The week after the attack, thousands protested the police eviction of the 57 workers who have run the Brukman plant in the Balvanera neighborhood of Buenos Aires, the country’s capital, since it was abandoned by its former owners in December 2001. The police takeover was ordered by Judge Jorge Rimondi, who ruled that "the factory belongs to the owners."

The cops arrived April 17 at midnight. They forced the workers on security detail out onto the street. The police then posted a guard to block workers from returning to their workplace, according to Leo Norniella, a unionist at a Buenos Aires Pepsico plant, who spoke to Militant reporters by phone April 25.

On April 21 thousands of unionists, unemployed workers, activists from neighborhood assemblies, students, and members of left-wing political parties gathered in a mass protest outside the Brukman plant. Reports had circulated that the former boss, Jacobo Brukman, intended to take charge of the factory that morning. When the garment workers moved toward police lines in order to enter the plant, hundreds of cops standing guard fired rubber bullets and tear gas into the crowd. In their drive to break up the demonstration, the cops pursued protesters into a nearby children’s hospital and a University of Buenos Aires building, firing tear gas canisters into the hospital. The police arrested about 100 protesters and wounded 32 in the assault.  
 
State of economic collapse
Argentina remains in a state of economic collapse. The fight for jobs is at the center of the class struggle there today. The official unemployment rate exceeds 20 percent. Some 40 percent of adults are unemployed or work only marginal jobs.

In late 2001 the International Monetary Fund (IMF) cut off loans to Argentina after the government was unable to maintain interest payments and Buenos Aires defaulted on its record $141 billion foreign debt.

Then-president Fernando de la Rúa initiated a series of drastic cuts in social programs, sparking an explosion of general strikes, road blockades, and mass demonstrations by unemployed workers, known as piqueteros, other workers and farmers, and many among the middle classes. This wave of protests forced de la Rúa, of the Radical Party, from office. Congress appointed Eduardo Duhalde from the Peronist Justicialista party as president in January 2002. The Peronist party is the main bourgeois political force that has dominated Argentina since World War II. The Radicals have been mostly in the opposition, but have often alternated in the government with the Peronists.

Duhalde ended the 10-year policy of previous administrations of pegging the peso to the dollar. This move precipitated a 70 percent devaluation of the currency, which devastated the buying power of workers’ wages and the savings of retirees, shopkeepers, and others. Argentina’s Gross Domestic Product shrank 12 percent last year. Official statistics indicate that working people face the double burden of spreading joblessness and a 75 percent increase in the cost of the basic basket of food for a family.

The Brukman owners had cut in half the monthly wage of $300–$500 for production workers eight years ago. In the second half of 2001, they increasingly delayed wage payments, sometimes paying as little as five pesos per week, or $20 per month. When the bosses announced a general layoff and threatened to shut down the plant in December of that year, workers had enough. They decided to occupy the plant the night of that announcement to prevent the owners from removing machinery and other equipment.

The majority of the 57 remaining workers are women. "We work 12-hour shifts and have to take turns sleeping at the plant," Celia Martínez, a member of the workers’ factory committee, told the Guardian newspaper in December. "We can’t leave it empty, because the police or owners could come at any moment."

Since the occupation began, workers maintained production and have earned on average $110 per month.  
 
Attempts to get rid of ‘bad example’
By standing up to the employers and their government in Buenos Aires, the workers at Brukman have become heroes in the eyes of many workers and farmers throughout Argentina. The bosses have been looking for a way to get rid of this "bad example."

The April 18 police assault was the third attempt by the Duhalde regime to evict the workers. In March and in November of last year the cops forced their way into the Brukman plant, only to pull back rapidly in face of mass support for the occupation.

On November 24, more than 200 heavily armed police broke into the plant, arresting six workers on guard duty and a nine-year-old daughter of one of the workers. Within an hour, hundreds of working people from around the city responded to an appeal for help and came out into the street in front of the plant. Later that day, the judge who had issued the eviction notice reversed himself and ordered the police to withdraw from the factory.

Chanting "Brukman belongs to the workers," the garment workers re-occupied the plant. By next day they had resumed production. Large banners draped over the front of the six-story building declared, "Jobs for all: not one more unemployed," and "Workers at Brukman fight for nationalization under workers’ control."

Brukman remains a focal point of labor resistance in Argentina. There have been more than 100 other plant occupations throughout the country, involving an estimated 5,000 workers. Above all the workers at Brukman have forged ties with those at the Zanón ceramic tile factory in the southwestern province of Neuquén. Some 380 workers there began an occupation of their work place in late 2001.

The Duhalde government has ordered the eviction of workers from a number of occupied plants over the last month. "Some 3,500 workers and other trade unionists blocked the cops from entering the [Zanón] factory" in early April, Norniella said. "The provincial government made a decision not to call more cops. The CTA called a strike in solidarity, joined by teachers, health-care workers, and state employees." The Federation of Argentine Workers (CTA) is one of the country’s main trade union federations.

The police attack on the April 21 demonstration at Brukman has not halted the protests against the eviction. "Our weapons are our sewing scissors, overalls, and needles," said Celia Martínez, as 40 workers began an encampment near the factory. "We are doing this in order to defend our jobs."

A tent that the Brukman workers have established has attracted other workers confronting record-high unemployment levels. Thousands have come out to show their support. Jobless workers organized marches from the suburbs of Buenos Aires into the city, cutting off the Pueyerredón bridge and blocking traffic.

The Pueyerredón bridge is the site of the June 26, 2002, brutal police attack on a march of unemployed workers that killed two piqueteros--Darío Santillán and Maximiliano Kosteki. The following day the Buenos Aires daily Clarín published a series of eight photographs that confirmed accounts by demonstrators that the cops killed Santillán and Kosteki in cold blood. More than 10,000 marched June 27, 2002, in Buenos Aires to demand justice for the murdered piqueteros.

After a national outcry, police investigators announced that Santillán and Kosteki had been killed by police bullets fired at close range.

On April 24, some 15,000 turned out in Buenos Aires to rally behind the fight for jobs at Brukman. There had been a lull in protests over the last months, stated Norniella. The outpouring of support for these embattled garment workers made it seem for the moment that the "spirit of December" 2001 could return, he said. That’s when a massive upsurge of working-class struggles and protests by professionals and other middle-class layers forced the resignation of the de la Rúa regime.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home