For a generation, a small but talented school of Argentine labor historians has probed developments in the union movement during the “Infamous Decade” preceding the rise of Perón (1930-43). Attempting to test G. Germani’s classic hypothesis that a wave of politically naive internal migrants made unions “available to Perón’s clientelism, David Tamarin, the Argentines Murmis and Portanteiro, and Japan’s H. Matsushita have all studied the impact of the Depression and semiauthoritarian Concordancia. They have shown that Agustín Justo’s import-substitution industrialization, public works, and other “pump-priming” programs widened labor’s ranks, in particular those of industrial workers. Tamarin revealed the deep ideological cleavages that plagued labor, robbing it of unity at a time of economic stress. The 1930s were thus a decade of unrealized potential; an “age of transition between Hipólito Yrigoyen’s party clientelism and Perón’s personalistic, authoritarian variety.
But what was the precise link between unions and the state? Joel Horowitz offers convincing answers in his fine empirical study of five unions: telephone workers, retail clerks, railroad workers, municipal employees, and textile operatives. Four of the five are from the service sector, reflecting the porteño proletariat of that age. The same can be said of political ties: three of the unions were Socialist or Socialist-Syndicalist in orientation, one pure Syndicalist, and one divided between Communist and Socialist.
Horowitz’s case study methodology is as challenging as it is novel. He has mined the polemical columns of hundreds of union periodicals that chronicled workplace routine and bread-and-butter struggles alongside the Byzantine debates of factions vying for control of unions and confederal bodies. Other sources include interviews with leaders, minutes of meetings, congressional debates, and party newspapers. Such material requires great care in factoring bias, but the interpretation here is as uniformly critical as it is balanced and fair. Moreover, it corrects numerous misconceptions about this rarely studied but important debate. The result is a readable, vivid, and three-dimensional portrayal.
The first several chapters survey politics, economics, social conditions, and specific aspects of the five industries. We again encounter Yrigoyen’s tacit alliance with native-born Syndicalist artisans, so aptly portrayed by David Rock. Yrigoyen’s strategy provided the unions with an important precedent: their members voted Radical, and the unions sought full advantage in return for their cooperation. The Syndicalists, however, were careful to retain their independence.
Horowitz develops the heart of his argument in chapters on Uriburu and the Concordancia. The Salteño’s fascist-leaning dictatorship suppressed anarchist and Communist unions and maintained strict curbs on labor activity, but he was not as uniformly antilabor as commonly believed. A corporatist faction sought to mitigate the Depression’s impact and favored a conciliatory approach; among its preferred remedies were mixed commissions and binding arbitration. Such ends were pursued by Eduardo Maglione, Uriburu’s appointee to head the National Department of Labor (DNT). But the DNT’s lack of enforcement power was a crippling weakness not remedied until Perón.
The dictator’s replacement by the quasidemocratic Concordancia (1932–43) brought both challenges and opportunities. Agustín Justo and his successor, Roberto Ortiz, restored most democratic rights, including collective bargaining; but toleration was limited, especially for activities affecting agro-exports. Labor responded with a flurry of strikes. The telephone workers’ tactics included the systematic sabotage of equipment, isolating the capital and the Casa Rosada from the rest of the country. Justo at first attempted to mediate; when that failed, he forced a largely pro-union contract on the U.S.-owned facility. The Socialist-leaning retail clerks also benefited from the democratic opening. Under A. Borlenghi’s able leadership, the union exploited its Socialist ties and approached other parties represented on the Buenos Aires city council and in Congress to obtain legislation limiting working hours and providing new fringe benefits. The key to this strategy, Horowitz shows, was the Concordancia’s political instability. Contrary to its conventional image, the coalition did not rely entirely on electoral fraud, and it did require the cooperation of nonruling participant groups such as the Socialists to retain its parliamentary majority.
Railroad workers in the Syndicalist Unión Ferroviaria were hit hard by Depression-era layoffs and wage cuts. The Concordancia, however, drew its support from the landed elite, whose interests usually interlocked with those of the British-owned railroads. Confronted with the cuts, the union proposed the prorrateo—a reduction of paid work days rather than layoffs. Wildcat strikes and slowdowns elicited Justo’s arbitration. The 1934 laudo (arbitral award) continued the prorrateo but required companies to repay the “retained wages” once their business recovered. Justo’s award failed to satisfy either side, but permitted workers and their union to survive a difficult period.
Horowitz calls the textile union “archetypal,” yet it seems more unique than prototypical. The only one of the five unions affiliated with the Communists (and, one suspects, under direct party control), it was also the sole backer of industrial unionism. Stimulated by the textile industry’s post-1935 expansion and the Popular Front line (which permitted Communist–non-Communist coalitions), the textile union grew rapidly and merged with its Socialist rival. In a series of industrywide strikes between 1936 and 1939, it won major new contracts for most of the textile trades. These victories were important for two reasons: they pioneered industrial unionism, and they fostered provincial governor Manuel Fresco’s emergence as a key player. Fresco was a Conservative who had been fraudulently elected to Buenos Aires’ governorship, yet his authoritarian populism foreshadowed Perón’s.
The final chapter casts new light on Perón’s impact on labor and vice versa. Horowitz describes the dramatic labor mobilization that culminated in the freeing of Perón on October 17, 1945. The unions quickly organized the Partido Laborista, the group most responsible for Perón’s landslide victory. But even as it recognized its tremendous debt to Perón, labor sought to maintain its independence. Perón could not tolerate an autonomous partner, and ultimately labor paid with its liberty for Perón’s reforms.
Not surprisingly, Horowitz’ balance sheet of the Infamous Decade is filled with complexity. The labor movement grew in numbers; some unions enjoyed significant improvements in wages, working conditions, fringe benefits, and collective contracts. But most just survived the blows of the Depression and the repression of Uriburu and Ramón Castillo. In the final analysis, the Concordancia could offer the unions only tolerance. It was uncomfortable with their presence but unable either to eliminate or to ignore them. By 1943, consequently, labor was frustrated and seeking a new modus vivendi.
Horowitz’ study is a major achievement. It significantly illuminates the picture of Argentine labor in the 1930s and the question of how Perón was able to mobilize that movement as a vehicle for his own advancement. General and research libraries will wish to include this book in their collections. Modern Latin Americanists as well as social and labor historians will find it well worth the price.
