Abstract
Days were getting brighter in late September 1917, announcing the much-awaited warm weather that would put an end to Comodoro Rivadavia’s cold and windy winter. Located in the San Jorge Gulf, in central Patagonia, the port town was the commercial and transportation hub that linked the ranches of the western Chubut territory with the rest of the country. It was also a bustling service and commercial center that benefited from its proximity to the ring of company towns that had sprung since the discovery of rich oil deposits just a few kilometers to the north in 1907. The largest of these company towns was built by the Argentine state and, ten years later, was home to close to half the area’s population.1 As the main commercial, service, and transportation center, Comodoro Rivadavia was full of activity, and its streets were busy with locals and out-of-towners from distant rural settlements and nearby oil towns. The early spring of 1917, however, witnessed a movement of a different kind, signaling the beginning of important social transformations. A diverse, multiethnic group of oil workers from the state-owned company town took to the streets of Comodoro Rivadavia asking for improvements in working conditions and denouncing the company in harsh terms.
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Notes
For information about the demographic characteristics of Comodoro Rivadavia and the oil company towns, and immigration to the area, see Daniel Márquez and Mario Palma Godoy, Comodoro Rivadavia en tiempos de cambio: Una propuesta para la revalorización de nuestras identidades culturales (Comodoro Rivadavia: Ediciones Proyección Patagónica, 1993);
Susana Torres, “Two Oil Company Towns in Patagonia: European Immigrants, Class, and Ethnicity, 1907–1933” (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 1995), chap. 1; idem, “La inmigración chilena a Comodoro Rivadavia,” Revista de Estudios Trasandinos 5 (First Semester 2001): 39–69; idem, “Pautas matrimoniales e identidades de los españoles y europeos del Este en la zona de Comodoro Rivadavia, 1901–1947,” paper presented at the 5th International Congress of Americanists, Warsaw, Poland, July 10–14, 2000;
Graciela Ciselli, Los italianos en el sureste de Chubut: Su inserción socioeconómica, 1901–1944 (Comodoro Rivadavia: Dirección de Imprenta y Comunicaciones, Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia San Juan Bosco, 1995);
Víctor Manuel Castiñeira Castro and Alfredo Martín García, “Aproximación a la emigración española a la provincia del Chubut: Los Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales, 1915–1933,” Anuario de Estudios Americanos 56, 2 (1999): 581–604;
Marcelo Borges, Chains of Gold. Portuguese Migration to Argentina in Transatlantic Perspective (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009), chap. 4.
For a historical introduction of the concept of class, see Patrick Joyce, ed., Class (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). Analytical frameworks have shifted from traditional labor studies to new fields such as subaltern studies and global labor history.
See the recent theoretical and historiographical analyses of working class and labor history in Jan Lucassen, ed., Global Labour History: A State of the Art (Bern, Berlin, etc.: Peter Lang, 2006),
and Marcel van der Linden, Workers of the World: Essays Toward a Global Labor History (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008).
For Latin America, see Charles Bergquist, Labor in Latin America: Comparative Essays on Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, and Colombia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986), and John D. French, “The Laboring and Middle-Class Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean: Historical Trajectories and New Research Directions,” in Lucassen, Global Labour History, 289–333.
Werner Sollors, “Introduction: The Invention of Ethnicity,” in The Invention of Ethnicity, ed. Werner Sollors (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), xv.
See also Kathleen Conzen et al., “The Invention of Ethnicity: A Perspective from the USA.,” Altreitalie 3 (April 1990): 37–63;
Ewa Morowska, “Ethnicity,” in Encyclopedia of Social History, ed. Peter Stearns (New York: Garland Publishing, 1994), 240–3;
Gerd Baumann, The Multicultural Riddle: Rethinking National, Ethnic, and Religious Identities (New York: Routledge, 1999).
Carl Strikwerda and Camilee Guerin-Gonzales, “Labor, Migration, and Politics,” in The Politics of Immigrant Workers: labor Activism and Migration in the World Economy since 1830, ed. Camille Guerin-Gonzales and Carl Strikwerda (New York and London: Holmes & Meier, 1993), 24–7.
See also Dirk Hoerder, ed., Struggle a Hard Battle: Essays on Working-Class Immigrants (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1986).
Gary Mormino and George Pozzetta, The Immigrant World of Ybor City: Italians and Their Latin Neighbors in Tampa, 1890–1940 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 370.
Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales, Desarrollo de la industria petrolifera fiscal, 1907–1932 (Buenos Aires: Peuser, 1932); Medio siglo de petróleo, 43–100; Cincuentenario de Comodoro Rivadavia, 1901–23 de febrero—1951 (Comodoro Rivadavia: El Rivadavia, 1951), chap. 7; Márquez and Palma Godoy, Comodoro Rivadavia en tiempos de cambio, passim; Torres, “Two Oil Company Towns,” chap.1.
Olga Paterlini de Koch, “Company Towns of Chile and Argentina,” in The Company Town: Architecture and Society in the Early Industrial Age, ed. John Garner (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 208, 211–14, 216–29.
See, for example, Federico Neiburg, Fábrica y villa obrera: Historia social y antropología de los obreros del cemento (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1988);
Alicia Villafañe, “Procesos de transformación del espacio social rural-urbano pampeano: El caso de de la conformación de localidades minero-agrarias en el Partido de Olavarría, Pcia. de Buenos Aires,” Revista Theomai no. 1 (First Semester 2000), http://revista-theomai.unq.edu.ar/numerol/artvillafanel.htm; Guillermina Fernández and Aldo Guzmán Ramos, “El patrimonio industrial-minero como recurso turístico cultural: El caso de un pueblo-fábrica en Argentina,” Pasos: Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural 2, 1 (2004): 101–9;
María Inés Barbero and Mariela Ceva, “La vida obrera en una empresa paternalista,” in Historia de la vida privada en la Argentina, 3, ed. Fernando Devoto and Marta Madero (Buenos Aires: Taurus, 1999), 141–67.
Mirta Lobato, La vida en las fábricas: Trabajo, protesta y política en una comunidad obrera: Berisso, 1900–1970 (Buenos Aires: Prometeo Libros-Entrepasados, 2001);
Silvia Simonassi, “Labor and Community in Postwar Argentina: The Industry of Agricultural Machinery in Firmat, Santa Fe,” in Company Towns in the Americas: Landscape, Power, and Working-Class Communities, ed. Oliver Dinius and Angela Vergara (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011), 198–220.
LaProtesta, October 5, 1917, 3; Archivo de YPF (YPF Company Archive, hereafter AYPF), Copiador (December 1925–December 1930), 23–4; República Argentina, Ministerio del Interior, Censo general de los Territorios Nacionales (Buenos Aires: Establecimiento Gráfico A. de Martino, 1923), 2:185.
Dirección General de Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales, Memoria correspondiente al año 1929 (Buenos Aires: La Dirección, 1930);
Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales, Memoria correspondiente al año 1943 (Buenos Aires: Talleres Gráficos R. Canals, 1944).
Carl Solberg, Oil and Nationalism in Argentina: A History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1979), 98;
Márquez and Palma Godoy, Comodoro Rivadavia en tiempos de cambio, 71–5; Daniel Márquez, “Conflicto e intervención estatal en los orígenes de la actividad petrolera: Comodoro Rivadavia, 1915–1930,” in Distinguir y comprender: Aportes para pensar la sociedad y cultura en Patagonia, ed. Daniel Márquez and Mario Palma Godoy (Comodoro Rivadavia: Ediciones Proyección Patagónica, 1995), 102, 107, 114–9; Torres, “Two Oil Company Towns,” passim. Colonel Mosconi was not alone in his assessment of social unrest. The interwar years witnessed the growth of nativist sectors that advocated Argentinization as a way to put an end to labor unrest, even through violent means, as illustrated by the anti-foreigner activities of the Argentine Patriotic League.
See Sandra McGee Deutsch, Counterrevolution in Argentina: The Argentine Patriotic League, 1900–1932 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986);
Luis María Caterina, La Liga Patriótica Argentina: Un grupo de presión frente a las convulsiones sociales de la década del veinte (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 1995).
Alfredo Lattes, “Las migraciones en la Argentina entre mediados del siglo XIX y 1960,” Desarrollo Económico 12, 48 (January–March 1973): 849–65;
Fernando Devoto, Historia de la inmigración en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 2003), 294–302.
The lack or ethnic or national segregation was common to all the company towns in oil zone of Comodoro Rivadavia, even in the private company town in which there was a large presence of administrators or high-ranking personnel from a particular national group (i.e., Germans in Km 20, British in Km 8, or Dutch in Km 27). In contrast, ethnic or racial spatial segregation was a common practice in extractive industries’ company towns in other countries. See, for example, Crandall Shifflett, Coal Towns: Life, Work, and Culture in Company Towns of Southern Appalachia, 1880–1960 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991);
Eileen Goltz, “The Image and the Reality of Life in a Northern Ontario Company-Owned Town,” in Mines and Single-Industry Towns in Northern Ontario, ed. Matt Bray and Ashley Thomson (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1992), 62–91;
Jonathan Brown, Oil and Revolution in Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993);
Thomas Miller Klubock, Contested Communities: Class, Gender, and Politics in Chile’s El Teniente Copper Mine, 1904–1951 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998);
Miguel Tinker Salas, “Races and Cultures in the Venezuelan Oil Fields,” in Work, Protest, and Identity in Twentieth-Century Latin America, ed. Vicent Peloso (Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 2003), 143–64. See also the analyses of ethnic and racial spatial divisions in company towns of China, Angola, and Indonesia in this volume.
Mariel Pacheco, “Las prácticas materiales e imaginarias del estado y la nación en un yacimiento petrolero de la Patagonia argentina: La puesta en escena de la Fiesta Nacional del Petróleo como mitografía atávica, 1907–1960,” Voces Recobradas, Revista de Historia Oral 6, 17 (April 2004): 14–26.
Daniel Marques Cabral, “Del pozo al socavón: Trabajadores petroleros y mineros estatales en la Patagonia Austral: Un estudio comparativo,” in Historia de los trabajadores en la Patagonia, ed. Enrique Mases and Lisandro Gallucci (Neuquen: Educo-Universidad Nacional del Comahue, 2007), 1:70–1, 74, 76, 79.
See Carl Solberg, Immigration and Nationalism in Argentina, 1890–1914 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970);
Iaacov Oved, “El trasfondo histórico de la ley 4144 de residencia,” Desarrollo Económico 6, 61 (April–June 1976): 123–50;
Juan Suriano, ed., La cuestión social en la Argentina, 1870–1943 (Buenos Aires: La Colmena, 2000);
Gabriela Costanzo, Los indeseables: Las leyes de residencia y defensa social (Buenos Aires: Madreselva, 2009).
For an overview of Argentine labor history, see José Panettieri, Los trabajadores (Buenos Aires: Jorge Álvarez, 1967);
Samuel Baily, Labor, Nationalism, and Politics in Argentina (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1967); Bergquist, Labor in Latin America, chap. 3;
Héctor Palacios, Historia del movimiento obrero argentino (Buenos Aires: Mundo Color), 1992;
Julio Godio, Historia del movimiento obrero argentino, 1870–2000, 2 (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 2000);
Robert Alexander, A History of Organized Labor in Argentina (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003).
Susana Fiorito, Las huelgas de Santa Cruz, 1921–1922 (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1985);
Osvaldo Bayer, “El Far South: Latifundistas y anarquistas,” in Patagonia, una tormenta de imaginario, ed. Graciela Madanes (Buenos Aires: Edicial, 1998), 149–57; idem, La Patagonia rebelde (Buenos Aires: Planeta, 2002); Ernesto Bohoslavsky and Alberto Harambour, “El miedo rojo más austral del mundo: Clase dominante local y Estado nacional frente a los trabajadores en la Patagonia argentino-chilena, 1917–1922,” in Mases and Gallucci, Historia de los trabajadores en la Patagonia, 201–20.
La Vanguardia, February 25, 1920, 9. For a general overview of the Tragic Week and the rise of the Argentine Patriotic League, see Edgardo Bilsky, La Semana Trágica (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1984);
and Sandra McGee Deutsch, “The Right under Radicalism, 1910–1930,” in The Argentine Right: Its History and Intellectual Origins, 1910 to the Present, ed. Sandra McGee Deutsch and Ronald Dolkart (Lanham, MD: SR Books, 1993), 37–47.
Enrique Mosconi, El petróleo argentino, 1922–1930 (Buenos Aires: Círculo Militar, 1983 [1936]); Desarrollo de la industria, passim; Medio siglo de petróleo, chap. 7; Solberg, Oil and Nationalism, chap. 3;
Carl Solberg, “YPF: The Formative Years of Latin Americas Pioneer State Oil Company, 1922–1939,” in Latin American Oil Companies and the Politics of Energy, ed. John Wirth (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1980), 51–102;
Carl Solberg, “Entrepreneurship in Public Enterprise: General Enrique Mosconi and the Argentine Petroleum Industry,” Business History Review 56 (Autumn 1982): 380–99;
María Inés Barbero and Fernando Devoto, Los nacionalistas (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1984);
Raúl Larra, Mosconi, General del Petróleo (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1992).
Ruben Iscaro, Origen y desarrollo del movimiento sindical argentino (Buenos Aires: Editorial Ateneo, 1958), 135;
Julio Godio, El movimiento obrero argentino, 1910–1930 (Buenos Aires: Editorial Legasa, 1988), 166; El Chubut (Comodoro Rivadavia), February 2, 1924, 1.
Recent overviews about this case can be found in Bruce Watson, Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, The Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind (New York: Viking, 2007),
and Moshik Temkin, The Sacco-Vanzetti Affair: America on Trial (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009).
On international repercussion, including Argentina, see Lisa McGirr, “The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti: A Global History,” Journal of American History 93, 4 (March 2007): 1085–105.
Rufino Gómez, La gran huelga obrera de Comodoro Rivadavia, 1931–1932 (Buenos Aires: Editorial Centro de Estudios, 1973), 13, 27.
Gómez, La gran huelga, 14, 27. For an overview of Communist organizations in Argentina, see Iscaro, Origen y desarrollo; Mario Rapoport, Los partidos de izquierda, el movimiento obrero y la política internacional, 1930–1946 (Buenos Aires: Centro Editor de América Latina, 1988);
Hernán Camarero, A la conquista de la clase obrera: Los comunistas y el mundo del trabajo en la Argentina, 1920–1935 (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2007);
and Robert Alexander, International Labor Organizations and Organized Labor in Latin America and the Caribbean: A History (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger/ABC-CLIO, 2009).
For the global outreach of the International Red Aid, see J. Martin Ryle, “International Red Aid and Comintern Strategy, 1922–1926,” International Review of Social History 15, 1 (April 1970): 43–68.
Banned ethnic organizations included the White Russia Ukrainian Association, the Dom Polski Polish Association, and associations created by Croatian, Slovak, and Bulgarian immigrants. Other banned associations supported the war effort in Europe or had clear political profile, such as the Democratic Confederation of Aid to Free Countries, the Italian Democratic Mutual Aid Association, and the Spanish Democratic Center. El Chubut, August 7, 1943; El Rivadavia (Comodoro Rivadavia), August 27, 1943. See also Stella Armesto et al., Crónicas del centenario, 1901–2001 (Comodoro Rivadavia: Diario Crónica, 2001), 239, 252, 263–5, 273–4.
Pacheco, “Las prácticas materiales e imaginarias del estado y la nación”; Edda Crespo, “Madres, esposas y reinas: Petróleo, mujeres y nacionalismo en Comodoro Rivadavia durante el primer Peronismo,” in Cuando las mujeres reinaban: Belleza, virtud y poder en la Argentina del siglo XX, ed. Mirta Lobato (Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos, 2005), 143–90.
A sense of European identity among old-timers and differentiations vis-à-vis Argentine migrants from the Northwest continued into the following decades. These differences were reinforced with the arrival of immigrants from neighboring Chile. See the findings of a sociological study conducted in the 1960s in Lelio Mármora, Migración al sur: Argentinos y chilenos en Comodoro Rivadavia (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Libera, 1968).
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Torres, S.B., Borges, M.J. (2012). Labor Resistance and Accommodation among Immigrant Workers in the Oil Company Towns of Patagonia, Argentina. In: Borges, M.J., Torres, S.B. (eds) Company Towns. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137024671_5
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