From Turbulence http://www.turbulence.org.uk/politicisingsadn.html

After the euphoria of the event, the melacholy of the comedown, as our power-to-act wanes and we sense new possibilities receding. Colectivo Situaciones ask how we can resist this sadness and thus reclaim our power

ZNet | Argentina

by Marie Trigona; Monthly Review ; September 14, 2007

Nearly six years since Argentina’s worst economic crisis in 2001, both the level of popular participation in struggles and the breadth of the political spectrum have been radically transformed. There has been a resurgence of struggle inside the workplace and Argentina’s working class has turned to its historical tools for liberation: direct democracy, the strike, sabotage, and the factory takeover. Labor struggles in public hospitals, public universities, the bank sector, recuperated enterprises, and the Buenos Aires subway have resulted in new visions and victories for the country’s working class.

ZNet | Argentina

by Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis; New Statesman; September 03, 2007

On 19 March 2003, we were on the roof of the Zanón ceramic tile factory, filming an interview with Cepillo. He was showing us how the workers fended off eviction by armed police, defending their democratic workplace with slingshots and the little ceramic balls normally used to pound the Patagonian clay into raw material for tiles. His aim was impressive. It was the day the bombs started falling on Baghdad.As journalists, we had to ask ourselves what we were doing there. What possible relevance could there be in this one factory at the southernmost tip of South America, with its band of radical workers and its David and Goliath narrative, when bunker-busting apocalypse was descending on Iraq?

Latin America is preparing to settle accounts with its white settler elite
The political movements and protests sweeping the continent - from Bolivia to Venezuela - are as much about race as class
by Richard Gott
November 19, 2006
The Guardian
The recent explosion of indigenous protest in Latin America, culminating in the election this year of Evo Morales, an Aymara indian, as president of Bolivia, has highlighted the precarious position of the white-settler elite that has dominated the continent for so many centuries. Although the term "white settler" is familiar in the history of most European colonies, and comes with a pejorative ring, the whites in Latin America (as in the US) are not usually described in this way, and never use the expression themselves. No Spanish or Portuguese word exists that can adequately translate the English term.

Graciela Monteagudo

Last summer in Mexico, a friend asked me how did the Argentinean people manage to avoid making a revolution? I had just come back from spending time among the social movements there. My answer was grim: cannibalism. The social movements have historically been unable to get together and overcome their differences to create an alternative to capitalism. That is true —but, as another friend gently reminded me later, there is Peronism to take into account.

Written by Marie Trigona

Monday, 27 March 2006
Argentina’s worker-run factories are setting an example for workers around the world that employees can run a business even better without a boss or owner. Some 180 recuperated enterprises up and running, providing jobs for more than 10,000 Argentine workers.

The new phenomenon of employees taking over their workplace began in 2000 and heightened as Argentina faced its worst economic crisis ever in 2001. Nationwide, thousands of factories have closed and millions of jobs have been lost in recent years. Despite challenges, Argentina’s recuperated factory movement have created jobs, formed a broad network of mutual support among the worker-run workplaces and generated community projects.

by Wes Enzinna

Today, March 24th, 2006, marks the thirty year anniversary of the coup that brought to power one of history’s most sanguinary regimes, Argentina’s infamous military dictatorship, “El Proceso.” About a week earlier, on March 18, a milestone of a related yet more inspiring sort took place—the biggest Escrache in Argentine history. If you had been sitting in one of the residential buildings that line the 600 block of Avenida Cabildo in the Belgrano neighborhood of Buenos Aires this past week, watching this escrache unfold in the street below, it might have seemed pure anarchy, a perfect portrait of Bakhtinian carnivalesque: 10,000 revelers dancing, singing, throwing eggs and paint. Yet this escrache, like previous ones, was actually somber in intent, meticulously organized and poignantly purposeful. So what exactly is an escrache? First, a little history.

ZNet | Corporate Globalization

by Cory Fischer-Hoffman; November 11, 2005

MAR DEL PLATA, ARGENTINA- The week of November 1-5 the Argentine beach town of Mar del Plata has become the primary site of a 25 year struggle between neo-liberalism and social movements. Bush has come to Argentina, with thousands of security, to attend the IV Summit of the Americas whose theme is Creating Jobs to Reduce Poverty and Strengthen Democratic Governance.

Tens of thousands have joined demonstrations against George Bush, the war and occupation in Iraq, and the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) in Argentina and across South America. Below are some excerpts from mainstream media outlets on this. Read between the lines.

Hundreds of protesters have run riot in Argentina, throwing stones at police just blocks away from the opening of a summit attended by 34

by Michael Alberrt; November 03, 2005 ZNet | Parecon

This October I spent a week in Buenos Aires, Argentina learning about Argentina's workers movement to recuperate factories.

During the recent corporate globalization inspired economic downturns in Argentina, workers confronted disaster when their capitalist workplaces often went bankrupt. To preserve income and avoid possible starvation, workers in failing plants in certain cases decided to recuperate their workplaces back into viable businesses despite the capitalist owner being unable to make a go of it.