Cacerolazo is the name of a popular form of protest that consists in a group of people creating noise by banging pots, pans and other utensils in order to call for attention. Demonstrators march through the intersection of 18th and M Streets NW in Washington DC at the A16 demonstration against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund on April 16, 2005. ...

The word comes from Spanish cacerola, which means "stew pot". The derivative suffix -azo denotes a hitting (punching or striking) action, and has been extended metaphorically to any sort of violent shock demonstration. In linguistics, derivation is the process of creating new lexemes from other lexemes, for example, by adding a derivational affix. ... Suffix has meanings in linguistics, nomenclature and computer science. ... In language, a metaphor is a rhetorical trope defined as a direct comparison between two seemingly unrelated subjects. ...

The term cacerolazo in the above sense was first used in Argentina during 2001, as the colloquial name of the protests and demonstrations of the middle-class people who had seen their savings trapped in the so-called corralito (a set of restrictive economic measures that effectively froze all bank accounts, initially as a short-term fix for the massive draining of bank deposits). The corralito meant that many people who needed a large amount of cash immediately, or who simply lived off the interests from their deposits, suddenly found their savings unavailable. As court appeals were slow and ineffective, people resorted to protest in the streets. 2001: A Space Odyssey. ... This page is about protests. ... The middle class (or middle classes) comprises a social group once defined by exception as an intermediate social class between the nobility and the peasantry. ... Corralito was the informal name for the economic measures taken in Argentina during 2001 by economy minister Domingo Cavallo in order to stop the draining of bank accounts. ... For other uses, see Bank (disambiguation). ... Bank deposits accounts are the large part of the money supply. They come in different types depending on withdrawal restrictions. ...

As the Argentine peso quickly devalued and foreign currency fled the country, the government decreed a forced conversion of dollar-denominated accounts into pesos at an arbitrary exchange rate of 1.4 pesos/dollar. At this point the unavailability of cash for people trapped in the corralito compounded with the continuous loss of value of their savings, and the unresponsiveness of the appeal authorities (minor courts and the Supreme Court itself) further angered the protestors. Devaluation is reduction in the value of a currency. ...

The first cacerolazos were spontaneous. While in Argentina most demonstrations against government measures are customarily organized by labour union activists and low-level political recruiters among the lower classes, and often featuring an assortment of large banners, drums and pyrotechnic devices, cacerolazos were composed mostly of spontaneously gathered middle-class workers, housewives and professionals, who used not to be involved in grassroots political action of any kind. A union (labor union in American English; trade union, sometimes trades union, in British English; either labour union or trade union in Canadian English) is a legal entity consisting of employees or workers having a common interest, such as all the assembly workers for one employer, or all the workers... A grassroots political movement, inspired by the German word Graswurzel, is a movement organized by a network of citizens. ...

After a time, however, the cacerolazo became an organized phenomenon, often of a violent nature, directed against the banks. Many of them were attacked, their facades spray-painted, their glasses broken, their entrances blocked by tire fires, or even their facilities occupied by force at times.

In order to avoid further violence, especially with the deadly December 2001 riots still fresh in the memories of Argentinians, the government decided not to use active police force against the cacerolazos unless absolutely necessary, and to restrict most police presence to barricades in critical spots, a policy that was followed also with piquetero marches of unemployed people asking for state welfare and jobs. The December 2001 riots were a period of civil unrest and rioting in Argentina that took place during December of 2001, with the worst incidents taking place on December 20 and December 21, 2001, in Argentinas capital Buenos Aires. ... A piquetero is a member of a social movement originally initiated by unemployed workers in Argentina in the mid-1990s, a few years before the peak of the economic crisis that started in 1998 with a recession and erupted in 2001 causing the resignation of President Fernando de la R...

Isolated cacerolazos also featured during the apagón ("blackout") of September 24, 2002, to protest against increases in public service fees requested by the providers. Apagón (in Spanish, literally, blackout) is a form of protest that was employed several times in some large cities of Argentina, during the economic crisis at the beginning of the 2000s. ... September 24 is the 267th day of the year (268th in leap years). ...

As the financial and macroeconomic conditions became more stable, the government loosened the restrictions on the withdrawal of deposits, and the cacerolazos died out.

External links

• Cacerolazo.com (in Spanish)
• "Cacerolazo" in the Google directory
• Articles in Worldpress.org: [1], [2]