The Labor Politics of Radicalism: The Santa Fe Crisis of 1928

On December 4, 1928, President Hipólito Yrigoyen of Argentina ordered federal troops into Santa Fe province to put an end to a major wave of labor unrest. The historical literature makes little or no mention of this federal intervention and its surrounding events, treating the Santa Fe crisis as a minor footnote to the last Yrigoyen administration.¹ This essay will demonstrate that the 1928 events warrant greater analytical inquiry.

Between May and December of 1928, Radical provincial officials in Santa Fe implemented a series of policies designed to develop closer ties between their party and the labor movement. These labor policies were attacked by business organizations, conservative political leaders, and the mainstream or nonlabor press, which accused the provincial authorities of inciting labor unrest and undermining social stability. Even the labor press joined conservative commentators in portraying the Radical officials as demagogic political leaders manipulating labor issues to advance their own careers. Yrigoyen’s decision to send troops to the province of Santa Fe was primarily a response to pressure from business and conservative groups. But in a larger context, the Santa Fe events illustrate the social pressures and institutional tensions that characterized Radical efforts to develop a viable political strategy toward labor. The 1928 crisis can serve as a guide for examining in greater detail the relationship between provincial and national labor politics during the interwar period, and for tracing the early development of a populist discourse in Argentina.

The May Strikes

In 1928, labor conflict spread through the province of Santa Fe and the city of Rosario, the most important economic region of Argentina after Buenos Aires. Rosario had always been an epicenter of labor ferment in Argentina, but these strikes were broadly perceived as the first resurgence of labor organizing in the city since 1923.²

The strikes began among Rosario dockworkers demanding higher wages. Conforming to national trends, labor organizing at the port had been undermined since the early 1920s by business discrimination against unionized workers. But in 1928, falling wages and “unspeakable abuses” provoked a series of small strikes by dockworkers who handled grain and cement. Although trade unions in the port were virtually absent during the early stages, informal networks strengthened the workers’ bargaining power. The strikers were also abetted by a strong harvest: “The docks are crowded with steamers, and there is a great quantity of wagons ready to be loaded and unloaded.”³ Furthermore, the demand for higher pay caught some steamship companies in a bind: the shippers had sold for April transport, and May contracts called for six hundred thousand tons of grain to be loaded in Rosario.⁴ The success of these initial strikes encouraged workers in other ports to raise their own demands, and labor conflicts soon involved more than seven thousand dockworkers along the river border of Santa Fe province.

Employers initially expected the Rosario strike to be quickly resolved in their favor. But unrest intensified on May 8 when Luisa Lallana, a young woman distributing pamphlets supporting the port strike, was killed at the entrance to the waterfront in a confrontation involving picketers and nonstriking workers.⁵ The mainstream press reported her death as an accident, but labor sympathizers branded it a “barbaric assassination” committed by a member of the Liga de Trabajadores, an organization of nonunion workers supported by employers and conservatives.⁶ The death of Luisa Lallana was followed on May 9 by a 24-hour citywide general strike that affected factories, transportation, businesses, and schools. The general strike was strongly condemned by business organizations.

Rosario’s Federación Obrera Local organized a demonstration of seven thousand to accompany Luisa Lallana’s body to the cemetery. The general strike itself was accompanied by violent confrontations. Demonstrators stoned public buildings and vehicles, and the police arrested dozens of people. In one particularly violent clash, the police forcibly dispersed hundreds of strikers who had tried to burn a streetcar after forcing its passengers off. The strikers reportedly stoned the police, who responded with a barrage of gunfire that seriously wounded a striker and a young boy. The youth died soon afterward.⁷

Even after the general strike ended, violent clashes continued at the port between strikers and nonstriking workers, who were protected by federal security forces provided by the navy. Solidarity strikes spread throughout the province, often giving local workers an opportunity to press their own demands. On May 15, railroad engineers decided to stop bringing trains to the port, claiming that their lives were in danger. Employers perceived this action as a grave escalation of the conflict.⁸

On May 20, Rosario’s labor federations rallied in solidarity with the dockworkers and in protest against the violence. At one of these rallies, union members declared a new general strike for the following day. This strike paralyzed the city and brought violence to the streets as groups of strikers reportedly attacked shops, factories, cafés, and schools.⁹ Automobiles and streetcars were stoned and burned, and several individuals were beaten. In one widely reported instance,

Employers and a number of newspapers complained that the lack of adequate protection had allowed “several raging crowds” to demonstrate, carrying sticks and improvised red flags that had been stolen from construction sites. “On the improvised red banners, knives had been fixed in the manner of spears, and the men who formed the rear guard shot their guns into the air.”¹¹ According to the Buenos Aires Herald, the strike was characterized by “mob law.. . . Matters grew so serious during the weekend that the police had to raise barricades in the streets to hold back armies of desperate strikers bent on gaining the city.” The port strike was developing “into what may almost be termed the forerunner of a national industrial crisis.”¹²

The Unión Obrera Local (affiliated with the syndicalist Unión Sindical Argentina, or USA) extended the general strike for another 24 hours. The city was again brought to a halt. “The few automobiles that could be seen on the streets carried small flags with the green cross and were driven by their owners, for the most part doctors.”¹³ Most of Rosario was in the dark, for three thousand street lamps had been destroyed during the first day of the strike; but observers noted that the absence of potential victims resulted in fewer muggings than usual. Strikebreakers were again attacked, reportedly by groups of youths. La Nación complained that banks had been forced to close by threats from “a band of [about four hundred] types, with wild appearance and revolutionary demeanor, among whom young men predominated and women were not lacking, carrying improvised weapons.”¹⁴

Exporters hitherto had been unwilling to negotiate with the striking dockworkers, arguing that “there was no guarantee that the union would carry out any arrangement or agreement that might be entered into.”¹⁵ But in the midst of the general strike, dockworkers notified employers that the Unión Sindical Argentina was willing to declare a national general strike in their support. Faced with this threat, port employers agreed to provide a 12 percent wage increase to their striking dockworkers. Employers and labor representatives met on May 22 at the Bolsa de Comercio (stock exchange) and reached a preliminary agreement, bringing the port strike to an end.¹⁶

The labor press applauded this outcome as a major defeat for employers who had sought to divide and undermine labor organizations.¹⁷ The mainstream press, on the other hand, reacted with dismay. Earlier in the month, the Buenos Aires Herald had warned that the labor movement could threaten the existing social order by replacing “capital tyranny with labor domination.” The outcome of the port strike discouraged the Herald’s editors, for “the laboring man has suddenly arrived at the conclusion that the capitalistic camp has lost its power and force. The agitators are cock-a-hoop. . . We are much afraid that this country is to see worse before it sees better.”¹⁸

Radical Labor Policies in Santa Fe

The strikes had begun to reveal a rift between employers and a new provincial administration headed by Santa Fe’s Radicals. The strikes escalated immediately after the inauguration of the new governor, Miguel Gómez Cello, on May 9, and followed Yrigoyen’s election to the presidency in April. Labor sympathizers acknowledged that the transition between administrations was “complicating the existing situation, for many police officers are not in the mood to keep order, knowing they will be removed at any moment.”¹⁹ Some strikers attributed the conflicts directly to the situation that “the rulers who took over the provincial government on May 9 had committed themselves to help, but now in power were not keeping their word.”²⁰ The strikes quickly came to be perceived as a litmus test of the Radicals’ future labor policies.

In a series of provincial and national elections in early 1928, Radical supporters (Personalistas) of Yrigoyen did markedly better than his opponents (Antipersonalistas) in the party. The success of the Personalistas in Santa Fe’s February gubernatorial elections was particularly significant, for the Antipersonalistas had controlled the province throughout the 1920s. Gómez Cello was a longtime Radical party member who had been mayor of the city of Santa Fe early in that decade. As mayor he had developed a reputation for an efficient and honest administration that had eradicated deficits from the city’s budget. Building on this reputation in a province characterized by recurrent fiscal deficits and overbearing taxation, Gómez Cello forged a strong political alliance among contending personalistic factions in the province.²¹ The strength of this alliance assured Gómez Cello’s election, but its heterogeneity all but guaranteed more political friction after his inauguration, particularly over labor policies.

During the first decades of the twentieth century, electoral competition with the Socialists and government control led Radical leaders nationally to seek closer ties with urban workers and labor groups in order to appeal to labor as a constituency. But even in the late 1910s and early 1920s, the first Yrigoyen administration (1916–22) was responding to escalating labor unrest with repressive measures, undermining its own efforts at alliance. The rift between the Radical party and the trade unions widened during Marcelo T. Alvear’s administration (1922–28). But many provincial and national party leaders continued to perceive the establishment of close ties with labor as crucial to the very survival of the Radical party. This was clearly the case among top Radical leaders in Santa Fe province.

More generally, labor support was crucial to the success of Yrigoyen’s supporters in the 1928 elections. David Rock contends that workers voted for the Personalistas in response to propaganda that romanticized Yrigoyen’s personal role in improving working conditions during his first administration.²² Other analysts suggest that Radical party members viewed the 1928 elections as a potential turning point that would transform radicalism into a “new Left” that in turn would create “a social democracy with a clearly nationalistic character.”²³ The course of events discussed in this essay tends to support this interpretation. The Radical party had won electoral support by advocating greater social justice and promising profound institutional reforms. For this reason, the labor policies of the newly elected authorities were scrutinized by all interested parties (including workers and employers) as a key indicator of future developments. The interested parties, furthermore, recognized that their ability to shape the direction of those policies early in the game would significantly affect their long-term bargaining power under a Radical administration.

Gómez Cello emphasized in his inaugural speech that future policies would be guided by “the great enterprises of social, political, and economic reparation espoused by radicalism,” and that he would seek “the faithful execution of the laws protecting workers, projecting into these ideas new norms that can ensure a healthy environment, equitable salaries, and comfortable housing.” More directly, immediately on taking office the new governor ordered police to restore calm and avoid bloodshed.²⁴ Despite these gestures, some mainstream periodicals briefly hoped that the new Radical authorities would abandon their reformist rhetoric. After all, during his first administration, Yrigoyen had not tolerated disruptive strikes: “The outcome of [his] volte-face was the Semana Trágica, which at least served to clarify the atmosphere and to encourage business to hold on for better times, which eventually arrived with the Alvear administration.”²⁵

Once Gómez Cello’s administration had taken office, however, employers charged that the new authorities were failing to maintain law and order. In the early stages of the port strike, exporters complained that despite effective federal protection inside the port area, strikers could take advantage of less restrictive conditions along the access routes. The press commented that in surrounding neighborhoods, “and in the cosmopolitan coffee shops scattered along the Avenida Belgrano and adjacent streets,” there was virtually no police presence to enforce order among the large crowds of workers.²⁶

To address these concerns, Rosario’s main business organizations met with the incoming chief of police to inquire how his administration intended to protect “the interests of capital” and particularly the “freedom of work,” or the right of nonstriking workers to cross picket lines.²⁷ The business groups portrayed labor unrest as a challenge to basic constitutional rights, and called for the state to defend those rights. This important feature in their political discourse was accompanied by a second dominant theme: labor unrest was caused not by true workers but by professional agitators and extremist ideologies foreign to the workplace and the pueblo. Mainstream newspapers attacked “the revulsive action” of these “enemies of our nation” and called for unions to rid themselves of these “parasites of social dissidence, for they persist in making every strike action a revolutionary event; from every spark they want a social bonfire.”²⁸ These images were invoked to delegitimate the actions and demands of labor organizations, and to justify the call for state action against “subversive” forces.

The new police chief, Ricardo Caballero, was a political appointee of the new governor. His conduct during the strikes had disturbed the business community. One newspaper complained that police commanders had ordered officers not to intervene in strikes, and reported that Caballero had been seen enthusiastically greeting a group of strikers and ordering nearby police forces “to be very careful not to proceed,” a comment that brought “warm applause from the striking elements.”²⁹

Caballero had provided crucial support for Gómez Cello’s election, so much support that throughout 1928 his opponents asserted that Caballero had become de facto governor of the province. He had joined the Unión Cívica Radical as a teenager in the early 1890s, and had been briefly arrested during the unsuccessful Radical uprising of 1905. He was elected lieutenant governor of Santa Fe in the crucial elections of 1912, a year in which he mediated conflicts involving Santa Fe’s tenant farmers. He served repeatedly in both chambers of the Argentine Congress during the late 1910s and 1920s. He enjoyed a personal relationship with Yrigoyen, though it was briefly strained in 1916 over internal party disputes. Since 1916, the Radicals of Santa Fe had experienced a growing rift between northern and southern caudillos, and Caballero was among the strongest of the latter. According to Gabriel del Mazo, his Senate speeches represented “the most vigorous expression of Radical thought on social relations.”³⁰

For Caballero, the ultimate objective of democracy was “the conquest of economic freedom for the working masses,” or “social justice, within the limits and nature of our nationality.” Labor was to become a crucial source of future support for the Radical party. Caballero urged political authorities to maintain their independence in the face of capital-labor conflicts, and spoke against employer organizations that believed themselves to be “owners of elements of the state” and opposed “the political and economic redemption of the pueblo.”³¹ Economic freedom would allow workers to “realize their destiny in all walks of life and reach all the summits of the spirit”; by eliminating social problems, this “last stage of democracy” would permit workers “the real exercise of freedom.” Social reforms would also transform workers into a middle class. This was important, for the social upheaval that had followed World War I had produced “moments of real terror among government representatives and the ruling and historical classes of almost all countries,” but “current civilization has found in the middle class. . . the conditions of intelligence, valor, and discipline that it has needed to save itself” These views were compatible with the predominant Radical doctrine.³²

The imperative of social renovation and solidarity could be met through state action and law, preventing both the merciless exploitation of materialistic society and the brutal violence of sectarian revolutions. Caballero took pains to distinguish himself from both communism and “Cesarismo,” emphasizing his strong belief in “the idea of nationality and patria” as well as private property and traditional family structures.³³ He argued that the Santa Fe administration represented a socially conscious Radicalismo oriented toward “the protection of the dispossessed classes,” and that this orientation distinguished “the economic faction of the party” from others that “pretend to transform this force into an exclusively political group, without any ultimate objectives on behalf of the welfare of the people.”³⁴

Given Caballero’s philosophy, it is not surprising that the May events triggered an onslaught of protest from employers and the mainstream press. Rosario’s Bolsa de Comercio complained about the strikes not only to Gómez Cello and Caballero but also to the federal minister of the interior, “in case the ultimate outcome of these events requires the intervention of the Superior Government of the Nation.”³⁵La Nación asserted in an editorial that Rosario’s strikes threatened a strategic economic sector and thereby required federal action to ensure “both public peace under the rule of law, and individual and collective rights.”³⁶ Rosario’s Federación Gremial del Comercio e Industrias called for Caballero’s dismissal, charging that he had failed to guarantee that he could “contain the overflow of suppressed passions” that aecompanied demonstrations.³⁷ Rosario’s merehants and other employers began calling for a 24- or 48-hour lockout in protest against the police chief Caballero left Rosario to meet with Yrigoyen and Alvear in Buenos Aires, forcing Gómez Cello to deny rumors that these meetings presaged the police chief’s resignation. Business did not yet have a united front against Caballero, however. The chamber of commerce stopped short of demanding his resignation. Political sympathies were rumored to exist between Caballero and the chamber president, who defended the police chief while denying the existence of “personal or political compromises.”³⁸

On the provincial level, conflicts among the Personalistas had intensified after the inauguration of the new administration. Dickering over the distribution of state resources, the Personalista faction split into two main groups: Caballeristas, who shared the police chief’s labor policies, and a group of “intransigent Young Turks,” who eventually ended up with little of the provincial budget. Conflicts were also reported between Caballero and the province’s vice governor, but not just over the distribution of publie jobs and political appointments. They involved a substantial dispute over the future direction of the Radical party’s labor strategy.³⁹ In these terms, the provincial debate was bound to reach national proportions. Principally, conservatives hoped to persuade Yrigoyen publicly to disapprove of Caballero’s labor policies. Furthermore, Santa Fe’s new legislature was widely expected to impeach the provincial ministro de gobierno for failing to counteract local authorities’ passivity during the Rosario strikes.

The provincial legislature, however, failed to meet, due to an effort by the provincial executive to force new elections to achieve “the necessary majority to develop harmonically the duties of government.”⁴⁰ In a few weeks Gómez Cello closed the legislature and asked the national congress to order a new provincial election. Many provincial legislators condemned this action as arbitrary and called on the federal government to ensure “the constitutional exercise of our legislative functions.”⁴¹ The broader conflict between Personalistas and Antipersonalistas, however, made it difficult for either Alvear or President-elect Yrigoyen to take any immediate action.

For the time being, political conditions at the national level strengthened the power of the provincial authorities. In his successful campaign, candidate Yrigoyen had built an effective national coalition of forces against his Radical opponents. During the transition period between the April election and the October inauguration of the new administration, relations grew tense between the outgoing Alvear administration and the newly elected candidate. Alvear briefly considered the possibility of intervening in Santa Fe province, as Rosario’s exporters demanded, and he sent federal troops to the city’s port during the May strikes. But he was unable actually to replace Santa Fe’s provincial authorities. Because of the overwhelming defeat of Antipersonalista candidates, Alvear lacked the political capital necessary to take any actions that could be construed as an attack on the Personalistas. Yrigoyen, on the other hand, was concerned with ensuring a smooth transition to his own administration and was unlikely to support any drastic measures that could alienate his supporters, particularly in a key province such as Santa Fe. These dynamics enhanced the autonomy of provincial leaders in relation to both the national government and party authorities in Buenos Aires.

Labor’s Response to Caballerismo

The new political climate also enhanced the bargaining power of workers, who exploited the opportunity to raise a broad range of demands. Labor unrest in Rosario virtually exploded after early May 1928, and organized political factions in the labor movement found themselves struggling to provide leadership to a militant rank and file. At the same time, these factions searched for an appropriate response to the labor policies of the new provincial administration. In particular, they came to perceive Caballero as a political threat, vying for the electoral support of the working class and undermining the labor movement’s independence in the process. Their antagonism toward Caballero was significant, for it limited their willingness to support the provincial administration in a potential confrontation with national authorities.

Between the inauguration of the Radical provincial authorities in May and Yrigoyen’s deployment of federal troops in December, specific and general strikes spread throughout Santa Fe province. The number and scale of these conflicts generated a growing sense of empowerment and exceptionality among Rosario’s workers. Both the press and activists across the political spectrum frequently observed that working-class neighborhoods in the city were developing a sense of virtual autonomy. The reaction these trends provoked from business, the mainstream press, and conservatives became a fundamental influence on Yrigoyen’s decision to terminate Caballero’s labor policies by force.

Strikers repeatedly brought transportation to a halt. For example, a streetcar strike began on July 3, and was highly disruptive: “Many employees and workers who live in the suburban neighborhoods are opting to miss work rather than face the possibility of. . . spending the night in the city center.”⁴² The press noted that the few working buses were overloaded: “The public has traveled on the front fenders, on the hood, hanging from side windows and in clusters from both running boards and the rear platform, exposed to all the dangers of traffic. Happily, no accidents have been recorded.”⁴³ Strikes also interrupted the city’s public services, contributing further to “an atmosphere of malaise and justified fear that keeps neighbors nervous and withdrawn in their homes.”⁴⁴A telephone strike forced many banks, offices, and factories to rely on bicycle messengers to deliver urgent communications; even the police had to deploy 50 mounted officers to relay messages between downtown Rosario and the suburbs.⁴⁵ These labor conflicts were magnified by at least seven general strikes in Rosario during the same eight-month period.

Sabotage and violence were constant features of these conflicts, although strikers complained that employers themselves were committing the illegal acts to frame workers.⁴⁶ The strikes involved a broad range of demands, including recognition of labor organizations, wage increases, union regulation of employment, paid sick leave, and enforcement of union-negotiated contracts. Carpenters struck to improve working conditions and reduce hours, but also to reduce the unemployment that resulted from technological innovations. Textile workers demanded an end to “the vexations they must endure,” and the elimination of “petty despots who even threaten the honor of the poor women exploited by capitalist selfishness.”⁴⁷

What caused employers even greater concern was that the strikes stimulated new patterns of government intervention in labor conflicts. In mid-July, city officials warned the streetcar company that it would face daily fines unless it restored services. The firm nevertheless would not recognize a union. Its board of directors in Brussels would agree to a 10 percent wage increase only if city authorities reciprocated by lowering municipal taxes from 8 to 4 percent.⁴⁸ Angrily, the city council suspended its efforts to mediate the strike, while the mayor warned the company to restore services or face the punishment of having the city seize all its equipment and facilities.⁴⁹ The mayor subsequently presented the city council with a plan for the municipalización of the company, which was approved on July 30 with broad political support, including that of both the Progressive Democrats and the Communists. The streetcar firm’s management capitulated with greater flexibility in labor negotiations and eventually reached a final agreement (with the help of the Belgian consul) that provided an eight-hour workday and a 13 percent wage increase.⁵⁰

The city took similar action during a strike at the telephone company, also in July, once again pressing the employer to meet the strikers’ demands. Management in turn demanded greater protection; but Police Chief Caballero replied that it was impossible to “place an officer behind each employee who comes to work” and criticized the firm for paying “hunger wages.” Once again, city officials pressured the firm by threatening to impose daily fines unless services were immediately restored. In another case, the city ultimately intervened with the Sociedad de Electricidad to restore services, after threatening fines and other measures.⁵¹ In all these cases, the attitude of municipal authorities strengthened the bargaining power of workers.

What’s more, at times strikers and city authorities openly demonstrated considerable sympathy for each other. For example, a delegation of workers was on its way to announce the start of the streetcar strike; “as they passed the police station, located three blocks from the union hall, many insistently cheered the chief of police, Caballero.”⁵²Some anecdotal evidence also suggests close ties between the Santa Fe Radicals and anarchist sympathizers, but greater research is needed to ascertain the actual extent of these contacts.⁵³

Beyond these occasional expressions of sympathy by the rank and file, however, support for Caballero from the leaders of organized labor was less forthcoming. The established political factions in the labor movement all took an ambivalent stance toward the new provincial administration, dealing pragmatically with Radical authorities over strike-related issues and seeking to take advantage of the new opportunities provided by the favorable labor policies.

The different labor factions strove to adapt their language to the new political opportunities by portraying employers as the subjects of foreign capital, and labor demands as the embodiment of the true national interest. Thus the Socialists emphasized that “thousands of proletarian households suffer the African tyranny of foreign capital,” which showed nothing but insolence and “contempt for this country.” They defended the new patterns of state regulation emerging in Santa Fe as “contributing perhaps to greater respect for the country by foreign capitalism.”⁵⁴ The Communists raised similar arguments: “The axis of our future activity must be the struggle against imperialism.” The Communists accused Yrigoyen of developing close ties with “imperialist sharks.”⁵⁵

The Socialists also endorsed state regulation by asserting that it was needed to protect the interests of both workers and consumers.⁵⁶ Government had the responsibility to ensure the availability of services; it would thereby demonstrate that “until the time comes to establish more normal relations between the state and the companies that own and exploit public services, there are many ways of letting foreign capital know that it cannot use the country as a colony from which to extract excessive profits.”⁵⁷ Furthermore, the Socialists used the example of the United States to argue that rural workers should receive higher wages so as to strengthen Argentina’s internal market. According to the Socialists, employers in Argentina failed to understand that the nation’s progress could be measured only by general welfare, not by the wealth of employers.⁵⁸

Caballero himself elicited a more confrontational attitude from the different labor factions, which perceived him as a demagogue and an opportunist seeking to make inroads into their constituency. They initially hesitated about whether to respond to Caballero as a political challenge or to support his initiatives. Although the Socialists stopped short of openly endorsing the police chief, at times they acknowledged that “Rosario’s police generally observed during this strike a conciliatory attitnde that has precedents in countries such as France.” They attributed this to an effort by the new provincial authorities to protect the strong popular support they had received in the election.⁵⁹

For the syndicalists, the police chief had “embarked on the same current of ideas that inspired them,” although they had neither spoken directly with him nor had felt obliged to follow his pronouncements. It was “not the purpose of workers to meddle in matters that were more likely to be of interest to politicians than to workers.”⁶⁰ On the other hand, they acknowledged that the burgueses were strongly against the police chief, “who this time did not want to be Falcon and did not want there to be a Radowitzky.”⁶¹ The syndicalists ultimately characterized Caballero as “a politician who only pursues electoral ends,” seeking labor support in response to “the imperative needs of Caballerismo, which faces the danger of losing forever its current status through a lack of support from the ‘high[est] Party authority.’” However, “The bourgeois state, responding to the inflexible laws of the capitalist machine, cannot serve the ends of the revolutionary cause of labor even if one hundred Chiefs of Police honestly pursue these goals.”⁶² Despite these criticisms, the syndicalists accepted and actively pursued government mediation in labor conflicts.⁶³

For the Communists, Caballero represented a version of Radical ideology; “While there are relatively peaceful relations between proletarians and the bourgeoisie, Yrigoyenismo can successfully carry out its demagoguery; but when class struggle assumes vast proportions and deepens, Yrigoyenismo shows its true face in the bloodiest repressions.”⁶⁴ The Communists ridiculed Governor Gómez Cello as a tool of Caballero and insisted that “bourgeois rulers, although they may sometimes look like antiimperialists and fancy themselves to be laborites, act like what they are as soon as they come together as a cartel: servants of national exploiters and foreign imperialists.”⁶⁵ The principles and actions of Caballero, an “ex-anarchist leader,” corrupted the labor movement by deceiving “more effectively than the politics of social democracy. It is the American type adapted to South America, more agile and cunning.. . . Our party and all class-conscious workers must carry out an energetic offensive to lay bare the nature of Caballerismo, its petty-bourgeois essence.”⁶⁶

Similarly, the anarchists applauded the labor upsurge in Rosario but cautioned about Caballero. On a self-critical note, they acknowledged that traditional politicians had trumpeted more effective nationalist slogans to labor, strengthening the “demagogic politics of Peludismo” and the personal standing of leaders such as Caballero.⁶⁷ But the anarchists attacked workers who sympathized with the police chief charging that such sympathy revealed “how terribly naive the proletariat is in trusting the promises of a government that, like all governments, will distribute sablazos and bullets when this is convenient to its plans.”⁶⁸

Each faction deplored the political strategy represented by the police chief and attacked the competing factions for negotiating with Caballero. The syndicalists and Socialists published repeated diatribes against the anarchists, who in turn criticized the syndicalists for seeking official mediation in strikes and playing to the labor strategies of the Santa Fe Radicals. The Communists attacked the Socialists for divorcing themselves from labor and the anarchists for supporting bombings that played to “reaction.” The anarchists themselves were divided.⁶⁹

These different factions all feared Caballero’s potential impact because they suspected that Rosario’s workers, despite their militancy, remained uncommitted to the specific ideologies or programs of the Left. Evaluating the city’s labor unrest, an anonymous militant declared that despite the intensity of the strikes, “the norms of the ongoing and disciplined action of the proletariat, based on stable organization and firm and methodical procedures, have not yet taken root in the labor movement.” The strikes had responded to economic conditions but also to “political circumstances that have allowed the free exercise of strikes.”⁷⁰ The Left saw most local trade union leaders as responding to general actions rather than promoting them. According to the syndicalists, labor organizations needed to keep up with a militant labor movement “both so that [the movement] does not wane, and so that it is not depicted [by political cartoonists] with a lion’s body and a mouse’s head.”⁷¹

While the established political factions in organized labor feared for their shallow roots among the rank and file, Caballero apparently never could build, or even attempt to build, institutionalized mechanisms of political support among Rosario’s trade unions. The Radical leaders in Santa Fe remained committed to mobilizing popular support through the electoral process, and to using their party structure as the most important organizational framework. This strategy had served as the basis of electoral success in early 1928, but it came to represent a political vulnerability later in the year.

The Escalating Offensive

As labor unrest intensified, business organizations and the mainstream press pressured federal authorities to assume responsibility for ensuring public safety and the right to work in Santa Fe. Business leaders not only criticized the passive attitude of the police but openly accused the police chief of directly promoting unrest.⁷² Business and the press also complained that labor unrest in Rosario was undermining the national economy and “our credit as an exporting country in the international markets.”⁷³ Rosario’s Federación Gremial del Comercio e Industrias and principal business organizations met in July to criticize the police chief and the governor. After agitated debates, the group declared a citywide lockout beginning July 12, to protest the lack of security and attract federal attention.⁷⁴

The lockout lasted 48 hours. Grain merchants and wholesalers handed out signs announcing “closed due to the lack of guarantees,” which merchants were to place in shop windows; but police ordered them removed. The Socialists claimed that the lockout was effective among wholesalers but not in retail shops, and accused wholesalers of threatening nonstriking merchants with commercial retaliation to enforce the lockout. The labor press reported that some supporters of Caballero “refused to close their establishments, arguing that they were not members of either the Bolsa or the Cámara Sindical and that, in addition, they disagreed with the lockout.”⁷⁵ The syndicalists pointed out that the shops of these dissidents were attacked by demonstrators, showing that employers applied the concept of “freedom of work” only to labor. The press reported that the lockout was very effective; nevertheless, the action clearly contributed to a sense of crisis, a “state of disorientation in public opinion.”⁷⁶ Following the lockout, Rosario’s Federación Gremial del Comercio e Industrias declared that all legal means had been exhausted in the province and beseeched the protection of national authorities. A few days later, the same organization all but explicitly called for federal intervention.⁷⁷

Governor Gómez Cello countered that employers were being inflexible in their negotiations with strikers. Force by the police was not an acceptable course of action: the real root of labor unrest was the “economic malaise of the workers,” and the use of force would only aggravate matters.⁷⁸ The president of the Bolsa de Comercio responded that business organizations were calling not for the use of force against strikers but for protection against violent acts.⁷⁹ Public authorities were being called on to ensure social peace, “marking the true road of collective and individual prosperity, which does not reside in the blind struggle of interests but in their harmony; nor in a routine and frequent leisure that consumes without creating, but in the labor that produces comfort and wealth.”⁸⁰

As labor unrest continued, the political offensive against the police chief intensified.⁸¹ Caballero frequently reiterated that by intervening, the city sought to “promote faithful understanding between the parties, so there would be neither vencidos ni vencedores, nor injuries to any dignity, for [the last] is equal among workers and patrones.” Accordingly, “the forces of the province will not be at the service of privilege, and the police will not be transformed into persecutors of workers, either of those who strike or of those who serve.”⁸² Furthermore, “Radicalism does not accept class struggle. To the contrary, it endeavors to avoid it. . . We conceive of the state as an indispensable instrument for maintaining social equilibrium, contemplating all interests. . . but serving in particular to protect the helpless and the weak from the selfishness of the strong.”⁸³ The duties of the police as an institution were to “keep order, to guarantee lives and property, but not to lend their assistance so that powerful enterprises can exploit their workers with hunger wages.”⁸⁴

The situation remained a virtual stalemate until November. Despite strong pressure from employers and the mainstream press, both the outgoing Alvear administration and the incoming Yrigoyen government hesitated to send troops to Santa Fe. But by the end of November, two new developments had shifted the balance of power. First, Rosario held municipal elections, and the results were widely perceived as a major defeat for the police chief. This lowered the potential political cost to the federal administration of launching an official offensive against Caballero. About the same time, massive labor unrest spread rapidly to agricultural areas in southern Santa Fe province. Business and the press stepped up the pressure.

In the municipal elections of November 11 the Radicals aligned with Caballero won 11,718 votes out of a total of 42,145, compared to 12,830 for the opposing Radical factions and 10,431 for the Progressive Democrats. Although these returns produced only minor political realignments in the city council, the mainstream press hailed the election as a major defeat for Caballero. La Nación reported that the citizens had voted against “a state of anarchy,” and that the results made it imperative for the provincial governor to dismiss Caballero.⁸⁵For the Buenos Aires Herald, “Lincoln’s aphorism that you cannot fool all of the people all of the time has been amply proved in Rosario,” for the laboring class “has expressed its disapproval of the chief of police—a pleasing proof that, at heart, Argentine labor is sound enough and that noisy demagogues in no way represent it.”⁸⁶

These interpretations of the elections bore a measure of truth. The results represented a major setback for Caballero’s political strategy. The disruption of daily life that resulted from heightened labor unrest had considerably eroded Caballero’s support among the voters (although how this erosion varied across the social spectrum must be learned from further research). Even among workers, the political capital Caballero accrued from his labor policies was probably limited, principally because the gains workers made still seemed to result from labor conflicts and trade union activities in which other political factions predominated. From this point of view, the election results exposed the vulnerability of Caballero’s labor policies.

The elections represented a turning point in the business offensive against Caballero. Drawing new strength from the results, the Federación Cremial protested to the federal interior ministry, criticizing the “lack of guarantees” of order in the city and pointing out “the uselessness of its previous protests before municipal authorities.” According to the federation, Caballero was “instigator and solely responsible” for labor unruliness in the province, warranting his removal from office. Rosario’s major business organizations agreed to call for Caballero’s dismissal and to send a delegation to Yrigoyen to request that “he use the means that the Constitution puts at his disposal to reestablish the guarantees we are currently deprived of” Joining the chorus, a group of dissatisfied Rosario Radicals published a manifesto denouncing the provincial administration and calling for federal intervention.⁸⁷

By late November federal authorities found these demands more compelling as labor unrest spread to the southern agricultural areas. There had already been a brief spurt of rural labor conflicts in July, and Rosario’s Sociedad Rural had called on the provincial governor to intervene. Gómez Cello had responded that resolution efforts were under way and that reinforcements would be provided to protect “free workers.” Rural organizing was led by the carters (conductores de carros) in protest against the increasing use of trucks to transport grain. Complaining that “gasoline threatens to triumph over blood,” they demanded that loads be allocated equally to trucks and horse-drawn wagons and that truck-owning farmers not be allowed to transport their neighbors’ harvest.⁸⁸

The new rural unions included other agricultural wage workers, both men and women. The unions called for better wages, union regulation of employment, and improved working conditions. In one strike, workers demanded that employers justify all firings before the union; other stipulations included “good food in abundance, including half a liter of wine per meal to each worker, and clean, fresh water. The workers will have 40 minutes for breakfast, an hour and a half for lunch, and half an hour for the afternoon snack.” Syndicalists and Communists both were active among these rural trade unions, and the mainstream press suggested that competition between the factions aggravated labor unrest.⁸⁹

As the new strikes spread, the Sociedad Rural told Gómez Cello that the approaching harvest demanded measures to “broadly ensure the freedom of work.” It also informed the federal minister of agriculture of its appeal.⁹⁰ The Federación Agraria Argentina said that tenant farmers were being squeezed between the grain prices offered by merchants and the wage demands of the workers, and alleged that groups of workers were threatening employers who wanted to hire nonunion personnel. Delegates from this group and the Fraternidad Agraria met with Yrigoyen to press the need to investigate rural labor unrest.⁹¹ Rosario’s chamber of commerce urged the provincial governors of Santa Fe and Córdoba to deploy the rural police to “protect the freedom of work and energetically persecute the hotheads (exaltados) who are wiping out individual rights and property.”⁹²

Observers reported that the countryside was overwhelmed by chaos. The Liga Patriótica Argentina denounced local authorities and called on Yrigoyen to take appropriate measures, declaring, “fear spreads everywhere. During the night, bands of ruffians in automobiles travel the roads, howling, shooting off their guns, and burning the fields wherever they can. God help us!” Similar pleas were made by the Sociedad Rural and by local tenant farmers, who announced that they had decided “to cross their arms and wait for government intervention and the effective guarantee of the freedom of work.”⁹³ Rumors circulated that farmers had been killed by strikers. The harvest was in danger; as La Nación warned, “almost the whole south of the province will be left in a state of pure misery if the conflict is not resolved in the coming week.”⁹⁴

Not all press reports confirmed this situation, however. As late as November 22, even conservative La Prensa saw no signs that force was warranted: workers were seeking to organize legally, and employers’ alarm was typical during the labor shortages that accompanied each harvest. Within a few days, however, the same newspaper called for public authorities to “repress with energy any act that implies a limitation on the freedom of work.”⁹⁵ Reports on the extent of the rural violence remained contradictory even on the eve of the military intervention. In spite of these ambiguities, late November and early December witnessed an intensified campaign by business and the mainstream press for federal action to curb labor unrest in Santa Fe.⁹⁶

The campaign was not without contention. The business organizations and their sympathizers in the press portrayed the strikers and their demands as illegitimate, but the labor press responded with a similar attack on employers. The Socialists applauded provincial authorities for their restraint in placing “the welfare of the native population before the bastard interests of foreign speculation. At stake is a principle of good and healthy nationalism, linked to the situation of our rural peonadas.” They attributed the business attack to “the grain speculators of Rosario, effectively aided by the Yrigoyenist anti-Caballeristas of Santa Fe,” and blamed those factions for introducing “creole politics” into the efforts of rural workers.⁹⁷ Communist writers complained that tenant farmers were calling for police action against strikers despite having experienced repression themselves during their conflicts with landowners over rents. “The colonos must fight against their exploiters and not against their exploited.”⁹⁸

Responding to the pressure from business, the federal department of labor sent an inspector to Santa Fe in late November. The inspector attributed much of the unrest to syndicalist militants, and observed that the sons of tenant farmers were being forced to join the rural unions. The farmers protested that “they wished to have the freedom of choosing their peones, particularly because, in this line of work, el peón hace vida en familia con el colono, and they could not allow in their houses persons who did not enjoy their confidence.” Moreover, the rural unions intended to maintain a high level of unrest “once the current conflict is resolved.” Tenant farmers and merchants urged the federal administration to “guarantee the freedom of work on the basis of justice and harmony between capital and labor.”⁹⁹

In the face of these escalating pressures, Santa Fe provincial authorities portrayed themselves as caught in the middle. The ministro de gobierno argued that his administration was already mediating and controlling labor unrest. Caballero assured the Sociedad Rural that the authorities would protect the harvest, for “the conditions of rural work do not allow the presentation of lists of demands at moments when reaping the harvest is urgent.” The Sociedad Rural broadcast Caballero’s statement on radio. Police reinforcements were sent from Rosario to troubled rural areas.¹⁰⁰

But these eonciliatory measures did not satisfy the principal business organizations. A delegation from the Federación Gremial met with Yrigoyen on November 26 to declare that Rosario’s labor problems involved “continuous and systematic subversive acts that local authorities are incapable of repressing” and that “all the malaise of the working class is the work of professional agitators who act with the authorities’ tolerance.” The federation therefore requested federal protection “to reestablish public calm.”¹⁰¹

Yrigoyen received a second delegation of employers from Santa Fe two days later. They reiterated the complaints about the inaction of the provincial authorities, who “stimulate strikes and consent with their passivity to attacks on property, persons, and institutions.” This delegation explained that labor demands in the rural areas were difficult to meet, given the competitive pressures faced by local producers in foreign markets. They were not calling for outright violence against strikers, the delegation said, but given “that the intensity and extension of the [strikes] already exceed local and provincial jurisdictions to encompass much larger areas that appear like a stain over the Argentine map,” they asked for “an extreme but certain recourse that can restore peace.” The demands were endorsed by the national Sociedad Rural in Buenos Aires.¹⁰²

Yrigoyen assured these groups that the federal government would not allow these events to continue because he understood that “in all areas of the country, the action of the central power must procure the harmony and welfare of society in general,” and his administration would therefore adopt “the necessary measures to remedy that state of affairs, in defense of the trabajo nacional” and “the tranquility of society.”¹⁰³ In a few days, the interior minister sent Gómez Cello a telegram calling on provincial authorities to “reestablish the routine of work,” and warning, “if Your Excellency does not feel capable of dealing with the situation, or if you are of the opinion that you have not sufficient means to do so, kindly inform this government of the fact so that it may take the measures it deems necessary.”¹⁰⁴

La Prensa applauded the presidential statement for rebutting the political doctrine of Caballero, reestablishing an appropriate role for state agencies, and signaling a “healthy evolution” in the labor policies of the national administration. El Diario made similar points, referring to Caballero and fellow leaders as “provincial caudillejos with Communist pretensions,” and declaring that “order, discipline, and liberty are the bywords of the healthy population of the countryside, and the national executive power must intervene so that these bywords do not become a myth. . . In the last elections, the pueblo rosarino already signaled the road to follow: War on anarchy, war on bolshevism.” Observed the Buenos Aires Herald: “Affairs are no longer within the political arena. The men who are protesting most vehemently are not politicians and never have been. They are the businessmen, producers, and traders of the province. No government can afford to close its ears to clamor from such a source.”¹⁰⁵

The provincial ministro de gobierno again responded that the instances of labor unrest “lack the overriding importance given to them by alarmist indicators, and cannot be reasonably or justifiably attributed to the conduct of the government.” Discontent among workers was ultimately the result of the situation inherited by the current administration. Employer organizations should act at times of “public tranquility” to promote national policies aimed at resolving economic problems, rather than falling into “the uncertainty brought by labor agitations, under the mistaken assumption that they will immediately cease by the simple virtue of intervention by the authorities.”¹⁰⁶ Santa Fe’s governor earlier had given a similar response to the Interior Ministry, suggesting that “lowly motives” were responsible for making labor unrest a central political issue.¹⁰⁷ But these attempts at dissuasion failed to reverse the course of events.

The Federal Response

Finally, on December 2, 1928, Yrigoyen ordered a regiment of mounted infantry to Santa Fe. He justified his action by declaring that provincial authorities had failed to protect employers, and society in general, from “disruptive elements that are alien to the agricultural activities of the province,” According to the text of Yrigoyen’s order, “the whole pueblo, [which is] cultured, healthy, and aware of the importance of the existing circumstances, wished to obtain immediate guarantees and reassurances, depositing all this trust in the action of the executive power of the nation.”¹⁰⁸ The next day, the Tenth Cavalry was sent to Rosario to coordinate the federal forces and to help “maintain order and the freedom of work.” The troops were housed at the headquarters of the Sociedad Rural. Small military units and representatives from the ministry of agriculture were dispatched to areas of labor unrest, where they were “very well received by rural commerce and the farmers.” The arrival of the army had dampened the rural strikes, allowing employers to hire nonunion workers and forcing many organizers to abandon their efforts.¹⁰⁹

The startled provincial authorities responded with alarm. Caballero rushed back from the city of Santa Fe to meet with federal representatives. Caballero, Gómez Cello, and other officials met frequently over the next few days; it was rumored that the provincial ministers, at great effort, had finally persuaded the governor not to resign in protest. On the other hand, the vice governor, Elías de la Puente, publicly criticized Gómez Cello, complaining that “the situation in which the province finds itself is a consequence of having ignored my loyal advice.” The intervention was also supported by Santa Fe senator Armando Antille, who called for new provincial elections: “The permanence of señor Gómez Cello in the government represents a danger to party unity and institutional stability.”¹¹⁰

The stock and grain exchanges were also satisfied with the executive measures “to safeguard the agricultural wealth of the region,” and applauded the troops’ arrival in a special letter to Yrigoyen.¹¹¹ The Federación Gremial hailed “the measures adopted to ensure tranquility and trust for the hardworking pueblo of the second province of the republic,” and other business organizations were equally enthusiastic.¹¹² In a few days, the minister of agriculture announced that “since the arrival of the national troops, the rural strike has become completely paralyzed.”¹¹³ Nevertheless, the Federación Gremial complained that strikes continued to hurt businesses in Rosario. General Marcilesi, commander of the troops in Rosario, responded that he had “received instructions from the national government to intervene in any conflict where guarantees are lacking.” Businesses needed only to request his protection for the troops to be mobilized “to guarantee the freedom of work.” The press reported that these declarations stimulated commercial and stock market operations.¹¹⁴

Most of the mainstream press also responded with enthusiasm. A frontpage editorial in El Diario challenged Gómez Cello’s assertions that there were no major disorders in the province: “That attitude is so improbable that one wonders whether señor Gómez Cello is the [governor] of the province of Santa Fe or a delegate of Moscow’s Third International.” A subsequent editorial declared that a preferable solution would have been for the governor to fire Caballero, for the federal forces were likely to “leave the governor under the thumb of Rosario’s chief of police, the official [responsible for this problem] who espouses revolutionary communism.” El Diario urged a broader action to ensure “the regular functioning of permanent institutions,” but continued to support the military intervention: “We applaud any measure taken by the government to prevent discord, anarchy, terror, and bolshevism from ruling in our country, a country of liberty, of work, and of respect.” La Nación and the Buenos Aires Herald also hailed the federal action.¹¹⁵

Other newspapers dissented. La Prensa had already stated its opinion that the strikes fell under the jurisdiction of provincial authorities: the stability of elected authorities had never been endangered, the situation in rural areas had greatly improved over the past few days, and the Rosario strikes had been virtually settled. The provincial authorities had failed to safeguard the freedom of work, but this did not allow the federal administration to “reach beyond its constitutional limits.” The authorities of Santa Fe had been freely elected, and could only be sanctioned by ballots. The affair, said La Prensa, reflected a split among the Radicals over the closing of the provincial legislature and over the provincial administration’s endorsement of “the doctrinaire anarchism of Rosario’s police chief. . . and his ambiguous theories about the attitude befitting public authority when struggles between patrones and asalariados explode.” Yet these internal party disputes over appropriate labor strategies failed to justify the federal action. In Rosario, La Capital raised similar reservations.¹¹⁶ But the reservations were ridiculed by the Buenos Aires Herald.

The Review of the River Plate commented that the federal action had saved the province’s harvest, and “there could be no greater immorality than allowing the bread grain that God has made to grow in this bounteous season to fall to the ground and rot for want of the right of way to go ahead with the harvest.”¹¹⁸La Nación’s correspondent even remarked that the troops should have been accompanied by army planes, for their patrols over rural areas would have brought “tranquility to homes in the countryside.”¹¹⁹

Even La Capital soon shifted from a critical to an openly supportive position. In an editorial published a few days after the troops arrived, it explained that although it still suspected constitutional violations in the action, “the inefficiency or passivity of the provincial government in repressing the excesses that came to characterize the rural strike in Santa Fe undoubtedly imposed this position on the national executive in the face of the imperative and unavoidable duty to guarantee public and private interests.” Although the measure may have been excessive, “the fact is that it has produced an undeniable feeling of relief among the agriculturalists, industrialists, and merchants of the province,” improving conditions for “cooperation and harmony between capital and labor” by “suppressing the causes of the disturbances and disorders that have diverted the rural workers’ movement.”¹²⁰

The syndicalist press referred to the troops as malón blanco and compared the intervention in Santa Fe to the repression of strikes in Patagonia earlier in the decade: “We had supposed that the Argentine army was destined for greater missions, and that conscripts, largely sons of the pueblo, would not be placed in the situation of having to fire at their own fathers or brothers.”¹²¹ It attacked the Federación Agraria Argentina as “reactionary and bourgeois” and accused “the bourgeois press” of carrying out an offensive against strikers “by order of foreign capitalists.” The capitalists in question were the “grain sharks”—“speculators sitting in Holland, France, North America, etc., and with branches in Buenos Aires, Rosario, and other cities, who through scandalous and criminal maneuvers fix the price of grain in all countries of the world according to their wishes.”¹²² The Socialists condemned the use of the army in labor conflicts and characterized the intervention as an “armed invasion of the province.”¹²³

Some sectors of the labor press remained optimistic about the future of the movement. The syndicalists themselves declared that “the reactionary sirens of capitalism can blast, inciting a response. But this no longer matters, nor does it scare anyone; their screams are like smoke, which vanishes in the air.”¹²⁴ But the swift effect of repression on the rural and urban labor organizations dispelled that optimism. Soon after the intervention, the Unión Sindical Argentina held a rally in Rosario to protest the army’s presence; although it was a Sunday, only 150 people attended.¹²⁵ Recognizing the impact of the intervention, the anarchists offered a more pessimistic prognosis: “It is the beginning of a repression that will not take long to be savagely unleashed over the entire movement. Rosario’s current situation should teach us to struggle against it in its true spheres:. . . the high spheres of the national government, a government of despotism, cowardice, and dictatorial excess.”¹²⁶

Although the labor press criticized the federal measures, labor organizations failed to raise a strong response to the intervention. This was partly because of continuing factional struggles. The syndicalists met with Yrigoyen within days of the event and reportedly blamed most of the rural disruptions on “the subversive action” of elements from outside the syndicalist labor federation. They also informed the president that they were stopping their organizational drive in the province.¹²⁷ The Socialists and anarchists denounced syndicalist union members for obtaining credentials from the army that allowed them to organize in the Santa Fe area. The syndicalists first called these accusations falsehoods, but later argued that such negotiations with the military were necessary to continue an effective struggle.¹²⁸ These factional divisions further undermined the labor movement’s bargaining power. Even the anarchists recognized that unions were fighting among themselves in Rosario rather than promoting solidarity with the rural workers.¹²⁹

The leading labor periodicals likewise failed to keep the focus on the Santa Fe events. By mid-December, the Communist press was giving priority coverage to police repression of the rally held to protest President Hoover’s visit to Buenos Aires. The anarchist paper was following the arrest of two anarchist militants whom the police had accused of terrorist activities. If these sectors of the press touched on the Santa Fe events, it was to condemn the Yrigoyen administration as a bourgeois dictatorship that served imperialism and capitalist reaction. Conflicts between the federal administration and provincial authorities, as well as ongoing disputes in the Radical party, were perceived by most labor organizations to involve an internal struggle in the bourgeoisie, and participation in this struggle was not viewed as a viable or promising course of action for labor.¹³⁰

In the second week of December, Caballero issued a lengthy document announcing his resignation as Rosario’s police chief After reviewing the events that had taken place in Santa Fe since May, Caballero accused employers of conducting a repressive offensive against labor.¹³¹La Prensa criticized his statement, noting that the police chief had been well aware of the political consequences of allowing labor unrest to continue. La Nación declared that the social policies of Rosario’s police chief were incompatible with the national constitution, and characterized Caballero as a desorbitado. The Buenos Aires Herald sneered, “Rosario must be a very wicked city indeed, for apparently there is only one truthful man in it. . . [The] press, Bolsa de Comercio, Sociedad Rural, Bolsa de Cereales [grain exchange], and private individuals. . . are unmitigated liars. . . joined in an unholy conspiracy to make the virtues of the chief of police appear as vices.” By the middle of December, Caballero was reportedly attempting to meet with federal officials in Buenos Aires, but public authorities were avoiding him, reportedly under instructions “from señor Yrigoyen. . . so as not to receive the document of resignation he had brought.”¹³²

Yrigoyen’s response to the Santa Fe events was undoubtedly influenced by the personal challenge represented by Caballero, who had designed his own labor strategy to assert himself as the leader of a new Radical faction. But Caballero’s efforts to implement this strategy at the provincial level were greatly constrained by the tensions they generated on both a local and national scale. Caballero continued to pursue some of his tactics after the 1930 coup that unseated Yrigoyen. His subsequent political career, however, was not based on the type of alliances and discourse that he cultivated in 1928.¹³³ The Radical party continued to lack a strong and coherent labor strategy, remaining “indecisive, moderate, and contradictory” in its policies toward labor.¹³⁴

Despite the federal intervention in Santa Fe, business organizations and the mainstream press continued to criticize the Yrigoyen administration for lacking stable labor policies. After the December events, the newspapers began to complain that strikes had not been totally eradicated in the province, and there was a persistent perception that the Yrigoyen administration was associated with rising conflict and uncontrollable violence throughout the country.¹³⁵ Furthermore, Yrigoyen continued to make gestures designed to promote labor support; for example, declaring May 1 a national holiday in 1929.¹³⁶ These activities raised doubts about the Radical administration’s true sympathies. Also criticized was the highly personal manner in which Yrigoyen sought to intervene in labor conflicts. Such a strategy, critics complained, distracted his administration from other important matters.¹³⁷

Political opposition to the Yrigoyen administration among these sectors, however, remained moderate. For business and the mainstream press, the federal intervention bode well for the country’s future. No major labor conflicts obstructed the next harvest, and labor unrest declined, except for a brief upsurge in August 1929. Noting that Argentina was enjoying high rates of growth in agriculture, industry, foreign investment, and immigration, the Buenos Aires Herald declared, “It is our conviction that Argentina is on the verge of a great industrial and commercial boom. All is bright and healthy in our particular garden. Let others dream of war and military power. Our future, in all its greatness and brightness, depends on peace and work. There is no reason why Argentina should not have an abundance of both.”¹³⁸ The reversal of these expectations with the onset of the depression in 1929, of course, led directly to the military coup of 1930.

Conclusions

In all likelihood, the federal intervention in Santa Fe not only showed the limits of Caballero’s labor strategy and political discourse, but also undermined the long-term stability of the Yrigoyen administration. Strong pressures from business and the mainstream press lowered the government’s threshold of tolerance for labor unrest and pushed the administration into a repressive posture, more moderate than but similar to the one adopted by the first Yrigoyen regime in the late 1910s and early 1920s. The action also undermined popular support for Yrigoyen, which partially explains why the labor movement did not actively defend his administration at the time of the 1930 coup. The administration’s national legitimacy was eroded by its use of federal intervention to resolve political disputes with provincial governments it did not like. Moreover, this use of force helped erode the legitimacy of democratic processes, fortifying a political language that justified the use of coercive measures as necessary for the defense of national interests and the defeat of subversion.

Labor unrest played an important role in shaping the political language of powerful elites, conservatives, and labor organizations. The provincial authorities in Santa Fe, for example, promulgated a political rhetoric that called for the state to assume a more active role in mediating conflicts between workers and employers. This notion was not terribly innovative, for business and the mainstream press were also asking state authorities to increase their regulation of labor-capital conflicts. But the political discourse of Radical leaders such as Caballero went beyond the defense of these regulating functions to call, in the name of social justice and economic freedom, for the active defense of labor interests against capitalist exploitation. In an attempt to broaden the appeal of this discourse, provincial authorities also advocated the protection of consumers from unscrupulous private enterprise, and national interests from the ravages of foreign speculation.

Beyond the insights they provide into the relationship between the Radical party and the labor movement and the evolution of state regulation of capital-labor conflicts, the 1928 events in Santa Fe illuminate the ongoing formation of labor identity in Argentina. For example, many elements of the political images, rhetoric, and alliances that emerged at this time reappeared later in the interwar period, particularly after the 1943 coup. In this sense, these earlier attempts to develop a closer institutional relationship between the labor movement and political parties provide a sound basis on which to evaluate the fundamental continuities and discontinuities in the origins of populism.

This article has benefited from comments by Len Berkey, Elizabeth Brumfiel, Ann Forsythe, David Rock, Mark D. Szuchman, Norma Wolff, and an anonymous reviewer for the HAHR. The research for this study was made possible in part by a grant from the Program for Inter-Institutional Collaboration in Area Studies (University of Michigan) and a Faculty Development Grant from Albion College. I would also like to thank the Fundación Simón Rodríguez (Buenos Aires) for providing easy access to its archival holdings.

Citations refer to the following periodicals, all from Buenos Aires except as noted: La Antorcha (LA), Bandera Proletaria (BP), Boletín de Servicios de la Asociación del Trabajo (BSAT), Buenos Aires Herald (BAH), La Capital, Rosario (LC), El Diario (ED), La Internacional (LI), La Nación (LN), El Obrero Municipal (EOM), La Prensa (LP), Review of the River Plate (RRP), the Standard (TS), La Vanguardia (LV).