Читать книгу Rebellion in Patagonia - Osvaldo Bayer - Страница 10

“The same was done to the Indians in that bloodbath they call the Conquest of the Desert.”

“The Massacre in Santa Cruz,”

La Protesta, January 6th, 1922

“Like the Indian before him, the pariah—without family, home, religion or fatherland—becomes a murderer and a vandal, burning crops and

attacking ranches…”

El Soldato Argentino,1 Vol. II No. 13

January 2nd, 1922

The first strike was nothing more than an overture to the massacre that would follow. It was a rosy chapter in the history of Patagonia when compared to the horror that events will acquire nine months later. Let’s see how General Anaya, who participated in the repression of the second strike as a captain, describes the difference:

We have just heard the most objective account possible of the events that shook the far south in 1921. To differentiate it from the events that followed, allow us to refer to it as the “peaceful military campaign,” in contrast to what I shall call the “bloody military campaign.”2

Work resumes and the much-delayed shearing is rushed to completion. But this gives a false impression of what’s really going on: the workers have triumphed, plain and simple. This is how the Workers’ Society sees it, how the Rural Society sees it, and how the Commerce and Industry League sees it.

Two police officers have been murdered. Landowners, gendarmes and ranch administrators have been taken hostage. Fences have been cut, animals have been slaughtered, buildings have been destroyed.

But that didn’t stop Captain Yza and Commander Varela from coming to Patagonia and settling with the strikers, giving them safe conduct passes that allowed them to freely move around the region and work wherever they pleased. And don’t forget that they didn’t hand over their weapons, as most of them remain in the possession of El 68, El Toscano, and the group that followed them. Aside from a few old rifles and rusty revolvers, Varela turned up nothing. Such is the panorama seen by the landowners and despondent merchants of Santa Cruz.

When Varela returns to Río Gallegos, they even say so to his face. Edelmiro Correa Falcón recounts the story in his pamphlet The Events in Santa Cruz, 1919–1921:

Once the 10th Cavalry Regiment’s peacemaking mission had concluded, a few individuals happened to encounter Lieutenant Colonel Varela in Río Gallegos. While they drank their tea, one of those present said that it set a dangerous precedent to allow so many weapons to remain in the hands of the rebels, who had nevertheless been issued with a sort of act of indemnity. The lieutenant colonel rejected this view of the situation, adding that his mission had been satisfactorily completed in accordance with the personal instructions of the president—a claim that was later borne out by those who heard these instructions issued. During this same conversation, another one of those present said that the news arriving from the countryside left him convinced that there would soon be a general uprising throughout the territory. The lieutenant colonel ignored this prediction, repeating that he believed his pacification efforts to have been definitive.

But the mighty aren’t Varela’s only critics. The commander’s pacifist stance is even being openly censured within his own regiment. Captain Anaya enumerates these criticisms:

The regiment, which had remained in the barracks in Santa Cruz, was utterly oblivious to what was going on and felt unsatisfied with the peaceful outcome. These feelings were encouraged by the landowners who had abandoned their ranches and wanted to see brutal, indiscriminate repression. The coastal business interests also disapproved of the solution, wishing that the strike had instead been drowned in blood. They mounted a campaign of defamation against the military officer and the governor, whom they claimed had blindly made a pact with insurgents out of ignorance and short-term political gain. Some officers were not unsympathetic to these criticisms, feeling that a humanitarian rather than military solution to the conflict had robbed them of their laurels.

Even before he leaves for Buenos Aires, Varela hesitates. He seems to be under a lot of pressure. Enrique Noya—brother of Rural Society President Ibón Noya—will tell us the following:

When the first strike ended, my brother Ibón told Varela, “When you leave, it will all start again.” Varela replied, “If it starts up again, I’ll come back and shoot the lot.”

In Río Gallegos, La Unión mercilessly attacks the settlement reached by Varela and Governor Yza:

The settlement deals exclusively with the economic aspects of the conflict, constituting a resounding victory for the impositions of the workers that has been facilitated by the authorities themselves. Lacking understanding, and with a total absence of impartiality, they have delivered a Solomonic judgment and indirectly forced capital to accept it.3 Nothing has been done to address the crimes, thefts, arsons, etc. that were committed during the strike—the perpetrators and their accomplices have not been taken in, not even for questioning.

The bosses had insisted on a hard line, glorifying Correa Falcón and brutish police officers like Ritchie and Nicolía Jameson. They had seen violence as the only possible solution. They could not understand the accommodating policies of the Radical president, as implemented by Governor Yza and Lieutenant Colonel Varela.

So, as we can see, nothing has been settled. There are still three antagonistic forces in a sparsely populated region. There are the bosses, with Correa Falcón as their most visible figure, along with the administrators of British-owned ranches and, perhaps most importantly, Mauricio Braun and Alejandro Menéndez Behety, who are the most intelligent of the lot, the ones with the most influence in Buenos Aires and the ones who have slowly begun to arrange a definitive settlement of the crisis. The second faction revolves around Borrero and Judge Viñas and includes all the members of the Radical Civic Union. It is this group whose support Governor Yza will seek. The third conflicting force is, of course, the labor movement, strengthened by its recent success.

In his role as the mediator between the bosses and the workers, Yza asks the Workers’ Society to lift its boycott of certain stores. But Antonio Soto refuses to simply do whatever the governor tells him to do. Yes, the boycotts will be lifted, but only when three conditions are met:

 All of the strikers who have been fired will be rehired and given back pay for all workdays lost to the strike.

 All non-unionized workers will be dismissed.

 The bosses will reimburse the Workers’ Society for all costs incurred in printing their manifestos.

In short, Soto demands unconditional surrender. When the bosses learn of his demands, they are truly outraged. La Unión, scandalized, can’t help but attack the governor once more:

The government’s passivity in the face of such extortion essentially authorizes the subversion of law and order and the abdication of authority to the labor associations, which now represent a new power running parallel to the constitutional authorities. Outside agitators, the aftertaste of unrestricted immigration, profess doctrines in which those who were once slaves will take the place of their oppressors. An undisciplined horde, incapable of the honest struggle to earn a living, offers us the sad spectacle of tyranny lurking behind the veneer of economic concessions and forces us to confront the problem of nationality by slandering native-born citizens and supplanting the principles of the law with the imperative of their bastard aspirations. Foreigners, who have formed trade unions for no other purpose than the subversion of order and rebellion against the law and who have found easy living in revolt and social imbalance, proclaim destructive theories in the form of supposed concessions. They must therefore destroy any trace of the national spirit that could oppose their aims. War has been declared against the country’s sons, against the criollos who have more right than anyone to live in our society, as it is their home, on the simple ground that they rightly rebel against the imposition of these utopias.

This patriotic nonsense is but a sample of the arguments that were rehashed day after day, in every corner of the country, by the Argentine Patriotic League. According to them, Argentine workers weren’t the victims of capitalists or landowners, be they foreign or domestic, but instead of immigrant workers who “brought with them ideas that are incompatible with national sentiments.”

Syndicalism, liberty, equality, socialism, and universality were all foreign notions. The authentic Argentine, by contrast, was that worker who refused to succumb to this siren song, who was satisfied with his lot and was always respectful to his betters. He had a deep-seated love for his fatherland, always wearing his best on Independence Day, always flying the blue and white high, and always opposing those Spaniards and Italians who wished to swap the nation’s symbols for the “red rag.”

This argument about “foreign ideas,” used to combat socialist and libertarian ideas, was an undeniable success. It has taken root in the Argentine working class. It hasn’t just been repeated by every government from 1930 onwards, without exception—no matter if they derived their legitimacy from military coups or from elections—but also within the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) itself, from the mouths of Peronist labor leaders such as José Espejo, Augusto Vandor, José Alonso, José Rucci, Lorenzo Miguel, etc.

All of the philosophical, social, and political ideas that belong to no country in particular, but are instead the heritage of the entire human race, could be silenced with a single word: Argentina!

This argument would nevertheless cast its spell over the entire country and has continued to prove lucrative for the Argentine bourgeoisie up to the present day.

But what’s even odder is that, in the Río Gallegos of 1921, every single member of the Argentine Patriotic League—­without exception—was a foreigner. The nonsense printed above was written by Rodríguez Algarra, the editor of La Unión, a purebred Spaniard with close ties to the Braun and Menéndez Behety interests.

But the secretary of the Workers’ Society cared little for these patriotic arguments. Instead, he was preparing a new blow against the frightened supporters of capitalism: a strike at the Swift meatpacking plant in Río Gallegos.

If there was one place in Patagonia that deserved a strike, this was it. Perhaps not because of its wages or working conditions—which were comparable to the rest of the country—but because of the medievalism of its employment contracts. We have in our hands an example of one of these contracts.4 It speaks for itself. This contract, which workers were required to sign before shipping out from Buenos Aires to Río Gallegos, is pompously titled Service Leasing Contract and reads as follows:

Swift & Company of La Plata, Río Gallegos, and San Julián (hereinafter referred to as “The Company”), through its agent in this city, Swift & Company of La Plata, Ltd, with its address at Calle 25 de Mayo 195, and Manuel Pérez (hereinafter referred to as “The Contractor”), have agreed to the following:

The Contractor will provide his services as a manual laborer for the aforementioned Company at its plants in either Río Gallegos or San Julián, for which he will receive an hourly wage of 0.65 pesos, plus an extra 50 pesos per month for room and board. The Contractor commits to do all work required of him.

The Company will advance the Contractor the price of a third-class ticket from Buenos Aires to either Río Gallegos or San Julián, which will be deducted from his first month’s wages. The Company commits to pay the Contractor the equivalent of the wages for four hours of work for each day during the period between his departure from Buenos Aires until the first day of the slaughter, as well as during the period from the last day of the slaughter until his arrival in Buenos Aires in his return trip, with the exception of Sundays, holidays, and delays beyond the control of the Company.

Should the Contractor remain employed until the end of the season’s labors, or so long as the Company requires their services in any capacity, he will be reimbursed for his travel expenses between Buenos Aires and either Río Gallegos or San Julián. If the Contractor resigns or is dismissed prior to the end of the season for poor performance or incompetence, at the discretion of the Company’s administrators in Río Gallegos and San Julián, he will not be reimbursed for his travel expenses, neither from Buenos Aires to either Río Gallegos or San Julián nor in his return trip. To guarantee compliance with this contract, the Company will withhold 30 pesos per month from the Contractor’s wages, which will be returned to him upon completion of his contractual obligations. If the Contractor does not strictly fulfill his contractual obligations, or if he directly or indirectly contributes to labor disturbances or otherwise interferes with the Company’s business interests, he will forfeit his right to the amount withheld. The Contractor commits to work for the wage established above for the amount of hours required by the Company. If required to work a half day on Sundays, he will do so. The Company commits to provide the Contractor with a minimum of eight hours of work each day for the duration of the slaughter. If the steamship bringing workers from Buenos Aires to either Río Gallegos or San Julián is delayed or unable to depart for reasons beyond the control of the Company, such as strikes, fires, or cases of force majeure, this contract may be suspended or canceled at the Company’s discretion.

Any claims made against the Company prior to the Contractor’s return to Buenos Aires must be presented to the Company’s superintendent in Río Gallegos or they will be considered as null and void.

In accordance with the above, the parties have duly signed this contract in Buenos Aires on January 9th, 1921 on the understanding that, in the event of any disagreements between the parties regarding the above clauses, the Contractor agrees to accept the jurisdiction of the competent authorities in Buenos Aires and commits to accept their resolutions.

This, then, was the “contract.” If we analyze this condemnation to slavery on the part of a North American company, we can see that a worker who behaved himself—according to the company’s criteria—could earn a few pesos—very few, to be sure—while in the process destroying his health in the hellish meatpacking plants of those days. But the worker who protested or “directly or indirectly contribute(d) to labor disturbances or otherwise interfere(d) with the Company’s business” would forfeit everything he had earned.

Borrero was not exaggerating when he wrote in Tragic Patagonia that a Swift meatpacker, working shifts of up to fifteen and a half hours (in the most unhygienic conditions imaginable, of course), would receive only 28.50 pesos for an entire month of work—332 hours. And that is to say nothing of the worker who dared to speak up: he would be fired and abandoned there in Río Gallegos or San Julián, with no grounds for complaint. He had signed the contract.

But there was one person in Río Gallegos who was not afraid of Swift: Antonio Soto, secretary general of the Workers’ Society.

After two or three workers at the plant get the nerve to meet with him and explain their situation, Soto gets things moving. Something happens on March 25th, 1921 that takes the directors of the powerful North American company by surprise: a strike at their meatpacking plant in Río Gallegos.

It’s the only thing that was missing: the Swift strike comes hot on the heels of the rural strike and right at the height of the slaughter.

But the men of the Rural Society and Swift & Company aren’t going to take it lying down. They call for a hardline approach in the pages of La Unión, blaming Soto and the men of the Workers’ Society instead of the plant’s wretched working conditions. According to La Unión, the workers, “by presenting a list of demands contrary to the spirit of the contract, and by refusing to load ships and undertaking other actions that amount to preemptive retaliations, such as demanding to be paid for days squandered in working out a settlement, have shown that outside agitators have intervened in this dispute, distorting the intentions of the true workers.”

This time, the employers have the upper hand. The Workers’ Society will be defeated. After a week, the meatpackers will meekly return to work. This time, Governor Yza allows the police chief, Captain Schweizer, to settle the conflict however he sees fit. Led by Ibón Noya, the Rural Society meets with Schweizer and tells him that the problem will be easy to resolve if only Soto and company are removed from the picture. The captain gathers the strikers together and tells them that everything can be straightened out if only they distance themselves from the Workers’ Society and elect their own strike committee. He also offers to have the Rural Society intervene on their behalf.

The workers, brought in from Buenos Aires, are easily tamed. Penniless and homeless—despite Soto’s best efforts—they know they can find no other jobs in town, nor can they return to Buenos Aires. They accept, almost without a second thought. And so a solution is found. La Unión is euphoric: “The workers have decided to return to work on the same terms as when they left, with no modifications to their employment contracts one way or another… Those who prepared the demands driving the strike have failed.”

Rural Society president Ibón Noya publicly congratulates the police chief, the first step towards reconciling the bosses with Yza’s Radical government.

During the strike, Soto had been unable to give his full attention to the meatpackers’ struggle because he was facing one of the most dangerous offensives against the labor organization: internal division. Between the victorious conclusion of the first strike and the coming tragedy, Soto must wage a relentless struggle against the union leaders sent from Buenos Aires by the syndicalist FORA and against a faction of workers that have broken away from the Workers’ Society to organize non-aligned unions.

The mighty are delighted by this split in the Río Gallegos labor movement and they encourage this sectarianism as best they can. At the beginning of April 1921, La Unión prints an exultant article titled nothing less than “Signs of Backlash”:

Some unionized workers in Río Gallegos have decided to form an independent organization, allowing them to more spontaneously make decisions that serve their own interests in the trade union struggles in which they are engaged.

The first group to leave the Workers’ Society is the printers’ union, led by Amador González, whose disagreements with Soto we have already seen. To raise funds for their union they organize a festival, which is promoted in the conservative newspaper. This same newspaper will later run a story on the event, describing it as:

An enjoyable party that has proven to be a great success, judging by attendance, and whose eminently humanitarian purpose is a faithful reflection of the societal ideal that this union is pursuing through its honorable independence from the systematized tyranny currently observed in many other unions. This attitude can be seen in their statement of principles, which speaks with measured eloquence on the standards that must be met by the new organization, which has already won some concessions and which subscribes to the principle of harmony and concord between workers and bosses.

The good workers, in other words. The launch of a “free” trade union triggered the first split from the anarchists of the Workers’ Society. The bosses have high hopes: they see the free trade unions as a way to put the rebels in check. As La Unión writes, “the attitude of the printers will soon spread to many other unions once we can objectively appreciate the results of their efforts.”