Content area
Full Text
An Ethnographic Account*
Abstract: Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a shantytown in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, this article studies the workings of Peronist "political clientelism" among the urban poor. It analyzes the web of relations that some slum-dwellers establish with local political brokers to obtain medicine, food, and solutions to other everyday concerns. The article also explores the main functions of the "problem-solving networks," which are resource control and information hoarding, and pays particular attention to an underexplored dimension of the operation of clientelism: clients' own views on the network.
Thirty-four-year old Norma lives in a slum in the city of Cospito, in the Conurbano Bonaerense.1 She has no stable job, and her husband has recently lost his as a construction worker. They have a handicapped baby girl and a teenage boy who dropped out of the neighborhood public high school. In September 1996, they opened a grocery store in the front part of their house. Norma told me in our interview, "You know, things were not working very well, so I decided to open an unidad basica (a grassroots office of the Peronist party) and see what happens!" Their decision coincided with the ascending career of Gustavo Pedele, a Peronist councilman trying to make inroads into the slum to launch his 1998 mayoral campaign. Pedele now pays Norma's utility bills and provides her family with small amounts of cash. Norms is now Pedele's broker (his punters) and Pedele is Norma's political patron (her referente).
Every week, Norma's unidad basics (UB) distributes powdered milk from the Programs Materno-Infantil (a nutritional program funded by the national welfare ministry) and food from the local municipality to more than fifty slum-dwellers. Norms explained, "Every month, at the party meetings, the mayor informs us [the brokers of the 140 UBs who usually attend the meeting] of the date when they are going to give out food at the municipality. . . We tell the neighbors." Because Norms is "just starting with this party thing,' her access to state resources is for the time being restricted.
But Norma admitted that she "compensates" for this limited access "with other things,' such as organizing short trips for the slum-dwellers and other recreational activities. Councilman Pedele provides her with a...