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Tenant Mobilization and the 1907 Rent Strike in Buenos Aires*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

James A. Baer
James A. Baer*
Affiliation:
Alexandria, Virginia
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Extract

In September of 1907, the residents of a large conventillo, or tenement house, in Buenos Aires protested a 47 percent rent increase by striking against their landlord and refusing to pay. The strikers called on the residents of other rental buildings to join with them and organized a central committee. The strike spread quickly. By October 1 tenants from more than 750 buildings had joined in the strike. That number increased to nearly 2,000 buildings before the end of 1907. Neighborhood and building committees arose throughout the city as nearly one tenth of the total population of Buenos Aires, and tenants in several other major cities as well, joined the strike in one of the largest and most unusual forms of working-class collective action in early twentieth-century Argentina.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , January 1993 , pp. 343 - 368
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1993

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Footnotes

*

The author would like to thank Vincent Peloso and James Riley for their encouragement in the preparation of this article, and several anonymous readers for their comments and suggestions.

References

1 This study uses an occupational definition of worker because census records, labor statistics, and other government figures are listed by occupational categories. The following sources have been used for occupational information: Municipalidad de Buenos Aires, de la Ciudad, Anuario estadístico de la ciudad de Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires: Compañía Sudamericana de Billetes de Banco, 1891–1914);Google Scholar de Estadística, Dirección General, Censo de la ciudad de Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires, 1887, 1904, and 1910);Google Scholar Argentina, República, de Estadística, Dirección General, Censo de la República Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1869,Google Scholar 1895, and 1914, and de Trabajo, Departamento Nacional, Boletín (Buenos Aires),Google Scholar Número 4, 11, 16, and 21. Thus, immigrants and native Argentines who labored in many unskilled, semi-skilled, or skilled occupations have been identified as workers in this study. Although there was a range of income, they all worked for wages and shared many experiences of working-class life. One such experience was the need to confront the problem of expensive and overcrowded housing.

2 The strike in Barcelona, was reported in La Protesta (Buenos Aires),the anarchist daily, on May 25, 1905. For the tenant movement in New York City,Google Scholar see Lawson, Ronald, ed., The Tenant Movement in New York City 1904–1984 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1986).Google Scholar

3 “No sooner is the exploitation of the laborer by the manufacturer over, to the extent he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.,” wrote Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich in the Communist Manifesto. Feuer, Lewis S., ed., Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1959), p. 15.Google Scholar

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7 Spalding, Hobart, Organized Labor in Latin America, p. 21.Google Scholar

8 Spalding, Hobart, La clase trabajadora argentina (Buenos Aires: Editorial Galerna, 1970).Google Scholar

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14 For a thoughtful analysis of gender issues and politics in Sao Paulo, see French, John D. with Pederson, Mary Lynn, “Women and Working-Class Mobilization in Sao Paulo, 1945–1948,” Latin American Research Review, 24:3 (1989), 99–125.Google Scholar A study of the role of women in strikes in an earlier period appears in Wolfe, Joel, “Anarchist Ideology, Worker Practice: The 1917 General Strike and the Formation of Sao Paulo’s Working Class,” HAHR, 71 :4 (1991), 809–46.Google Scholar

15 See Cameron, Ardis, “Bread and Roses Revisited: Women’s Culture and Working Class Activism in the Lawrence Strike of 1912,” in Milkman, , ed., Women, Work, and Protest, pp. 42–61.Google Scholar Grocery stores served as social centers as well as forums for discussions about prices (p. 48).

16 Rock, David, Argentina 1516–1987 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987), p. 165.Google Scholar

17 Argentina, República, de Estadística, Dirección General, Censo de la República Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1914).Google Scholar

18 Spalding, Organized Labor in Latin America, p. 24.

19 Baily, , Labor, Nationalism, and Politics in Argentina, p. 21.Google Scholar

20 Oddone, Gremialismo proletario argentino, provides many statistics on strike activity.

21 Bergquist, , Labor in Latin America, p. 92.Google Scholar

22 See La Vanguardia (Buenos Aires), Nov. 21, 1896, and La Protesta (Buenos Aires), Sept. 26, 1905, Sept. 29, 1905, July 1, 1906, and August 5, 1906, as examples of the on-going concern housing costs and conditions in the working-class press.

23 Voz de la Iglesia (Buenos Aires), June 3, 1893.

24 Ibid., Nov. 5, 1894. There is little information about this first attempt at forming a tenant league outside of this citation.

25 de Santillán, Diego Abad, La F.O.R.A. (2nd éd.; Buenos Aires: Editorial Proyección, 1971), pp. 147–48.Google Scholar

26 Alba, , Historia del movimiento obrero en América Latina, p. 221.Google Scholar

27 La Vanguardia (Buenos Aires), Nov. 21, 1896.

28 La Protesta (Buenos Aires), May 30, 1905.

29 Ibid., May 25, 1905.

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid., June 21, 1905, 1. [This issiie lists all the articles of the new league.]

32 Ibid., August 25, 1905, 2.

33 Ibid., Sept. 22, 1905. “Pensamos que lo mejor es que cada inquilino se haga fuerte en su derecho y pague el alquiler hasta el precio que le paresca justo y rasonable.”

34 Ibid., Oct. 23, 1906, 2.

35 Ibid., Nov. 9, 1906, 2.

36 Ibid., Dec. 1, 1907, 1.

37 Ibid., Jan. 10, 1907, 2.

38 Ibid., Jan. 22, 1907, 2.

39 Ibid., Jan. 27, 1907, 2.

40 Ibid., March 13, 1907, 2.

41 La Vanguardia (Buenos Aires), Sept. 15, 1907.

42 Spalding, La clase trabajadora argentina, p. 453.

43 These include La Prensa, La Protesta, and La Vanguardia.

44 de Buenos Aires, Municipalidad de la Ciudad, de Estadística, Dirección General, Censo de la ciudad de Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires, 1904);Google Scholar Argentina, República, del Trabajo, Departamento Nacional, Boletín, 4 (March 31, 1908).Google Scholar

45 La Prensa (Buenos Aires), Oct. 23, 1907.

46 La Protesta, Oct. 6, 1907. One announcement regarding the strike read, “To Russian tenants: You are invited to a meeting for information about opposition to high rent, today, Sunday, at 2 p.m. in the Plaza Lavalle. There also will be fellow workers speaking in Spanish.”

47 See La Protesta, Sept. 25, 1907.

48 See article by Suriano, Juan, “La huelga de inquilinos de 1907 en Buenos Aires,” en Barrán, , et al, Sectores Populares, 223–224.Google Scholar Suriano recognizes the importance of women in the strike, and cites several examples.

49 La Protesta, Oct. 23, 1907.

50 Ibid., Oct. 28, 1907, 5.

51 La Prensa, Oct. 22, 1907.

52 The names of the central committee members were gathered from various newspaper accounts during the rent strike.

53 La Vanguardia, Sept. 21, 1907, 2.

54 La Prensa, Sept. 25, 1907, 9.

55 La Protesta, Sept. 25, 1907.

56 Ibid., Sept. 24, 1907.

57 Ibid., Oct. 4, 1907.

58 La Prensa, Sept. 17, 1907.

59 de Santillán, Abad, La F.O.RA., 147.Google Scholar

60 Ibid., 148.

61 La Protesta, Oct. 27, 1907.

62 Antonio Maimo created a comité pro huelga general de los inquilinos (committee in support of a general tenant strike). But no action was taken to implement such a strike. La Vanguardia, Sept. 28, 1907.

63 de Santillán, Abad, La F.O.R.A., 172.Google Scholar

64 Ibid., 174.

65 La Protesta, Oct. 23, 1907.

66 La Protesta, Oct. 22, 1907.

67 Cameron, Ardis, “Bread and Roses Revisited,” 48.Google Scholar

68 La Prensa, Nov. 1, 1907, 8.

69 Argentina, República, del Trabajo, Departamento Nacional, Boletín, Número 30 (Buenos Aires, 1914), 68,Google Scholar lists strike activity in Buenos Aires as follows: These official figures contrast greatly with the estimates of Baily, , Labor, Nationalism, and Politicsin Argentina, 21,Google Scholar and the events described by de Santillán, Abad, La FORA, 177–179,Google Scholar and indicate that “unofficial” participation continued to grow, even if officially recorded strikes did not attract increasingly large numbers of participants.