El experimento de Hawthorne

Another duality found alive in the CREA Movement is the tension between being a self- managed, small group versus becoming an institution with an expanding membership. In a select group of close friends with whom everything is easily shared, trust is more likely to exist. However, this contrasts with the messianic vocation of the CREA Movement of “open doors” (see glossary), expanding its frontiers to many more. In its origins, the CREA groups were mostly friends who shared socioeconomic conditions, culture, values, and geographical locale. Mainly based in the Pampas, the farmers’ main concerns for coming together were related to productive issues (the erosion of the soil) and to the isolated social condition in which they lived. These two causes came together as a reason to join forces back in 1959. Elderly farmers remember their life before they joined their CREA group:

CREA for us meant a lot of exchange with others…It opened us to friends and to a network of people. We were very lonely, because of the distances, because of the roads, because of the type of cars in those days…

As word of CREA got out, farmers from different geographical areas, which produced different crops, beef or milk, became involved. Growth was explosive at this stage, with some resistance on part of the founder to the relentlessly expanding number of groups. Word-of-mouth, anecdotes and stories seemed to play an important role in the formation of new groups. As Boal and Schultz (2007, p.413) write, stories work as “A powerful way of making outsiders feel insiders and imparting tacit knowledge or its emotional component”.

Size brought complexity and the need for organizing. Soon productive and geographical differences started creating communication problems: “it was like a

dialogue of deaf people, we spoke different languages”, said one of the interviewees that worked for many years as an asesor and general coordinator. The AACREA

institutional structure followed the growth in the number of groups; regional Zones were created. As mentioned, a National Congress in 1970 was the milestone when AACREA introduced the geographical division of its groups.

Growth in number of CREA groups pushed and fuelled the development of AACREA as an institution. However, what may seem today like a natural development into a complex organization only took place with considerable internal resistance and struggles. The following quote of a farmer who was a former AACREA president explains why and how the institution came to exist (E.P., personal communication, September 1st, 2006):

First there was one group, and then…..when there were 20, or 30 they realised that the richness of the exchange among those 12 people had to be communicated on between the groups. So it grew organically. …Then they said ‘experiences have to be exchanged in a more structured way’…AACREA was created… and then the regions were born. And so as a fruit of growth, the structure was being formed, but the cell of all that is each group.

The final sentence provides a hint of the underlying duality that is present between the CREA farmers and AACREA. Closely related to the representative nature of a

democratic system, the interviewee insists that the essence of the Movement is the group; the “cell” of the organism is the CREA group. Further:

The movement was developed through the years, but what we must not forget is that the essence of it is the CREA group. The CREA group is the 12, 10, or 9 members, each with their monthly meeting, their asesor, and each group is a cell, and each cell is autonomous.

What can be read as the formal history of the institution with accurate dates and facts is not representative of the deep problems that AACREA as an institution suffered to convince some of the farmers of the importance of its existence:

The members of the CREA groups did not understand why this was necessary, they said it would only generate bureaucracy; it was something very very resisted. It was terrible, terrible. They said but why? Why create an association if we are fine the way we are? This took years, years to overcome… (Former General Coordinator of AACREA).

A very important distinction is made in this story: most people strongly identify with their CREA group, but often tend to resist AACREA, the organization. This resistance to bureaucracy and formality resonates with farmers’ identity, as self-organisers and resistors of paperwork. Farmers like their own group intimacy. They like to work on their own. They do not feel comfortable around structures and formalities. An institutional representative describes his experience from within:

There were CREA members that used to travel very little. The man that imagined AACREA13 used to live in a selected neighbourhood in Buenos Aires, and he travelled to the farm. But the farmer who lived in the farm, very very far away said: ‘AACREA for what?’ So it was very difficult…we were very worried by the miscommunication that existed between the CREA groups and AACREA.

While AACREA has grown, it is far from being monolithic. The vast majority of Argentine farmers are not members. A former president explains how the nature of CREA limits massive expansion:

It is not easy to be a CREA member; that is the question. It is not easy…So, it is a wonderful idea, but one asks, so why it doesn’t get spread massively? It doesn’t spread massively because of the level of commitment you have to assume, the hard work, the transparency, the dedication…