August 2022

Expropriation against the clock It is an enduring paradox that a project driven by, worked on, and wished for by the workers for almost ten years would be approved in a race against time. The result the Presidential elections in 2015 was the starting gun for this last opportunity to try to approve expropriation before the rise of a political movement that was openly hostile, that had already ended expropriation in the Legislature of the City of Buenos Aires, and… Read More »BAUEN, day 92

In spite of being a bill that distanced itself from the self-management that characterized the recovery of the BAUEN from the beginning, the cooperative did not have many other choices and decided to accept the idea. It remained to be seen what would become of the role of the cooperative organization, which workers were not ready to abandon, even if the legal and ownership status changed, and they become State workers with stable jobs, a contract, and guaranteed salaries. Larroque’s… Read More »BAUEN, day 91

A State-run Bauen? In November of 2014, it came to light that Deputy Andrés Larroque, of the Front for Victory, had presented or was about to present a new expropriation bill that was explicitly supported, for the first time, by the Executive Power. The BAUEN workers, after the latest adverse judgment by the Supreme Court – which represented the definitive end of any possibility of reconsideration of the judgment of the lower court – had started efforts at the governmental… Read More »BAUEN, day 90

Clarín did not stop paying attention to the BAUEN. In fact, other than Página/12 from the opposite perspective, it is probably the newspaper that has paid the most attention to the recovered hotel. Most of the other almost 400 recovered businesses, not so much. As the situation was not being resolved, the Iurcoviches, supported more and more openly by Clarín, turned up the pressure. Besides the website, the workers found out through several deputies that the Iurcoviches were touring Congressional… Read More »BAUEN, day 89

Demonstrations of support for the cooperative also continued to grow at the local level. Personalities like Osvaldo Bayer and Quino spoke out, together with hundreds of political leaders and intellectuals. The 15th and 16th of April, the Social and Political Book Fair was held in the BAUEN, where stands of independent and self-managed publishers were set up in solidarity with the workers. The flags and T-shirts of the BAUEN were seen at demonstrations, recitals, stadiums, and the players of the… Read More »BAUEN, day 88

Chapter 12 The long road to expropriation March 21, 2014, marked the eleventh anniversary of the occupation of the hotel by its workers. Like every year, the cooperative organized an event and invited numerous guests from different political, labor and cooperative sectors to show their support for self-management of the BAUEN. There was even a presentation of the report on the fourth survey of recovered businesses done by the Open Faculty Program of the UBA,1 in which there was an… Read More »BAUEN, day 87

“No businessperson comes through these courts the way we do” Speech by Omar Villablanca, representative of FASINPAT and of the Union of Ceramistas of Neuquén, at the doors of Court n.° 9, April 19, 2012 We prefer to call ourselves Zanon, because we’ve exproporiated everything from the boss, even his name. We continue to be Zanon under worker control, together with the compañeros of Cerámica Stefani and other factories of ceramic bricks that are about to celebrate two years of… Read More »BAUEN, day 86

The BAUEN workers pay homage to the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo Speech by Federico Tonarelli, April 18, 2012 We simply think that it was the best opportunity to remind all of you, and the grandmothers, obviously, of the story of this place. It is a place that is intimately linked to the story of Estela (de Carlotto), and the Grandmothers, from its beginning with the military dictatorship – when there’s talk of the civilian members of the military… Read More »BAUEN, day 85

As the representatives of the cooperative, its lawyers, and various legislators and social and political leaders that accompanied them went into the hearing, the protesters listened to a series of speakers. One of them was Omar Villablanca, leader of FASINPAT, Factory Without Bosses, the former Zanon Ceramics, another great example of the recovered businesses in the country. To come to these spaces, which are not our spaces, the courts (…) produces indignation (…). In these 10 years, we haven’t seen… Read More »BAUEN, day 84

Of course, it did not stop building its collective management every day. Nor did it stop building support and social strength for its demands, even as it pushed for new expropriation bills in Congress. One significant milestone in that search was the event in which it honored the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo by naming the main auditorium of the hotel after them, on April 17th, 2012. Human-rights organizations had constantly supported the workers by participating in their demonstrations,… Read More »BAUEN, day 83