With or Without the State? Reviewing the Political Autonomy of the Piqueteros Movement

EMILIA CASTORINA

York University Toronto (Canadá)

Congreso; 75 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences; 2006

Canadian Federation for the Societies and Social Sciences

The aim of this paper is to trace the evolution of a complex relation of autonomy and dependency between the Piqueteros –unemployed- movement and the state. This new movement first emerged by mid-1990s when neo-liberal policies broke the “developmental” model of labor relations, which hitherto articulated a populist and corporate link between state, unions and enterprises. In open confrontation with traditional forms of politics and deploying novel forms of political organization, the emergence of the unemployed movement and their struggles expressed the social limits of market discipline in Argentina. A new “undisciplined” subject emerged: fragmented, autonomous and highly heterogeneous, it grew and organized around the institutionalization of social programs (Planes Trabajar). Yet, their increasing autonomization from the state far from uniting this movement has fragmented it even more. Overall, within the piqueteros movement there has been a first moment of cooperation among their different sectors, then moving to a period of competition between them to conclude in an open process of conflict among them. This paper will attempt to explore the extent to which this increasing fragmentation gave the state the opportunity to co-opt and re-discipline this movement by re-playing new links of dependency with the state. Some of the undertaking of the piqueteros organizations will be given in order to illustrate the practical dilemmas (and contradictions) they face vis-à-vis their autonomy/dependency from the state.