Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
WORKERS AND PETROLEUM
SELF-SUFICIENCY
N ationalism is one thing and oil self-sufficiency, quite another. The
Yacimentos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF) had helped nationalist
politicians hold the international petroleum companies at bay since
the 1920s. But the YPF had never achieved the elimination of costly
oil imports. Oil workers became involved in the equation as politicians
utilized nationalism to command their loyalty but expected their com-
pliance when government leaders themselves had to face reality.
The first instance came early in 1955 when President Juan Perón
began negotiations with Standard Oil for infusions of capital and
technology into the Argentine petroleum industry. Radical opposi-
tion leader Arturo Frondizi attacked Perón for violating Argentina's
economic sovereignty. Though they remained loyal peronistas , the oil
workers sided with Perón's critics. Before they were able to defy their
patron on the issue, Perón himself succumbed in September 1955 to
the Revolución Libertadora.
The oil workers would get a second chance to enter the debate. In
1958, Arturo Frondizi, now as president, confronted the same problem.
Forgetting his position of three years previous, Frondizi proposed inviting
a Standard Oil affiliate to invest in Argentine oil. The nation's oil workers
led a grass-roots movement that revived peronismo among the laboring
classes. Ultimately, President Frondizi managed to defuse the oil workers'
strike in 1958 and to implement the contracts, but the resurgent unions
moved national politics to the left. “Peronism is either a revolutionary
social movement or it does not have a reason to exist,” stated one left-
ist newspaper. “[Because] Peronism is formed by millions of workers, it
is fitting that its direction reflects the hegemony of the working class”
(82). Subsequently, the military in 1962 moved to end another electoral
regime that could not contain the popular resistance—and the oil con-
tracts were voided.
Source: Quotation from Teplica, Brian W. “The Petroleum Battle: Oil
Workers, the State, and Peronism in Argentina, 1955-1958” (master's
thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 2007).
pundits liked. One of them called this “the economy of dynamic stag-
nation,” and this term, in all its simplicity, spoke volumes about what
Argentina had become in the 1960s.
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