Table Of ContentRegion and Nation
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Region and Nation: Politics,
Economics, and Society in
Twentieth-Century Argentina
Edited by
james P. Brennan and Ofelia Pianetto
Palgrave Macmillan
REGION AND NATION
Copyright © 2000 James P. Brennan and Ofelia Pianetto. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied
in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin's Press,
Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2000 978-0-312-23144-6
ISBN 978-1-349-62846-9 ISBN 978-1-349-62844-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-62844-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data to be found at the Library of
Congress.
First edition: July 2000
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Introduction vu
1. Society and Politics: From Social Mobilization
to Civic Participation (Santa Fe, 1890-1909) 1
Marta Bonaudo
2. Water, Guns, and Money: The Art of Political Persuasion
in Mendoza (1890-1912) 49
joan Supplee
3. Hip6lito Yrigoyen, Salta, and the 1928 Presidential
Campaign 71
Nicholas Biddle
4. The Organization of Jujuy's Sugar Ingenios in a Regional
Context (1870-1940) 103
Marcelo Lagos
5. Forestry in the Llanos ofLa Rioja (1900-1960) 129
Gabriela Olivera
6. Catholicism, Culture, and Political Allegiance:
C6rdoba, 1943-1955 151
jane Walter
7. Labor in C6rdoba in the 1960s: Trade Union
Consciousness and the "Culture of Resistance" 193
Monica B. Gordillo
Maps 227
Index 231
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Introduction
I
n the early 1970s, one of the most renowned English-speaking histori
ans of Argentina, James R. Scobie, published what for many years
remained the best general history of the country in the language,
Argentina: A City and a Nation. Scobie's title caught an essential national
paradox, noted previously by Argentine intellectuals from Domingo
Faustino Sarmiento to Ezequiel Martinez Estrada, of a bifurcated historical
experience, the great metropolis and capital city versus the underdeveloped
and often ignored, not the least by the Argentines themselves, hinterland.
Scobie was one of the first historians to heed his own advice to give greater
attention to the special character and historical development of the
provinces in his posthumously-published study of late-nineteenth- and
early-twentieth-century urbanization.' Scobie's untimely death, and at a rela
tively young age, robbed the argentinistas in the English-speaking academic
community of the person best able to promote the study of provincial
regional history. Its continuing underdeveloped state has yet to recover from
his loss.
Indeed, the English-language historical scholarship on Argentina, despite
the strength of regional and even local studies in European and North
American historiography, rather curiously has practiced a centralism of its
own and has tended to follow very much a Buenos Aires-focused approach.
The obvious importance of the regional economies in the nineteenth century,
and only the belated, definitive consolidation of political and economic
power in Buenos Aires near the end of that century, meant that historians of
the nineteenth century could not practice the same centralism in their
scholarship that twentieth-century historians did. & a result, there is a small
body of work by North American and British scholars on the provinces,
though historical research is heavily weighted in favor of Buenos Aires for
the nineteenth century as well. 2
Provincial-regional history remains, even more so than that for the previ
ous century, largely unexplored territory for historians of twentieth-century
Argentina. The list of the works of the leading English-speaking historians
in particular have shown a marked proclivity for either broad, national his
tories (themselves quite Buenos Aires-centric) or Buenos Aires-focused studies.3
There are a number of reasons for this fixation on Buenos Aires at the
expense of the rest of the country. One is strictly practical. Archives and
viii • Introduction
libraries in the provinces were, until recently, in very poor shape compared
to Buenos Aires, though conditions have improved greatly in a number
of provinces in recent years. Foreign scholars naturally preferred to stay in
Buenos Aires where archival sources and collections, though hardly in
optimum conditions, were by Argentine standards good.
Another reason for the preoccupation is that, as an intellectual proposi
tion, the fixation on Buenos Aires was and remains valid. For over a century,
greater Buenos Aires has always held a third of Argentina's population, and
has been the center of the nation's economic and political power. In no
other Latin American country has a single urban center arguably so domi
nated national life. Though socially and culturally the provinces remained
important and experienced interesting historical developments of their own,
sometimes representing noteworthy departures from the Buenos Aires
paradigm, the nation's fortunes were more often than not played out and
decided in the great metropolis. So studies of Argentine politics, the labor
movement, immigration, industrialization, and now women and popular
culture were and will remain quite legitimately concerned with Buenos Aires.
But the time has also come to reassess an historical scholarship so domi
nated by Buenos Aires; and not merely for purposes of giving the provinces
and regions their due, but also because a more national, integrated perspec
tive holds out the prospect for redefining many of the essential questions
and reevaluating a number of interpretations in the great issues of twentieth
century Argentine history. It is not just a question of filling in the gaps,
but of recasting historical scholarship on Argentina, and in the process
perhaps reaching some very different conclusions about Argentina's twentieth
century history.
Fortunately, the Argentines themselves have recognized that federalism is
not only a political issue but also an intellectual one, and there is currently a
renaissance of historical scholarship on twentieth-century provincial
regional history, most of it being written by historians from the provinces
themselves. Some of the best historians in Argentina are now to be found in
the interior of the country, and a number of research centers, Rosario and
C6rdoba especially, have stood out for their dynamism and creativity. The
recent establishment of an important new center of research on regional his
tory, the Centro de Estudios Sociales Regionales in Rosario, and its promising
journal dealing with provincial questions, Avances, is giving a voice to
historians, particularly a younger generation who are rightfully insisting on
a place for their provinces in the research and writing of what should be a
truly national history. A number, though by no means all of the best of
these young historians, have contributed chapters to this volume.
Introduction • ix
In what directions do these historians of the provinces appear to be tak
ing twentieth-century historical scholarship? Perhaps the best description of
their work is an insistence on diversity within pervasive national contexts.
The best provincial history has been that which integrates local or regional
variations into broader historical processes. The history of Radicalism,
immigration, agriculture and agrarian classes, industrialization and urban
ization, the working class and organized labor, Peronism-in other words,
the great issues of twentieth century Argentina-have had particular expres
sions in the provinces, but few would argue that they are utterly unique and
most recognize that they are variations on a common theme. Since the late
nineteenth-century, various national projects, often in conflict with one
another, have been elaborated in Buenos Aires, the liberal and the Peronist
being the most important. The provinces accompanied these national
projects, indeed these projects helped to incorporate the interior into the
nation, and little that has happened in this vast but in many ways homoge
neous country could be said to be entirely unique. Unlike much of Latin
America, there are few examples of deep cultural, racial, or ethnic conflicts
in modern Argentine history, not even important geographical divisions,
and we are usually not in the presence of anything entirely sui generis when
we study Argentina. So Argentine provincial-regional history is always sensi
tive to the interaction of national contexts and local conditions. Again, the
unifying concept seems to be variations on a common theme, be it the his
tory of the Church, that of Peronism and the working class, or the role of
women and gender in social and political movements.
By accounting for these variations, however, it is possible in the process
to so redefine established interpretations of certain issues that it will call
into question a number of historical nostrums. Labor history is one area of
study to which both editors have devoted a considerable amount of their
attention. Our research, and that of other historians of the provincial work
ing class, certainly calls into question the validity of looking at working
class and labor history strictly from the point of view of the Buenos Aires
paradigm. It is possible, for example, to see alternately both more conserva
tive values among workers in the interior, such as a greater religiosity and
closer relationship to the Catholic Church, and a greater proclivity for mili
tancy, even political radicalism. The recent history of the Cordoban and
Rosario working classes alone, of the Cordobazo and Rosariazo, the clasista
movements of the 1970s, indeed their histories during the democratic
restoration of the last decade, certainly revealed some marked differences
from the historical experience of labor and the working class in the port
city, the result naturally of different processes of class formation and of
