These two measures cut down on a number of rights and prerogatives that had been acquired per se, but also created a defensive atmosphere among large landowners that united them in resistance to anything that smelled of tax collectors and government agents.
It was Dr. Ismael P. Viñas, the new judge in the Patagonian territories of Santa Cruz and Tierra del Fuego—a man with a Radical background and a personal friend of Yrigoyen—who broke with the tradition that all of Patagonia’s public servants and judges either answered to ranching interests or were their direct agents. Before the surprised eyes of the representatives of the region’s corporations, Viñas initiated legal proceedings for tax evasion against one of the region’s largest ranching concerns, The Monte Dinero Sheep Farming Company. The resolute judge also initiated proceedings against The San Julián Sheep Farming Company for their illegal seizure of the property of Donald Munro, who had passed away at the turn of the century and whose fields, as he lacked heirs, should have been turned over to the National Education Council.
This was unthinkable for the large ranching concerns and their agents. It was clear that something had changed in Argentina. The Yrigoyen administration had decided to defend the government’s interests against the creeping influence of those who controlled the country’s sources of socioeconomic power. But this radicalism showed its limitations at each step. Though he backed Judge Viñas, Yrigoyen also allowed for the inconceivable: the government of Santa Cruz remained in the hands of an ultraconservative, Edelmiro Correa Falcón, who—though it’s hard to believe—simultaneously served as the secretary of the Santa Cruz Rural Society, the landowners’ federation. President Yrigoyen could have immediately designated someone else to serve as governor, as Santa Cruz was then a territory and not a province—it was under the direct control of the federal government, in other words, and did not enjoy political autonomy.2
As if afraid of rattling the mighty too much, Yrigoyen did not replace Correa Falcón. The ultraconservative continues holding the reins of the territory’s government bureaucracy and police apparatus, both of which will be used against the Radical judge.
We shall see how the judge will be supported in this conflict by the sparse middle class of Santa Cruz—small business owners, white collar workers, and artisans—as well as by unionized workers. A crude class alliance in this distant territory will form a sort of anti-oligarchic front aimed at destroying the medieval regime to which they are subjected. When the hour of decision comes, however, this class alliance will break apart and the entire middle class will defect to the side of the landowners, letting the workers alone fall victim to the savage repression.
But first let’s study the forces in Buenos Aires that are playing tug-of-war over Argentina’s first popularly elected president.
When Patagonia’s landowners asked Yrigoyen for support in facing the wool crisis, the president was surrounded by a series of enormous problems. Though he hadn’t lost his calm, he was constantly being attacked in both international and domestic politics and on economic, social, and political issues.
Internationally, Yrigoyen had once again fallen out of favor with the Allied nations. Foreign Minister Pueyrredón had left Geneva during the inaugural meeting of the League of Nations after being the sole delegate to vote against the war reparations imposed on defeated Germany. The Argentina of Yrigoyen thus remained true to its policy of neutrality, showing its desire to maintain an independent line, that of a sovereign nation.
And the summer that comes at the end of 1920 will be a hot one in every sense of the word. The peso reaches a record low: 100 dollars buy 298.85 Argentine pesos, scandalizing the haughty columnists at the traditional newspapers, the fearless defenders of the oligarchy’s privileges. They blame the populist government. They don’t explain that the falling value of the German mark also affects the value of pounds sterling and strengthens the dollar, and that Argentina’s economy has become more independent of the British sphere and is slowly beginning to fall under the influence of the true winner of the First World War: the United States.
Domestically, the price of bread has jumped once again, this time to sixty centavos per kilo, which makes these same columnists remember in passing that, before the coming of the populist government, this essential foodstuff cost barely thirty centavos.
Labor conflicts are on the rise. There’s a near-general strike among agricultural laborers, primarily in the provinces of Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, Córdoba, Chaco, and Entre Ríos. The ranchers, the small independent farmers, and the large and small property owners don’t turn to Yrigoyen for defense. They don’t trust him. Neither do Argentina’s businessmen nor the representatives of powerful foreign corporations. They know that they have a firm ally, their only friend but a strong one: the Argentine Army. If the army hadn’t defeated the workers of the Vasena metal works with fire and blood, who else would have saved the country from the anarchist and Bolshevik hordes in January 1919? Did Yrigoyen even try? Did anyone see any white berets on the streets repressing the rebel workers?3 All those individuals whose actions stand out in the uncontrolled class struggle of the first three decades of the twentieth century have been graduates of the National Military College. It was Colonel Ramón Falcón who trained the police and worked to break up the major labor organizations until 1909, the year in which he fell victim to the bomb thrown by the anarchist Simón Radowitzky. It was General Dellepiane who became the hero of the Vasena metal works, where proletarian cadavers were piled into wheelbarrows. It is Lieutenant Colonel José Félix Uriburu who will give subversive anarchism the coup de grace in 1930, together with men like Colonel Pilotto and Major Rosasco.4 And later on, it is General Justo who will put an end to the dreams and vagaries of proletarian revolution with severe repression and a continuous state of siege.
But in the wake of the Tragic Week, or Red Week, of January 1919, the upper and upper-middle classes—that is, everyone with something to lose from a workers’ uprising—start preparing to defend themselves, even though they know they can count on the army as a strong ally. The genius behind this movement is Dr. Manuel Carlés, the president of the Argentine Patriotic League. A talented organizer, his paramilitary organization spreads across the country, forming a true army of white guards. The organization’s brigades are formed by bosses, managers, foremen, police officers, retired military men, and the so-called good workers. Respectable people, in other words. Well-armed, they patrol Argentina’s small towns and countryside. If a property owner has a problem with their laborers, the Argentine Patriotic League comes to their aid. They are prepared to do whatever is needed to defend what’s theirs. Carlés has also organized women’s brigades, led by young Catholic women from good families who recruit their followers from among factory workers and domestic workers.
Manuel Carlés tours the country, sounding the alarm about the threat posed by organized labor and the Yrigoyen administration, despite having been an employee of the federal government not long ago. On December 5th, 1920, Carlés gives the following florid speech:
We are the only country in the world whose authorities, barely concealing their contempt, allow for public sedition against our national identity. Saturated with the insults of sectarianism, the greatest atrocities against the right to work and the moral honor of the fatherland are treated as if they were but the sound of falling rain.
The Patriotic League acts with complete independence: they use the newspapers to issue orders to their members, openly calling on them to take up arms, repress strikes, provide support for besieged capitalists, etc.5 One example will be enough: this communiqué was issued on December 5th, 1921 by the Patriotic League brigade in Marcos Juárez, Córdoba in the midst of a peon strike:
The brigade has mobilized all of its members, who are preparing themselves to defend their collective interests from the anarchist agitators who made their appearance last night and who have since been interfering with the harvest. These outlaws have been threatening the workers and resort to violence at the first sign of resistance; they immediately tried to storm the police station when a group of their agitators was arrested. Such a state of affairs justifies the serious measure of mobilizing the brigade. Divided into defense sectors, we stand ready to repel this aggression. The town’s police force is small, but fortunately we form a large and determined group that is willing to guarantee the right to