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As is customary, I did not quite keep to the original plan of writing something every week. It’s not so much due to being a lazy person (which I am) but spending the days in the centre in Lanus and an hour on the bus each way makes sure every night when I get back, I’m knackered and ready to hit the sack. In addition, I have not resolved entirely how to go about the blog. Spending time with the people in the movement, getting to know them, becoming friends and enjoying their company makes me feel slightly awkward about writing about them too much in detail as ‘subjects of study’. Consequently, I’m probably not going to do the profiles of the people; it feels somewhat too personal and I feel a bit uncomfortable with that. So I decided to stick to movement-wide issues and events, and here I will tell you about a couple of things that have happened in the past few weeks.
A quick check now proves I’ve been in Argentina for four weeks. I’m still staying in San Telmo in a hostel which is conveniently next to where the buses for Lanus stop. My daily routine consists of waking up early and heading over to Lanus. The bus journey takes an hour, which gives me some time to prepare the focus of the research. Depending on the day, there are reunions of the movement that I attend. My research is interested in the challenges of direct democracy and non-authoritarian social movements as promoters of change. This means for me it is fundamental to attend the meetings where the movements take decisions. Consequently, during this time I’ve attended all the Friday assemblies where the most important decisions are taken. People of the movement are really very used to making decisions collectively, having a history of more than 12 years as a movement. The discussion is often quite feisty but good-spirited and often for me it remains somewhat unclear how a decision was reached as voting is generally avoided. Consensus often just seems to emerge, and everyone is encouraged to speak out any doubts or objections. It would probably not be fair to recount too much in detail the kinds of things that are debated in the assemblies, but I’ll post you some pictures so that you get an idea of the setting.
On top of the weekly assemblies, I was invited to join in on a ‘mesa de responsables’ (table of responsibles) meeting on Wednesday. Each one of the five barrios of MTD Lanus has their own representative that meet weekly to discuss the coordination of the movement, based on the mandate they have been given in the weekly assembly in their respective neighbourhoods. The way the organization works is thus a form of ascending rather than descending decision-making. This means any decisions taken at the level of the coordinators or responsibles of the movement needs to be in accordance with what the people in the assemblies have discussed. In addition the idea is that all the people with a role of responsibility rotate and that new and unexperienced members also get involved in the running of the organization. This is not always very smooth, as it can be quite intimidating to take up a role as a delegate or a coordinator of work. The movement is trying to tackle the problem by having workshops and a form of training to the positions by way of accompaniment by the person who is leaving the position.
So far I’ve spent most of the time, perhaps too much of it with the people who work at the metal workshop. The amount of work varies greatly depending on the needs of the movement and the neighbours who often come needing something fixed. Often there are periods of no work which means sitting at the workshop listening to radio, preparing the food and talking about all kinds of things. Friends come and go, which makes the workshop a sort of a social hub where one is kept well informed about the things that go on in the neighbourhood.
In the last two weeks I’ve sought to expand my sphere beyond the workshop, though. The idea is to try and learn as widely as possible about the work of the movement and the experiences of different members of the movement. For example, this week I joined in on a large group of people that went out to do work in the municipality. This time the work had to do with cleaning up a little park that the movement had cleared up a couple of blocks away from the Roca Negra. I think the work of that day is symbolic of the difficulty of the work of the movement as a whole.
We set of early in the morning for the plaza. There were probably about 25 of us cleaning up the square, but there weren’t near enough tools for all of us. Even basic things such as gloves are not available for everyone, making the work of cleaning up rubbish a pretty unhealthy one. The movement is supposed to get its resources for municipal work from the ‘authorities’ but as of late they haven’t complied. The movement is now trying to exert pressure on the municipal government to secure the resources needed for basic security and tools for the work.
However, the lack of resources is not the only challenge. The movement sees itself as primarily a social movement. This is to say that they think the change in our societies will come primarily through a change in the way we ourselves behave. In the case of the plaza, we cleaned up much of the rubbish that had piled up next to the road alongside the park. The idea was to push the rubbish back to clear up a space for the park that then should be fenced up. We cleared up the way for people to be able to take the rubbish further down the little road that would be more convenient for everyone. However, the next day already the rubbish was back. The rubbish collection system seems somewhat ineffective. In particular in the poorer neigbhourhoods the streets are too narrow for the lorries leaving the rubbish for men who take it out for the neighbours in exchange for a fee. These guys then dump it next to the road effectively eating into the park. Apparently the work is rushed so that it was not convenient for them to take the rubbish further down the road, regardless of the way we cleared up for the purpose. The trees that were planted that day at least were not stolen yet.
Most naturally quite a few things have happened during my stay here. But more about that another time. I will start going around the different workplaces of the movement, so I intend to introduce you the different activities of the movement in the weeks to come.
A Question of Autonomy 