Exchange Rising? Karl Polanyi and Contentious Politics in Contemporary Latin America

Exchange Rising?Karl Polanyi and Contentious Politics

in Contemporary Latin America

Eduardo Silva

ABSTRACT

Free-market reforms in the last quarter of the twentieth centuryweakened the point of production—labor unions—as the source ofeffective nonparty political countermovement to liberal capitalism.Has another significant source of societal resistance arisen in asso-ciation with the resurgence of market economics? Building on thework of Karl Polanyi, this article argues that circuits of exchange—the commodification of labor, land, and money—can be powerfulsources of movement against contemporary forms of free-marketcapitalism. It draws on the cases of Argentina, Bolivia, and Ecuadorto explore how Polanyi’s exchange-based approach helps to eluci-date three phenomena: the great variety of identities behind themyriad movements against free-market capitalism, the emergenceof community as a powerful locus for organizing, and the prolifer-ation of new forms of transgressive and highly disruptive directaction to reinforce the debilitated effectiveness of the strike.

The resurgence of market economics against Keynesianism and social-ism during the last quarter of the twentieth century raised important

questions regarding the sources of societal countermovement to theglobal spread of the market. Historically, it was workers who spearheadedmobilization against capitalism in the belief that the point of production—especially large-scale industrial enterprise—was the main source of labor’snonparty political power. It provided the principles for identity (workers),organization (unions), and disruptive action (strikes) that had given it thecapacity to challenge free-market capitalism for most of the century, withvarying degrees of success (Silver 2003; Burawoy 2003).

To be sure, alliances between labor and populist parties providedthe political power to implement policies that protected individuals frommarkets. But organized workers and their capacity for mobilization werea key nonparty political societal source of advocacy and defense ofthose protections. Ironically, free-market reformers shared this interpre-tation of labor power. Thus, many of their policies—along with theforces of economic globalization—intentionally weakened organized

© 2012 University of MiamiDOI: 10.1111/j.1548-2456.2012.00163.x

Eduardo Silva is the Lydian Chair of the Department of Political Science atTulane University. [email protected]

labor (Cook 2007). Deindustrialization, privatization, deregulation, andbusiness-friendly labor codes debilitated the workplace as the locusfrom which to organize effective societal countermovement, thus draw-ing the teeth from one of free-market capitalism’s principal historicalenemies (Burgess 2004; Kurtz 2004).

In Latin America, market liberalization reformed key components ofboth import substitution industrialization and the region’s version of thewelfare state. Having undermined organized labor and its party politicalallies, Latin America’s market reformers believed that they had van-quished the main source of opposition to the construction of a new free-market socioeconomic order (Soros 1998; Stiglitz 2002). The remainingfragmented universe of movements was not thought to be a seriousthreat. And yet, counter to expectation, as labor declined, other socialmovements gained strength and mobilized against market liberalizationand its politics. In some countries, they toppled pro–free-market gov-ernments and replaced them with more reformist ones (Silva 2009). Inother countries, they contributed to electoral politics that eventuallyousted unconditional supporters of the Washington Consensus for free-market economics from power.1

What might be the principal source of movement for those newerforms of social resistance to market liberalism? How and why does thisresistance differ from historical patterns of mobilization against capital-ism by workers? This article examines cycles of mobilization from themid-1980s to the early 2000s in Argentina, Bolivia, and Ecuador to sug-gest some answers to these questions. These cases most dramaticallyshow the relevance of Karl Polanyi’s (1957) theory that circuits ofexchange in capitalism—the commodification of labor, land, andmoney—can be powerful sources of mobilization against resurgentmarket economics in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

This article is not intended as a general explanation for the differ-ent forms that countermovements to market liberalization may take. Nordoes it argue that resistance by organized workers is irrelevant. Its pur-pose is to show how we might apply Polanyi’s rather abstract theoreti-cal propositions about resistance to market society in more concreteterms and thereby highlight their usefulness for explaining a significantportion of the “big picture” of societal mobilization against contempo-rary market liberalism in Latin America. Polanyi himself did not give usmuch of a sense of the variety of actors, locations, organizational pat-terns, and forms of resistance that might be involved. In an effort toaddress this limitation, this article tracks the transition from one pre-dominant mode of societal resistance associated with a state-led capi-talist stage of development to another one associated with market lib-eralism. In short, it seeks to anchor Polanyi’s “double movement” inparticular patterns and stages of capitalist development in order more

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effectively to couple the logic of accumulation and liberalization with itsmost characteristic patterns of societal resistance.

We also need a framework to explain how those varied movementsrecognized the common threat that recommodification posed and thenformed horizontal linkages, which augmented their power. The con-tentious politics literature offers such a framework with its focus on howthe mechanisms of threat, framing, and brokerage contribute to suchprocesses (McAdam et al. 2001). Building on that literature, this articleexamines the role of circuits of exchange in the creation of threats, inframing, and in the emergence of effective repertoires of contentionbeyond the strike.

That said, it should be clearly noted that defensive reactions tointensified commodification were not “pure,” meaning that they werenot based solely on that principle. They mixed with other sources ofidentity, organization, and disruptive action, such as ethnicity and cul-ture, in the case of indigenous peoples. Nor did organized labor andstrikes just disappear or become irrelevant. They continued to playimportant roles in the struggle against market liberalism, but togetherwith many other movements based on different organizing principlesthat developed novel forms of transgressive disruptive action. It is alsoclear that organized labor usually became one more actor among manymobilizing against market liberalization, and not necessarily the leadingone, either; it frequently followed or played supportive roles. At othertimes, workers simply struggled for organizational survival (Burgess2004; Cook 2007; Murillo 2001). Of course, peasants, urban popular sec-tors, and indigenous people had also raised demands, organized, andprotested along exchange-based lines in the earlier period of state-ledcapitalism. But back then they tended to be subordinate to the policyagendas set by the then organizationally politically dominant urbanlabor sector.

In sum, motivation for resistance, identities, organizational form,and types of action based on the point of production and circuits ofexchange existed side by side in the previous period of state-led devel-opment, as well as in the more recent period of market liberalization.As a result, grievances, claims, and demands based on those two logicsof resistance may appear concurrently. But that does not preclude thepossibility that one logic may predominate in terms of which subalternsocial groups possess the most significant political impact, how theyorganize, and the types of direct action they employ. The distinction hasimplications for strategies of resistance.

This study explores the role of exchange in societal resistance tocontemporary market liberalization in Argentina, Bolivia, and Ecuadorprecisely because these societies produced the strongest backlashes.Thus, in these contexts, the utility of circuits of exchange as a significant

SILVA: CONTESTING FREE-MARKET CAPITALISM 3

underlying source of societal resistance is most readily apprehended.The point is to use the cases to highlight key characteristics of the under-lying logic instead of attempting mechanical correlations. To be sure,there are differences in the timing, depth, and intensity of national pop-ulism, industrialization, the strength of organized labor, and marketreforms in these three cases.2 However, the differences in the relativestrength of organized labor across cases matter less than that before themarket liberalization push in each country, labor unions were consideredto be the major societal form of resistance to marketization. Other socialmovement organizations—to the extent that they existed—were treatedas subordinate or of little political consequence. By the same token, dif-ferences in the timing and relative degree of industrialization, the inten-sity of national populist policies, and the extent of market reforms werenot as important as that in all three cases, the state made concertedefforts to roll back whatever protections from the market that subalternsocial groups (including labor) may have gained. Those policies and thenegative effects of market liberalization elicited similar responses from avariety of social sectors (including workers). They mobilized, frequentlywith new and powerful social actors in the lead.

It is also clear that the region exhibited great variation in how soci-eties responded to market liberalization. In some, a similar backlashoccurred, but without horizontal linkages between the different groups.As a result, they failed to develop into a coherent national political force.This occurred in Venezuela after 1992 and in Mexico with the Zapatistamovement beginning in 1994 and later developments in Oaxaca. Othercountries experienced the Polanyan “double movement” in a very dif-ferent way, not through social protest but through an electoral empow-erment of institutionalized leftist parties, as in Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay.However, it is beyond the scope of this article to develop a full expla-nation for variation in the existence or forms of double movements,which in theory could include socialist revolution or fascism.

TWO SOURCES OF SOCIETAL COUNTERMOVEMENTTO FREE-MARKET CAPITALISM: PRODUCTION ANDEXCHANGE

An enduring debate developed in the twentieth century over the impor-tance of circuits of production or circuits of exchange as the principalsource for the identities, organization, and action of societal counter-movement to free-market capitalism.3 The following characterization ofthat debate is necessarily stylized and anchored in ideal type construc-tions to focus attention on the consequences of their key characteristics.Space restrictions preclude a more nuanced analysis of how the mixtureof those types in the real world affects individual cases.


Based on the work of the mature Karl Marx, views favoring thepoint of production prevailed for most of the twentieth century. Theproliferation of large industrial concerns, whether in manufacturing,mining, or agribusiness, brought large numbers of exploited wage earn-ers together. The concentration of masses of people earning meagerwages in poor working conditions facilitated three processes critical forthe struggle against liberal capitalism at that time.

First, the concentration of workers was a central element in the cre-ation of shared identities, the basis of class consciousness. Throwntogether in the “satanic mills” of capitalism, individual workers realizedthat they suffered from common troubles traceable to common origins.Their impoverishment enriched their masters, who relied on coercion—overt or embedded in work rules—to keep them subordinate (Marx andEngels 1967).4 Of course, later work recognized the additional contri-butions of community and other cultural factors in working-class for-mation (Thompson 1963; Seidman 1994).

Second, the large-scale industrial workplace was ideal for buildingpotentially powerful organizations—unions—to support the struggleagainst capitalism. It provided leaders with a large pool of people toorganize. Factories facilitated communication among masses of individ-uals in common circumstances. It brought them together daily in rela-tively stable face-to-face contacts in the various divisions, bureaus, andunits of the factory—all of which was reinforced by subcultures basedon neighborhood, church, basic schooling, and leisure activities (Marxand Engels 1967; Kuczynski 2003; Thompson 1963; Seidman 1994).Large-scale enterprises made possible the organization of national-levelunion federations and confederations in and across industrial sectors.

Third, the power of the labor movement rested not only in thestrength of class consciousness and organization; it also depended onthe movement’s capacity to disrupt the process of capital accumulation,to “hurt” capital in ways that forced negotiation.5 The strike at the pointof production was an ideal tool in economies dominated by large indus-trial concerns. Companies paid attention when profits were threatened.Political strikes, of which the general strike was the maximum expres-sion, were an extension of this weapon. They were directed against thestate to change national policy and, if necessary, to topple governmentsunwilling to compromise (Crook 1931; Hyman 1972).

Karl Polanyi (1957) had a different perspective on the relationshipbetween the forces of production and social relations of production.Rather than focus the possibility of socialism primarily on the develop-ment of productive forces, he emphasized “humanity’s historic capacityto subordinate the economy to social relations” (Block and Somers 1984,77). Polanyi argues that circuits of exchange in capitalist society offer apowerful alternative principle of organization for subaltern groups


(Polanyi 1957). He maintains that people naturally resist efforts to turnlabor, land, and money into pure commodities. These are not just thingsto be bought and sold in markets over which individuals have no con-trol. Labor, land, and money embody social relations and therefore arefictitious commodities.

People need a certain amount of stability and reciprocity in socialrelations to live dignified, meaningful lives, Polanyi contends. Thisinvolves taking part in life’s rituals and having the opportunity to pursuelife’s chances in the context of just relations among status groups. Themarket, however, is too turbulent, unstable, unjust, and hardship-induc-ing. Unfettered, it destroys society. Therefore, people seek to restrict themarket and protect themselves from it. Because the experience of themarket generates challenges to it, commodification is a powerful site ofanti–free-market capitalism, as people mobilize to secure social protec-tion, civil rights, and inclusive citizenship (Burawoy 2003, 231–32;McMichael 2005, 592).

Polanyi does not claim that workers and the point of production arenot relevant sources of resistance to market society; instead, his argu-ment implies that they may not be the most significant or primary ref-erent as it interacts with other sources. Thus, his emphasis on exchangeprovides for a more flexible framework. His approach to the wellspringsof countermovement to free-market capitalism leaves the site of poten-tially transformative resistance more open than insistence on industrialworkers as the vanguard. It allows the possibility that different classes,class fractions, ethnic groups, and culturally or otherwise defined socialsubjects may be in the forefront (Burawoy 2003, 228). The locus oforganization also remains open. As the importance of the point of pro-duction declines, commodification may increase the salience of locality,community, or territory (geographic proximity) as the venue for build-ing powerful movement organizations (Burawoy 2003; Silver 2003), asalient point for this study.

An often-recognized problem with Polanyi’s work is that he predictsresistance to market society in very abstract terms. We do not get muchof a sense from him of the various actors, locations, organizational pat-terns, and forms of resistance. Moreover, analysts usually only invokehis thesis of the double movement of capitalist society and quicklymove on to their main subjects. In short, the role of commodification asa source of countermovement identities, organization, strategies, tactics,and repertoire of contention remains unstudied.6

This article addresses that gap by focusing on nationally politicallysignificant cycles of protest against free-market policies in three cases.In Argentina, Bolivia, and Ecuador between 1984 and 2003, successive,intensifying waves of contention against market liberalization helpeddefeat avowedly promarket sociopolitical forces and ushered in gov-


ernments committed to reforming free-market capitalism (Silva 2009).On a larger scale, these episodes of contention can be interpreted as themost dramatic instances of a leftward trend in Latin American politics,as resistance to market liberalization spilled over into the electoral arenaacross the region.7

This article examines how, in the midst of a relative decline oforganized labor, Polanyi’s exchange-based approach to the develop-ment of countermovement to market society helps to explain (a) thegreat variety of identities behind the myriad movements against free-market capitalism, (b) the emergence of community—territory and local-ity—as a powerful locus for organizing, and (c) the proliferation of newforms of transgressive and highly disruptive forms of direct action toreinforce the debilitated effectiveness of the strike. The flexibility of anapproach that does not give primacy to a particular social group, locusof organization, or form of action fits well with the plasticity, fluidity,and diversity of episodes of contention against market liberalization thatthese countries experienced.

We also need conceptual tools that explain the transformation ofatomized and very different types of movements into more coordinatedefforts. How did substantially diverse movements recognize commonal-ities that helped them to forge horizontal linkages? To fill this gap inPolanyi’s framework, this study draws on the literature of contentiouspolitics that focuses on the dynamics of contention (McAdam et al.2001). In particular, it concentrates on the role of threat and framingmechanisms in the process of “scaling up” mobilization. Threats pro-voke movement and mobilization when people feel that they cannotdefend themselves within established political institutions (Tarrow1998). The intensification of commodification under free-market eco-nomic, social, and political reforms threatened not just labor but virtu-ally every popular sector group, as well as farmers and peasants andmany in the middle class (especially those dependent on state employ-ment). The myriad movement organizations that developed over timerecognized the common origin of their grievances and began to frametheir struggles in terms of antineoliberalism.8 This helped them forgehorizontal linkages.

It merits mentioning that the construction of horizontal linkagesrequired a de-emphasis on class interests and identities. Building thoselinkages called for the construction of a more plural, heterogeneous his-torical subject with a different type of discourse and identity. This notionhas important implications for the political left and other progressivepolitical projects that must wrestle with the challenges of articulating amuch more broadly inclusive agenda, not to mention turning it into a gov-erning platform capable of holding such a heterogeneous coalitiontogether if and when they become government (Laclau and Mouffe 2001).


MARKET REFORMS, NATIONAL POPULISM,AND ORGANIZED LABOR

Beginning in the mid-1970s, but especially in the 1980s and 1990s, free-market economic, social, and political reforms to the national populiststate advocated by the so-called Washington Consensus substantiallyweakened organized labor in Latin America. The point here is not todefend the economic inefficiencies and political instability of thenational populist period (1930s to 1982). Instead, it is to establish abenchmark of protections from the market (decommodification) createdby national populist governments, for much mobilization against marketliberalization was a defensive reaction to recommodification of thoseprotected spaces. As mentioned earlier, the discussion necessarily drawson ideal types of the processes involved; individual cases differed intheir timing and extent. For our purposes, however, this is less signifi-cant than the knowledge that they all went through those processes andthat the relevant subaltern social groups reacted in a broadly similarmanner to the threats that market reforms posed.

Decommodification Under National Populism

National populism was Latin America’s version of the social democraticcompromise that evolved in Europe during the long twentieth century.In Europe, organized labor and labor parties played significant progres-sive roles in the reform of laissez-faire economies into mixed economieswith a commitment to full employment, labor rights, and social insur-ance. In Latin America, a coalition of urban labor, middle classes, anddomestic market–oriented bourgeoisie, mediated by the state, supportedpublic enterprise and import substitution industrialization, with itsmyriad foreign exchange and industrial subsidies.

Urban workers and state employees won formal sector employ-ment, labor rights (minimum wages, collective bargaining, the right tostrike), social insurance, and subsidies to basic consumer goods, suchas transportation, energy, and food staples. In pursuit of materialdemands, labor movements also pressured for political incorporation(Anderson 1967; Collier and Collier 1991; Cook 2007; Furtado 1976).In some cases, corporatist structures incorporated labor unionsdirectly into the state. In others, labor parties relied on labor bureaus,where unions participated in socioeconomic policy design and polit-ical strategizing. A third variant sported independent center-left par-ties that built clientelistic relationships with unions in return for votes.Elements of all three arrangements could be present in a single case.By the same token, generally more limited agrarian reform and sub-sidies benefited peasants. Although campesinos won some rights to


organize, those rights were generally weaker and subordinate tourban labor.

Latin America’s subordinate, peripheral situation in the world econ-omy meant that labor there was not as powerful as its European coun-terpart. Consequently, organized labor and labor-friendly political par-ties had to rely more on alliances with middle-class sociopolitical forcesto press for reforms (Rueschemeyer et al. 1992; Cardoso and Faletto1979; Drake 1978). Usually the state mediated those alliances throughthe terms of the national populist bargain. For example, public enter-prise and a swelling state administrative apparatus provided employ-ment for expanding middle-class sectors and the urban working class.This smoothed over strong class, status group, cultural, and ethnic dif-ferences. The same principle applied to domestic business support fornational populism. Business and labor were antagonists, but both hadan interest in import substitution industrialization. It expanded businessopportunities for national capital while labor gained employment, betterwages and working conditions, and a stronger organizational base.

Latin American labor may have been weaker than its Europeancounterpart, but it, too, led the popular sectors, and organization at thepoint of production was a significant source of its power, outside ofparty political connections and elections. The strongest and most mili-tant public and private sector unions organized the workers of thelargest strategic industries and concerns, such the mining, oil and gas,steel, and aluminum sectors and the automotive, textile, food and bev-erage, consumer durables, and pharmaceutical industries. They con-trolled labor confederations and claimed the right to lead, defend, andrepresent the interests of weaker popular sectors.

Market Reforms and Recommodification

Class tensions, crippling balance of payments difficulties, virulent fiscalcrises, and raging inflation destroyed national populism. The processbegan in the mid-1970s and snowballed in the wake of the Latin Amer-ican debt crisis of the mid-1980s. Stabilization and structural adjustmentpolicies reorganized economic and social relations according to neoclas-sical economic principles. They emphasized balanced budgets, restrictivemonetary and fiscal policies, and stable unitary foreign exchange rates.The retrenchment of the state terminated efforts to create the Latin Amer-ican equivalent of full employment policies and the welfare state. As theyreduced protections from the market, free-market reformers also drewthe teeth from organized urban and rural labor and their political allies(Haggard and Kaufman 1995; Stallings and Kaufman 1989).

First- and second-stage structural reforms substantially intensifiedthe commodification of labor, land, and money. First-stage structural


reforms liberalized finance, investment, trade, and agriculture; theyemphasized privatization of state holdings, encouraged foreign directinvestment, and reformed labor codes in favor of business (Foxley 1983;Edwards and Edwards 1986; Ramos 1986). These policies eliminated thenational populist state’s policy instruments and institutions to plan anddirect economic development, support formal sector employment, pro-vide social services, and sustain farmers and peasants (Tokman andO’Donnell 1998; Kay 2004). Formal sector employment declinedmarkedly, and precarious employment in the informal sector expanded;wages frequently suffered; income concentration increased sharply; eco-nomic volatility and financial crises intensified insecurity. Land reformin favor of agribusiness and the elimination of subsidies for smallhold-ers threatened farmers and peasants.

Meanwhile, second-stage reforms introduced market principles forthe delivery of education, health care, pensions, and social assistance.Privatization shifted risk management for these services from collectiveentities protected from markets by the public sector onto individuals inthe marketplace. Most people could not afford private services (Graham2000; Raczynski 1998; Gerstenfeld 2002; Huber and Solt 2004; Madrid2003; Abel and Lewis 2002).

Latin American countries varied in the timing of market reforms, thepolicy mix, and the extent of implementation (Haggard and Kaufman1995; Weyland 2002). To one degree or another, however, the reformshad a similar effect. Governments that committed to those reforms, andto the domestic and international sociopolitical forces that supportedthem, correctly bet that they would significantly weaken labor and itsparty allies. Thus, although unions mobilized against market liberaliza-tion, structural reform, especially privatization and labor code revisionsthat emphasized flexible labor, generally left them too numericallydepleted, fragmented, and internally divided to mount effective generalstrikes or to sustain them.9 In the best of cases, organized labor suc-ceeded only in managing its own downsizing (Murillo 2001; Cook 2007;Drake 1996). If labor threatened success, governments frequently calledstates of siege or emergency to repress them more effectively (Silva2009).

Of course, the decline of organized labor and leftist, class-basedmass movements did not mean the end of contentious politics as such.New social movements rooted in identity, cultural, ethnic, citizen, liveli-hood, and environmental concerns flourished (Slater 1985; Foweraker1995; Escobar and Alvarez 1984). Free-market reformers were not muchtroubled by these new social movements. Given their turn away fromsocialist demands and their highly fragmented nature, these postmodernnew social movements were not expected to mount sustained nation-wide leftist mobilization. They also seemed less threatening because


they fit well with liberal democracy’s emphasis on individual rights—which market reformers promoted (Yashar 2005).

EXCHANGE, THREAT, AND CONTENTIOUS POLITICS

Market reformers attempted to build a new order that, like Polanyi’sconcept of market society, sought to subordinate politics and social wel-fare to the needs of the self-regulating market economy (Polanyi 1957).Because those reforms encompassed the economic, social, and politicalspheres, they threatened a wide range of popular sector and middle-class groups, raising grievances and demands that emanated from allthree areas. These threats included loss of formal sector employment,deterioration of working conditions in remaining formal sector jobs,diminished expectations of ever entering the formal sector, rising unem-ployment, precarious and substandard employment in the burgeoninginformal sector, and declining income, all at a time of rising costs forservices in education, health, utilities, transportation, and food due toprivatization, deregulation, and the elimination of subsidies.

Land tenure and farming conditions became even more insecure forsmallholders. Income and land concentration at the top intensified. Thepolitical institutions and organizations that incorporated popular sectorsinto the polity and provided them a power base were dismantled,reformed, or undermined (Fernández-Kelly and Shefner 2006; Pérez-Saínz 2005; Abel and Lewis 2002; Stallings and Peres 2000; Tokman andO’Donnell 1998). Widespread threats to livelihoods due to recommodi-fication under market reforms generated significant socioeconomic andpolitical exclusion, which people perceived as injustice and whichthereby fed grievances and demands (Huber and Solt 2004; Wood andRoberts 2005).

Because negative changes in class situation affected wide swaths ofurban and rural labor, farmers, peasants, and middle classes, a greatvariety of social groups mobilized to defend against the threat of“neoliberal” policies as expressed in those grievances and demands(Silva 2009). This process involved new social movements based onidentity and subjectivity, such as indigenous peoples, the unemployed,pensioners, neighborhood associations, citizens organized in popularassemblies, and environmental, gender, human rights, and urban sub-sistence rights organizations.10

Because the point of production was not a relevant reference fororganizing people in these social categories, they organized by localityand community (meaning by neighborhood, borough, town, or village),as well as by territory (meaning geographical area in the countryside).However, they also operated alongside class-based groups organizedaround the point of production, especially new unions and state work-


ers, in addition to traditional organized labor and professional associa-tions, especially among state employees.

Many of the grievances and demands of popular sectors, peasants,and some middle classes were exchange-based because they sprangfrom the process of intensified commodification and the socioeconomicand political exclusion it generated. These groups clamored for policiescentered on socialization and planning that clearly sought to decom-modify economic and social life, albeit in the overall context of a capi-talist (but not free-market) economy. They demonstrated against dra-conian stabilization programs, privatization, and labor code reforms thatpushed workers into the informal sector. They demanded state inter-vention to sustain full employment and opposed the collapse of statesupport for social insurance, health, and education. They raised claimsfor wage and salary adjustments, especially in the public sector. Theyprotested strict private property rights and insisted on greater stateinvolvement in the economy by way of (re)nationalization, industrialpolicy, and greater commitment to the welfare state.

Peasants wanted state backing for land reform, cheap credit, infra-structure, and price protection.11 In Bolivia and Ecuador, these claimsintertwined with indigenous people’s demands for ethnic rights; thesegroups also shared the same socioeconomic grievances as the non-indigenous popular sectors.12 Many protests called for the reinstatementof food, fuel, transportation, and housing subsidies, as well as pricecontrols.

These sharp distinctions between the national populist period andthat of market reforms are drawn only for analytical purposes. In real-ity, exchange-based grievances, demands, and claims by peasants,urban squatter and self-help groups, migrants to cities from the coun-tryside, informal sector groups of all kinds occur in both periods. Thedifference is one of degree and national political significance. In thenational populist period, the labor movement dominated, and it wasmainly interested in expanding decommodification of the workplace,social insurance for formal sector workers, and resisting backsliding. Inthis context, when urban poor people and peasants raised demands forinclusion, it was generally with significantly less political impact thanlabor because they were more fragmented, less organized, and less sig-nificant as an electoral base. Moreover, partial gains by governmentsinterested in accommodating them blunted potential escalation of mobi-lization. In contrast, the period of market reforms witnessed a more orless concerted and sustained effort to recommodify land, labor, andmoney. In this new context of heightened exclusion and rolling back ofrights, and in the midst of a relative decline of the labor movement,exchange-based grievances, claims, and demands had the potential tobecome much more central to resistance to market liberalization than in


the previous period. In some cases, they melded with new social move-ments, such as indigenous peoples and the unemployed, that gainedsignificant national political presence.

Argentina

Argentina’s major waves of contention against market liberalizationoccurred in the second half of the 1990s and the early 2000s. Theepisodes culminated with major nationwide mobilization in December2001 and the resignation of President Fernando de la Rúa. These eventscontributed to the eventual election of a center-left administration in2003, headed by Néstor Kirchner of the Peronist Party.

Stabilization and structural adjustment policies adopted duringCarlos Menem’s two-term presidency (1989–99) significantly recom-modified labor and money.13 Over those ten years, free-market reformsgenerated significant job insecurity, unemployment, underemployment,diminished income levels, and increases in poverty. These problems ini-tially hit hard in provincial towns dependent on vanishing state employ-ment, and then spread to the working-class neighborhoods and shanty-towns of the large urban centers. The centrality of the problem of workunder conditions of intensified commodification influenced the rise ofthe most emblematic movements of Argentina’s episodes of contentionagainst market reforms. These were the movements and the commis-sions of the unemployed, together with the closely related piqueteros(Svampa and Pereyra 2003; Auyero 2004; Flores 2005).

The movements and commissions of the unemployed first appearedin small towns of the interior. Privatization of state enterprises, such asthe oil industry, along with fiscal retrenchment, devastated remote, smallurban areas that had been heavily dependent on state employment.Unemployed workers, many of whom had been unionized formal sectoremployees, organized these movements. Since they were no longerstably employed, the locus of organization shifted from the workplace tothe community. In these small towns, the jobless and underemployedlived in high concentrations, and local networks could be exploited forthem to organize (Svampa and Pereyra 2001; Oviedo 2001; Auyero 2002).

Relative success in the more remote provinces contributed to theemergence of the unemployed movements in Buenos Aires and largercities of surrounding provinces, the political and economic center ofArgentina. Here, the high concentrations of jobless and underemployedwere found in popular sector neighborhoods or city sectors, such as LaMatanza. Frequently, the remnants of local community self-help, squat-ter, housing rights, and urban livelihood sustenance groups—many ofwhich, decades earlier, had led the land invasions that gave birth tothese communities—provided the local organizing networks (which


included soup kitchens), as did Christian base communities organizedby progressive Catholic clergy and human rights groups.

In the urban spaces of both the remote and central provinces, othercategories of people adversely affected by recommodification undermarket reforms organized. Pensioners and retired persons were onesalient example. Reflecting their origins in locality and community,many of the organizations took on the names of their neighborhoods orthe fallen martyrs of previous protests. By the end of the 1990s, asprawling confederation of such organizations formed the FederaciónTierra y Vivienda (Federation of Land and Housing, FTV) (Svampa andPereyra 2001; Flores 2005; Alderete and Gómez 1999).

The success of the non-Marxist unemployed movements in thesecond half of the 1990s spurred the Workers’ Party to organize theunemployed and underemployed in working-class communities andshantytowns in which it had a strong presence. This was a pool ofactivists the party had historically ignored. Guided by orthodox Marxistideology, the Workers’ Party had always focused on organizing at thepoint of production, the locus of the vanguard of the working class(Oviedo 2001; Altamira 2002).

Another category of jobless, the piqueteros, intertwined with themovements and commissions of the unemployed. They, too, wererooted in community, and became the iconic figures of the period. Thepiqueteros emerged in the second half of the 1990s. They were, origi-nally, loosely organized groups of (usually) young men drawn from theunemployed commissions, whose job it was to form picket lines at road-blocks and to defend protesters from repression. Later the term becamesynonymous with organized groups of unemployed whose principalform of direct action was the roadblock (Svampa and Pereyra 2001).

Asambleas populares (popular assemblies) were yet another signifi-cant form of community-based movement organization against marketliberalization. These were assembly-style decisionmaking institutionscharacterized by highly democratic gatherings that brought together pop-ular sector—and middle-class—leaders, neighbors, and citizens. Togetherthey developed resistance tactics, logistics for community self-help anddirect action, and strategies for negotiating with authorities. They alsomobilized people under their banners—identified with their communitynames—in mass demonstrations (Svampa and Pereyra 2001).

These community-based organizations intertwined significantly withnew breakaway and smaller established unions. These were the Con-federación de Trabajadores Argentinos (CTA) and the Marxist CorrienteCombativa Classista. Both these groups saw the value of encouragingand allying with the unemployed workers’ movements. Indeed, theyhelped to organize the FTV. They developed significant mobilizationalcapacity, augmented by joint actions with the Polo Obrero (a second


major piquetero confederation, organized by the Partido SocialistaObrero) and, during the climactic events of 2001, with the main tradi-tional labor unions of the Peronist Confederación General de Traba-jadores (CGT) (Svampa and Pereyra 2003; Flores 2005; Altamira 2002).

Their demands clearly focused on protection from the destructiveeffects of the market at the local, national, and international levels.Between 1996 and 2002, popular sectors and middle-class protestersdemanded unemployment compensation, formal sector employment,economic development funds, higher taxes on big business, low-incomehousing, industrial policy, expansion of public enterprise, and betterfunding for public education, health, and pensions. By the early 2000s,when Argentina experienced a major economic and financial crisis, theywere also demanding a moratorium on foreign debt payments, thewithdrawal of draconian stabilization policies, and renationalization ofprivatized banks and other large-scale businesses. The government’sunwavering defense of orthodox stabilization policies fueled politicaldemands for the president’s resignation (Svampa and Pereyra 2003).

This description has focused on the newer forms of resistance inArgentina because they clearly led the protest cycles. Argentine organ-ized labor—the CGT—may have been one of the strongest in SouthAmerica (even in its diminished form), but throughout this period itmainly fought a rear-guard action to preserve organizational integrity;essentially, it negotiated the conditions for downsizing (Murillo 2001;Cook 2007). Thus it was emblematic that in the cycle of mobilizationthat eventually toppled De la Rúa in December 2001, the CGT did notadd its weight until the cycle was on a strong upward surge and thegovernment was clearly vulnerable. Of course, because the CGTremains a significant player in Argentine politics despite downsizing andchanges in its relationship to the Peronist Party, when it eventuallyjoined the protests, it added one of the final nails in De la Rúa’s politi-cal coffin (Levitsky 2003; Levitsky and Murillo 2006).

Bolivia

Bolivia’s episode of contention against market liberalization spanned theyears 1985 to 2005. In the mid-1980s, the New Economic Policy (NEP)introduced a drastic fiscal stabilization and first-stage structural adjustmentprogram. The Confederación de Obreros Bolivianos (COB), and to alesser degree the Confederación Sindical Unica de TrabajadoresCampesinos Bolivianos (CSUTCB, an alliance of peasant organizations),mobilized immediately, staging general strikes and other actions. Privati-zation, especially of mining, and repression defeated them. By the early1990s, the COB had lost the capacity to mobilize large numbers of work-ers and peasants (Grindle and Domingo 2003; Klein 2003; Crabtree 2005).


The fate of the tin-mining sector was critical to weakening the COB.The tin miners’ federation—and especially its state enterprise compo-nent—was the backbone of the combative sector of the COB, born fromthe 1952 revolution.14 Since the late 1960s, it was at the center of workermobilization. Although the tin-mining sector had been declining forsome time, it was not until Víctor Paz Estenssoro decided to crush it byprivatizing the mines and radically downsizing the state holding com-pany, Compañía Minera Boliviana, which resulted in the firing of mosttin miners, that the COB lost most of its national political impact (Klein2003). Private sector unions affiliated with the COB, much smaller andmore fragmented due to Bolivia’s late industrialization, did not have thewill or capacity to take over that role. Public sector teachers and healthworkers remained combative but did not wield the same economicthreat that the tin miners had in their heyday. In short, the COB neverrecovered its role as the axis that articulated popular sector demands,organized contentious politics, and forced governments to negotiate(García Linera et al. 2000; Sanabria 2000).

However, new sources of organization, many built around locality,community, and territory developed in the 1990s and the early 2000s,severely challenged governments that supported market reforms. Whatwere these organizations?

One of the first was the rise of coca union federations in the 1980sand early 1990s. Coca had been part of indigenous culture for millen-nia in Bolivia, a country where a majority of the population claimedindigenous heritage.15 Peasants who cultivated the bushes wereallowed to organize because coca growing was legal in designatedregions. They shared many organizational characteristics with peasantunions in general. Dispersed agricultural activities led coca sindicatosto organize by territory and locality (community), with the village ortown as the central seat. As is customary with rural unions in Bolivia,sindicatos also acted as local governments. Union federations repre-sented the interests of highland peasants to the state and distributedresources allocated by the state (Healy 1991; Healy and Paulson 2000;Van Cott 2005).

Coca sindicato militancy increased significantly after implementa-tion of the NEP. Intensified commodification of labor with privatization,union busting, and labor code reforms generated significant unemploy-ment and underemployment of once unionized workers. Many migratedto rural areas and turned to coca growing for a livelihood, especially inthe Chapare region and around Cochabamba. Conflict with the Boliviangovernment arose when they began to grow coca illegally (outside ofdesignated areas) and sold product to drug traffickers.16 Their fieldswere targeted for eradication by U.S. and Bolivian counternarcoticsforces as the United States escalated its war on drugs.


Cocaleros linked eradication policies to market reformism becausethe United States, a critical supporter of the Washington Consensus, hadpressured the Bolivian government into accepting the program. Itthreatened to withhold foreign aid that was critical for the implementa-tion of the very market liberalization policies that had driven the farm-ers to coca growing, and that the Bolivian government supported (Healy1991, 1988).

The cocaleros’ relative success in resisting eradication and forcingnegotiations with the Bolivian government influenced a significant changein contention against market liberalization. The basis for organizingshifted from the mines and factories (the point of production) to territori-ally based forms (Spronk 2006, 9). This change accelerated when theCSUTCB, which had been declining, revived after joining forces with thecoca federations. The CSUTCB’s more politically savvy leadership helpedthe coca federations to negotiate coca laws with the Bolivian government(Healy 1991, 1988; Pinto Ocampo 2004, 6–7). The CSUTCB summed upthese new exchange-based developments by emblazoning its officialbanner with the slogan “Territory, Power, Coca” (Territorio, Poder, Coca).

The intertwining of material and indigenous culture in peasantunions more broadly reinforced the exchange-based, territorial qualityof their organization. A majority of Bolivians are indigenous peoples,with high concentrations of Aymaras and Quichuas in the highlands andtheir valleys.17 Although most land ownership was in privately heldsmall plots (minifundios), communities organized reciprocal work obli-gations and rights to dispersed plots of land based on traditional prac-tices known as uses and customs (usos y costumbres) anchored in thesocial structure of the ancestral ayllu. As with the cocaleros, in moreremote communities, the sindicato was also the local political authoritystructure (Albó 2002; Ticona 2000).

Market-oriented economic reforms to further commodify land andaccompanying political reforms in the mid-1990s threatened these formsof indigenous peasant economic and political organization. Free-marketreforms terminated subsidies, special credit lines, infrastructureimprovement, and marketing agreements. Political reforms establishednew municipalities with direct election of mayors and councilors, whichbrought in well-oiled national political party machines. These measuresthreatened the CSUTCB’s rights of representation, resource base, andlocal political control. Because traditional “uses and customs” and polit-ical organization were endangered, many localities supported CSUTCBmobilization against the reforms (Crabtree 2005; Healy and Paulson2000). Thus, government attempts to break the CSUTCB had the oppo-site effect of strengthening it.

Intensified commodification of land—in this case, policies to priva-tize water services and to lease the concession to one international com-


pany—escalated organizing on territorial principles during theCochabamba Water War in 2000, one of the great milestones in Bolivia’sepisode of contention against market liberalization. A public companysupplied approximately 50 percent of Cochabamba’s water; a commu-nity-based network of small-scale private water providers and distribu-tors covered the other 50 percent. Wells were located in surroundingpeasant communities and managed according to traditional indigenous“uses and customs.” Small local entrepreneurs handled distribution(Crabtree 2005; Assies 2004).

Privatization and monopoly concession threatened a loss of formalsector employment, large increases in the price of water, and destruc-tion of community livelihoods. As a result, communities strengthenedtheir local, territorially based regante (water provider) associations.Public sector employees joined them, as did a pivotal labor union(Oscar Olivera’s Fabriles) that understood the necessity of coordinatingwith community organizations, including neighborhood associations.These, along with consumer groups, environmentalists, and other publicsector unions, mobilized for the Water War and stopped privatization inCochabamba (Olivera and Lewis 2004).

Intensified commodification of labor and land under marketreformism played a significant role in the even greater upheaval that fol-lowed: the Gas War of 2003, a massive nationwide mobilization thatcontributed significantly to President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada’s res-ignation. Throughout the Bolivian highlands, intensified commodifica-tion of labor and land caused an expansion in informal sector labor thatfed the growth of urban squatter settlements and poor neighborhoods,where urban and rural migrants organized on territorial principles. ElAlto, which looms over the capital city of La Paz, was emblematic. Res-idents formed neighborhood associations. Given the indigenous peasantorigins of the majority of the residents, many of the associations weremanaged by indigenous peasant codes of reciprocal work obligations,and ayllu social networks proliferated, as did women’s associations.These became critical mobilizing structures during the Gas War, whichdefended the use of rich natural gas deposits for national developmentpurposes rather than for the private gain of international companies andconsumers in California, to where it would be exported (Assies 2004;Crabtree 2005; Assies and Salman 2005; Postero 2007; Lazar 2008).

Ecuador

The period 1984–2006 saw the chief struggles against market liberalizationin Ecuador. The country’s national populist impulse had been weaker thanArgentina’s or Bolivia’s, as were its efforts to construct contemporarymarket society. Still, market reforms threatened the nonmarket instruments


that supplemented the livelihood of urban popular sectors and largelyindigenous peasant communities, as well as the rights of organized urbanlabor and peasants (Bretón and García 2003; Collins 2006; North 2004).

Initially, urban labor confederations mobilized against marketreforms, but they were weak, divided, and easily co-opted. Territoriallyorganized indigenous peoples, by contrast, emerged as the strongestand most dynamic opposition to free-market economic policies, eventhough the indigenous composed a smaller proportion (30 percent) ofthe national population. Beginning in 1990 and through the year 2000,they staged a number of “Indian uprisings,” which frequently coordi-nated with urban labor and territorially organized urban self-help organ-izations under the umbrella of the Social Movements Coordinator (CMS).They forced the government to negotiate and on two occasions forcedpresidents to resign (Bretón and García 2003; Selverston-Scher 2001;Drake and Herschberg 2006).

Indigenous people’s communities had been organizing sindicatosand their confederation since the 1960s. As in Bolivia, the sindicatosrepresented indigenous peoples’ interests to the state, managed resourcesdistributed by the state, and acted as local authorities. Also as in Bolivia,“uses and customs” structured the organization of reciprocal work andsocial rights and obligations. This was a system in which sindicatosplayed a central role and were relied on as a mobilizing structure.

Beginning in 1984, market-oriented reforms threatened to intensifythe commodification of land, labor, and money. Special agrarian banks,lines of credit, subsidies to public utilities and basic consumer goods,and infrastructure projects were cut. Land reform in favor of largelandowners loomed, and efforts to undercut the local authority of sindi-catos were undertaken (Bretón and García 2003). Facing these chal-lenges, highland and lowland indigenous confederations joined forcesand formed an overarching confederation, the National Confederationof Indigenous Ecuadorians (CONAIE), in 1986 (Yashar 2005). Theirclaims consistently focused on inclusion in agrarian development,access to state resources, and cultural survival and autonomy throughthe creation of a plurinational state. CONAIE recognized that it couldnot achieve these goals alone, so it developed a strategy in which itcooperated with organized labor and other organizations in oppositionto market reforms. Moreover, CONAIE led the alliance because of itsrecognized superior organizational and mobilizational capability (VanCott 2005; Zamosc 2007, 2004, 2003).

EXCHANGE AND THE REPERTOIRE OF CONTENTION

For most of the second half of the twentieth century, the strike, fre-quently accompanied by marches and demonstrations in major cities,


was the main instrument in urban labor’s repertoire of contention. Itcould be highly disruptive to production—especially in the case of gen-eral strikes. These could force governments to the negotiating table onmajor policy initiatives. Urban labor unions, especially public sectorunions, struck frequently during episodes of contention against marketliberalization in Argentina, Bolivia, and Ecuador. However, the power oforganized labor had declined since its heyday, due to privatization,downsizing, flexible work rules, and the weakening of leftist parties thathad supported it. Alone, it could not stop the imposition of free-marketreforms.

In response, direct action that targeted forms of exchange by terri-torially organized popular sector and peasant movements emerged tocomplement—and even overtake—collective action at the point of pro-duction (Silver 2003). These became emblematic forms of mobilizationthat were highly transgressive and disruptive of commerce, the conductof daily business, and the delivery of government services. These formsof protest attracted media attention, encouraged individuals to join in,and frequently invited repression, which usually stiffened resistanceinstead of squashing it. They could force governments to the negotiat-ing table and even cause the fall of incumbent presidents when com-bined with general strikes.

The roadblock emerged as an effective instrument in an exchange-based repertoire of contention in all three cases. When applied to majorhighways and urban thoroughfares, it disrupted international, national,regional, and local commerce. In cities, it disrupted business and theroutines of daily life. Although the roadblock was not a new invention,its application to urban areas and coordinated use was. In more extremeinstances, it was used to lay siege to major cities by blocking supplyroutes, especially in Bolivia and Ecuador. The roadblock’s effectivenesslay in its capacity to force authorities to negotiate, because governabil-ity was at stake, and therefore their jobs as elected officials and publicsector administrators (Svampa and Pereyra 2001; Healy 1991; Sanabria1999; Selverston-Sher 2001; Yashar 2005).

The siege of La Paz from El Alto was iconic. Largely indigenousrural migrants and informal service workers from cities around thecountry had settled in El Alto over several decades, swelling the popu-lation to more than 650,000. The city occupied the high ground aboveLa Paz, the capital of Bolivia, and the major supply route to La Paz ranthrough it. The citizens of El Alto had developed a dense system of com-munity organizations to meet basic needs in the face of governmentneglect (Lazar 2008; Villegas 1993; Postero 2007). When they mobilizedin 2003, demanding an end to market reforms and the resignation ofPresident Lozada, they blocked that route and choked La Paz. Food,energy, and medical supply shortages loomed. The government acted


harshly to reopen the thoroughfare—too harshly, it turned out, precipi-tating the very outcome it wanted to avoid (Crabtree 2005; Assies 2004).

In Ecuador, CONAIE’s four “Indian uprisings” between 1990 and1999 coordinated roadblocks and stopped transportation in many of thenation’s provinces. These mobilizations were designed to bring nationalcommerce to a halt and to threaten major urban areas with shortages ofcritical supplies, such as food. They forced the authorities to negotiateand contributed to the resignation of President Abdalá Bucaram in 1997(Zamosc 2007, 2003; North 2004; Collins 2006).18

Roadblocks also became the iconic form of direct action inArgentina.19 They began in the mid-1990s as a tactic of desperate peoplein the dying towns of poor, marginalized provinces of the interior toforce provincial officials to address their plight, and to draw nationalattention. They were so successful that poor people in the major citiesat the center of Argentina’s political and economic power also usedthem to great effect (Svampa and Pereyra 2001; Oviedo 2001).

In Argentina, Bolivia, and Ecuador, the mass demonstration culmi-nating in rallies in front of government buildings became anotherexchange-based instrument in the repertoire of contention againstmarket reforms. Although it was not a new tool, it acquired novel sig-nificance. As the effectiveness of strikes waned, this type of massdemonstration frequently became a substitute for them in reaction tointensified commodification of labor under market liberalization. It wasa vehicle of political expression for the growing army of informal sectorworkers (shopkeepers, artisans, street vendors, clerks, occasional labor-ers) for whom striking was not an option; for people who had lost theirunion jobs but were still employed in the formal sector; and for unionworkers who could not strike for fear of job loss (Svampa and Pereyra2001; Lazar 2008; Drake and Herschberg 2006).

The mass demonstration, like the roadblock, disrupted commerceand daily routines, and especially the business of government. The dis-ruptive capacity and transgressive nature of mass demonstrationsincreased significantly when their furor incited protesters to attack andoccupy government buildings. The effectiveness of mass demonstrationsto force negotiation with the authorities burgeoned when accompaniedby strikes (such as by taxi drivers and transportation workers or publicsector employees) and roadblocks (Silva 2009).

EXCHANGE AND FRAMING

Framing is a critical cognitive mechanism by which activists shift per-ceptions about a problem in a way that resonates with aggrieved socialsubjects and draws them in (McAdam et al. 2001). Framing was centralfor the construction of horizontal linkages among the myriad organiza-


tions and social groups that protested against economic, political, andsocial problems associated with market liberalization, because it helpedthem to identify the common source of their troubles. In the case ofArgentina, Bolivia, and Ecuador, framing linked the problems of indi-viduals to the intensification of commodification under market reforms.This helped people to recognize the common origins of many differenttypes of personal situations.

Exchange-based framing allowed individuals differently located inthe structure of production—and regardless of ethnicity or race—toidentify with each other. Framing that focused on the commodificationof labor, land, and money resonated with urban workers, indigenouspeoples, the unemployed, the underemployed, pensioners, and urbanself-help groups, as well as peasants, family farmers, and rural workers.It also appealed to environmental, gender, and human rights groups thatfelt violated by the market juggernaut.

Activists in Argentina, Bolivia, and Ecuador framed their plight interms of a particular interpretation of the concept of neoliberalism, whichthey imbued with negative meanings that allowed the different groups torecognize each other as victims (Roberts 2008).20 Neoliberalism’s com-prehensive package of economic and social reforms became shorthandfor a long list of troubles. Neoliberalism became synonymous with theloss of national sovereignty to foreign governments, international institu-tions, and transnational capital, which imposed free-market policies atthe expense of everyone not allied with the international sector.

In this framing, the privatization of state enterprises and services,the liberalization of trade and financial sectors, the dismantling of indus-trial policy were the cause of massive job loss, job insecurity, andincreased precarious working conditions (Alderete and Gómez 1999;Flores 2005). Land reforms that favored agribusiness and cutbacks tosubsidies for small-scale agriculture were the source of threats to peas-ants—especially highland indigenous peoples—and farmers (Bretón2003; Yashar 2005; Zamosc 2003). Because of orthodox economic poli-cies, many people suffered a general decline in the quality of life, dueto price increases for goods and services, including health and educa-tion, as their income fell (Crabtree 2005; Postero 2007). The obsessionwith market-led economic growth at all costs was equated with unre-stricted damage to the environment (Gerlach 2003). Politically, neolib-eralism was associated with arrogant exclusion and repression of dissi-dence, thus attempting to abuse democratic values and human rights(Sautu 2001).

In this context, corruption by government officials and policies thatshored up foreign creditors and failing national banks during debt andfinancial crises were framed as theft (Rock 2002; Sautu 2001). Moralindignation at this theft rallied people from many different backgrounds


to protest. By the same token, positive framings of exchange and pro-duction-based policy options rallied protesters from many differentsocial strata. These framings included the recovery of national sover-eignty and of a positive role for the state in the economy and society.They focused on state intervention in markets to create jobs and pro-vide relief for the unemployed and underemployed, debt moratoriumsfor individuals, wage support, price controls, subsidies, land security,and support for farming, in addition to state-led development andnationalization of enterprises (Assis and Salman 2005; Svampa andPereyra 2001; Yashar 2005; Zamosc 2007).

In addition to “neoliberalism,” in Bolivia and Ecuador, “life” becamean encompassing frame for the myriad problems attributed to the inten-sification of commodification under neoliberalism. “Life” was shorthandfor the recognition that free-market policies were destroying the eco-nomic, social, and cultural conditions that had supported a way of life forstate and private formal sector workers (many of them middle class), aswell as the material basis of the culture of indigenous peoples and ruralinhabitants. Neoliberalism subjected people to hunger, misery, and alien-ation, which consigned individuals and their families to eke out bare sur-vival in cities and the countryside alike. For these reasons, neoliberalismwas an assault on life itself, especially a life worth living, with prospectsfor the future; a life in which people could develop their potential, fulfilltheir social roles with dignity, and affirm their value in the rituals of living(birth, puberty, marriage, childrearing, anniversaries, public festivals,close friendships, and death). The shift away from the language of classstruggle and exploitation to the moral question of the right to live withself-determination and dignity made it easy for movements to forge hori-zontal linkages among many different social groups and identities (Nash1992; Sanabria 1999; Whitten et al. 2003; Yashar 2005).

In Argentina, antineoliberal framing around “unemployment” and“hunger” was ubiquitous. In contrast to Bolivia and Ecuador, Argentinawas a highly urbanized country, with a relatively good standard ofliving, accustomed to ample formal sector employment. Given the neg-ative effect of neoliberal policies on employment and income, the prob-lem of work affected people of many different social strata and eco-nomic situations, but it hit hardest the popular sectors and thosedependent on public sector employment. Because of privatization andeconomic rationalization at the firm level, people were dismissed fromformal sector (frequently unionized or managerial) jobs. Those luckyenough to hold onto their jobs experienced a decline in salaries, bene-fits, and job security. Others descended into the uncertainty of precari-ous labor in the burgeoning informal sector or despaired of ever risingup the employment ladder. By official count, shocking numbers wereunemployed and poor.


All of these differently situated people recognized themselves aspart of the world of work; they agreed that neoliberal economic, social,and political reforms and processes that benefited international anddomestic capital jeopardized national sovereignty and were responsiblefor their deteriorating quality of life. This spurred the formation ofmovements of the unemployed, popular assemblies, and retirees, andtheir alliances with organized labor (Alderete and Gómez 1999; Flores2005; Huber and Solt 2004; Oviedo 2001; Sautu 2001; Svampa andPereyra 2001).

In this devastated, rapidly changing social landscape, breakawaydissident Argentine unions framed the issue of work and the problemof collective action with the slogan “The neighborhood is the new fac-tory.” This exchange-based framing shifted the center of resistance tomarket liberalization from the decimated workplace to the popularsector neighborhoods, where displaced workers and the unemployedlived in large concentrations (Svampa and Pereyra 2003). It captured theexpanded meaning of work and worker, defined the locus of organiza-tion, and established a principle of solidarity that united individuals invery different situations. The framing facilitated horizontal linkagesbetween urban self-help groups demanding services, subsistence rightsand community-based working-class organizations, and unions (Eck-stein 1989). They were all in it together because neoliberal reformsmade difficult lives even harder and hunger lurked at every turn(Alderete and Gómez 1999).

In all three cases, framing in terms of national sovereignty, demo-cratic participation, and state intervention brought people together. Thenotion of national sovereignty appealed to the belief that neoliberalismwas being promoted by foreign governments (mainly the United States)and international financial institutions (mainly the International Mone-tary Fund and the World Trade Organization). Without it, the Argentine,Bolivian, and Ecuadorian states would lack the autonomy necessary toreform neoliberal capitalism, to negotiate with transnational capital, andto govern their own domestic capitalists. In this framing, national sov-ereignty also required democratic reforms to create a political space forresistance to neoliberalism and to chart an alternative course. This fram-ing brought in prodemocracy movements (Andolina 2003; Sautu 2001).

The claim that state intervention was essential for reforms that mightsomewhat decommodify labor, land, and money brought environmen-talists, gender, and human rights movements into the antineoliberalcamp, too. Universal market principles and state support for them vio-lated these value-based issue areas: the earth became more polluted andnatural resources were extracted at unsustainable rates, women were dis-criminated against, and state repression of dissent trampled human rights(Gerlach 2003; Jelin and Hershberg 1996; Kohl and Farthing 2006).


CONCLUSIONS

Karl Polanyi (1957) hypothesized that circuits of exchange in capital-ism—the commodification of labor, land, and money—are powerfulsources of mobilization against “market society”—the subjugation ofpolitics and society to the self-regulating free market. This article hasargued that mass mobilization in Argentina, Bolivia, and Ecuador againsta contemporary version of market society supports that hypothesis.First, intensified commodification created structural conditions for theorganization of communities after the decline of the point of productionas the primary source of resistance to utopian free-market capitalism.Second, because the Washington Consensus policy package encom-passed economic, social, and political reforms, many different types ofmovements were “antineoliberal” at their core. Third, the intensificationof commodification influenced both the framing and innovations in therepertoire of contention by which people and movements recognizedand resisted the common threat that they faced.

Taken together, these conditions facilitated the task of building hori-zontal linkages among movements (and with political parties), whichwere the source of the protesters’ power. In short, Polanyi’s political econ-omy informs not only the structural conditions for massive mobilizationagainst market liberalization in Argentina, Bolivia, and Ecuador; it alsoinforms key complementary explanatory conditions drawn from the con-tentious politics literature: the cognitive (framing) and direct action mech-anisms that helped the aggrieved to recognize a common problem.

This article has stressed that organizing based on the principle ofexchange did not consign organizing at the point of production to irrel-evance; there just is not room here to develop the point. However, thisstudy has repeatedly recognized that unions were significant allies incontention against market-oriented reforms. Although the form andtiming of those complex partnerships varied across cases, without unionparticipation, resistance to market liberalization would not have reachedthe crescendo it did in Argentina, Bolivia, and Ecuador.

This article also suggests a path to the reconciliation of two seem-ingly opposing strands in the literature on contemporary market liberal-ization and its effects on popular sector mobilization. One strandemphasizes their atomization, fragmentation, and demobilization, whilethe other strand emphasizes the rise of new forms of resistance. Neitheris wrong; indeed, they seem to be two sides of the same coin—thedecline of forms of resistance associated with one stage of capitalistdevelopment and then the (somewhat lagged) emergence of othersassociated with the most recent stage of capitalism. The literature asso-ciated with the first strand is not wrong; it just reflects a particular stageand pattern and is, perhaps, not sufficiently dialectical.


What does the shift in the organizing principle for resistance to free-market capitalism mean for the left in Latin America? As a practicalmatter, it creates the necessity for broad cooperation and coordinationacross many different types of movements, including declining organ-ized labor (a point that is sometimes difficult for the traditional labormovement to recognize). However, this strategy also complicates mat-ters for the left in Latin America. It is very difficult to maintain the coher-ence of such heterogeneous agglomerations and to channel their polit-ical purpose constructively. Herein lies a key challenge for both activistsand researchers.

NOTES

For their constructive critiques and animated discussion, I am grateful toValeria Palanza, Juan Pablo Luna, Cassandra Sweet, David Altman, Anthony Pez-zola, Alfredo Rehren, Fernando Rosenblatt, and the participants in the Seminariodel Instituto de Ciencia Política, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, June17, 2011, as well as the anonymous referees for LAPS.

1. Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva (Brazil), Tabaré Vázquez (Uruguay), NicanorDuarte Frutos (Paraguay), and Hugo Chávez (Venezuela).

2. Differences due to intervening factors that lie outside the scope of thisarticle.

3. The term societal is emphasized to distinguish it from party politicalforms of countermovement that were critical for the labor movements’ ultimatepolitical power. Party political factors are not addressed here because this studyfocuses on the structural and cognitive factors that affect the rise of social move-ments with national political impact.

4. This fits with social movement theory focusing on framing and othercognitive elements as a source of identity formation (Tarrow 1998; McAdam etal. 2001).

5. Again, this is deliberately isolating movement power as distinct fromparty political connections; see note 3.

6. Some work examines the development of transnational countermove-ment to neoliberal globalization (Munck 2007; Silver 2003).

7. Episodes of contention is a technical term that refers to the bundling oftwo or more related cycles of contention (MacAdam et al. 2001). What theseefforts actually accomplish in terms of reforming neoliberalism remains unclear.At a minimum, however, popular mobilization has raised significant challengesto neoliberalism and may herald the beginning of a reform process whose con-tours we cannot yet know. To the extent that it contributes to a new process ofreincorporation of the popular sectors into politics and the extension of eco-nomic and social rights to them, we may be at the threshold of a new criticaljuncture in Latin America (Collier and Collier 1991; Mahoney 2001).

8. For a full discussion of framing, see McAdam et al. 1996. I wish toemphasize that I refer to the term neoliberalism as interpreted by the socialactors themselves, not as a scholarly analytical term.

9. If they were already weak and fragmented they became even more so.


10. For new social movements, see Slater 1985; Escobar and Alvarez 1992;Mainwaring and Viola 1984; Foweraker 1995; Eckstein and Wickham-Crowley2003.

11. For Argentina, see Svampa and Pereyra 2001. For Bolivia, see Kohl andFarthing 2006; Olivera and Lewis 2004. For Ecuador, see Bretón and García2003.

12. For the intertwining of ethnic and socioeconomic rights in Bolivia andEcuador, see Zamosc 2003, 2004; García Linera 2010; Silva 2009.

13. They also affected land. However, given Argentina’s overwhelminglyurban demographics, that is not the focus here. For an account, see Giarraca 2001.

14. As an example of its centrality, the office of the presidency of the COBis by statute explicitly reserved for a leader of that sector.

15. There is, however, some controversy over the meaning of indigenousidentity for different groups (Lucero 2008).

16. These growers had not been able to gain access to legal areas.17. The Amazonian region is more sparsely populated, with a higher diver-

sity of indigenous peoples’ nations.18. A second president, Jamil Mahuad, was deposed in 2000.19. The Buenos Aires daily El Clarín kept a tally of roadblocks per month

and per year, broken down by province and locality. It used them as a measureof public disapproval of government policies.

20. To avoid sterile polemics, it should be emphasized that the purpose ofthis passage is to specify an actor-centered interpretation of the concept ofneoliberalism, not a scholarly one. For the purposes of the analysis at hand,actors’ perceptions rather than scholarly precision are what counts.

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Documents

Exchange Rising? Karl Polanyi and Contentious Politics in Contemporary Latin America