The Argentinian anarchist movement was the
strongest such movement in South America.
It was strongest between 1890 and the start
of a series of military governments in 1930.
During this period, it was dominated by anarchist
communists and anarcho-syndicalists.
The movement's theories were a hybrid of European
anarchist thought and local elements, just
as it consisted demographically of both European
immigrant workers and native Argentinians.
== Early years ==
The first Argentinian anarchist groups appeared
in the 1870s.
A section of the First International was founded
in the Argentinian capital of Buenos Aires
in either 1871 or 1872, but at first it was
explicitly part of neither the International's
anarchist nor its Marxist wing.
By 1879, there were several sections in Argentina,
with anarchists in control of all of them.
In 1876, adherents of Bakunin's ideals founded
the Center for Workers' Propaganda.
The well-known Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta
was in Argentina from 1885 to 1889.
With his help, the first anarchist trade union
was started in 1887.
In 1890, El perseguido became the first anarchist
organ in the country.
During this time the Argentinian anarchist
movement was split over the question of organization.
There was a, mostly communist anarchist, wing
advocating workers' organizations, deeming
them the natural weapon for the anarchist
struggle.
The opponents of organizations, both communist
and individualist anarchists, in turn claimed
organizations forced those working within
them to become reformists and give up their
revolutionary stance.
Until his departure in 1889, Malatesta helped
bridge this gap and minimize the tensions
and rivalries between the two wings, but after
he left, they broke out once again.
The pro-organizers were strengthened in 1891
by the arrivals of the Spanish anarchist Antoni
Pellicer in 1891 and the Italian Pietro Gori
in 1898.
In 1897, the proponents of trade unions also
founded the weekly newspaper La Protesta Humana.
In 1900, Paraire published a series of articles
in La Protesta Humana under the title "Labor
Organization" advocating a dual organization
concept: a militant labor federation for economic,
and a genuinely anarchist organization for
political matters.
== FORA founding and radicalization ==
In 1901, Argentina's first national labor
confederation, the Argentine Workers' Federation
(FOA), was founded.
Although its founding principles were influenced
by Paraire and Gori, it was at first a joint
project with the socialists.
In 1902, the first general strike in Argentinian
history took place.
It led to the passing of the Residence Law,
which gave the government the power to deport
"subversive foreigners".
This law was used to expel hundreds of anarchists,
while a great number of them fled to Montevideo
in Uruguay only to reenter the country afterwards.
In 1903, La Protesta Humana was renamed as
La Protesta, the name under it which exists
to this day.
In the same year, the moderate wing of the
FOA left the federation to form the General
Workers' Union (UGT), thus leaving the hegemony
in the FOA to the anarchists.
They renamed the union as Argentine Regional
Workers' Federation (FORA) as a sign of the
organization's internationalism in 1904.
In 1905, at the FORA's fifth congress, its
adherence to anarchism was formalized.
In a resolution, it declared that it should
"inculcate in the workers the economic and
philosophical principles of anarchocommunism".
This resolution became the basic policy for
the following years.
The FORA disagreed with the revolutionary
syndicalists over the question of the unions'
role after a revolution.
While the anarcho-communists viewed labor
unions as a by-product of capitalist society,
which would have to be dissolved with the
establishment of an anarchist society, the
syndicalists viewed their unions' democratic
structure as a model for the society they
envisioned and wanted the unions to be the
basis of such a new society.
A series of strikes, many of them instigated
by the anarchists, followed in 1905.During
this period the anarchist movement experienced
rapid growth.
50 to 70% of the males in the working class
were disenfranchised, because they were not
native Argentinians.
Hence the legal political framework was not
an option for them and anarchism gained appeal.
The movement's strength and its relationship
to the state is demonstrated by the events
on May 1, 1904.
70,000 anarchist workers marched in the streets
of La Boca (Buenos Aires' total population
was of 900,000).
Proscribed by Roca's government, the demonstration
ended in the death of Juan Ocampo, a teenager.
== Major clashes with police ==
In 1909, police fired on a May Day demonstration
in the Plaza Lorea in Buenos Aires organized
by FORA.
Several workers were killed.
The anarchists responded by declaring a general
strike leading the government to shut down
the workers' centers and arrest 2,000 people.
This strike lasted nine days.
As the Chief of Police Ramón Falcón was
widely blamed for the killing, the young Jewish
anarchist Simón Radowitzky killed him and
his secretary by throwing a bomb at the car
they were in on November 13.
An unprecedented repression against the anarchist
movement ensued.
Martial law was declared and remained in place
until January 1910.
The offices of La Protesta were raided and
its machinery destroyed, as were the workers'
centers.
Within 48 hours thousands were arrested, many
sent to Ushuaia prison in Tierra del Fuego.
Non-Argentinian activists were generally deported.Although
martial law was lifted in January 1910, this
year also saw the next major clash between
the government and the anarchists.
1910 was the hundredth anniversary of the
May Revolution of 1810, which led to Argentinian
independence.
Anarchist agitation was on the rise, a new
anarchist daily newspaper, La Batalla, was
founded in March, and the FORA planned protests
against the Residence Law, but was somewhat
hesitant as it scented a lack of militancy
among workers.
The moderate syndicalist Argentine Regional
Workers' Confederation (CORA), the successor
of the General Workers' Union, however, pushed
for confrontation and the anarchists were
forced to follow suit.
They threatened to call for a general strike
on May 25, the day of the anniversary festivities.
Therefore, the government once again declared
martial law on May 13.
Police arrested the editors of La Protesta
and La Batalla and FORA leaders.
Meanwhile, right-wing militant youths attacked
union offices and workers' clubs while the
police ignored or even encouraged them.
Because of this, the general strike was moved
to May 18, but it was suppressed by the police
and the right-wing militants.
1910 also saw the sentencing of Simón Radowitzky.
As a minor, he could not be sentenced to death,
so he was condemned to life in Ushuaia.
He would be pardoned and released from prison
in 1930.Argentine anarchist historian Angel
Cappelletti reports that in Argentina "Among
the workers that came from Europe in the 2
first decades of the century, there was curiously
some stirnerian individualists influenced
by the philosophy of Nietzsche, that saw syndicalism
as a potential enemy of anarchist ideology.
They established...affinity groups that in
1912 came to, according to Max Nettlau, to
the number of 20.
In 1911 there appeared, in Colón, the periodical
El Único, that defined itself as ´Publicación
individualista´".
== FORA split ==
The events of 1909 and 1910 left the Argentinian
anarchists fatigued.
The movement's growth stalled as a result
of state repression and the country's economic
problems.
The Law of Social Defense, passed as a reaction
to the Falcón assassination, allowed the
government to deny any foreigner who committed
crimes punishable under Argentinian law entry
into the country, prohibited the entry of
anarchists, banned groups disseminating anarchist
propaganda, and granted local authorities
the power to prohibit any public meetings
which subversive ideas could be expressed
at.
Meanwhile, the moderate syndicalist CORA grew
in size as a result of its pragmatic approach,
which included participating in negotiations
with employers in place of direct action as
advocated by the anarchists.
Striving for labor unity, the CORA set up
a fusion committee with some non-affiliated
unions to push for a merger with the FORA.
The majority of the FORA agreed, calling for
the CORA to abolish itself and enter the FORA.
At the April 1915 FORA congress, its ninth,
a resolution which reversed its commitment
to anarchist communism was passed, paving
the way for the CORA unions to join.
Only a minority in the FORA rejected this
move.
After the congress, this minority started
a breakaway federation under the name FORA
V, referring to the fifth congress, which
the resolution for anarcho-communism was passed
at.
While the FORA IX had somewhere between 100,000
and 120,000 members, the anarchist FORA V
had 10,000 at the most, though both figures
are considered unreliable.
The FORA V was strongest in the interior of
the country, where most of the workers were
native Argentinians.With the start of World
War I in 1914, the conditions for the anarchist
movement became even more unfavorable.
The falling of wages and a net migration back
to Europe created poor premises for any kind
of labor activism and the anarchist FORA V
struggled to adapt to this.
After a railworkers' strike broke out in October
1917, the anarchists called for a futile general
strike and received little support from the
FORA IX.
A meat-packers' strike in Berisso and Avellaneda
led by the anarchists was defeated in 1918.
== Semana Trágica and 1920s ==
In December 1918, a strike broke out at the
Vasena metalworks in the Buenos Aires suburbs
of Nueva Pompeya.
The union leading the strike was a splinter
from FORA IX and called itself anarchist,
though its links to FORA V were tenuous.
On January 7, 1919, a shootout between strikers
and police, troops, and firemen killed five.
The police and troops then attacked the 200,000
workers at the funeral procession on killing
at least thirty-nine and injuring many more.
After the events of January 7, the FORA V
immediately called for a general strike, but
the work stoppage that followed was more of
a result of the workers' outrage over the
killings than of the anarchists' call.
The general strike took place on January 11
to 12, but then subsided.
Once again, the police, the military, and
right-wing groups reacted with pogroms in
working-class neighborhoods.
Right-wing militants created the Argentine
Patriotic League.
The Jewish inhabitants of the workers' quarters
especially became the victims of the attacks.
In all, somewhere between 100 and 700 people
died and around 4,000 were injured.
The Semana Trágica further perpetuated the
decline of Argentinian anarchism.
From around 1920 on, the anarchists' influence
in the trade unions was rather minor.
From 1920 to 1921, there was a peasant uprising
in Patagonia led by anarchists.
The army, led by Colonel Héctor Varela, reacted
by executing some 1,500 people.
Because of the remoteness of the region, the
events did not become known in Buenos Aires
at first.
Once they did, the anarchist movement started
a campaign against the "killer of Patagonia",
as they called Varela.
This led the Tolstoyan anarchist Kurt Gustav
Wilckens to assassinate the colonel on January
23, 1923.The movement's decline continued
nevertheless.
It was intensified by both strife within the
movement and government persecution.
== Infamous Decade and Perón government ==
On September 6, 1931, José Félix Uriburu
came to power in Argentina via a coup d'état
starting a series of military governments
known as the Infamous Decade.
The anarchist FORA, the sole FORA since the
FORA IX was renamed as the Argentine Syndicates'
Union (USA) in 1922, went underground immediately.
A number of distributors of La Protesta were
arrested or killed within a year of Uriburu's
ascension to power.
Deciding it had become impossible to distribute
the paper, the publishers of La Protesta ceased
making it and disseminated an underground
newspaper named Rebelión instead.
After martial law was lifted in 1932, La Protesta,
the anarchist weekly La Antorcha, and FORA
unions in Santa Fe and Rosario published a
manifesto called "Eighteen Months of Military
Terror" about the repression they had endured.
In this year the second Regional Anarchist
Conference was held in Rosario - the first
having taken place in Buenos Aires in 1922.
It had been planned by anarchists imprisoned
under Uriburu.
The congress set up a regional committee for
anarchist co-ordination, which eventually
led to the founding of the Argentine Anarcho-Communist
Federation (FACA) in 1935.The Spanish Civil
War, which broke out in 1936, was an important
topic for the Argentinian anarchists.
Various anarchists left to fight in the war
and the FACA's official newspaper Acción
Libertaria published special editions dedicated
to it.In 1946, President Juan Perón came
to power.
With the emergence of Peronism, more and more
labor unions (especially the socialist ones)
became Peronist, and anarchist unions - which
had already suffered a significant decline
during the previous decade - lost all of their
remaining strength.
The anarchist representation in the labor
movement became minimal.
When Peronism became the mainstream ideology
of the Argentine working people, it replaced
the old mainstream labor ideologies (including
anarchism, socialism and communism), which
never again regained their old importance
among the working class.
FORA, the traditional anarchist union, was
closed as a result of this.
In 1952, following the imprisonment and torture
of several FORA members, anarchists of all
factions launched a campaign to inform the
public of this situation.
After the violent coup that overthrew Perón
in 1955, anarchist periodicals reappeared
openly once again, among them La Protesta
and Acción Libertaria.
However, Argentinian anarchism could never
recover as a movement with popular roots.
== More recent developments ==
The FACA became Argentine Libertarian Federation
(FLA) in 1955, but like its predecessor organization
was never able to gain a mass following.
In 1985, the FLA replaced Acción Libertaria,
its newspaper, with a new political journal
called El Libertario.
== References ==
== Bibliography ==
Colombo, Eduardo (1971), "Anarchism in Argentina
and Uruguay", in Apter, David E.; Joll, James,
Anarchism Today, Garden City, New York: Anchor
Books, pp. 211–244.
Oved, Yaacov (1997).
"The Uniqueness of Anarchism in Argentina".
Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina
y el Caribe.
Tel Aviv: University of Tel Aviv.
8 (1).
ISSN 0792-7061.
OCLC 25122634.
Simon, S. Fanny (February 1946).
"Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism in South
America".
The Hispanic American Historical Review.
Durham: Duke University Press.
26 (1): 38–59.
doi:10.2307/2507692.
ISSN 0018-2168.
Thompson, Ruth (1985).
"The Limitations of Ideology in the Early
Argentine Labour Movement: Anarchism in the
Trade Unions, 1890—1920".
Journal of Latin American Studies.
16 (01): 81–99.
doi:10.1017/S0022216X00004041.
ISSN 0022-216X.
Thompson, Ruth (1990), "Argentine Syndicalism:
Reformism before Revolution", in van der Linden,
Marcel; Thorpe, Wayne, Revolutionary Syndicalism:
an International Perspective, Aldershot: Scolar
Press, pp. 167–183, ISBN 0-85967-815-6
== Further reading ==
== External links ==
History of Anarchism in Argentina from R.A.
Forum
The Anarchist City of America Santiago Juan-Navarro's
article on Pierre Quiroule's work
Website of the FLA (Argentine Libertarian
Federation)
FLA cited in the Anarchist Encyclopedia
[1] scans of periodicals housed in the FLA's
archive.
