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
