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Argentina 1976–1982: Labour Leadership and Military Government

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Pablo A. Pozzi
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Argentina's labour leaders make up one of the most powerful social groups in the nation's society. Their power is based on the unions' economic resources as well as on their capacity to mobilise rank-and-file workers. However, the group has developed a tendency towards bureaucratisation. On the one hand they are representative of their fellow-workers which is why they are continuously re-elected. At the same time, they have acquired technical and bureaucratic skills which ease their handling of the trade union structure. ‘As long as permanence at the head of the union becomes prolonged, the labour leader draws further away from the cultural and economic criteria of the workers who form the rank-and-file.’1 This tendency towards self-perpetuation in office maintains the acquired social status. In addition, the separation from the rank-and-file increases in order to have a relative autonomy and play the role of intermediary between the worker and the employer. In this sense, the corporativism and verticalism inherent in the Peronist doctrine, as a form of selecting leaders, increases the tendency towards bureaucratisation in the trade union leaders, marking a breach with the historical tendency of the Argentine labour movement previous to 1946–7.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , May 1988 , pp. 111 - 138
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

1 Fernández, Arturo, Las prácticas sociales del sindicalismo: 1976–1982 (Buenos Aires: CEAL, 1985), p. 22.Google Scholar

2 Portantiero, Juan Carlos, ‘Clases dominantes y crisis política en la Argentina actual’, in Braun, Oscar (ed.), El capitalismo argentino en crisis (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, Editores, 1973). P. 102.Google Scholar

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5 Ibid., p. 101.

6 Ramos, Mónica Peralta, Acumulación del capital y crisis política en Argentina (1930–1974) (México: Siglo XXI, 1978), pp. 122–9Google Scholar, states that in 1963, 4% of all Argentine enterprises produced 52 7% of all industrial production value. In addition, she considers that 69% of Argentine industry was highly concentrated, and that 24.6% of all industries were overtly controlled by foreign corporations.

There is an ample literature on the economic sectors which supported the dictatorship as well as on their objectives and their effects on the economy. I relied on Schvarzer, Jorge, Martínez de Hoz: La lógica política de la política económica (Buenos Aires: CISEA, 1983)Google Scholar; Azpiazu, D., Basualdo, E. M. and Khavisse, M., El nuevo poder económico en la Argentina de los años 80 (Buenos Aires: Legasa, 1986)Google Scholar; and Schvarzer, Jorge, Expansión económica del estado subsidiario 1976–1981 (Buenos Aires: CISEA, 1981).Google Scholar In terms of Martinez de Hoz as representative of the monopoly bourgeoisie, see Lupo, Rogelio Garcia, Mercenarios y monopolios en la Argentina de Onganía a Lanusse, 1966–1971 (Buenos Aires: Achaval Solo, 1971)Google Scholar; and Toledo, Mariano, ‘Argentina: Nine Months of Military Government’, Monthly Review, vol. 28 (04 1977), pp. 13–20.Google Scholar

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12 One source estimates that 53 7% of all disappearances in Argentina during 1976–83 belonged to the labour movement. Statistics of the Southern Cone Human Rights Defense Committee (CLAMOR), San Pablo, Brazil. Other estimates are higher. On December 1977, Senator Edward Kennedy read into the Record of the US Senate statistics on repression in Argentina. He calculated that 31 3 % of the Argentine prison population at the time were there for activity as union leaders or activists. See Denuncia, Año 4, no. 30 (New York: 02 1978), p. 5.Google Scholar

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27 The economist Alfredo Allende stated to Clarín (18 February 1978): ‘Nobody – native or foreign – will invest in a nation with a… potentially explosive social situation’.

28 Latin America Political Report. London, weekly (7 01 1978).Google Scholar The analysis in Denuncia, Año 4, no. 29 (01 1978), p. 6Google Scholar, places more emphasis on the internal contradictions within the military.

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48 Clarín (5 March 1981).

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51 For instance, the Textile Workers Union (AOT) lost 60,000 members during this period. Abós, , Organizaciones sindicales, p. 73.Google Scholar

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79 Héctor Sandler (1973–6 Congressional Deputy for UDELPA) during a press conference given in the C.A.S. (Argentine Solidarity Committee), Mexico D.F., Mexico, July 1982. Note the declarations by different political parties. Some examples just before the Malvinas War were: the Argentine Communist Party declared, in mid-1981, that they desired ‘a return to the Constitution, but that does not mean that the military must return to the barracks’ (Denuncia, Año 6, no. 60, 06–07 1981)Google Scholar; Deolindo Bittel, at the time first Vice President of the Justicialist Party, said that ‘I hope that this Process triumphs in spite of the fact that some Peronists do not like it’ (in a radio interview); Miguel Unamuno, a former Peronist Minister stated that ‘it would be lamentable if this Process were to end with the defeat of the Armed Forces’ (Denuncia, Año 6, no. 60, 06–07 1981).Google Scholar Examples after the Malvinas War were: Raúl Alfonsín ‘[we must say] to the military that we have not gathered to defeat them’, while he called for a popular mobilisation but ‘without any spirit of revenge’; the Christian Democrat Francisco Cerro declared that ‘we must strengthen the military government to strengthen the civilian government which will succeed it in 1984’ (Denuncia, Año 8, no. 69, 09 1982).Google Scholar