The Great Homeland The dividing line between the prolonged period of “holding on” — the first activities — and the launch of the reactivated hotel could be drawn by the solidarity of the Bolivarian government of Venezuela. At this moment, at the beginning of 2004, the hotel had not managed to re-establish the ability to provide housing. To do so, it had to get a minimum amount of resources to be able to facilitate the use of at least one… Read More »BAUEN, day 50
Soon, other projects were also located in the BAUEN. On the Callao side, with the door to the new bar, a bookstore was installed, which was there for several years. During one semester, classes were given by the Language Laboratory of the School of Philosophy and Letters of the UBA. Training courses for workers and activists of the MNER were held, as were countless initiatives that were welcomed in their meeting rooms. Around that time, another large conflict was brewing… Read More »BAUEN, day 49
The mere existence of an occupied hotel in the very center of the city of Buenos Aires quickly turned the BAUEN into a center of political and union activities. The MNER itself started to use the rooms for meetings and assemblies. October 11, 2003, for example, a debate was held about legislation for recovered businesses, led by “the Basque” Murúa, José Abelli, and lawyer Diego Kravetz (already a Deputy-elect), to which various legal experts were invited, including some who were… Read More »BAUEN, day 48
Chapter 7 The recovered hotel While Rosalía Peñarrieta’s birthday was the key to rehabilitating the event rooms, the key to the guest rooms, which is to say, the hotel itself, was still missing. In spite of the efforts of the cooperative workers, a year after the occupation, they were still not in conditions to accommodate guests. Twenty stories of hotel rooms needed furniture, sheets, repairs, hot water, paint, etc. All that was being done, little by little, story by story.… Read More »BAUEN, day 47
The party was held at the beginning of October of 2003, and marked the return of food and hospitality activities to the building at Callao 360—this time, without the boss. As Plácido says: The bitterness of not being able to sufficiently satisfy the needs of my family for a year was mixed with the sweetness of being able to pay the debt to my daughter, thanks to the solidarity of all the compañeros. So, I went down in history as… Read More »BAUEN, day 46
Two plans were combined: on the one hand, Plácido wanted to organize his daughter’s birthday party, though he didn’t have the resources, and was trying get them through the solidarity of various sectors; and on the other hand, the workers at the BAUEN cooperative no longer only wanted to help out a compañero who had helped them to recover the hotel, but as reason to return to restore the rooms, kitchen, and other parts of the building, and give themselves… Read More »BAUEN, day 45
“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… Read More »BAUEN, day 44
The first event: recovered business to recovered business “Meanwhile, we put the rooms in a condition to be able to work. This took us about a year, before we had our first client, the quinceañera [fifteenth birthday party] of compañero Plácido’s daughter (Plácido belongs to the Chilavert cooperative). That was when we started holding events in the rooms. We barely made enough to replenish our supplies and eat,” remembers Gladys of this difficult period. Plácido Peñarrieta, worker and president of… Read More »BAUEN, day 43
From there, with the disputes overcome, the “holding on” was organized better, with tasks distributed according to people’s capacities and availability of time. The first thing that occurred to them was that all the available unused and wasted material could get a little money. They contacted a depository of recyclable materials to see what could be rescued. There was lots of old folders, useless papers, irons that couldn’t be fixed, ruined mattresses, and other leftover furniture. Some people pulled the… Read More »BAUEN, day 42
Chapter 6 Holding on Taking over the hotel was simple compared with the long period of resistance immediately afterwards, which the workers usually call el aguante, “the holding on.” They found themselves inside an immense building, in a state of total abandonment, in no condition to work. The door on Callao Avenue was boarded up, the furniture had disappeared, and every part of the hotel needed to be repaired and cleaned before they could even start to think about recovering… Read More »BAUEN, day 41