Talk:Recovered factory

Notes

I just added a note to the effect that the meaning is well understood. "Recover" as the only translation of "recuperar" somehow implies that the company was taken from the employees (and from there to economico-ideological discussions that do not belong here). But "recuperar" also means "to get it back to work, to re-fit, to put back in good condition". These factories were not also bankrupt, sometimes they were gutted ("vaciadas").

Are there documented examples from other countries? As presented it looks like an Argentine-only phenomenon. --Pablo D. Flores 15:01, 9 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Closest I can think of is the CNT-FAI, but I guess you're talking more contemporary. I hope this article can see some expansion; I've been so frustrated in looking for information on this that I'm considering Spanish lessons. Until then I have little clue how legit this site is, or whether to link it. --Echeneida

The site seems legit. The MNER seems like one of those spontaneous assemblies of workers that became co-opted by very, very shallow anarcho-communist ideologues, which are a penny a dozen in today's Argentina. They complain about persecution and some of them even equate the current situation with that of the Dirty War, denouncing "political prisoners" and all. Of course, if this was truly a dictatorship, they'd all be dead or disappeared by now. I'm sure most of the workers in the recovered factories do not buy most of that ideological stuff. The ones you see protesting are the unemployed piqueteros. --Pablo D. Flores 10:41, 16 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Oy. Let's not talk here about the humaneness of capitalism or effective solutions to it. While I can't tell how "mainstream" this current is among the MTDs, it's certainly prominent enough to get some serious attention in the article. As regards factions and political groups, I'm still trying to untangle all these names. I can barely suss out who's who from the English coverage. I'm tempted, for now, to just make a redirect page for every name I've come across. Y/N? --Echeneida

It's not a matter of language only, believe me. That's why I haven't taken up the task to write the piquetero article yet. :) I understand you've been researching for sources in English? Could you list them here? Maybe we can get something out of them. What are those names you want to make redirects of? --Pablo D. Flores 20:16, 16 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

PS: Oh my, I see now what you meant. Last time I checked piquetero was a red link. I strongly suggest avoiding that redirect. The piquetero movement is something altogether different from the recovered factory movement. To begin with, the only job most piqueteros have is precisely picketing, blocking roads. --Pablo D. Flores 20:21, 16 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

My bad, dogg. Like I said, Anglophone reports tend to run all the movements together -- probably, considering the sources who even bother reporting on this, because they want to believe there's a great deal of solidarity where perhaps there isn't. Piquetero is now a very bad stub. As for sources in English, all I've found are scattered articles, not much more substantial than what's already linked here and in Hotel Bauen. Still working on that, and on getting a decent collection of names to be confused about. --Echeneida

Recovered business

I'm finding a lot of cases where the occupied business is not a factory. Maybe this should be moved to "recovered business" or something like that? I can hardly tell if such thing as a "commonly accepted term" even exists at the moment --Echeneida

There is no such term yet. Google gives me less than ten hits for "recovered business", and most of them are part of larger expressions ("they recovered business data after the virus strike"), while "recovered factory" gives me more than 80, mostly good hits. Anyway I'm going to make a redirect. Do you have a list of companies that we can include?

You can sign with your name and date/time using four tildes (~~~~). --Pablo D. Flores 10:38, 17 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I think there are real problems with finding a good English term here. The most distinctive features of what were talking about are (1) its origins as a spontaneous response by workers to a situation of severe economic, political and social crisis ; (2) their co-operative nature, not the type of economic activity (business is not good since it usaually implies for-profit) ; (3) the connection to an ongoing movement and the struggle to secure a future for these economic entities.

How about using the Spanish term "fabrica recuperada" as article title and term to cover the various types of economic entities? I think this is justified since this phenomenon originates in Argntina/Latin america to which it remains confined for now, and the term is very closely tied to its origins. It's quite common in the English language to borrow terms for othr languages when there is no good English term. And there simply is no English translation that really hits the mark - "recovered factory" [1] and "recuperated factory" [2] are both used but neither really captures the important features - they are just clumsy translations. - pir 12:06, 18 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm... I'm all for using the Spanish name for certain things that are not known otherwise in English (Revolución Libertadora, Proceso de Reorganización Nacional, etc.), but "recovered factory" is not a clumsy translation — it's a good verbatim translation of a phenomenon named after a specific case which no longer applies, but the name has stuck and it works. "Recuperated factory" sounds positively hideous to me; I didn't know that "recuperated" was even a word. But I'd say recuperated factory should be a redirect to recovered factory. This is not Spanish WP after all, so people looking for this will probably not search for "fábrica recuperada"; Spanish speakers will most surely use the verbatim translation. The idea is to get a recognizable and quickly searchable title, not one that gets the true meaning (that's what the rest of the article is for).

Also, check Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English). English sources use "recovered/recuperated factory", not the original Spanish.

"Recovered business" is not used much and I would rather not have that title even as a redirect. However, a recovered factory is a business — maybe not supposed to make profits just for the sake of it, but of course intending to produce money to pay salaries, and maybe some profit to invest on equipment. --Pablo D. Flores 12:45, 18 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

PS: I see that the article covers the concept of recovered factory and at the end jumps into a mention of the recovered factory movement. The movement (one of the things you, Pir, talked about in the definition above) is different from one single worker-run company; there should be a section of the article mentioning it. A full socio-economic study of it would be nice, but we can't expect that soon. :) I'm having trouble getting piqueteros into the picture, too; there's not much info on the relationship between MTDs and RFs. --Pablo D. Flores 12:45, 18 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

OK maybe you're right. My main problem with "recovered" was that to me it meant only to gain owenership over something one owned beforehand (when these factories were reviously owned by capitalists) - but I guess that is an exact translation of the Spanish meaning ; it is a defiant claim to ownership relations in capitalism and, perhaps, similar to things like Reclaim the streets. (btw. "reclaimed factory" is another translation that has been used [3] I looked up the definition of recover [4] and it also means "to restore to a normal state" although this can only be used in the sense where one (a person) recovers oneself - similar to another important meaning of the Spanish term.

 re·cov·er 
 v., -ered, -er·ing, -ers.
 v.tr.
  1. To get back; regain.
  2. To restore (oneself) to a normal state: He recovered himself after a slip on the ice.
  3. To compensate for: She recovered her losses.
  4. To procure (usable substances, such as metal) from unusable substances, such as ore or waste.
  5. To bring under observation again: “watching the comet since it was first recovered—first spotted since its 1910 visit” (Christian Science Monitor).

Anyway, I'm really glad that some people at Wikipedia are working on the topic of these factories. pir 15:07, 18 August 2005 (UTC) P.S. It's true that this entry is a bit difficult to find whatver name it is under so we should make sure all the possible translations exist as redirects.[reply]

In other countries

Argentina
- Global (Baloons), Buenos Aires [5]
- Ediciones Marymar (books), Buenos Aires [6]
- Zanón [7]
- CUC (ex Gatic) (shoes), Buenos Aires [8]

Uruguay
- Dymac (textile), Montevideo [9] (05/10/2005)
- Molino Santa Rita (flaur mill), Canelones [10]

I just added a link for an external site that lists all the known recovered enterprises in South America. --Brian Z 21:15, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]