Embarcados is the first book-length study of early twentieth-century Argentine syndicalism to focus on the labor process onboard ships in analyzing trade unionism and its relationship to the fledgling state. This departs from earlier studies (by Hugo del Campo, David Rock, Edgardo Bilsky, and Jeremy Adelman) that analyzed the period leading up to the 1921 strike's defeat from the perspective of Argentina's first Radical Civic Union (UCR) government. Her central thesis, not unlike Ruth Thompson's conclusion about the early anarchist movement, is that revolutionary rhetoric notwithstanding, unions were pragmatically inclined to seek piecemeal reforms and the state's protection.
Laura Caruso unveils the informal, fragmented, and hierarchical nature of maritime work's division of labor as well as trade unions' fostering of masculinity via gendered rituals, which periodically aligned subaltern workers and their officers to protect the corporatist demands of the Maritime Workers' Federation (FOM). She links these to the unique configuration...
