Abstract
Argentina’s intense political struggles of the turn of the century have often been framed as a local versus foreign conflict. This chapter argues that Eduardo Gutiérrez’s and José J. Podestá’s Juan Moreira, Ezequiel Soria’s Justicia criolla, and Nemesio Trejo’s Libertad de sufragio and Los políticos frame politics differently, suggesting instead that modernity’s substitution of criollo values with market values opens a space for abusive politicians to rule. Through a diverse repertoire of performative tactics they frame the political and justice systems as lucrative, violent systems dominated by opportunists, illustrating the need to turn to political alternatives taken from popular criollismo, such as justicia criolla. Thus, they realign resistance with the local popular culture and, paradoxically, open a space for cross-cultural alliances against the oligarchy grounded in the precarity of the popular sectors.
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Notes
- 1.
My use of the term “precarious” draws from Judith Butler’s work on the topic (2004).
- 2.
This financial boom and bust cycle catalyzed a group of writers known as the Generation of the Stock Market, the most famous of which was Julián Martel for his novel La bolsa, analyzed recently by Ericka Beckman (2013).
- 3.
While the revolution technically failed, it succeeded in prompting Juárez Celman and his entire cabinet to resign. Moreover, from this point on the middle class, composed mostly of relatively poor criollos and children of immigrants (i.e., citizens), continued to push for political participation through the UCR , its main outlet. Rock makes it clear that this was not a popular revolution in that it was organized by the elite in accordance with its interests. Rather, it served as an opportunity for various factions, such as Mitre and the Catholic Church, to vie for power while drawing support from the masses and paying lip service to popular democracy. In fact, the revolution ended with a secret deal among Conservative and Radical leaders, who sold out the popular-democratic supporters’ objectives and cast their leader aside (Rock 1987, pp. 157–60).
- 4.
For an exquisite cultural history of these strikes and of anarchism in Argentina, see Suriano 1988. For a detailed history of anarchism and other political movements that challenged the hegemony of the conservatives and sought to rectify the political, economic, and social marginalization in the period 1890–1930, see Rock (1975). He explains that the Socialist Party, for example, which was founded in 1894, enjoyed working-class voting support but was largely controlled by middle-class groups, especially before 1912. They aspired to European-style parliamentary democracy and relied on non-violent means for attainting legal victories, which they achieved by electing prominent Socialist senators such as Alfredo L. Palacios beginning in 1904. Syndicalism, which was supported by large groups like shipping, port, and railway workshop workers, took precedence after the first decade of the century. These professions enjoyed more strategic bargaining power because they were related to exports. Syndicalism aimed to slowly erode away at inequality by pushing for concrete economic objectives one by one. Like anarchists, syndicalists rejected the notion that the modern state could be reformed from within to eradicate its inherent class bias. Although radical, socialist, and syndicalist groups all made some isolated progress (for instance, the eight-hour workday, or negotiating higher wages for different unions), each of these groups were either repressed or neutralized when they were incorporated into formal politics (Rock 1975, p. 84).
- 5.
For a discussion of the climate of police brutality at this time, see Viñas (1971, pp. 237–41).
- 6.
For Viñas this law is symptomatic of what he deems the crisis of the seniorial city (1971, 2004). Similarly, Zimmermann studies in detail the rise of what he calls “liberal reformers”: those who abandoned laissez faire but sought a middle ground so as not to go as far as socialists (1995, p. 15). These reformers , such as Miguel Cané, Guillermo Rawson, and others set out to “sanitize the country and correct the errors of the last thirty years” (1995, p. 70). He is quick to point out that though socialists were sometimes confused with anarchists, they were reformers who worked with the liberal reformers in alliance against anarchists (1995, p. 58).
- 7.
This law, proposed by Meyer González, was strongly influenced by Cesare Lombroso, who saw anarchists’ criminal behavior as a result of innate, morose perversions rather than social conditions (Suriano 1988, p. 19; Zimmermann 1995, pp. 127–31). The law, which passed quickly after a bomb was planted in the elite Colón Theater, had “the goal of eradicating from society those who denied ‘government, religion, property, family, society and the constituted order’” (Suriano 1988, p. 19). Moreover, Argentine anarchists would lose political rights and be sent to the penal colony in the harsh climate of Staten Island off the coast of Tierra del Fuego. Anarchist meetings and associations, along with their symbols and propaganda, were outlawed, as well (1988, p. 19). Once again I should note that this repressive law was, paradoxically, part of the liberal reformist shift in the ruling class prior to 1916. The correction of the perceived “liberal error” required both the eradication of undesirable foreigners and an active state that would create and protect certain minimum conditions for developing a “republic of citizens” in Argentina (Zimmermann 1995, pp. 17, 215–6).
- 8.
For more information about these groups see Sandra McGee Deutsch (2001).
- 9.
While the nation’s leaders saw anarchists as enemies, Suranio paints quite a different picture in his enlightening study of the culture and politics of anarchism in Buenos Aires in the period, which sheds light on the specific cultural characteristics of anarchism in this context. As he explains, anarchist publications whose titles included El Sol [The Sun], La Aurora [The Dawn], Fulgor [Glow], Hijos del Sol [Children of the Sun], Aurora del Porvenir [Dawn of the Future], and Sol de Mayo [May Sun] remitted to the hope of building a new society based on truth, freedom, and light. These optimistic titles and the ideals they incarnated also remit to a utopian future based on the belief in the natural equilibrium and goodness of mankind. These ideals included harmony, peace, happiness, healthy lifestyles, equal rights for men and women, freedom from enslavement to alcoholism, hygiene, education, and ethics (Suriano 2001, pp. 44, 119). Their ideals stand in stark contrast to the perception of anarchist groups as “foci of social pathology that are inassimilable to our collective personality” (qtd. in Suriano 2001, p. 226).
- 10.
Suriano reflects upon the multiple factors that led to anarchism’s decline after 1910. First, the fact that anarchists were now permanently forced to work clandestinely seriously interrupted their activities and organization. Many prominent figures such as Rodolfo González Pacheco, Apolinario Barrera, Teodoro Antilli, Alberto Ghiraldo, and Eduardo Gilimón were imprisoned, deported, or forced to abandon their activities. But Suriano outlines deeper reasons, including the fact that a majority of workers seemed more apt to strike for concrete, targeted improvements rather than for the abstract ideal of full social revolution. At the same time, the State seemed to realize that such violent conflicts could be avoided if minimum conditions were guaranteed to workers. Suriano points also to the importance of a general disconnect between anarchists’ objectives of a total social transformation and many workers’ aspirations of social mobility. Finally, he signals anarchism’s relative inability to offer a satisfactory cultural production that could compete with the proliferating film, theater, and mass press industries (Suriano 2001, pp. 336–42).
- 11.
According to Rock, the ruling oligarchy’s increasing xenophobia toward working-class and immigrant groups led them to seek allies against them from the middle class. With this intention they eventually reached out to the UCR and allowed this significant political opening. After a 1905 Radical revolution led by Hipólito Yrigoyen and the 1906 transfer of presidential power to Figueroa Alcorta (representing a reform-minded faction of the PAN), a Radical victory seemed inevitable . Yrigoyen was gaining popularity among the middle class and children of immigrants. By 1908, Radical committees had formed and the party was becoming quite organized as an outlet for mostly native-born, middle-class politics (Rock 1975, pp. 48–50). Rock convincingly argues that when President Roque Sáenz Peña expanded voting rights, he only pushed for reform as a way to neutralize the Radicals when their victory in revolution seemed imminent. He also argues that Sáenz Peña’s intention was to gain middle-class support for the oligarchy rather than to allow a true change of regime, thus neutralizing more dangerous expressions of popular dissent. Recognizing that many Radical leaders were themselves committed to defending elite interests, the oligarchy increasingly came to consider the UCR a useful vehicle for uniting the elite and middle-class groups and for thus thwarting the immigrant working-class agenda (1975, pp. 35–40).
- 12.
In 1823 President Rivadavia returned to the colonial way of controlling rural vagrancy: the rural population was divided between “owners” and “servants,” and the servants had to carry papers signed by an owner. If they failed to do so, they faced a penalty of five years of service in the militia (Rock 1987, p. 99).
- 13.
For a detailed account of institutionalized electoral fraud at this time, see Botana (1994, pp. 174–89). A dramatization of electoral fraud in action will be discussed in the next section.
- 14.
This battle, the last between the federal government and the province of Buenos Aires, marked the final unification of Argentina with the federalization of Buenos Aires (Rock 1987, p. 131).
- 15.
Here we see an example of what Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Moufe have theorized in regard to radical democratic politics: that any particular notion of inclusion is established through a “constitutive exclusion” (1985).
- 16.
González’s aspirations to move from medical doctor to politician reflect the aperture in the political realm that historical pushes for a more democratic government brought. Although still firmly set within the rule of the Conservative Order, he is a middle-class professional seeking entry into a political scene dominated by the traditional landed oligarchy.
- 17.
His worlds prove prophetic. Speaking of Perón’s use of folklore, Chamosa notes the symbiotic relationship between the criollo working class and the Peronist political project (2010, p. 134).
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Garrett, V.L. (2018). Criollos, Caudillos, and the Violent State. In: Performing Everyday Life in Argentine Popular Theater, 1890–1934. New Directions in Latino American Cultures. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92697-1_6
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