Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The railway unionists seemed to find grievances over which to halt
operations in protest, and most vexing to the landed oligarchs, often
right at harvest time! For these reasons, the governments of both the
Conservative and Radical Parties paid a great deal of attention to how
the Britons operated the rail system that they had built and maintained.
Politicians who were tough with the foreign companies gained support
among the elite. As one deputy said in 1913, “I would not fear the
trust if I did not know that the railways, like all industrial trusts and
monopolies, exercise a depressive influence, especially upon the morale
of a country” (Wright 1974, 107).
There were instances of labor unrest in the Argentine oil fields as well.
Oil field workers, most of whom were foreign-born, protested the rising
cost of living and the poor housing conditions in Comodoro Rivadavia.
Private companies such as Shell and the British railways provided elec-
tricity and clean barracks for their workers, but the government did not.
In 1917, workers struck the government oil fields for a period of 51 days.
Navy personnel operated the oil fields while the government negoti-
ated, but as soon as the workers returned to the job, the police arrested
and deported their leaders. In the 1920s, the government continued its
tradition of dealing harshly with strikes in the government oil fields.
Argentine military administrators did not look kindly upon “unpatriotic”
labor organization by Spanish, German, and Romanian workers. The
army ended the brief strikes of 1924 and 1927. What explains the gov-
ernment's leniency toward railway workers and its intransigent attitude
toward oil workers? The railway workers worked for foreigners.
The same may be said for the British-owned meatpacking plants, the
frigoríficos. Landowners had transformed their cattle-raising enterprises
to satisfy the new demand of the meatpacking industry for fat livestock
of good quality. They had rid themselves of the skinny, lanky longhorns
of Rosas's time. They put up fences, improved the pastures, built barns
and sheds, and hired more peons to tend to the shorthorn stock they
imported—at great expense—from England. Moreover, the nation's
cattlemen had reorganized the system for the new beef markets. The
estancieros in the dryer grasslands of Mendoza and Córdoba special-
ized in breeding the cattle. They shipped the cattle as yearlings—by
British rail, no less—to landowners of the humid Pampas of Buenos
Aires province, where cattle fattened for market on the dense alfalfa
pastures. British meatpackers supported this whole productive industry
when they paid good prices for the estancieros ' cattle. But they did not
always pay well.
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