'Que se vayan todos!' (All of you out!) – just one of the memorable lines of the Piquetera Puppet Show performed by the touring Argentina Autonomist Project at the Adelphi pub in downtown Leeds last night in front of around 50 people. Leeds was the penultimate stop on the Piquetera Puppet Show's UK tour, which began on June 14 after the 'autonomistas' were invited by a number of anarchist and green activist networks to bring the tragedy of Argentina to British audiences and help raise money for the unemployed movement.

Based in an occupied bank in Buenas Aires, the show was designed and built in February this year by Graciela Monteagudo, a community artist and Argentine human rights activist, in collaboration with Italian artists Damiano Giambielli and Cristina Disccaciatti from the Bread and Puppet Theatre in February 2003. Accompanied by piqueteras, Graciela then took the show on tour across Argentina to communities, Indymedia centres and popular assemblies, making tweaks here and there in response to feedback. In April, the tour went to the United States where Graciela was forced to perform alone after the piqueteras were refused visas. She explained why she had come to the UK: 'We want to share our experiences of neoliberalism and globalisation in Argentina with the rest of the world, because what is happening to us is happening everywhere.' She added that there had been a great response from people here with meetings ranging from 40 to 100.

Last night, we crammed into the upstairs room of the Adelphi to watch Graciela perform her 'que se vayan tod@s: a cardboard piece'. With the help of her puppetistas, Graciela retold the last thirty years of Argentinian history using whistles, songs and visual aids to create powerful imagery of how first the country was bled dry by the banks, the corrupt politicians, the IMF and the US, and then how the piqueteras rose up in revolt and inspired millions to do the same.

After some short films, it was the turn of Neka, an Argentinian piquetera and organiser in the national Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados, or MTD ( Movement of Unemployed Workers). The piqueteras are a movement of the unemployed who for the past six years have been engaging in direct action – principally through roadblocks – as part of their social struggles for dignity and employment, and against neoliberalism.

Speaking through a translator, Neka explained the history of the piquetera movement, how it had begun some six years ago in response to the deepening unemployment crisis in the country at the hands of neoliberal policies and IMF austerity policies. At the time, the popular classes and democratic social forces were still very much dormant. Neka explained this as the continuing destructive impact of the military dictatorship on democratic movements and the psychological hold of the party system on Argentinian people. They were willing to give neoliberalism a try. But in the late 1990s, the social and economic effects of liberalisation, deregulation and privatisation were really hitting people hard. Communities began to come together, and organise.

Assemblies emerged of communities deciding on what they were opposed to and what they wanted instead in relation to food, health, housing, public services, welfare and privatisation. At first, more militant sections of the communities found it difficult to propose taking direct action against the government because people were reluctant to engage in ‘illegal’ actions out of fear of repression. When the roadblockers movement emerged and began blocking roads to stop public services, there were fierce debates within the community about desirability of such actions. Many complained that in protesting about their lack of rights to work and a living, the piqueteras were taking away the rights of others to move freely and go to work. But as the country’s economic crisis worsened, and the roadblockers movement grew and spiralled from roads, to avenues, to motorways, to bridges and so on, debates about the legality of such actions subsided – the communities realised that it was the state that was acting illegally and the people had every right to protest in this way. The media would of course act against the unemployed movement by creating hateful stories creating the pretext for the government to pass laws restricting the piqueteras.

A series of questions prompted the thorny issue of political parties and the piquetera movement. Neka made it clear that she was from the autonomista bloc within the movement, and so had many issues and problems working with Trotskyist political parties. She explained that on occasion, such parties had interfered with roadblocks and worked against them. The roadblockers movement has suffered from the spectre of cooptation from both left and right, but because of their strong consolidation have managed to resist much of this. However, the popular assemblies have not escaped political party infiltration.

Neka explained that the piquetera movement consists of different tendencies, and various Marxist parties are well-organised factions in there. In general, the different factions do coordinate together, but sometimes, it is impossible to work horizontally and be organised horizontally with people who aren’t horizontally organised themselves. If the parties agree to an action, then we can all work together; if they don’t, they we don’t work with them and do it alone. There are clashes and some parties have had to be chased off demonstrations. Just like in the UK, there are a lot of flags from different parties on such actions, but they have no social grounding, no real grassroots membership.

Discussion then turned to how piqueteras coordinate direct actions within their movement. In Neka’s own network, there are some 100 groups working together. Neighbourhood assemblies meet to decide on an issue for an action, and then the kind of action. Delegates from the assembles then meet to plan the exact location and time of the action. Escape routes will be spotted and telephone numbers and codes agreed because of police surveillance. The exact details are never publicly revealed: only the delegates have this information. Its often very difficult to get consensus – even after a month of discussions – but without consensus, actions cannot go ahead because of the danger involved.

It was a beautiful evening and everyone left knowing a lot more about the issues, and inspired to keep going in our own struggles against neoliberalism at home.