4/30/07
BACKGROUND
Argentina’s story is painfully reminiscent of other developing countries around the world. Cold War debts inflated and were repaid with loans from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. However, help from these organizations came with conditions: national industries were to be sold to foreign corporations, social programs were to be downsized, and economies were made to shift toward export for the global market. As the developing countries slipped deeper into debt, they were simply given more loans with even stricter conditions. Toss rampant government corruption and a failed currency augmentation into the mix and you have a picture very similar to Argentina’s at the turn of the century.
It was December of 2001 when the Argentine economy collapsed. Economic ministers noticed that there was almost no hard cash left – it had been invested abroad or taken by corporate executives, political bureaucrats and even some IMF representatives. Fearing a run on the banks, the government froze all personal accounts and quickly raised taxes. While foreign investors divested their cash, Argentines woke up to empty ATM machines and shuttered banks. At the height of the crisis, over 58% of the population lived below the poverty line, hundreds of thousands lost their jobs, and the value of the peso depreciated by two-thirds.
Still, as Argentina grabbed the world’s spotlight as one of the global economy’s biggest failures, its citizens were noticed the world around for their response to the collapse. The crisis created an economic and political void that was almost instantaneously filled with popular, people-centered initiatives: workers took over their closed factories and began producing and sharing profits equally, neighborhood assemblies formed to organize everything from local security to community day-care programs, and students held massive outdoor classes filled with lively and passionate debate. It was called “Horizontalism,” an invitation for all sectors of society to participate in the processes and decisions that affect them. For once, people and direct democracy replaced money and competition as society’s driving force. Cartoneros participate in the horizonatlist movement as well. In Buenos Aires over 14 cartonero cooperatives provide social and communal services for members, and act as liaisons to the neighborhoods where the cartoneros work. Additionally, many of the cooperatives rent warehouse space where members can repair and use an array of items reclaimed from the city’s dumpsters, and stockpile recyclables over time. This allows the co-op to sell to large recycling conglomerates in bulk and rece
ive a better return, which is then split equally among members.
Nevertheless, the radicalism that emerged in the first two years after the collapse has waned, and Argentina has rejoined the ranks of poor countries struggling to stay afloat in the choppy waters of free trade globalization. The center-left government has begun repaying its debts to the World Bank and implementing IMF mandates. As the economy steadied, middleclass Argentines have forgotten about the popular assemblies and factory takeovers and have moved toward an individualistic consumer culture.GLOBALIZATION’s LOSERS
Its important to understand that the majority of cartoneros – some 100,000 in Buenos Aires alone – are people who once held steady jobs but are now forced to support their families through a survivalist form of self-employment that yields sub-poverty income. They are the working poor and the underemployed, people that could be making meaningful contributions to society and building communities with dignity, but instead must bring their entire families to sift through trash. They provide an essential service to communities and the environment, taking on much of the city’s waste management burdens. Yet many see them as secondary citizens, they have very little job security, and lack access to even the most basic occupational protections or social services.
However, the cartoneros are not mere victims of one country’s misguided trade policies; their new roll as impoverished scavengers is used to continue a cycle of ever-expan
ding inequality in global trade. Depositories that buy recyclables from cartoneros, many of which are run illegally with fixed scales, are mere middlemen in a multi-billion dollar recycling industry. After purchasing recyclables from the depositories, multinational paper and plastic conglomerates eventually process and sell the materials for many times the price paid to cartoneros per kilo. Needless to say, they don’t pay wages to cartoneros, offer occupational protections, and certainly don’t provide health care programs. Seen like this, the cartoneros have a social and economic status similar to that of garment workers in sweatshops – forced by a cycle of poverty to amass fortunes for a few very rich multinational corporations. But there are changes being made to recognize the rights of the cartoneros. In late 2002, the city of Buenos Aires passed public law 992 stating that cartoneros be given the legal status of “urban reccuporators,” which awards them some rights. For example, the government provides a free train service for cartoneros who commute from outside the city. And the legislature has recently been debating a
meager social welfare program for cartonero families to discourage parents from bringing their chi
ldren to work. Moreover, charity groups have provided free tetanus shots and work gloves for cartoneros. However, these new initiative are complex and create issues for the cartoneros: under the new public law, the city regulates the type of carts that can be used, the free train is generally unsafe and unreliable, and support from neighborhood assemblies are the cartoneros’ only defense against train stoppages and harassment. WHAT CAN BE DONE?
Real change for the cartoneros lies in their own ability to organize and demand rights, and in the fundamental transformation of global trade. If cartonero cooperatives could reach a critical mass of membership, they could collectively make demands as they see fit: fair prices and no fixed scales at the depositories, a social tax per kilo of recyclables to finance community healthcare and education programs. They could even insist that the city contract with the cooperatives and make every cartonero a public service employee with a steady paycheck, occupational protections, and healthcare. The number of cartoneros and the importance of their work give them an incredible opportunity to assert themselves. Without cartoneros the city’s waste management services would be overburdened, the streets would fill with trash, and the recycling conglomerates would suddenly see their steady flow of recyclables from Argentina taper off to a trickle.
Still, the cartoneros’ situation is precarious and can quickly be made worse at the hand of an unforgiving global economy. Multinational recycling firms, for example, can simply start buying recyclables elsewhere, much like garment retailers that move their business to whatever country has the cheapest cost of labor. The city can easily privatize its waste management services and have a corporation hire thousands of hands to collect recyclables at sorting facility and keep the profits.
For this and other reasons, the role of a global civil society is essential. Everyday people around the world - people like you - can have a tremendous impact on the state of human rights around the world. Consumers can demand buying standards for products made of recycled materials, and voters can ask their elected officials to vote against destructive free trade agreements, to forgive debt, and to support fairness in global trade. Awareness and a popular consciousness of these issues will create a culture of compassion and progressive action toward a better future.
2/15/07
Why I made Los Cartoneros
I was an undergraduate student from the United States finishing my last semester studying abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I was interested in the economic collapse that had happened there in 2001. "The Crisis" as it is now called was caused by many things, although it is widely accepted that Argentina had fallen victim to unfair free trade policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank - globalization's "managers".
In 2001, Argentina suddenly had no money - empty ATM machines, closed banks, businesses closed and widespread divestment. Despite this causing 58% of the population to fall into poverty, the collapse created an opening for civil society to define itself on the playing field of globalization in a way it never had been. For once, people - not money - became the most valuable resource; neighborhood assemblies were created and workers began taking over their factories and managing them democratically.But five years after the collapse, it seemed as though Argentina and Argentines had gotten back on track not only with the policies, but also the mentality of modern globalization. The government was restructuring its debt and inviting foreign corporations to come buy out industries, and everyday people insisted on the Argentina's large middle class and the wonders of consumer culture.
And on nearly every street, in every neighborhood, at any time, there were people digging through trash bags. Teenagers, seniors, whole families, all with their push carts salvaging anything of value.
"They're just the cartoneros. Bums," is what people told me.
Some very simple research showed that these "cardboard people" were not simply a minority of lazy street people. They are a huge population of people who cannot find jobs, and have formed a survival economy so they can meet the most minimum of living standards. They are a visible display of Argentina's true identity as an underdeveloped nation, one of globalization's losers.
But I didn't make this movie to point out the unfairness of globalization. I chose to make this movie because I wanted to show that cartoneros are people. They have many different stories, families, desires, interests, and livelihoods. They are human beings, most of which have been forced out of desperation to live off the discards of society. When an audience sees these things, the cartonero becomes Juanchi, or Juan Carlos, or Florencia, or Ivana, all with names, faces and smiles. The stigma of their work gets broken down, and it provides the viewer with a new, more human context to approach economics, poverty and globalization.
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