User:Oaklandstudent/Patagonia Rebelde

First strike

See also: Patagonian sheep farming boom

Antonio Soto, the Galician anarchist who led the strike. He was one of the few union leaders to survive the massacre by fleeing to Chile. In 1920, in the aftermath of the First World War, the price of wool had dropped significantly provoking an economic crisis in sheep-breeding Argentine Patagonia. (HERE IS WHAT I ADD) The strike occurred during a period in which Argentina had been facing a worker's shortage and an economic downturn, which led to rising prices, which had only began to slowly return to higher economic recovery . The fear of revolution and unrest may have threatened to destroy Argentinian society, as the Russian Revolution acted as moral boost for the workers and was fear-inducing in the middle and upper classes of Argentina .

During the 8 years preceding the Patagonia Rebelde, the Argentinian economy and government was making efforts to move away from mostly agricultural and attempted to diversify and industrialize, following a trend among nations of the period. The period in the economic recovery which preceded the Patagonia Rebelde and followed the economic downturn of 1914 was expected to be less radical and more stable than the period before during the economic downturn, but it was marked rather by a number of strikes which resulted in violent confrontations, the Patagonia Rebelde would follow in this trend .The Patagonia Rebelde mirrors some aspects of the "Semana Tragica", in that it was a failed attempt at using a mass movement in order to affect working conditions with a strike, with its roots in revolutionary and anarchist ideas The period preceding the Patagonia Rebelde was also marked by the strengthening of the feminist movement within Argentina, which saw changes to the workforce and included more radical ideology within the minds of Argentinian women. (END OF ADDITION) In August 1920 there were a number of strikes in the province of Santa Cruz, followed by a general strike declared on 1 November. Most of the strikers were shearers and rural workers. The first armed confrontation took place on 2 January 1921 near El Cerrito, where four policemen and a striker were killed, and two policemen and a gendarme were taken hostages. Another gendarme was shot and killed in an ambush at Centinela river several days later. The ranchers and the interim governor Edelmiro Correa Falcón, himself a landowner, used the incidents to ask the federal government to declare the state of emergency in Santa Cruz.

1. Horowitz, Joel. “Argentina’s Failed General Strike of 1921: A Critical Moment in the Radicals’ Relations with Unions.” The Hispanic American Historical Review 75, no. 1 (1995): 57–79. https://doi.org/10.2307/2516782.

2. Munck, Ronaldo. “Cycles of Class Struggle and the Making of the Working Class in Argentina, 1890-1920.” Journal of Latin American Studies 19, no. 1 (1987): 19–39. http://www.jstor.org/stable/156900.