The political makings of the 2001 lootings in Argentina

Journal of Latin American Studies

Volumn 38, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 241-265

  Auyero, Javier ^a  

^a STONY BROOK UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

POLITICS; VIOLENCE;

ARGENTINA; SOUTH AMERICA;

EID: 33747798016     PISSN: 0022216X     EISSN: 1469767X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0022216X06000708     Document Type: Article

References (101)

1. Sidney Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism (Cambridge, 2005)
2. Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly, Dynamics of Contention (Cambridge, MA, 2001)
3. Mario Diani and Doug McAdam (eds.), Social Movements and Networks. Relational Approaches to Collective Action (New York, 2003)
4. Jeffrey Broadbent, 'Movement in Context: Thick Networks and Japanese Environmental Protest,' in Diani and McAdam (eds.), Social Movements and Networks, pp. 204-29
5. Ann Mische, 'Cross-talk in Movements: Reconceiving the Culture-Network Link,' in Diani and McAdam (eds.), Social Movements and Networks, pp. 258-80
6. Maryjane Osa, 'Networks of Opposition: Linking Organizations Through Activists in the Polish People's Republic,' in Diani and McAdam (eds.), Social Movements Networks, pp. 77-104
7. Florence Passy, 'Social Networks Matter. But How?,' in Diani and McAdam (eds.), Social Movements and Networks, pp. 21-48
8. Edward Epstein, 'The Piquetero Movement of Greater Buenos Aires: Working Class Protest During the Current Argentine Crisis,' Canadian Journal of Latin American and Carribean Studies, vol. 28, no. 55-6 (2003), pp. 11-36.
9. Charles Tilly, The Politics of Collective (Cambridge, MA, 2003).
10. James Rule, Theories of Civil Violence (Berkeley, 1988).
11. Beth Roy, Same Trouble with Cows (Berkeley, 1994).
12. Charles Tilly, 'How to Detect, Describe, and Explain Repertoires of Contention,' Working Paper No. 150, Center for the Study of Social Change, New School for Social Research, 1992, p. 6.
13. Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence; Anton Blok, Honour and Violence (Oxford, 2001)
14. Paul Brass, Theft of an Idol (New Jersey, 1997)
15. Veena Das (ed.), Mirrors of Violence. Communities, Riots, and Survivors in South Asia (Oxford, 1990)
16. Sudhir Kakar, The Colors of Voilence. Cultural Identities, Religion, and Conflict (Chicago, 1996)
17. Paul Brass, 'Introduction: Discourse of Ethnicity, Communalism, and Violence.' in Paul Brass (ed.), Riots and Pogroms (New York, 1996)
18. Mary Roldán, Blood and Fire. La Violencia in Antiouqia, Colombia, 1946-1953 (Durham, NC, 2002), pp. 1-55
19. Vadim Volkov, Violent Entrepreneurs. The Use of Force in the Making of Russian Capitalism (Ithaca, NY, 2002).
20. Miguel Bonasso, El palacio y la calle (Buenos Aires, 2002)
21. Jorge Camarasa, Días de furia (Buenos Aires, 2002)
22. Gerardo Young, 'La trama politíca de los saqueos,' Clarín digital, 19 December 2002.
23. Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved (London, 1989), p. 23.
24. Ibid., p. 27.
25. Ibid., p. 22.
26. In his remarkable study of social suffering of homeless addicts, Philippe Bourgois, Righteous Dopefiend (forthcoming) uses the notion of 'grey zone' to capture the abusive behaviour, personal betrayals and self-inflicted damage that predominate in that specific universe. As will become clear, in this essay I use the notion in a rather different way.
27. Das, Mirrors of Violence, p. 12; emphasis mine.
28. Farida Shaheed, 'The Pathan-Muhajir Conflicts, 1985-6: A National Perspective,' in Das, Mirrors of Violence, pp. 194-214.
29. Larissa MacFarquhar, 'The Strongman. Where is Hindu-Nationalist Violence Leading?, 'The New Yorker, 26 May 2003, pp. 50-7.
30. Brass, Riots and Pogroms, p. 12.
31. Kakar, The Colors of Violence.
32. Roldán, Blood and Fire, p. 22.
33. For further evidence on the Colombian case, see also Herbert Braun's study of the violence during the 1948 bogotazo that followed the assassination of liberal leader Gaitán: The Assassination of Gaitán. Public Life and Urban Violence in Colombia (Madison, 1986).
34. Roldán, Blood and Fire, p. 82.
35. Laurie Gunst, Born fi' Dead. A Journey through the Posse Underworld (New York, 1995), p. 83.
36. Donna Goldstein, Laughter Out of Place. Race, Class and Sexuality in a Rio Shantytown (Berkeley, CA, 2003), pp. 188-90.
37. Desmond Arias, 'The Infrastructure of Criminal Governance: Illegal Networks and Public Order in Rio de Janeiro,' paper presented at the 2003 Meeting of the Latin American Studies Association, Dallas, Texas, March 27-29 2003,
38. and 'Faith in Our Neighbors: Networks and Social Order in Three Brazilian Favelas', Latin American Politics and Society, vol. 46, no. 1, pp. 1-38, 2004.
39. Arias, 'Faith in Our Neighbors', pp. 3-4.
40. Elizabeth Leeds, 'Cocaine and Parallel Polities on the Brazilian Urban Periphery: Constraints on Local Level Democratization,' Latin American Research Review, vol. 31, no. 3 (1996).
41. Donna Goldstein, Laughter Out of Place. Race, Class and Sexuality in a Rio Shantytown (Berkeley, CA, 2003), pp. 188-90.
42. Desmond Arias, 'The Infrastructure of Criminal Governance: Illegal Networks and Public Order in Rio de Janeiro,' paper presented at the 2003 Meeting of the Latin American Studies Association, Dallas, Texas, March 27-29 2003,
43. and 'Faith in Our Neighbors: Networks and Social Order in Three Brazilian Favelas', Latin American Politics and Society, vol. 46, no. 1, pp. 1-38, 2004.
44. Arias, 'Faith in Our Neighbors', pp. 3-4.
45. Elizabeth Leeds, 'Cocaine and Parallel Polities on the Brazilian Urban Periphery: Constraints on Local Level Democratization,' Latin American Research Review, vol. 31, no. 3 (1996).
46. Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement Social Movements and Contentious Politics (New York, 1998).
47. Javier Auyero, Contentious Lives (Durham, NC, 2003).
48. For different examinations of the causes and forms of the emerging repertoire of collective contention, see Roberta Villalón, 'Piquetes, Cacerolazos y Asambleas Vecinales: Social Protests in Argentina, 1993-2002,' MA Thesis, The University of Texas at Austin, 2002
49. Norma Giarraca (ed.), La protesta social en la Argentina (Buenos Aires, 2001)
50. Ana Dinerstein, 'El poder de to irrealizado. El corte de ruta en Argentina y el potencial subversivo de la mundialización,' Revista OSAL (Observatorio Social de América Latina), No. 5, September 2001
51. Adrían Scribano and Federico Schuster, 'Protesta social en la Argentina de 2001: Entre la normalidad y la ruptura,' Revista OSAL, No. 5, September 2001
52. Luis Oviedo, Una historia del movimiento piquetero (Buenos Aires, 2001)
53. Nicolas Iñigo Carrera, 'Fisonomía de las huelgas generales de la década de 1990,' PIMSA 1999, 1999, pp. 155-73
54. Rubén Laufer and Claudio Spiguel, 'Las "puebladas" argentinas a partir del "Santiagueñazo" de 1993. Tradición histórica y nuevas formas de lucha,' in Margarita López Maya (ed.), Lucha popular, democracia, neoliberalismo: Protesta popular en América Latina en los años del ajuste (Caracas, 1999)
55. Maristella Svampa and Sebastián Pereyra, Entre la ruta y el barrio. La experiencia de las organizaciones piqueteras (Buenos Aires, 2003).
56. Scholarly accounts include Emilio Cafassi, Olla a presión. Cacerolazos, piquetes y asambleas, sobre fuego argentino (Buenos Aires, 2002)
57. Raúl Fradkin, Cosecherás tu siembra (Buenos Aires, 2002)
58. and Ignacio Lewkowics, Sucesos argentinos (Buenos Aires, 2002). Those from journalists include Bonasso, El palacio y la calle; Camaraso, Días de furia; and Tomás Martinez, Episodios argentinos (Buenos Aires, 2002).
59. For insiders' accounts, see Aníbal Kohan, A¡ las caller! Una historia de los movimientos piqueteros y caceroleros de las '90 al 2002 (Buenos Aires, 2002)
60. and Colectivo Situaciones, 19 y 20 apuntes para el nuevo protagonismo social (Buenos Aires, 2002).
61. The few existing studies and journalistic reports on the food riots in particular are single-actor accounts dominated by what Tilly, Politics of Collective Action, calls the 'steam boiler' analogy or what historian E.P. Thompson (Customs in Common, New York, 1994) labels a 'spasmodic view' of popular revolt. In other words, the main actors in the lootings are said to be the poor and unemployed who, responding to a rapid reduction in the standard of living by visible government (in)action (e.g., the suspension of many food distribution programmes) and the high level of joblessness (in December unemployment rates were at 21% of the economically active population), suddenly exploded in anger and plundered stores and supermarkets (as in Fradkin, Cosecherás tu siembra). As prevailing analysts in Argentina portray the events, poverty and unemployment, together with state inaction, created an insurmountable pressure that built up during 2001 until everything exploded, as reflected in the title of Cafassi's widely read Olla a presión (pressure cooker).
62. Javier Auyero and Timothy Moran, 'The Dynamics of Collective Violence: Dissecting Food Riots in Contemporary Argentina,' paper presented at the Contentious Politics Seminar, Columbia University, 2005. Available at: http://www.iserp.columbia.edu/news/workshops/contentious_politics.html
63. El Ciudadano, 24 December 2001.
64. Rio Negro, 23 December 2001. The main Argentine newspaper reported that the French-owned supermarkets Auchan and Carrefour were protected by the state police and the National Guard because the French ambassador, Paul Dijoud, called the then secretary of the presidency, Nicolás Gallo, asking him to do so (Clarín, 19 May 2002).
65. Clarín, 19 May 2002.
66. Marcelo Sain, Política, policiá y delito. La red bonaerense (Buenos Aires, 2004).
67. See, for example, Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970 (Chicago, 1982)
68. William H. Sewell, 'Space in Contentious Politics,' in Ronald Aminzade et al. (eds.), Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics (Cambridge, MA, 2001), pp. 51-88
69. Tilly, Politics of Contentious Violence.
70. For a statistical analysis of brokers' presence and police action based on newspaper accounts, see Auyero and Moran, 'Violence and Collective Action'.
71. Clarín, 19 May 2002.
72. Tilly, Politics of Contentious Violence, p. 32.
73. See, for example, Doug McAdam, Freedom Summer (New York, 1988) and Diani and McAdam, Social Movements and Networks.
74. But see, for example, Cynthia Bouton, The Flour War. Gender, Class and Community in Late Ancien Régime French Society (University Park, PA, 1993)
75. and John Markoff, The Abolition of Feudalism Peasant, Lords, and Legislators in the French Revolution (University Park, PA, 1996).
76. Young, La trama política.
77. Griselda Alsina and Andrea Catenazzi, Diagnóstico preliminar ambiental de Moreno (Buenos Aires, 2002). The Human Development Index (Indice de Desarrollo Humano) as defined by the UNDP comprises three elements: Health (life expectancy), education (combined index of literacy and school attendance) and living conditions (estimated through per capita income utility).
78. PAKA UD! 2001, p. 8.
79. Tilly, Politics of Collective Violence
80. McAdam et al., Dynamics of Contention.
81. Javier Auyeco, Poor People's Politics (Durham, NC, 2001)
82. and Política, dominación y desigualdad en la Argentina contemporánea. Un ensayo etnográfico,' Nueva Sociedad 193, Sept-Oct 2004, pp. 133-45
83. Valeria Brusco, Marcelo Nazareno and Susan Stokes, 'Vote Buying in Argentina,' Latin American Research Review, vol. 39, no. 2, 2004, pp. 66-88
84. Alejandro Grimson et al., 'La vida organizacional en zonas populares de Buenos Aires,' Center for Migration and Development, Princeton University, Working Paper 03-15-e, 2004.
85. See also Steve Levitsky, Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America: Argentine Peronism in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge, MA, 2003)
86. Pablo Torres, Votos, chapas y fideos (Buenos Aires, 2002).
87. Jonathan Goldberg, 'Campaign Conscripts. How to Fill a Stadium with Argentina's Poor (and Other Ways to Win the Presidency),' The American Prospect, On Line Edition, 23 April 2003, p. 3, accessed 23 August 2003; available at: http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2003/04/ goldberg-j-04-23.html
88. Torres, Votos, chapas y fideos
89. Levitsky, Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America
90. Goldberg, 'Campaign Conscripts'
91. Grimson, 'La vida organizacional'.
92. Levitsky, Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, p. 188.
93. Brusco et al., 'Vote Buying in Argentina,' p. 69.
94. ibid.
95. McAdam et al., Dynamics of Contention.
96. Marcel Mauss, Seasonal Variations of the Eskimo: A Study in Social Morphology (in collaboration with Henri Beuchat) (London and Boston, 1979; orig. 1916).
97. Felice J. Levine, and Katherine Rosich, Social Causes of 1 Violence: Crafting a Science Agenda Washington, DC: American Sociological Association, 1996, p. 70. Online document accessed 30 January 2003, available at http://www2.asanet.org/pubs/socialcauses.html.
98. Bert Useem, 'Breakdown Theories of Collective Action,' Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 24, 1998, pp. 215-38
99. David Snow, Daniel M. Cress, Liam Downey and Andrew W. Jones, 'Disrupting the "Quotidian": Reconceptualizing the Relationship Between Breakdown and the Emergence of Collective Action,' Mobilization, vol. 3, no. 1, 1998, pp. 1-22.
100. Tilly, Politics of Collective Violence, p. 40.
101. Ibid., emphasis mine.