Greetings from Buenos Aires

Thank you everyone for such a great welcome. And a special thank you to Renegade Eye for inviting me to his blog. I never knew that blogging connected so many people. The idea for Latin America Activism is to archive writing, reports and photos. Much of the work is related to Grupo Alavío, direct action and video collective. Social movements in Argentina are witnessing an exciting but very difficult moment. With increasing attacks from the far right and the current govenrment progressive-repressive policies, activists are facing threats and increasing challenges. In the next coming months I will be producing many articles and radio stories which will be featured on Renegade Eye and Latin America Activism. I especially want to invite readers to visit Grupo Alavío's new community internet tv site, Ágora TV. This is the first site of its kind in Latin America.

I look forward to posting and comments.

Salud y anarquia!

Avío m, preparation, provision; picnic lunch; money advancd (to miners or laborers); pl Inf. equipment, tools. During the beginning of the 20^th century in Argentina laborers often carried an avío with what provisions they needed when traveling in the countryside. They would travel from harvest to harvest to work on different plantations and farms. These workers, many of who were immigrants, carried a tradition of free worker or working only when they needed to. These workers were called crotos (English translation Hobos). They got this name because a government official named Croto passed a law to permit these workers to ride free on cargo trains. Along with food and clothes, many crotos carried inside their avío anarchist literature, newspapers and pamphlets for the release of political prisoners. They would distribute these materials among fellow workers to raise consciousness of the exploitation by the boss and to organize. Al in Spanish means to the. Alavío is a call out to take to the road. A summon to action. A call for the workers to strike.

Grupo Alavío is a direct action and video collective working in Argentina. Since the early 1990’s the group has produced audiovisual material as a tool to create a new working class subjectivity. “Through the recording and elaboration of audiovisual materials we are battling directly against the imagery of fascism. The camera is a tool, another arm, like a stick, Molotov, miguelito or covering or faces (Grupo Alavío). As a video collective we become available to the demands of organizations in struggle and often times our videos take on a life of their own. Many times the factory occupied by workers, the changing room of transport workers organizing a wildcat strike, land squat or barrio is the first place where we premiere our documentaries. Alavío uses the camera as a political organ and as a tool, which the protagonists in the films appropriate and use to organize. We use the videos as the anarchist crotos used the avío to organize and generate actions against the boss, state, macho, and church.

Making technologies and skills accessible and available to exploited people by democratizing audiovisual production and language is a priority for Grupo Alavío. For more than 15 years, Alavío has been participating in working class struggles in Argentina and supporting them with audiovisual materials.

RENEGADE EYE-Marie Trigona