> Routine Politics and Violence in Argentina
> The Gray Zone of State Power
> Series: Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics
>
> Javier Auyero
> State University of New York, Stony Brook
>
> "It's a terrific combination of political ethnography and
> theoretical innovation". Charles Tilly
>
>
>
>
> Routine Politics and Violence in Argentina
>
>
> Close to three hundred stores and supermarkets were looted during
> week-long food riots in Argentina in December 2001. Thirty-four
> people were reported dead, and hundreds were injured. Among the
> looting crowds, activists from the Peronist Party (the main
> political party in the country) were quite prominent. During the
> lootings, police officers were conspicuously absent – particularly
> when small stores were sacked. Through a combination of archival
> research, statistical analysis, and multisited fieldwork and
> drawing on the perspective of contentious politics, this book
> provides the first available analytic description of the origins,
> course, meanings, and outcomes of the December 2001 wave of
> lootings in Argentina. It scrutinizes the gray zone where the
> actions and networks of both party activists and law enforcement
> officials meet and mesh. The book also makes a case for the study
> of the gray zone in less spectacular, but equally relevant, forms
> of political activity. Clandestine connections between established
> political actors, this book argues, count in the making of
> collective violence and in routine political life.
>
> Javier Auyero is an associate professor of sociology at the State
> University of New York, Stony Brook. He was awarded a John Simon
> Guggenheim Fellowship in 2001 and a Harry Frank Guggenheim
> Fellowship in 2005. He is the author of Poor People’s Politics and
> Contentious Lives and has published articles in Theory and Society,
> Ethnography, Mobilization, Latin American Research Review, and
> Journal of Latin American Studies, among others.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Routine Politics and Violence in Argentina
>
> THE GRAY ZONE OF STATE POWER
> JAVIER AUYERO
>
> State University of New York, Stony Brook
>
>
>
>
>
>
> CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
> Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São
> Paulo
>
> Cambridge University Press
> 32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013-2473, USA
>
> www.cambridge.org
> Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521872362
>
> © Javier Auyero 2007
>
> This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
> and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
> no reproduction of any part may take place without
> the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
>
> First published 2007
>
> Printed in the United States of America
>
> A catalog record for this publication is available from the British
> Library.
>
> Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
> Auyero, Javier.
> Routine politics and violence in Argentina : the gray zone of state
> power / Javier Auyero.
> p. cm. – (Cambridge studies in contentious politics)
> Includes bibliographical references and index.
> ISBN: 978-0-521-87236-2 (hardback) ISBN: 978-0-521-69411-7 (pbk.)
> 1. Food riots – Argentina. 2. Pillage – Argentina. 3. Violence
> – Argentina.
> 4. Political violence – Argentina. 5. Partido Peronista
> (Argentina). 6. Peronism.
> 7. Law enforcement – Argentina. I. Title. II. Series.
> HV6485.A7A94 2007
> 982.07 – dc22 2006030228
>
> ISBN 978-0-521-87236-2 hardback
> ISBN 978-0-521-69411-7 paperback
>
> Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for
> the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or
> third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication
> and does not guarantee that any content on such
> Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> For Esteban, reader of all books, source of all important ideas.
> And for Tuki, who knows what really matters.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Contents
>
>
> List of Figures, Maps, and Tables
> page xi
> Preface and Acknowledgments
> xiii
> Introduction
> 1
> 1 The Gray Zone
> 31
> 2 Party Politics and Everyday Life
> 55
> 3 Food Lootings
> 73
> 4 Moreno and La Matanza Lootings
> 97
> 5 Making Sense of Collective Violence
> 131
> Conclusions
> 151
> Appendix: Modeling the Looting Dynamics
> 159
> Bibliography
> 167
> Index
> 185
>
>
>
>
>
> List of Figures, Maps, and Tables
>
>
> Figures
>
>
> 1
>
> Lootings in Conurbano, December 19, 2001.
> page 2
> 2
>
> Lootings in Conurbano, December 19, 2001.
> 2
> 3
>
> Lootings in Conurbano, December 19, 2001.
> 3
> 4
>
> Lootings in Conurbano, December 19, 2001.
> 3
> 5
>
> The Gray Zone.
> 48
> 6
>
> Protecting Small Markets.
> 93
> 7
>
> Drawing of D’Elia’s View.
> 114
> 8
>
> Looting at Whan’s Store.
> 144
> Maps
>
>
> 1
>
> The Geographic Distribution of Lootings, December 14, 2001.
> 76
> 2
>
> The Geographic Distribution of Lootings, December 15, 2001.
> 77
> 3
>
> The Geographic Distribution of Lootings, Total.
> 78
> Tables
>
>
> 1
>
> Frequency Distribution of 261 Riot Episodes by Market Type.
> 161
> 2
>
> Maximum Likelihood Coefficients and Odds Ratio Estimates Predicting
> Type of Market Looted.
> 162
> 3
>
> Frequency Distributions of Police and Broker Presence by Market Type.
> 164
>
>
>
>
>
> Preface and Acknowledgments
>
>
> One might legitimately ask how, from my considerable distance in
> place and time from the events I am describing, I can know all that
> I claim to be a part of my brother’s story....And the answer, of
> course, is that I do not, in the conventional sense, know many of
> these things. I am not making them up, however. I am imagining
> them. Memory, intuition, interrogation and reflection have given me
> a vision, and it is this vision that I am telling here.
>
> Russell Banks, Affliction, p. 47
>
> There is not one simple, “animal,” response to
> hunger....“Riot”...is not a “natural” or “obvious”
> response to hunger but a sophisticated pattern of collective
> behaviour, a collective alternative to individualistic and familial
> strategies of survival. Of course hunger rioters were hungry, but
> hunger does not dictate that they must riot nor does it determine
> riot’s forms.
>
> E. P. Thompson, Customs in Common, p. 266
>
> In 1989, when the first food riots in modern Argentine history
> occurred, I was living in Buenos Aires – close, in fact, to one of
> the epicenters of the violence. Years later, in December 2001, when
> the episodes this book describes and seeks to understand took
> place, I was not in Argentina. I watched brief images of the
> sacking of food markets and other stores on TV and read about them
> on-line in the Argentine newspapers. At the time, I thought we were
> witnessing pretty much the same thing as in 1989: people were
> hungry, they couldn’t take “it” anymore, and they exploded –
> in 1989, “it” was soaring prices in the midst of a
> hyperinflationary peak; in 2001, “it” was a combination of an
> inept government and a dramatic economic crisis. Collective
> suffering, I thought then, couldn’t go on much longer without
> manifesting itself in some dramatic way. Chaotic and desperate
> lootings were the result of many – too many and too fast – being
> pushed against the ropes. While watching the 2001 episodes on TV
> and reading about them in the newspaper, I also recalled the human
> toll of the 1989 lootings and began wondering what would happen
> this time, when events were apparently more massive: How long would
> it take for the government and its repressive apparatus to control
> the mayhem? How many would be dead and injured (and soon
> forgotten)? How terrible would the human and material devastation
> be when things calmed down? At the time, the lootings received some
> media attention, but the events in the main plaza and the streets
> of Buenos Aires captured the spotlight: The cacerolazos (as the
> banging of the pots and pans in protest against government policies
> came to be known), the brutal repression that left thirty-five dead
> (and no one punished), and the political crisis that ended the De
> La Rua government and put the Peronist Party back in office became
> the main story.
>
> The 2001 lootings lasted about a week; things eventually calmed
> down and, while the study of popular protest in Argentina became a
> sort of mini-industry among scholars and activists interested in
> Latin American politics, the food riots quickly retreated into
> oblivion – explained away as a collective but disorganized
> response to hunger, pretty much along the lines of my own thinking
> at the time. This book recovers the lootings from that oblivion and
> seeks to reconstruct what happened during those episodes by
> focusing on their dynamics and meanings.
>
> Why scrutinize the lootings? Who cares about them many years
> afterward? As the reader will soon realize, in and of themselves,
> the lootings are interesting, multifaceted episodes. And, as we
> will see, people (participants, bystanders, victims, public
> officials, and grassroots leaders) care deeply about them. Truth be
> told, I was extremely surprised when top public officials made room
> in their busy schedules on short notice to talk about events that
> happened years ago. I was even more surprised at the vehemence that
> officials and grassroots leaders put into their accounts (“I am so
> angry about what happened. Anything you need, please do not
> hesitate to contact me again,” a prominent activist told me;
> “anything you need...I also want to know what happened,” a top
> official confessed). Shopkeepers and residents also took time to
> talk to us and to dwell on the many details of those days as if
> they were reliving them right then and there. But the main reason
> for attempting the reconstruction of the lootings is twofold: The
> food riots are a unique window into contemporary Argentine popular
> politics and a wonderful opportunity to extend our knowledge of the
> political dynamics of collective violence. If we know which
> questions to ask them, then the story the lootings tell exceeds the
> actual events and speaks of issues, I will argue, to which students
> of politics around the world should be paying closer attention.
>
> Carried out from a “considerable distance in place and time,”
> this reconstruction is based on old-fashioned fieldwork and
> archival research, and it is informed by an ethnographic
> sensibility that keeps vigilance over a scholastic view all too
> common among those who study the relationship between collective
> suffering and popular contention. Fieldwork in different
> communities and in the archives gave me a vision of what happened
> from December 14 to 22, 2001, of how politics tends to work in
> modern Argentina, and of the dynamics and meanings of collective
> violence. This book tells of this vision.
>
> Many, many people helped me in the creation of this vision.
> First and foremost, I want to thank the residents and shopkeepers
> in La Matanza and Moreno for trusting me with their stories about
> events that, mainly in the case of the victims of violence, shook
> their lives. I am also extremely grateful to Vanesa da Silva and
> Graciela Rodriguez, my two hard-working research assistants on this
> project. They helped me locate the fieldwork sites, conducted many
> interviews, and shared with me their own views of the events.
> Rodrigo Hobert, fellow sociologist and unwavering entertainer,
> helped me in the creation of the catalog of the events.
>
> This book draws on my own fieldwork and that of others. For
> sharing their field notes with me and for enriching dialogues, I’m
> thankful to Marina Sitrin, Karina Mallamacci, and Magdalena Tosoni.
> In Buenos Aires, Horacio Verbitsky proved to be not only an
> intelligent interlocutor with whom I discussed the main thrust of
> this book but also a source of crucial contacts that, literally,
> changed the course of my inquiry. Eduardo Cura facilitated my
> access to the archives of Channel Eleven, where Osvaldo Petrozzino
> kindly showed me images of the lootings – some of them never
> broadcast before. Thanks to all.
>
> Mia Bloom, Elizabeth Borland, Mona El-Ghobashy, Daniel Fridman,
> Leslie Gates, Michael Hanagan, James Jasper, Jackie Klopp, John
> Krinsky, Roy Licklider, Francesca Polletta, Sherrill Stroschein,
> and Sidney Tarrow provided comments on two earlier drafts of the
> Introduction and Chapter 4 during two lively sessions at the
> Columbia Contentious Politics Seminar. I also presented a draft of
> the same chapter at the Economic Sociology Workshop at Princeton
> University; many thanks to Patricia Fernandez-Kelly and Viviana
> Zelizer for a constructive session. When I thought the book was
> “almost done,” I took it on a tour to California to test how it
> fared. Nina Eliasoph, Paul Lichterman, and Pierrette Hongdaneu-
> Sotelo at the University of Southern California and Beatriz Sarlo,
> then visiting at UC-Berkeley, may not know it but I found enough
> encouragement in their comments to push me deeper into this
> project. I then realized that the book was not “almost” but
> only “half ” done and that I needed to further conceptually
> dissect and empirically explore the notion of gray zone. I then
> took another tour with the book “half cooked,” this time to the
> South, to Argentina, where I shared many of the ideas and empirical
> findings with researchers and colleagues at a meeting organized by
> Valeria Brusco from Centro de Estudios en Política y Sociedad
> (CEPYS)–Córdoba. Part of a series called In Vino Veritas, the
> discussion that followed my rather disorganized presentation helped
> me to refine some of my arguments. Thanks to Valeria and her
> colleagues for their interest, comments, and, of course, the wine.
> I’m also grateful to my colleagues at the Centro de Estudios en
> Cultura y Política (CECYP), with whom, surprisingly after all these
> years, we keep editing the journal Apuntes, particularly Marina
> Farinetti and (again) Daniel Fridman (whose comments I heeded
> carefully), and my dear friend Lucas Rubinich (again, Lucas,
> gracias). An early version of the Introduction and of Chapter 4 was
> presented at the Seminario Internacional: Ciudadanía, sociedad
> civil y participación política organized at the University of
> Buenos Aires on September 1–2, 2005, and then published in the
> Journal of Latin American Studies. Thanks to the many participants
> who heard and provided encouragement and criticism; to Isidoro
> Cheresky, who organized a wonderful two-day seminar; and to the
> editor of JLAS, James Dunkerley, for his encouragement. I also want
> to thank Gastón Beltrán, John Markoff, and my colleagues at Stony
> Brook, Michael Schwartz, Naomi Rosenthal, Andrea Tyree, and Ian
> Roxborough, who made trenchant criticisms and suggestions on
> earlier drafts. Timothy Moran, colleague and skilled statistician,
> helped me to create a statistical model of the looting dynamics out
> of data I collected from newspaper sources. A snapshot of our joint
> work is reproduced here in the Appendix (an extended version was
> published in the journal Social Forces). I am also indebted to my
> graduate students, past and present members of the Ethnography
> Workshop at Stony Brook. The new generation of Stony Brook
> ethnographers had to put up with me while I was writing this book.
> Unbeknownst to them, I tested some of the ideas during the
> ethnography seminar I taught in the spring of 2005. Thanks then to
> Diana Baldermann, Larissa Buchholz, Lauren Joseph, Carol Lindquist,
> Matthew Mahler, Etsuoko Marouka-Ng, Tyson Smith, and Amy Traver for
> being patient with me while I was thinking out loud and for being
> wonderful sources of ideas, energy, and fun. Carol, editor
> extraordinaire, carefully cleaned this manuscript from weird,
> incorrect, or all-but-Spanglish expressions while challenging me to
> go further into my understanding of the relationships between the
> gray zone and democracy. Thanks to Jessica Giovachino whose
> architectural skills were put to good use in the making of Figure 5.
>
> I am very grateful to the staff at the Laboratorio de Sistemas
> de Información Geográfica from the Instituto del Conurbano at the
> Universidad de General Sarmiento who were diligent in making the
> maps presented here. Without the generous funding provided by the
> Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and without a sabbatical leave
> made available by my home institution, Stony Brook University, I
> would not have found the time to conduct the research – much less
> to transcribe, analyze, and write up the results.
>
> I’ve done this twice already, and I need to do it a third time.
> This whole business of writing books began when, I still don’t
> know whether intentionally or not, my former advisor Chuck Tilly
> referred to my then-dissertation as a book. Since then, I’ve been
> thinking in terms of books – both reading them and writing them.
> Chuck was the first to read the research project that started all
> this, and he made critical comments along the way. He then read the
> final version and provided his by-now legendary insights – both
> substantive and stylistic. As the reader will see, much of the
> argument of this book is a critical dialogue with Tilly’s work.
> Muchas gracias, Chuck. I am also very grateful to my editor at
> Cambridge, Lew Bateman; to the Contentious Politics Series editor,
> Jack Goldstone; and to two anonymous reviewers. It is not
> exaggeration to say that their careful reading and astute
> criticisms and suggestions made a crucial difference in the final
> product.
>
> Summers in the United States are a good time to do fieldwork in
> Argentina. I had, and still have after so many years, the same
> ambiguous feelings about that time. On one hand, I spend time doing
> what I like most about this craft, talking with people, listening
> to them, engaging with them. I also spend time with my friends down
> in Argentina. During the course of this project, Esteban and Shila,
> Tuki and Valeria, were there to...well, they know. When I was too
> tired after long days in the field, they took me on a two-day trip
> to Mendoza that merits a book all on its own. On the other hand,
> summers are time away from mi tribu, the loved ones up here.
> Gabriela, compañera, Camilo and Luis, amigos mios, I promise I will
> make up for the time lost.
