About this book
This book is a collective creation. Its authors, those of us who drafted it, did interviews, and collected material, are members of the Open Faculty Program of the University of Buenos Aires, a university extension team that has studied businesses recovered by workers since 2002. Emiliano Balaguer and Desiderio Alfonso worked on the documentary part and on putting together the body of information that established the core of the text, but the rest of the team collaborated in different ways. The undersigned, Andrés Ruggeri, is the author of the final draft.
But it would be misleading to say that the three of us who sign are the sole authors. The BAUEN cooperative workers provided their experiences and an enormous amount of documentation that form the skeleton of data and information that give shape to the final product. Federico Tonarelli, especially, was the great organizer of information, telling us where to search, and who to ask. The testimony of María Eva Lossada, Marcelo Ruarte, Horacio Lalli, Arminda Palacios (who, unfortunately, passed away a few days before we finished the first draft), Gladys Alegre, and Federico himself, are the nerves and the muscles of this story. Fabián Pierucci, who recorded the whole history of the BAUEN from the beginning with his camera, and who made the great documentary “BAUEN: Struggle, Culture and, Work,” provided the script of his movie, from which the remaining personal stories were extracted.
Diego Carbone, the cooperative’s lawyer, contributed to a better understanding of some of the intricate legal matters that surround this story. We are also beneficiaries of journalistic research published by Santiago O’Donnell and Guillermo Berasategui, who have contributed greatly to the knowledge of the hidden web of asset-stripping and business fraud, together with judge Roberto Gallardo and his criminal complaint, which added important data to be able to reconstruct that framework.
Finally, this book is also part of a cooperative effort, edited, designed, and printed by worker cooperatives. It is also, in that sense, an integral part of the self-management movement.
Whatever happens after the arbitrary end of this book, which is required by circumstances and our time, which is limited by publishing and writing needs, we are convinced that the ending remains open, even if the correlation of forces seems indicate something else. It remains so because of the workers’ struggle and, since that struggle is going to continue, we know the next edition will have a happier and less uncertain ending.