Continuing along the lines of the previous post, here is my modest contribution of events that were happening in Argentina during the same period covered in chapters 21-22. Strayer touched a bit on the beginning of the times I’ll describe here, when he mentioned in Chapter 18 the 2.5 million European immigrants that arrived in Bs.As. between 1870 and 1915 (Strayer, p.552).
At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, Buenos Aires received a huge wave of European immigrants. With exports on the rise and the political power in the hands of the elite, the Argentinean middle and lower classes began to push for more political representation and social recognition. The immigrants had brought with them communism, anarchism, and socialism, and their ideas started finding fertile grounds among the middle and lower classes; mostly an ideological movement with few actual attacks on the elite or its property. At the other extreme of this movement was the Argentine Patriotic League, an alliance of upper class youths characterized by their anti-Semitism, anti-communism, and xenophobia. The League made immigrant and, in particular anarchists, the target of violent attacks.[1]
This was, in a few words, the socio-political context of the early 1900s in Buenos Aires. It is important to note that, aside from two particular incidents that decidedly scarred the history of the country, communism, socialism and anarchism in Argentina were never as extreme in their behavior as they were in other parts of the world. While the basic ideals were professed, these groups were mostly interested in a moderate version of what they preached.
What followed in Argentina were the populist governments of Hipolito Yrigoyen (who paid no attention to the already weakened anarchist movement, and had no intentions of supporting them, or of entering any conflict) [1], then the Peronist era, and during this long period governments made every effort to stay away from any form of extreme leftist movement or ideology.
Yrigoyen’s first presidency largely avoided the violent police repressions of anarchists, communists and socialists of his predecessor (President Alvear), therefore chilling confrontations. Later on, and in a political move, Yrigoyen still avoided anarchists, but began dealing with trade unions [1]. Peron’s government fostered the syndicalist’s relationship with his government, and syndicalism rapidly replaced the “fresh-from-Europe” anarchism, communism and socialism of the early 1900s.
The beginnings of the populist movements in the early 1900s are significant in Argentinean history for what happened decades later. Although revolutionary ideas of communist, socialist and anarchist nature never reached massive support, they stained the Argentinean political scene for decades to come. They were part of the chaos that unleashed after Peron’s death, and part of the reason for the military coups that followed. With the missile crisis still fresh in its mind, the U.S. backed and supported these military “anti-Communist” governments [1], which ended the lives of tenths of thousands of “disappeared” people, and ruined forever the lives of tenths of thousands of others. The bloodiest chapter of state violence in Argentinean history had begun.
Note: The two incidents (their full descriptions would merit several more posts) were the violent police repression of workers during a protest on May 1st, 1909, commanded by the chief of police Ramon L. Falcon; and the vengeance (at the hands of the anarchists) for the workers killed during that protest. In short, Falcon repressed the anarchists violently, then Simon Radowitzky, an 18 year-old Russian immigrant, dropped a bomb in Falcon’s coach, killing him and his assistant. A full description of these particular events can be found in Osvaldo Bayer’s essay titled “Simon Radowitzky.”
[1] Nouzeilles, G. & Montaldo, G. (Eds) The Argentina Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Duke University Press, 2002
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