Piquetero
A piquetero is a member of a social movement originally initiated by unemployed workers in Argentina in the mid-1990s, during Carlos Menem's rule, a few years before the peak of the economic crisis that started in 1998 with a recession and erupted in 2001 causing the resignation of President Fernando de la Rúa and three of his successors in a matter of weeks.
The word piquetero is a neologism in the Spanish of Argentina. It comes from piquete (in English, "picketing"), that is, a standing demonstration of protest in a significant spot, in this case usually appearing as a road blockade.
The piqueteros appeared first in June 1996 in the Patagonic town of Cutral-Có, province of Neuquén, when workers laid off by the state-owned oil company YPF (now privatized and part of Repsol YPF) blocked National Route 22. Like many other small towns throughout Argentina, Cutral-Có depended almost exclusively on the jobs provided by a single local company.
Piqueteros as a national phenomenon
As the Argentine economy shrank, lost competitiveness and exports markets due to the low fixed exchange rate, and many former state companies were sold to private corporations, many Argentines lost their jobs. The piquetero form of protest soon spread to the impoverished neighbourhoods and de-industrialized towns of Greater Buenos Aires, starting in Florencio Varela and La Matanza, as well as other provinces. In 1997 there were 23 roadblocks in Buenos Aires Province, and a total of 77 in the whole country.
After a time, piqueteros began assembling in a more organized fashion, forming "Unemployed Workers Movements" (Movimientos de Trabajadores Desocupados, abbreviated as MTDs). The protests began to include not only major road-blocking pickets, but also blockades of important streets in the cities or just outside of them, as well as bridges and accesses to economically critical spots (for example, directly in front of major stores and supermarkets). In some instances, government buildings were blocked and occupied by force.
The MTDs also began involving themselves in co-operatives for a myriad of purposes, such as barter markets for goods and services, small-scale food production, sewing workshops, food-ration distributing facilities, etc. A number of piqueteros now participate, support, or otherwise have ties with the recovered factory movement (for example in the former ceramic tile factory Zanon, now FaSinPat).
Political involvement in the MTDs
The success of the MTDs soon attracted the attention of political actors, from two main fronts: old, traditionally fragmented leftist parties and movements, and the Peronist Party. As a result, as of 2005 of the large MTDs in Buenos Aires have been mostly co-opted either by radical, intransigent left-wing ideological factions, or by the local Peronist municipal administrations, many of them linked to former Buenos Aires governor and then interim president Eduardo Duhalde, and others to supporters of current president Néstor Kirchner.
The Peronist Party connection is particularly important given that piquetero groups have acquired a hierarchical structure, where benefits are shared from the top down, and in many cases the heads of the movements serve as intermediaries for the distribution of government welfare subsidies, from which each member of the piquetero organization must discount a small sum to support the logistics of the protests, the hiring and maintenance of assembly facilities, etc.
Criticism and fragmentation
The criticism towards piqueteros and MTDs have come mostly from three sides: middle-class Argentinians, right-wing political actors, and piqueteros themselves.
Among the decimated but still numerous Argentine middle class, the common criticism is that piqueteros, while morally and legally entitled to protest and demonstrate, should not do so by blocking important roads and streets, since this violates other people's right to circulate freely and often results in delays (from the relatively trivial problem of arriving home later after work, to the very serious of ambulances with critical patients being stopped by a picket). The violent attitude of some piqueteros, who cover their faces with scarfs or handkerchiefs and wield sticks as a visible threat towards passers-by and police, is usually pointed out as proof. In ocasions, these type of critics become violent too when faced with a picket. People who thus criticize the piqueteros may agree with the need to provide relief for the poor and unemployed, but disagree on the form of the demands.
The political right, speaking mainly through politicians and journalists but resonating with many other Argentinians, overtly or covertly equates piqueteros with criminals. It is a fact that violent incidents with piqueteros have ended up with people wounded, cars and houses damaged, etc., and even non-violent blockades are formally illegal if they cause serious disruptions. Occupation of state and private buildings, including supermarkets and casinos, followed by demands of money and food supplies, has also occurred in the recent past. People advocating the criminalization of the piqueteros request that the government outlaw the protests and suffocate them using violent means if necessary. However, the case is that most pickets ends without violence.
The piqueteros themselves have become fragmented, as explained above. The movements supported by leftist parties, as well as the independent ones, criticize the piquetero leaders that have chosen to support the national Kirchner administration (which is viewed by them as a relatively progressive government, working slowly to improve Argentina's condition). In turn, the left-wing piqueteros are portrayed by the others as representatives of an unproductive, non-constructive radical opposition, sometimes encouraging violent action.
In the media, this fragmentation has been somewhat oversimplified by terming intransigent MTDs as piqueteros duros ("hard piqueteros") and those more willing to negotiate as piqueteros blandos ("soft piqueteros").
References
- Piquetero Movement Ideas: A discussion with MTD Allen - Interview with a piquetero leader
- Argentina: the mystification of the 'piquetero' movement International Communist Current, criticizing the piquetero movement for being an instrument of the bourgeoisie
- Argentina: Report on the current situation by the Organización Socialista Libertaria
- Capital & Class: Power or counter power?
- Argentina's Piqueteros and Us - Overview and comparisons with the situation of the United States
- Argentina's New Social Protagonists - A tour of piqueteros with a Clarín journalist
- Piquetero TV
- Argentina's unemployed movement: fragmented but active
- Argentina: Who's afraid of the piqueteros?