The Argentina Autonomista Project (AAP) and the Inter-American Center for the Arts, Sustainability, and Action (CASA) will again work with a vast array of social organizations in Buenos Aires, Argentina, such as the Coordinadora Anibal Veron, unemployed workers, the popular neighborhood assemblies, community artists, and radical University of Buenos Aires faculty and students who are struggling to create space for the masses of poor and unemployed left by the recession, continuous austerity and structural adjustment programs, privatizations, and inept governments.
Over the last year an incredible wave of social protest and action has engulfed Argentina. In the midst of a severe economic crisis there have been massive street protests, over eighty factory take-overs, more than three hundred coordinated microenterprise cooperatives organized by unemployed women and men, countless neighborhood associations formed, and many other autonomous popular initiatives. Yet, little is heard about this in the United States or in Europe.
The purpose of the Argentina autonomista project is to bring news about events in Argentina to North America through people-to-people exchanges and the internet (web and email) and to facilitate non-hierarchical communication within Argentina, especially among groups with a minimum of resources.
In the past, the AAP coordinator, Graciela Monteagudo, has helped organize a number of street theater actions with local groups in Argentina and in the U.S. covering both global and local social justice issues. Recently, the the AAP coordinated a delegation of two community artists and organizers to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where they collaborated with the Coordinadora Anibal Veron, unemployed workers, neighborhood assemblies, community artists, FEAS, autonomous feminists, and radical university faculty and students. Over the course of three weeks the artists lived with these communities and participated in the organization of an interactive artistic and cultural gathering of 5,000 people in demand for human rights in Argentina.
Working alongside with these communities as a member of this delegation, volunteers can have the opportunity to provide a meaningful service to the microenterprise coops by working in their bakeries, organic gardens and cheap art stores. Also, opportunities are available to participate in direct democracy processes of decision and action while practicing the Spanish language and being a delegate for social change. These opportunities are self-funded, so participating individuals will be responsible for their own food, transport and lodging.
For information or contributions contact:
Graciela Monteagudo
188 Barre St.
Montpelier, VT 05602
Graciela can be reached via her cell phone in Buenos Aires at 011-54-9-11-4156-5847 or when she’s in the US, via her home phone at (802) 223-8445 or her cell phone at (802) 272-5606.