short, Soto demands unconditional surrender. When the bosses learn of his demands, they are truly outraged. La Unión, scandalized, can’t help but attack the governor once more:
The government’s passivity in the face of such extortion essentially authorizes the subversion of law and order and the abdication of authority to the labor associations, which now represent a new power running parallel to the constitutional authorities. Outside agitators, the aftertaste of unrestricted immigration, profess doctrines in which those who were once slaves will take the place of their oppressors. An undisciplined horde, incapable of the honest struggle to earn a living, offers us the sad spectacle of tyranny lurking behind the veneer of economic concessions and forces us to confront the problem of nationality by slandering native-born citizens and supplanting the principles of the law with the imperative of their bastard aspirations. Foreigners, who have formed trade unions for no other purpose than the subversion of order and rebellion against the law and who have found easy living in revolt and social imbalance, proclaim destructive theories in the form of supposed concessions. They must therefore destroy any trace of the national spirit that could oppose their aims. War has been declared against the country’s sons, against the criollos who have more right than anyone to live in our society, as it is their home, on the simple ground that they rightly rebel against the imposition of these utopias.
This patriotic nonsense is but a sample of the arguments that were rehashed day after day, in every corner of the country, by the Argentine Patriotic League. According to them, Argentine workers weren’t the victims of capitalists or landowners, be they foreign or domestic, but instead of immigrant workers who “brought with them ideas that are incompatible with national sentiments.”
Syndicalism, liberty, equality, socialism, and universality were all foreign notions. The authentic Argentine, by contrast, was that worker who refused to succumb to this siren song, who was satisfied with his lot and was always respectful to his betters. He had a deep-seated love for his fatherland, always wearing his best on Independence Day, always flying the blue and white high, and always opposing those Spaniards and Italians who wished to swap the nation’s symbols for the “red rag.”
This argument about “foreign ideas,” used to combat socialist and libertarian ideas, was an undeniable success. It has taken root in the Argentine working class. It hasn’t just been repeated by every government from 1930 onwards, without exception—no matter if they derived their legitimacy from military coups or from elections—but also within the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) itself, from the mouths of Peronist labor leaders such as José Espejo, Augusto Vandor, José Alonso, José Rucci, Lorenzo Miguel, etc.
All of the philosophical, social, and political ideas that belong to no country in particular, but are instead the heritage of the entire human race, could be silenced with a single word: Argentina!
This argument would nevertheless cast its spell over the entire country and has continued to prove lucrative for the Argentine bourgeoisie up to the present day.
But what’s even odder is that, in the Río Gallegos of 1921, every single member of the Argentine Patriotic League—without exception—was a foreigner. The nonsense printed above was written by Rodríguez Algarra, the editor of La Unión, a purebred Spaniard with close ties to the Braun and Menéndez Behety interests.
But the secretary of the Workers’ Society cared little for these patriotic arguments. Instead, he was preparing a new blow against the frightened supporters of capitalism: a strike at the Swift meatpacking plant in Río Gallegos.
If there was one place in Patagonia that deserved a strike, this was it. Perhaps not because of its wages or working conditions—which were comparable to the rest of the country—but because of the medievalism of its employment contracts. We have in our hands an example of one of these contracts.4 It speaks for itself. This contract, which workers were required to sign before shipping out from Buenos Aires to Río Gallegos, is pompously titled Service Leasing Contract and reads as follows:
Swift & Company of La Plata, Río Gallegos, and San Julián (hereinafter referred to as “The Company”), through its agent in this city, Swift & Company of La Plata, Ltd, with its address at Calle 25 de Mayo 195, and Manuel Pérez (hereinafter referred to as “The Contractor”), have agreed to the following:
The Contractor will provide his services as a manual laborer for the aforementioned Company at its plants in either Río Gallegos or San Julián, for which he will receive an hourly wage of 0.65 pesos, plus an extra 50 pesos per month for room and board. The Contractor commits to do all work required of him.
The Company will advance the Contractor the price of a third-class ticket from Buenos Aires to either Río Gallegos or San Julián, which will be deducted from his first month’s wages. The Company commits to pay the Contractor the equivalent of the wages for four hours of work for each day during the period between his departure from Buenos Aires until the first day of the slaughter, as well as during the period from the last day of the slaughter until his arrival in Buenos Aires in his return trip, with the exception of Sundays, holidays, and delays beyond the control of the Company.
Should the Contractor remain employed until the end of the season’s labors, or so long as the Company requires their services in any capacity, he will be reimbursed for his travel expenses between Buenos Aires and either Río Gallegos or San Julián. If the Contractor resigns or is dismissed prior to the end of the season for poor performance or incompetence, at the discretion of the Company’s administrators in Río Gallegos and San Julián, he will not be reimbursed for his travel expenses, neither from Buenos Aires to either Río Gallegos or San Julián nor in his return trip. To guarantee compliance with this contract, the Company will withhold 30 pesos per month from the Contractor’s wages, which will be returned to him upon completion of his contractual obligations. If the Contractor does not strictly fulfill his contractual obligations, or if he directly or indirectly contributes to labor disturbances or otherwise interferes with the Company’s business interests, he will forfeit his right to the amount withheld. The Contractor commits to work for the wage established above for the amount of hours required by the Company. If required to work a half day on Sundays, he will do so. The Company commits to provide the Contractor with a minimum of eight hours of work each day for the duration of the slaughter. If the steamship bringing workers from Buenos Aires to either Río Gallegos or San Julián is delayed or unable to depart for reasons beyond the control of the Company, such as strikes, fires, or cases of force majeure, this contract may be suspended or canceled at the Company’s discretion.
Any claims made against the Company prior to the Contractor’s return to Buenos Aires must be presented to the Company’s superintendent in Río Gallegos or they will be considered as null and void.
In accordance with the above, the parties have duly signed this contract in Buenos Aires on January 9th, 1921 on the understanding that, in the event of any disagreements between the parties regarding the above clauses, the Contractor agrees to accept the jurisdiction of the competent authorities in Buenos Aires and commits to accept their resolutions.
This, then, was the “contract.” If we analyze this condemnation to slavery on the part of a North American company, we can see that a worker who behaved himself—according to the company’s criteria—could earn a few pesos—very few, to be sure—while in the process destroying his health in the hellish meatpacking plants of those days. But the worker who protested or “directly or indirectly contribute(d) to labor disturbances or otherwise interfere(d) with the Company’s business” would forfeit everything he had earned.
Borrero was not exaggerating when he wrote in Tragic Patagonia that a Swift meatpacker, working shifts of up to fifteen and a half hours (in the most unhygienic conditions imaginable, of course), would receive only 28.50 pesos for an entire month of work—332 hours. And that is to say nothing of the worker who dared to speak up:
