In a book that is both intriguing and frustrating, Nicolás Iñigo Carrera has attempted to make a large historiographical/ideological argument by examining in great detail a general strike in Buenos Aires in January 1936. While I am not convinced by his larger arguments, he has done a masterful job of recreating the general strike.
Underlying the book is the author’s vociferous rejection of the idea that a self-conscious working class did not exist in Argentina before the late 1930s or early 1940s, which he (without naming names) argues is the dominant trend in the historiography. He wants to show that such a class did exist and that it participated in politics through alliances with parties of the Left. He attempts to demonstrate this by investigating the general strike of January 7 and 8, 1936. Iñigo Carrera argues that past commentators have paid insufficient attention to this strike, either ignoring it...
