“¡Que se vayan todos!” :Opportunity Structures, Social Movement Mobilization, and the Argentine Piquetero Movement

The emergence of the Piquetero Movement in Argentina during the 1990s and early 2000s is the result of changing economic, political, and social processes at both the macro (national) and micro (local) levels. With Carlos Menem’s election to the presidency, Argentina began a state-led project for national economic development and modernization. The opening of the economy to foreign investment and the reductions of state interference in the national economy transformed the national economy. However, the long-term economic and social costs of these reforms saw the growth of widespread unemployment among the working class, a dismantling of state assistance networks, and growing socio-economic inequality. Deteriorating socio-economic standards would lead to growing dissatisfaction with traditional political institutions and channels of representation. Since these institutions were either unable or unwilling to address the social costs of Menem’s economic development program, the lower classes, specifically the urban poor and unemployed began to mobilize in protest. Piquetero protests were thus born within the context of Argentina’s push for economic development. The macro trends of economic, political, and social change that shaped the trajectory of the nation’s economic growth efforts would in turn impact the development opportunities afforded to the Piquetero Movement. The changes in macro trends would thus result in the dismantling of state controls and networks that had previously served to contain and/or subdue popular unrest. New social actors, such as the urban poor and unemployed, were thus able to engaging in collective action for the first time, challenging the state’s neoliberal economic model and offering an alternative form of social and political representation