The Take Streaming
Sunday, September 12th, 2010 |
The Take Streaming.
Movie Title: The Take The Take is available for streaming or downloading. |
Overall, this is a moving film. As an anthropology instructor, I’ve shown it several times and evoking a largely sympathetic audience. Currently I’m writing a paper on the process of recuperacion, and this seems to be potentially one alternative model to the destructive policies of transnational corporations, their agencies, and the neoliberal ideology they espouse.
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That said, there is one serious problem in their choice of a case study that runs throughout the film; the auto parts manufacturer Forja San Martin (Forja). It’s a very moving portrait of Freddy Espinoza, one of the leaders of the cooperative taking over the shutdown factory. Lalo, the coordnator representing the national organization for recovered factories, seems to be a likable guy. We see the leaders trying to work out a deal with a tractor factory.
This image breaks down, however, when we learn from Andres Ruggeri in his “Worker Recovered Enterprises in Argentina” that the backslider depicted in the film, the one who supports Menem in the 2003 election, has taken over the leadership of Forja San Martin, that the others portrayed in the film have been expelled from the factory and cooperative, and that the deal with the tractor factory–Zanello by name–has fallen through.
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Even worse, we find from Zachary Fields in his unpublished paper “A Conservative, Middle Aged Revolution,” that Forja is producing way below capacity, that it cannot add new technology because banks refuse them credit (private lenders hate all recovered factory cooperatives), and that it cannot make any investments until they deliver to their customers, who often furnish Forja the raw materials. Forja, in short, is not doing well.
Zanon and Brukman seem to fare better when it comes to accurate representation. One thing that they seem to be doing right is maintaining strong bonds with their neighborhoods and community, a deficit of Forja according to Ruggeri, and of many other recovered organizations.
Another issue is worker commitment to change. According to Andres Gaudin, many, if most, workers of recovered factories lack a sense of political ideology or commitment; they just want to get their wages and go home. In fact, says Ruggeri, many workers are in the enterprises because they have nowhere else to go.
Despite these reservations, The Take is on to something interesting. For one, Ruggeri points out that despite the miniscule number of recovered factories (0.08% of all such operations) and low number of workers, they have stabilized. In an hostile environment–no credit, stringent legal constraints, competitive economy, constant threats of evictions, and uncertain policies of the Kirchner government–this is an accomplishment in its own right.
The movement has spread to Brazil, Uruguay, Panama–and Venezuela, where the first conference on recovered facories was held. Venezuela is looking at 700 factories for possible recovery, and a paper mill, an aluminum company, and a valve manufacturer were featured at the conference.
Let’s hope that the factory recovery movement is embryonic of the future; and I hope the couple comes back to film or otherwise provide an update of the situation in Argentina. It would also be nice to know how the rcovery movement is doing in other countries–especially Venezuela.
Using the recuperated Forja factory as a microcosm of the larger Argentine piquetero movement, author Naomi Klein and director Avi Lewis have done a brilliant job documenting the grassroots activism of marginalized workers in the wake of Argentina’s dramatic economic collapse caused by years of IMF/World Bank structural adjustment programs and the corrupt presidency of Carlos Menem. Faced with abject poverty and state repression, the unemployed auto-parts workers of the Forja factory have occupied their abandoned workplace and transformed it into a successful cooperative, proving thus the power of labor solidarity. As such, the Forja factory, like all the recuperated factories, neighborhood assemblies, and independent media collectives in Argentina, provides an inspirational example of direct democracy, participatory economics, and horizontal social organizing. Besides being an important film politically, as a work of art it is simply exquisite. Fans of Mercedes Sosa will especially be moved by the protest scenes that were put to her music!
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