General

Argentina Autonomista Project

Tuesday, 09 November 2004
7:00 PM - 10:00 PM

Organizer: Argentina Autonomista Project, Graduate Employees Organization,

ARGENTINA AUTONOMISTA PROJECT: FALL TOUR 2004

@ UMASS-AMHERST
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 7PM
CAMPUS CENTER, ROOM 162-175
Free and open to the public.


*Grassroots Speakers
*Multimedia Presentations

Argentina, the IMF poster child of the nineties, collapsed in December 2001 and defaulted on its huge debt. A wealthy South American country until recently, Argentina now bears the wounds that result from almost 30 years of corporate plundering: half of the population lives below the poverty line and almost a quarter of the population is unemployed. Although born in a land that feeds millions of people worldwide, Argentinean children die of hunger everyday.
Argentina is also the place where an ongoing direct democracy movement has developed. This movement has become a living laboratory of creative struggle -a space where the politics of the future are being reinvented.


The argentina autonomista tour Multimedia Presentations:

Bread and Puppet artists Damiano Giambelli and Cristina Disccaciatti from Italy visited Graciela Monteagudo in Buenos Aires to build a puppet show about the history of Argentina's social movements with special emphasis on current events: Que se vayan tod@s: a cardboard piece. This piece is a combination of songs, puppets, acting and storytelling. It has successfully toured the United Kingdom and Ireland, as well as!community centers, universities and colleges in northeastern United States including Duke, Vassar, Cornell, and many others.

The puppet show is an introduction to an array of lectures, workshops, slide shows and video presentations on:

-the unemployed workers movement (the "piqueter@s" who build community projects in their neighborhoods)
-the "asambleas" (the horizontally-organized neighborhood meetings)
-the "trueque," (barter network which is massively used instead of money)
-the workers who occupy and manage more than 200 workplaces
-the special participation of women in the movement.
-the history of Argentina and its relationship with the United States and the international lending institutions.


FALL AUTONOMISTA TOUR INFO:

Soledad Bordegaray, Movement of Unemployed Workers (MTD - "piqueter@s") La Matanza, Argentina and Claudia Acuna of La Vaca will be touring the US and Canada during November 2004 with Graciela Monteagudo, coordinator of the argentina autonomista project.

Soledad Bordegaray is a co-founder of the MTD La Matanza, an an unemployed workers organization that has created through a direct democracy process an amazing array of microenterprises, an organic community garden, and an elementary school!

Claudia Acuna is a Human Rights organizer and award winning independent journalist and co-founder of La Vaca (http://www.lavaca.org, a web based counterinformation agency). Claudia is also the main organizer of Alerta Salta (www.Alerta-Salta.org.ar), a solidarity campaign with the piqueter@s of the UTD Mosconi, and three different indigenous organizations presently struggling to get their lands back from the US based Seabord Corporation.

Graciela is an Argentinean Human Rights organizer and community artists who will be presenting a slide show and a full length puppet show (Que se Vayan tod@s! a carboard piece) about the history of the Argentinean social movemens.

In addition to spreading word about the Stop Seaboard campaign in solidarity with the Ava Guarani and Kolla people of northern argentina this tour will also mobilize around the upcoming demonstration to shut down the School Of the Americas (Nov. 19-21). SOA graduates murdered two piqueteros in Salta, Northern Argentina, where members of the UTD (Union of Unemployed Workers) Mosconi, one of the most well-known piquetero movements in Argentina, face violence by the hands of the government of Salta, who wish to criminalize protest and protect enormous petroleum companies like Repsol.

Location:
UMass Campus Center, Room 162-175

Cost: FREE

Directions: Click here for directions/map:
www.umass.edu/umhome/visit_campus/directions.html
www.umass.edu/umhome/visit_campus/maps.html

URL: http://autonomista.org/