Some comments on neighbourhood assemblies.

Even before the events of 19 and 20 December,
and faced with the increasing deterioration of
the economic and institutional situation, in
some neighbourhoods of the city of Buenos Aires,
local people began to meet up, almost
spontaneously, on street corners, to share their
unease and to discuss effective forms of
protest. In the two weeks that followed the fall
of Fernando De la Rua, the phenomenon
multiplied, with around twenty neighbourhood
assemblies being held and the creation of an
inter-neighbourhood assembly. This meets on a
weekly basis to co-ordinate the proposals of the
neighbourhood assemblies, and has an average of
3000 "autoconvocados"* from all the city?s
neighbourhoods participating in it. Today there
is already more than fifty assemblies operating
in the city of Buenos Aires alone, while in
Greater Buenos Aires (the urban belt surrounding
the city, where there is the largest demographic
concentration in the country), and in the rest
of the country, the first steps are beginning to
be taken in this direction.

Faced with this phenomenon of incipient direct
democracy, unprecedented in the history of this
country, we need to formulate some
considerations that arise from both
participation in and observation of this
movement:

The majority of the population of the city of
Buenos Aires, the cradle of the phenomenon in
question, belong to the middle class.

The movements of protest and resistance against
the current economic model have had several
years of gestation. The middle class, however,
were generally unaware of these, adopting a
position of passive observance of the dictates
issued by the financial powers, acritically
accepting the consensus created by the mass
media concerning the marginal nature of these
protest movements, and profiting, as far as
possible, from the "advantages" that this model
seemed to offer them.

The initial reason for these first "encounters"
between local people was the unanimous rejection
of the financial ring-fence (the so-called
"corralito") set up by the then Minister of the
Economy, Domingo Cavallo. Broadly speaking, this
"corralito" consisted in the expropriation by
the banks (and large companies, often associated
with them) of a substantial part of the capital
of hundreds of thousands of small and medium
savers, in an attempt to save certain banking
institutions from collapse. These measures not
only dealt a direct blow to the impoverished
middle class, who had originally been the main
supporters of the government of the Alliance,
but also had a devastating effect on domestic
consumption, deepening a recession in the local
economy that had been going on for more than
four years. It was this situation that prompted
the middle class - who felt let down and used by
those who in turn had used them to reach power -
to meet in assemblies, thus giving material form
to a growing mistrust and rejection of the
traditional forms of participation that the
institutions of representative democracy offered
them.

With time (in the very short time that this has
gone on), the fundamental concerns of the
assemblies moved on from the specific subject of
the "corralito" to more general questions of the
economic model and the political system. At the
same time there began to develop a sort of
rapprochement between the assembly movement and
the "piqueteros" movement; the latter are from
another socio-economic grouping, and have many
years of struggle and resistance against the
neoliberal model behind them, but not against
capitalism as a whole. We consider this point,
the union in the struggle between assembly-
members and piqueteros, as one of the most
interesting and positive aspects in this
process. We must also remember that in the
inter-neighbourhood assembly it was resolved to
include delegates from both the piqueteros and
the workers struggling against employers?
organisations or the state, who had been left to
their fate by the bureaucratic union leaders, as
in the cases of the Bruckman textile workers or
the Zanón ceramic workers, who in both cases
occupied their factories before these were
closed down by the respective companies.

This whole assembly movement is in its very
early stages and is just beginning to take its
first steps. Coexisting in it are local people
with no experience of political participation,
alongside experienced militants from the whole
spectrum of the left, and even some poorly
camouflaged "snipers" from the discredited
traditional parties.

The assemblies generally operate horizontally,
with rotation of co-ordinators, speaking times,
etc. In them the people talk quite freely, and
are able to listen to speeches of all types:
from naive local people who repeat the
alienating discourses of the mass media, to
"self-sacrificing" militants who repeat the
alienating discourses of the party, to "eminent"
fascists who are in raptures before the flag and
the national anthem, to the occasional
libertarian, and so on. Nevertheless, it is the
voice of "common sense" that prevails, and a
marked distrust and rejection of any whiff of
institutions, leaderships or political parties
can be perceived.

Each assembly is autonomous from the rest of the
assemblies. No assembly speaks or decides for
any other than itself. This autonomy is
reflected in the co-ordinating inter-
neighbourhood assembly, where in a manner much
closer to federalism than centralism, even if
with the inevitable defects of all new
movements, all the assemblies usually have the
same opportunities when presenting their
proposals to the rest.

Another feature that it is important to
highlight, in this case of the inter-
neighbourhood assembly, is that this is co-
ordinated by rotation, that is to say, every
week the neighbourhood assemblies rotate the
function of co-ordinating and organising the
inter-neighbourhood ones.

As a final point, it is necessary to warn about
the fragility of these assemblies; this
fragility is constantly stressed by the groups
that do not benefit from an exercise of direct
and popular democracy, and so try to undermine a
movement that, if it were to take root, would
make the rotten foundations of many power
structures tremble. This fragility is perceived
in aspects such as the lack of patience when
faced with certain difficulties that arise from
limited experience of horizontal practices,
particularly at the time of making or voting on
resolutions, with many feeling that this
apparent wasting of time is in turn a wasting of
forces; also regarding the capacity to put these
resolutions into practice, when the desired
impact is often not achieved in the actual
actions.

Resolutions

Perhaps an analysis of the resolutions that are
proposed and voted on in both the neighbourhood
and the inter-neighbourhood assemblies will
enable us to understand this phenomenon that is
very new at local level, but is spreading fast.

The fact that there are contradictory
resolutions, we believe, faithfully reflects the
heterogeneous nature of the assembly movement,
as well as its understandable immaturity. Taking
as our example the fourth inter-neighbourhood
assembly, we see that at the same time proposals
of a radical nature are voted for, as is the
case of: "The people must governs through its
assemblies" or the case of "Annul article 22 of
the constitution, which prevents the people from
self-governing, only being able to do so through
representatives" along with moderate ones such
as "Remove the special powers of the Head of the
City?s Government, Aníbal Ibarra", or one
previously voted for, which demanded
"Representation of neighbourhood assemblies in
the legislative chambers with voice and vote".

It can also be seen through some proposals that
certain groups, especially the CTA (Union of
Argentinian Workers), the MST (Workers?
Socialist Movement, in the United Left
coalition) and the P.O (Workers? Party), attempt
to manouevre the assembly movement in their own
direction. A clear (and pathetic) example of
this was when, in the fifth inter-neighbourhood
assembly, there was a vote in favour of a
proposal to march round the National Congress on
13/02/2002, the day when there was to be
discussion on the approval of the executive
budget for the year 2002; when the assemblies
reached the Congress they saw that a stage had
previously been erected, from which leaders of
the CTA were speaking. Other examples quickly
come to light when we review the proposals for
votes, and we note that some of these are party
manifestos, such as the call for a "free and
sovereign Constituent Assembly", the platform of
the ultra-troskyist P.O.

However, it is important and positive that the
proposals that in our view are freshest and most
original almost all come from assembly-members
who are not involved in union or party
structures, or at least, are not "brainwashed"
by these structures and their discourses. But we
cannot help but stress the naive character of
many resolutions, such as the one that proposes
that "hiding information by an organ of the mass
media must be sanctioned by the penal code",
ignoring the fact that it is the very essence of
these media conglomerates to be shapers of
consent.

As regards the role that the libertarian or
anarchist movement in general plays in these
assemblies, it would be difficult to outline a
general line of action; we believe it would even
be unnecessary. Many members of these groups
participate in the assemblies, and immediately
after the events of 19 and 20 December, there
was an attempt by some groups to positively
disseminate the message and promote the creation
of neighbourhood assemblies, when these were
still a minuscule and isolated phenomenon. Just
days before the fall of President De la Rua,
Osvaldo Bayer, a recognised libertarian writer,
was asked on a radio programme who should lead
an imminent change in the country?s political
and economic situation. Bayer answered that "the
assemblies must do it, everybody?s assemblies",
and this aroused an almost mocking and amazed
silence on the part of the person who had asked
him the question. At that time, few imagined
that a movement with these characteristics could
arise and spread with the spontaneity and force
that it is showing today. We believe that as
anarchists we must defend and enrich the
resource, the valuable space that these
assemblies are, to in turn enrich ourselves with
them, provided they maintain their
characteristics of horizontality, solidarity,
freedom of speech, respect for other assemblies,
autonomy and co-ordination in the various
struggles. Almost without knowing it, and
sometimes in spite of us, from the very
beginning these assemblies, if not in word then
in deed, raised historic libertarian flags, such
as federalism, autonomy and the construction of
an alternative from the bottom up. We believe
that it is our task to prevent these principles
from being lost, distorted, or, in the worst of
cases, from being just that, principles, and not
concrete practices.

Fortunately there is a lot to learn, a lot to
do, to improve, and a long way to walk.

The Comrades of the José Ingenieros Popular
Library, Buenos Aires, 22/02/2002

Translation by Les

[*"autoconvocados" is the word used in Argentina
to describe people who are not part of
institutionalised political groups, who take
part in political action. It literally means
"self-convened"]