Thursday's excursions were interesting and created much heated debate. In the morning we went to another recuperated factory/worker's collective, called Grissinopoli. They make breadsticks (grisines) and it smelled a whole lot better than the metals and plastics at IMPA. We talked for a while with Mari, who works as an administrator there and has been at Grissinopoli for many years -- she was married to the owner's son back in the 1980s when it was a family-owned business. Like many recuperated factories, the workers took over Grissinopoli in 2002 after the business started bankruptcy proceedings during the 2001 economic crisis. Unlike other factories, Grissinopoli had a fairly smooth path to legalization. Following the advice of Luis Caro, their lawyer and a leading figure in the Movimiento Nacional de Empresas Recuperadas (MNER), they built support after occupying the factory in 2002, and began production in 2003. They were granted a two-year legal right to the building, and when that law was up for renewal in 2004, they won a permanent expropriation law transfering the ownership of the building and its contents to their cooperative. That was possible because the community supported them and the owner was not asking for anything or contesting the workers' claims.
Also in 2004, the MNER split and Luis Caro led a group called the Movimiento Nacional de Fabricas Recuperadas (MNFR). This alliance has more than 100 cooperatives as members now. They have a different ideology than the MNER, whose slogan is "ocupar, resistir, producir: - occupy, resist, produce. The MNFR sees itself as less confrontational and more working within the law (its leader is a lawyer), and its factories are managed differently. At Grissinopoli, 52 workers held full-time jobs before the economic crisis. Since the takeover, they have 14 partners in the cooperative, 12 in production and 4 in administration. As their workload has risen, they have hired outside workers in temporary positions. This year they have 19 contract workers who work for 3 months without formal benefits and for lower wages than the cooperative partners. Expanding the partners of the cooperative would take a majority vote and so far they have not been willing to take that step -- a position that has stirred much controversy and with which Mari clearly disagreed. Unlike the IMPA spokesperson, Eduardo, who was very clear that their goal was to create a new economic system outside of the logic of capitalist markets, the Grissinopoli spokesperson said that this was not an ideological choice but simply a way to save the jobs of older workers who would have been unemployed otherwise. All of them were over 40 at the time of the crisis, and some had been working since the factory first opened in 1962. Worker ownership was their only hope for a livelihood.
We asked Mari some hard questions and then went on a tour of the production floor. The workers talked with us a bit and gave us large bags of breadsticks to take home with us. Then Eric (one of our interpreters) led us to Pizzeria Guerrin, known as one of the best pizza places in Buenos Aires, on Avenue Corrientes, and we tried pizzas with some unusual combinations of toppings.
In the afternoon we went to the Universidad Popular de las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo (www.madres.org). They started this university as a way for working people to get an education -- all the classes begin after 7:00 p.m. so that workers can attend after their jobs. They have formal curricula and degrees in law, human rights, political economy, and a couple of other subjects, and they also offer non-credit courses in subjects like Simon Bolivar, Marxism, and drama. Alejandra gave us a tour and also introduced us to the professor who runs a new program designed for prisoners who are being released and are in the process of transitioning back into society. The Madres teach these prisoners in a drama-based popular education program, that uses their experiences as a starting point to explore the challenges of transitioning from incarceration back into the community. After the tour the Madres served us a lovely "merienda" -- Argentina's version of afternoon tea, or a pre-dinner meal -- with lots of fresh fruit, fresh orange juice, sandwiches, and coffee (below).
Dinner was at a new restaurant called Las Pizarras and it was very delicious (above). It is a little-known restaurant that is by invitation only -- luckily Julia is friends with the chef, Rodrigo, and we were able to get a reservation for 20. Marcelo Brodsky and Fabio Grementieri joined us to talk about their work and their new books on architecture and history.
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