This is a sequel to UCEMA working paper # 277, and as such, the draft of the second chapter of a book project on Argentina as a ‘parasite state’, i.e., one that simultaneously lives off the rest of the world and consumes itself, harboring parasitical segments within its political elite, bourgeoisie, bureaucracy and proletariat. This chapter delves on the so-called “piqueteros”, the picketing organizations that emerged during the 1990s and have since thrived. Their genealogy can be traced to two roots: (1) the trade unions, which have radically changed their character due to soaring unemployment, and (2) the organizations that arose during the mid-1980s among groups of the urban poor which, through violent means, succeeded usurping private and public lands for the establishment of shanty towns in the Greater Buenos Aires area. In 1989 and 1990 the latter led the widespread looting that followed two hyperinflationary crises. By 1995 they had managed to wrest from the provincial state the right to distribute unemployment benefits among their members, and had established strategic alliances with NGOs dedicated to human rights. Thus, an “underground institution” (as defined in paper # 277) emerged, endowed with some of the functions normally attributed to the state. Concomitantly, in 1996 riots broke out in small towns that were massively unemployed due to the privatization of state industries. Protesters adopted the tactic of blocking roads, and due to a decrease in governability, the state acquiesced to granting massive numbers of small unemployment benefits, handing them out in exchange for the lifting of roadblocks. The method proliferated, and the organizations born of this process converged with the older groups that had emerged from the urban land-usurpations, and with CTA, a new workers’ organization that concentrated on the unemployed.  Zero-sum games between the Radical and Peronist parties gave yet more political power to the incipient underground institution, when the De la Rúa government encouraged promoting the picketing organizations to NGO status, and the Justicialists of the Province of Buenos Aires facilitated the disruption of law and order by these very organizations, in order to reap political benefits from the public’s perception of insensitivity and incompetence on the side of the national government. By 2005, the picketing organizations have approximately 400.000 members. They systematically break the law and rely on extortion to wrest additional clientelist benefits from the state. They enjoy the sympathy of wide segments of public opinion, and their methods are perceived as legitimate by important political, journalistic and academic sectors. Piquetero art, music and symbols are fast developing, together with a sense of pride and identity. They have become an established part of the institutional landscape and the political game.