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The Rural Working Class in Nineteenth-Century Argentina: Forced Plantation Labor in Tucumán

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

Donna J. Guy
Donna J. Guy*
Affiliation:
University of Arizona
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The history of the Argentine interior during the nineteenth century has often escaped the attention of researchers attracted to the dramatic economic and political growth of the eastern riverine provinces. Included in this oversight has been the plight of the rural laboring classes, unless associated with studies of immigrants. It has been easier to trace the impact and lifestyles of coastal elites—the estanciero, the merchant, the caudillo, and the politician—and the urban working class, than to reconstruct the life of the provincial peon. The study of the lower classes in general has been further impeded by the dramatic but stereotyped visions of the gaucho and other rural characters immortalized by writers such as Sarmiento, Hernández, Güiraldes, and Martínez Estrada. Finally, the illteracy of creole workers has left us with limited personal records of their existence. Yet despite all the inconveniences involved in the study of the rural working class, it is still possible to reconstruct aspects of its social, political, and economic conditions.

Type
Research Reports and Notes
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , 1978 , pp. 135 - 145
Copyright
Copyright © 1978 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Professor Sidonie Smith for her comments on the final draft.

References

Notes

1. Studies that deal with immigrant rural workers include James R. Scobie, Revolution on the Pampas: A Social History of Argentine Wheat, 1860–1910 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964); Mark Jefferson, Peopling the Argentine Pampa, Research Series No. 16 (New York: American Geographical Society, 1926); and Carl Solberg, “Farm Workers and the Myth of Export-Led Development in Argentina,” The Americas 31:2 (October 1974): 121–38.

2. Domingo F. Sarmiento, Facundo (Mexico: UNAM, 1957); José Hernández, Martín Fierro (Buenos Aires: SUR, 1962); Ricardo Güiraldes, Don Segundo Sombra, 21st ed. (Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 1939); Ezequiel Martínez Estrada, X-Ray of the Pampa, trans. Alain Swietlicki (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971).

3. Germán O. E. Tjarks, Olga G. d'Agostino, Hebe G. de Bargero, Laura B. Jany, Ana E. Magnavacca, María Haydée Martin, Elena Rebok, María Susana Stein, “Aspectos cuantitativos del estado económico y social de la ciudadanía argentina potencialmente votante (1860–1890),” Boletín de Instituto de Historia “Dr. Emilio Ravignani” 11:18–19 (1969):31–33.

4. Ibid.

5. José Carlos Chiaramonte, Nacionalismo y liberalismo económicos en Argentina 1860–1880 (Buenos Aires: Solar Hachette, 1971), pp. 45–68; 91–120.

6. Donna J. Guy, “Tucumán Sugar Politics and the Generation of Eighty,” The Americas 32:4 (April 1976):568.

7. Ibid., passim.

8. Donna J. Guy, “Argentine Sugar Politics: Tucumán and the Generation of Eighty,” unpublished manuscript, diagram B-2: Land Dedicated to Agriculture, Tucumán 1874–1900, p. 356.

9. Tucumán produced 109,253 metric tons out of a national total of 130,000 metric tons, sufficient to meet all domestic needs.

10. Compiled from provincial census figures and estimates of factories that failed to report the number of workers employed; Ramón Cordeiro, Carlos Dalmiro Viale, Horacio Sánchez Loria, and Ernesto del Moral, eds., Compilación ordenada de leyes, decretos, y mensajes del período constitucional de la provincia de Tucumán que comienza en el año 1852, 33 vols. (Tucumán: Prebisch y Violeto, 1915–1919), 20, n.p., “Datos generales sobre la zafra de 1895–1896.” Hereinafter referred to as Compilación.

11. See Fig. 1 for total number of registered workers that year.

12. Paul Groussac, Alfredo Bousquet, Inocencio Liberani, Dr. Juan M. Terán, and Dr. Javier Frías, Memoria histórica y descriptiva de la provincia de Tucumán (Buenos Aires: M. Biedma, 1882), pp. 529–33.

13. Letter of Eudoro Avellaneda to National Immigration Commision, 13 January 1873, Tucumán Province, Boletín Oficial 25 (1873): 193; Tucumán Province, Anuario estadístico de la provincia de Tucumán (Tucumán: 1895-), 1895, 1:302; Argentine Republic, Comisión Directiva del Censo, Segundo Censo de la República Argentina, 3 vols. (Buenos Aires: Taller Tip. de la Penitenciaria Nacional, 1898), 2:527.

14. Emile Daireaux, Vida y costumbres en el Plata, 2 vols. (Buenos Aires: Felix Lajouane, 1888), 2:439; Manuel García Soriano, “La condición social del trabajador en Tucumán durante el siglo XIX,” Revisión Histórica 1:1 (May 1960):28; Alejandro Gancedo, Memoria descriptiva de la provincia de Santiago del Estero (Buenos Aires: Stiller and Laass, 1885), pp. 127–28. The work hours for all were standardized by the Police Codes and later by the Ley de Conchabos and harvest work hours differed from regular work hours by an additional rest hour at noon.

15. Contract of 8 December 1878, Compilación 10:252–53.

16. Ibid., pp. 255–56; Manuel García Soriano, “El trabajo de los indios en los ingenios azucareros de Tucumán,” Revista de la Junta de Estudios Históricos de Tucumán 2:2 (July 1969):120–24.

17. 1856 Police Code, chap. 6, Compilación 1:413–14; 1877 Police Code, sect. 5, Compilación 6:368–74.

18. Decree prohibiting begging on the streets, 28 May 1877, Compilación 6:348–49.

19. 1888 Ley de Conchabos, Compilación 12: 326–75.

20. Ibid., pp. 327–28.

21. Ibid., p. 328.

22. Jefferson, Peopling, p. 35.

23. Ibid., pp. 35–36.

24. The 1895 census listed 35,281 residents of Tucumán out of a total population of 215,742 who claimed nearby provinces as their birthplaces. Since the census was taken before the harvest season, it did not include those who migrated for seasonal employment. The census also did not distinguish how many of the native Tucumán residents had parents who had migrated to Tucumán. Argentine Republic, Segundo Censo Nacional 2: 540–41.

25. Part C of Governor's Annual Message, 1 January 1877, Compilación 6:285; “Movement of Indentured Peons and Domestic Servants in Tucumán during 1882, Tucumán Province,” Registro estadístico correspondiente al año 1882 (Buenos Aires: Coni, 1884), p. 77; “Movement of Indentured Servants During the Year 1888–1889,” in Paulino Rodríguez Marquina, “Memoria descriptiva de Tucumán. Su industria, su presente, su pasado y porvenir estadístico,” 3 vols., unpublished manuscript, 2: 280; Tucumán Province, Anuario, 1895, 2: 462–63.

26. Part C, Governor's Annual Message, Compilación 6: 285; “Criminal Statistics, Admissions to the Police Jail of Tucumán City During 1882 According to Crimes, Sex and Education of Delinquents, Tucumán Province,” Registro estadístico, 1882, p. 93; Tucumán Province, Anuario, 1895, 2: 112–15.

27. Jefferson, Peopling, pp. 35–36; Eduardo Quintero, Ocho días en Tucumán (Buenos Aires: M. Biedma, 1877), p. 26; and Daireaux, Vida y costumbres 2:489.

28. The three national censuses were taken in 1869, 1895, and 1914. In addition the Argentine Congress also has an official report on Tucumán; Argentine Republic, Cámara de Diputados, Comisión de Agricultura y Colonización, Investigación parlamentaria sobre agricultura, ganadería, industrias derivadas y colonización. Anexo G: Tucumán y Santiago del Estero por Antonio M. Correa. Revisado y aumentado por Emilio Lahitte (Buenos Aires: Tip. de la Penitenciaria Nacional, 1898).

29. San Pablo Factory, Inventario I, 1876–1890, pp. 142, 163, 184, 203, 228, 252, and 275. I wish to thank Sr. José María Nougués for lending me this document.

30. Juan Bialet Masse, El estado de las clases obreras argentinas a comienzos del siglo, Prólogo y notas de Luis A. Despontin, 2nd ed. (Córdoba: Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, 1904–1968), pp. 141–63; 499–538.

31. Isabel Aretz-Thiele, Música tradicional argentina. Tucumán. Historia y folklore (Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, 1946), p. 77.

32. Juan Alfonso Carrizo, Cancionero popular de Tucumán, 2 vols. (Buenos Aires: A. Baiocco y Cía., 1937) 1:11, 314. Arretz-Thiele, Música, p. 75.

33. See also the association of superstitious tales with certain sugar barons, María Eugenia Valentié, “El familiar,” Ensayos y Estudios: Revista de Filosofía y Cultura (Tucumán) 2:3 (1973):26, 29, 35–36.