Yearbook 2019
Argentina. Alberto Fernández from the left coalition
Frente de Todos (Front for All) sworn in as new president
December 10 after defeating incumbent President Mauricio
Macri of the center – right coalition Cambiemos (Let's
change) in the first round of October 27 elections. It did
not help that Macri won in some of the most populous
metropolitan regions (mainly Córdoba, Buenos Aires and
Mendoza).
In the congressional elections held simultaneously,
Cambiemos increased his mandate to 120 in the Chamber of
Deputies while the challengers in Frente de Todos got
exactly half of the seats in the Senate. However, both the
government coalition and the opposition coalition have
potential fragmentation trends, which led analysts to point
out that legislative work in Congress can be complicated.
According to
CountryAAH, Macri's success in the big cities was partly linked to
the electorate's suspicions of Fernández's vice presidential
candidate, former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner,
who in recent years has figured in several cases of
suspected corruption. But Macri's defeat was mainly
attributed to galloping inflation, which reached 4% per
month in August. Year-on-year prices had so far risen by
more than 54%. It prompted the trade union movement and the
Catholic Church to organize large street protests on
September 10, forcing Congress to accept a proposal by the
Peronist Party to issue a national food Christian state,
which increased food aid by 50%. The financial problems
associated with it, such as the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) threatening to postpone loan payments of 5.
1870-1910 Mass immigration
Foreign influence was not only expressed through
investments. At the end of the 19th century, an immigration
wave began, culminating in the decade from 1901 to 1910,
when more than a million emigrants came to a country that in
1867 had less than one and a half million residents. Many of
the immigrants hoped that in Argentina they would be able to
cultivate their own land, but since the large estates had
already largely divided the land between them, the hopes of
most were soon crushed. Some became land workers or rented
some land, but the vast majority settled in the cities and
almost half settled in the Buenos Aires area. This led to a
drastic change in class structure and the immigrants soon
formed a clear majority in the growing working class and an
even greater share in urban service industries. Among the
emigrants, the first sprouts for labor organization grew -
among other things. under the influence of
anarcho-syndicalism that many of them had been involved in
before leaving Europe.
Another political movement that grew strongly in the
early 20th century was the Unión Cívica Radical (UCR, the
bourgeois radical union). The party was in opposition to the
major property owners and was dominated by bourgeois groups
such as traders and intermediaries who expanded financially
without correspondingly strengthening their political
position. Following an expansion of the right to vote, UCR
gained alliance with parts of the working class government
in 1916 and its leader Hipólito Yrigoyen became president.
Continued industrialization during World War I created new
divisions and conflicts in society, culminating in "the
tragic week" in 1919, when soldiers fired striking workers
with machine guns, and ultra-right-wing government-directed
commands attacked the Jewish quarter in search for
«Bolsheviks».
1930-46 The citizenship is back in power
The 1929 world crisis revealed the weaknesses of the
agro-export structure. In 1930, the bourgeoisie conducted a
military coup that brought the Yrigoyen government to a
fall. During its reign, UCR had not significantly changed
the economic structures of the country, and it also proved
useless for emerging industrial citizenship. After the
military coup, the major cargo owners and export interests
again had the political power. Ironically, it was this
alliance that also constituted the driving force of the
relatively extensive industrialization that occurred before
and partly during the Second World War. They were the only
groups that had accumulated capital that could be put into
this business when the world crisis around 1930 led them to
no longer be able to import goods they had previously
received from abroad. However, these groups were not
particularly interested in industrial production for an
expanded national market. After the war, they would revert
to the old pattern of foreign trade, and they opposed all
measures that could make this more difficult. For example.
protection measures to build an industry for the domestic
market.
However, during the industrial growth of the 1930's,
capital was also accumulated among groups that were in a
more independent relationship with export interests. In
these groups we find the basis for a national citizenship
that wanted more independent industrial development in
Argentina - aimed at the domestic market. They wanted
protection from foreign competition, and therefore came in a
clear contradiction to the prevailing land ownership and
trade interests. Industrialization also led to strong growth
in the industrial proletariat, which was relatively well
organized early on. By 1939, about 30% (about 440,000) of
industrial workers were organized. A figure that must be
said to be high when considering the difficulties faced by
the trade union movement in the pre-war period. They had to
fight against a massive alliance of large landlords,
big-industry citizenship and the military. Only towards the
end of the period did the development of contradictions in
the industrial bourgeoisie reach as far as a new one class
alliance was possible. The 1930's were a period of great
capital accumulation and very uneven distribution. At the
same time, a large influx of workers from inland led to
widespread unemployment and made the workers' struggle for
better conditions difficult. In 1939, real wages for workers
were lower than 10 years earlier, and a series of strikes
only led to defeat.
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