Defense of the Hotel BAUEN Pt. 1

The workers at the Hotel BAUEN Cooperative recently held a gathering of solidarity activists to announce their plan of struggle against the eviction order and for their full expropriation of the building. For now, I will just post the list of upcoming activities. Later, I will post my thoughts and experiences of the events and the month of struggle as a whole. I will also later be posting an email get-active that people can send to the judges and politicians involved as a statement of solidarity with the cooperative workers. However, before posting the calendar of events there are a few things that immediately struck me that I want to mention.

On the day of this gathering, the workers of the Hotel BAUEN came with announcements and tasks. They had stacks of thousands of leaflets explaining their situation along with a list of important locations in the city to distribute such information. It was the sort of seriousness in organizing that I rarely see in the United States and shows the absolute importance of community support for their struggle. The locations they chose reflected a real diversity in their outreach efforts as well as a general attempt at communication with the public.

Included in the list of events are a number of cultural events as well as typical protest organizing. This is an important element so often left out in organizing in the United States, and it tends to make our organizing dry, boring, and exclusive. Artistic groups are actively doing this sort of solidarity as a means to defend BAUEN and the rest of the cooperative movement.

Lastly, I’m impressed by the strategic organizing being done. The demands are not purely defensive, as they easily could be. Rather than simply calling for the eviction order to be reversed, they are using this mobilizing opportunity to take an offensive stance. They are using this moment to simultaneously call for full expropriation of the building for the cooperative. In the face of state repression they are maintaining an astounding strength and clarity.

Month of activities in defense of the Hotel BAUEN Worker Cooperative:

• July 27^th and 28^th – The band Ataque 77 will play a concert in support of the cooperative.
• August 3^rd – The San Telmo neighborhood assembly is organizing a show with La Covacha and Poder Sikuri as a fundraiser to defend the attack.
• August 6^th – We will meet at the doors of the BAUEN hotel with a murga and theatre group to lead a funeral procession to the office of the judge involved in the eviction order. We will be mourning the loss of the right to work while the cooperative workers present a letter of demands.
• August 9^th – Press conference at the Hotel with the culture committee of the worker cooperative. A social and political atmosphere with artists and musicians.
• August 16^th – The play “Maquinando” will be shown in solidarity with the struggle. The play is the story of the expropriation of printing factory in Buenos Aires.
• August 24^th – In the final day of the eviction notice there will be a large rally outside of the BAUEN Hotel.

I will post more of these events as they come.

Hotel BAUEN: Threatened With Eviction

Once again for solidarity! Time to defend our victories!

The Hotel BAUEN has become one of the most significant symbols of the worker recuperated businesses here in Argentina. It’s exactly this symbol of a worker power and progress that the state is hoping to repress now. This Saturday, July 21^st, the worker cooperative at the Hotel BAUEN was served with an eviction order, giving them one week to leave the building. We cannot allow such an important movement advance to be pushed back.

History

The hotel hasn’t always been a symbol of progress and promise. The 20-story building was built in 1978 with massive state subsidies from the military dictatorship then in power. It quickly became a symbol of upper class luxury in Argentina. During the 1990’s and the failures of the neoliberal model pushed by the International Monetary Fund and President Carlos Menem the business began to fail. With the total lack of imagination consistent of capitalist management, the owners saw no option but to close the hotel. On December 28^th, 2001 – shortly after the neoliberal economic model in Argentina collapsed, and the people revolted – the Hotel BAUEN was closed leaving all of its workers unemployed.

On March 23^rd, 2003 a group of around 30 former hotel workers met with delegates from other recuperated businesses around the country. They headed to the hotel, broke the lock to the entrance, and while occupying the building, began the legal process of applying for cooperative status. Upon arriving they found a nearly destroyed building, no inhabitable rooms, and no electricity. In the following months, the workers began fixing the hotel. They rented out rooms as they became available, and in December 2004 opened up the front café. Today the entire 200 rooms are open for business; there is a convention hall, concert space in the basement, and bookstore in the lobby. The workers have even managed to do what is so rare in Argentina today: create jobs. From the initial 30 cooperative members that took the space, there are now over 160 cooperative members.

Inspiration

All of the accomplishments of reopening the hotel have been done through democratic worker self-management. Decisions are made through assemblies and the workers themselves control all profits of the hotel. This success has been an inspiration to movements throughout the country. The story of their success has been spread in part through the cooperatives consistent solidarity with other movements. Once a week you can find the subway worker assembly delegates organizing their union’s struggle. Activist groups use the space for gatherings and conferences. There are frequent concerts put on by social groups. In the basement the activist media group Alavio has editing space, and there are constant movement discussions happening in the lobby restaurant and bookstore.

The Hotel BAUEN worker cooperative has not only inspired activists in Argentina, but throughout the world. Lessons have been taken from the Hotel BAUEN by worker cooperatives, union movements, and cultural centers throughout the world. They have demonstrated the possibilities of solidarity economics in the face of tremendous pressure, and managed to run a socially conscious business better than many of the exploitative businesses in the city of Buenos Aires.

Threats and Repression

Of course the state of affairs based on exploitative economics can’t allow this model to gain a successful stronghold and continually transmit inspiration throughout the world. During their process of opening the hotel they have been faced with numerous legal challenges and eviction orders. Despite all of their tremendous work the BAUEN cooperative still has not obtained a full legal expropriation. However, the current eviction order represents a considerable escalation against the cooperative on the part of the state. Past evictions have come from relatively minor problems, like possible fire hazards that needed to be fixed. The eviction order received this past Saturday is considerably stronger, saying that the cooperative must leave because they have stolen the building. The local government is showing their true political colors by asserting the property rights of those that gained the building from the military dictatorship and destroyed it over those that have revitalized it.

In the past eviction orders have been fought off in part through massive solidarity efforts. The example of the Hotel BAUEN worker cooperative has provided insight and motivation to many of our movements throughout the world in recent years. It’s our obligation to stand with them now and repay all that they have already given each of us. No, it’s not an obligation; it’s an honor to stand with these courageous people.

Subway Workers Rising!

In relatively short time here in Argentina I have come to find a huge variety of labor struggles. In the past few months there have been actions taken by tire factory workers, casino workers, hospital workers, agricultural workers, subway workers, and more in Buenos Aires. To find a particular place of business on strike at any given moment is a common site. While talking to people about these struggles, what I’ve found hasn’t been very surprising. Those unions that fight are more likely to win. But what is definitely different from so many actions I have seen in the US is that those fights are so often led by worker assemblies. The power of a particular union can be measured by the activity, support, and sustainability of the rank and file assemblies within that union.

Privatization

The best example of an assembly that has sustained constant activity in Buenos Aires is clearly the subte workers. The subte (Buenos Aires’ subway system) was privatized in 1994 and sold to the company Metrovias. This privatization brought about some massive immediate changes. The system went from 4,600 employees to 1,500 – 800 of which were new hires with no previous experience. Wages were lowered and arbitrary firings became common place. At the same time, during the presidency of Carlos Menem, unemployment was growing. After the economic crisis of 2001, unemployment would rise to over 20%, as the policy of privatization of all services grew.


Worker Democracy in Action

With daily exploitation of workers growing and constant arbitrary firings, workers began to organize. Their early demands included recognition of their assembly delegates and an end to all firings. In these early fights, they built the worker assembly, and began to develop a sense of unity between workers. The subte system has a number of different types of workers on 5 different lines. Different sections of workers would often have no contact at all with one another. But today there is constant mobilization by workers. Each line has its own assembly, electing delegates to represent them. Those delegates have weekly coordinating meetings, in the Hotel Bauen (an expropriated hotel in central Buenos Aires). These assemblies and delegates organize negotiations, media, cultural events, strikes, and other worker actions.

Through these mechanisms of self organization, the Subte workers union has consistently been one of the most active and militant of unions in the nation. They have held numerous work stoppages from 1 hour to 2 days long in what they see as an ongoing labor struggle for all workers. In the January of 2005 these methods of organizing saw their true test. After police attacked a rally of workers, an indefinite strike was called by the assembly. In what many here consider to be a prime example of worker organizing, the strike maintained consistent actions. They held numerous marches, built community support, and kept control in the hands of the rank and file. In the end they won a 44% increase in wages and benefits and the 6-hour work day.

Solidarity Struggles

With power in such a clearly strategic industry – transportation, the Subte workers have since organized in solidarity with a number of movements. They are often one of the first unions to take action in regional struggles. Along with the recuperated factory and unemployed worker movements, the Subte workers have called for a national 6-hour work day. The 6-hour day will help to end the crippling unemployment faced by Argentine workers. It will also help to end the exploitative and precarious working conditions of those working; conditions that so often destroy the capacity of labor movements to fight.

They are also working with a number of organizations in Buenos Aires to call for public control of Line H, the subway line currently under construction. These actions are demonstrating the common ground between workers, demanding better employment conditions, and riders, calling for lower fares and community regulatory powers.

As a part of these struggles, or in relation to their own demands, the Subte workers have taken on a number of workplace direct actions. They organize everything from press events and rallies, to short term strikes, and free fare days as methods of their ongoing struggle with the company Metrovías.


The Subte workers have come to represent the real potential of a rank and file led worker movement to many in Argentina. On any given day, delegates from the assembly are on the news talking about a current action or campaign. Their actions have taken a meaning much greater than simply their on the job complaints, they are a beacon of the power that the worker movement can demonstrate in building a different world.

Human rights in Argentina: Where is Julio Lopez? (Reposted)

Written by Marie Trigona

Tuesday, 03 July 2007



Argentina is preparing for a new human rights trial for crimes committed during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship. Just days before the start of the latest trial, Argentine police discovered a body thought to be that of a missing witness.


Police early this morning found a body of a man, who they believed to be Julio Lopez the key witness who went missing last year following the land mark conviction of a police official who ran clandestine torture centers. Forensic officials confirmed today that the body, found without its hands or feet, was not that of 78-year-old Julio Lopez. Police followed a tip off that a dismembered body had been found in an unmarked grave about 6 miles from the city of La Plata, where Lopez was last seen on September 18, 2006.


The gruesome discovery could have a chilling effect on witnesses planning to testify in a new trial of an accused torturer. On Thursday, a federal court will open the trial of Catholic priest, Christian Von Wernich, charged with carry out human rights abuses while orking in several of the clandestine detention centers used to disappear 30,000 dissidents during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship.


The next individual slated for trial, Catholic Priest Christian Von Wernich, facing charges for kidnapping 45 people, torture, three murders, and the illegal appropriation of a baby born in captivity. Witnesses scheduled to testify in the trial say they won't be scared off. There are currently 200 former military officers lined up for human rights trials—not even one officer for each of the 375 clandestine detention centers that operated during the dictatorship.


Juan Ramon Nazar was kidnapped in 1977 and held in a clandestine detention center for 14 months. While in a two-by-two cell in the detention center's basement, Father Von Wernich visited Nazar to give him "spiritual aid" Nazar, now 75, has agreed to testify to the torture he received at the hands of Von Wernich. He recently stated, "I'm willing to testify before the courts as many times as necessary. I'm not afraid and I'm not going to ask for police protection."

Lopez, a retired construction worker and former political prisoner disappeared just hours before he was slated to give his final testimony on the eve of the conviction of the former police investigator, Miguel Etchecolatz. Human rights groups are pointing to provincial police with ties to the 1976-1983 military dictatorship for kidnapping the witness.


Etchecolatz's sentence for crimes against humanity, genocide, and the murder and torture of political dissidents during the dictatorship represents the first time in the nation's history that the courts have sentenced a military officer to life for crimes against humanity.


This is only the second conviction of a former military officer charged with human rights abuses since 2005 when Argentina's Supreme Court struck down immunity laws for former officers of the military dictatorship as unconstitutional. Etchecolatz was arrested and sentenced to 23 years in 1986, but was later freed when the "full stop" and "due obedience" laws implemented in the early '90s made successful prosecution of ex-military leaders for human rights abuses virtually impossible.


Marie Trigona is a writer, filmmaker and radio reporter for Free Speech Radio News based in Buenos Aires. She can be reached at mtrigona@msn.com. For more information on Argentina's human rights trials visit http://mujereslibres.blogspot.com/


Marie Trigona