'Que Se Vayan Todos': Of course, that slogan is still heard but more as a wish than as a distinct possibility

'Que Se Vayan Todos': Of course, that slogan is still heard but more as a wish than as a distinct possibility

The hunt for Red October...

Without any of the heightened galmour of context, it'd be easy to launch into a Brad Will stream of consciousness on Buenos Aires. So over come are you with the haunted whispering of a movement some rushed to call the most important working class uprising since Paris 1968. As the barricades of Genoa passed away in our memories as that last great summer of anti-capitalist hope

In Palermo there are some houses vandalised hastly, with the term 'the proles will be back' these are rich houses the think aylesbury roads as a point of refernce for the porteno social scale.

Motoqueros gave help during the fighting that engulfed the Plaza de Mayo during the December days, couriering rocks to the front and the injured to the back.

AST, the assemblea de San Telmo

Populated by bike couriers and the ever present dreadlocks that seem to mark them out globally.

A run down bar, the source of scores of grafitti scouring the area and the city?

Meat ball stew and heavily creamed, mashed potatoes served alongside a thin soup, some bread and a carmelised apple for desert. Served by a bald, pot-bellied man with a blue overoatt with a patch consisting of a cirlced 'A' with comedore populaire emblazoned around it in a half arch.

Beside us a twenty something year old woman and an older lady hold conference with an agitated family gathered around an old school table that looks like it passes for a reception. Behind the old table, cardboard boxes are legion, packed and tidied the fruit of the carteneros evenings in the dust of daylight and night and the space where third world survival collides with the first world of high street shopping fistricts. In the weeks before we arrived a law was introduced banning the collection of cardboard as the informal economy was undercutting official business.

Ahorrista graffitti all over the banks

A lot of graffitti commemorates the victims Lopez and Vegas, but not mere passive victims but activists in the autonomous movement of the unemployed,

The gap between housing along the motorway on the way into Buenos Aires, these Miserable towns 'villas'

Posters for the striking telefonica lockout - autogestion media - streams of street art - the permently walled state pariliment - barricades framing Hospital strike graffitti - cuts go back to economic minister Cavello

Comedor Comunitario

The asamblea popular Plazo Dorrego - selling handbags through the window to tourists

Centro de Jubiladis, Nuevo Horizantes - these old women sit around in a circle and its a false dawn as the term retirement comes to mind.

Across the city on the voluminous subway, as scours of kids selling religious medallions hand them out to you and pour luxurious description on their magic before gathering each and everyone back up again and hopping on to the next carriage.

Betty, a twenty two year old from the neighbourhood who became involved in the movement and stuck with her assembly. described the situation with the aborition laws (insert wikipedia'd info here) , then how the day after the pickateers were shot the neighbourhood opened up the place, an old factory used for freeze storage and then closed down - some 24 year old businessman bought it out before it collapsed and just left it there.

Veggie food delivered veggie milansea a breaded over (discuss micro enterprises and how it followed you all over city) - screen pressing tee shirts for a local business and handicrafts to be sold on street stalls, handicraft jewellry seems a prime diet of the informal economy, some chilenos hippies making a trip to La Paz to stock up their ruck sacks and sell them back in the bohemion market that gathers around Snatiagos art museum every Sunday.

Severed Head of State makes a sharp contrast to the sleazy mid 1990's techno steming from the back packer party central that is our hostel FOR THE FIRST TIME A BACK PACKER TOURSIT DESTENTION ON A MASS SCALE

In the Zizek Club down in San Telmo, the urbane consumer class dish out 10 pesos to listen to a DJ from the states dance Pee Diddy style, yelling ' i do it all hour like Austin Power' while a band called Maetimatike encourage them to 'bombo claap - clap your hands.'. In the sort of early milenium street wear, that meant leaving one tracksuit bottom leg up regardless if you had no intention of cycling a bike

Americans in our hostel were dishing out 40 club for club in Palermo

National rehabilition around the acceptance of the mothers of plaza de mayo

the racial aspect of it is hard to ignore, with many assumed to a third world existence moments away from others opulently living up a predominantly, white and rich hertigage.

All of the assemblies we visited featured the same poster for a Lopex demo, all of the m that is apart from the punk one which seemed critical of any discourse that engaged with the state at allowed

University party and student elections, turly like walking into a scene from a movie on 1968, this was student revolution as Hollywood imagined it. Over sized pint glasses for your scoops and and chairs piled against a door more for storage than anything bringing to mind the spirirt of occuaption. The Assamblea over at Medrano would have nothing to do with it.

Who worked within the assembly.

Assamblea Popular Plaza Dorrego, occupied on January 22, originally met in the tourist square famed for its massive tango sesssions

sitting in the restaurants with kids selling stickers

A gernal prior to the 'dirty war' said 'we are going to have to kill 50,000 people, 25, 000 subversives, 20,000 sympathesiers and we will make 5,000 mistakes.'

Not a new struggle goes back to the weeks of riots in Chubet in Patagonia, if it is a struggle against neo-liberal hegemony

the idea of "Fixing things with wire."

Away from the maddening crowds and in a bar called La Tanguerra De Roberto over near Plaza Almagro, popuarl with local leftists and Americans popping into study the movemnet for dissertations at the unviesrity as well - the cartenero collection point, dusty old trucks straight out of the old opening credits for the beverly hill billies cuts across the romaticised idea of autonomy in the informal economy

Tango, an emo laced latin tales of love lurching straight from the heart.

The petrol station outside covered in banners proclaiming 'two meso since NAFTA' '2 meso since Sueldo'

Our companions explains that this site is not as common as it once was. Bus station near Ritmo, CUBA MTD 'Libertad a chaco Berroz!" another political prisoner, amongst the many while the state takes up the discourse of the dirty war to salviate the opposition movements. So its on to an Andesmar bus, with reclining leather chairs and a world away from the chicken bus tales of Raymor Ryan.

The two murdered picqueterros, Dario Santillan and Maxi Kosteki appear in stencil form like patron saints of a whispered movement. You hear its echoes everywhere, but you have yet to chase it down.

The FORA building, stuck agitated in a sense of its own collosoll history. Tiny museum but an absurd collection of an archive, massive backing board , footage of a direct action and attempted land occupation by sections of the housing movement. Discussions among many there, including some recognisable faces from one of the assemblies we had visited on the actual status of the movement. Then it was Super Okupidos, theis dreadful documentary or early peice of riot porn from the spanish end of the autonomous movemnet, about these suposedly super powered Squatters. Moved between badly choreographed street stunts designed for the gilm and a tale of resistance to eviction.

It'd be nice to flesh and legitimise my own thoughts by wrapping them around some choicely selected replies by the interviewee as a justification and a cushion, that's what real journalists out there in the grown up world do I hear. Instead I've opted instead to lash it up here, good and proper Indymedia style with not a second to spare, not a glance to editing.

Biblioteca Popular Jose Ingenieros www.nodo50/bpji over on Ramirez de Velasco

The price of a pair of converse?

drop out hippy movements