In mid-November, local officials sent out notice that Neuquen, a city in southern Argentina, would be the first locality to implement new changes proposed in the federal unemployment assistance program. Neuquen authorities required assistance recipients to register at local offices as part of the new system.

When members of the unemployed workers movement (MTD) in Neuquen arrived on the morning of Nov. 25 as they were told, they didn’t come quietly. The city government required their presence at Roca Che stadium in order to fill out forms with their personal information as a first step in the process of replacing cash unemployment subsidies with magnetic cards.

Four hundred members of MTD Neuquen marched to Roca Che stadium at 8 a.m.
Infuriated by the new plan, they said they weren’t going to sign up.

Outside the stadium, members of the MTD gathered in an assembly and explained to each other what the magnetic card would entail. As the assembly ended, loud chants filled the air and a nefarious police presence assumed position. Water cannons aimed at a group of people chanting on a corner and buried them under streams of water. Plumes of tear gas shot off in the air and hundreds of people ran. Lives bullets from police guns nipped at their heels. Thus began a ten-hour police repression, which left
26 people injured, nine of them wounded by live bullets.

The new assistance the workers from the MTD were supposed to register for replaces previous subsidies of 150 pesos a month in cash with a magnetic card that could only be used at card-accepting businesses. Argentine unemployed workers movements have gained unemployment subsidies after many years of struggle and this magnetic card would restrict and regulate these benefits and their livelihoods. “(The government) wants to decide for us what we eat and what we wear. Without cash we can’t pay the electricity or gas. We can’t pay for the bus. We can’t buy medicine. What are we going to do when our children get sick?” expressed a member of MTD Neuquen.

Because the machine that accepts the card must be purchased, the unemployed will be unable to shop in small, local businesses. “The card takes business away from our neighborhood. (With the card) we would always have to go the city’s center and we can’t always get to the city center,”
said Monica, member of MTD Neuquen and leader of the barrio of San Lorenzo, Neuquen’s largest neighborhood and its poorest, where the MTD was born.

Once the police began shooting tear gas and live ammunition at the marchers, people fled into nearby San Lorenzo. Neighbors came out in support of the MTD, fighting back and their numbers started to amount to the thousands as members of other unemployed workers movements, unionists, workers of the Zanon ceramics factory and university students arrived.
Twenty year-old Pedro “Pepe” Alveal, a member of MTD Neuquen and worker at the recuperated ceramics factory Zanon, was chased by police and hit with over 62 rubber bullets, losing an eye. It was the first time in Neuquen that police used live ammunition to attack a demonstration.

The day following the repression, a group of seven armed and masked gunmen entered the recuperated factory of Zanon and robbed it of 32,000 pesos (approximately $10,000). Zanon had stopped work the on Nov.25, sending a bus of workers to the site of the repression and blocking the road in front of the factory to demand an end to the repression. Zanon workers and community members had planned another protest for the day following the robbery in response to the repression. Zanon workers believe the police were behind the robbery because of the factory’s political involvement in the demonstrations.

“The robbery happened the night before the demonstration we organized against the repression. It was not a coincidence; it had to be an intimidation by the police and the government. It was a political attack,”
said Raul Godoy, Secretary General of the Union of Ceramics Workers of Neuquen.

It was also not a coincidence that members of MTD Neuquen, some of who work at Zanon, were specifically targeted by the police repression, as was Alveal. During the Nov.25 repression, the Neuquen chief of police pointed at specific people for police to shoot at. “All of the people who were injured were well-known activists or leaders,” said Aldo, member of MTD Neuquen, who was shot in the arm with a live bullet, which remains under his skin.

Godoy added, “I think the police targeted Zanon (during the robbery) because our workers were the ones taking photos and made the police misconduct report.” Members of Zanon have been repeatedly intimidated and harassed. A strange car approached workers as they were leaving a meeting and demanding they get in, strangers approached several workers on the street, placing guns in their sides and saying they were ‘marked.’ Workers homes have been entered and searched without a warrant, and they say their phones are tapped.

The incidences of repression and robbery mark a new campaign of state terrorism on people opposing government policies. The national government under Nestor Kirchner has followed a policy of reform to appease the mainstream left, annulling impunity laws for those involved in the military genocide in the 1970s, replacing judges, and calling for police conduct reform.

Meanwhile, a national campaign to minimize unemployment subsidies through fragmentation, intimidation and repression isolates the unemployed workers movement. All of this is part of a concerted effort by the government and the press to portray protesting piqueteros as too extreme in order to turn public opinion against them. The future of the grassroots organization remains in question as the government has fulfilled measures

Implementation of the card reveals the possibility of the government taking further steps to shrink unemployment subsidies. One government excuse for the card was to eliminate the ‘puntero’ system. Punteros are politicians who manage unemployed workers by buying votes with money from unemployment subsidies. With the card system, the government will take out a portion of the subsidies for ‘administration purposes.’ “This is a business for the government,” said Monica of MTD Neuquen.

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