[Dryerase] Argentines squat new cultural centers

[Shawn G]

Asheville Global Report
www.agrnews.org

Argentines squat new cultural centers

By Vero Perez and Buzzard Gilmore

Buenos Aires, Argentina, Aug. 13 (AGR)--  In the past year and a half, the 
region of Argentina has seen the birth of at least four squatted social and 
cultural centers. Two are located in the capital district, one in the 
outskirts and one in Cordoba City. The squatted social and cultural centers 
are all places that were left abandoned and taken over by groups of people 
to serve as communal living space and to hold events and activities 
accessible to the surrounding community. Those who squat and maintain these 
spaces see them as partial answers to the social and cultural dilemmas in 
the cities of Argentina, as well as the most direct and concrete way to 
actualize the struggle against speculation and private property.
The dominant culture in Buenos Aires is that of television, pop music, and 
(even though more than half the population live in poverty) consumerism. The 
entertainment industry is owned by the same people who operate the largest 
enterprises and the government, so the end product has a dual purpose: to 
earn money, and to manipulate the state of mind and political conscience of 
the people. The squats offer independent shows, theatre, poetry, music and 
parties (for which they rarely, if ever, charge entry fee) as well as an 
open forum for people from outside the squat to put on their own events. 
Many times the performers are members of the squat or the surrounding 
community. Artistic and musical programs have been cut from almost all 
public schools, and the subjects are rarely taught in such a way that people 
learn them well. Many people either finish or drop out of school lacking the 
basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic. The social and cultural 
centers provide free classes including foreign languages, school help, 
juggling, drawing, welding, theater, and yoga to name a few. The squatters 
struggle for a society in which all resources, including knowledge, are 
freely exchanged. Many would like to create full-fledged free schools, but 
few people trained in teaching have shown enough interest to start such a 
project yet. Food scarcity is a fact of life in a country where the food 
prices have quadrupled in the last six months. In the same time period, more 
than 300,000 workers have been laid off, putting more and more people below 
the poverty line each month. The squatters live in community, not only to 
fulfill social needs, but also to lighten the burden of obtaining the 
necessities of life on the individual, and are almost always able to put 
food on the table. They are horizontally organized and make decisions in 
assembly by consensus. For the most part, these assemblies take place weekly 
and function to better the organization of the activities and community.
Squatting movements date back centuries, but the trend to create free 
artistic, cultural, and social spaces has its roots in the anarcho-punk 
movement in Europe during the last 30 years. Nowadays there are thousands of 
squats in European cities being operated this way, with well-developed 
networks of information exchange and mutual aid. Notwithstanding the lack of 
affordable housing, the act of taking over abandoned spaces is a political 
act for the squatters. Their ideological background is mostly anarchistic; 
they see private property as one of the bases of inequality. A slogan 
frequently seen on the walls of the squats is: “If housing is a privilege, 
squatting is a right!”. The squatters, many having formed their ideology 
through immersion in or contact with the anarcho-punk culture, differ from 
traditional anarchists in that they want not only societal, political and 
economic revolution, but complete cultural change as well. They want not to 
not only topple all power-based relationships in the public and commercial 
sphere, but also abolish them on a personal level: between men and women, 
adults and children. Since they have no faith in reformist or systematic 
change, they plan their lifestyles and the activities they generate to 
confront the structures of inequality and oppression in society, and doing 
so make political and social resistance a daily part of their lives. For 
example, the free classes are directly in contrary to the hierarchical 
educational system. The communal lifestyle confronts a culture based on the 
family structure, which in their experience and opinion is oppressive.
The ideology is basically the same in all of the squats, but the experience 
is lived out differently in each place. In the Social Center in Laferrere, 
the original idea was to create a community center with open, free space for 
nearby residents to put on activities. Due to the lack of interest in the 
adults of the surrounding community, the squatters had to create their own, 
and now, after a year and a half, there are free classes offered every day, 
now attended by people of various ages. The rest of the time the space is 
used by children from the neighborhood as an alternative to spending the 
days in the street, the most common way for kids to pass the time in that 
area, one of the poorest in Greater Buenos Aires. According to them, "The 
idea that motivates us the most is that of generating an anti-authoritarian 
conscience, fomenting free education and denying the oppressive values of 
the established society. There is no property law to respect; it's all about 
recuperating stolen and abandoned spaces, freeing them. Occupy to liberate 
souls and minds. Solidarity, respect, and mutual aid are indispensable, 
conscience and ideas are essential." The Trivenchi Brothers Circus was 
squatted about a year ago. The group entered the space with very concrete 
ideas about creating a training space for circus related skills, putting on 
events and holding free classes in the field. They have put together a real 
circus that puts on functions each week, and have daily classes. The Social 
and Cultural Center Tierra del Sur existed as a cultural center in a rented 
space for three years until the cost of the rent upped and forced them to 
look for an alternative way to create space for the classes, activities, 
parties, and performances they generate last December. "The proposal was to 
generate a space for free expression, calling together everyone to 
participate in the construction of a place where another way of life would 
be possible." They have a photoduplicator which most of the 
anti-authoritarian collectives in Bs. As. use to print material. One can see 
in the relatively smooth functioning of the community and the activities 
that the group has been maintaining such a project for years. Kasa Las 
Gatas, in Cordoba was squatted as much for the participants' need for a 
place to live as to create a social and cultural center.  "Squatting is a 
conscious act of rebellion that destroys the chains that impede our road 
toward liberty and constructs a better world, takes what is ours and 
advances along this road, step by step, with no fear that dignity won't win 
out."
Tierra del Sur and the Trivenchi Brothers Circus are under constant threat 
of eviction. The courts are currently hearing their cases, and if and when 
the judges decide, the police come to evict.
Most of the people involved in the squats have been acquainted for years, 
through social events and political organizing. In the past few months they 
have begun to come together in a more formal manner. In September they will 
hold the first regional squatter convention of the southern cone, the idea 
being to exchange experiences and skills to strengthen their functioning and 
doing so infect others so they also open such spaces. What was a few years 
ago isolated deeds is beginning to constitute a true movement. The call is 
clear: “Dream, Live, Struggle. Occupy and Resist!”




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