Based on archival research and ethnographic fieldwork, this article examines the continuities between everyday life, routine politics, and contentious action. Focusing on a case study, the 6-day road blockade in the Argentine Patagonia in June 1996, the article dissects these connections through a thick description of (a) the intersection of this episode of popular protest with the biography of one of its key participants, and (b) the modes in which routine politics and local history have an impact on the origins and shape of the protest and on the activated identities of the actors who collectively voice their discontent during the protest.