[A-List] Argentina: The Seed of a New Form of Citizen Participation (fwd)

[Andre Gunder Frank <franka@xxxxxxx>]

I can also supply  a  better spanish language account of this
development
agf



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               ANDRE    GUNDER      FRANK

Senior Fellow                                      Residence
World History Center                    One Longfellow Place
Northeastern University                            Apt. 3411
270 Holmes Hall                         Boston, MA 02114 USA
Boston, MA 02115 USA                    Tel:    617-948 2315
Tel: 617 - 373 4060                     Fax:    617-948 2316
Web-page:csf.colorado.edu/agfrank/     e-mail:franka@xxxxxxx

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Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2002 14:42:15 PST
From: shniad@xxxxxx
Reply-To: Discussions on the Socialist Register and its articles
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Subject: Argentina: The Seed of a New Form of Citizen Participation

http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=8614

IPS March 24, 2002

Argentina: The Seed of a New Form of Citizen Participation

     By Marcela Valente

Buenos Aires - The neighbourhood assemblies that have mushroomed throughout
the capital of Argentina since the December protests and rioting that
toppled two presidents within the space of two weeks have achieved some
concrete results.

But they have also become the target of violence at the hands of thugs at
the service of certain political forces.

The new neighbourhood associations have organised community purchases of
food at reduced prices, as well as volunteer brigades of skilled workers who
reconnect homes to the public service grids when their electricity,
household gas or water supplies are cut off for failure to pay their bills.


The assemblies' projects range from a community vegetable garden to a
neighbourhood bank in which people can put their savings in order to keep
them out of the financial system, where strict limits on cash withdrawals
were imposed by the government in early December to prevent a run on banks.


Neighbourhood associations on the west side of Buenos Aires successfully
pressured the Edesur power company to consider the possibility of a 180-day
suspension of cut-offs due to delay in paying bills. Assemblies in other
neighbourhoods are demanding discount electricity rates for the unemployed.


The phenomenon of neighbourhood assemblies has boomed since the mass
demonstrations that led to the resignation of president Fernando de la Rúa
on Dec 20. The violence and brutal police crackdown on Dec 19 and 20 left a
death toll of 30.

At the assembly meetings, which are generally held in plazas or other public
spaces, political and economic issues of national interest and pressing
local problems are discussed.

The main focus is usually on the crisis faced by the public hospitals,
unemployment (which has soared to 23 percent), and the widespread hunger and
inability of families to buy food - questions that the neighbourhood
assemblies complain have received less than adequate attention from the
country's political leaders.

Local residents who have been organising in lower-income suburbs to the
north, south and west of Buenos Aires have become the targets of violence.
Municipal employees and sympathisers of the traditional parties - the
Justice (Peronist) Party and the Radical Civic Union - have attempted to
intimidate the more active members of the associations, some of whom have
even been beaten up.

A nurse at a hospital in the western suburb of Morón said she was beaten to
unconsciousness by a stranger who had trailed her for several days.

At a neighbourhood assembly, the nurse had complained that the leader of her
trade union did not defend the workers, due to his political ties.

When the neighbourhood association in Merlo, west of the capital, began to
grow in size and strength, around 200 men wearing no shirts broke into one
of the meetings and beat local residents with ax handles, a teacher who has
become a local activist told IPS. After that incident, one of the rooms in
the activist's home mysteriously caught fire.

Telephone threats and different forms of repression - in which the police
have generally not been involved - have become routine for members of the
neighbourhood assemblies. Local merchants even complain that tax inspectors
show up to carry out audits as soon as they put up signs in their shop
windows calling local residents together for an assembly.

President Eduardo Duhalde, who was designated by Congress on Jan 1 to govern
until September 2003, has criticised the neighbourhood assembly movement.
''It is impossible to govern with assemblies. The democratic way to organise
and participate is through voting,'' he said.

While the leaders of the traditional political parties discredit the
phenomenon, the neighbourhood assemblies complain of a vacuum of power,
which has led them to take their problems into their own hands.

''The question of hunger is an urgent one,'' said a local resident of Morón
in an assembly. ''We cannot continue delaying our response to the offer by
INTA (the National Institute of Agricultural Technology) of 200 empty
hectares to plant a community garden. We have to decide who is going to work
there, and what we are going to produce.''

A younger resident called for an acceleration of the discussion of special
tariffs for public services.

He also urged the assemblies to press their demand that a delegate be
allowed to participate in the negotiations with the utility companies, the
government and consumer groups, to keep the companies from ''taking
advantage of the circumstances to increase electricity rates during the
World Football Cup (in Japan and South Korea) in June.''

Although the activity of the assemblies has not slowed down, assistance has
waned in recent weeks, several participants told IPS.

''It seems that less people are showing up now,'' Cristina Guerra, a
54-year-old nurse who has been unemployed for five months, told IPS. ''That
always happens - after the crisis comes to a head, participation falls off.
But the important thing is that the assemblies continue to meet, to change a
world that no one is satisfied with anymore.

''We are living in a cruel system, a society for the few, and the way to
change that is by participating in these new spaces created by the people,''
said the nurse.

Guerra said that in December, a ''rupture'' occurred between the people and
the government. She predicted that local political leaders in the suburbs of
Buenos Aires would attempt to obstruct the phenomenon of the assemblies.

''They only like to see people mobilising in their favour, their political
clients,'' who receive favours like food in exchange for participating in
rallies and demonstrations, she said.

''If we are able to solve some of our problems, we will create a parallel
power. If we obtain, for example, a 50 percent discount in utility rates for
the unemployed and for people with low incomes, we will take a leap forward
in quality, and will have many more people participating,'' said Guerra.

Residents in the Buenos Aires neighbourhood of Palermo Viejo have organised
a first aid clinic while they continue discussing the problems plaguing the
local hospital. In Ramos Mejía, on the outskirts of the capital, even the
director of the local medical centre has taken part in the neighbourhood
assembly.

Assemblies are held once a week throughout the entire metropolitan region.
They then send delegates to periodic ''inter-neighbourhood'' meetings to
share their experiences and discuss their common concerns.

The participants want to make sure the organisations maintain a
''horizontal'' power structure, with rotating moderators and the creation of
commissions to study the proposals that are formulated.

Many assembly members believe it is possible for their organisations to
eventually take on tasks that the government is unable to carry out
effectively.

According to Juan Mosca, an aeronautics industry worker from the town of
Castelar, the assemblies should discuss ''the issues of democracy.''

That view is shared by many residents of the greater Buenos Aires (a city of
over 12 million people) who cast blank or spoiled ballots in the October
parliamentary elections to signal their rejection of the political class.
(Voting is compulsory in Argentina.)

''On Dec 19 and 20, the pact by which the leaders represented the people was
broken, and our constitution no longer prevails. If it did, there wouldn't
be 15 million poor (out of a total population of 37 million) or so many
abuses,'' said Mosca, 57, mounted on his bicycle after an
inter-neighbourhood assembly in Morón.

''That's why I brought to this inter-neighbourhood meeting Castelar's
proposal to begin discussing who will govern tomorrow, what our political
designs and goals will be, and how we are going to replace our leaders and
our judges,'' said Mosca, a veteran community activist.

Since Argentina's four-year recession peaked in December's crisis, at least
one out of three people surveyed by the local Hugo Haime polling firm say
they have taken part in a neighbourhood assembly or in a ''caceroleo''
(pot-and-pan-banging protest) at least once.

Of the respondents, 35 percent say the assemblies constitute ''a new form of
political organisation,'' 16 percent believe that ''new leadership will
emerge'' from the movement, and 21 percent say the effervescence will
eventually die down.

The assemblies are gaining a growing space in the media, while they have
begun to create their own alternative channels. A Morón radio station
broadcasts the programme ''Assembly Hour'', and the associations produce
their own newspaper, ''Argentina is Burning''.

''Some people believe our numbers have shrunk. But those of us who are left
are the ones who really want to do things, the ones who want to stop
complaining in our homes and do what the politicians are not doing: work out
our day-to-day problems, without political-party machines, just us and our
organisations,'' said Guerra.