Si supieras que tu teléfono celular fue producto de un arrebato en el subte, ¿lo usarías para whatsappear tranquilamente con tus amigos? O si te dijeran que el estéreo del auto está manchado con sangre, ¿podrías manejar por la ciudad y escuchar música sin culpa? Y si tus camisas, remeras, jeans o vestidos fueron confeccionados por inmigrantes reducidos a la servidumbre, sometidos a jornadas laborales de 16 horas, hacinados en pequeñas habitaciones, despojados de su documentación y mal alimentados, ¿sentirías la libertad de mirarte al espejo? Tal vez ha llegado la hora de preguntarse: ¿quién hizo esa ropa?

It is estimated that throughout the metropolitan area the "Sweat Workshops", or "Slave Workshops" are supplied by a 30 network.000 seamstress workers, mostly from Bolivia.In the city of Buenos Aires alone, at least 3000 clandestine spaces would be settled where thousands of garments are made per week.There are those who risk that 80% of the clothing that circulates throughout the country comes from the illegal circuit.

Overcrowding, slavery and death are the three words that summarize each of the stories of this type, from the fire of March 30, 2006 in Caballito, in which four minors and two adults died - and that originated a wave of complaints andInspections– until April 27 in Flores, where two children, 7 and 10 years old, lost their lives.

Behind the tragedies, however, a new way of understanding the textile industry and that could become the tip of the iceberg to sweep slave work: cooperatives, called to be the retaining network of seamstress workers who suffered ill -treatment andsubmission.

A new step towards that concept took place two weeks ago in the Bonpland Solidarity Economics Market, in Palermo, where the parade "Clean Clothing was held.Slave Labor Free ".20 brands of independent designers participated that began to stock up at the World Alameda, Lacar, Soho and others that work in the demonstrative center of Barracas (CDI) clothing, under the orbit of the Alameda Foundation and the National Institute of Industrial Technology (Inti).They are the first clients who try to be the locomotive of the revolution.

"The change has to start with the boys," says Tamara Rosemberg to La Nacion while showing the shirts of the Heroicotoons series with the stamped images of Belgrano and San Martín.They are drawings by Luciano Giraldez and were designed "thinking about the boys who use superheroes's shirts".

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The cooperative, which already has its own brand and makes garments of the non -chains brand (without chains), with presence in several countries, had its first customers in 2005 and today it manufactures the products of 25 designers."Many of them sell inside.Some were in the circuit of the clandestine workshops and passed to the cooperatives, "adds Tamara, one of the founders of the Alameda.

The Foundation, which works in an old house on the corner of the Directory and Lacarra Avenue, in Flores, began as a community center due to the urgencies of the autoconvocated neighbors in the Avellaneda Park since December 2001.The first activities were a dining room, school support classes for children and a child development workshop.

"Many Bolivian women who had arrived in the country were cheated to work in slave workshops.They were reduced to servitude, they were held by documentation and told them to approach the Argentines "it was dangerous," recalls Tamara.

First with subsidies, then with their own funds, they began to buy textile machines to produce and generate jobs.

In one of them is Olga Cruz, a specialist in the termination of the necks and the hem."When I started in the cooperative I thought I would always be an assistant and now handled all the machines.I ascended, "he says, timidly laughing.

Olga is one of those who participated in the meetings of the Avellaneda Park.When he arrived in the country, he was paid five cents per garment;Today he wins between $ 45 and 55 per hour."I came like any immigrant, thinking about a better future, with two children and the idea of never abandoning them.I thought I was going to find decent job, as they said on many radios.They offered to pay in dollars, house and food.But when I arrived I found another reality, "he recalls.

In that slave workshop I worked from 7 to 22;He had to cook, clean the garments and clean the entire house."I didn't understand why people worked without moving from the machine.I had to serve breakfast and lunch right there! "

Luis Fernando Calle's story is similar, like the hundreds of his countrymen who were torn from his country.In 2012 he arrived in Argentina from La Paz with his wife.When the collective left them at Liniers, a combi was waiting for them to transfer them to a González Catán workshop.Then, the confinement, and nothing more."My wife became the sick and we could escape.We left everything because there was no other way out of that, "he explains.

A month ago he works in the Alameda world with a salary that is enough to rent and save.It is finishing a lot of non -chains shirts, but you take a break to share the agrio moments that it lived."All the production of the workshop was going to La Salada; we had to supply three fairs per week and deliver 100 shirts per day each.We had breakfast and had lunch on the machines, they did not pay us with money, but they gave us the merchandise we needed and at the end of the year they delivered some silver.It was terrible.I had never seen that, "he says.

Causes and prosecutions

In Federal Justice there are a total of 51 processing for exploitation in textile workshops throughout the country.For labor trafficking there were 16 convictions: ten correspond to textile workshops, four to agricultural exploitation, one domestic service and one to commerce.

In the City of Buenos Aires, meanwhile, there are two sentences for reduction to servitude in workshops of the same field and prior to the Law of Trafficking in Persons (26.364), sanctioned and promulgated in April 2008, modified in 2012 and regulated, with its changes, in January this year.

In 2013 the Alameda denounced the existence of 200 clandestine workshops.The presentation was made by the legislator of common good, Gustavo Vera (which is also president of the Alameda and the Special Commission of Trafficking of the Legislature) and Julio Piaumato, general secretary of the Union of Judicial Employees of the Nation.From that year, until today, the La Alameda Foundation denounced more than 500 directions in which there would be labor exploitation.The use of potential is not craving since in most cases the eventual lack of pragmatism of justice prevented it from verifying it.

The "sweat workshops" are detected by the complaints that the Alameda receives via mail, through the NGO blog, by telephone or in the legislature.All are given course through the Prosecutor's Office for Trafficking and Exploitation of Persons (Protex), created in April 2013 in replacement of the Fiscal Unit for Assistance in extortion kidnappings and human trafficking.If the demand is personal, and if the case requires it, the team of the National Program for Rescue Program for victims of trafficking acts to evaluate the situation and dispose if the victim is under their orbit and needs some kind of special assistance.

Other containment and integration alternatives are possible.Seven textile cooperatives work in the CDI of Barracas and at least another 20 have already passed there.On average, three years remain until they manage to strengthen ties with their customers, although the period of time can extend.Then it is time to fly, to continue the work in its own space.

There, among Bolivian cumbia, fabric and wire pieces there are women and men who worked in clandestine workshops.Some cooperatives are in charge of the machines that until a few months ago operated in the overcrowding of a small room;The CDI is usually the judicial deposit of clothing and confiscated machinery in textile raids.In one of the halls there are 10.000 jeans to finish from a 2007 operation.When the judicial case is unlocking they will be raw materials of cooperatives.And some machines were sent to Chaco and Formosa, where the Qom community uses them for their ventures.

"Here they are given space and technical accompaniment to cooperatives.He also advises them to seek financing when some machines are independent and lent.It is a limited period, what is called incubation, "says Néstor Escudero, technician of the INTI and member of the Alameda.

The Barracas textile pole works in a space assigned by the Buenos Aires government through the Buenos Aires Southern Corporation.The largest cooperative has 30 people, but there are others that work with six members.Among them is Lacar, a brand of shirts that broke and was recovered by the workers.There they manufacture the products that then sell in a Morón store and another located in the Bonpland market.

A similar initiative takes place in Soho Coop, which works in what was the central house of the brand before its bankruptcy.Some 17 people achieved work continuity in June 2014 with the guarantees of justice, although there is still a litigation for the use of the brand.It was the same workers who, in 2007, were part of the complaints against the owners of the company, who used the workforce of some 300 clandestine workshops to make 35.000 garments per week that supplied 45 stores.

"From here the workshops were sent, there was no intermediary.The workshops came to look for the cuts or our colleagues carried them.The places were frightening.There are two companions who contributed testimony of the reported workshops.That happened throughout the history of Soho, "recalls Ezequiel Conde, who worked in the company's deposit and today is one of the referents of the cooperative, which usually receives seized machines in raids.

That happened, for example, after the operation that was carried out on this month in a Patricios Park workshop, where Bonaerense police uniforms were made.The machines were ceded to Soho Coop for reuse."We offer to give transitory assistance to the victims of slaves workshops.Here we have room.You can stabilize, eat, sleep, bathe, have social assistance and start working in a cooperative with the same machines that justice seized, "says Ezequiel.

#Bastade TrabajoesClav, #Ropalimpia and #quienhizomiropa are the slogans that are committed to installing the issue on social networks to sweep slave labor."Where is cheap clothes, there will be exploitation.As long as there are salad or manteros de Avellaneda there will be exploitation, "summarizes Luis Fernando.Nobody better than him to say it.

Olga Cruz: From Sucre to a clandestine workshop in Flores

He arrived from Bolivia with his two children, Johan and Daniela."When we came we had to buy false documents at the border.We were there for a few days until they asked us $ 400 to enter.The one that falsified the document lent you that money until you enter Argentina, "he recalls.Once installed she learned the trade and began to produce in a clandestine workshop garments that were marketed in La Salada and in eleven."You look bad, there are no spaces to move, it is full of garments and fabrics.The seamstresses can only move to go to the bathroom, "he says."Breakfast is tea or mate cooked with bread or cookies.Lunch is lousy: rice with a little tuco or a vegetable soup.I did not understand why they paid so little."

Luis Fernando Calle: Prisoner in the deep conurbano

The first thing they saw, next to his wife, when he arrived at the Liniers station was a white combi that would transport them to a González Catán workshop.Then came a long confinement, days of darkness and uncertainty."He brought us a countryman of peace.There, for the eyebrow of the high, there are classified warnings: "You need staff for sewing workshop in Argentina, you pay a passage, an individual room, per diem, seven -hour work and US $ 500 per month is given".It was good money for Bolivia, "he explains."Most people access that because in Bolivia there is not much work, except in the textile area.Many compatriots opt for that option that seems the easiest, but here things change, "he says.