This article analyzes the lasting effects of privatization on public-sector telecommunications workers in Argentina's rural interior. I draw on over fifty hours of oral histories carried out from 2015 to 2017 with former ENTel and Telefónica workers in General Pico, in the interior province of La Pampa, Argentina. This unique source base reveals how the material objects themselves acquired symbolic weight in the minds of workers, and how the introduction of new technologies and labor regimes after privatization in 1990 eroded workers' feelings of loyalty toward and ownership over the previously state-run company. This article specifically explores notions of trauma as related to the destruction of the physical materials of work, and the association between that destruction and the mass layoffs that followed. David Harvey's engagement with creative destruction in late capitalism has suggested that “continuous innovation”—whether technological or practical—has meant the devaluation and/or destruction of existing labor relations. I expand this concept to show how this logic of “creative destruction” maps onto spatialized ideas of modernity. The trauma that workers experienced in the 1990s is most productively understood vis-à-vis the unfulfilled promises of “progress” which claimed to bring efficiency, growth, and long-term stability but instead delivered job loss, atomization, and the breakdown of social relations of labor.

本文分析了私有化对阿根廷农村内陆公共部门电信工人的持久影响。我借鉴了 2015 年至 2017 年与阿根廷内陆省拉潘帕省 General Pico 的前 ENTel 和 Telefónica 员工进行的 50 多个小时的口述历史。这一独特的来源基础揭示了物质对象本身如何在工人心目中获得象征意义，以及 1990 年私有化后新技术和劳动制度的引入如何削弱工人对以前国营公司的忠诚度和主人翁感。本文专门探讨了与工作物质材料的破坏相关的创伤概念，以及这种破坏与随后的大规模裁员之间的关联。大卫·哈维 他对晚期资本主义创造性破坏的参与表明，“持续创新”——无论是技术上的还是实践上的——都意味着现有劳动关系的贬值和/或破坏。我扩展了这个概念，以展示这种“创造性破坏”的逻辑如何映射到现代性的空间化理念上。工人们在 1990 年代所经历的创伤与未兑现的“进步”承诺相对应，这些承诺声称会带来效率、增长和长期稳定，但却带来了失业、原子化和社会崩溃劳动关系。我扩展了这个概念，以展示这种“创造性破坏”的逻辑如何映射到现代性的空间化理念上。工人们在 1990 年代所经历的创伤与未兑现的“进步”承诺相对应，这些承诺声称会带来效率、增长和长期稳定，但却带来了失业、原子化和社会崩溃劳动关系。我扩展了这个概念，以展示这种“创造性破坏”的逻辑如何映射到现代性的空间化理念上。工人们在 1990 年代所经历的创伤与未兑现的“进步”承诺相对应，这些承诺声称会带来效率、增长和长期稳定，但却带来了失业、原子化和社会崩溃劳动关系。