We Future Challenge Nicolas 28.03

8/9/2019 We Future Challenge Nicolas 28.03

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Milagro

tags > Milagro, Argentina, Tupac Amaru, leadership, trust

Nicols Tereschuk

Nicols Tereschuk is an Argentinean political scientist

and journalist. He is editor of a personal blog of politi-

cal discussion (http://vidabinaria.blogspot.com) and

co-editor of the collective blog http://artepolitica.com.

Sebastin Miquel

Sebastin Miquel is an Argentinean photographer and

political scientist. Works as a free-lance photographer.

Has developed the series "Abya Yala, Sons of The Land,

Documental Photography about Tupac Amaru", expo-

sed at the Palais de Glace, in Buenos Aires.


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Milagro is Spanish for miracle which is whatmany think Milagro Sala has accomplished. Likeother jobless groups in Argentina her organization,Tumac Amaru (named after a revolutionary thcentury Inca), received money from the government.But unlike most of them, the organization of thisdiminutive Indian woman has gained the love and

respect of her people.

After the Argentine economy recovered, the govern-ment channeled money for food and housing tosocial groups in poor regions of the country. TupacAmaru took a decision which proved to be the rightone: to empower all its members and make wise in-vestment. They built two factories for bricks andsteel to reduce the cost of building new housing.And their move paid dividends. In the northernJujuy province the government spends over $ ,

to build a family house whereas it costs Tupac Amaru just $ , and their houses are built at four timesthe speeds of state-contracted construction com-panies. Their logic of autonomy and intelligentspending also ensures sustainability for the projects.

Another key aspect of the Tupac Amaru philosophyis the way it seeks to give people true human rights,to make them feel they can do as well in life as richerpeople. For instance, they decided to build an aqua-tic park in a neighborhood where people never

even dreamed of having a swimming pool. Or a parkfor kids, with big dinosaurs and cartoon charactersfigures that seems like Disney World to the boysand girls of neighborhoods that were shanty townsonly a few years back. As they say, The poor havea right to fun.

Many lives in one

Who is Milagro Sala? And why does she go againstthe grain of traditional politics in North Argentina?

A native American Kolla, Milagro grew up in awhite family until she was . From that time onshe remembers being segregated from the highlystratified and traditional Jujuy society where thecolor of her skin was enough to keep her out of thepublic pool where rich white kids played in the hotnorthern summers. Her life was played out on thestreets where she quickly developed a familiaritywith drugs, poverty, violence and police harass-ment. It was also the time when she realized that

she would never meet her biological mother, oneof her abiding dreams.

Since her first active involvement in politics, Salaknew the truth of Juan Peron dictum that organiza-tion beats time. She organized a protest for betterfood and was arrested during a scuffle with local

police. Later on she became a public service officialand became involved in the trade union where shefought against neoliberal reforms in Jujuy.

The Argentinean crash of a fall of over points on GNP left the poor regions of the coun-try clamoring for food and shelter and strengthenedsolidarity between people in poor neighborhoods.In the shanty towns around Buenos Aires and theeven poorer areas in the north, mothers were de-sperate to feed their children and looked to mutual

self-help, government hand-outs and other newways, making it easier for leaders like Milagro tobring people together. She was trained in the

s when various sections protested against theneoliberal reforms privatization, the open eco-nomy and the dominance of the financial sector which caused a tripling of unemployment and in amere ten years a widening of the gap between therichest and poorest sections of society from a factorof to a factor of . The then president CarlosMenem was the best disciple of IMF policies and

privatization boosted the fortunes of foreign capitalcompanies while thousands of small businesseswent broke. Unemployment, inequality and thecorruption of public services (education, health, justice) for the poor peaked in . With the eco-nomy in deep recession, that years mid-termelections were a defeat not only for the party of theformer president Fernando de la Ra but for thewhole of the political class as large swathes ofvoters protested against traditional political partiesby voting for Homer Simpson or other cartoon cha-

racters over actual candidates. When the govern-ment fell in the middle of a major financial, politicaland social crisis, the streets resounded with the cryAll of them, go home!!. The middle classes sawtheir savings gobbled by bankers who were bailedout by the state. Workers suffered as their salarieswere weakened by devaluation and inflation. Andthe unemployed could not even make a living byworking in the informal grey economy.


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Tupac Amaru

Tupac Amaru took off when Milagro Sala started toorganize her neighbors to feed the children ofstarving families. When we went on the streets todemonstrate, we had good TV coverage but we stillhad nothing to eat, she remembers, *_speaking at

a local TV show._*

When the political turmoil of passed, after an

economic recovery based on devaluation of thepeso and a boom in exports, the poorest peoplestarted to receive government help which came ina variety of channels but mainly from the rulingJusticialista party. This was the time when the ideaof letting people build their own houses was firstfloated. We went to Buenos Aires to ask for money.The government refused because we werent ableto show them any experience in this field whichwas actually true, we had none! We fought hard forthe funding though. We told them we had coope-

rative groups already formed, the skills needed andthe land. Once the money was secured, a wholeorganization was set up through the indefatigableleadership of this Kolla native woman with buil-der groups defined and ready to receive materialsto start their job. Things went much better thanthey would have done under a private contractor.

Milagro Sala led her people to a better use of public

funding and also tackled alcohol and drugs two

issues which were endemic problems for the peopleof the Arid Puna region. One of the obligations forpeople joining Tupac Amaru is to avoid addictionto alcohol and drugs and the best way of doing this,as Sala says, is to give them stable employment.Delinquency, unemployment and a lack of personalprojects were also major issues in the poor neigh-borhoods of San Salvador de Jujuy yet through itsactivities Tupac Amaru has actually lowered crimefigures in the region. To tackle the high schooldrop-out rate, Tupac Amaru members must not


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only go to school and learn to read and write butare also encouraged to strive for the higher levels ofthe educative system. We need professionals toserve in their own neighborhoods, Milagro says_*in a local documentary about her life*._ And interms of domestic violence, Tupac Amaru empo-wers women in their neighborhoods to seek help

and denounce violence against them. In a traditio-nal society like Jujuy, violence against women goeslargely unpunished. Even though national laws doprotect children and women, local officials arefrequently unwilling to apply them. Today TupacAmara is about much more than food and housing.It has also set up health and education services andthrough its agencies poor Native American boysand girls can now play sports like hockey or waterpolo which were once the exclusive preserve of therich.

Tupac Amaru is different from other social organi-zations in Argentina because its main focus is onconcrete achievements like employment, housing,and food. Some political sectors in Jujuy are veryupset with us because they also receive money forhousing, but their money always goes missing,Milagro Sala has repeatedly told the national press.Big media groups in Buenos Aires accuse Sala ofusing violent methods, but she says that whatthey really fear is the collective power of the ,people who make up Tupac Amaru.

Traditional politics

How do traditional politicians react to an organiza-tion like Tupac? Mainly with fear and distrust. Localpolitical parties dont like an organization whichspends less time talking and more doing hard work.Milagro Sala does not have to spend money, timeand effort in political campaigning, even thoughshe may be the most powerful woman in the northof Argentina. The kind of power she has is based

on providing the people with those housing, healthand food solutions which the state, in a highly un-equal society, has proved incapable of delivering.These solutions are made possible through the useof public investment which is neither administeredby the state nor by the private sector but by thethird party of an organization with its own set ofrules to define its own objectives and efficiencystandards.Milagro is accused of being violent. Is she? Imagine

, people ready to go on a demonstration if

their leader, the person who has shown them howto cooperate and build a better future for theirchildren, asks them to. They may be described asviolent but are they? As Milagro Sala says, Wecan show results in terms of houses, and factories.The political leaders who accuse us of being vio-lent simply cant. The leader of the old radical

party in Jujuy, Gerardo Morales, called Tupac Amarua mob. And the same message is sent out by thebig media groups. A mob is certainly an organi-zation which develops activities independentlyfrom the state. But, does that make Tupac Amarumembers a mob of gangsters?

Milestones

Milagro Sala has founded two schools for ,students and Tupac Amaru pays the salaries of

teachers. Theres not much in common here withthe gangster activities of a Cosa Nostra mob!Rights and opportunities for all could well be theslogan for Tupac Amaru. If they build a neighbor-hood, it wont look like a second best for a shantytown but will come complete with parks for chil-dren, access to schools and a good service infra-structure. If they build a school, it will look like theones in Buenos Aires: with libraries, and scienceand computer rooms. In a country where a childfrom a poor background is more likely to do badly

in school exams, projects of this kind are a valuablecontribution towards equality of opportunity.Imagine a region with a high child mortality ratelike Jujuy. Tupac Amaru has administered govern-ment money and its own resources to build twosmall hospitals staffed by over doctors andnurses. Medication, X-rays and blood tests are freefor the members of the organization. These poorpeople some of the poorest of Argentinas poor have grouped together and bought a computertomography and mamography system for the pre-

vention and cure of a range of lethal diseases. Andthey are now planning to build a rehabilitation cen-ter for the disabled. Medical services in the AltoComedero neighborhood, once the poorest in SanSalvador de Jujuy, are so good that Tupac Amaruhospitals now offer their help to state hospitals inan effort to shorten their notoriously long waitinglists.Dental care is the most recent medical service offe-red by the organization. In , Tupac Amarustarted to educate its members about the impor-


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tance of dental care, and develop preventive cam-paigns. A mere two years later and they opened adental healthcare center.

Participation, empowerment and sustainability

Milagro Sala is not the one and only leader: she

asks all members of the organization to participateand empowers them to make decisions. In ex-change, they receive concrete benefits and have theright to debate and decide in assemblies on how touse resources and which plan to follow. A weeklycongress of delegates makes the final decisi-ons. Working within this structure, they have prio-ritized the building of six factories financed withpublic resources.Sustainability is another characteristic of TupacAmaru projects. Factories supply materials to build

houses. A textile factory produces aprons for kidsand doctors. Recently, they have diversified pro-duction and are now selling the Ministry of SocialDevelopment T-shirts and shorts kit for national-level sports. This forward-looking proactive thinkingis what makes Tupac Amaru different from thepassive model of organizations for poor or un-employed people.The neo-liberal Argentina of the s saw theemergence of / piqueteros / groups of organizedunemployed who demonstrated to gain the go-

vernments attention. The first major social plan tohelp the unemployed was put together in . Itprovided most poor families with dollars amonth. By large-scale protests and unrest hadabated by but there were still many / piquete-ros / groups asking the government for money.Even though some of these groups could show spe-cific advances for their people, most depended ona life-line of public support for their survival andsome found their power ebbing away as membersstarted to find jobs. Nothing of this kind has hap-

pened to Tupac Amaru with its close cultural affi-liation to northern Kollas.

Native Americans

Until the last major economic crisis in , Argen-tina had considered itself as the most Europeancountry in Latin America in a self-understandingthat originated in the th century when hundredsof thousands of Europeans arrived in the country insearch of a better life. The rich owners of the estan-

cias, the powerful of the time, encouraged im-migration as they believed it meant people fromnorthern Europe. But things did not happen accor-ding to plan and instead a wave of mostly illiterateSpanish and Italian families arrived in Buenos Aires.The European image of Argentina asserted its do-minance reinforced by an extensive education pro-

gram guaranteeing access to public and freeschools for most of the population. The educationsystem neglected diversity and inculcated an un-derstanding of Argentina not as a multi-cultural,multi-ethnic country but rather as a nation whoseorigins were to be found in a crucible of races.This constructed image, in which racial conflictswere absent from the public eye, tended to hide thereality of discrimination, private violence and ex-ploitation that the Native Americans of Argentinawere subject to.

The political vision nurtured by Tupac Amaru tendsto break this image. Diversity has finally been re-cognized, and as Max Quispe, a member of the na-tional board of Tupac Amaru puts it, Every poorperson has a bad time, but the color of your skin isan extra mark against you. Quispe says that Tupachas a native American vision by rising the Whipala(the flag of the Aymara Quishwa people). You learnthat Tupac Amaru exists. You learn more about con-flicts you were only vaguely aware of. You realizeyou are a son of the land. We have a great chal-

lenge now which is to come together with, meetand grow stronger with Mapuches, Quom, Kollas,Guaranes, and every race of people. We must re-cover our identity, our land, our languages. NativeAmerican have now woken up! Our time hascome!The spread of such ideas has been encouraged bythe Bolivian president Evo Morales who became thecontinents first Native American head of state. In arecent meeting with different ethnic groups, Mila-gro Sala expressed a feeling that is growing across

the Andean region, They wanted to divide us, butwe are showing them that we are closer than ever.They could not conquer us. Comrade Evo Moralesshows us the strength that lies in us. We follow hisexample.

Avoiding isolation

The Tupac Amaru position is not based in a strategyof political or social isolation. Milagro Sala is partof one of the two trade unions federations of Ar-


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gentina, the left-leaning Central de los TrabajadoresArgentinos (CTA). She has an extremely fluent rela-tionship with the most prominent political and so-cial leaders in the country. Recently she appearedat the National Congress in support of the hetero-dox economist Mercedes Marc del Pont as presi-dent of the Central Bank of Argentina.This woman, who was abandoned as a baby in acardboard box by her parents, has become a trueleader by empowering her own people. For herpower isnt a matter of command and control but of

serving peoples needs and of going the extra mile.For example, a few weeks ago she had a meetingwith Science and Technology Minister, Lino Bara-ao, to talk about funding a Center of InnovativeTechnologies in new form of governmentTupacpartnership.Yet all the work of Milagro Sala and the TupacAmaru, as spectacular and impressive as it mightbe, unfolds against the backdrop of a series of deependemic fissures in Argentinean society. First andforemost there is the pattern of growing inequality

which reached record levels after more than years of democratic governance. In the wake of thestate terrorism of the last dictatorship and follo-wing the break-up of the pseudo welfare statemodel which had prevailed since the s, politi-cians did extremely badly in some fields, especiallywhen it came to income distribution policies. Criti-cized for adherence to IMF policies, Radical and Pe-ronist governments were not able to strengthensovereign policies for the majority of the people.Only after the crash and the boom in commo-

dity exports did governments start to think aboutacting in an autonomous way and introduce speci-fic policies to combat poverty, like the dollar perchild monthly benefit for all unemployed families.Tupac Amaru acts against a further deficiency inArgentina which is particularly notable in its nort-hern region the lack of state investment in infra-structure and basic services. If we exist as a socialorganization is because the politicians got itwrong, says Milagro Sala. Although the organiza-tion flaunts revolutionary icons Tupac Amaru II,

Ernesto Che Guevara, and Eva Pern at all itspublic demonstrations, causing fear and distrustamong conservative political leaders, its slogans arefar from subversive. Who are we? shouts MilagroSala. Tupac Amaru, members of the organizationroar in answer. What do we want? Work, Edu-cation and Health!. They chant. In Argentina theseare constitutional rights for every citizen. Even so,many poor families have not been able to livedecent lives for generations now.

The future

What could the right path into the future be for anorganization like Tupac Amaru? Should it replacestate policy-making in certain regions? Will it bepossible to maintain coordinated activities (statefunding and control and Tupac work)? ShouldMilagro Sala step into politics and open up her pro-posals for the whole of Jujuy society? Is it a rightmove when social organizations become politi-cal?


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This kind of strategy has been successfully pursuedin Bolivia by Evo Morales. As has Brazilian presidentLula Da Silva, once a local trade union leader butnow the most important politician of one of thebiggest countries in the world. The dilemma isclear: how can an organization like Tupac Amarustrengthen its capacities and extend its activitiesbeyond the northern provinces of Argentinawithout becoming just one of the others, just

another political party competing among the rest?As Milagro Sala explains, Tupac does not competewith the state, it pitches in where the state hasfailed. But what will happen if its own membersstart to act politically, and canvas for votes and sup-port far beyond Tupacs present neighborhoods?These are issues that have already affected presidentEvo Morales in Bolivia. The situation is complicatedbecause these are not simple non governmentorganizations; their strength is based upon theparticipation of people who have been neglected

by governments for generations, on the participa-tion of poor people, Native Americans who onlyrecently after the crisis of neo-liberal policies inthe s and with the help of highly talented andoriginal leaders have started to feel that theirrights are real. It was with their support that EvoMorales could take a crucial step and become apolitical leader for the majority of Bolivia, leavingrepresentation of coca-growing farmers behindhim.Milagro Sala remains a Native American from

Argentinas northern region, only now she is a well-known figure in Buenos Aires. While only traditio-nal and right-wing political leaders feared her, shecould work patiently to counter the violent imagein which the big media groups portrayed her. Butcan she get her message across to the broad majo-rity? The next few years may give us an answer.Until then, Milagro Sala will continue tellingeveryone who asks her that she is just the expres-sion of the many who dreamt they could live abetter life by organizing themselves.

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We Future Challenge Nicolas 28.03