Читать книгу Rebellion in Patagonia - Osvaldo Bayer - Страница 8

“For his exploiters, the value of a man can’t match

that of a mule, a sheep, or a horse.”

Manifesto of the Río Gallegos Workers’ Society

November 1920

The strikes in Punta Arenas, Puerto Natales, Puerto Deseado, and Río Gallegos were enormously significant for those living in the south. They opened the eyes of the bosses to the possibility of a revolutionary strike that could threaten the private property system at any moment. The days had ended when some people gave the orders and others did nothing but obey. And they realized that, to defend themselves from this danger, they needed unity and, above all, the support of the federal government, which could provide police reinforcements and deploy the armed forces. For the workers, these episodes showed that a movement without organization was condemned to fail. More than anything else, the men of the Río Gallegos Workers’ Society criticized themselves for their lack of coordination with their sister organizations in Puerto Natales and Punto Arenas on the Chilean side of the border.

To understand the background to the coming tragedy, we need a clear explanation of the behavior of two men: Judge Viñas and the journalist José María Borrero. The first represents the Radical Party in all its zeal for change and progress; the second, with his charismatic personality, is the spokesman for that stratum of Santa Cruz society caught between the landowners and the workers. A stratum that is almost entirely made up of Spaniards: small landowners, small business owners, tavern keepers, hotel and restaurant owners, white collar workers, independent artisans, etc. This petite bourgeoisie sees their existence threatened by the large consortiums—like the Braun-Menéndez family’s La Anónima—true regional monopolies in the sale of such staple products as food, clothing, etc., and possessing the capital and logistical infrastructure needed to destroy any potential competition.

With the meager resources at its disposal, the Patagonian middle class depends on its clientèle, the workers. They even support the labor movement to a certain extent, because higher wages means more purchasing power and therefore higher sales volumes.

This middle social stratum has just one weekly newspaper to speak for it: La Verdad, whose owner and editor is José María Borrero. On their side, the landowners have the biweekly La Unión.

Two dissimilar men arrive in Río Gallegos at almost exactly the same time, though by very different routes. The first is the aforementioned Judge Ismael Viñas, appointed by President Yrigoyen for a three year term, while the second is the Spaniard Antonio Soto, who ended up in the far south as a stagehand for a traveling Spanish operetta company: he set up the scenery, arranged the seating, cleaned up afterwards, and even played the occasional minor role when needed. He decides to stay in Río Gallegos and, within a matter of weeks, becomes the secretary of the Workers’ Society, steering it in a frankly revolutionary direction.

The fuse of the coming tragedy will be lit by Judge Viñas through his aforementioned legal proceedings against two English ranching companies: The Monte Dinero Sheep Farming Company and The San Julián Sheep Farming Company.

The acting governor and secretary of the Rural Society, Correa Falcón, uses all the resources at his disposal—the police, the government bureaucracy, and the newspaper La Unión—to obstruct the judge. José María Borrero defends the judge’s unprecedented stand against the power of the landowners in the pages of La Verdad, while two lawyers, Juan Carlos Beherán and Salvador Corminas, provide legal support. This group of men makes contact with the Río Gallegos Workers’ Society and holds frequent meetings with Antonio Soto and other union leaders. And so there are working-class manifestos written by Borrero, a lawyer.

A protracted power struggle between the judge and the governor ensues. Viñas accelerates the legal proceedings and orders Monte Dinero’s assets to be auctioned off. The governor retaliates by ordering the arrest of the auctioneer and a group of the judge’s friends, including José María Borrero, Corminas, and Beherán. When Viñas orders the seizure of the assets of San Julián, the other English ranching company, Governor Correa Falcón once again intervenes with the police to prevent them from being auctioned off.

The president soon learns of the conflict. Even though Judge Viñas is a loyal Radical, the federal government knows that supporting him would bring the country into conflict with English capital at a time when Yrigoyen doesn’t want any more problems than he already has; the British legation has been closely following events as they unfold.

Neither has the depression in the wool market been properly dealt with. The time is not right for Yrigoyen to involve himself in land conflicts in Patagonia. For him, that time will never come.

Judge Viñas will be disowned. He will emerge defeated from his attempt to fight British capital. The victor will be Governor Correa Falcón, along with all the interests he represents. But the war is just getting underway and the judge has only lost two battles.

In addition to this internecine strife between the representatives of the executive and legislative powers, which the landowners and merchants of Santa Cruz were following with concern, there was also an atmosphere of latent rebellion among the workers in the region’s small towns and rural areas. Worried, Governor Correa Falcón informs the interior minister in April 1920 that “some individuals have arrived from the capital and other parts of the country to spread new ideas, beginning a campaign aiming to subvert the territory’s public order.” He encloses a copy of an anarchist pamphlet titled Justicia Social, which had been widely distributed among the region’s farmworkers.

Correa Falcón, who has a nose for labor disturbances, is not overreacting. That June, at the La Oriental ranch near the province of Chubut, an unmistakably subversive strike breaks out. Two Russian anarchists—Anastasio Plichuk and Arsento Casachuk—and one Spaniard—Domingo Barón—stir up the farmworkers and proceed to carry out an occupation of the ranch. But Correa Falcón, with the help of the Chubut police, acts with exemplary speed and vigor. He steps in and breaks the strike. The two Russians and the Spaniard—with the stigma of having violated Article 25 of Public Safety Law 7029—receive a few good blows to their swollen, revolutionary heads and are thrown in the hold of a naval transport on its way to Buenos Aires, where President Yrigoyen will sign their deportation orders under Residence Law 4.144.

Correa Falcón also knows that there is another threat right there in Río Gallegos: Antonio Soto, the new secretary-general of the Workers’ Society.

A Spaniard, Antonio Soto was born in the Galician city of El Ferrol on October 11th, 1897, the son of Antonio Soto and Concepción Canalejo. He arrived in Buenos Aires at the age of thirteen. When his father passed away, he and his brother Francisco entered a life of misery and privation not uncommon in Argentina at the time of the centennial. Antonio was rarely able to attend elementary school. Instead, he learned a variety of trades—like many other children in those days—and was educated by poverty, exploitation, and corporal punishment. He was attracted to anarchist and ­anarcho-syndicalist ideas from a young age. In 1919—when he was twenty-two years old—he joined the Serrano-Mendoza theater company, which toured the ports of Argentine Patagonia and then continued on to Punta Arenas, Puerto Natales, Puerto Montt, etc., bringing the dramatic arts to the south’s most isolated southern villages.

A true popular rebellion breaks out in Trelew, Chubut in January 1920. It all started when retail workers go on strike in protest against the governor, the police, and powerful businessmen. Almost the entire population of the city joins the movement. The situation is aggravated by mutual recriminations and, as in every small town, personal issues came to the fore.

In the midst of this conflict, Antonio Soto, the stagehand of the Serrano-Mendoza theater company, makes his appearance by rallying the people behind the striking workers. This earns him his arrest and expulsion from Chubut. It’s the first entry on his police record.

He arrives in Río Gallegos soon afterwards. He is attracted to the town’s working class atmosphere. Before and after theatrical performances, he goes to the headquarters of the Workers’ Society and listens to the speeches of Dr. José María Borrero, who speaks like the gods and always leaves the audience stunned. Borrero encourages Soto to stay in Río Gallegos and join the union; he realizes that Soto is a man of action with the proper ideological background, as well as someone who knows how to express himself in assemblies. And so when the theater leaves town, Soto stays behind.

The future leader of the rural strikes finds work as a stevedore, or as he calls himself, a “beach worker.” By Sunday, May 24th, 1920, he has been elected secretary-general of the Río Gallegos Workers’ Society.

This is Antonio Soto. According to his police file, he is 1.84 meters tall, has clear blue eyes, dirty blond hair, and a lazy right eye.

He receives his baptism by fire as a union leader that July. Together with unions from elsewhere in Santa Cruz, the Río Gallegos Workers’ Society launches strikes in every port and hotel in the territory. They demand higher wages. It isn’t easy. Particularly in Río Gallegos. The stevedores lose their strike. The hotel workers’ union moves forward, however. The bosses give in, accepting the workers’ conditions—with the exceptions of the owners of the Hotel Español and the Grand Hotel, who resort to hiring scabs. So Soto and a compatriot enter one of the hotels and use their fists to try and convince the holdouts to stop work.

When the hotel owner complains to the police, Soto and his colleague are arrested. Representatives of the Workers’ Society then approach Judge Viñas, asking him to release the two men. The time has come for the judge to put the governor in check. Viñas orders the two workers to be immediately released, even though the police have already initiated criminal proceedings against them for forcible entry, assault, and property damage. We shall soon see the consequences of this decision.

On August 24th, the police chief, Commissioner Diego Ritchie, informs Governor Correa Falcón that:

The police have discovered that the local Workers’ Federation is working with its counterparts in Buenos Aires, the port cities and Punta Arenas (Chile) to launch a general strike that is to begin next month, a movement that could take on a revolutionary nature … dynamite is being prepared in one or more of the territory’s ports.

Commissioner Ritchie—who insists that the strike will include rural peons—puts in a request for machine guns.

Two weeks later—on September 7th, 1920—the police chief’s concerns grow and he sends the governor another report:

Faced with the threat from the workers and anarchists, I deem the situation in the territory to be quite serious, as there’s no doubt that the general strike being planned will unavoidably become a seditious movement, given the unrest in the workers’ camp and the territory’s numerous anarchists and repeat offenders, whose ranks are being swelled by the dangerous elements expelled from Punta Arenas in the aftermath of that city’s revolutionary strike.

In his urgent request for reinforcements, the police chief provides the following interesting details:

The territory’s police force consists of 230 troopers (including the border patrol), who are stationed at 46 precincts, sub-precincts and detachments spread across a 282,000 square kilometer territory that is home to some very important ranches and four large meatpacking plants—the Swift plant in Río Gallegos, the Swift plant in San Julián, the Armour plant in Puerto Santa Cruz and the Puerto Deseado Meatpacking Plant, owned by a local ranching company. Río Gallegos alone has a population of around 4,000 residents, with more in important towns like Puerto Santa Cruz, San Julián, Puerto Deseado, and Las Heras. It’s easy to see how difficult or even impossible it would be to defeat a movement such as the one being prepared with our badly paid and understaffed police force.

He then requests infantry troops from Buenos Aires or a warship carrying an expeditionary force, adding that the police under his command are keeping a close watch on the movement’s ringleaders.

On December 15th, 1920, Governor Correa Falcón complains to the interior minister that Judge Viñas “favors the workers” and has been a party to “extortion” against the business community of Río Gallegos. This is what happened: after the July hotel workers’ strike had been lifted, the Río Gallegos Workers’ Society declared a boycott of the hotels that had refused the union’s demands. The boycott was well organized: taxi drivers refused to take passengers to those hotels, union members talked to hotel staff and encouraged them to stop working—or, rather, pressured them to stop work—and hotel guests were stopped in the street and had the conflict politely explained to them. And the streets of that small city were inundated with flyers in those days.

As we have said, these two hotels were the Grand Hotel and the Hotel Español. The owner of the latter, Serafín Zapico, seeing that he would either have to give in or be forced to close the hotel, asked Judge Viñas for advice. Viñas agreed to straighten things out for him, telling him the next day to go to the headquarters of the Workers’ Society, as Soto and other union members had agreed to meet with him. The distressed businessman did as he was told and Soto informed him that the only way to resolve the matter would be to rehire the four hotel workers who had been fired during the strike, paying their lost wages, and accepting the conditions demanded by the union. Zapico consulted with Viñas, who also told him that this was the only way to end the conflict. And so Zapico bowed his head and paid up.

Things wouldn’t be so easy for Manuel Albarellos, the owner of the Grand Hotel. Despairing of the “blockade” imposed by the Workers’ Society, he also turned to Judge Viñas, who gave him the same advice he had given Zapico. According to Albarellos’s subsequent statement to the police, when he entered the building he was surrounded by union members who insulted him and threatened him, saying that they could only reach an arrangement if he paid a 3,700-peso fine.

The desperate hotel owner—3,700 pesos was a substantial sum in those days—went back to Judge Viñas, who told him not to give up and promised to settle the matter. Viñas—after meeting with the labor leaders—told the hotel owner that he was able to get him a “discount” and that he would only have to come up with 2,500 pesos. To complete his cavalry, the reluctant hotel owner, accustomed to treating his workers like slaves, had to swallow his pride and make the payment in person at the union headquarters. The hotel owner, specialized in attending to the needs of the well-to-do, had to hand the money over to Soto, who made a show of counting it out before an assembly of jubilant workers. Soto told him that he could go, that the “blockade” would be lifted.

There’s no doubt that for these proletarians, accustomed to the lean side of life, these triumphs must have felt glorious.

Governor Correa Falcón makes all this known to the federal government, sending a detailed report to Interior Minister Ramón Gómez, popularly known as Tuerto Gómez. The minister’s reaction is typical of the Radical administration: he orders it to be filed away. For him, the best way to solve a problem is to leave it unsolved. And this would also allow the judge, a loyal party member, to remain in good standing. The government already took the side of the governor in the case of the English ranches. And so now it’s time to take the judge’s side, even if only by omission. Besides, it’s a policy of the Radical administration to give the unions a free hand as long as they don’t go too far.

Under the leadership of Antonio Soto, the Rio Gallegos Workers’ Society receives a great impetus. It acquires a printing press, begins to publish the newspaper 1° de Mayo and sends delegates to the ranches of the interior to explain the basics of organizing and fighting for concessions. These delegates bring up names like Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta. They all have an anarchist background and constantly bring up the example of the October Revolution in Russia.

It’s genuinely strange—and why not exciting?—to find the red flag flying over the headquarters of a small union that nevertheless embodied the hopes of the dispossessed in distant Río Gallegos, a town of barely four thousand inhabitants, far removed from all major cities and thousands of kilometers from the cauldron of rebellion that Europe became in the 1920s. It’s incredible how these men, who not only lacked proven leaders but also had a complete lack of organizational experience, nevertheless put their best foot forward in order to not lose the hurried pace that the Russian Revolution had imposed on the proletariat.

And just as strange is another incident that will directly lead to many of the events that followed. In September 1920, the Río Gallegos Workers’ Society asks the police for permission to hold a memorial for the Catalan pedagogue Francisco Ferrer, the father of rationalist education who was executed eleven years beforehand at the Montjuich Castle. In an act that brought shame upon the human race, the most conservative faction of the Catholic Church had influenced Alfonso XIII to do away with a teacher who used reason to destroy myths and who opposed religious obscurantism and militaristic irrationality above all else.

The memorial is scheduled for October 1st. In the days leading up to the event, the Workers’ Society distributes flyers throughout the city and surrounding ranches. The text of these flyers says more than any later interpretation of these events:

THE RÍO GALLEGOS WORKERS’ SOCIETY

1909—OCTOBER 13—1920

TO THE PEOPLE

It has been eleven years since this day moved the entire world.

It has been eleven years since the lowest and most cowardly attack on Free Thought was carried out in the thousand-times-accursed Montjuich Castle (Barcelona).

Francisco Ferrer, the founder of the Modern School, who taught children the path of light, was cravenly executed by those Tartuffes who commit all class of infamies in the name of Christ. But Francisco Ferrer will live forever in our hearts and we shall always be ready to spit this crime in the face of its perpetrators.

Glory to the martyrs of Human Liberty!

Glory to Francisco Ferrer!

Farmworkers: You have the duty to come to town on October 1st and pay homage to the Martyr of Freedom.

FRANCISCO FERRER

Cravenly executed on October 13th, 1909

On September 28th, Diego Ritchie refuses to issue a permit for the event. The workers aren’t intimidated and, without stopping to blink, declare a forty-eight-hour general strike.1 And this isn’t a bluff. Here’s what Amador V. González has to say about the strike:

September 30th dawned to a city in a state of siege. Though there was no reason to adopt such measures and martial law had not been declared, pedestrians were banned from gathering on the streets or in doorways, the armed forces poured out of the barracks to show off their Mausers and prison guards patrolled the city by automobile, frightening residents from north to south, as if the city was a warzone. On the 1st, armed men surrounded the offices of the Workers’ Society and passersby were stopped and sent in another direction. The offices of the Workers’ Society were closed down and the homes of its secretary and treasurer ransacked, but under what law? As a preliminary measure, the Workers’ Society ordered the suspension of all previously scheduled demonstrations and declared the general strike to be indefinite until the authorities recognized their error in allowing the police chief to use such extreme measures against a peaceful and orderly commemoration.2

The confrontation is ruthless. The government and police use force and the workers use the strike, that powerful measure of civil disobedience.

Faced with Correa Falcón’s offensive, the workers turn to their friends Borrero and Viñas. They gather in the offices that the lawyer shares with Dr. Juan Carlos Beherán and prepare to appeal Commissioner Ritchie’s decision.

In their statement to the judge, they make use of an impressively original argument. They write:

We protest against the prohibition of a demonstration scheduled for today—October 1, 1920—to commemorate the anniversary of the execution of Francisco Ferrer, whom the believers in the religion of labor hold as a martyr of freedom and a symbol of their ideas, just as believers in the Catholic religion pay homage to St. Francis of Assisi or the Maid of Orleans, recently beatified as St. Joan of Arc, or as believers in the Mohammedan religion pay homage to Mohammed, or as believers in the religion of patriotism pay tribute to the heroes of the Reconquista, the War of Independence, or the Emancipation.

Judge Viñas receives the appeal at three in the afternoon and immediately orders Commissioner Ritchie to explain his motives. And he also informs him that the court will remain open past its normal hours as a way of letting him know that his response must be immediate.

The barracks arguments used by Commissioner Ritchie show a devastating inconsistency:

By banning the meeting to be held today, the police department has understood that it was to commemorate the memory of a person held to be a martyr for his anarchist ideas, as Francisco Ferrer is universally considered to be a fanatic of that cause which is currently threatening to dissolve our contemporary social order. This gives the planned homage the hallmarks of inviability inherent in that class of protests that have been prohibited to protect the social order. Moreover, Your Honor, this is fundamentally a protest against an execution carried out by a foreign nation. Whether legal or illegal is not for us to judge for reasons of international courtesy; a judgement cannot be made by our constituted authorities, cannot take part, not even to grant a permit for protests against the decisions made by the Spanish court system, as it is not subject to our appeals. Nor was this event organized with a respectable aim, such as that of the improvement of living conditions for the working class. The character of the demonstration is purely political and falls outside our remit.

Viñas doesn’t waver. Not only does he reverse the commissioner’s decision, he also criticizes his ideas, demonstrating a rational spirit and a respect for the ideas of others:

The Public Safety Law has long been the subject of judicial decisions and has just as long been the cause of errors, with a lack of knowledge of our social history leading to many blatantly unfounded assertions. The flyer distributed by the workers only states that the event will commemorate the execution of the person mentioned, describing him solely as the founder of the Modern School, nothing more. There is no mention of any political tendency on the flyer that could be considered anarchist or libertarian, which are admittedly new developments in the history of ideas and whose consequences in the history of events are even more recent. The scientific conception of anarchism, its theories and the nature of its attacks are not only extremely vague and confusing to the masses, but also to sociologists and law professors. When these fundamental doubts present themselves before the court, the duty of the law must be to prevent any restriction of the freedom of assembly guaranteed in the Constitution.

Reading this decision, we have to give Viñas his due. It’s clear that he had a special sensibility. It was truly exceptional and daring to sign the defense of a labor demonstration in this way, and even more exceptional still for a homage to Ferrer in regions where the government was controlled by the mighty—and just one year after the Tragic Week, when it was the duty of all well-born Argentines to hunt down revolutionary workers.

He orders the ban to be lifted and for the governor to be informed of his decision.

The governor is notified on October 2nd. Correa Falcón, neither stupid nor lazy, drafts his own resolution: “Acknowledge receipt of the judicial decision and, as the date on which the permit for a demonstration had been requested has since passed, place the permit on file.”

Even though the opportunity to pay homage to Ferrer has passed, the workers cannot contain their enthusiasm for the judge’s decision. They feel defended; their ideas have triumphed over the government officials whom they accuse of being mere lackeys of commercial and landowning interests. The Workers’ Society lifts the strike. Now the offensive will be taken by the merchants and the property owners of the Commerce and Industry League. They find a leader in Ibón Noya, a rancher and the owner of the Buick Garage, an auto parts store. And their counteroffensive will also begin with boycotts. The first thing they do is organize an advertisers’ boycott of a newspaper called La Gaceta del Sur, which published an article praising the strike.

The Workers’ Society responds to this blow with an even heavier one: a boycott of three local businesses. They distribute flyers among the population encouraging them not to purchase from three local grocery stores. With this measure, they aim to divide the alliance of the bosses, since other grocers will double their earnings as long as nobody patronizes the three boycotted businesses.

Correa Falcón summons Soto to the police station to end the conflict with the Commerce and Industry League. But the anarchist tells Commissioner Ritchie that a police station is hardly an ideal location to resolve labor issues.

Correa Falcón realizes that words are of no more use and goes all in. On the night of October 19th, the Workers’ Society holds an assembly. So he acts. First measure: agents are stationed outside the doors of the union headquarters so nobody can leave. Second measure: the police chief himself directs the raid, which will be carried out by prison guards. The workers are forced against the wall with their hands up and—once they have been patted down for weapons—they are thrown out of the union offices and lined up in full view of their neighbors. Then, escorted by bayonets, they are marched in single file to the nearest jail and locked up with the common criminals to soften them up.

In the meantime, Correa Falcón covers his back, wiring the following message to the interior minister:

A group of labor agitators held a meeting without the permit required under existing regulations. The group, which for some time has been characterized by their extortionate tactics and the aggressive nature of their propaganda, disobeyed police orders to disperse. The police arrested ten individuals on violations of the public safety and social defense laws, as red flags and banners were confiscated, as were a large number of flyers calling for consumers to boycott local businesses. The municipal government and the Commerce and Industry League passed measures in support of the police action and have ensured that the populace will not suffer from shortages in the event of a strike. These measures have been welcomed by public opinion. Preliminary depositions have demonstrated the guilt of those arrested. I hope that you will inform me if they should be turned over to the federal government, given that they are foreigners to a man.

The governor’s plan was perfect. Only the immigrants were processed and he took advantage of the government’s confusion by offering the interior minister a way out: put them aboard a battleship, send them all to Buenos Aires and apply Law 4.144, expelling them from the country. Dead, the dog is cured of rabies. Great problems require great solutions.

This plan would have been very easy to carry out under a conservative government. But now Hipólito Yrigoyen was in power and such cavalier treatment of the lives of others, even if they were nothing more than poor immigrants, was being slightly curtailed.

There was one big fish among those arrested at the union offices: Dr. José María Borrero. According to Correa Falcón, there were three men responsible for everything that had been happening in that sleepy Patagonian town: Judge Viñas, the fiery Borrero, and the Spaniard, Soto.

Those arrested were all Spaniards, which Borrero and his friends skillfully frame as an attack on the Spanish community. They complain to the Spanish consul and the federal government.

With its offices closed and the majority of its leaders jailed, the Workers’ Society immediately launches a general strike. Judge Viñas orders Correa Falcón to immediately free the arrestees, but he refuses to carry out the judge’s orders.

With battleships available to take the arrestees away, the governor impatiently awaits the response of the interior minister. But the response of the federal government is truly disappointing for Correa Falcón: “If the preliminary depositions aren’t strong enough to begin legal proceedings against the arrestees locally, they should be released, keeping them under discreet surveillance in order to avoid civil disturbances.” This means that Correa Falcón must either turn the prisoners over to his enemy Viñas or grant them conditional freedom. He chooses to take a different path. He still has plenty of room to maneuver and sees no reason to admit defeat, though he only has a few weeks left in office—his replacement, Captain Ángel Yza, has already been named. He finds his inspiration in the interior minister’s telegram, which states, “If the preliminary depositions aren’t strong enough…” This suggests that he still has an opportunity to build his case, which can take several days. And Santa Cruz is very far away from the capital—between telegram and telegram, the prisoners could spend a great deal of time in the shadows.

But the situation deteriorates. The strike spreads like an oil spill throughout the countryside. The Workers’ Society distributes the following manifesto to nearby ranches:

Greetings, comrades. The police have arrested a group of workers and refused to release them, even when so ordered by the judge. Such an abuse of authority has forced us to call a general strike, and so we urge you to stop work and come to the capital as an act of solidarity until our comrades walk free.

Regards, The Strike Committee.

The strike upsets the government of Santa Cruz. The police are on the move. Groups of workers are broken up, even when doing nothing more than walking down the street, with the nightstick encouraging the reluctant. All suspicious-looking Chileans are run out of town. Upon receiving news of a group of Chileans gathered at the Hotel Castilla,3 they carry out a raid, pulling no punches, and identify all those present. Taverns are raided if they offer haven to Chileans coming in from the countryside or allow them to hold meetings. Their owners are often subpoenaed or “delayed” at the police station. This produces solidarity between workers and small business owners, uniting them in open conflict with large companies such as La Anónima.

Correa Falcón has arrested twenty-seven people. But he knows that he can’t get greedy and so he tactically decides to set some of them free—but holds on to those whom Viñas ordered him to release.

This is celebrated by the Workers’ Society as a partial triumph. They issue a manifesto that, despite the best efforts of the police, is passed from hand to hand among the peons and the poor:

To the workers

Comrades: We are approaching victory with giant steps. Fifteen of our imprisoned comrades have already been set free. There are still twelve left in jail. Our interim governor, the secretary of the Rural Society, has rebelled against the law and refused to obey the binding orders of the federal government to release eight of them. But his time will come and justice will triumph over caprice. The strike continues, as does the boycott, and neither will be lifted until all of our comrades are free. They are trying to turn our righteous stand into a question of nationality. Reject this nonsense, comrades—workers don’t see an enemy in a man who doesn’t share his nationality, but instead a fellow victim of capital, which corrupts and dominates everything. Men are all equals, no matter where they were born, and we therefore cannot let differences of nationality come between us. Forward, then, until we achieve our hard-won victory. If we remain united, we will defeat all the difficulties created by our enemies.

—The Strike Committee

But Correa Falcón continues with his tactical blows. The next will target the El Antártico printing press, where the workers print their flyers. The police will claim that they were provoked—that they were fired upon from the direction of the printing press—and then they will break into the shop, arrest those present, and destroy all the propaganda they find.

A group of Spanish nationals send a complaint to the Interior Ministry stating that “the police are beating people in the street.” This claim is backed by the Puerto Deseado newspaper El Orden, which reports that “the police commit outrages and abuses against the workers, provoking unrest in the population at large.”

After a great deal of back and forth, the federal government sides with Judge Viñas and orders Correa Falcón to release all the detained union members. They all go free on October 29th—except for two.

The Workers’ Society celebrates this development but orders the general strike to continue:

Our comrades Muñoz and Traba remain imprisoned. Both of them have been beaten and deliberately wounded by the police. Their tormentors have kept them locked up in foul dungeons to hide this brutal and unspeakable abuse. Well then—as long as these comrades remain imprisoned, the strike will continue and we will not lose heart. Comrades, we therefore beg you to help us bring work to a standstill by circulating these resolutions on the ranches. Victory will be ours because we have reason on our side: a force that triumphs over all obstacles. Our enemies will fall from the weight of their own crimes, just as rotten fruit falls from the tree that nurtured it.

The campaign is a complete success: all of the detainees are released by November 1st.

The finale of this turbulent prelude to the Spartakiad launched by the Workers’ Society is an attempt on the life of the organization’s secretary-general, Antonio Soto. It occurs on November 3rd, 1920. Soto is walking in the direction of Antwerp House to speak with a workers’ delegate when a suspicious figure lunges from a doorway and rapidly stabs him in the chest. The knife pierces his clothing but strikes the pocket watch that Soto carries in his left coat pocket. Soto collapses from the blow and pretends to reach for a gun. His attacker flees at full speed. Soto has received some cuts to the chest, but he is alive.

Those who sent the assassin thought well. By eliminating Soto, they would have decapitated the Santa Cruz labor movement.

The Workers’ Society has won a battle by securing the release of its prisoners, but now it’s time to make demands. Its workers have shown discipline, a spirit of sacrifice and clear class consciousness. This can be taken advantage of, as could the fact that many farmworkers came into town during the strike.

The labor organization prepares two campaigns: better pay for retail workers and a full list of demands for farmworkers. Here Antonio Soto proves himself to be a very gifted organizer. He sends emissaries to the countryside, holds meetings around the clock, rallies the new recruits, and instructs activists on the ABCs of unionism. When their demands are rejected, a strike breaks out across the territory.

In November 1920, Governor Correa Falcón sees control slip from his fingers. The rural strike extends across Santa Cruz. Work has completely stopped in Río Gallegos and the ports are paralyzed. There’s a growing sense of unease among the landowners. The work stoppage threatens the sheep breeding season, but a solution remains elusive. The tougher Correa Falcón gets, the more rebellious the workers become. La Unión reports that, “In the early days of the strike, there were over two hundred strange men wandering the streets confusedly, staring at people without understanding what was going on.” These men are none other than the farmworkers who have answered the call of the Workers’ Society.

The bosses, their children, and high-ranking employees decide to form a volunteer militia whose first action is to offer their services to the local jail “for the sake of order and as a guardian of morality,” as the aforementioned newspaper will put it.

But neither the Patriotic League nor the Rural Society nor the Commerce and Industry League nor the volunteer militia will be able to bring the strike to an end. They find themselves forced to seek out the union leaders and open negotiations.

On November 6th, three leading ranchers—Ibón Noya, Miguel Grigera, and Rodolgo Suárez—announce that they have been unable to reach an agreement with the strike committee. They then issue the following manifesto:

To the people of Río Gallegos and the farmworkers:

We the undersigned, owners of haciendas to the south of the Río Santa Cruz, have resolved, in spite of the difficult times we are experiencing as a result of the crisis in the international beef and wool markets, to:

1. Negotiate directly with our workers on our own ranches.

2. Pay our workers a minimum salary of 100 pesos per month, to be paid in Argentine currency, plus meals.

3. Negotiate salaries in excess of this amount with individual workers in accordance with their duties.

4. Work to gradually improve the food and hygienic conditions in the workers’ quarters.

The first point is entirely out of question for the workers. The bosses have decided not to recognize their labor organizations. The situation becomes tenser still. Soto is unfamiliar with the countryside and so he puts his trust in questionable individuals with unquestionable energy. During this first strike, the two de facto leaders of the rural movement had little union experience. The first, El 68, is a former inmate at Ushuaia, where 68 was his inmate number. It became his nickname after his release. The other, El Toscano, is an irrepressible daredevil who has also had his share of run-ins with the law. They are both Italians. El 68, whose real name is José Aicardi, is an accomplished rider, as is El Toscano, the alias of Alfredo Fonte, a thirty-three-year-old cart driver who came to Argentina when he was only three. They both come across more as genuine gauchos than as Italian immigrants.

They are aided by two Argentines: Bartolo Díaz (known as El Paisano Díaz) and Florentino Cuello (nicknamed Gaucho Cuello). They’re both brawlers, always on hand when there are blows to be delivered. But they’re also the ones who recruit the most chilotes to the union, charging them 12 pesos in yearly dues and handing out union cards. Both men are extremely popular on the ranches and know the countryside like the backs of their hands.

Gaucho Cuello is from Diamante, Entre Ríos, where he was born in 1884. In 1912, he stabbed someone back home—it seems their wounds were quite serious—earning him five years in the Río Gallegos prison. He stayed in town after his release in 1917 and was working on the Tapi-Aike ranch when the strike broke out.

These four men are largely responsible for the complete work stoppage on the ranches of southern Santa Cruz. The ringleader is undoubtedly the mysterious El 68. They are also joined by a Chilean named Lorenzo Cárdenas: a brave, determined, cold-blooded man. This group of organizers is rounded out with the German anarchist Franz Lorenz; the Paraguayan Francisco Aguilera; Federico Villard Peyré, a French anarchist and the delegate representing the Menéndez Behety’s La Anita ranch; the Americans Carlos Hantke (who also goes by the name of Charles Manning), Charles Middleton (easily identified by his gold teeth) and Frank Cross; the Scots Alex McLeod and Jack Gunn; an Afro-Portuguese by the name of Cantrill; a handsome Uruguayan cart driver nicknamed Palomilla; John Johnston, another American; a Spaniard named José Graña, etc.

They make up the active minority that goes from ranch to ranch to organize occupations. They take the landowners, administrators, and foremen hostage and swell their ranks with the peons.

All of the ranches south of the Río Santa Cruz are paralyzed.

On November 18th, La Unión runs an article that captures the tense atmosphere:

With work stoppages on every ranch and the intransigence of the landowners, a new, more fundamental problem arises. The economic interests of the territory and its population depend on a rapid solution. What will become of Río Gallegos if the meatpacking plants don’t reopen? What will ranches do with almost half a million heads of unsellable livestock? And Puerto Natales, in Chile, will also be unable to dispose of its livestock. Ranchers have already suffered heavy losses from the strike launched by their peons during the breeding season.

It is the ranchers who will take the first step towards reaching an agreement. They make a new offer to the workers on November 17th. This time, they include the following clause:

The Río Gallegos Workers’ Society will be acknowledged as the sole representative of the workers and its delegates will be authorized to visit our ranches once per month. At this time, they will be permitted to discuss any grievances with the ranch owner or foreman as well as to meet with union members.

The following day, expectations run high in Río Gallegos. There isn’t enough space in the Workers’ Society headquarters for everyone. The offer is gone over point by point, only to be rejected. The agreement must be clear, its clauses must leave no room for doubt and points that contain little more than generalities cannot be endorsed. The workers draft a counter-offer, signed by Antonio Soto:

CAPITAL-LABOR AGREEMENT

For the purposes of mutual assistance and sustenance, as well as for the dignity of all, the ranchers south of the Río Santa Cruz and the farmworkers represented by the Río Gallegos Workers’ Society agree to the following clauses and conditions:

FIRST: At the earliest possible opportunity and within the limits imposed by specific local and regional conditions, the ranchers must implement the following reasonable improvements to the living conditions of their workers:

a) No more than three men will be required to share any given four square meter room. Bunks are to be prohibited and they must be given cots or beds, complete with mattresses. Rooms must be properly ventilated and will be disinfected on a weekly basis. Each bedroom must be equipped with a bathroom and enough water for the workers to wash themselves after work;

b) Lighting costs will be borne by the employer, who will be required to issue each worker with a monthly supply of candles. Each common area will be supplied with a stove, lamp, and benches, to be paid for by the employer;

c) Saturday afternoons will be set aside to allow the peons to wash their clothes. If this is unfeasible, another day can be substituted;

d) Meals will consist of three courses, including soup, dessert and coffee, tea, or mate;

e) Beds and mattresses will be supplied by the employer, and workers will be responsible for purchasing their own clothing;

f) In the event of strong wind or rain, work will stop until the weather improves, unless there is an emergency recognized by both parties;

g) Each ranch must be equipped with a first aid kit with instructions in Spanish;

h) If a worker is fired or is otherwise no longer needed, their employer will be required to return them to the location at which they were hired.

SECOND: The ranchers commit to pay their workers a minimum salary of 100 pesos, to be paid in Argentine currency, plus food expenses. They must also commit to not reduce any salaries that currently exceed this amount. Any raises made will be at the discretion of the rancher, provided that they are in accordance with the abilities and merits of the worker. They must also hire one assistant cook if they employ between ten and twenty workers, two assistant cooks for ranches with between twenty and forty workers and a baker if the number of workers exceeds forty. Drovers hired on a month-to-month basis will be paid an additional 12 pesos per day if they make use of the ranch’s horses and an additional 20 pesos per day if their provide their own horses. Shepherds hired on a month-to-month basis will receive 20 pesos for every foal they deliver, while shepherds hired on a daily basis will receive 30 pesos.

THIRD: The ranchers will hire at least one drover per ranch, depending on its size. Bimonthly inspections will be carried out to look after the needs of the drover(s), with preference given to family men in proportion to their number of children, which will encourage population growth and the country’s development.

FOURTH: The ranchers recognize the Río Gallegos Workers’ Society as the representative of the workers and agree to allow a delegate to be appointed on each ranch to act as an intermediary between the employers and the Workers’ Society. This delegate will have the power to arrange temporary settlements for pressing issues that affect the rights and responsibilities of both the workers and their employers.

FIFTH: The ranchers will do everything in their power to ensure that all of their workers are unionized, but they will not force them to join a union nor are they required to refuse the labor of nonunion workers.

SIXTH: The Workers’ Society commits to lift the present farmworkers’ strike and will order its members to return to work once this agreement has been signed.

SEVENTH: The Workers’ Society commits to immediately endorse regulations and instructions for its members that are designed to bring about greater harmony between capital and labor, which together form the foundation of existing society. It will use flyers, conferences, and conversations to encourage the values of order, hard work, and mutual respect among its members—values that should not be forgotten.

EIGHTH: This agreement will come into effect on November 1st and the strike will end with all workers receiving payment for the days missed, with no reprisals on either side.

Faced with this response from the workers, the ranchers reply that, “Having exhausted our options and being unable to overcome our disagreements, we regard our mission to be over.”

Negotiations break down. If we analyze the workers’ offer, we can reach a number of conclusions about the true situation of Patagonian farmworkers.

The system of bunks4 was not just used in Patagonia, but in many parts of the country. It was the “custom” in rural areas. The living quarters for peons—especially on smaller ranches—were also used to store obsolete gear or farm machinery. The menu consisting solely of capon—along with the health problems that accompany it—remains in place to this day on virtually every ranch in Patagonia. In many cases, the living quarters remain exactly the same as they did half a century ago. But the greatest impediment to progress in Patagonia—and this cannot be refuted—is the inhumane treatment of workers and the lack of thoughtfulness towards the land’s primary source of wealth: human beings. Just as it was fifty years ago, only single men are hired as shepherds or peons. Ranch owners want no families—unless that means a “household,” as they call it, where the woman handles domestic chores for the landowner and her husband is a cook. But broadly speaking, the entire workforce is made up of single men who live at the ranch from Monday to Saturday and then head into town on Sunday to spend all their earnings on getting drunk in bars or brothels. The economics of this system are poorly understood by the ranchers. Farmworkers become itinerant; there’s nothing to tie them down and they go wherever they receive higher pay or wherever life is better.

This is why the third clause of the workers’ offer showed great wisdom in asking for drovers to be selected from among family men, “with preference given to family men in proportion to their number of children, which will encourage population growth and the country’s development.” What a shame that none of this was ever implemented and was instead drowned in blood and crushed by the logic of lead and steel.

All in all, there was nothing outrageous about the workers’ demands, and later on we shall see that the ranchers largely recognized this. Their reformist motives could be seen in the seventh clause, in which the Workers’ Society “commits to immediately endorse regulations and instructions for its members that are designed to bring about greater harmony between capital and labor…”

Here we can detect the hand of Borrero at work, and perhaps that of Viñas. We say this because Borrero was always eager to show that the Workers’ Society was not an extremist organization. As for Viñas, the phrase “harmony between capital and labor” hints at the Yrigoyenist mindset that Perón would later inherit. Of course, this harmony would be torn apart by gunfire and end up crucified on the posts of Patagonia’s endless barbed wire fences.

The Workers’ Society accompanied their list of demands with a manifesto titled To the Civilized World, again showing that they only sought to win a series of concessions and had no revolutionary aims:

To the civilized world:

A general strike has been declared in the countryside. It will be total and absolute: no work will be done, not even the transportation of livestock, which is the region’s sole resource.

We cannot yet tell what the consequences of this strike will be nor the dimensions it may assume, especially as urban workers are standing firm in their support for their rural comrades, showing solidarity with their just and legitimate aspirations.

And so the Río Gallegos Workers’ Society wishes to absolve its membership of all responsibility for any later developments, placing this responsibility into the hands of the ranchers south of the Río Santa Cruz. With the honorable exceptions of the Clark brothers and Benjamín Gómez, they have displayed what is either the crassest ignorance or the most refined malice, accompanied by an utter lack of humanitarianism, altruism, fair-mindedness, and equity. They propose to carry on treating their workers with the same brutality they have shown up until today, confusing them with serfs or slaves and treating them as just another vulgar product on the market, like mules, sheep, or horses. At the present time, ranchers feel that one man can always be replaced by another, at no cost to themselves, while the replacement of an animal constitutes a financial setback and pains them more than the loss of a fellow man or the needs of a family in distress.

It is shameful to have to say such things in the twentieth century, but since these are the conditions that can be observed by anyone visiting the region’s ranches, even the ones closest to Río Gallegos, we must expose this situation to everyone who considers themselves to be civilized and let opprobrium and shame fall on the heads of those responsible.

And, lest it be argued that our claims are exaggerated, allow us to recount what has happened so far.

As part of the labor negotiations occurring in the territory, the workers put forward a list of demands on November 1st, and it took the ranchers a full sixteen days to respond, and only then after a great deal of maneuvering.

Consistent with their desire to harmonize the interests of the parties involved, the workers put their own demands on hold and studied the ranchers’ offer. They then decided to draw up their own capital-labor agreement, which is transcribed below.

This was then followed by the list of demands signed by Antonio Soto. The manifesto concluded by stating that the eighth clause was “imbued with humanitarian sentiments, sacred and sublime. By requiring both parties to refrain from reprisals, it puts into practice the greatest of precepts: love one another, forget your resentments, discard your hatreds, and set aside your ill will.” And then it made an appeal:

WORKERS:

Now, more than ever, we must display our unyielding will to assert our dignity and be regarded by society as the most efficient champions of progress and civilization. We must marshal our forces, move forward and staunchly defend our vulnerable and unrecognized rights. Whenever we see a comrade who is fearful or hesitant, let us not burden him with reproaches or threats, but instead strive to strengthen his resolve, lift up his spirit, and offer him the fraternal and loving embrace of his fellow unfortunates.

Now, more than ever, we must display our cultivation and education, of which so few proofs have been offered, by setting aside violence and coercion and neither using nor abusing the use of force. Let the latter become the final symptom of the lack of conscience on the part of the bosses, as it is widely known that whenever they are presented with the just demands of the workers, they see a terrifying specter and immediately turn to bayonets, rifles, and men in uniform. They cannot be too certain of the justice of their cause when they resort to such measures.

Let us counter the strength of arms with the strength of our arguments, the righteousness of our conduct, and the integrity of our actions, and victory shall be ours. —The strike committee.

The manifesto speaks for itself. It tells workers to “love one another,” and leaves the use of force, of “bayonets, rifles, and men in uniform” to the bosses, who of course will use them, surpassing all expectations. Such as when Commissioner Micheri bends his saber out of shape by beating chilotes who speak of nothing but love for their fellow man. And when Varela orders his men to open fire on this shapeless mass of wretches, let us then remember the phrase about countering “the strength of arms with the strength of our arguments.”

As the days slip by, the atmosphere south of the Río Santa Cruz becomes increasingly tense. The strike shows no sign of lifting and the landowners continue to worry. On November 24th, the latter head down to the port to receive two “wealthy landowners and influential businessmen,” as La Unión refers to them. They are none other than Mauricio Braun and Alejandro Menéndez Behety, stopping by on the steamship Argentino on their way to Punta Arenas for the unveiling of a monument to Magellan donated by Don José Menéndez.

They come bringing good news: workers recruited in Buenos Aires are on their way to replace their disobedient counterparts.

La Unión pompously announces the establishment of the Free Labor Association, a sort of union of right-thinking, deferential workers:

A large number of workers from throughout the region have taken the initiative to found a Free Labor Association, allowing the working man, currently tyrannized by the absurd sectarianism of malicious, belligerent gangs, to exercise his freedom to adjust his conduct to his circumstances and interests.

Antonio Soto is unsettled by this offensive, but he has someone to cover his back: that mysterious individual known as El 68, who fluently speaks the language of gunfire.

So when the first “free” workers arrive from Buenos Aires and head towards the Douglas ranch to replace the strikers—traveling under police escort—they are met by armed horsemen at a place along the road to Punta Arenas known as Bajada de Clark. The horsemen fire into the air, disappearing and reappearing like guerrillas. The scare is so great that the tractors carrying the strikebreakers and their police escorts immediately turn around and head back towards Río Gallegos. Correa Falcón immediately orders Commissioner Ritchie to patrol the area with four cars and fifteen policemen. But they simply waste gasoline—there’s no trace left of the rebel gauchos.

Soto is amused, but deep down he knows that to some extent he has sold his soul to the devil: having friends like El 68 or El Toscano is neither very wise nor very anarchist. These two men have done a little of everything and can’t be accused of being naïve. They know that the only gospel they can bring to the police and the powerful is violence; they laugh at those poetic souls who believe in the “sovereign will of assemblies” and respect the opinions of others. They monopolize decision making and impose their preferred methods, even into the second strike: They rally the peons, organize them into armed gangs, and attack the ranches, holding their owners, administrators, and sympathizers hostage, all the while confusing the police by traveling far and wide.

The Bajada de Clark incident has a demoralizing effect on the ranchers. On December 2nd, they come back to the workers with a counteroffer: they accept the union’s second list of demands, with the sole exception of the part about delegates being assigned to each ranch. The bosses offer their own version of the clause:

The ranchers recognize the Río Gallegos Workers’ Society as the sole representative of the workers and agree to allow a delegate to be appointed on each ranch to act as an intermediary between the employers and the Workers’ Society. This delegate will have the power to arrange temporary settlements for pressing issues that affect the rights and responsibilities of both the workers and their employers. On each ranch, these delegates will be appointed by the workers with the approval of the employers, taking seniority and behavior into account. The employers reserve the right to veto the delegate of the Workers’ Society and the workers recognize that holding the position of delegate is not a guarantee of job stability.

This counteroffer is accepted in principle by the rural delegates in a referendum organized by the strike committee, but it’s here that the workers become divided. Antonio Soto and the strike committee reject the counteroffer.

Amador González, a worker at the Gaceta del Sur newspaper who had thrown his weight behind Antonio Soto and the Workers’ Society, comes out in favor of lifting the strike. He is seconded by Ildefonso Martínez and Bernabé Ruiz, who, as representatives of the FORA IX, one of the two labor organizations in Buenos Aires, are very important men for the Patagonian labor movement. The two delegates, Martínez and Ruiz, also maintain contact with the Maritime Workers’ Federation, which owes its importance to its presence in every port along the coast of Patagonia. Both men launch a furious campaign against Soto for opposing the agreement.

In the meantime, an important change is about to occur in the world of politics. Captain Yza—the new governor of Santa Cruz, appointed by Yrigoyen and ratified by Congress—has announced in Buenos Aires that all of the government functionaries who served under Correa Falcón will be replaced, including Commissioner Ritchie, who will be replaced by Oscar Schweitzer.

This news is greeted as a victory by Borrero and Judge Viñas, as it represents the total defeat of Correa Falcón. And it actively encourages the continuation of the strike.

Antonio Soto goes for broke and gathers all the workers together. The conflict between the two tendencies in the union—syndicalist and anarchist—comes to a head in that December 4th assembly. The majority backs Soto’s decision to continue the strike. But Soto is well aware that he can only pull this off if the union’s entire leadership supports the strike. So the union also elects new leaders, almost all of them Spaniards holding libertarian ideas. Soto is re-elected as secretary-general.

From this moment on, the workers will have new enemies in the syndicalists and the Gaceta del Sur newspaper, which, as we have said, came out in favor of accepting the ranchers’ offer.

The newspaper is unsparing in its attacks on Soto. For example, the article “Unionism? Anti-Unionism!” reads as follows:

The workers of Río Gallegos, who have the idiosyncrasy of paying homage to the absurd, have set an awful, terrible precedent. Led by their personal feelings, the workers have let themselves be steered towards disorganization and a grotesque authoritarianism imposed by an inept union leadership. Although the reverence shown to shameless demagogues has always been the greatest threat to the Workers’ Society, Antonio Soto stands out for his mental obtuseness and his practical ignorance of unionism even among those who make up the union’s unreasonable and idiotic leadership, claiming that their shrewdness elevates them above neophyte workers. More than anyone else, he bears the responsibility for the union’s unraveling. His disciples have embarrassingly hoisted him up on a pedestal and worship him as if they have seen the Messiah.

Further along, they criticize the “illogical frequency of the union’s strikes and its absurd boycotts.” It’s important to note that the “syndicalists” aren’t just attacking Soto but also the strikes and boycotts organized by the Workers’ Society—and that they are doing so in the middle of a general strike, a life or death struggle for the union’s future.

When this issue of Gaceta del Sur appears on the newsstands, Correa Falcón wastes no time in sending a copy to the interior minister. He also takes the opportunity to attack Judge Viñas for good measure, arguing that his defense of Soto and the labor organization was responsible for everything that followed.

But the strike keeps going despite all these setbacks, and with ever greater intensity. El 68 and El Toscano continue stirring up the peons and cutting fences. The ranchers are afraid and begin preparing their exodus to Río Gallegos.

What position should they take? They are at a loss. At first, they had no interest in reaching a settlement because the wool market was in crisis and so the strike represented an opportunity for them not to pay their workers. But now the very existence of their ranches is at stake, as is the private property system as a whole. The days slip by and the strikers remain unstoppable. Correa Falcón is seemingly impotent, with too few police at his disposal to teach the subversives a proper lesson. There has to be another way: putting pressure on the government, for example.

The ranchers—led by Alejandro Menéndez Behety—send desperate messages to Yrigoyen. The press in Buenos Aires speaks of predations and has begun using the word “bandits” to refer to striking peons. But the strike advances. First it spreads to Puerto Santa Cruz, then San Julián, where something happens without precedent in those latitudes: somebody bombs the home of the “prominent citizen” Juan J. Albornoz, local president of the Argentine Patriotic League. But it’s in Puerto Deseado where the truly unexpected will occur, with blood spilled and gunshots exchanged.