Don't Cry for Argentina
(Page 2 of 2)
January / February 2003
Leif Utne Utne magazine
The local assemblies have helped propel the spread of the huertas, community vegetable gardens that are popping up across the country. According to Ben Backwell in The Ecologist (October 2002), these gardens appeared in rural provinces in the mid-1990s when the economy first began to soften. But it wasn?t until the current crisis hit that they spread to Buenos Aires. ?With unemployment benefits and social security almost nonexistent,? says Backwell, ?many people have been thrown back on their own resources to survive.?
Now, vacant lots, parks, and schoolyards throughout the capital are planted with huertas. There are some 450,000 of these gardens across Argentina, covering 10,000 acres of land and providing food to 2.5 million people (nearly 7 percent of the population)
On another front, workers facing factory shutdowns have taken them over and turned them around?testing out new modes of self-management and worker ownership. Many people have disengaged themselves from the formal peso economy by joining ?barter clubs??neighborhood-based economic networks, often with their own currency, that let citizens trade goods and services without dealing with the banks.
?Argentina is explosive right now?anything could happen. It?s an enormous social experiment that could well prove to be the first great popular rebellion against capitalism of the 21st century,? Jordan and Whitney write.
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