Benclowicz 2011

Benclowicz, José. 2011. "Continuities, Scope, and Limitations of the Argentine Piquetero Movement". Latin American Perspectives. 38 (1): 74-87.

• Introduction
• looking at Tartagal and Mosconi in Salta province (74)
• piquetero movement became the reference point for the area's working class, even displacing official unions
• Piquetes, workers, and the unemployed
• despite the fact that piqeuteros came fro many different classes, the term became closely identified with the unemployed movements (76)
• Three types of groups
• autonomous groups such as the UTD
• those connected with left-wing parties, such as the CTD, and MTL
• those linked to unions, like the FTV
• but also interlocking groups
• CCC is a workers and unemployed group with ties to communist party
• Leaders and Followers
• UTD (Mosconi)
• started in 1996 by an ex-YPF union militant (77)
• started presenting its own initiatives to the municipal government, and took controla of social assistance programs after a big roadblock in 1999
• questioned for allowing one of its memebrs to be part of governmet (78)
• CTD (Tartagal) created and led by a Polo Obrero leader (77)
• gained control of planes trabajar in 2000 (78)
•  this created distance between leaders and rank and file
• Simliarities
• leaders were usually ex state employees with union experience
• grassroots components were usually unemployed without much union experience
• "government wouldn't listen, so we block the roads"
• Piquetero Associations as union-social organizations
• these groups took over militant functions, like demanding wage increase on public works,  not taken up by the official unions (81)
• eventually some of the piquetero groups gained control of hiring on public projects, which is a big change from normal capitalist relations
• employers had to start negotiating with piqutero organizations to get labor (82)
• the official unions were subordinated to political power, so by gaining power on their own piquetero organizations usually forced unions out of the way, took the place they should have had
• Coordination
• UTD and CTD convened congress in 2000, set seven demands (including control of hiring, wage levels, set level of plaes funds, etc) (82-83)
• activists and leaders suffered harsh repression in June 2001 (83)
• The Coordination became a nucleus for the regrouping of unemployed and the labor movement allowed for joint actions, before it was crushed in summer of 2001
• meaning this movement seemed to present a real threat to the social and poltiical order...
• but failed to transcend in regional definition, and thus unable to survive state repression (84)

Wolff 2007

Jonas Wolff. 2007. "(De-)Mobilising the Marginalised: A Comparison of the Argentine Piqueteros and Ecuador's Indigenous Movement". Journal of Latin American Studies. 39 (1): 1-29.

• Compares the indigenous movement in Ecuador and the piqueteros in Argentina
• on the one hand, these movements have mobilized the marginalzied, which is unexpected
• but the state (in each case) has been able to subsequently demobilize and tame these movements without really giving into their lager demands (2)
• These movements were tamed because they coupled a NEGATIVE broad demand (anti-neoliberalism) with PRAGMATIC goals toward local and regional community needs (2-3) -- this allowed them to be coopted, essentially
• indigenous movement was coming from a historical exclusion, whereas the piqueteros emerged with the memory of inclusion that was lost during privatization (3)
• History of CONAIE in Ecuador (4-6), Piquteros (6-9)
• Movements commonalities (9-18)
• 1) both movements combined a negative macropolitical focus and a pragmatic stance toward local demands (work, food)
• but these same problems made groups fragmented (see Kurtz) 11-12)
• "Formally functioning but publicly delegtimised democracy presented a decisive opportunity structure to both movements" (12)
• the macro-political claims of both these movements were of a global rejection, a ardical negative stance, which was combine with a pragmatist desire to secure conrete micro-political gains (13)
• concrete, pragmatic claims were very much based on local level needs/desires
• the double transformation made people feel like political and social inclusion crpmises were largely unfulfilled (10-11)
• 2) specific territoriality
• indigenous have their villages, campo, and the piqueteros have the barrios
• 3) organization strategy that responded to the crisis of representation both in politics and in traditional representatives
•  relied on participatory and consensus decision making (16-17)
• but as groups become nationalized, the old distance returns and participation becomes less-popular-based (17)
• 4) repertoire of contention: the roadblock (17-18)
• its effectiveness depends on public resonance: is it a legitimiate protest or just illegitimate troublemakers (18)
• The evolution of the movement
• these movements represent new (and enduring) facets of each country's social and political life, but at the moment they are limited to seeking/gaining regimes to make adjustments (19)
• how were these groups "tamed", why didn't they threaten the old political and economic elites to a greater extent?
• the state and state actors have acted to integrate teh voices f these movements into the political system, and these movements have accepted that offer (20)
• the movements enjoy some form(s) of veto power on questions concerning their vital interests
•  concrete demands are being served (20-21)
• but at the macro-level, demands of these groups have not been met (21-22)
• the restabilization of these countries came from a combo of cooptation and marginalization, partial disarticulation and demobilization of the contentious protest alliances (22)
• the internal features that initially enabled mobilization also proved to be vulnerable to manipulation
• the negative stance was fine, but when it stalled groups fractured over figuring out a more positive stance (because they were so heterogeneous)
• absence of a program outside of an identity was a problem
• internal division grew
• leaders also drawn into political dialogues, away from their constituents (23)
• tension of quasi-corporatist demands from the state and participatory democracy from the rank and file
• piqueteros lost social support for their roadblocks once teh government was trying to integrate them (24)
• these intrinsic weaknesses in the movements reveals a remarkable capacity for democratic regimes to regain stable and pacific relations with civil society (26)
• combination of cooptation via ad hoc dialogues, quasi-corporatist negotiations, and clientelist and populist practices proved able to demobilize these groups by fixing their concrete needs while still ignoring their larger demands (26-27)
• Conclusion
• Ecuador's indigenous have gained political voice through social and political organizations
• piquteros mostly relying on singluar leaders who have gotten government office
•  "What is new, however, is that such movements of marginalised people are the prime forces of contentious collective action in democratic politics. This directly follows the weakening of 'traditional' social and political organizations which represent the popular sectors that is associated with the double transformation in teh region" (28)

Alcañiz and Scheier 2007

Alcañiz, Isabella, and Melissa Scheier. 2007. "New Social Movements with Old Party Politics". Latin American Perspectives. 34 (2): 157-171.

• looking at how new social movements interact with old parties (157)
• three factions of piquteros
• groups that are more likely to enter into agreements with the state, the FTV and the CTA
• moderate groups with the CCC
• radical groups with the Movimiento Territorial de Liberacion (MTL) and the National Piqutero Bloque
• Bloque piquetero gets fewest subsidies (158)
• Argument: preexisting partisan networks (linking unemployed to institutional political forces) determined the specific development of piqutero coalitions, and these coalitions in turn limited the strategies available to movements and ther iability to persist over time
• second try: piquetero groups formed along lines of previous partisan networks, which subsequently meant these groups had varying access to parties
• while others have shown that clientelism is important, authors show that other mechanisms of political organization can replace the need for such links
• The piqueteros are coming
• piqueteros first appeared in oil towns, places with long and rich histories of social, political, and labor organization (159)
• first wave of piqueteros tended to be unemployed union workers
• second wave (2001) were independent of, and often vocally rejected the lead of Peronist unions
• Leaders in the first wave had been labor organizers, second wave were mostly from leftist political parties (160)...even those with prior union exerience rejected verticality of peronist unions
• Old partisan networks and new coalitions
• previous social networks among piqueteros shaped the way they saw the unemployment situation, which in turn shaped coalition strategies for piqutero groups
• MTL was specifically founded around rejection of neoliberalism, distrust of peronist politics (161)
• this precludes coalition/strategy that invloves the PJ or UCR
• The Political economy of the piquetero movement
• two important environmental variables help explain piquteros
• bad economy
• unions and PJ had been based on full-employment economy, so downturn in economy in 1990s resulted in piqueteros who weren't used to being unemployed, felt they were owed a job by society (more or less) (162)
• but unions were too weak to demand them, so they protested
• social policy was decentralized, making municipalities and non-state actors the coordinators/distributors of state resources (163)
• this prompted organization on the part of these unemployed, so their groups could get control of resources
• also promoted growth of clientelism
• importantly: piquetero organizations were a place where opposition parties could get an ally in the popular sector
• Piquetero cooperatives and the rise of the MTL
• the communist party helped found the CTA, which in turn got the PC involved in te unemployed movement (164)
• FTV head D'Elia endorsed a teachers protest in 1997, which got the FTV closer to the CTA, which got the PC involved with the FTV
• 1998 FTV officially joins CTA (165)
• in June 2001 MTL created because the communists don't like the soft line taken by the FTV
• "The issue of autonomy is a central concern of the MTL movement" (165)
• but how can the MTL stay autonomous and still have the funding necessary to help its people?
• through the IMFC, Institute for the Mobilization of Cooperative Funds)
• MTL got employment through the IMFC and financial autonomy for the MTL (166)
• IMFC is a buffer between the MTL and the PC, meaning MTL has real autonomy
• IMFC was created by PC in 1958 and formed a group of cooperative banks
• seems to be independent-ish of the PC
• MTL not initially excited about cooperatives idea, which was proposed by PC and the IMFC
• eventually all three collaborate to buy/operate a mineral processing plant in 2005 (expropriation not supported by government) (166-167)
• MTL also started a large housing project in BA, supported by loans from the city (167)
• city and the MTL consider this a pilot project for future housing projects developed by social movements and paid for by government (168)
• Concluding remarks
• MTL's association with the PC offered and alternative to traditional patterns of government-labor relations
• my take: but not really, as housing project shows, government still has biggest coffers
•  odd coalition, between the horizontal MTL and the hierarchical PC, but these ties were based in historical ties
• MTL voters, of course, vote peronist (169)

Dinerstein 2010

Dinerstein, Ana Cecilia. 2010. "Autonomy in Latin America: between resistance and integration. Echoes from the Piqueteros experience". Community Development Journal. 45 (3): 356-366.

• Intro:
• new social movements have been reluctant to allow traditional left ideologies to frame their movements
• there is a contradiction in the way movemetns are depicted, either they are
• basis of wider collective action, changing the world without taking power (Holloway 2002), or
• dismissed as contributing to the problem of the World Banks efforts to reduce the role of the state and re-frame social policies in neoliberal terms (357)
• Argument: this is a false dilemma: autonomy from state, market is contested
• focus: how unemployed in Argentina navigated the tension between resistance and integration (357-358)
• focus is on Unemployed Workers' Unions (UTD)
• they maintain autonomy and independence from all political and labor organizations (358)
• created by a group of highly skilled ex-YPF workers
• had become a quasi-city council
• funded by money from state programs, by fighting for re-appropriation of these monies from the state, by mobilizing and receiving social spending (359)
• roadblocks
• State has tried to depoliticize the UTD and other organizations
• early on repression of roadblocks, now simply consistence harassment by the police against the UTD (360)
• government trying to force UTD to become an NGO
• UTD has become the bargainer for workers employed under social programs (361)
• UTD's strategy avoids identification with political power, but gets the state to comply through resistance
• importantly: has no connections to parties or labor unions
• creating new forms of solidarity among the unemployd (362)
• fights back against paternalism
• Downsides:
• women are the majority of members, but aren't in leadership
• has some personalism in leadership
• UTD is in danger of simply replacing politicians as head of client-patron relationship (363)
• also these groups have had trouble moving beyond their local context
• Conclusion
• important difference between accepting the state's invitation tto join social policies and inviting the state to accept their demands for social policy