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Without the community work of women in working-class neighborhoods, there would be a social explosion. This is the view of Mónica Troncoso, a leader of the organization La Poderosa. With several years of experience in community care work, Mónica knows firsthand the challenges of a situation in Argentina where 55% of the population lives in poverty, subsidies for services and transportation are being cut, and public policies and social programs are being dismantled. This is compounded by the fact that food is not being delivered to soup kitchens and community meal programs, even though a million children go to bed hungry.

“I’m proud to do this work, but I also understand that I can’t be doing what I love 24/7. I dedicate as much time as I can because I also have to work outside the home to survive. I’d like to do more, but right now we’re facing the obstacles this government has put in place. The way they’ve weakened community networks is terrible,” Troncoso shared in a conversation with Presentes.

Mónica Troncoso is 47 years old. She was born in the Piñero Hospital, in Bajo Flores, in the City of Buenos Aires, and during the last military dictatorship, she and her family went to live in Lomas de Zamora. She remained there until she was 11 years old, when they moved to her grandparents' house in the Fátima neighborhood of Villa Soldati, where she currently lives. 

Throughout her life, she held many jobs. After finishing high school, she studied Electromechanics. In the 1990s, she cleaned houses and offices, sold magazine products, and did any odd job she could to raise her daughter, who was born in 1997. She studied pastry making and became a certified pastry chef. She ran her own business from home, working as a grocer and owning a bakery. Now she works at the Che, ¡qué rico!and is a national representative for the Cooperatives and Social Economy branch of La Poderosa.

slum feminism

At 40, through the community work she began doing with that organization, she first recognized herself as a feminist. She is currently traveling to San Salvador de Jujuy to meet with other women at the 37th Plurinational Meeting of Women, Lesbians, Trans, Transvestites, Bisexuals, Intersex, and Non-Binary People. 

“I identified as a feminist and as a slum feminist because I am an activist for my neighborhood, my body, my territory, where I live, and who I am as a woman. I believe that this slum feminism movement opened the eyes of many of my sisters. We are not against men; we believe in deconstructing that machismo. The fightis against the patriarchy, which inflicts so much violence on women and also affects men,” Troncoso acknowledged.

This Friday, the second annual Slum Feminism Round will take place under the title "Community Work as a Curb on Drug Trafficking: The Struggle in the Time of Milei." It will be held at 2 PM in Plaza Belgrano, located at the intersection of General Belgrano and Sarmiento streets in San Salvador de Jujuy. Presentes spoke with representatives about this work and its importance as a tool for community support.

– How is community work going in working-class neighborhoods during Javier Milei's government?

"Before, we tried to keep the soup kitchens open every day, but now we only cook three times a week because we can't keep up. You can cook 40 meals a day, but you have a line of 300 people; it's a joke. It's not that everything was perfect under the previous government; we also made demands, but at least we could talk. With this government, there's nothing, and they deny the people's hunger.".

Today we have no food. Many of our soup kitchens and community meal programs are surviving through economic strategies like selling other food items or holding raffles, or what happened, for example, with Mollo's guitar. Our soup kitchens, 128 of them across the country, are surviving thanks to the community work done by our networks. We're knocking on the doors of ministries, municipalities, and council members, begging them to do their job and declare a food emergency. We already know we're getting nothing from the national government. If it weren't for these networks, there would be a social explosion. 

The fake war on drugs

– From the Ministry of National Security, headed by Patricia Bullrich, there is a strong emphasis on demonstrating that a “fight against drug trafficking” is being waged. How do you see the current situation?

– More and more women are coming to us and telling us that their children have started falling into drug use and they don't know how to stop it. People in working-class neighborhoods do odd jobs, often sleeping only five hours a night, and then spend the rest of the day working to feed our children. There's no other way to survive in the current situation. There's not much to collect for cardboard because consumption has decreased, and so has the amount of recyclable materials like cardboard, metals, everything that can be collected on the street. The kids see no future and end up falling into this. That's what drug traffickers do: they encourage residents to set up small kiosks to sell drugs, to consume them. And the government denies this and doesn't address the problem head-on as it should. 

– How can community work be a brake on the advance of drug trafficking?

– Kids who run away from home and end up sleeping on the streets come to our spaces seeking support. There they find a meal, a kind word, and connections to places where they can get medical treatment or detox. It's very difficult because drug traffickers often see our organizations as enemies because we take away their clients or "foot soldiers." It's hard to work in the community with such a huge monster that's like a parallel state. It puts us, the neighbors, at great risk, but we also can't stop talking about it.

We don't have a facility to provide support for young people struggling with substance abuse. We only support families and coordinate efforts to connect them with places to receive treatment. That's why building networks with others is so important in community work. We're concerned about the situation at Sedronar, which has been completely dismantled, and also about the attempted closure of the Bonaparte Hospital because they have programs in the slums and neighborhoods with which we collaborate. 

– How do these issues fit into the feminist agenda?

– I recognized myself as a feminist at 40 thanks to the community work I started doing at La Poderosa. I hadn't recognized myself as one before because it was so distant. We always thought it was just the academics. Being able to demystify feminism a bit and see what it really was made me realize that everything I was doing fit very well with what it meant to be a feminist. Feminism is a way of life where you fight for your rights, for the rights of your fellow women, and for gender equality in the sense that we are respected. 

It was incredibly difficult to get the issues of our communities onto the feminist agenda. But at some point, after they opened the refrigerator and we were there, on television, on the radio, we carved out our space. Today, the work we do with Ni Una Menos (Not One Less), with feminist networks across the country, is truly impressive. Taking on the struggle of a fellow activist as our own makes this movement grow and prevents us from being divided.

– What can be done from popular feminisms in the face of the attack against women and diverse people being carried out by the current government?

– The struggle in Javier Milei's time must bring us closer together, united, and organized. That's the lesson the Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo taught us: organization, not believing that because we are women or few in number, they can overwhelm us and violate our rights. Our intention with this march is for more women to join the struggle, to embrace our way of fighting in our communities. They have tried to dismantle us and have implemented measures to undermine community work, unity, and the work of social organizations, preventing us from continuing the work we do in our communities. This government is doing exactly what it said it would do. They are coming for us, for us poor people.