Argentina has been experiencing economic
woes for quite some time. Over the past few years, there have been mass
demonstrations of the poor and unemployed,, road blockades, battles with police
and so on. Already deeply in debt, the Argentine government has been seeking a
loan from the IMF which has required it to institute harsh austerity measures,
measures that inevitably strike those at the bottom the hardest. In the second
week of December, there was a general strike. Over the next week or so, fear of
economic collapse led many people to withdraw their money from the bank. So on
December 19, the Economy Minister, Domingo, issued a declaration that limited
bank withdrawals to $250 a week. Of course, those most affected by this measure
were those without credit, without other means to make the purchases needed to
feed themselves and their families. The response was immediate.
As soon as people heard about the new measure
that Domingo had enacted, road blockades went up all over the country. People
began looting supermarkets and other stores, mainly for food. People battled
police and attacked banks. In La Plata and Cordoba, the state houses were
attacked as well. Of course, the Argentine government declared a state of
emergency and outlawed all public gatherings.
On the 20th, both official left
and spontaneous demonstrations continued, as did looting and attacks on banks.
The unions, whose role of course depends on the continued functioning of the
present social order, were afraid to agitate because the situation might “get
out of their hands”. But the initiative for demonstrations required no formal
organization. Those who wanted to gather people simply went to street corners,
clapped their hands and gathered people to demonstrate in the Plaza del Mayo.
When police moved in to remove people from the plaza passersby aided the
demonstrators, harassing the cops and attacking them with a variety of objects.
In the course of the day people destroyed eight banks in Buenos Aires. Looting
continued throughout the country.
The president then in office was compelled
to step down, and the Peronists took advantage of the situation, presenting
themselves as potential saviors of the nation. One of their party was appointed
interim president. The Argentine secret service went out to on the streets of
Buenos Aires to spread rumors to frighten people from the streets, and within a
few days, things quieted down… briefly.
Then on December 29, fed up with the lack
of any real answers from the new president, a “self-convened” (i.e.,
autonomous—not called by any formal organization) demonstration took place in
the Plaza de Mayo in front of the presidential palace. People attacked the
doors of the palace. Chants included: “Everybody out, nobody stay” and “Without
Peronists, without radicals, we will live better”, indicating the level of
disillusion with the government. When the police attempted to disperse the
demonstration with tear gas, some stayed to battle the cops. Others marched to
the Parliament and still others took to the streets. In the streets, people
attacked banks and billboards, and at least one ruling class observer perched
on the balcony of a luxury hotel received a bruise from a projectile. At the
parliament, people built bonfires on the steps and looted the building, taking
out furniture for barricades, bonfires and so on. When the cops used teargas in
an attempt to disperse this crowd, most instead took to the street together
with the idea of going on to the supreme court. But cops armed with tear gas
and rubber bullets ambushed the march. Fortunately, people in cars and on foot
who sympathized with the demonstrators helped them as they retreated, blocking
and attacking the cops. The next day, the interim president resigned and a few
more have followed suit.
In US newspapers, this rebellion has been
largely described as “middle class” (an ambiguous term, at best, when used by
the US press), but reports from Argentine and the nature of the looting
indicate significant involvement by the poor as well. At least one person has
described the events as “bread riots”. And the unrest among the unemployed and
marginalized in Argentine has been going on for quite some time.
Most
of the reports that I found of these events came from anarchists who were
there. These accounts raise many questions. Though there has been unrest on
some level in Argentina for quite some time, this rebellion seemed to take
anarchists by surprise. The accounts treat these events in a spectacular manner
as a moment separated from life and from the ongoing struggle. This is not at
all surprising. Events like this tend to be unpredictable, and sometimes the
apparently most politically aware have the most difficulty figuring out how to
respond. Clearly we need to bring our analytical capacities and our
insurrectional project into such events, but how?
It was also clear from the reports that although the formal
anarchist organizations had no idea how to respond to the situation, no real
initiatives to propose, they saw their task as that of educating the people in
revolt, of getting their message out. But what message could these formal
groups have for those who have entered the sphere of informality that is real
revolt? It became increasingly clear to me as I read these reports, how
important it is to pursue the self-organization of our lives, our struggles,
our revolt as an ongoing movement against all formalization and
institutionalization so that we will be able to encounter situations such as
this not with ideologies, platforms or programs (like any politician) but with
the capacity to carry out initiatives for the ongoing expansion of the
self-organization of struggle that spontaneously appears in such uprisings to
more and more aspects of life, aiming at the total transformation of existence.