This is a CTP of initiative: ICA/COVILPI (Argentina)
This CTP addresses a very important fact in the historical trajectory of the social organization Cooperativa de Vivienda Los Pibes COVILPI (for acronym in Spanish). This CTP focuses on the murder of Martín "El Oso" Cisneros in 2004. Although the punctual fact (by its nature) did not constitute a change in the cooperative's objectives or strategies, the importance of losing the leader of the social organization implied for the rest of the members a fundamental fact in its history that marked COVILPI forever.
After years of experience collaborating with social organizations and cooperatives, in 2003 the first housing cooperative associated with COVILPI was formed. The first step was the identification of a set of families with specific housing problems who agreed to organize to begin a process of struggle:
"At that time our organization was operating at the headquarters of Lamadrid 1053 - acquired in October 2001 - and since the space was small for 200 families to attend the assemblies weekly, they lent us a shed located in Pedro de Mendoza 1407. We observed there that at the bottom of the place there was an unoccupied parcel, almost a vacant lot; We immediately started the inquiries and we were able to verify that it was for sale.
In February 2003, we presented the project in Municipal Housing Comission. For the purchase of land, we formed our cooperative on March 8, 2004 and Martín "El Oso" Cisneros was named President . Martín Cisneros was 44 years old and had more than 10 in social movements, especially oriented in the field of habitat as the Federation Land and Housing.”
Approval of the cooperative project took more than a year. That was the first year of COVILPI; year of struggles, anxieties, dreams, frustrations, uncertainty. Faced with the refusal as the first alternative, COVILPI was formed and began a process of organization and work that gave identity and meaning to the organization. Some families could not sustain the struggle, while others continued the path to what, apparently, "impossible".
“In COVILPI every day we vindicate Martin 'El Oso' Cisneros, the fighter, the builder, the 'new man' and we resist like him the clashes of the powerful who are not resigned to the advances of our people. Because resisting is not a crime. To resist is to stand, rebuild, confront, contrast, oppose, challenge, create, fight ..."
The members of COVILPI claim that there were political or economic sectors involved in the murder of Cisneros. And that, mounted on the crime, renew forces to advance on the goals reached by COVILPI (and other organizations) in those years.
The action of taking the police station and the political claim for the clarification of the crime of Cisneros generated the support of numerous social actors. Within the housing cooperative sector, COVILPI has been linked in the last 13 years with numerous institutions in the field of habitat and many of them.
1. First, emerged the Movement of Occupants and Renters MOI (for its acronym in Spanish), a social organization with a trajectory of three decades. Some members of the MOI even participated in the taking of the police station.
2. The Housing and Community Foundation, created in 1978, created in full military dictatorship by a group of architects and sociologists of the City of Buenos Aires to provide technical and financial assistance to families, groups and organizations of low-income settlers.
3. The Faculty of Architecture, Design, Art and Urbanism of the University of Buenos Aires, which participated in numerous social projects, offered its support and solidarity with COVILPI.
After the take of the Police Station, members of COVILPI made a press release reaffirming their transformative political mission and commitment to the struggle led by Martin "El oso" Cisneros:
"Injustice is the reason that historically pushes people to engage in political and social change. As long as this inequality persists, and the political corporation fails to take the depth of popular longings, continue with policies limited to unworthy social patches, or directly act as an agent of the imperialist plunder, the popular subject, emerging in the crisis of neoliberalism in our region, Will make known his discomfort in the street."
This process was crossed by the political changes produced at the national level. The new government assumed a new way of managing the social conflicts developed in the public space. The new policy was focused on peaceful negotiation and non-repression. In this context, the taking of the police station by social organizations after the Cisneros crime was approached by the government with a broad understanding of the problem that had generated it.
The takeover of abandoned public buildings in the 1980s was directly linked to the neoliberal economic policy initiated years earlier by the military dictatorship that carried out a coup d'état in 1976. In this scenario, the beginnings of the 1980s were marked by The exhaustion of the dictatorial experience, whose livelihood, both extraterritorial and domestic, collapses with military defeat in the Malvinas War. In a context of increasing expression of social discontent, the reconstruction of the socio-political fabric that foreshadowed the democratic "transition" began.
In the 1990s, a change was made in Argentina in the economic policies of shrinking of the State and reduction of social spending that aggravated the situation of the housing deficit. This management lasted for more than a decade and favored the growth of transformative cooperative movements.
At the beginning of the year 2000, the neoliberal economic policies had produced a serious crisis that aligned to numerous transforming forces, among which was the COVILPI. The abandonment of public assistance from problems such as habitat implied the destruction of the welfare state. In turn, the 1990s were affected by two regional crises: the first was in Mexico in 1994, while the second in 1995 was even more important for Argentina, given that it occurred in Brazil, an associated country in an area Common exchange.
These crises, as a result of the quick growth of external indebtedness and the destruction of labor legislation through deregulation, flexibilization and precarious employment, accompanied by the liberalization of imports and destruction of the productive apparatus at the regional level.
Concrete expressions of these policy changes at the local level were overwhelming: 1- interrupting the support of the Government of the City of Buenos Aires to advance the PADELAI experience; 2 - indication to the Zonal Social Centers, decentralized government agencies, strongly linked to the neighborhood demands, not to link with the social movements that occupied buildings (mainly COVILPI and the MOI); 3 - mediatic construction of strong discriminatory campaigns against social movements that proposed changes in housing policies; 4- Drafting of a new Civil Code that framed the occupation of buildings as a criminal figure. Somehow it was stated that:
“Contrary to the social aims pursued by COVILPI, the Argentine National Government and the Government of the City of Buenos Aires oriented their housing policy to intervention in urban renewal processes linked to the concentrated sectors, progressively abandoning social housing programs.”
Although the political and social crisis that began in 2001 was already beginning to be resolved, the economic situation continued to affect more than half of Argentina. This meant that the housing deficit, increasing since the early 1990s, was as present as a decade ago. In turn, the National State, which at the beginning was more tolerant of social protest and opposition organizations, was consolidated and began to fight against social movements. This created conditions for a greater social consensus on the eviction of the occupied building.
This CTP presents a profound sense of contestation. The murder of "El Oso" Cisneros is interpreted by the referents of COVILPI as a mafia message against the action of social organizations working in the field of Popular Habitat.
For the referents of COVILPI, behind the assassination of Cisneros there were large economic interests of real estate developers and political sectors opposed to the national government. With his death, not only was it sought to halt the advance of cooperative housing projects in the southern part of the city of Buenos Aires, but to give a message to future similar projects.
The fact was a great internal challenge for COVILPI, how should they react to this fact? What consequences could that reaction bring? The takeover of the police station was a difficult decision since it provoked reactions against conservative sectors supported by the media. The speeches that opposed this concrete action raised that the social organizations involved were committing a criminal act.
The attitude of the national government to the conflict also generated a strong polemic. Security officials sought a peaceful solution to the conflict and avoided taking legal action against the occupants of the police station. This was considered as a sign of weakness and therefore the state was endorsing chaos and disorder.
Martin "El Oso" Cisneros, was a militant of social organizations since the 1980s. As a member of the Communist Party Youth, he also actively participated as a brigadist in Nicaragua in the revolutionary process. Then the collective memory places it in the struggle for housing in an estate identified as the former Bodegas Giol in the 90's, where 200 families were violently evicted while trying to live in dignified housing at the time of the government of Carlos Saul Menem.
From 2001 until he was killed in 2004 he joins militancy to become part of the "Los Pibes" community kitchen a prominent participation in the organization. In a nascent way, the popular economy was created, Martín was the one that was in charge of the productive initiatives that were born in 2002, from the plans of employment and the plans to work. Recall the miserable situation in which were the popular sectors at the time of the arrival of the government of Néstor Kirchner.
Some months before the crime, the Cisneros murderer, Juan Carlos Duarte, had stolen the COVILPI's Community Kitchen. The robbery made the relationship between Cisneros and Duarte - who lived on the same street- more tense. After the robbery, Duarte left neirborhood, but returned weeks later. Some witnesses said that 40 days before the crime they reported that Duarte threatened Cisneros but that police authorities did nothing about it.
Although it was never thought that the process would have such an outcome, the persecution, threats and prosecution of the protest highlight a permanent risk for social organizations, especially for leaders.
The murder of Cisneros generated a set of changes in COVILPI and among them some important learning for social organization are highlighted. The main one was the union of the COVILPI and the strategies to coordinate the support of the social and state institutions that supported the process.
In relation to the the murder, immediately after being known the fact a large number of members of the COVILPI occupied Police Station of the neirborhood, institution in charge of security in the area of the crime and suspected of protecting the suspect. Manifestants demanded the arrest of the homicide, Juan Carlos Duarte, a neighborhood character protected by the police. This fact, although controversial by the taking of a police section, was a great learning for the COVILPI since it took to the whole society the strength and organization of the cooperative. In turn, the outlet represented numerous logistics, negotiation and communication activities.
The occupation of the police station also motivated another judicial case, but against the members of COVILPI, which confirmed the continuity of the persecutions to the social movements and their main leaders. Finally, the judge granted an exemption of prison to more than thirty men and women of the community Kitchen that took the police station, among which were the leaders as Luis D'Elía and Lito Borello.
"The reactionary offensive we were witnessing at that stage, with the concentrated media, the big rural businessmen, the agents of the financial centers, the nostalgic ones of State Terrorism, those who benefit from the injustice that condemns the vast majority of our people to hunger, marginality and survival as the only expectation"
The Cisneros murderer was finally sentenced to 15 years in prison. According to Borello, current president of COVILPI, the case was paradigmatic because it was a crime of a social leader in a special context. It was quickly demonstrated that the killer had close ties with the Federal Police, so it could be a commissioned murder, aimed at disciplining social organizations. Therefore, since COVILPI maintain that the sentence, without aggravating the characteristics of the case, did not have the scope should have had.
The death of Martín Cisneros strengthened the social organization and ordered its transformative political objectives. On the 5th anniversary of the death of Cisneros, a tribute was made in which some members of the organization expressed themselves:
"From the Social and Political Organization 'Los Pibes' we are convinced that it is the social organizations that are transforming agents that built the time that we are today and continues to be the main driver of social and political change that our region requires. Today more than ever we say, paraphrasing what our people sing in the streets: 'with social actors like "El Oso" Cisneros, we are going to build together the national project'.
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