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From the Picket to the Congress: The Piquetero Movement of Argentina in Parliament

Sun, August 17, 12:30 to 1:30pm, TBA

Abstract

The piqueteros or unemployed workers’ movement has been the main contentious actor of Argentina from 1996 to 2009. It has been the most relevant actor struggling for the reincorporation of excluded popular sectors in Argentina, achieving some of its main goals. This movement became famous due to their pickets as a form of topping the distribution of goods and services, but the piqueteros has been developing an array of institutional and territorial strategies that were less studied. In this paper I will focus on one dimension of the piqueteros movement that is very relevant, but that has been neglected: the use of parliamentary representation. As I will show, those piqueteros organizations that had access to the parliament had made use of it for different purposes, but in only one case the main aim was to legislate. In this paper I will describe and analyze the main parliamentarian strategies of the piqueteros since the 2007 national election. To understand how the piqueteros has been making use of the parliament is crucial if we intend to improve our comprehension of the entire complexity of a movement struggle for its goals, diluting the artificial boundaries between contentious and routine politics.

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