The struggle moves to the legislature The expropriation bill that Marcelo Ruarte mentioned was presented to the Legislature of the City of Buenos Aires by Diego Kravetz, a legislator and also the cooperative’s lawyer, although due to his position in the Parliament of Buenos Aires, the representation of the cooperative was being covered by his sister Florencia. The tool of expropriation laws had already been used widely to be able to legally consolidate the recovery of businesses and factories of… Read More »BAUEN, day 64

Ruarte summed up the situation in these terms in those days: We what we have through the judge in the bankruptcy case is custody of the property. Later, we’re in contact with the Government of the City, we’re advancing on expropriation, working on an enormous tax debt this gentleman who calls himself the owner has. So, because of that, we want to see how much the debt is, how much the hotel is worth. And because of that, if politicians… Read More »BAUEN, day 63

Chapter 9 Macrismo takes the stage: the “Morando Law” While the judicial minuet was going on behind the scenes, the BAUEN workers were confronted with a more concrete threat. After the Cromagnon massacre (see sidebar, below), the product of systematic and long-standing corruption between the business community and the government of the City of Buenos Aires, the highly sensitive issue of safety at shows became the excuse to close numerous recreational spaces that had been open to the public. In… Read More »BAUEN, day 62

And, what’s more, why did judge Hualde herself, having noted the mismatch of the dates of the transactions, decide to ignore it, ruling that the cooperative had to be evicted from the hotel and crediting ownership to Mercoteles? Of course, none of this was a surprise to the workers. Marcelo Iurcovich never stopped presenting himself to them as the boss, the real boss, as he did on the day of the occupation of the hotel in March of 2003. All… Read More »BAUEN, day 61

The reader will be able to discern a wide incongruity in the dates. Not only the last, in which Mercoteles (which is to say, the front men of the Iurcoviches) appears before the court, which “understands” the bankruptcy of Solari SA three and a half years after having acquired ownership. There’s something much more serious, which we will put in words that the judge Paula Hualde herself used in her finding of first instance on July 20, 2007, in an… Read More »BAUEN, day 60

Chronicle of a sale foretold On July 25th, 2001 (or June 25th, according to Berasategui and Gallardo), arguing that the sale to Solari was void because he had not finished paying (leaving aside the issue of the hotel itself, with the debt to BANADE), Marcelo Iurcovich sold the BAUEN to Mercoteles, an enterprise that had been registered at the Inspector General of Justice only shortly beforehand, and with negligible capital. That is to say, they sold the hotel to themselves.… Read More »BAUEN, day 59

The issue of when and how this sale took place is key, because it is what protects the pretensions of the Iurcoviches and allows them to appear over and over, demanding the eviction of the BAUEN. The deed to the building at Callao 360 appeared in their hands, almost by magic. Recall that when the bankruptcy took place and over the first years of the recovery of the hotel by the workers, these same people apparently had nothing to do… Read More »BAUEN, day 58

The chicken or the egg The Iurcovich group was now under the control of Hugo, the son of the founder, Marcelo, but it still had the same old tricks. For them, the hotel had always been their property. In that sense, they had the advantage of really knowing what arguments they had to demand its return. While the prevailing version was that the Iurcoviches were only creditors to Solari, and as owners of the Bauen brand, the issue seemed tricky… Read More »BAUEN, day 57

So, where did the capital come from to set up and equip the rooms, to outfit the bar and the rooms and the rest of the arrangements discussed above? The answer is clear: from labor. From the work of the cooperative members, from the solidarity of workers at other recovered businesses, and from the community. It came from the solidarity of thousands of people who collaborated with a few coins when the BAUEN workers went out to the streets looking… Read More »BAUEN, day 56

Chapter 8 The return of the ones who never left: the Iurcoviches reappear By the middle of 2005, as we’ve seen, the workers in the BAUEN cooperative had managed—with enormous effort—to put this large hotel back on its feet after it had been abandoned by the employers. What had been a boarded-up, empty building a couple of years earlier had been filled with life and work, thanks to the cooperative. A small list of accomplishments was included in the expropriation… Read More »BAUEN, day 55