The Construction of a National Project. An Ethnographic Study on Union-State Relations in Argentina during Cristina Fernández de Kirchner's ast Government

In this paper, I present an analysis on union-State relations in Argentina during the government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, through an ethnographic study of activism in FOETRA, the main telecommunications union in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires, between 2013-2015. Drawing on results of my PhD research, I begin by describing everyday interactions between union activists/leaders and State representatives/agencies, and the meanings constructed about them, to show the complexity of relations that could otherwise be simplified as heteronomous, or pro-government. Instead, I analyze the activists' perspective on union-State relations as a joint construction of a national project, and I show how this perspective was in itself complex. First, by considering how it was contested in everyday activist practice and, second, examining the long-term perspective that activists and leaders took into account in its construction. I situate this perspective by briefly reconstructing the recent history of FOETRA to how these relations took shape in the last decades. Finally, I describe how this historical perspective has been urgently recalled in activist practice since the assumption of Mauricio Macri at the end of 2015, and the radical reshaping of union-State relations that has taken place since. From a framework of analysis in Political Anthropology, I seek to contribute to an anthropological analysis of the State as a process in the making (Joseph and Nugent, 2002; Corrigan and Sayer, 2007), by showing the active part that workers and their organizations play in State construction.