most of its inhabitants are Guaraní, indigenous people w ho migrated
there from Paraguay.
School facilities there are aw ful, and any kid w ho causes even a
small problem is just kicked out. An enormous number of the kids
never make it through school. So some mothers set up w hat they
call a cultural center, w here they try to teach these kids reading and
arithmetic, basic skills and a little artw ork, and also try to protect
them from drug gangs. (It’s very typical in such communities for
w omen to do most of the organizing.)
Somehow they managed to find a small, abandoned concrete
building and put a roof on it. It’s kind of pathetic—about the size of
this office. T he provisions are so meager that even a pencil is a
significant gift.
T hey also put out a journal. W ritten by the people in the
shantytow n, including some teenagers, it’s full of information
relevant to the community—w hat’s going on, w hat the problems are.
Several of the w omen are becoming educated; a few are close to
college degrees in professions like nursing. But they all say they’ll
never get out of the shantytow n, no matter how many degrees they
have. T hey haven’t got a chance w hen they go for a job interview
because they don’t have the right clothes, the right look.
T hese activists are dedicated and they w ork hard, trying to save
the children. T hey get some assistance from outside people, like
those university friends of ours. T he church also helps some. (T his
varies from community to community, depending on w ho the local
priests are.)
T hey don’t get any help from the government, I assume?
T he Argentine government is in the grips of a neoliberal frenzy,
obeying the orders of international financial institutions like the
World Bank and the IMF. (Neoliberalism is basically nothing more
than the traditional imperial formula: free markets for you, plenty of
protection for me. T he rich themselves w ould never accept these
policies, but they’re happy to impose them on the poor.)
So Argentina is “minimizing the state”—cutting dow n public
expenditures, the w ay our government is doing, but much more
extremely. Of course, w hen you minimize the state, you maximize
something else—and it isn’t popular control. W hat gets maximized is