The Bajada de Clark incident has a demoralizing effect on the ranchers. On December 2nd, they come back to the workers with a counteroffer: they accept the union’s second list of demands, with the sole exception of the part about delegates being assigned to each ranch. The bosses offer their own version of the clause:
The ranchers recognize the Río Gallegos Workers’ Society as the sole 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. On each ranch, these delegates will be appointed by the workers with the approval of the employers, taking seniority and behavior into account. The employers reserve the right to veto the delegate of the Workers’ Society and the workers recognize that holding the position of delegate is not a guarantee of job stability.
This counteroffer is accepted in principle by the rural delegates in a referendum organized by the strike committee, but it’s here that the workers become divided. Antonio Soto and the strike committee reject the counteroffer.
Amador González, a worker at the Gaceta del Sur newspaper who had thrown his weight behind Antonio Soto and the Workers’ Society, comes out in favor of lifting the strike. He is seconded by Ildefonso Martínez and Bernabé Ruiz, who, as representatives of the FORA IX, one of the two labor organizations in Buenos Aires, are very important men for the Patagonian labor movement. The two delegates, Martínez and Ruiz, also maintain contact with the Maritime Workers’ Federation, which owes its importance to its presence in every port along the coast of Patagonia. Both men launch a furious campaign against Soto for opposing the agreement.
In the meantime, an important change is about to occur in the world of politics. Captain Yza—the new governor of Santa Cruz, appointed by Yrigoyen and ratified by Congress—has announced in Buenos Aires that all of the government functionaries who served under Correa Falcón will be replaced, including Commissioner Ritchie, who will be replaced by Oscar Schweitzer.
This news is greeted as a victory by Borrero and Judge Viñas, as it represents the total defeat of Correa Falcón. And it actively encourages the continuation of the strike.
Antonio Soto goes for broke and gathers all the workers together. The conflict between the two tendencies in the union—syndicalist and anarchist—comes to a head in that December 4th assembly. The majority backs Soto’s decision to continue the strike. But Soto is well aware that he can only pull this off if the union’s entire leadership supports the strike. So the union also elects new leaders, almost all of them Spaniards holding libertarian ideas. Soto is re-elected as secretary-general.
From this moment on, the workers will have new enemies in the syndicalists and the Gaceta del Sur newspaper, which, as we have said, came out in favor of accepting the ranchers’ offer.
The newspaper is unsparing in its attacks on Soto. For example, the article “Unionism? Anti-Unionism!” reads as follows:
The workers of Río Gallegos, who have the idiosyncrasy of paying homage to the absurd, have set an awful, terrible precedent. Led by their personal feelings, the workers have let themselves be steered towards disorganization and a grotesque authoritarianism imposed by an inept union leadership. Although the reverence shown to shameless demagogues has always been the greatest threat to the Workers’ Society, Antonio Soto stands out for his mental obtuseness and his practical ignorance of unionism even among those who make up the union’s unreasonable and idiotic leadership, claiming that their shrewdness elevates them above neophyte workers. More than anyone else, he bears the responsibility for the union’s unraveling. His disciples have embarrassingly hoisted him up on a pedestal and worship him as if they have seen the Messiah.
Further along, they criticize the “illogical frequency of the union’s strikes and its absurd boycotts.” It’s important to note that the “syndicalists” aren’t just attacking Soto but also the strikes and boycotts organized by the Workers’ Society—and that they are doing so in the middle of a general strike, a life or death struggle for the union’s future.
When this issue of Gaceta del Sur appears on the newsstands, Correa Falcón wastes no time in sending a copy to the interior minister. He also takes the opportunity to attack Judge Viñas for good measure, arguing that his defense of Soto and the labor organization was responsible for everything that followed.
But the strike keeps going despite all these setbacks, and with ever greater intensity. El 68 and El Toscano continue stirring up the peons and cutting fences. The ranchers are afraid and begin preparing their exodus to Río Gallegos.
What position should they take? They are at a loss. At first, they had no interest in reaching a settlement because the wool market was in crisis and so the strike represented an opportunity for them not to pay their workers. But now the very existence of their ranches is at stake, as is the private property system as a whole. The days slip by and the strikers remain unstoppable. Correa Falcón is seemingly impotent, with too few police at his disposal to teach the subversives a proper lesson. There has to be another way: putting pressure on the government, for example.
The ranchers—led by Alejandro Menéndez Behety—send desperate messages to Yrigoyen. The press in Buenos Aires speaks of predations and has begun using the word “bandits” to refer to striking peons. But the strike advances. First it spreads to Puerto Santa Cruz, then San Julián, where something happens without precedent in those latitudes: somebody bombs the home of the “prominent citizen” Juan J. Albornoz, local president of the Argentine Patriotic League. But it’s in Puerto Deseado where the truly unexpected will occur, with blood spilled and gunshots exchanged.
CHAPTER FOUR: HAPPY ENDING: A GOOD PRELUDE TO DEATH
“He who is not for the fatherland is an
enemy of the fatherland.”
Río Gallegos Rural Society,
May 27th, 1921
“Workers of the world, unite!
In one solid block, in the close embrace of our exploited brethren, we shall march down the path that leads to the emancipation of the slaves of capital.”
Río Gallegos Workers’ Society
May 18th, 1921
The movement in Puerto Deseado was unique. Far from being a simple confrontation between workers and their bosses, the conflict pitted the majority of the town’s population against the “Argentine Circle,” an organization of far-right notables that had the full support of the police and treated the town’s politicians like their playthings. And it’s striking that here is where the battle between the left and the right was at its purest. The left was made up of small shopkeepers, immigrant artisans, and the entirety of the working class—including the unionized workers of the Puerto Deseado-Pico Truncado railway line—while the right consisted of professionals, ranchers, and high-ranking employees of the Braun-Menéndez and Argensud companies. It all started when the immigrants asked the interior minister to officially recognize Puerto Deseado as a municipality. This would not only give immigrants the right to vote but also control of the local government, as they were the majority of the town’s population. And so power would slip from the hands of the Argentine Circle’s highly exclusive membership. As the latter were neither stupid nor lazy, they were well aware that they were about to lose their truly oligarchic power through a simple legal maneuver. So they sent Yrigoyen an unusual telegram: “The Argentine Circle of Puerto Deseado is against giving the town municipal status, as it would put the local government