Political Violence and Trauma in Argentina. Antonius C. G. M. Robben
had disillusioned the rank and file. Understandably, many workers drifted into the orbit of integrationist union leaders who could at least achieve some modest material advances through their negotiations with the government. Occasional street protests became instrumental means during negotiations instead of emotional manifestations of political sentiment. The street presence became always related to sectorial interests, and only seldom acquired the transgressive quality of the previous five years. During this period, a division developed between integrationists who pursued a strategy of pragmatic negotiation and intransigents who continued with a grass roots resistance. The intransigents would eventually split into those who tried to incite a mass mobilization that intended to overthrow the ruling powers, and those who joined the vanguardists and propagated a guerrilla insurgency.
Integrationism, Intransigence, and Vanguardism
The 1959 tug of war between the unions on one side and the government, armed forces, and industry on the other, disconnected the political goals from the economic objectives of the Peronist workers. The call for Perón’s return had been a motivating force in the labor disputes since 1955, but became a remote ideal as more pressing economic concerns arose after the 1959 defeat. The façade of Peronist militancy was maintained in order not to betray the hardships suffered by the rank and file, but a new style of union politics was taking shape. The years between 1961 and 1966 were times of institutional pragmatism.24 Institutional pragmatism implied a strategy of “hit and negotiate” (golpear y negociar) in which strikes, work stoppages, and factory occupations were used as bargaining tools.25 It led to the growing isolation of militant union activists from the majority of the Peronist workers organized by the integrationist unions. Sabotage never ceased entirely, but it was the work of small groups. Militant Peronists were admired by their co-workers for their tenacious resistance to the authorities, but their political intuition was no longer trusted.
The dominance of the integrationists pushed the intransigents to the margins of the Peronist movement. Most former activists joined the unions in their move towards political moderation. Intransigent workers in Buenos Aires were ousted from Peronist unions, and reorganized over the years into two small groups.26 The most militant intransigents became involved in guerrilla warfare. The other group continued with their sabotage and political work in factories and neighborhoods. These intransigents-turned-insurrectionists hoped for a return to the crowd mobilizations of the Peronist era, and became convinced that nothing should be allowed to stand between the masses and Perón. However, despite their rhetorical appeal to the myths of the past, they lacked a clear conception on how to mobilize the masses, and wean the rank and file from the bosom of union clientelism.27
Many workers recognized that the institutional pragmatism had reaped material results. The integrationist union leaders summoned a large following, and had the means to maintain people in a clientelistic relation. They controlled the union dues and pension funds, maintained health clinics, gave jobs to loyal members, and acted as brokers between labor, management, and the government. In return for swallowing rationalization schemes, greater managerial control, and an overall depolitization on the work floor, the workers received fringe benefits such as maternity benefits, bonuses for years of employment, and furloughs on social occasions.28 Still, the workers rejected the personal life styles of the union leaders, the corruption, bodyguards, expensive cars, and imported whiskey. Rubbing shoulders with politicians and captains of industry, union leaders stood at a growing distance from the oppressive climate on the work floor. The workers were also bitter about the fraudulent union elections, and the removal of shop floor union representatives considered too radical. A clear indication of this withdrawal was the declining participation in union elections. In other words, the pragmatic stance of the workers conflicted with how they experienced this process emotionally.
This unresolved tension between material gains and emotional losses worked itself out in a crowd demobilization. Labor conflicts in the first half of the 1960s were increasingly confined to the work place, and did no longer transbord into the streets and squares of the major industrial cities. The Peronist workers had lost their leader in 1955, yet his ideas continued to be of collective inspiration, but his place remained vacant and was not occupied by either integrationists or intransigents. The crowd as a political means in a conflict and as an emotional force for its participants failed therefore to materialize.
The gap between intransigents and integrationists was as much vertical as regional. The integrationist union leaders dominated labor politics in the city and province of Buenos Aires and at the national level, but they were less influential in the city of Córdoba. Córdoba had become Argentina’s second largest industrial center since the arrival of Fiat in 1954 and the IKA car manufacturer in 1955. Local unions kept their independence from the overbearing union centrals based in Buenos Aires and cultivated an internal democracy which maintained an active participation of the rank and file in union politics. Attempting to prevent the Peronist union establishment from dominating the newly founded auto industry of Córdoba, the Aramburu government had granted in 1956 the union rights of the IKA auto workers to the tiny garage mechanics union SMATA (Sindicatos de Mecánicos y Afines del Transporte Automotor), and not to the Peronist UOM metal workers union (Unión Obrera Metalúrgica). The embattled UOM in Córdoba adopted therefore a more hard-line, intransigent position than both the Buenos Aires UOM and the UOM union central.29
The SMATA auto workers union in Córdoba pursued a line relatively independent from the national union centrals. Peronists commanded only a small majority in SMATA, and had to tolerate a critical communist presence. SMATA succeeded in raising the number of shop stewards on the work floor and organized open assemblies at which workers could express their opinions. Various governments did not succeed in preventing the politicization of the auto workers. Grass roots participation forged the workers’ identification with the union and with each other. This solidarity would become crucial in the considerable crowd mobilizations of 1969.30
The bloc of Independents, a group of unaffiliated unions not subject to the Peronist union centrals, played a pivotal role in Cordoban union politics. Many members were anti-Peronists with strong Radical, socialist or communist sympathies. The bloc stood under the inspired leadership of Agustín Tosco, the secretary-general of the light and power workers union Luz y Fuerza. Despite a membership of less than three thousand members, the union occupied a strategic position in Córdoba because of its ability to cut off the city’s power supply. The militancy of the electricians can be attributed to their grass roots involvement in union issues cultivated by Tosco and the inability of the union centrals to assume control over the Cordoban working class. The prominence of the Independents in Cordoban labor politics prevented local Peronist unions from slipping into the soft-line strategies of the Buenos Aires unions, and made Luz y Fuerza spearhead an uncompromising position towards the government.31
So, at the beginning of the 1960s, there were two major currents in the Peronist labor movement: intransigents and integrationists. The intransigents were mainly based in Córdoba. They were more prone to take to the streets to lend force to their demands, and were ready to enter into loose alliances with non-Peronist Independent unions to further their interests. The intransigent union leaders were not averse to pragmatic negotiations to achieve concrete gains, but did not give in entirely to the integrationism of the Buenos Aires-based union centrals.
Peronism Without Perón
In control of the majority of the Peronist workers, the integrationist union leaders in Buenos Aires began to acquire political aspirations. Augusto Vandor, the leader of the powerful metal workers union, succeeded in placing unionists on the provincial election slates. The resounding victory on 18 March 1962 of Peronist candidates in nine provinces, including the province of Buenos Aires, triggered the downfall of the Frondizi government.32 The armed forces did not tolerate a Peronist victory, let alone the return of Perón to Argentina. The elections were annulled on 19 March, and Frondizi was arrested on 29 March. José María Guido was sworn in that day as head of the transitional government. General elections were held on 7 July 1963.33
The 1963 elections were won by Arturo Illia of the Radical Party (UCR) with only 25 percent of the total vote because the proscribed Peronists cast blank votes en masse.34