East Coast Autonomista Caravan

Published on ZNet | VisionStrategy
by Joseph Huff-Hannon; December 01, 2003

What better way to end the caravan than with an outlaw puppet show? Right as the cardboard police came to evict the cardboard workers from their cardboard factory in the show, flesh and blood police officers showed up to tell Graciela Monteagudo, the Argentine "puppetista", that they had come to evict the audience. According to them, capacity had been exceeded in the hotel conference room. But this particular audience was not your typical passive crowd. They had all come here this weekend, to Columbus, Georgia, to protest against the infamous US Army School of the Americas. And in typical activist fashion the show went on, until it was forcefully moved outside and performed in the hotel parking lot. When the police threatened to arrest the crowd for trespassing on private property, the show continued on the sidewalk.

This was the end of the road for the 'Autonomista Caravan', the stage name given to a group of Argentine and Brazilian activists who traveled down the East Coast, from Montreal to Miami, from October 20 to November 24, 2003. Graciela Monteagudo, aforementioned "puppetista" and coordinator of the Argentina Autonomista Project, had already facilitated various delegations to Argentina over the last year and a half, in which people visited with unemployed worker organizations and worked on their cooperative projects, visited occupied factories, and met with human rights activists. For her project, this tour was in part meant to expand people's knowledge of grass-roots social movements in Argentina and Brazil, and to let people know about ways to visit, get to know, and work with movements down south.

The caravan was first proposed by activists in Sao Paolo, Brazil from Acao Local por Justicia Global (Local Action for Global Justice) and was the product of various conversations between activists in North and South America. In particular, after the third World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, some felt that grass-roots groups, autonomous non-hierarchical organizations, and the "non-party" Left had been pushed to the margins of the Forum, whereas figures such as Presidents Lula and Chavez were kept front and center. Whereas this sort of marginalization comes as no surprise from the corporate media, it is more so in the context of such an important Left "venue". As a way of directly challenging this marginalization, the proposal of the caravan was to bring people involved in these independent, autonomous movements in Latin America face to face with activists in the north; to exchange ideas and experiences in direct action and organizing, and to help build relationships. The tour was also thought of as a way to educate people about anti-FTAA organizing in South America, and to compliment the local campaigns against the FTAA negotiations in Miami at the end of November. While making a steady pace south towards the actions in Miami and Ft. Benning, Georgia, the caravan visited universities, community groups, and other activist spaces in 25 different cities.

The following interviews were done on the road November 10, somewhere between Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., with three of the visiting delegates on the Caravan. Neka Jara is an organizer with the Unemployed Workers Movement in Solano, Argentina (MTD Solano). Giulius Cesari Aprigio works with a collective called CAVE (Coletivo Alternativo Verde - Green Alternative Collective) in Santos, Brazil that has brought large lawsuits against Shell Oil and Dow Chemical for polluting the region. He also works with the Guaraní Indians to preserve their ancestral lands. Alessandro Campos is a psychologist from Sao Paolo, Brazil who works with Acao Local por Justicia Global (Local Action for Global Justice), as well as in a movement to close malfunctioning psychiatric institutions in Brazil.

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What has most struck you about the United States, or specifically about the activists whom you have met in different events during this caravan?

Alessandro: Well, every time that we arrive at a new place there is always a common thread, in the sense that people always ask us how we are, offer us a place to stay, and offer us the autonomy and the space to speak about what we want to. But the coherence of the spaces that we are visiting, the will to work autonomously, and to work together, is still surprising to me. I think it speaks to the history of the movements here. People don't seem so worried about creating political parties, or about reproducing models that people don't believe in anymore.

Neka: Also to me it is quite admirable that in a country like this one, where it would appear that almost everything is resolved, socially speaking, where you enter a University and you see everything served up, at your fingertips - that there are people who are questioning the system, that are questioning domination. That seems very radical to me. I think that has most impacted me, the commitment that I have seen amongst people here to the struggle, a commitment to taking action.

What would you tell people in the United States that think that the new governments in Argentina and Brazil are doing a lot to combat neoliberalism, or are doing a lot to change economic policy?

Giulius: Well, in Argentina as much as in Brazil, the governments are carrying through reforms. They are neoliberal reforms. Really, they are not doing anything to challenge or combat neoliberalism; to the contrary. Take agrarian reforms as an example, which is so direly needed in Brazil. I don't think that the government will do much, on account of the compromises that were made with the latifundio (the land owners) during the presidential campaign. How can the government move forward on this, if it is already compromised? We believe above all that popular mobilization will be what changes things, what will transform our reality. And the principles that we believe in, that we believe will truly be able to bring down neoliberalism are: horizontality, direct democracy, and direct action. These are the principles that motivate people to defend and extend their rights. Another important thing is popular power, the day to day exercise of popular will, independent of the government.

Alessandro: I understand the interest that people have in the new government in Brazil. There are a lot of expectations, in Brazil and in the rest of the world, about this "leftist" government. Principally that it is something historic, the fact that Lula came from "the proletariat", that he grew up poor; that he is really "a man of the people". But maybe these people don't know that there are many contradictions within the Workers Party, from which Lula comes, that there is a lot of manipulation, corruption scandals. The party is connected to the large unions, which are often negotiating behind closed doors with the big capitalists. It's not always easy to see what is happening within the party. But in Brazil people still think that the Lula government is going to collaborate in some way. But you know what? In ten months of government I could point out many contradictions. The government has implemented some conservative reforms that the previous government, a government of the Right, couldn't implement over the course of eight years. The most recent example is the admission of genetically modified foods into Brazil, allowing them to be grown in Brazil. And these measures have been pushed through in only a few months.

Neka: In this moment in which Argentina is still mired in a deep political, social, economic, and ideological crisis - what the new "populist" president, Nestor Kirchner, is doing is recomposing the institutional vacuum of the Argentine state. And he is co-opting social movements, co-opting the organizations. In fact we are seeing a heightened militarization of neighborhoods, and of different areas of the country. And I think that the same politics are being implemented, the politics of the IMF - hand in hand with repression.

Why do you feel that it is so important to work within autonomous, independent movements, instead of focusing your energies on creating large organizations, or working to create unifying coalitions between social movements and political parties?

Giulius: Well first of all, I think all of us here agree on one word, freedom; the freedom to construct our own alternatives, our own way. Big structures tend to become bureaucratic, and to become authoritarian in their function. We don't want that. We are free; we never compromise with the big economic or political powers. That is a principle that we will never sell. My group in Santos, the Coletivo Alternativo Verde (CAVE), never sits down to negotiate with polluters. People tell us that we are too radical, that we don't sit down to talk to them. But we don't think there is anything to talk about. We only want them to stop polluting, to close their doors, to stop destroying the environment. And only by remaining autonomous are we able to keep struggling in this way, without having to compromise with these groups. For us, autonomy means deepening our freedom; freedom of action, freedom of thought, freedom to create.

Neka: I agree, I think that it is really a cry of liberty. It is part of a rupture that we are discovering in our history. Above all, it comes out of evaluating past experiences of struggle, the historical experiences that we have had in Argentina and in other countries in Latin America. We don't believe in dogmas, in closed programs. I don't think that there is any theory that is the undisputed theory on how to direct the struggle. We believe that it would be reproducing the same model of domination to believe that we are the illuminated ones, the ones to lead the charge. But if we believe in liberty, if we believe in equality, if we believe in justice; then that means that everybody needs to participate in what we are doing. And so the person who chooses this path needs to know that s/he is doing so freely, without being manipulated or coerced. For us, autonomy is about building a project of liberation, of equality, of direct democracy - where relationships are important.

What does it mean for you and your movements to be able to travel in the United States and to talk to activists here about the FTAA and the work that you are doing in your own communities to fight it?

Neka: In the first place, we have decided to participate in this caravan, and connect with movements here in the US, because we think it is necessary to globalize the resistance, globalize the struggle. For many years now in Argentina we have seen that the FTAA is already advancing. Many of the consequences that we are suffering from are as a result of the applications of the policies of the FTAA, consequences such as environmental devastation, the consumption of genetically modified foods, and the subjugation of whole countries. So our movement, the Unemployed Workers Movement in Solano, works on creating spaces for alternative production, the generation of our own healthy foods. And that in itself is part of the fight against the FTAA. Of course we are also targeting and attacking the companies and governments that sustain this model, but the point is that for every thing that we attack, we attempt to create as well.

Giulius: It is very important to be here, because we know that the movements here have much more weight than any other movements in the world. And if people here can organize a large movement against the FTAA, we are sure that it can be stopped. In Brazil, we are working a lot with education now, going to schools, going into neighborhoods, explaining the FTAA and it's implications to people.

What can activists in the US do to most effectively be in solidarity with independent, autonomous social movements in the south?

Alessandro: Well, I think that this caravan is a clear example of solidarity and mutual support. It was made possible because people in North America and South America have been working together for months to bring it to life, and now this is the fulfillment of that work. And so this is a way to solidify our ties, strengthen our relationships. What else can activists here do? They can keep pressuring the government and corporations here, for abuses in Latin America but also here in the US. It is not only other countries that are being exploited - they are also exploiting the North American people. We have seen how immigrants are treated here. We have seen how this country is dependent on everything from outside its borders, including people. And so the more that we travel, get to meet people here, and learn about projects that people are working on, the more that we learn from each others' experiences. My perception is that this process of sharing is not going to stop. It is getting stronger each day.

What will you bring back with you to Argentina and Brazil; what experiences, memories, or ideas will stick with you the most from this caravan?

Giulius: I will bring with me a lot of the affection that I have received from activists here, who have showed us a lot of solidarity, which has been really cool. For us, it is very important to see the kinds of organizing going on here, against the FTAA for example. Now I can go back and tell people in Brazil how people here are organizing against the FTAA also, how they are organizing the actions in Miami. For us, this is priceless.

Alessandro: One of the most remarkable things for me has been to see the courage and determination of activists here. In Brazil there is an idea, a bit mistaken I think, that activists in rich countries have a very easy life, a much easier life than us Latin Americans in the struggle. I don't know about other countries, in Europe and such, but what I have seen in the United States is that people work really hard, that they don't have access to many resources either, and that the repression here is impressive. We have seen the mentality that exists here in the US; that it really is like being in the midst of an Empire. But I will leave knowing that people are doing very significant things here. That is very powerful for me.

Neka: Every day that we go on I feel that something new is happening. And this novelty can always be a way to renew our strength, a way to recharge our batteries, to keep moving forward. You can see through this that history is dynamic, it is renewed every day. And so this whole experience helps me see more every day how much I love liberty, and how much I hate domination. To be able to go back home and share these experiences with my compañeros, I think that really strengthens us all.

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*For more information on the 'Autonomista Caravan', autonomous social movements in Argentina and Brazil, and ways to collaborate, visit and work with social movements in Argentina, visit www.autonomista.org. Joseph Huff-Hannon (pelirojo79@hotmail.com), traveled with the Autonomista Caravan as a translator. And without the coordination, translating, and guitar playing abilities of Matt Feinstein (teo@riseup.net), the caravan would never have gotten past Worcester, MA.