Jerónimo Montero
University of Durham 

 On March 30^th, 2006, the news in the Argentinean media was, as usual, bad: repression of oil workers engaged in struggle in the south, flooding in the north-west, workers struggling for higher wages in Buenos Aires, inflation, etc. But among the many bad news stories, there was one, particularly dreadful report, so dreadful that it would have a long-term impact on the public agenda: six Bolivian citizens had died in a fire in a sweatshop in Buenos Aires; two of them were garment workers; the other four were children. As the day unfolded, reality took a turn for the worse); these six people couldn’t leave the sweatshop on Viale Street because all the doors had been locked by their boss. They used to live there with 60 other people (who escaped the fire through the windows), sleeping on mattresses on the floor and working up to 18 hours a day for about a hundred dollars a month.