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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

Resistance and solidarity continue Throughout the following years, the legal case in which the original judge ruled that the cooperative had to leave the hotel, continued to advance through different levels of the judiciary, always with unfavorable result for workers. The appeal by the cooperative’s lawyers was granted by the judge and then rejected in appellate court on May 20th, 2008, by the National Chamber of Appeals for Commerce, Room C. In that presentation, the Secretariat of Human Rights of… Read More »BAUEN, day 82

As the years went by, FACTA became consolidated as an organization with a national reach, with affiliated cooperatives in different regions, like the provinces of Jujuy, Salta, Santa Fe, Entre Ríos, Cordoba, Mendoza, San Juan, La Rioja, Catamarca, La Pampa, Formosa, Chaco, and Buenos Aires and the City of Buenos Aires, growing to include some 60 organizations. The cooperatives of FACTA belong to different industries and areas: textiles, printing, audiovisual arts, metallurgy, tourism, gastronomy, food production, shoemaking, construction, paintings, glass,… Read More »BAUEN, day 81

But in contrast to MNER, which was made up exclusively of recovered businesses, the Federation intended from its beginning to expand the connection with other collectives of self-managed workers. Resino continues: We are worker cooperatives that are self-managed businesses, because some are recovered businesses and others are cooperatives, which, while they are not recovered businesses in the broad sense of the word, they are cooperatives that have made it possible to recover work and the dignity of the compañeros that… Read More »BAUEN, day 80

The formation of FACTA While these disputes were going on in the judicial and legislative spheres, the old mother organization of the recovered businesses, the National Movement of Recovered Businesses, was thrown into crisis. Political differences and diverging organizational practices had reached a point of no return that brought on a new division in the MNER. A significant part of the movement opted to create a federation of cooperatives in place of the lax, top-down structure they had used until… Read More »BAUEN, day 79

Chapter 11 Resistance and self-management The eviction ordered by judge Paula Hualde unleashed a wave of solidarity with the BAUEN workers that grew endlessly from then on. If there is one thing the recovery of the downtown hotel had, it was solidarity. It received all kinds of groups of popular struggle in its rooms and its hospitality, which led to that open-door policy coming back toward them in the difficult times that followed. The news of the eviction order dropped… Read More »BAUEN, day 78