13
The Limits and Possibilities of Workers’ Control within the State
Mendoza, Argentina, 1973
Gabriela Scodeller
During 1973 Argentina was rocked by an intense period of workplace occupations. This chapter describes the experiences that developed in the midwest province of Mendoza, where state-owned enterprises and institutions were the main battleground. The takeovers of state branches of government enterprises were driven by workers who subsequently conceived, elaborated, and implemented models of self-management and self-organization that represented exercises of workers’ control within the state.
Argentina’s extensive history of military dictatorships and the repression since 1955 of the Perónist party prompted the workers’ struggle to follow noninstitutionalized paths. With the return of democracy in May 1973, many workers recognized the necessity of taking into the political-institutional realm the organizational tools developed during nearly two decades of conflict. Workers’ democracy and power were formed and sustained through a class-conscious and mobilized rank and file, regarded as a means of transforming the state from below.
Given the contradictions and complexities during a time of increasing class struggle the experiences in Argentina in 1973 present intriguing material for analysis. The unfolding of events demonstrates that contesting for power in the workplace did not always translate into challenging the government or the employers. This case study also allows us to reflect on the limitations and practical difficulties that workers faced during these attempts at workers’ control within the state.
Social Struggle in Argentina in the 1970s
Since the military coup of 1955, the Perónists—Argentina’s leading party—had managed to survive despite eighteen years of proscription, mostly through the support of workers and the lower classes. During those years the broad Perónist movement had developed a range of tactics for its struggles—including military insurrection, electoral boycott, and industrial sabotage—and formed alliances with other political and social forces to engage in factory takeovers, urban and rural guerrilla warfare, and mass rebellions. Throughout this course of struggle and organization, Argentinean society in general was moved to question its major institutions. But inside the Perónist movement there were differing goals. While some fought against the military government and for the return of their exiled leader Perón without questioning capitalist social relations, others fought against the regime itself, thus exceeding the limits of the system and turning their struggle into one for revolutionary change (Bonavena et al. 1998).
In this context, the armed struggle that surfaced during this era should be considered as the expression of a specific stage in political-military class struggle. However, the practice of direct physical violence was not restricted to armed guerrilla organizations—the radicalized masses also exercised forms of popular armed struggle to prevent the closure of state enterprises. The process of political radicalization within certain sectors of society was accelerated in reaction to the military dictatorship of the “Argentine Revolution” (1966–73) and the question of class power was placed firmly on the agenda. With each day the people became more fearless of the regime.
As a response to this social and political crisis, the government of General Alejandro Agustín Lanusse (1971–73) implemented the Great National Agreement (GAN), calling for democratic elections in order to regulate the transition from dictatorship to democracy. The goal was to institutionalize the social conflict and disarm the masses politically, and then return to the traditional Argentinean paradigm of domination under parliamentary democracy. The elections of March 1973 were won by the Perónists, although Juan Perón himself was not allowed to run; in May of the same year, Perónism, in alliance with smaller parties and represented by the new president Hector Cámpora, assumed power after eighteen years of repression. As some researchers observe, “From a strategic point of view it was a bourgeois victory, due to the strategic defense that was accomplished through the implementation of elections. The mere fact of voting meant, in that context, a political disarmament for the masses; however, from a tactical point of view, victory corresponds to the popular sectors, which rise with the success of the polls” (Bonavena et al. 1998, 106).
Contrary to the goals of the GAN, the social mobilization of the working class did not subside, but instead was advanced. The social climate of euphoria that characterized President Cámpora’s short-lived government expressed itself in spontaneous takeovers of public and private workplaces throughout the country. Even though this phenomenon lasted only a short time, it had high intensity and was therefore significant. Under the newly changed circumstances the common enemy, represented by the dictatorship, had vanished; consequently, the social force antagonistic to the regime started to split up in the face of intensified internal differences.
With the assumption of Perónist governor Alberto Martínez Baca in the province of Mendoza, many of the practices of rank-and-file organizations were transformed into state policies. During the initial months several government posts were assigned to leaders of the Revolutionary Tendency
110: especially after the Mendozazo,
111 the capacity of mobilization and organization of the revolutionary groups had expanded. But quickly the most reactionary right-wing factions within the government recognized the challenge to state power and instigated a process to obstruct popular power in order to regain influence and control.
From 1973 on, three major contesting sociopolitical forces can be distinguished: Peronism in government; the revolutionary movements; and the traditional system of domination (Marín 1984). While the revolutionary movements were increasingly isolated from the popular sectors and traditional elites sought to create a consensus for “order,” the split of the Perónists enriched the other two (Izaguirre 2009). This conflict between antagonistic factions encompassed the whole of society, splitting Peronism into what became known as the right wing (the orthodox or historical sectors of the party plus the union bureaucracy) and the left wing (sectors linked to the Revolutionary Tendency). While the right wing identified with the slogan “Perónist homeland” (patria perónista), the left supported the notion of creating a socialist homeland (patria socialista).
Once the government of Martínez Baca assumed power, the tension between the two disputing Perónist factions became more apparent: Martinez Baca was supported by the Revolutionary Tendency, while the vice governor Carlos Mendoza, leader of the Metal Workers’ Union (UOM), was the head of the Perónist right wing. After several conflicts, the right wing succeeded in June 1974 in suspending the governor from his duties through political impeachment. Perón, who by that time had assumed the presidency, embarked on a nationwide campaign aimed at overthrowing the governors linked to the Revolutionary Tendency. When the vice governor assumed provincial executive power, repressive measures and censorship increased in all sectors, from the university to the poor neighborhoods. The most reactionary factions had retaken the initiative in the class struggle.
In Mendoza, as throughout Argentina, the relation of forces became increasingly unfavorable to mass movements. While the pro-revolutionary forces were still in formation, the counterrevolutionary forces had already consolidated.
The Nationwide Occupations
One of the last actions carried out by the regime of the “Argentine Revolution” to maintain its influence over the administration of the Perónist government was the appointment of officials who would ensure the political continuity of the military dictatorship. Supporters of the government elected in March 1973 opposed the military as an obstruction, and denounced these political maneuvers. This triggered a series of workers’ occupations in an attempt to prevent those who supported dictatorship from participating in a popular government.
During Cámpora’s government (May 25–July 14, 1973), workers’ struggles acquired a particular character. Most conflicts assumed the modality of takeovers, whether in workplaces or in trade unions. The takeovers were the most significant advance of workers on employer’s terrain, since the workplace is “socially and legally alien, but they feel it practically and morally as their own” (Izaguirre and Aristizábal 2002, 51).
Most occupations were declared as being “against the continuity” of the military government and its officials, but a closer look reveals a huge variety of motivations, expressing the differences in the struggle for the reappropriation of the social and political system. The Argentine sociologist Flabián Nievas argues that the primary conflict motivating the takeovers was “more concerning the social order than the political order, which the different social forces tried to signify from the inside, more in a sense of appropriating it than confronting it” (Nievas 1999, 359).
In his research on takeovers in Argentina, Nievas identifies four distinct periods. The first runs from the beginning of Cámpora’s government until June 3 (1999, 351–393). The second extends from June 4, when the huge wave of takeovers began, until June 14, when Abal Medina, secretary-general of the Perónist party Partido Justicialista (PJ), urged an end to the occupations. During this period more than five hundred occupations took place nationwide. More than three hundred fifty were carried out between June 11 and June 15 alone. The effect of Abal Medina’s call was immediate: the number of takeovers dropped dramatically, although they resumed shortly thereafter with even greater intensity in factories and union sites. In addition, Abal Medina’s call demobilized the less politicized groups of workers that rallied behind the slogan “against the continuity,” reducing the confrontation to the more organized groups. The third period ranges from June 15 to June 20, the date of the “Ezeiza massacre.”
112 The fourth period began June 21 and lasted until the fall of Cámpora’s government on July 13. During these days the province of Mendoza saw significant activity, together with the province of Tucuman; it was the fourth jurisdiction nationally in number of takeovers (Bonavena and Nievas 1999, 1).
113 As we will see, many of these occurred during the second and third periods.
As noted, a large variety of social groups, often with opposed interests, gathered under the banner “against the continuity.” Nievas distinguishes two different types of takeovers: first, the “occupations for the socialist homeland,” referring to the takeovers of the “New Left,” including those they did not directly organize but with which they maintained a certain affinity (1999, 364–372).
114 These activities had an anticapitalist bent, although with different degrees of consciousness informing their actions. In this category he includes the occupations performed by the leftist armed organizations, by the Perónist left-wing armed or political organizations, and by rank-and-file workers.
The second category is called “occupations for the Perónist homeland,” which Nievas describes as reactionary due to their content or because they were initiated in response to the left-wing takeovers. The nationalist-oriented occupations were commonly carried out by much smaller groups. In this category we find takeovers organized by the Perónist right and “preventive takeovers” initiated to avert leftist takeovers, motivated by the goal of maintaining the status quo (ibid., 373–381). Nievas found that occupations favoring the “socialist homeland” had massive participation but the majority of Perónist occupations were conducted by small groups not exceeding forty people, who typically carried firearms.
Of all the takeovers, 54 percent nationwide were aligned with the “socialist homeland,” while those associated with defending the “Perónist homeland” represented 46 percent. However, although the socialist occupations were significantly more active, the latter focused on key sectors—media, health centers, and public enterprises.
The Mendoza Occupations
Considering the different elements addressed by Nievas, we can see that in the province of Mendoza the dynamic of occupations presented a series of peculiarities.
115 As
Table 1 shows, unlike in the national process, more than half the occupations in Mendoza occurred after the official government call on June 14, 1973, to suspend takeovers. Additionally, those who remained active were rank-and-file workers neither armed nor affiliated with political organizations.
Table 1 Enterprise Occupations: 1973
| TOTAL: | 18 (100 percent) |
|---|
| Phase 1: | May 25–June 3 | 0 |
| Phase 2: | June 4–June 14 | 8 (44.4 percent) |
| Phase 3: | June 15–June 20 | 9 (50.0 percent) |
| Phase 4: | June 21–July 13 | 1 (5.5 percent) |
As shown in
Table 2, only 16.6 percent of the occupations were staged by groups linked to conservative forces, all in state dependencies—provincial roads, the General Irrigation Department, and radio station LV4 of San Rafael. In contrast, 83.3 percent of the takeovers were carried out by social forces in formation, which combined support for the newly elected government and a policy of “national and social liberation” with a simultaneous questioning of the organization of the different working sectors. Moreover, they demanded workers’ participation in decision-making arenas as the only way to ensure the response to the interests of the working class.
Among all occupations, 77.7 percent were carried out by rank and filers in their workplaces without the explicit mediation of political or armed organizations, although they were supported by their respective trade unions. However, after the initial outbreak of takeovers, organizing and planning became less significant.
These rank-and-file occupations occurred in twelve different state dependencies
116: the Social Welfare Bank, the National Roads Department, the Provincial Transport Company (EPTM), the bus terminal, the Direction of Traffic and Transportation, the Infrastructure and Water Services Dependency (DOSS), the Construction Department, the Service of Adult Education, the Railway Polyclinic Hospital, the Revenue Department, the Fellow Students Institute, and the Department of Geodesy and Cadastre.
The same dynamics and characteristics developed in takeovers at some private enterprises, such as the occupation of the Argentine Telephone Company and the center of the Argentine Construction Workers’ Union (UOCRA). Just one of the occupations—radio station LV8, Libertador—was carried out by the Perónist left and none by leftist armed organizations.
Table 2: Political Character of Occupations
| # | Percentage |
|---|
| Total Occupations: | 18 | 100.0 |
|---|
| Socialist homeland: Subtotal | 15 | 83.3 |
| Leftist armed organizations | 0 | 0 |
| Perónist left-wing groups | 1 | 5.5 |
| Rank-and-file: subtotal | 14 | 77.7 |
| Public dependencies | 12 | 66.6 |
| Private enterprises | 1 | 5.5 |
| Trade union sites | 1 | 5.5 |
| Perónist homeland: Subtotal | 3 | 16.6 |
| Perónist right-wing groups | 2 | 11.1 |
| Preventive | 1 | 5.5 |
In Mendoza, 56 percent of the occupations were considered “effective” and 44 percent “symbolic”—of very short duration or because, despite the protest, employees continued to work and provide services.
All takeovers oriented toward a “socialist homeland” were decided in workplace assemblies. This marks a clear difference from the occupations of the “Perónist homeland” tendency, which were carried out by small groups without broader support. The right-wing tendency was also opposed by other groups of workers, revealing the development of an important political intra-class struggle.
All takeovers took place in spaces that workers considered as their own. Only one of them was a local union headquarters (of the UOCRA); all others occurred in workplaces. The state apparatus represented the main area of conflict; 88.8 percent of takeovers were carried out in state companies and institutions. The differentiation between the political natures of the takeovers occurred unmistakably in the context of the struggle between antagonistic social forces, expressed through the local structures of Peronism. The conflict between the internal tendencies of Peronism became even more visible when some of the provincial ministers were accused of “Marxist infiltration” by regional leaders of the union General Confederation of Labor (CGT).
117 Significantly “it did not only matter who was removed, but, and especially, who was left in charge” (Nievas 1999, 353). Behind the problem concerning the continuity of officers in the dictatorship, a new axis of confrontation emerged, revealing the still forming, antagonistic sociopolitical forces in favor of working-class democracy and against state and capitalist repression.
The declaration of the workers of the Social Welfare Bank lays out their demands, decided within workers’ assemblies during takeovers. The workers listed as their goals: “a) to demonstrate the real vocation of workers in the guidance of the institution; b) to appoint comrades able to implement policies to achieve national liberation and reconstruction” (Diario Mendoza June 29, 1973, 8).
In the Railway Hospital workers demanded participation of the personnel in decision-making areas in order to “intervene in health and employment policy” (Diario Mendoza June 17, 1973, 6). Similarly, in the Revenue Department and in the Fellow Students Institute occupations, workers’ assemblies defined themselves as “instruments for change of the system” (Diario Mendoza June 19, 1973, 6).
According to a participant, the takeovers “were . . . away of expression, to participate in the seizure of power.... When the comrades, the construction workers, occupied the Distribution Department, they sent the guy in charge to hell. They suddenly felt that finally some power was in their hands, even if it was just a small quota of power” (Vázquez 2005). However, it should be noted that while these activities objectively questioned private property and a particular form of social organization, the fact that workers pronounced support of the new (bourgeois) government demonstrates that they intended not to transform the sociopolitical system but to reappropriate and resignify it more favorably toward their class interests.
So, what was the content and form of the new state sought by workers?
Limits and Possibilities of Workers’ Control within the State: Two Case Studies
The takeovers were relatively ephemeral actions, with varying degrees of success in each case. The most interesting factor is not so much the actions themselves, but the developments in the workplaces afterward. The most important experiences in the province of Mendoza took place in the Provincial Transport Company (EPTM) and in the Infrastructure and Water Services Dependency (DOSS).
Both, as with all takeovers in the sphere of the state, had the support of the trade union, the Workers and Public Employees Union (SOEP). Formed a year earlier—after the Mendozazo—the organization adopted the militant unionism of the era. During those years, a large number of new unions emerged with characteristics rooted in the centrality of shop stewards, who persistently called on rank and filers to participate in assemblies, strikes, and demonstrations. The strong militancy was accompanied by profound internal democracy. These workers’ groups defined themselves as antibureaucratic, anti-employer and anti-imperialist.
In statements to the press regarding the occupations, the SOEP leaders declared:
The occupations . . . respond clearly to the line drawn by our organization. This means the mobilization of the rank and file, in support of the revolutionary administration of the comrade governor . . . .The unions, as key sectors in the construction of the workers’ fatherland, must guarantee the activities of the comrades elected by the people, with the massive support of the working class, so that our leaders can keep an honest and militant orientation, which can assure the way to national and social liberation (Diario Mendoza June 15, 1973, 9).
On Thursday June 14, 1973, an assembly of the personnel of the Provincial Transport Company of Mendoza (EPTM) decided to occupy the company due to doubts as to its economic stability and ability to pay its workers their next wages. The workers challenged the inactivity of the authorities in making future investments and the failure to resolve growing labor disputes. Workers announced that the occupation would last until the government appointed new authorities “in favor of a real national and social liberation and a greater participation of the employees in the company’s management” (Diario Mendoza June 15, 1973, 5).
The takeover of the EPTM—carried out with the participation of the SOEP—dissolved the company board and decreed the abolition of all hierarchical levels, including manager, accountants, and legal advisors. In their place, the workers appointed an interim executive board, formed by four employees, until the government assigned new officials. The SOEP reported that “the decision made by the workers and employees of this state company follows the urgent need for the power of decision making and management of the company to be assumed by the true representatives of the people” (Los Andes June 15, 1973, 6). As general supervisor they proposed a shop steward who had been working at the company for more than fifteen years.
According to the union activists, “The company is under perfect self-management since it was taken over by its workers three days ago” (Diario Mendoza June 16, 1973, 6). During the occupation, the trolleybus service continued to operate. Large signs were placed on the buses, announcing: “Trolleybus taken by its personnel for a real and effective national and social liberation” (Los Andes June 15, 1973, 6).
Regarding this experience, the SOEP union secretary recalls:
The department was taken over, the guy in charge was kicked out and workers took control of the administration. And a new administration was named among the comrades . . . they gathered in an assembly in which we the union participated . . . . One comrade was appointed on behalf of the garages, one on behalf of the drivers, and another comrade on behalf of the administration employees . . . . They built the new authority, appointed by the assembly, and started to manage the trolley company . . . and they made it work exceptionally! It was a public company under workers’ control (Vázquez 2005).
According to the union secretary, workers operated the factory efficiently during the occupation that lasted from one to two months.
118The recollections of a shop steward regarding this experience are somewhat different: “In those years we occupied everything. We took over the trolleybuses because we wanted a self-managed company . . . under workers’ control.The schools were occupied.... So in this context we felt encouraged to take over the trolley company.” The shop steward continued, describing the takeover’s impending end:
We achieved some of our demands, but not what we proposed . . . .We gained control of the accountancy, but not workers’ control over production. We achieved the participation of the shop stewards, the control of entries and exits, while previously we didn’t have access to anything. But the company was returned, because as I said, the ax . . . [at which point the shop steward made a cutting gesture symbolizing the approaching counterrevolutionary process]” (Moyano 2005).
The Infrastructure and Water Services Dependency (DOSS) was occupied on June 15 for three hours, after a workers’ assembly. They demanded that the governor implement a series of legal instruments to improve services and guarantee the company’s solvency and continuous operation. Once again, an interim board was appointed by the workers’ assembly and previous authorities were replaced. The assembly demanded that the new administrators be chosen from a list of names proposed by the workers and that they have the authority to transform the DOSS according to the new “Law of Autarky,” which had been approved by the government but not yet applied. They also requested an amendment to one article of the law concerning the composition of the board, so that it would be integrated by workers’ and users’ representatives.
The process that took place after the occupation reveals the creative content that accompanied the direct action. The SOEP financial secretary recalls: “Seven groups were formed and each one had to formulate a plan how to restructure the DOSS. Then, these seven papers merged to form one proposal. This proposal was introduced as a bill to the local parliament. . . . We incorporated some very, very important aspects for us . . . but finally it wasn’t approved” (Berro 2005).
119The draft of the bill proposed that two out of nine members of the board of directors should be workers’ representatives. This was justified with the following:
. . . the need for this sector, being the one that develops the plans and programs, to participate in decision making, since it is this sector as a whole that has profound knowledge of the problems and complexity facing the department. On the other hand, it enables the working class, the action and motor nerve center of national life, to mature in the practice of leading through regular and organic participation (Lilloy 1973, 10).
According to the draft, the other sector to be represented on the board of directors was the users of the service. The workers intended for the utility to be operated for cooperatives or neighborhood units of public services, due to the “need to integrate and make effective the participation of service receivers in decision-making” (Ibid., 9). In both cases the board members were to be appointed by the provincial executive power from a list of nominations by each sector.
The bill proposal emphasized the benefits of placing the drinking water service in the hands of the provincial state through a decentralized body because as part of the “collective needs it cannot be left with liberal criteria to the private initiative” (Ibid., 1). The workers argued for the necessity of creating an organ of control, coordination, and execution throughout the province due to “the need for a direct contact between the official body and the workers or beneficiaries of this public service” (Ibid., 2).
What were the real-time obstacles to the development of these plans? The financial secretary of SOEP states that the difficulties were due to the low level of technical and political preparation, not only of rank-and-file workers, but also of activists and union leaders.
Our great concern was to gather information about self-management experiences. . . . Our experience . . . of self-management mechanisms was very limited . . . workers of the different departments weren’t prepared enough to assume a responsibility of that nature. We wanted all state services and companies to be self-managed. In some of them we had more success than in others.
For example, in the Infrastructure and Water Services Dependency, where I was working, we appointed an experienced sanitary engineer. Well, that administration had a stronger technical guarantee than other places where that didn’t happen . . . . Following the union’s initiative an internal discussion with all workers was organized.
All the personnel were divided into seven working groups, where all concerns could be expressed; especially of workers with fewer resources and the most marginalized . . . . We wanted the professionals to share their knowledge through discussions with all the workers. In many cases, as you can imagine, the level of knowledge was very low, very low” (Berro 2006).
This reflection by a union leader enables us to recognize that, beyond the unfavorable context from 1974 onward, workers frequently lacked the theoretical, technical, and political capacity to advance the struggle for a state in workers’ hands even when the banner of self-management and workers’ control had been unfurled and workers actually directed state enterprises. One major difficulty was that most rank-and-file workers and activists were predisposed to direct action and mobilization and not fully conscious of the longer-term significance of their acts. At the time, political education and instances of reflection on practical experience were not understood within the union culture to be part of the same dynamics as struggle. As such, the secretary of SOEP stated, “We were born and started to fight . . . we had no time to stop and reflect about anything” (Vázquez 2005).
According to Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci, this emphasis on the practical moment of the struggle indicates that society was experiencing a historical point in time when “the new” had not yet formed organically—although it was in the process of emerging (Gramsci 1997, 17—18). Instances of theoretical and political education, and reflection on practical experiences, usually arise when class struggle increases. This awareness develops because the learning experience is considered more valuable when obtained on the battlefield, where—as Marx, Lenin, and Luxemburg argued—one learns in a few days what otherwise would take years. But these moments of reflection are crucial if the goal is to have the knowledge necessary to analyze any situation and organize struggle strategically, especially during times—examined herein—when counterrevolutionary forces are on the advance at a national and global level.
Struggle for the Reappropriation of the State
Throughout this chapter we have seen forms of struggle that did not follow institutionalized patterns. Workplace takeovers questioned the existing social order in a process that developed based on different levels of consciousness. Within the framework of a bourgeois state, the workplaces were territories expropriated by workers from their employers. Most of the occupations were carried out not against but in defense of the Perónist polity, seen as a “people’s and workers’” government, against another faction cohabitating within the same administration. Thus the analysis suggests, on the one hand, that the class struggle manifested itself within the working class through political disputes. On the other hand, the early 1970s were a complex historical period for Argentina, exacerbating the still unresolved contradictions of a social force under construction.
Occupations expressed a challenge to the established hierarchical order. They were a result of the course of direct action that workers had developed since 1955, during which power was rethought and constructed. The occupations represented higher grades of autonomy by asserting the need for direct and majoritarian workers’ participation in the exercise of power as the only way to guarantee the construction of a political project expressing working-class interests. The problem was that these interests were understood in very different ways.
Once a new battlefield had opened with the return of parliamentary democracy in 1973, workers collectively recognized the importance of forging their own paths in order to contest for political power. The radical actions adopted through factory occupations and the takeover of state services aimed to elevate workers to positions of power; in this way they tried to transfer to the political level what was already unfolding through militant union practices. But the struggle for workers’ democracy exceeded the sphere of the unions.
120 The workers attempted to install the experience accumulated in terms of union struggle—a power built and sustained on workers’ democracy and mobilization—into the state apparatus, endowing it with democratic content and form by redefining workers’ control over the workplace.
Yet the relationship between form and content is neither immediate nor linear. Why were these workers looking for participation in decision making? What were their goals? While the social activist assumes that everyone was pursuing revolutionary change, in reality a diversity of perspectives and interests, some conflicting, were involved. These contradictions went unacknowledged in Argentina during 1973 because the emphasis was on the practical moment, a major obstacle to the movement’s success.
Additionally, the pro-revolutionary faction of workers was a social force in its infancy, and did not recognize the looming and growing offensive of another, already constituted, counterrevolutionary social force. In view of the complexities of the era, a valid question is whether it would have been possible to move solidly toward a revolutionary transformation, conscious of its construction and accumulation of power. The more comprehensive, strategic goals for workers’ power were not sufficiently accompanied by instances of reflection and elaboration regarding their collective practices.
From the narrative of the Mendoza occupations during June 1973, it is evident that the extremely high level of mobilization did not necessarily correspond to a development of working-class consciousness. As Nievas contends, the workers fought for heterogeneous objectives—as evinced by the fact that not all “occupations for the socialist homeland” actually identifed as anticapitalist.
The workers combined their support for certain government policies with the demand for participation in decision-making arenas with the goal of securing their class interests within the state. However, differences emerged over the definition of those interests—for some it meant overcoming capitalist social relations; for others, gaining workers’ participation in the production process or management sphere was enough, and questioning the capital-labor relationship was off the table. One of the interviewees summarizes what workers as a whole were looking for with the takeovers: “People wanted to decide about their lives, and their rights, and achieve what they did not yet have” (Moyano 2005). After years of repression and censorship, the occupations of 1973 demonstrated the general desire of the working class to bring an end to political oppression, yet only a minority sought to bring an end to the exploitation inherent in a capitalist society supported by the state.
References
Bonavena, Pablo and Flabián Nievas. 1999. Las tomas estudiantiles en la Provincia de Mendoza durante el camporismo. In Actas de las VII Jornadas Interescuelas/Departamentos de Historia. Bariloche, Argentina: Universidad Nacional del Comahue.
Bonavena, Pablo Augusto, et al. 1998. Orígenes y desarrollo de la guerra civil en Argentina. 1966–1976. Buenos Aires: Eudeba.
CLAVES para interpretar los hechos. 1973. Mendoza, June–July.
Diario Mendoza. 1973. Mendoza, June.
Gramsci, Antonio. 1990. Escritos políticos 1917–1933. Mexico City: Siglo XXI.
______. 1997. El materialismo histórico y la filosofía de Benedetto Croce. Buenos Aires: Nueva Visión.
Izaguirre, Inés and Zulema Aristizábal. 2002. Las luchas obreras. 1973–1976. Buenos Aires: IIGG, FSOC-UBA.
Izaguirre, Inés, ed. 2009. Lucha de clases, guerra civil y genocidio en la Argentina. 1973–1983: Antecedentes. desarrollo. complicidades. Buenos Aires: Eudeba.
Lilloy, Rubén R. 1973. Proyecto de ley creando la Dirección de Obras y Servicios Sanitarios como ente autárquico [Bill project creating the Department of Infrastructure and Water Services as an autonomous body]. Mendoza, October 10.
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Nievas, Flabián. 1995. Hacia una aproximación crítica a la noción de “territorio.” Nuevo Espacio. Revista de Sociología, no. 1, 75–92. Buenos Aires: University of Buenos Aires.
______. 1999. Cámpora: primavera-otoño. Las tomas. In La primacía de la política. Lanusse, Perón y la Nueva Izquierda en tiempos del GAN, ed. Alfredo Pucciarelli, 351–393. Buenos Aires: Eudeba.
Nun, José. 1973. El control obrero y el problema de la organización. Revista Pasado y Presente no. 2/3, nueva serie, año 4 ( July/December): 205–232.
Scodeller, Gabriela. 2009. Conflictos obreros en Mendoza (1969–1974): Cambios en las formas de organización y de lucha producto del Mendozazo. PhD thesis, La Plata.
Tortti, María Christina. 1999. Protesta social y “Nueva Izquierda” en la Argentina del GAN. In La primacía de la política. Lanusse, Perón y la Nueva Izquierda en tiempos del GAN, ed. Alfredo Pucciarelli, 205–234. Buenos Aires: Eudeba.
Interviews
Berro, Marcos. 2005–2006. Interview by author. [Berro was an employee of the Infrastructure and Water Services Dependency and financial secretary of SOEP (1972–1974). Activist in the Peronism of the Bases (PB). Interviews conducted in June 2005 and July 2006.]
Vázquez, Luis María. 2005. Interview by author. [Vázquez was an employee of the Provincial General Account and union secretary of SOEP (1972–1974). Interview conducted in July 2005.]
Moyano, Nora. 2005. Interview by author. [Moyano was an employee of the General Schools Department, shop steward, and a member of SOEP (1972–1974). Activist in the Independent Group of the Bases and Agrupacion Clasista 1° de Mayo. Interview conducted in July 2005.]