We will always be rebels

Situations Collective: A conversation with MTD Solano*
situaciones [at] sinectis.com.ar
(Translated from Spanish by Ivan A. Ramirez)


The “Piquetes”

-I think that the piquetes blasted away our sense of helplessness, but in a new way. We shook the country out of the lethargic dream that Menem and his politics were selling, like a bolt of bright new light. Together with many other struggles, we woke the country from the sweet dreams of post-modernity. They branded us with a name—the Piqueteros--but for us the piquete became the only way in which we could talk with the rest of the country, our way of telling them that there were other methods of struggle, other ways to fire-up our lives with dignity.

-How did this idea arise? How did you get organized?

-The piquetes began in the interior, in Cutralco, Tartagal, Mosconi, Santiago del Estero, and they spread throughout the country, blocking the trade routes that fed the most important cities. Once that had started, people started to take the piquetes seriously as a way fighting, even here, in Buenos Aires, but there were tremendous arguments over the plans; over whether it was correct to ask for the work plans or not . Some said that we were only up to reformist self-help schemes. Instead of getting embroiled in that argument, we decided to put it into practice. At that point our organizing had only reached the level of church groups, but we were always talking about a greater struggle. We were always talking about taking over the Municipality, raising the stakes, and then there was the first road blockade. The first was somewhat improvised, and some of our compañeros were arrested. But, little by little, it started to come into evidence that a new way of fighting had been developed.
The most important thing, however, was that our numbers started to grow; we started to build productive workshops, to enable people, to teach what we were learning, all of those things that are so much more important than the blockades. The blockades are only the most visible element, and so it seems that they are all there is to see, but the struggle is really what we had been doing before. In reality, we only started the blockades once we had already gotten organized.
Yet the press still insists in disparaging us, talking about unemployed hoodlums, masked criminals, entirely marginal people, bums…
-It’s important to make it clear that from the beginning all of the left, including the progressives, accused us of begging, self-help, reformism, and did not see what the central demands of the organization entail: work, dignity, social change. It was obvious that many things went beyond the plans; even if many organizations did not, because once they had gotten the plans they would call it quits.
The piquetes have changed a lot. At first, in the first blockades, we kept our faces completely uncovered, we did have some rocks, kept hidden, and we did not reveal them because we did not want to frighten people. It was a process; we suffered escalating repression and we started to cover our faces, so that we could not be identified. We only used violence as self-defense. We did not start to throw sticks and stones in order to attack, but to defend ourselves. It is also essential to point out that the piquetes and the plans are just another factor in our struggle; they are not fundamental.
-The plans are the reality that allows us to organize ourselves. Clearly, we can’t take control over a factory. We are very different from other kinds of organizations, groups that do very real work, because we cannot use the neighborhood organizations as an “excuse” that leads to other goals.
-There were some hard moments in the first blockades, but things changed after Mosconi . From then on the consciousness of our compañeros changed. At first we had to insist that everything was going to be alright, we had to struggle to keep our compañeros from being frightened, and more often than not we had to keep our sticks and our slingshots hidden. We had strong disagreements on whether to keep our faces covered or not. It took time for people to understand that we needed some kind of self-defense, that the security compañeros could not show their faces to the militias. In the blockades that we did with the congress of La Matanza, the people of the CTA would demand that we remove our hoods. We took that to the assembly, and the assembly decided that we might as well abandon the piquete if we were forced to go unmasked. The system considers the blockades as crimes, they are illegal, but to us they are entirely legitimate. We finally understood this, and it changed our organization fundamentally.

-We understand that what makes you different from other organizations of the unemployed is that you organize workshops, projects, task groups, that you have a burgeoning collective life: how does this difference manifest itself in the conception of the piquetes?

-I have been to other piquetes and our organization is different to theirs, our security criteria are different, and our compañeros have a different notion of discipline. It would be very surprising to catch one of our compañeros drinking at one of our piquetes; that someone is asked to leave because he is a security risk. There have been a lot of changes in the neighborhoods, in the lives of our compañeros, because you have to keep in mind that these were compañeros who, a year ago, would take 30 pesos in bribes for their vote, who were forced to steal in order to survive.
-Our common development, our formation, holds all of this together. That’s its bedrock. Nobody imposes a drinking ban, or stops a compañero from drinking; we talk about these things at the assemblies. Basically, the coordinators don’t get to decide whether drinking is forbidden or not, rather, we look for a consensus; we discuss the reasons why it might not be prudent. That’s the great difference; it’s not because you happen to wear a hood, or carry the biggest stick.

-When did you get the first plans, the ones that helped you to organize?

-In 1997, as soon as we started marching onto the Municipal Hall, we got 50 plans. We didn’t do any blockades then, we marched to the Department of Labor. So, we got our first plans through our actions on the Municipal Hall. We achieved autonomy in the handling of the plans after two blockades.

-This idea, to transform this relationship with the State: was this a conscious decision at the time?

-Yes, and this is what made us different to other organizations, now there are many organizations that are beginning to do the same thing. The problem, basically, was that the municipality would put pressure on the compañeros to keep them from organizing. 120 workers got work under the State’s plan; only 5 or 6 of them are still part of the MTD. We soon realized that it made no sense to promote a project that would extend the process we wanted to redress.

-We have discussed the heterogeneity of the piquetero movement on several occasions. How do you explain this heterogeneity?

-Our difference to that of other movements is becoming increasingly apparent, that is, above all, because many others still work in the classical way: they say, “we seize power from above and then we change things;” while we say: from below, without any desire to seize power, we struggle. Those other organizations see themselves as political actors and they have revolutionary strategies; we see ourselves, like the Subcomandante Marcos says, as rebels seeking social change. For example, they say that what we call popular education de-forms people rather than in-forming them. They don’t make any attempt to tie popular education to political education, on the contrary. We were below, at the bottom, and we don’t want to rise, we want to stay there, we will always be rebels.
We are at the bottom and we don’t want to come up. We have a lot of compañeros that stand out, but none that aspire to lead. We all lead, all of the time.
-In any case, these differences won’t let us lose sight of the fact that we have to organize, that we have to coordinate and articulate, that it is necessary to go on discussing things and coming to agreements, struggling together. We are not saying that we know the truth and the others don’t. We know that we build things differently; but these differences can be coordinated, just as long as we keep raising the call for social change, for dignity, and that we don’t take advantage of people, say, by using them to win elections.

-I have heard some piquetero compañeros complain that they felt “useless,’ “forgotten,” “left behind,” in their everyday lives, yet, at the blockades they feel different; “empowered,” they feel that “they have a choice.”

-It’s true; it’s a liberated zone, the only place where the cop won’t treat you like trash. There, the cop says to you, “pardon me, we come to negotiate.” That same policeman would beat you to death if he saw you alone on the street.
-It’s true that you feel yourself to be in control of an area during a blockade, but I believe that the compañeros are aware that organizing empowers them; that it is not only the blockade, but the organization that makes you strong. For example, today the compañeros are putting up signs on the street, they put up MTD signs, with an small arrow, indicating how to get to the shelter [galpon]. These are the strong signs of an emerging counter-power.

-People say that some of the compañeros have a purely pragmatic relationship with the movement; that they only come to get the plan. How does this actually work out in the piquetes?

-The majority of the compañeros that join the movement--more than eighty percent--start out only because they have concrete necessities. They need something to eat, they don’t have groceries, they don’t have work; they have nothing. At first they come for the plans, but once there is a real process, things change, they begin to feel the excitement and the need to get organized. But yes, some compañeros only go because the assembly voted that those failing to attend the blockade don't get a plan.

-Some say that taking to the streets is a way of saying “no” to a model, “no” to a system. I think that this can be understood in two different ways: in the first we speculate that the model failed and that you represent the moment when the victims stand forth, like with “Farinello,” whose “people” never step out of their role as the witnesses of misery: those that are “left-out,” those that beg, the impoverished, the forgotten. But, there is another way to see the issue, one where the model did not fail, where exclusion simply does not exist because there is no place of inclusion, where exploitation is merely a desirable variable in the system. Things being as they are, we feel that the stance taken by most of the people that participate in the piquetes is not that of the victims, rather, they present a very clear subjective desire to work and think actively.

-We don’t want to be included. At least, I know that I don’t want to be exploited ever again, to have Fortabat or Macri as bosses again, that’s for sure. I have not struggled just to return to exploitation. I believe, personally, and I believe that many compañeros share this belief in regards to themselves, that I am not made to be included, but this is something else altogether.
-One of the things that we know with certainty is, precisely, what we don’t want; getting organized makes this clear. To discover where we want to go, what it is that we are building, that is what is uncertain, new, and this is something that has not been closed-off, it’s unfinished, something that we think anew every day. The organization is dynamic, it changes and it reflects upon its changes. It’s true that the blockades are exciting, but what is truly exiting about the organization is that it brooks no dissociation between that excitement and our everyday lives. That’s where the reality of the organization lies; the piquete can only express what we have managed to build in our everyday life, otherwise it is useless. The system has nothing to offer us in regards to this task, and we are forced to build an alternate history.
We don’t demand things because we want to be included; we only demand things in order to continue getting organized.

-How is a piquete agreed upon, how and where do you block the road; who makes the decisions?

-Each and every zone reports on their situation. Then, depending upon each neighborhood’s situation, a battle plan is proposed. We discuss whether we will march or blockade. Each neighborhood assembly decides upon their action first, then, at the table, we try to reach a consensus based upon the choices made by the different assemblies. We begin to see what we may be able to achieve as the proposals are presented. We never talk about the specific location that we intend to block at the assembly, for security reasons. We choose the method but not the details.
-In the assemblies we determine the roles and the zones. For example, we determine which of the compañeros will take care of food, security and any injuries. That is to say, the different zones coordinate particular activities and then there is someone who is elected to serve as a nexus for all these zones. In contrast, other organizations have leaders who decide who does security; yet the location of the blockade and, therefore, the security zone itself—in our experience it is security that decides where a blockade will occur—remains unclear to the leaders. There are many different kinds of organization.

-It seems as if security and the political criteria of the blockade always respond to the internal needs of the organization, rather than to the political conjuncture or to any possible external support.

- Yes, but these internal necessities entail much more than our “economic needs.” For example, we blockaded because of the events at Mosconi; those events implicated our identity, because if a compañero is affected in Mosconi, well, that also concerns us, even if it is something that does not seem to affect us directly in Solano.
-Likewise, we blockaded the Pueyrredon Bridge because the compañeros at La Matanza were under the threat of repression; we said to the government, “to repress over there, you’ll have to also repress over here.” We saw that they were beating our brothers (despite D’Elia and Alderete), so we had to come out to fight for them. Keep in mind, though, we do not build toward the conjuncture. We are not interested in elections, whether people should vote or not.
-Another example; when Patricia Bullrich organized an offensive, we said, “we have to come out because they want they want to cut our plans, they don´t want to renew them." It was an attempt to put a stop to our organization. What we never do is to come out when a super-structural power tries to convene us, when an organization with a pre-determined political agenda tries to mobilize us; we analyze and decide upon a situation according to our own agenda.
- We don’t want to foreclose anyone’s space; we don’t want to be a vanguard. We build because there is a reality that needs to be transformed, and we organize and join-up with those that are changing their situation. We are not interested in going to La Matanza to harangue and agitate, just in order to gain space. We don’t conceive politics in that manner. Yes, we believe that the base needs to be organized, but it is up to the compañeros at La Matanza to organize their own area. We want to coordinate our movement with those that are building theirs, but we don’t dispute them any political space.
-It can’t be said, as others claim, that we are just a “base” movement. We do have a political project. In fact, we do know how to read the current political conjuncture, but our project occurs at the neighborhood level, with the people. Our analysis is more comprehensive, precisely, because we work in this manner. They can’t reproach us for lacking a strategy and a guiding political structure; that’s a lie. The movement itself is a political tool; all of us, all the compañeros in the movement, constitute this tool and we all work on the analysis. When we are asked what our political project is, we explain that it is this: politics from below, a comprehensive politics from below. Our goal is the complete formation of the person, in every possible sense. Everything counts, everything is important.
-We don’t believe that we need a national front, one that encompasses the entire country, in order to succeed. I don’t believe that there will be an alliance or a front that will take power; there will be many fronts.


*This brief excerpt of a conversation between Collectivo Situacciones and MTD Solano is taken from the book La Hipótesis 891: Más allá de los Piquetes, Ediciones de mano en mano, noviembre de 2002, páginas 54 a 62 (this and other translations for the radical exchange coordinated by the eleusa production initiative: eleusa [at] riseup.net).