soy, trailing behind the United States and Brazil. However, this lucrative industrial form of farming has come under fire with environmental groups, local residents, and traditional farmers reporting that GM soy threatens biodiversity, the nation's ability to feed itself, and health in rural communities.
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| A study released by Dr. Andres Carrasco earlier this year reports that glyphosate causes birth defects. Photo: Marie Trigona. |
Criticism of the soy farming model intensified recently when research released by Argentina's top medical school showed that a leading chemical used in soy farming may be harmful to human health. The study has alarmed policymakers in the South American nation.
A study released by an Argentine scientist earlier this year reports that glyphosate, patented by Monsanto under the name "Round Up," causes birth defects when applied in doses much lower than what is commonly used in soy fields.
The study was directed by a leading embryologist, Dr. Andres Carrasco, a professor and researcher at the University of Buenos Aires. In his office in the nation's top medical school, Dr. Carrasco shows me the results of the study, pulling out photos of birth defects in the embryos of frog amphibians exposed to glyphosate. The frog embryos grown in petri dishes in the photos looked like something from a futuristic horror film, creatures with visible defects—one eye the size of the head, spinal cord deformations, and kidneys that are not fully developed.
"We injected the amphibian embryo cells with glyphosate diluted to a concentration 1,500 times than what is used commercially and we allowed the amphibians to grow in strictly controlled conditions." Dr. Carrasco reports that the embryos survived from a fertilized egg state until the tadpole stage, but developed obvious defects which would compromise their ability to live in their normal habitats.
Pointing to the color photos spread on his desk, Dr. Carrasco says, "On the side where the contaminated cell was injected you can see defects in the eye and defects in the cartilage."
For the past 15 months, Dr. Carrasco's research team documented embryos' reactions to glyphosate. Embryological study is based on the premise that all vertebrate animals share a common design during the development stages. This accepted scientific premise means that the study indicates human embryonic cells exposed to glyphosate, even in low doses, would also suffer from defects.
"When a field is fumigated by an airplane, it's difficult to measure how much glysophate remains in the body," says Dr. Carrasco. "When you inject the embryonic cell with glysophate, you know exactly how much glysophate you are putting into the cell and you have a strict control."
Glyphosate is the top selling herbicide in the world and is widely used on soy crops in Argentina.
Monoculture soy is grown on more than 42 million acres of fields across Argentina and sprayed with more than 44 million gallons of glyphosate annually. It is part of a technological package sold by Monsanto that includes Round Up Ready seeds GM to tolerate the herbicide glyphosate. This allows growers to fumigate directly onto the GM soy seed, killing nearby weeds without killing the crop. In the winter, crops are sprayed to kill off weeds and seeds are then planted without having to plow the soil, a process commonly referred to as "no-till farming." Nearly, 95% of the 47 million tons of soy grown in Argentina in 2007 was genetically modified, adopting the Round Up ready technology marketed by Monsanto.
The study on the top-selling agrochemical has alarmed policymakers, so much so that Dr. Carrasco has received anonymous threats and industry leaders demanded access to his laboratory immediately following the study's release. Industry leader Monsanto wouldn't talk to the Americas Program for this story, but in a press release on its website, the company says that "glyphosate is safe."
Many in the agro-business sector claim that Dr. Carrasco's study has little scientific basis. Guillermo Cal is the executive director of CASAFE—Argentina's association of agrochemical companies that counts Monsanto, Dow Agro-sciences, Dupont, and Bayer CropScience among its members. Cal dismissed the recent study conducted at the University of Buenos Aires. In an exclusive interview with the Americas Program, Cal rebuked Dr. Carrasco's study, stating, "There are hundreds of articles about the impact of glyphosate in amphibians and none of these articles have shown the disastrous effects that Dr. Carrasco is mentioning. I have the suspicion that these are headlines and probably [this study is a] politically motivated article."
On further investigation, it turned out that the studies that Guillermo Cal cited in the interview were all financed and conducted by the companies that market glyphosate. When asked about that Cal replied, "The developing companies are the ones that have to finance these studies because we need to have proof of the innocuous character of the product before the product is launched."
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| Frog embryos injected with glyphosate developed obvious defects which would compromise their ability to live in their normal habitats. Photo: Marie Trigona. |
Since Argentina's soybean boom in the late 90s, clinical studies have been conducted in communities reporting suspiciously high rates of cancer, birth defects, and neonatal mortality. However, industry leaders also refute these clinical studies, saying they are anecdotal and have little scientific basis. Among a corporate controlled scientific community it is notoriously difficult for clinical studies to "prove" the link between environmental contamination and health results, since life is not a "controlled environment."
In a small town bordering soy farms in the province of Cordoba, the Mothers of Ituzaingo group was formed in response to sudden increases in the local cancer rate. Ituzaingo has 5,000 residents—in 2001 they reported more than 200 cases of cancer and by 2009 that number has jumped to 300. This is 41 times the national average. (I conducted this calculation: the national average or percentage is 0.145 of the population diagnosed with cancer—in this town 6% of the population has cancer.) They have fought for regulations against fumigating soy crops in residential areas and a ban of agrochemicals.
Sofia Gatica is an activist with the Mothers of Ituzaingo. Sofia joined the grassroots group after suffering the death of her newborn baby. Her daughter was still born with a malformed kidney. Her 14-year-old daughter is currently undergoing treatment for toxicity in the blood. The toxin was identified as endosulfan, an insecticide used on soy fields.
Gatica describes the many birth defects that have occurred locally. "We have had children born with only two thumbs and no fingers, malformed kidneys, children with six fingers. We have had babies born without an anus, or with malformations in the intestines."
After years of documenting the tragedies, the Mothers of Itzuaingo decided to take their case to the courts. In 2006, they won their lawsuit in the provincial Supreme Court. Based on their findings the court ruled to prohibit the use of agrochemicals within 1,000 meters of residential areas. The decision applies to the province of Cordoba while in the rest of the country farmers can continue to fumigate with no regulations.
The case of Ituzaingo is not an isolated case. For nearly a decade, communities have reported health problems from aerial and terrestrial fumigation with the arsenal of pesticides and herbicides used in industrial soy farming. And for nearly a decade they have been ignored. "Communities are literally fumigated with planes or with the terrestrial 'mosquito repellant' fumigations (similar to the DEET trucks used to fumigate U.S. neighborhoods in the 50s). Cases of health problems, miscarriages, birth defects, and cancer rates have multiplied at an alarming rate in communities surrounding the soy fields," says Carlos A. Vicente, head of information for Latin America at GRAIN.
The Campesino Movement of Santiago del Estero (MOCASE), a grassroots movement made up of traditional farmers and indigenous groups, has taken more than 100 accusations of agrochemical poisoning to court in Santiago del Estero. The only other case of a judge ruling against the use of herbicides occurred in the northern province of Formosa. The judge, Silvia Amanda Sevilla, was subsequently fired. No other judge in the country has ruled in favor of prohibiting fumigation using glyphosate or other herbicides and pesticides. The courts have either thrown out or ruled against every single claim brought by the plaintiffs. Darío Aranda, a journalist with the national daily, Página/12, has reported on numerous communities in soy-producing regions throughout the country that have faced severe health problems, including residents in the provinces of Buenos Aires, Entre Rios, Chaco, Santa Fe, and Formosa.
Worse yet, research shows that the mostly rural communities that suffer the negative health effects of fumigations have not benefited from the soy explosion. On the contrary, in most regions families have been pushed off land taken over by soy farming, leading to a loss of livelihood in addition to the severe health risks. According to a 2002 agricultural census, in four years more than 200,000 families were driven from their traditional farms, and most of the families relocated in working class belts outside of major cities.
Authorities and industry representatives maintain that the clinical studies and citizen complaints must be backed up by "serious studies" in order for them to act. Gatica says that GM seed and agrochemical companies have converted Argentina into an experimenting ground to test the toxicity of their herbicides and pesticides, principally glyphosate and endosulfan. "We can prove that agrochemicals have harmed us. We can prove this with studies and with whatever is left of our children," says Gatica. The anger in her voice reflects the grief and rage she has channeled into this David and Goliath battle.
The expansion of soy means the increased use and concentration of glyphosate. Over time, Round Up herbicide loses its technological battle with evolution and new weeds develop that are more resistant to the herbicide, explains Javier Souza Casadinho, professor at the University of Buenos Aires and regional coordinator of the Latin American Action Network for Alternative Pesticides. "Producers must use more applications, and in higher doses with higher toxicity—the application has gone from three liters in 1999 to the current dose of 12 liters, per hectare," says Souza.
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| DANGER! Genetically Modified Soy. Photo: Marie Trigona. |
GM soy was swiftly approved for cultivation in Argentina in 1996, under former Agricultural Secretary Felipe Sola. A 180-page file report, prepared by GM giant Monsanto in English without a Spanish translation was the only document evaluated before Sola approved GM soy after only 81 days of review. The former secretary and investor in the soy industry won a seat in the legislature in the June 2009 elections, riding in on his opposition to President Cristina Kirchner's decision to increase the export tax on soy. Argentina's current Secretary of Agriculture Carlos Cheppi refused the Americas Program's formal request for an interview. His press secretary said Ricardo Gouna is "unwilling to talk about the use and regulation of agrochemicals in Argentina's soy industry."
The study in Argentina is not the only research concluding that the number one selling herbicide may be harmful to human health. Gilles-Eric Seralini, professor at the University of Caen and specialist in molecular biology, led a study that concluded the herbicides in the Round Up Ready package causes cells to die in human embryos.
"Even in doses diluted a thousand times, the herbicide could cause malformations, miscarriages, hormonal problems, reproductive problems, and different types of cancers," said Dr. Seralini in an interview with Dario Aranda published in Página/12. Round Up Ready is currently marketed in more than 120 nations. Latin American nations Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay are the region's fastest growing markets.
Since Carrasco's study was released in April, the NGO Association of Environmental Lawyers (Aadeaa) petitioned the Supreme Court to ban the use of glyphosate and endosulfan. Policymakers are currently considering the petition. The National Committee on Ethical Science has also recommended that the Agricultural Ministry create an investigative committee to urgently evaluate the effects of the number one selling herbicide in Argentina. Dr. Carrasco says that his study and previous studies should serve as a red-light warning for policymakers charged with evaluating regulations for glyphosate. The herbicide is currently categorized as a level 4 toxin—the lowest level possible for agrochemicals. In science and medicine, when you suspect that something dangerous is occurring, you need to implement the precautionary principle, which dictates: "I need to take precautions; I can't ignore the problem; I can't wait until there are a lot of deaths to intervene." Unfortunately, Argentine courts and federal, state, and local governments appear not to agree. Given the enormous economic stakes, precaution may come too late as soy has invaded the majority of Argentina's highly fertile land leading to irreversible social, health, and environmental consequences.
Friday, July 03, 2009
Argentina's capital declares Swine Flu emergency
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In Argentina, the capital city of Buenos Aires declared a Swine Flu health emergency as deaths from the H1N1 flu virus continue to rise. More than 17 provinces in Argentina have declared health emergencies in an attempt to slow down the spread of the swine flu pandemic. FSRN´s Marie Trigona has more from Buenos Aires.
http://www.fsrn.org/audio/argentina%C2%B4s-capital-declares-swine-flu-emergency/4994
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Argentina's President Loses Power in Mid-Term Elections
Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner faced a major test in the recent mid-term election in which she lost 
considerable power and her party's congressional majority vanished. The June 28 mid-term election could be better described as a referendum on Fernandez. As the first woman president elect her party fed the fire, turning the elections into a poll on the President's popularity. More than 70 percent of voters voted for opposition parties, according to official election results - indicator that Fernandez's popularity and support for her Peronist leaning party, Frente Para la Victoria (FPV) may be waning among the 19 million voters who went to the polls.
The Kirchner's have dominated the Argentine political scene since Nestor Kirchner, her husband, was elected in 2003 and credited for the nation's rapid recovery from the 2001 financial crisis which devastated the economy. Opting out of re-election in 2007, his wife Fernandez de Kirchner ran and took office with an 80 percent approval rating. However, the good times for Latin America's "power couple" who have also been described as the Kirchner dynasty were short lived as the economic crisis hindered hopes for continued 2003-2007 economic growth.
President Fernandez de Kirchner called for early elections originally scheduled for October so that her administration and legislative bodies "can focus on how to tackle the economic crisis." But many analysts claim that the government pushed elections up early so that Fernandez could avoid blame on how her government has handled the economic crisis which is beginning to take hold of South America's second largest economy.
The fall was hard for the Kirchner's. Nestor Kirchner lost the high profile political race in Buenos Aires province, the province with the most voters, by a small margin. He was defeated by Francisco de Narvárez, a wealthy heir from the conservative-right coalition Union PRO. Narváez, an unlikely candidate, Columbian-born with a tattoo on his neck and son of a supermarket giant, reveled in his victory as the working-class suburbs of Buenos Aires had long been Kirchner's electoral home turf. The very next day Fernandez abruptly resigned as leader of the Peronist party. Despite the loss, President Fernandez de Kirchner played down the election results citing that it was a close race and diversity in the legislature will help the democratic process.
What caused this fall from grace? And what's next for Argentina?
The center-right candidates from the Union PRO won the most ground in both the nation's autonomous capital district and in the Buenos Aires province. The candidate of the PRO party, Gabriela Michetti, won the congressional elections in Buenos Aires City with 31.08 percent of the votes. Both PRO candidates Michetti and Narváez marketed themselves for voters who "don't like the Kirchners." They called for a regression to policies implemented in the 90's favoring markets, foreign investors, and the privatization of public services, while tackling crime with a hard hand.
However, there are other indicators that voters would like the President to turn more to the left, rather than remain in the center. Fernando "Pino" Solanas, candidate for the leftist leaning Proyecto de Sur coalition and the director of the classic political film The Hour of the Furnaces, came in second winning 24.5 percent of votes in the capital. His campaign focused on the renationalization of natural resources like the nation's mining and oil industries.
Fernandez adopted many policies, which the nation's consolidated press described as unpopular and probably were for the business community which has benefited from decades of government subsidies, but received approval from unions, social movements, and regional partners such as Venezuela and other members of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), a regional leftist trade bloc. She nationalized pension funds almost bankrupted by private companies that acquired retirees' pensions in the 1990's. The President also supported the legislative move to renationalize the country's largest airline. The formerly state-owned Aerolinas Argentina was privatized in 1990, but the government said that mismanagement put the carrier into 900 million dollars in debt. These measures, described as erratic and combative, were a move away from the 2001 neoliberal policies, adopted under former neo-conservative Peronist President Carlos Menem (1989-1999), which caused the country to go broke.
The economy, which saw economic growth under her husband topping 8 percent from 2003-2007, has now slowed down to a reported 2 percent, likely an inflated figure. For example, leading up to the elections, the national statistic institute (INDEC) was accused of inflating numbers to show that the country's economy is on track. Independent analysts say that the inflation rate, published at 9.6 percent, is much higher than official statistics. Unemployment figures are relatively low, officially reported at 8 percent. Economists estimate that more than 50,000 people have lost their jobs since the onset of the current economic crisis.
In a positive step, the President has finally spoken in defense of workers who occupy their workplaces in order to keep their jobs. The national government would like to modify the nation's bankruptcy laws, which currently favor creditors and bankrupt businesses rather than workers, to make it easier for workers to start up cooperatives.
Union groupings held numerous protests and even a national strike calling on Fernandez to implement protection measures for job security and wealth redistribution as recession slowly unfolds in the nation's industry. Consumer associations are also demanding price controls on food and consumer products. But following the June 28 election, business community announced price increases. Fernandez has reluctantly imposed price controls, essential with rising inflation so that the majority of the population can access basic goods like milk, meat and bread. In addition to inflation, basic goods have become more expensive since enormous monoculture soy plantations now dominate the countryside.
Argentina's soy farmers tried their hardest to influence the mid-term elections, but failed to win much political ground. Agrarian associations representing the country's soy farmers proved to be the president's biggest challenge since taking office. In 2008 and into 2009, farmers held several paralyzing strikes over the government's decision to increase an export tax on soy, a policy carried over from Nestor Kirchner, who upped the tax to 35% as an emergency measure to revive the economy after the crisis. Many of the provinces where the opposition won votes are precisely the bread-basket producing provinces, where the production of genetically modified soy has invaded more than 42 million acres of fertile land. It's unlikely that the government will reverse its support of the soy tax, as revenue from soy exports topped nearly 16 billion dollars in 2008 alone, crucial income for the government's treasury reserves. One agro-leader and hopeful governor candidate, Alfredo De Angeli received heavy criticisms after he said that in order to defeat the Kirchner's land owners should "find the farmhands on the estates, put them on a truck and tell them who they should vote for." A number of agro-leaders ran for congress hoping to win 17 percent of seats but fell short only winning a Senate seat and lower house seats.
A health crisis is looming due to the spread of the deadly H1N1 "swine flu" virus. As voters went to the polls, many voted wearing surgical masks and registry personnel were instructed not to shake voter's hands. More than 26 have died from the deadly epidemic and more than 1,500 have been infected with the virus. The Southern Hemisphere's winter temperatures are accelerating the spread of the virus. Yet the government has delayed declaration of a health emergency, resulting in the Health Minister Graciel Ocaña's resignation the day after the June 28 elections. It may have been prudent to hold off an election to deal with the deadly epidemic. Like many of the nation's structural problems such as the economy and growing crime the government opted to ignore the dilemma rather than dealing with it. The epidemic may spiral into a real crisis for the already stumbling economy.
What's next? President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and the new legislative representatives taking their posts this December are going to face many challenges as the economy takes an inevitable severe downturn. How they come out of the crisis is part of the game of politics. One of the first challenges for the President post-elections will be to take a strong stance in her foreign policy favoring regional integration and cooperation among progressive governments. Indeed, she is traveling with the OAS commission to escort illegally and forcibly exiled Honduran President Manuel Zelaya back to his country. Fernandez will also have to decide whether to reverse her anti-IMF discourse to gain loans to help meet the nearly 20 billion dollars in debt payments due by the end of 2010. At this point, the President can continue to push forward an alternative agenda or go back to the neoliberal model, but this election, as well as the regional trend in governing, suggests that Argentina and the region are ready for the alternative.
Marie Trigona is an independent journalist and radio producer based in Buenos Aires. www.mujereslibres.blogspot.com
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Monsanto soy chemicals could pose health risk
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New research released by Argentina’s top medical school has found that a chemical used in soy farming could be harmful to human health. The study has alarmed policy makers in the South American nation which is one of the world’s largest producers of soy beans. FSRN’s Marie Trigona reports from Buenos Aires.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Argentina's Community Media Fights for Access and Legal Reform
Read full article In response to misinformation and lack of access in the mass media, citizens have created alternative media networks that play a fundamental role in today's Latin America. Together, these community television stations are transforming the media landscape throughout the Americas. This redefined space for independent media has three vital functions: disseminating alternative information; providing a space for popular voice and especially the voice of groups underrepresented in the media; and building community. In Argentina, citizen media groups simultaneously fight for autonomous spaces and for reforms in media laws that will allow them to operate legally.
In Argentina, media concentration dates back to when the 1976-1983 military dictatorship censored most of the press and implemented harsh laws to prevent opposition from being publicly expressed. Media legislation from Argentina's dictatorship is still intact today.
But over the past decades groups have emerged that produce alternative and independent media for television, radio, and video to counter mass media's misinformation. They face legal challenges and a lack of resources, yet the independent media movement continues to grow.
A History of Fighting for Access
Argentina's radio broadcasting law (Ley de Radiodifusión 22.285) dates back to 1980, when the military dictatorship was still in power. Dictator Jorge Rafael Videla sanctioned the law, which guaranteed private media holders large profits, promised support for the dictatorship from media outlets, and silenced journalists from reporting on the systematic genocide taking place in the nation. Commando groups killed more than 100 journalists during the military dictatorship.
Lack of Media Diversity
Corporate concentration of the media has practically eliminated diversity in media and especially TV programming. There's little difference between what is shown on each of the stations. News programs spend more time reporting on petty robberies than actual news events happening throughout the country. A new trend in Argentine television is the rise of shows like "Dancing with the Stars" and "Big Brother," which have been adapted for a South American audience, and have won record ratings among the nearly 30 million Argentine viewers. Even government representatives from the Federal Broadcasting Committee, Argentina's broadcast media regulator, admit that TV programming is filled with junk. In a recent interview, Claudio De Cousandier, director of the Federal Broadcasting Committee, said that deregulation and media consolidation can be blamed for the current state of TV in Argentina. "Due to further deregulation, media groups can hold newspapers, television broadcast channels, and cable TV stations—leading us to media concentration and even a monopoly. In the past two years the Federal Broadcasting Committee has faced pressure to open negotiations for more access for broadcast licenses for low-broadcast signal stations, but a lot of interests and money is involved." For years, community media groups and human rights organizations have fought for new media legislation. Starting in 2008, more than 300 social organizations, union groupings, human rights groups, small business, and some community media organizations formed an official advisory committee to debate a new media law. After nearly 30 years of dictatorship legislation, the law may undergo a reform to include community media and improve access and diversity in TV and radio. The Coalition for Democratic Broadcast Regulation, made up of hundreds of organizations, led a letter campaign, presenting a formal letter to President Cristina Kirchner providing guidelines for a new bill proposal. The Coalition played an important role in developing the 21 point legislation that has been adopted by the president. Community groups' efforts have begun to pay off. President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner presented a bill to change the current dictatorship law on March 18, 2009. Many journalists, actors, and media figures have supported the president's imitative, called the Audiovisual Communication Service law (SCA, by its Spanish initials). The law states: "Airwaves belong to the community, they are the patrimony of humanity ... they should be administered by the State with democratic criteria." The SCA law calls for several fundamental changes to media legislation. The most important aspect of the law is the following: The law would reserve 33% of airwaves for non-profit groups. This would ensure that community associations, non-profits, and universities have guaranteed access to broadcast licenses. Media activists in Latin America have dispelled the myth that you can create media only with state-of-the-art equipment and corporate financing. Community television and radio have been around for decades. Argentina had a 24-hour pirate television station called Utopia that aired in the 90s. Brazil is home to Radio Favela, broadcasting radio in the nation's Favela's (marginalized shanty towns) since the late 80s. Many documentary producers in the Southern Cone utilized film and even intercepted TV signals to resist repressive dictatorships during the 70s. Despite the dictatorship-era law, grassroots groups are fighting to build experiences of community television. The idea is to establish legitimacy and use it as a base to fight for legal recognition. The logic of community television organizers is quite similar to the logic of Argentina's recuperated enterprises. When left with no other option, workers decided to take over factories and take charge of production themselves. Only later, when they had the support of the community and proved that they could run a factory did they demand legality.Citizens Demand New Legislation
Building Alternatives
Monday, June 08, 2009
Charlie abandoned his chocolate factory: Arrufat Chocolate without a boss
We all know the childhood tale of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory best
emulated in the psychedelic inspired 1971 film. Charlie a poor, well intentioned boy wins the Willy Wonka chocolate factory in a stroke of good fortune - every child's fantasy and utopia. But would what happen if Charlie grew older and greedy against the advice of Willy Wonka? If he ran the chocolate factory into ruins, throwing out the workers and closing up shop? And what if the oompa loompas would take over the plant to demand their unpaid salaries and severance pay? What if they would decide to start up production without Charlie, collectively running the plant and relating to other worker occupied factories? Well, this alternate version of the childhood story is becoming a reality for workers in Argentina.In Argentina, Charlie did abandon his factory. But in this case, Charlie is Diana Arrufat, heiress to the Arrufat chocolate factory in Buenos Aires. She closed the factory's doors on January 5, 2009. The workers, who are not the imagined oompa loompa refugees in the film, but real workers decided to occupy the plant. And now the workers are producing deliciously sweet delicacies without the supervision and exploitative practices of Charlie.
Factory closure
On January 5, the workers got the news that they were fired. Diana Arrufat left a poster on the gate of the factory to inform the workers they no longer had jobs. The 50 workers still employed hadn't been paid their salaries for much of 2008. "They fired us without having to look at our faces. They abandoned us," says Alberto Cavrico a worker who has worked at the plant for more than 20 years. That they same day they to open the factory gate and remain inside the factory.
Within hours owner went to the police accusing the workers for "usurpation" and trespassing of the plant. Meanwhile, she has been unwilling to meet with the workers and labor ministry to discuss how to normalize the situation.
Arrufat, founded in 1931 had been a national leader in chocolate. The family run business was finally inherited by the original owner's granddaughter, Diana Arrufat in the late 90's. Since she took over the company, the factory took a turn for the worse. Workers describe how the owner would cut corners sacrificing product quality - using hydrogenated oil instead of cocoa butter and imitation cocoa instead of the real beans imported from Ecuador or Brazil. In its heyday, when the company produced high quality chocolate, it employed more than 300 workers. By 2008, the chocolate manufacturer only had 66 employees.
Throughout 2008, the owner was not paying workers their full salary, with the promise that they would be paid at a later date. The workers sent a report to the labor ministry in May 2008 that the owner owed them nearly 6 months in back salaries, was emptying out the plant and hadn't paid the workers' retirement funds for 10 years. By the end of 2008, on Christmas Day the owners gave the workers 50 pesos (less than 20 dollars) and then five days before firing them paid them 50 pesos again on New Year's.
Many of the workers had heard about factory occupations but never thought that they would face a factory closure. "I never thought that I'd have to sleep inside the factory on top of a machine to defend my job post," says Marta Laurino, a stead fast woman with over 30 years working at the plant. Concluding that the owners weren't coming back, at least to open up shop again - the workers decided in an assembly to continue to occupy the plant and form a cooperative.
Chocolate without a boss
Just 30 days after occupying the plant, the workers of Arrufat had already formed a cooperative and sought out the advice from other occupied factories operating since the 2001 financial crisis. They have successfully begun producing, although sporadically because the electricity in the plant has been turned off since Diana Arrufat ran up a $15,000 dollar debt with the privatized electric company Edesur. And the electric company won't turn the lights back on until the debt is paid.
Meanwhile, the workers have invented alternatives in order to produce. For Easter, the cooperative produced more than 10,000 chocolate Easter eggs. They got a loan of $5,000 dollars from the NGO La Base that provides low interest loans to occupied factories and worker cooperatives. They used this money to rent an industrial generator and buy raw materials - cocoa beans, cocoa butter, liquor and sugar needed to make high-quality chocolate. They decided to re-open the store front on the side of the factory. The day that they started producing the government health inspector came to the plant, the same inspector's office which hadn't visited the factory in probably 20 years according to the workers. The police also came because the workers opened the store front.
All of the eggs were sold out of the factory's store front before the end of the Easter season. The workers were able to pay back the loan within a week, sell the entire stock of Easter eggs and each take home around $1,000, no small feat after not getting a full salary for more than a year. With the remaining capital, rented a generator and bought more raw materials.
During much of the occupation before getting the loan and afterward, the workers were producing small quantities of chocolate by hand, unable to use the machinery because the electricity was shut off. A neighbor, a niece of Diana Arrufat, let the workers connect an electric line that way they would at least have lights and a refrigerator in the factory. And in a small space, with a domestic freezer, the workers began producing small batches of bonbons, chocolate bars and chocolate covered delicacies.
Production has helped the workers transform their subjectivity, seeing that they have more power to fight against the owner, judges, private companies and police constantly throwing monkey wrenches at their dreams. "The worker occupied factories insisted that we get back to work giving us the advice that we won't gain anything by sitting around. They're right producing without a boss does change your outlook and ability to believe in yourself," said Marta Laurino.
Now the cooperative hopes that they can gain enough momentum in the market to continue production with regularity. But they are fighting an eviction notice, criminal charges and bureaucratic offices preventing them from accessing a tax number for their cooperative, which they consequentially need to get an account with the electric company. Looking at the business model other worker recuperated enterprises have established, the workers at Arrufat make all their decisions collectively in a weekly assembly. All workers are paid the same wage. And they want to continue to reinvent social relations inside the plant.
New wave of occupations
Arrufat isn't the only factory that has been occupied since the global recession crept up. Since late 2008 there have been several new factory takeovers in Argentina. For example, the owners of Indugraf printing press shut down operations in a similar manner to Arrufat in November 2008. The printing house workers in Buenos Aires occupied their plant on December 5, the same week that workers in Chicago decided to occupy the Republic and Windows Doors Plant - to demand severance pay and benefits after being abruptly fired. Currently, they are fighting to form a cooperative and start up production without a boss. Other occupations include Disco de Oro, a plant producing the pastry dough to make empanadas, a meat filled pastry common in Argentina. Febatex, a textile plant producing thread and Lidercar, a meat packing plant are two more examples of recent worker occupations. These workers have had to collectively fight violent eviction threats and are still struggling to start up production as worker cooperatives.
Many workers from the newly occupied factories say that their bosses saw the crisis as the perfect opportunity to clear their debts by closing up shop, fraudulently liquidate assets, fire workers and later re-start production under a new firm. This was the case in Arrufat, and seems to be a global trend with many companies hoping for a bailout plan to re-open shop.
All of these newly formed cooperatives have said that they were influenced and inspired by the previous experiences of worker self-management in the nation. "The other worker occupied factories bring us hope that we can win this fight," says Mirta Solis, a long time chocolatier. Essentially, the worker run BAUEN Hotel in downtown Buenos Aires, has become the landing place or you could say launch pad for many of these factory takeovers. Workers, who decided to take over their plant, come to the BAUEN Hotel occupied since 2003 to get legal advice and political support.
FACTA or the Federation of Worker Self-managed Cooperatives has played an important role in supporting the cooperatives. FACTA, founded in 2007, is made up of more than 70 worker self-managed coops, many worker occupied others worker owned inspired by the recuperated enterprise phenomenon. FACTA's objective is to group cooperatives together so they can collectively negotiate institutional, political, legal and market challenges together; the idea being that 70 cooperative united can better negotiate with state representatives, institutional offices and other businesses. FACTA also brings identity. For Adrian Cerrano, from Arrufat FACTA's work has helped the new occupied factories to organize legally and as cooperatives. "We were occupying not knowing what to do and workers from the BAUEN, which forms part of FACTA and provided a lot of support. We decided to ask FACTA's lawyer to represent us legally."
Utopia tale
Arrufat is not yet a utopia, but at least workers are fulfilling the dream of fighting for their rights. "I worked at this factory for 25 years. I lost part of my body inside this factory because I lost my hand while working in this plant. This is what makes me make the sacrifices and work towards forming the cooperative and produce." They are setting an example for workers all around the world that through direct action and occupations they can prevent companies from using the crisis as an excuse to further exploit workers and make unnecessary cut-backs in hopes of getting a bailout plan. The government should support these experiences of worker-self-management, provide them with the same benefits and subsidies that capitalist business receive.
And if Charlie, or any other boss, wants to leave his or her factory, let them! But the workers have the right to continue their work with dignity. "Maybe one day our story will be included in a chapter on the working class history that a group of workers occupy a plant and begin producing," said Adrian after lamenting the loss of his hand in the factory under capitalist supervision. And the occupied factories in Argentina are doing just that; writing a new chapter in working class history sending the message that workers can do what capitalists aren't interested in doing creating jobs and dignity for workers.
Marie Trigona is a writer, radio producer and filmmaker based in Argentina. She is currently writing a book on Worker Self-Management in Latin America forthcoming by AK Press. She can be reached at mtrigona@msn.com
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