When I asked Ricardo why he and some of his co-workers at Ghelco, a food processing plant with fifty or so workers, had decided in early May 2002 in the midst of Argentina's worst socio-economic debacle, to ‘recuperate’ their factory after the owner had filed for bankruptcy and terminated them, he responded:

After pressing Ricardo several times to clarify the meaning of this last phrase, he replied:

Many of the workers that I interviewed used strikingly similar terms rooted in civic recognition and political belonging to describe their own situation as well as the plight of unemployed Piqueteros who had been stripped of their ‘right to have rights’, to borrow from Hannah Arendt. They were as fearful of losing their jobs as they were of losing their ‘place in the world which is what makes opinions significant and actions effective’.

After the interview I spent the remainder of the afternoon strolling through the neighbourhood of Barracas, where Ghelco is located, on the city's southern edge. Prior to the debacle this area had been one of the most economically vibrant and productive in the country, home to hundreds of workshops and medium-sized factories which provided countless skilled workers with stable, well-remunerated jobs and their children with a sense of security, knowing that someday they would follow in their parents’ footsteps.