The New Idea

In Argentina, where disruptive and violent demonstrations have been the public's main channel for registering dissatisfaction with the major changes of the past two years, Guillermo has developed programs through which regular people become involved in the political process and influence the decisions that affect their daily lives. By opening spaces for public forums within government buildings and training community members in advocacy, he provides an outlet for the constructive redirection of participants' frustration, based on better understanding of policy and civil rights. He develops trainings and tools to inform social leaders, students, and their neighbors on current issues and on the best ways to sway forthcoming decisions on those issues. Guillermo's focus on current topics and the underlying trends and policies that cause them attracts the critical mass to impact public decision-making that has eluded most other advocacy projects.

The Problem

During the past decade, Argentina has become a country where state policies are rarely oriented toward public welfare, whose institutions are frightfully weakened by the economy's collapse, where laws are not observed, and where vandalism and threats replace the democratic process. Lack of confidence in public agencies is increasing at an alarming rate. According to the Center for New Majority Studies, approval for the National Congress has fallen to 7 percent in 1999 from 15 percent in 1990, for Judicial Power to 7 percent from 21, and for political parties to 11 percent from 13. Popular investment in democracy that had been falling apart at the end of the last decade has only reached new lows since 2000, exacerbated by the current socioeconomic crisis.

Partisanship now dominates the government and citizens feel alienated from political participation. As Argentinean people do not find institutional channels through which to express their rage and demands, their reactions to the national economic crisis is to convoke cacerolazos (noisy demonstration by clanging pots and pans), escraches (massive public humiliation of politicians), and piquetes (destruction of roads and other public property). Various civil society organizations work to subvert violence and promote civic participation through advocacy, but they are not issues-oriented or participant-driven and therefore, have fallen short of real policy change or broad influence.

The Strategy

Guillermo founded Participación Ciudadana, or Citizen Participation, in 2000 to stimulate responsible civic participation from a larger portion of Argentina's citizen base. His objectives fit into several focus areas: civic participation, transparency; institutional relationships, and participation tools. This work includes changing municipal laws and regulations to make spaces more accessible for citizens to learn about and discuss policy; training people in the best ways to exert their right to participate in decision-making; articulating consensus between different civil society organizations and political actors; introducing transparency mechanisms that guarantee free access to public information; and engaging with the local media to promote activities and increase participation.

Guillermo launched Participación Ciudadana in Usuhaia as a pilot and has already achieved tremendous policy-changing success through his Citizen Debate and Information Commissions. The commissions drafted and advocated for the passage of a new municipal law that permits citizens to participate in and give input to discussions of new bills and a second law that requires citizen approval of all new edicts passed by the City Council. Citizens of Usuhaia have also used the commissions to argue that they are entitled to call for a popular referendum or consult in any situation they deem necessary. Guillermo also worked with the commissions to gain access for citizens to a voting session of the Magistrates Council, during which the judges of the province's Supreme Court were elected.

As part of the commissions, Guillermo has established the Open Cathedral on Citizen Rights to educate community members about the municipal legal system, its application, and ways to use it toward public benefit. Prestigious local and national scholars instruct social leaders, teachers, university students, parents, and their neighbors on how to more clearly assert their rights. Role-plays include public trials, congressional debates, and elaborations on laws. Participación Ciudadano has also successfully advocated for its members to take active part in the participatory budget process starting in 2003.

Rather than simply rest on the laurels of his successes in mobilizing and educating an effective citizen base for advocacy and policy change, Guillermo has formed partnerships with some of the organizations whose ineffective practices he originally set out to remedy. By working with and strengthening other local citizen sector organizations, he has been able to increase Participación Ciudadana's spread and visibility. Collaborations with other groups have led to a formal Deliberation Forum, Dialogue Table of Tierra del Fuego, Participation Forum, Citizen for Democracy Forum, First Patagonic Exhibition of Civil Society, and strategic advances in participatory, budget, public information, human rights, judicial power, governance, and capacity building issues.

Another key aspect of Guillermo´s strategy involves drawing media attention to Participación Ciudadana's advocacy campaigns to further inform the citizen base of its rights and opportunities to take a more active role. He edits a monthly bulletin, hosts a weekly radio program, and receives regular coverage from Argentina's most widely read publications, Diario and La Nación. He intends to soon launch his own media agency, Patagonic, which will cover Participación Ciudadana's initiatives and denounce national and local corruption more openly than the press currently does.

Guillermo has already begun the spread of his methods throughout Argentina and the rest of the Southern Cone. He advises the organization Transparency in Paraguay on its work with the Magistrate Committee and is helping Poder Ciudadano adapt his methods to Peru. In Argentina, he is working with FORINS to revise the Provincial Constitution, and he is developing plans to advocate for responsible state and civil society interaction in Puerto Pirámides, Trelew, Calafate, and Bariloche.

The Person

Guillermo's grandfather, a socially active businessman, had a great influence on Guillermo during his youth. His grandfather encouraged him to volunteer in poor communities, beginning during his secondary school days. Guillermo was deeply saddened by the conditions in which people lived and he arrived at strategies for citizen mobilization. He developed problem-solving activities rather than simply helping a few people out of sympathy.

He acquired useful managerial and organizational skills while working at banks to support himself through college, and continued developing self-sufficiency programs for physically disabled people during his spare time. Guillermo relocated to Ushuaia when he was 22 to work at the Municipal Sports Area there, developing new provincial laws on disabled people's rights. After promotions led him to directorship of Municipal Social Development, he founded Inclusión Patagónica, an organization that provides job opportunities to disabled youth to promote social integration.

In 1999 Guillermo adopted a little boy whose mother had abandoned him at Inclusión Patagónica. Based on his experiences as a new father with a physically challenged youth, Guillermo launched his first formal advocacy campaign for inclusion of disabled children in public schools, eventually influencing policy in the National Ministry of Education. After similar initiatives representing the rights of the elderly, women, and people with AIDS, Guillermo launched Participación Ciudadana to educate and mobilize the efforts of all citizens for a just and more representative democracy.