"Argentina: Turning Around" - an Interview With Mark Dworkin and Melissa Young

Wednesday 22 July 2009

by: Benjamin Dangl, t r u t h o u t | Interview

"Argentina: Turning Around" is an exciting film which captures the spirit of Argentina's grassroots response to economic meltdown. Drawing from diverse interviews and incredible footage, the film offers an inside look at the victories and challenges of Argentina's neighborhood assemblies, protest movements and worker-run factories. "Argentina: Turning Around" skillfully transmits the country's courageous examples of social change.

In this interview, film directors Mark Dworkin and Melissa Young talk about what led them to make the film, how the social and political environment in Argentina has changed since the 2001 economic crash, and how Argentina's methods of combating economic crisis on a grassroots level might offer lessons to activists in the US facing economic trouble.

Argentina: Turning Around is a documentary available from Bullfrog Films .

Benjamin Dangl: What led you to make this film, and how is it connected to the story of your previous film on Argentina, "Hope in Hard Times?"

Mark Dworkin and Melissa Young: Just as we prepared to leave for the World Social Forum in southern Brazil, and then to visit Argentina, the dominant US media reported Argentina's economic and political collapse of late 2001 with pictures of people pounding on the shuttered banks and the news that 30 people had been shot and killed by the police in just one day. We almost canceled our plans to visit Argentina for fear that it might be too dangerous or depressing. But friends in Buenos Aires encouraged us to come anyway.

And when we got there we saw what was not reported in the dominant media - a remarkable resurgence of grassroots democracy, mutual aid and cooperation, with street corner assemblies that sometimes led to takeovers of unused banks to form neighborhood centers, factories that had been shut down and were reopened by their workers in defiance of the law, large-scale community gardens, and daily mass blockades of streets and highways to demand government action to help those most hurt by the economic crisis. We pulled out our traveling camera and began to film. Although we were only able to stay for a couple of weeks, we continued to follow events in Argentina and returned six months later for more filming. The result was "Argentina: Hope in Hard Times" (2004) which has screened all over the world in its English and Spanish versions and has even been translated into Chinese for a screening in Hong Kong.

We were invited to screen "Hope in Hard Times" at the 2005 Festival de los Documentalistas in Buenos Aires. While in Argentina again, we tried to assess if things were back to business as usual, or if there were some fundamental changes from when we were last there. We revisited the grassroots projects in our film with camera in hand, and we even screened "Hope in Hard Times" in a couple of the worker-run factories. Many neighborhood assemblies were no longer active, but the factories that had been taken over by worker cooperatives were surviving and thriving, and we filmed at a few more.

We also visited a new community cooperative run by unemployed workers in the poor suburb of La Matanza, and a villa de miseria (slum) on the outskirts of Buenos Aires founded by cartoneros (recyclers). We met with economists, journalists and activists, including Esteban Magnani, author of "The Silent Change," who helped us to appreciate that the long-term significance of the events of 2001-2002 goes well beyond the accomplishment of a given factory or neighborhood. As Magnani puts it in "Argentina: Turning Around," "It was a miracle! People took over the scene again. We said that we are the protagonists of our own history, and we want to be the protagonists."

BD: Could you describe some of the main ways that Argentina's social and political environment has changed since the 2001-2002 economic crash and subsequent popular activism and organizing?

MD and MY: This is what "Argentina: Turning Around" addresses. For most people life has become more normal again. Once the emergency passed, the intense grassroots activity subsided, but many efforts in communities and workplaces continue. In 2003, Nestor Kirchner was elected president, and he was succeeded by his wife Cristina Fernández in 2007. They both talked a more populist line, and persuaded the courts and government agencies to give worker-run factories a chance to prove themselves [even as former owners tried to get them back]. Argentina paid off its entire debt to the IMF with help from Venezuela. They began to prosecute human rights offenders from the military dictatorship of 1976-83 (also touched on in "Turning Around"). As the economy recovered substantially in 2004-2007, official unemployment rates dropped from over 20 percent to eight percent. We were told that people would never again let the Argentine government favor the demands of global corporations and institutions at the expense of regular people, such as what happened in the 1990's.

Of course, now Argentina is feeling the effects of the global financial crisis, and right now too, the swine flu. The economy is down and unemployment is up. The expansion of lands planted with transgenic soy has raised food prices and contributed to inflation. And President Cristina Fernandez's party lost seats in the June midterm elections, with criticism from both right and left. (For more information, see Argentine journalist Marie Trigona's writings about swine flu and recent elections in Argentina.)

On a return visit earlier this year, we found that the 200 or so worker-run factories continue to "occupy, resist, and produce." A few have failed but others have started up. When eviction has been threatened by former owners, often the public has shown up to demonstrate their support for the worker-run enterprises. For the history of the Zanon ceramics plant, one of the first to be seized by its workers, see this article. Similar worker-run enterprises have taken root in Brazil, Venezuela and most recently, Uruguay.

BD: Could Argentina's experience with economic crisis and methods of combating that crisis on a grassroots level offer any lessons to activists in the US facing economic trouble?

MD and MY: Although there is seldom inspiring news from Latin America in the US press, we believe we can learn a lot from Argentina's activism, especially from the can-do spirit of horizontalidad (non-hierarchical organizations). As Esteban Magnani puts it in "Turning Around," "There is a vibe in the air that the important thing is to do it, to find your own way to do it, and to help other people find their own way!"

When "Hope in Hard Times" came out over four years ago, people at screenings in the US would say, "We have seen similar policies, such as off-shoring of jobs and privatization of public services here in the US. Will we have an economic collapse of our own? And if we do, would we pull together as people did in Argentina?" Fast forward a few years and we are in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The corporate agenda of globalization and privatization has been discredited.

Many in the US have quit expecting solutions from the top and are becoming active with others in their local communities, with a particular emphasis on local food and alternative energy. Workers at Republic Windows and Doors occupied their Chicago factory late last year, to demand severance pay and benefits after the factory closed, and they won. That factory is scheduled to reopen under new management to produce energy-conserving windows. Their example was followed by workers at Hartmarx clothing, who voted in May to sit in at their plants to protect their jobs.

But so far, we haven't seen workers begin to run these plants themselves. Even in Argentina, self-management didn't happen right away. At the beginning of "Argentina: Turning Around," Soledad Bordegaray of the Union of Unemployed Workers says, "It's not like people began with the idea of running things ourselves, we weren't taught to think that way. But no existing institutions were responding to our needs for jobs, education, and health care. People got together and said, why wait for someone else? Let's see what WE can do!"

We produced these films to encourage our own resurgence of grassroots democracy here in the US. It is hard to imagine resolving the current economic situation and the challenges of energy and climate change by relying on the same top-down, profit-maximizing institutions that got us into this mess in the first place.

BD: What are you working on now?

MD and MY: Earlier this year we visited Argentina again and personally delivered copies of "Argentina: Turning Around" to all who appear in the film. Our travels led us to film some of the current struggles of indigenous peoples in northwest Argentina. The expansion of mining contracts, burgeoning grape production for wines, and the lucrative soy plantations that produce animal feed for export are exerting pressure on the traditional lands of indigenous peoples. We also witnessed the successful vote in Bolivia for the new constitution that provides more rights for indigenous peoples. Some short pieces about these struggles will appear soon on You Tube. At the moment, we are preparing our most recent documentary for public TV broadcast in English and Spanish, "Good Food." Recently we signed a license with public TV in Argentina to broadcast "Buena Comida." Our web site is http://www.movingimages.org, and you can contact us through info@movingimages.org

"Argentina: Turning Around" is available from Bullfrog Films.

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Benjamin Dangl is the editor of TowardFreedom.com, a progressive perspective on world events, and UpsideDownWorld.org, a web site covering activism and politics in Latin America.