The contemporary history of Latin America is probably, at a social level, one of the great ignored. This article, which focuses on the Argentine case, aims to review the Argentine social reality in its recent history. It is not uncommon to think that social movements have provoked protest behavior at a general level. In fact, the union example and the labor movements of the world were the best model of collective action that preserved fair and exemplary labor rights for all. However, with the weakening of the trade unions and the loss of their universal values, what we currently find is a model of collectivities that manifest themselves in pursuit of unequal objectives and that are inserted in what has come to be called “new social movements”. ».
At the end of the 1970s, in the midst of the dictatorship of the so-called “National Reorganization Process”, a social resignation was vindicated through the Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo movement that did not include, within the narrative of the act, the struggle of classes or revolutionary of previous stages. These are protests that, at a general level, did not seek the radical transformation of the system in which they lived, but rather a denunciation within a specific structure that is not criticized at its base.
In the 1980s, the social inequality gap widened with the emergence of neoliberal political regimes. Social movements come to light stating that the poor existed, yes, but that government policies instead of alleviating or combating poverty through social policies had increased it. Given that the traditional trade union associations, which had been the protagonists of this social struggle up to that moment, were not bearing the fruits desired by broad sectors of the population, the so-called “new social movements” will resprout almost spontaneously.
These emerged in opposition to the aforementioned traditional groups, which until practically the arrival of the 1980s had somehow channeled political participation through parties and unions. As a consequence of the rejection of this classic paradigm, new political protagonists will appear who will collect the claims of society to promote new political formations.
This fact can be considered as a response to the wear and tear of the political model, until then hegemonic, which had not been able to renew itself or adapt to the new social circumstances. In moments like the one we are dealing with, of political weakness, the old models were delegitimized, emerging new currents that were very different from each other, but that raised a common idea: the need for renewal.
Within this heterogeneity, we are going to find indigenous, feminist, environmentalist and even animal rights movements that are going to represent diverse interests, but that can be grouped into two: the demand for recognition by society and the demand for civil rights or cultural claims.
One of the great awakenings of society, understanding this as the instrument of political change in Latin America, came during the dictatorships. Almost certainly, a struggle to achieve full democracy was posed, but without this necessarily having a revolutionary connotation. In this desire for democratization, the Argentine population, plagued by the repression and persecution of the dictatorship, took to the streets in search of a solution that the judicial authorities could not or were not in a position to offer.
We are talking, as anticipated at the beginning of the article, about the so-called March of the Mothers and Grandmothers in the Plaza de Mayo. A whole movement, more or less spontaneous, that claimed and still claims today the release of numerous young opponents of the dictatorial regime, as well as their recognition by the State. However, it appears as an eminently feminine movement, of women who demanded the recomposition of their family unit, that is, they manifest themselves as mothers and grandmothers who wanted to recover their children or grandchildren, respectively.
But what impact did this mobilization have? As a result of this, after the dictatorship, specifically during the governments of Alfonsín and Menem, new organizations will emerge whose objective will be the recovery and recognition of all those individuals who were victims of political and social pressure and violence. exercised by the dictatorship. The movement of the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, on the other hand, not only demanded that those responsible be brought to justice, but also marked a before and after in relation to the appearance of other movements in defense of Human Rights that were deprived during these authoritarian stages. In spite of everything, the new perspective of the social movements is observed: they are limited to a concrete fact, but in terms of reform. These are social movements that do not imply the radical transformation of a given system.
With the arrival of the 1980s, Latin America is involved in a process of democratic transition, but accompanied by new social movements that appeared during the aforementioned military regimes. Eduardo Viola gives importance to five: those of those communities linked to the Church sector; the neighborhood assemblies and the feminist movement in Brazil; human rights groups in Argentina and environmentalists in the two countries mentioned. All of them, without a doubt, contributed their grain of sand in putting an end to the military regimes and in the democratic transition itself.
This article, however, focuses on the 1990s, when massive social movements were realized against neoliberal programs and that, in the case of Argentina, would have a notable impact: these would be the “piquetero” movement and the ” saver”.
At the time democratic transitions took place, they were accompanied by the recovery of those traditional trade union movements. In fact, with their reappearance, the idea was introduced that the “new social movements” would be like a kind of temporary eventuality and that they would not be able to face the union power. However, this only happened in those countries where new political parties were consolidated that did represent the interests of these new social movements.
The piquetero movement
The “piquetero” or unemployed workers’ movement is possibly one of the social movements that has drawn the most attention among all those collective actions that were carried out in the 1990s in response to the prevailing neoliberal system. The name “piquetero” was devised by the Argentine press to refer to the inhabitants who boycotted routes in the middle of the aforementioned decade in areas such as Cutral Co and Plaza Huincul (1996-1997) and Salta (1997-1998). In these protests, the term “piquete” was revived as a vindication scenario that had the ability to establish itself as the singing voice and channeler of the social struggle in defense of interests demanded by broad sectors of Argentine society.
The neoliberal process, adopted in its maximum extension by Carlos Menem, resulted in the manifestation of impoverishment, vulnerability and social exclusion. Although with antecedents during the last stage of the military dictatorship of the 1970s, it experienced a turning point between 1989 and 1991: the executive carried out an entire privatization program that caused a high rate of unemployment at a time when that social policies were conspicuous by their absence. In addition, the main unions, organized in the Peronist General Confederation of Labor (CGT), like the Menem government, did not show their rejection of the president’s reforms, regardless of the fact that in the face of this passivity they were breaking the number of union affiliations. Why didn’t the unions protest? It is believed that they decided to adapt to the new international economic situation. For this reason, it is not surprising that slogans and declarations such as these arose:
“Ohhhh, let them all go, ohhh, let there not be a single one left. The fans dance, dance, dance from the heart, without radicals, without Peronists, we are going to live better. Where is it? The union bureaucracy. Where is it? That famous CGT is not seen. You have to jump, you have to jump, whoever doesn’t jump is a soldier.”
The increase in social inequalities, precariousness, unemployment and the feeling of betrayal by the unions led to the appearance of new forms of organization and protest. From 1996-1997, a good part of this Argentina dissatisfied with the neoliberal model cut numerous communication channels, boycotting the free movement of people and goods, while demanding the recovery of jobs. These first acts of protest took place in the vicinity of the oil fields of Neuquén and Salta, with most of the nearby communities as the main actors. It is precisely at this moment that the term “piquetero” emerges, reflecting an entire alternative for all those people who felt unemployment as an evil that should be eradicated at all costs. They changed their condition from unemployed to that of piquetero, which reflected an ideal of dignity that they did not want to lose.
This is exactly how the history of the piquetero movement in Argentina begins, but we must bear in mind that it was not a unitary or homogeneous movement, but rather was made up of a great diversity of political-ideological currents. It lived through its period of maximum splendor as of 1996, a moment in which the systematic privatization of state-owned companies constantly increased unemployment rates in the country, as well as the growing impoverishment that devastated more than 58% of the total population of the Republic. The diversity of models within the piquetero movement was enormous, what is more, different political postulates are pointed out that can be explained from three factors that are present in all of them: a union presence, a political representation and a presence of the street as a place in which they show their social demands against the Menem government.
Regarding union presence, we find unions such as Land and Housing Federation; On elements of political magnitude we can witness parties of leftist politicians, who had lent their bases to the piqueteros movements, highlighting above all Workers Pole, Standing Neighborhoods, Territorial Liberation Movement or the Teresa Lives Movement. The political ideas of the formations described share the solidarity struggle of the unemployed within their ideas, for which political representation within the Chambers was assured. Lastly, the spontaneity of the piquetero movement made…