The Recovered Businesses of Argentina: Identities in an Imagined Country

Indianapolis, IN

Protest, mobilization, recovery, assembly, and communal revolution. Surviving through their country's massive economic crisis of 2001, Argentineans learned to use their creative resourcefulness to take over recently debilitated factories and maintain their jobs. As they saw their hours cut, monetary livelihoods taken away from them, and no other jobs to turn to in such an economic downturn, Argentine workers mobilized and assembled together to take over their failing workplaces, and build it up themselves. They proved the potential of workers activism by transforming their previous work sites into ones without bosses-led by the community of workers, with guaranteed pay and treatment, and most importantly, with a guaranteed job at the end of each day. I explore the process of revolutionary social and political reconstruction spurred by a devastating economic collapse by looking at the takeover of businesses throughout Argentina, and the ways this process necessitated newly defining citizenship, the Argentine identity, and an imagined nation, I will argue that through this newfound Argentine identity, direct participatory citizenship, and optimism for a better nation, such drastic reform became possible.