MAASTRICHT AND NEOLIBERALISM
KOORDINADORA DE KOL:LECTIUS DEL PARK ALCOSA.
It's not yet 7am and it's nice weather this morning, the sky is
blue with a reddish tinge, and the bus stop is full of the same faces
as always - those women who go and clean the houses of the "others"
in the city. The suburb will wake up later on, it's like a box of
matches stuffed full with 10,000 people in a square kilometre that
lies to the south, always to the south of every city, this time 7km
to the south of Valencia. The signs of sleepiness and of the pills
some of them take can still be noted - without them they feel they
can't bear the strain.
Juana is happy, her husband is unemployed and that's why he works
so hard - without any contract of course, with no social security,
withoput knowing if he'll have work tomorrow, and he works such long
hours because he doesn't get paid for overtime, but they have bought
a lovely car and it's clean, they wash it every Sunday, that way the
neighbours will forget he's unemployed. But will they be able to make
the repayments ? Yes, of course they will... and the water and
electricity bills ? And the local tax ? And the party for the kid
when he makes his first communion ? Yes, yes of course they will. So
that everyone will forget he's unemployed... and so he can forget
this too, he has to drink more and more in the bar every day, he
forgets so much that he spends half his day's pay. but Juana is
happy, she's going to go to the hairdresser's for her son's
communion, and she'll imagine they're like Andres's family, Andres
from the second floor who works in a big factory and has a real job -
although his wife Marta is worried and can't sleep at night because
they've told him they may throw him out: restructuring, Maastricht
and all that. with the new contract they've given him they can throw
him out whenever they want.
Marta can't sleep and that's why she takes pills... They still
haven't told Andres that their eldest son, Jose, the one who comes
home so late, has taken to stealing her pills, or that she's caught
him doing strange things with a piece of aluminium foil in his
bedroom.
But they're better off than the neighbours below them, Mariano and
his brother who work in an illegal sweatshop that everybody knows
about, the boss has told them they have to work harder because in
China they can make the same thing much cheaper, and the customer
will buy it from China instead of from them, but they're already
working ten hours a day and their hourly rate is a pittance.
On the television they said that Zaire is no longer Zaire, it's
called the Congo now, and the Europeans are no longer in charge -
what Europeans? I wonder. The French, somebody who reads the
newspaper every day tells me. But which French people? The emigrants
who live in the slums of Paris? No, it can't be them, anyway now the
Americans are in control... but which Americans? The newspaper tells
me it's the North Americans, but it can't be the Chicanos who live in
the poor suburbs.
Now we are in Europe, the Europe of Maastricht which deals in the
bones of coloured children and in broken stomachs that have no
colour at all.
Meanwhile, down in the local Co-operative, we go on recycling
cardboard and cleaning the streets so that the Council will pay, and
cooking good, cheap meals in the People's Kitchen, selling water for
the houses, doing little repair jobs in people's houses and now we're
thinking of putting up a greenhouse to grow tomatoes, onions and
everything in... as well as opening a second hand clothes shop and
selling newspapers in the street.
We have to survive, we go on exploiting ourselves a little more
every day, but at least it's our own affair; though they've told us
that some Indians have rebelled in Chiapas, Mexico.
LET THEM HAVE THEIR REBELLION, LET'S SEE IF WE MAKE OUR OWN
REBELLION ONE OF THESE DAYS!!