“I felt like I had a large debt to my family all the need they had experienced, and for all the times I wasn’t able be with them,” continues Plácido, who remembers:
When my daughter was fourteen years old, I promised myself that I was going to throw her a fifteenth birthday party. But another child was born, and things had become more difficult in economic terms. The baby was born in January of 2003, and everything was up in the air, I was being pulled back and forth, and was not fulfilling my functions as head of the family very well, or here, either. The lack of resources had me cornered. My desperation to follow through came because we had never celebrated her birthday. There were always other, more important expenses. There was always work, work. So, I missed many moments of enjoying my family, of being with the children at important times. It really bothered me that the bosses that steals even that from us, the pleasure of being with our children.
The idea that emerged as “crazy” started to take shape in the most unexpected way. The group that had begun to meet in their own cooperative, without having any idea what a recovered business was, was now occupying one of the most important hotels in Buenos Aires, with various rooms for throwing parties. Plácido continues:
At that time, contact with the BAUEN was constant, there was fraternity and solidarity in all aspects, there was a constant give and take. I remember that when we entered the hotel by force in 2003 and saw those abandoned rooms, I dreamed of recovering them to be able to hold my daughter’s party there. But it was a dream, just like when we dreamed here of the day we would finally work for ourselves, with a print shop in our hands. But, just like our dream came true, so did theirs.