ARGENTINA: Women Protesters Arm Themselves with Brooms, Pots and Pans

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Mar 7 2002 (IPS) - Women are taking on a new protagonism in the ongoing street protests in crisis-stricken Argentina, banging on pots and pans and getting ready to brandish their brooms in a symbolic act to “sweep” the country clean of corruption on International Women’s Day Friday.

The massive demonstrations that have not let up since Argentina’s social and economic collapse have given many women greater visibility and raised awareness about their rights, while their organising capacity is growing.

Gladys Quinteros, a 38-year-old schoolteacher and mother of three, is a case in point. In December, when the economic meltdown, looting and protests led to the resignation of then- president Fernando de la Rúa, she began to march around the local square in the Buenos Aires suburb of Merlo.

At first she went on her own, “carrying a pot cover, a spoon and a flag,” she told IPS.

But soon, Quinteros began to invite others to come along. Her friends and neighbours initially followed her at a cautious distance, and then started walking around the square with her. Three weeks later they numbered 300 men and women.

One day a group of strangers showed up out of the blue and began to throw rocks at the demonstrators and hit them with sticks. To express their anger at the attempt to intimidate the protesters, 1,000 people gathered in the square the following week.

“They came from the assemblies that have begun to meet in the neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires, from human rights organisations, from a local Merlo group that is fighting against the pollution of our water, and from a group of employees of a railway line that is going to close down. So we held a demonstration that I coordinated,” said Quinteros.

Two days later, a fire mysteriously started in one of the street-front rooms in her home, and everything in the room was destroyed. Quinteros does not know who was trying to intimidate her, but she suspects local authorities in Merlo are not pleased with her growing leadership.

“The government is not our enemy,” said Quinteros, who has never before been involved in political activism or held a publicly visible role. “We just want more soup kitchens, because kids are fainting of hunger in school and their parents are crying because they have no work.

“I don’t see the hunger on TV. I see it up close,” she added.

Like other teachers, Gladys participated in last October’s census. “In one block I found just two unemployed people. The rest were under-employed, people who were scraping by selling cans (of soft drinks). Many depressed men, in bed, without work.

“You think of what that means on a large scale, and it becomes obvious that the politicians are losing their ability to care,” said Quinteros.

“I don’t understand why the mayor (of Merlo) gets annoyed by us. Perhaps it’s because he doesn’t like us to show him what’s really going on, and because we are demanding concrete solutions to our problems,” she reflected.

Quinteros’ story is not unique. In the past few months of crisis, new forms of street protests and organisational styles have emerged, such as “cacerolazos” (pot and pan-banging protests), spontaneous demonstrations against political leaders, and neighbourhood assemblies, in which local residents from various neighbourhoods gather every Sunday to protest and discuss their problems.

The continuing demonstrations are a grassroots reaction to a nearly four-year recession, a 23 percent unemployment rate, growing poverty that now affects more than 40 percent of the country’s 36 million people, and widespread corruption in politics and trade unions.

Women comprise a majority in the neighbourhood assemblies, where they set forth concrete proposals to overcome shortages of materials in hospitals and schools – issues on the public agenda that have a direct impact on the lives of their families.

But they are also heavily represented in the demonstrations held outside banks to protest the restrictions on cash withdrawals, and in the roadblocks staged by the movement of the unemployed.

Many of them take part in the “piquetes” or road blockades with their children, camping out in tents.

Ana Elizalde, who participates in the Movement of Unemployed Workers even though she now has a job, said “I used to get depressed when I had no work, but I don’t anymore. If I have a job, great, but if I don’t, I fight alongside my companions in the movement, and my children see their mother standing on her feet and happy, even if the day is long and difficult.”

The protests are highlighting just how the economic crisis affects families, and how domestic problems, taken to the streets, can have a political impact, philosopher Diana Maffía, assistant people’s defender of the city of Buenos Aires, told IPS.

“Women are becoming aware that the sphere that affects them goes beyond the doors of their homes, and that it is necessary for them to go outside of the home,” said Maffía. “For that reason, an old feminist slogan of the 1970s, ‘the personal is political,’ has once again become relevant.”

Maffía said women were also protesting the model of the housewife who quiety stays at home raising the children and cleaning the house for free.

Women are using methods of protest that perplex old-style politicians as well as the police, said Maffía. They tramp around monuments, hold silent protest marches, bang on pots and pans, and have now called an “escobazo” (broom march) for March 8, International Women’s Day.

The Homemakers’ Union, which operates in coordination with the International Wages for Housework Campaign, is organising a march on the Plaza de Mayor outside the seat of government to “sweep away” corruption and poverty.

Women interested in participating in Wednesday’s march are to bring brooms, feather dusters and placards identifying what they want to “sweep away.”

“As in the past two months, we continue building in the streets, in neighbourhood assemblies, and in each of the spaces where we find ourselves, to empower ourselves and overcome poverty and misery,” according to one of the organisers of the march.

Maffía said it was “extremely significant” that “domestic concerns” have taken on such a loud political voice, as occurred in the case of the Mothers (and Grandmothers) of the Plaza de Mayo, the women’s groups that emerged to fight the 1976-83 military dictatorship and to demand the truth about the victims of forced disappearance.

“Politics is not something foreign to women,” she added. “Our pots and pans demonstrate that politics is what we are doing.”

Furthermore, she said, participation contributes to building full citizenship, and to helping women become aware of their rights and the strong roles that they play.

As Quinteros put it, “I don’t have to keep my mouth shut, because neither I nor my family deserve what is happening in Argentina.”