Subect 1: Pedro Peretti
Role: Executive Director of FAA \
Subect 2: Carlos González
Role: local representative and FAA diary commissioner \
Place: Buenos Aires
Date: April 14, 2015
Annotation
See Citation 5.
Interview
Pedro Peretti
[13:03] Authors: “How do you decide a protest in FAA?”
Peretti: “FAA has many mechanisms, a central executive committee, and regional assemblies. In general, the protest originates in the regional assemblies. In some occasions, when I was the executive director of FAA, and the central executive decided on an action, it consulted the bases. That was a two-way mechanism. When the people from below starts to mobilize, we do what we call district meetings as we call it, using our own districts, south of Santa Fe-north of Buenos Aires, south of Cordoba, north of Cordoba, La Pampa, Chaco-Formosa, Mesopotamia, etc. That’s how the process starts. In 2008, it was different, many of us were Kirchneristas. The majority of the FAA was Kirchneristas. We all had voted Cristina. Now’s different. In my roadblock all had voted for Cristina. We were coming of four excellent years. Yet, we had a debate with our friends in the Kirchnerism. The FAA had a group of government officials that we consult, such as Rafael Bielsa, the daughter of Cardozo, with Depetri, with Luis D’Elia, all different officials from diverse areas. We consult with them to avoid hurting the government with a positive human right policy. The leadership of Buzzi [Eduardo Buzzi, president of the FAA at the time of the 2008 tax revolt] was center-left. In 2004, we had made a land conference, which included Eduardo Luis Duhalde, Tummini who was Kirchnerista back then but not now, the Secretary of Agriculture who was Javier de Urquiza. We were complaining that the agriculture area of the government was dominated by a ‘ruralista’ view in that moment and they didn’t pay attention to family agriculture and small ownership agriculture. It was a difficult situation for the government, which had to put out fires, and the agriculture sector, which was benefited by good international prices and was doing very well was not paid attention to [17:01] … [22:13] in the FAA there were two positions during the [2008] conflict. One was our position that now is called the Cry of Alcorta but in that moment there was Buzzi as well and we supported differential public policy. You cannot treat in the same way those who are structurally different. We are against flat policies or universal policies. We believe in positive discrimination in function of size, volume, etc., it’s all explained here. It was the left-wing sector, but it was not necessarily left-wing, it was the sector who defended our historical position. And there was another sector led by de Angeli [Alfredo de Angeli, an important rural activist from the FAA in Entre Ríos, who would become a Senator for a center-right party] which demanded to return to March 11th [before the tax rate] because all producers were the same and we disagree [26:43] … [27:20] the differences were visible on the discussion for the nationalization of private pension funds. We supported it publicly and the other sector led by de Angeli opposed. This originated a debate and Buzzi was very good because he showed how we had always opposed the privatization and explained to the press how it was.”
Carlos González
[11:45] González: “The FAA is the organization that mobilizes the most and that’s most active in the roadblocks. The small and medium farmers, sharecroppers and service providers are the crucial core. The FAA has presidents of long duration, from the onset until Buzzi who was there for sixteen years. All leaders that are in power for so long generate personalized structures they can control because nobody can grow under their shadow. They generate structures they can dominate. He changed. He was close to the government in the first administration of Kirchner [13:00] … [13:23] even though he was close to Kirchner, in 2008, the pressure from the bases forces him to join the other rural organizations in the Coordinating Committee.” [13:33]