Tucumán Arde 1968
Posted on | June 22, 2009 | No Comments
Tucumán is the name of a region in northeastern Argentina whose tropical climate makes it ideal for growing citrus fruits, vegetables, tobacco, and, above all, sugar. In the second half of the 1960s, the agricultural structures in Tucumán were transformed by massive intervention on the part of the government under the dictator Juan Carlos Onganía. The Argentinean government itself spoke of a neo-liberal revolution? and named its pilot project Operation Tucumán. The impact of Operation Tucumán, a huge wave of privatization and centralization, led to the closure of many small sugarcane plantations, the rise of precarious forms of labor, and the creation of extreme social hardship.
Tucumán Arde (Tucumán is Burning) was a collective project by artists from Rosario and Buenos Aires whose objective, entirely in the spirit of the classical avant-garde, was to sound out the limits of their own methods and forms of artistic practice. At the same time, they worked on an information campaign against the official propaganda of the government. The artists themselves spoke of a cycle of over-information. Tucumán Arde was conceived as a process and followed a precise choreography:
1) In the first phase, several artists traveled to Tucumán, established contact with local union leaders and cultural organizations, and collected documents and research reports on the current situation.
2) The second phase consisted of taking stock, conducting interviews with those affected, and documenting places on film and photographs in a style that is vaguely reminiscent of the early Walker Evans. The photos show sugarcane plantations, abandoned factories, settlements, hospitals, the villas and lifestyle of the rich, but above all the faces of the people.
3) In the third phase, in collaboration with the trade union association, a protest exhibition was organized that was shown for five days at union headquarters in Rosario, then in Santa Fe, and finally in Buenos Aires, where it had to close after just a few hours. This exhibition entitled 1st Biennial of Avant-garde Art was essentially a montage of audiovisual media, plus appearances by artists, intellectuals, and experts. But guests were also served bitter black coffee without sugar, and the lights flickered in a rhythm that indicated the child mortality rate.
4) The fourth and final phase was to feature a concluding presentation of the information material.
This phase never took place. The military police became interested in the documentary material as a way of researching links between the unions and artists. Graciela Carnevale, one of the co-founders of Tucumán Arde, destroyed large sections of the archive.
Graciela Carnevale (*1942, lives in Rosario, Argentina)
Biography Archivo Tucumán Arde (Graciela Carnevale)
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