The Pots and Pans Revolution

Another jalapeño essay from Augusto Al Q'adi Alcalde, who describes himself as, "Chinese medicine healer, South American medicine healer, Zen Teacher in the Chin Lien Tao and Soto Tradition, Reggae and Blues musician, Zapatista supporter, poet and amateur writer, Pipe smoker and Gin drinker, fucker of the shitstem through three military dictatorships in argentina, and still full heartedly heartically in the struggle for a fuckin' new world, one in which many worlds can abide..."

The Military dictatorship of the early seventies established an economic plan that was in action up to the present times, in spite of the several "democratic" governments, and it is there where, i think, we should search for the causes of the drastic situation of Argentina.

The economy minister that created the external debt, passing the private debt on to the state, this is to say to the civil society, is the same person that was trying to unfold that economic plan to perfection under the last elected president. And perfection here means the emptying of the country of its rich resources, and the degradation and alienation of our culture and way of life.

That economy minister fell together with the president, in a beautiful succession of five presidents falling after them in less than ten days, and the deep and wise popular cry for justice, that includes the demand of the supreme court to go down too and be taken to court because of its corruption and endless support of the dirty politics and robbery of the government at play at any moment of our recent history.

That economic plan worked together with the Condor Plan, an early way of conceiving globalization, when that word was still not been used, globalization of the terror and repression, that linked all the military dictatorships of latin america and facilitated their task of annihilating the rebellion and the struggle for a better world of the seventies, by murder, torture, and the systematic appropriation of babies in the concentration camps and illegal detention centers, under the support and blessings of the united states working from the shadows as the shadows themselves.

Since then, it is no wonder that under the same pressure, now not a military one but an economic one, now from the IMF, the systematic process of dismantling the culture and the resources that the Neoliberalism carries on globally as the stage for unfolding its endless greed, inviting peoples cultures and nations to their own funeral, placed the Argentinean Nation on the brink of disintegration.

And Argentina is now paying the price of having been the best and most efficient and obedient follower of the Neoliberal model, defined by one of our Foreign Affairs ministers as "carnal relationships" with the united estates and its policies.

30.000 people disappeared by murder of torture since that model was implemented in the late sixties, 500 appropriated babies do not know yet their identity and are being searched by the Mothers and the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo.

Over 33 million people inhabiting the country, 14 million are under the level of poverty.

The unemployment rate, officially is of 20%. Sub employment makes this numbers even bigger.

The unemployed have no economic or medical support, they are absolutely on their own, with absolutely no hope of being back into work again.

Young people are, if working, exploited with minimal wages and uncertainty of the future.

70 children die every day of curable diseases.

The aboriginal people are being more and more deprived of their lands and culture, and the poverty rate is greatest in their communities.

People with disabilities and grave illnesses have seen their medicines evaporate in air as the laboratories either make them unavailable or rise the cost in the deadly game of speculation that is so dear to the neoliberal system.

The elderly and retired people are not earning their miserable pensions, not to speak of the difficulties in obtaining their medicines.

In the richest of the Argentinean provinces, last year 863.000 people fell under the level of poverty, this means that every day during the year of 2001, 2366 people just in the richest of all provinces fell down into poverty. During the same period of time, 440 thousand people fell from poverty to the lowest of the possible grounds.

The bank deposits, not the big ones of the economic mafia that flew away from the country much before, but the ones belonging to the once upon a time called middle class, were stolen by the banks, all of them owned by foreign (multinational) companies, and is no longer in the country or available to the legal owners.

The Power can only continue with this Neoliberal model of exclusion and death with the use of more and more violent repression, to the workers associations, in the streets and squares, to the civil society, a brutal police repression that left 30 dead people just during the first days of the struggle.

Argentina, nonetheless, is not isolated, but, as when the Condor Plan of the military dictatorships was working, is part of a regional predatory policy of war that is being carried throughout the continent against the cry for Social Justice, True Democracy and Freedom, a cry that is being shouted and walked in Chiapas, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, and Bolivia too, this last one completely ignored by the media even though she is at the edge of civil war, with a strong creative and steady struggle and resistance of the campesinos, the civil society and the Aboriginal People against the neoliberalism.

The Colombia Plan, the Puebla Panama Plan, and the Free Commerce treaty that the USA is trying to implement to absorb the Latin America markets and cultures under its wings, are the new but not less lethal versions of the Condor Plan that the military dictatorships implemented, which was nourished and protected during the sixties and seventies by the USA.

This is the ground from where the Argentinean rebellion comes from, this is the ground from where the pots and pans beating as a revolutionary arm comes from, growing both in silence and in cry through many years of struggle and networking of different social organizations, individual activists, and the Mothers and Grandmothers in their struggle for Justice and Identity.

This is the ground where hunger grew as the primal revolutionary force. Physical hunger, and the hunger for Social Justice and a better world, unfolding its legitimate need as the struggle.

And this hunger and this struggle gave birth to something new. I call it the "first postpersonalist social movement". No leaders, no fixed ideologies, no big organizations, no professional politicians, no unions or vanguards are leading this. The struggle learning from itself and unfolding into the unknown with a clear and firm consciousness of its need.

A new way of doing politics, one of multitudes gathering together in resonance, one of silent networking and neighborhood assemblies, one of recovering the streets and squares, one of making the Power and the professional politicians understand through social pressure and civil disobedience that they are the employees of the people, and that their task is to obey the will and needs of the peoples, one of marches and demonstrations, one of engaging and involving the body, one of finally dropping the fear that was planted in the hearts of the people as the best weapon by the successive military dictatorships and their atrocities.

Step by step, at the sound of pot beating the chords of the resistance movement are being played. Step by step, beyond class distinction but including all classes, the resistance is resonating and the popular assemblies are giving birth to the proposals for the new Argentinean Nation.

And Argentina is not just Argentina. Argentina is the world as the world is Argentina.

Argentina now is a spark of dignity, creative and effective struggle that awaits brothers and sisters sparks, so that the Inter National of the sparks of True Democracy, Social Justice and Freedom can shine bright in solidarity around the Blue Planet, the only horizon that can possibly and effectively create a better and new world, one in which many worlds can abide, and oppose to the international of greed that is destroying the planet, its peoples and cultures and committing the biggest robbery, the one of stealing joy and sanity from life.

Augusto Alcalde <augual2002@yahoo.com.ar>
Feb.7-2002