What We Want

For the last 25 days - if not for the last 25 years, we've constantly heard phrases like: … "cazerolazos are fine, but they don't achieve anything"…"the protest is legitimate, the problem is the lack of proposals" …"and if the current president (now Duhalde) leaves, who do we put in his place?" .
Clearly, these are the questions we'd all like to have answers to.

The big media organisations - they who decide when a cacerolazo should be noticed or ignored, fragmenting and emptying everything of its content - keep on reminding us of this.

They tell us: these are spontaneous protests, heartfelt, aimless, which only attempt to have the corralito opened up or to sack the Supreme Court or to guarantee prices; or to make Caballo or De la Rua or Rodríguez Saa or Duhalde resign or to stop politicians spending as much or to kick them out or to stop impunity or to have private companies and /or multinationals give back what they stole or to save public services or to maintain wages or to ensure that chemists and hospitals and clinics have a supply of medicine or to put a stop to corruption or to put a stop to the economic system or for unemployment benefits and training courses for the unemployed or help for small and medium-sized businesses or no paying the foreign debt or an end to repression or respect for the people or money for teachers and pensioners or work for all or that the usurers and bankers stop swindling on debts or that the union bureaucrats get screwed or that the transnationals go to hell or that the brothers and sisters in jail are freed or that the politicians should take the peoples side or that they should get on their bikes or throw them out throw them out. (If that's not a proposal, then what is?)

For 25 years they've been saying this from their positions of power, that the people have no proposals, that THEY are the specialists. Yes them: the genocidal military, their accomplices the intellectuals, the lying journalists, the thieving, drug-trafficking politicians, the murdering businessmen and the pirate bankers.

We, a large proportion of the people who live in this country, come fighting: fighting against hunger and for a better quality of life; fighting against repression and for respect of human rights; fighting against the trade union bureaucrats and for space for broad-based democratic participation; fighting against the damned politicians and for solidarity in the autonomous organisation of the neighbourhoods; against cuts and for bigger budgets for health and education; against privatisation and for services available to all; against commercial management of social work and for decent social insurance; against monopolisation of land and for agrarian reform and help for small and medium-sized farmers; against the exclusion of aboriginal people or of latinamerican brothers living in this country, for diversity of culture and lifestyle; against violence against children and for respect of children's wishes; against layoffs and the lack of jobs; for job security; against impunity and for justice and punishment and social condemnation.

We, who have been fighting for over 25 years, with the best proposals, the best tools, with confidence in our strength, with joy, with creativity, with solidarity…we are not one, not two, we number thousands. We do not want to occupy important positions, these are our positions. We do not want recognition; we will make ourselves heard by our own means. We don't have all the answers either, we want to live in dignity, in joy and then…?

For the last 25 years they have been telling us that we have no proposals, that a direction is lacking. We have had a path for a long time, we may go faster or slower, but we are moving forward. They say that these demands are vague and unclear. We defend democracy, freedom of speech, social justice and control over our destiny - and it is in this that we are different. They say that the people only governs through its representatives. For us representatives only govern through the people. They say that many of us who were in the Plaza de Mayo are responsible for what happened. This true in so far as the cacerolazo is starting to build a new citizenship, in which participation is responsible, collective, performed with dignity and solidarity and is sufficiently organised for us to make ourselves heard.

WE WANT TRUE DEMOCRACY, SOCIAL JUSTICE, FREEDOM AND SELF-DETERMINATION.
FOR A LONG TIME NOW, WE HAVE FOLLOWED THIS PATH, WE DO NOT KNOW WHERE IT LEADS, WE ONLY KNOW THAT WE WISH TO GO FORWARD AND THAT WE ARE STEADILY PROGRESSING.

arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)