ARGENTINA: Social Movement Studies Collapse of Neo-Liberal Model

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Aug 23 2002 (IPS) - The process of coming up with viable alternatives to the neo-liberal economic model will not be led by the political parties in Argentina, but by the social movement expressing itself in the streets, said the participants in the Argentina Thematic Social Forum.

“The political parties do not represent us. But we see a social movement in Latin America that is moving forward on its own, and which has taken up positions on the political front thanks to the fact that the participants are not organised in parties,” Ana Ceceña, director of the Mexican magazine Chiapas, told IPS.

The professor at the Autonomous National University of Mexico, who is in Buenos Aires this week to take part in the first thematic meeting of the World Social Forum (WSF), said “there is no major social explosion in the region, but a number of small uprisings in all of the countries, which will not be stopped, and which do not have a clearly defined leadership.”

“The grassroots groups do not want leaders, because they realize that the conventional forms of representation are of no use to them,” she added. “But the mobilisation will not be stopped. Even without a driver, something is taking shape in the grassroots movement” in the region.

The Thematic Forum, which opened Thursday with an enormous march that symbolically “turned its back” on the seat of government, will hold workshops, seminars and panels through Sunday to study the current collapse of Argentina, which strictly adhered to the neo-liberal prescriptions imposed by the multilateral lending institutions over the past decade.

Participants in the meeting, whose theme is “the neo-liberal crisis in Argentina, and the challenges for the global movement”, will also discuss alternatives to the neo-liberal model, routes through which participation in decision-making and democracy can be broadened, and possible solutions to Argentina’s worst-ever crisis.

This week’s is the first thematic meeting of the WSF, which was held in January 2001 and February 2002 in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre to discuss alternatives to the globalisation process in its current form and to protest its negative effects.

The WSF is held annually as a counterpoint to the World Economic Forum that draws the world’s economic movers and shakers to the Swiss alpine resort town of Davos every year.

This year, the WSF recommended that thematic meetings be held in countries tipped into crisis by neo-liberal economic policies.

“Since December, when Argentines took to the streets to say ‘enough!’ to the government of Fernando de la Rúa (which was toppled), we have put into practice the form of participative democracy that we are calling for,” activist Lenina Bulliet, with the organisation Cabildo Abierto Latinoamericano, told IPS.

“We don’t ask people which party they belong to, but we don’t want any parties in our movement,” she added. “Formal democracy, which leaves us outside of the decision-making process, is dying, and this forum shows us that a different route is possible for achieving true democracy.”

The meeting was convened by more than 400 – mainly Argentine – civil society organisations, including new groups that have emerged in the heat of the current crisis, such as organisations of savers unable to withdraw their money due to the freeze on accounts, lawyers demanding reforms of the legal system, the unemployed, and local residents who have begun to meet regularly in neighbourhood assemblies.

Only a handful of leftist legislators participated in Thursday’s march, and only one, Socialist Deputy Luis Zamora, has been invited to take part in some of the four-day forum’s 250 activities.

“I am convinced that it is not the political parties that are going to put an end to this model, but the social organisations, which are the driving force behind the movement for change,” said Bolivian parliamentary Deputy Evo Morales.

“It is the people, mobilising, who bring about changes in policy, and who can even bring about a change in president, as occurred here,” he said.

Morales, the indigenous leader of Bolivia’s coca farmers, came close to winning the presidency in his country in the June elections, and his Movement to Socialism is the second-strongest force in the Bolivian parliament.

“Unfortunately, our constitution stipulates that candidates can only be elected to Congress if they represent a party. But we have strong social support, and we only want to be an instrument of the movement,” said Morales.

But the secretary-general of Brazil’s Central Unica de Travalhadores, Joao Felicio, put the stress on a different aspect.

“Argentina is lacking a leftist, grassroots force like Brazil’s Workers’ Party (PT), and a charismatic leader like Lula (Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva),” the PT’s presidential candidate and the front-runner for Brazil’s October elections, Felicio told IPS.

He stressed, however, that changes are taking place in the trade unions in Argentina.

“A central trade union similar to ours, the CTA (Central de Trabajadores Argentinos), is being built. In Brazil, we have found the way to have a strong central trade union and grassroots party, and I am sure Argentina will find its own way” to do that, said Felicio.

He underlined that Argentina, a country with a high level of economic, political, social and cultural development, “did everything the International Monetary Fund demanded, and was rewarded with the current collapse.”

After four years of recession, half of the population of this Southern Cone country of 36 million, which defaulted on its foreign debt in January, has fallen below the poverty line.

“It is sad for Brazilians to see this setback in (TV) images that we are used to seeing in Brazil, but not here, like people digging through the garbage for food,” said Felicio, who was appalled by the poverty he found when he arrived in Buenos Aires.

In Thursday’s march, which was headed by the leaders of the human rights group Madres de Plaza de Mayo, Argentine Peace laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Bolivia’s Morales, Brazilian trade unionist Felicio, as well as delegates from other Latin American countries, thousands of people protested the neo-liberal model and its social and environmental effects.

“Another World is Possible” was the slogan of the demonstration, in which students, workers, members of neighbourhood assemblies, pensioners, environmentalists, church workers, lawmakers, account-holders and lawyers – demanding “justice for all” – took part.

The demonstrators set out from the Plaza de Mayo, in front of the seat of government, and marched around 20 blocks to the Houssay Plaza, near the venue where the WSF thematic meeting is behind held.

The movement “is the struggle of people who understand that isolated, they cannot change the system, but united they can,” said Morales.

The banners and placards of the social groups expressed hope and confidence in a better future. The demonstrators sang “Because it is possible to build a new world, a world that is able to breathe, a world where there is space for everyone, a new world…” – the chorus of a song written specially for this week’s gathering.

The national coordinator of the neighbourhood movement Barrios de Pie, Jorge Cevallos, stepped out of the sea of faces for a moment to tell IPS how pleased he was with the initiative, because “besides protesting, we also want to discuss alternatives to the neo-liberal model, which causes so much harm.”

Cevallos said the best part of the forum was the possibility of meeting and sharing experiences with activists from other Latin American countries.

“We want to learn about the experience of Brazil’s Landless Movement (MST), Bolivia’s peasant farmers, Venezuela’s Bolivarian committees, and Mexico’s grassroots movement,” he said with enthusiasm.