This is a CTP of initiative: ICA/MOI (Argentina)
This CTP addresses the Occupiers and Tenants Movement's strategy at the beginning of the 21st century. The economic and social crisis of Argentina represented a CTP in the trajectory of the MOI, evidenced in the interviews carried out and movement documents consulted. Faced with the crisis of 2002, the MOI developed a set of strategies that valued its experience of more than a decade and marked the future trajectory of the movement.
Starting in 1998, the MOI made an open and methodological change in its cooperative and self-managed formation processes. One of the most outstanding strategies was the creation of the "Guardia" weekly space. This space had three basic characteristics: a) families should approach from their initiative; (B) the scale of the cooperatives (not less than 30 families) is widened; And c) the cooperative proposal is opened to the formal workers (beginning with the CTA) and low-income families.
The "Guardia", as a matrix of cooperative organization, aims to develop the self-management capacity of the population in its aspects of internal organization, ability to define a collective goal in common, assume roles and functions, work as a team to achieve and see that it is Part of a broader process of struggle for the reconstruction of the popular field. In 2002, in the midst of an economic crisis, the MOI adjusted its working methodology with cooperatives, especially as a pedagogical experience, both at the level of projects and training. Later, kindergarten became a central tool.
"Moms came to the "Guardia" areas with their childs, so they were not with their childs or their mind in the meeting. Then began to appear areas of contention of children and the areas of contention of children generated the kindergarten. Later, we were also linked to the recovered factories and the bachelorship was created. It was developing everything that is an educational area that today is under the name of "Centro Educativo Integral Autogestional (CEIAS)" (Self-managerial integral Educational Center, in english). All of these areas: health, education, with the fight for the roof, the right to the city and the right to housing, occurred in parallel in response to the crisis of 2002."
At present, the basic nucleus of action is constituted by the Federation of Self-managed Cooperatives, led by the MOI and composed of dozens of housing cooperatives and a cooperative of work, which is the one that builds, in Buenos Aires City, the works of the housing cooperatives. In addition, other institutions that serve as a point of articulation between the MOI and the State.
In the scenario of the worst Argentine crisis in democracy, the MOI had achieved visibility and institutionalization. Even with a government that developed policies to restrict social spending, the growth of the movement and its great communication impact allowed the alignment of some institutions of the National State and the City of Buenos Aires. The other great "partner" of the MOI in developing its strategies for transforming habitat policies and society as a whole was the Central of the argentinian workers (CTA, in it spanish initials). This society emerged in the 1990s as a result of public policies contrary to popular sectors.
The other great "partner" of the MOI in developing its strategies for transforming habitat policies and society as a whole was the Central of the argentinian workers (CTA, in it spanish initials). This society emerged in the 1990s as a result of public policies contrary to popular sectors.
At the sectoral level, the MOI was linked to four institutions with a history in the field of habitat:
1. The Faculty of Architecture, Design, Art and Urbanism (FADU in it Spanish initials) of the University of Buenos Aires, created in 1947 and progressively incorporating social projects and their increasingly direct link with society in their different fields of work.
2. Within the FADU, the main body with which the MOI will work is in the Habitat and Housing Studies Center, created in 1984, in the scenario of the return of democracy.
3. The Liaison Secretariat of Self-managed Communities, created in 1980 as an articulation agent between the Government of the City of Buenos Aires and civil society.
4. The Housing and Community Foundation, was created in 1978, in the midst of a military dictatorship by a group of architects and sociologists from the City of Buenos Aires to provide technical and financial assistance to low income families, groups and organizations.
Based on the interaction with these institutions, the MOI developed a strategic action from 2002 that operates in 3 sub-spaces: Based on the interaction with these institutions, the MOI developed a strategic action from 2002 that operates in 3 sub-spaces:
a) join space, approximately 3 to 4 informational meetings;
b) space of First time, in which the basic proposals of the organization, the belongings, the history, route and later reflection on the cooperatives, structure and work areas of the MOI are presented, and subsequent stages;
c) Pre-cooperative stage, which involves a process of approximately 6 months structured around an agreement whose axes are participation, contributions and mutual aid.
In this scenario and through the action of the movement's articulation with social assistance agencies of the Government of the City of Buenos Aires, three cooperatives arised.
One of the most important events related to the MOI's trajectory was the economic and social crisis of the beginning of the 21st century. In 1998, Argentina entered what became a four-year depression, during which its economy declined by 28%.
Among other things, the economic policy of parity of the Argentine peso with the US dollar implied the impossibility of issuing currency and the national, provincial and municipal states began to issue pseudo coins, which the state used for the payment of salaries of public employees. These pseudo-currencies, when attempted to exchange in the market, were rejected or taken at a value well below their nominal value, which indirectly implied a significant wage loss.
Given the economic situation, many families of public employees joined the unemployed who entered the statistics of the housing deficit. The MOI gradually becomes a movement for social change, an institution increasingly oriented to transform society, not only to solve an emergency problem.
"In the context of a country immersed in a situation of deep socio-economic, cultural and institutional crisis, in the city of Buenos Aires, an aspect of the government's emergency housing policy "exploded": the Government of the City of Buenos Aires paid more than 500 dollars monthly of subzidies to housing until December 2001. The beneficiaries were housed in 4 square meters rooms, with poor common services, more or less prison regimes for the daily use of spaces, restrictions on visits, permanent arbitrariness of the dark managers, and so on."
Thus, the response to the housing emergency through the City government subsidized hotels is an example of state policies that were more oriented to the subsidy of a crisis-destroyed submarket (that of hotel owners), Which was "rescued" and rebuilt by subsidies from the government. While the owners of the hotels were benefited, the popular sectors did not see medium and long-term actions to their housing problem. In this case, emergency policies were again oriented to the irrationality of investments and a very short-term exit for homeless families.
This process provides new elements to deepen the need to distinguish, elaborate and propose specific policy frameworks for housing emergencies.
This CTP has an important contribution at the level of the different points of view of the MOI with respect to the strategies, actions and negotiations between the founding and recently incorporated members.
In the midst of a structural crisis, the MOI was confronted by a struggle of opposites expressed in different spheres and dimensions. One of its most recurrent expressions was individualistic assistance to collective self-management. Mainly in the formation of the cooperatives and the permanent debates that arose from the increasing incorporation of families to the movement, which did not always come close to sharing cooperative and self-managed values, but rather due to the emergent nature of the unfavorable economic situation.
"The debates revealed the subsidy culture, essentially functional to the class inequalities of capitalist society, against the culture of labor in the hands of generators of human wealth; Private property against collective property; Business production of habitat versus social production; The socio-spatially expulsive city against the democratic city, without expulsion or expulsion; The atomization of the organization against the articulation and integration of the popular field; The oblivion and concealment of history against the recovery of the reflection and the historical memory of the people; Representative democracy against direct democracy."
These elements were constituted in some of the antagonistic dichotomies that the construction of the popular movement had to solve to advance in its objectives of social transformation. The main challenge, in the words of the actors themselves, was to share the principles of the movement's self-management, without imposing them on the often individualistic common sense of the new co-operatives.
To deepen the principles and actions within self-managed cooperatives, the MOI invited two Uruguayan Technical Assistance Institutes, with a long history of working with cooperatives in FUCVAM (the Uruguayan Cooperative Center-CCU and "Hacer de sur"). These Technical Assistance Institutes have as main objective the advising to the cooperatives in technical questions, as much of architecture as of social formation. The idea of the exchange with the Uruguayan Institutes was to hold joint meetings between the cooperatives and the implementing agency of the Government of the City of Buenos Aires, especially with the legislators of the Housing Commission.
In this scenario, the MOI focused centrally on the work of training and the elaboration of documents and working days to define the objectives of the movement as a transformative organization. The Guards were one of the most outstanding tools of this strategy, accompanied by an intense follow-up of the cooperatives that were formed in those years.
Even knowing the expansion of the economic and social crisis at the beginning of the XXI century, the main leaders of the MOI could not anticipate the significant growth that the movement was going to have in those years. In the context of the deep crisis that crossed the country, the difference between emergency and self-management was projected qualitatively and essentially beyond the sectoral habitat.
"At that time the activity of the MOI was strengthened in the city, where the number of cooperatives reached 400 and more than 100 properties were bought. It is also a stage in which, through the implementation of law 341 at the meeting and the confluence with the crisis of 2001, a strategic tool was created in the design of any habitat policy, which is the creation of a real estate bank."
The MOI members, many of the popular movements that emerged as part of the acceleration of the crisis (such as the "piquetero" movement) could not be dissociated from the assistance proposals created by the National State. For the MOI, these organizations could not anticipate the actions of the State and were trapped by the contradiction of embodying, from the very bowels of the popular movement, the most genuine will for transformation. On the other hand, they were trapped in the emerging practices of individual subsidy systems installed almost coercively by the World Bank and international financial agencies.
"The collective struggle to take over the means of production and to put them into operation from the management of the productive system, embodied in the Movement of Recovered Factories, has the same perspective of gestation of a practice and a culture of liberation that the struggle of Self-managed housing cooperatives to gain organized and propositively the Right to the City and Housing and to be part of the construction of a Democratic City."
Although the members of the MOI were unable to pinpoint the scale-of-scale impact of the 2002 crisis, the group's theoretical and political solidity enabled it to situate itself at the historical moment and expand its scope as actors of change.
The growth of the MOI from the crisis was an opportunity to test the strength of the organization. The self-managed cooperative movement of the city of Buenos Aires, which had taken its first steps in previous decades occupying abandoned buildings, had positioned itself as an organization capable of proposing a normative framework and installing sectoral policies of popular habitat.
One of the main learnings of this phase was the sectoral contribution to the construction of a new society, moving from the stage of social organization and execution of material of the housing complexes and of community equipment, to the organization of a national movement in growth. The social and political formation from the construction of systematic spaces of transference and self-management training was central to face the incorporation of new groups, without cooperative experience.
To this end, a School of Self-Management was created, proposed for discussion within the Latin American Secretariat of Popular Housing as a formative stage for the entrance to self-managed production. The transition from a metropolitan organization to a national one was an important learning. The association with the Central of argentinian Workers (CTA), a national institution with experience in organizing a movement at the national level, was key to this. In this sense, some point learnings were:
• Discussion, elaboration and signing of the Pre-Cooperative Agreement. Associated to transmit the general operation of a self-managed housing cooperative, its structures, and functions.
• Development of an initial practice of cooperative self-management that enables its members to be able to join comprehensively, actively and purposefully to the existing cooperative processes of the MOI or to promote the formation of new cooperatives. Development of an initial practice of cooperative self-management that enables its members to be able to join comprehensively, actively and purposefully to the existing cooperative processes of the MOI or to promote the formation of new cooperatives.
• To form a pre-cooperative group, where each member progressively incorporates cooperation as an active and concrete element of organization and also progressively develops the attitudes and aptitudes of this way of life, as a member of a group that fights for the right to City and housing.
• To implement, in group, the three pillars of the operation of a self-managed housing cooperative by mutual aid (participation, contributions and mutual aid), through the implementation of a convention discussed, elaborated and executed in a self-managed manner.
• Develop a self-management cooperative evaluation practice (based on introducing notions of quality and quantity, trend and process) to characterize the performance of the group and its members.
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