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Clasismo and the Workers. The Ideological-Cultural Context of 'Sindicalismo de Liberacion' inthe Cordoban Automobile Industry, 1970-1975Author(s): James P. BrennanSource: Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol. 15, No. 3 (1996), pp. 293-308

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Bull. atin m.Res.,Vol 5,No.3,pp.293-308,996Copyright1996 ublishedyElseviercicncctd

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Clasismo and the Workers. The Ideological-

Cultural Context of'Sindicalismo de

Liberaciort in the Cordoban Automobile

Industry, 1970-1975

JAMES P. BRENNAN

University of California, Riverside, USA

AUTOMOBILE WORKERS IN LATIN AMERICA

In the 1960s and 1970s, the Latin American automobile workers' unions

emerged as one of the leading sectors of the labour movements in the

region's three most industrial economies, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. The

automobile workers' unions were perhaps the most active and effective of all

the postwar industrial unions in protecting rank and file interests on issues ofwages, job stability and working conditions. They also were leading advo-

cates of democratisation of their national labour movements, demanding an

end to state interference in organised labour and repudiating collaborative

union bureaucracies, alternately attacking lcharrismo\ 'peleguismo' and the

"burocracia sindicaF in their countries. They thereby raised issues which

ultimately had implications beyond the material conditions of the workingclass and embraced democratic reform and an end to nondemocratic rule,

whether in party or military guise, as part of a comprehensive programme of

political and social reform. Indeed, if there was one sector of the organised

working class which seemed to represent the aspirations for change of theirsocieties at large in these years, it was the automobile workers.1

The sources of the automobile workers' militancy were multiple and

scholars have chosen to emphasise one or another variable which best

seems to explain the particular case they are studying. Much attention has

been given to sectoral factors. For example, one important influence was

undoubtedly the nature of collective bargaining procedures in the industry.

Unlike the case of many unions, there were no collective bargaining

agreements in the Latin American automobile industry at the national

level. Instead, such

agreements,generally at the automobile multinationals'

insistence, were worked out on a company by company basis. This practice

put the union leadership and the rank and file in closer contact and

undermined the tendency in modern industrial unionism for a distant and

removed labour bureaucracy to cut deals and hammer out agreements that

may have served more the interests ofthe union leadership than those ofthe

workers. In Argentina, the notoriously anti-democratic practices of the








294 BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH

metallurgical workers' union (Union Obrera Metalurgica) were undoubtedlyfacilitated by a secretive and almost inscrutable collective bargaining processwhich allowed minimal rank and file participation. This contrasted with the

considerably more democratic and participatory procedures of the auto-mobile workers' union, the Sindicato de Mecdnicos y Afines del TransporteAutomotor (SMATA), in which collective bargaining was decentralised with

the local branches of the SMATA, not the national union, responsible for

negotiations and final agreements.2Another factor given considerable weight in the scholarship has been the

specific character of the state's labour policies and their effects on the

automobile workers' unions. In his study of the Mexican industry, Ian

Roxborough (1984) directly links the Mexican auto workers' reform move?

ment to President Echeverria's apertura democrdtica of the early 1970s and

the encouragement given to the democratic tendencies in the labour move?

ment, in this and in other industries, to make the unions more responsive to

rank and file interests. John Humphrey (1982) has argued that the inflexiblyauthoritarian treatment of the Brazilian labour movement by the military

governments in the 1960s and 1970s and the militancy of the automobile

workers at Sao Paulo's ABC district were closely related. For Argentina, I

have argued that a similar sort of rule by military governments in the late

1960s and early 1970s was an important influence on the shop floor

rebellions of the Cordoban automobile workers and emergence of the

clasista movements there (Brennan, 1994).An additional explanation offered has been the existence of a new kind of

occupational commimity, highly homogeneous and concentrated in the new

residential zones surrounding the automotive complexes. These new com-

munities reputedly lacked the diversity and therefore competing loyalties of

older working class communities. Living conditions in these new industrial

neighbourhoods, it was argued, were precarious, lacking basic urban

services such as ranning water and electricity and with housing itself over-

crowded and often substandard. These factors; with workers concentrated in

wretched living conditions yet sharing a similar work experience, thus had

the effect of creating new sodalities, unique occupational communities,

thereby fostering a heightened class consciousness and facilitating organisa-

tion and militancy among the 'new working class'.3

A final line of reasoning has stressed the importance of the nature of the

automobile industry itself, the volatility and wild swings in demand which

characterise it, as well as what might be generically grouped as workplace

influences and their deleterious effects on the automotive proletariat, as

primordial influences on the unions. Humphrey (1982) has suggested the

wage policies of the military governments and the instability of work as

catalystsfor the mobilisation of the autoworkers in Brazil in the late 1970s.

Kevin Middlebrook (1989, 1995) has argued that the extreme pressures that

the automobile workers were subject to in Mexico, where labour costs were

often the key variable between a company's profitability and survival,

precipitated union activism. That is, worker discontent seethed and ulti-

mately exploded in plants subject to frequent speed-ups, disregard for job

classifications by management, hazardous working conditions, as well as to








CLASISMO AND THE WORKERS 295

the hire and fire practices by the companies, all of which made automotive

work unusually onerous and encouraged labour militancy.4For Mexico, Middlebrook's analysis of conditions in the industry, and the

greater sensitivity he shows to the relationship between the problems of

production and working class politics, is a useful complement to Roxbor-

ough's emphasis on strictly political and sectoral influences. In explainingthe relationship between working conditions and union reform movements,he notes that the problems created in the workplace forced the autoworkers

to begin to question established union practices in their industry, specificallythe delegado de planta system in which professional union intermediaries

assigned by the CTM, rather than chosen in honest union elections, served

as the workers' sole link to management. The delegate system, a highly

personal and paternalist style of union representation, could not work in the

automobile plants with their huge labour forces and highly bureaucratised

and impersonal labour relations systems. The unremitting dreariness of

work on the line in automobile factories, and the anxieties caused by the

instability of their industry, fuelled discontent with a perfunctory and

ineffective union representation and sparked the democratic reform move?

ments in the Mexican industry.There were great differences from company to company and even from

plant to plant in these movements. The Volkswagen plants in Puebla, for

example, were centres of militancy and even political radicalism whereas the

Nissan plants in Cuernavaca or the Ford plants in Mexico City were muchless so. The GM plants in Toluca and the Federal District barely were

touched at all by the reformist currents. Some accounting of these differences

must be made beyond the explanations Middlebrook offers of the labour

process and the inadequacies ofthe plant delegate system to ameliorate poor

working conditions. A deeper, more culturally and historically-nuanced

understanding of the productive process, management practices, and the

concrete workplace environment in the various automotive factories, placed

firmly in a regional cultural context, could well offer additional insights and

help account for some of the differences.

Certainly in the Argentine automobile industry, the influences of workand production in the IKA-Renault (IKA) and Fiat plants in Cordoba and

the workplace cultures they helped created are profoundly important in

explaining the differences in the histories of the Cordoban automobile

companies from those in Buenos Aires and in the emergence of revolu?

tionary trade unionism, the so-called clasista movements in the Cordoban

plants. That is, the conflicts between labour and capital which are alwayslatent in this industry have had, especially in Latin America in these

particular years, specific dynamics of their own which must be understood

if we are to account for different histories in the same industry. Why were the

Cordoba-based companies centres of militancy and progenitors of a new

working class ideology, clasismo, whereas the Buenos Aires-based firms?

Chrysler, GM, Ford, Citroen and Peugeot?saw labour activism emerge at a

later date and with a very different character? Much of the explanation

certainly has to do with the particular characteristics and dynamics of

Cordoban society in these years, as well as political changes occurring at









the national level, specifically the emergence of a revolutionary left and theefforts it undertook in Cordoba to win a foilowing in the city's most strategicindustrial unions. Questions of production, the very different worlds of work

in the IKA-Renault and Fiat plants, were also influences and have beenstudied by the author elsewhere.5

The clasista movements were thus firmly rooted in workplace strugglesand the local political culture. The history of clasismo is undoubtedlyinseparable from the history of Cordoba in these years. The local labourmovement had certain characteristics which made it unique in Argentinaand which permitted the emergence of a dissident union movement in the

city. One was the lateness of Cordoban industrialisation and the creation ofa new working class concentrated in three sectors: automobiles, the metal-trades and electric power. This new working class was

comprised largelyof

first generation workers whose entry into city's factories and workshopscoincided with the Peronist Resistance of the late 1950s, the moment when

the bureaucratisation of the Peronist labour movement was the weakest in

its history. The combative leadership which emerged in key unions remained

closer to the militant traditions of this Peronism rather than to its bureau-

cratic one; and the new bureaucratisation, vandorismo, failed utterly in its

attempt to bring Cordoba within the verticalist fold in the 1960s. When to

this was added a suspicion and the barely disguised hostility of local unions

to porteno encroachments on Cordoban union autonomy, as well as such

miscellaneous factors as the independence in collective bargaining negotia?tions enjoyed by the local automobile workers' unions or the control over

union monies exercised by federal unions such as the light and powerworkers' union (Luz y Fuerza de Cordoba), it is possible to understand

how a maverick labour tradition managed to take hold in the city, a

tradition which made possible an independence and political protagonismon the part of the unions greater than that found anywhere else in the

country.Clasismo thus had deep regional cultural underpinnings. The revolution?

ary trade union movement in Argentina, though it was a national phenom-

enon, was particularly strong in the provinces and had its epicentre inCordoba. The clasista movements in the interior of the country had certain

things in common, especially the anti-bureaucratic sentiment and a certain

degree of political radicalisation which characterised them. But they were

also very much influenced by distinct regional contexts and local politicalcultures. The clasista movements of the Salta sugarworkers or that found in

the steel plants in a factory town like Villa Constitution showed some

marked differences from that of a large urban centre such as Cordoba, an

old city with a long political tradition and established trade union move?

ment.Indeed,

there wasarguably

not a clasismo but clasismos inArgentinain this period, the militant trade union movement emerging in response to

conditions shared in general by the Argentine working class but with its

precise expression rooted in local cultural contexts. This article will consider

clasismo in one of its regional contexts, the industrial city of Cordoba.









THE BUROCRACIA SINDICAL AS IMAGE

Until the early 1970s, the Peronist loyalties of the Argentine working class

stood as one of the few trustworthy variables in the country's otherwiseinconstant political life. The complex history of Peronism's relationship with

the workers and the workers' movement, in particular genius in both

articulating and fashioning workers' aspirations and ultimately garaeringtheir political loyalties, has stimulated a rich scholarly literature, with

particular significant contributions from sociologists and political scientists.

Due largely to the relative poverty of archival sources, historical scholar-

ship's contributions lagged behind those of other disciplines, though in

recent years historians have begun to produce broad interpretive studies

which will serve as thepoints

of reference and debate for thespecialisedhistorical studies of Peronism and the working class which are sure to

follow.6

Despite the controversies surrounding the subject and the conflicting

interpretations of Peronism which scholars have offered, there does appearto be consensus on at least one issue: that after Peron's emergence as a figureof national importance in 1943, the working class was inexorably won over,

through a mix of economic, cultural and institutional influences, to a

Peronist identity. The anti-capitalist, internationalist tradition of the Argen?tine working classes, represented early in the century in the history of its

vibrant anarchist movement, the growth of the Communist Party after thefirst world war and, perhaps most meaningfully for an immigrant and largely

unorganised working class, in the informal traditions of solidarity and

resistance in the neighbourhood and workplace, that tradition was replaced

by another which inculcated a sense of argentinidad and national identity,

stressed the struggle of nations rather than classes, and supported integra?

tion of the working class in society under state tutelage and through the

institutions of the state, rather than through autonomous working class

organisations, whether in the form of community and ethnic organisations,

trade unions or political parties. Defying the predictions of the Argentine

left, this new Peronist identity would prove to be resilient to whatever

changes occurred in Argentine society as a whole and, in fact, only seemed to

grow stronger with the persecutions and proscriptions which followed

Peron's fall from power in 1955.

Only once in the past half century has either Peronism's hold on working

class loyalties or its ideological presumptions apparently been seriously

challenged by Argentine workers. The clasista movements in Argentina in

the early 1970s stand as an enigma in recent Argentine labour history, an

apparent aberration from what is the historically more significant relation?

shipbetween Peronism and the

workingclass. Clasismo has

appearedas no

more than an interesting and exceptional chapter in modern Argentine

working class history in this light, and, indeed, in some ways it is no more

than that. Certainly as a political movement, clasismo failed to create an

alternative to Peronism and has almost no resonance in the contemporary

Argentine workers' movement. Nevertheless, as a subject to trace the sources

of working class politics generally, and specifically to understand the









quotidian reality of the Argentine labour movement and the influences of

ideology on the country's working class in the early 1970s, its importanceremains considerable.

Clasismo strictly defined was a movement confined to those sectors of the

working class which in the early 1970s adopted a Marxist ideology of class

struggle and identified with a revolutionary programme demanding the

abolition of capitalism and establishment of socialism in Argentina. The

leadership role clasismo assigned to the working class in the revolutionary

struggle obviously suggested Marxist-Leninist influences, but the diversityin the political affiliations ofthe clasista activists make it impossible to assign

any meaningful political or ideological predisposition to them. There was

never any unanimity, for example, on the need to form a revolutionary partyand Maoist, Guevarist, Peronist left and

Trotskyist

influences existed

amongtheir ranks. Generally, the slogan of the Fiat clasista unions, 4jNi golpe, ni

election, revolucion!', has bequeathed clasismo an image of an ultra-leftist,

utopic even chiliastic movement, at odds with the general tenor of Argentine

working class history after 1945, a fact which has caused some to see in it,

not the product ofthe workers' movement at all, but of leftist ideologues and

perhaps even of infiltrators from one of the myriad revolutionary organisa?

tions of the early 1970s, while even sympathetic critics have lamented its

reputed ideological and political intransigence.7

The question of the attraction which clasismo exercised as a revolutionary

ideology on a minority of workers who often, though not always, came topositions of union leadership remains unexplored. To analyse this issue, we

can rely on little else than oral history, despite the enormous problems the

popular memory presents in reconstructing and deciphering any ideology.

The pamphletary literature and union publications of the period are

notoriously unreliable. The manipulation of working class discourse by

leftist organisations and party militants in these years, who often indepen-

dently published 'union' tracts in the unions' name and in a few instances

actually managed to get control of union publications or at least a heavy

influence in the editing, make any direct connection between the printed

word and working class ideology, to say the very least, problematic. The

workers themselves recognise the limited utility of such sources in recon?

structing their history. Among the workers of the former Fiat clasista

unions, SITRAC-SITRAM, the influence exercised by the left in such

publications remains an issue of considerable contention:

Because of our inexperience and their wilhngness to help in our

struggle, the left from an early date got a considerable amount of

influence in the SITRAC union newspaper. A lot of times the news-

paper used a language, an intellectual langauge,that we workers didn't

understand. This was very different from the SITRAM newspaper

which never fell into the left's hands. The person in charge of the

SITRAM newspaper was the daughter of the union president and it

used a plain, straightforward language that the workers could relate to.

As a result, the workers in the Matefer factory read their newspaper.

Very few workers in the Concord factory read ours (Masera).8









Despite the obstacles that union publications and broadsides present in

deciphering workers' world view, a reconstruction of their ideology is not

impossible and there are certain recurring images which do come through in

oral testimony. Carlos Masera, the president of the clasista SITRAC union,

Domingo Bizzi, a clasista member of the SITRAC union executive commit-

tee, and Roberto Nagera, a clasista SMATA shop steward in the Ford

Transax plant, were three of the many individuals with whom I had multiple

interviews, indeed had an ongoing dialogue, during almost a decade of

research on this history and whose testimonies I believe are representativeand give a glimpse of the mentalities of other clasista workers in the early1970s. All three had been ordinary workers who reached positions of union

leadership in the upheavals ofthe early 1970s.

Perhaps the most common element in their reconstruction ofthe history is

the idea of clasismo emerging as a response to the burocracia sindical, as a

spontaneous, grass roots reaction to the abuse of power by an ensconced

Peronist trade union leadership:

The workers in SITRAC remained Peronists, but these same Peronist

workers came to realize that within Peronism there were people who

were betraying them . . . or people who jumped on the Peronist

bandwagon just to build union careers for themselves (Masera).

The comrades saw that we clasistas were not sell-outs, that we were

going to fight for them on the shop floor, something that they had seenthe peronista bureaucrats were not going to (Nagera).

Our bureaucracy was the worst since we had plant unions and the union

was completely controlled by the company. But it was still a Peronist

trade union bureaucracy since the UOM and Fiat had worked out a

deal giving the UOM effective control of the union in return for a

formal representation of the workers (Bizzi).

This image of a traitorous labour bureaucracy admittedly was not strictlya working class construction and the left played a major part in constnicting

and disseminating the idea. But the Cordoban auto workers were also ableto draw on their own traditions, both the linea dura, anti-bureaucratic

practices and discourse which characterised the Cordoban unions and had

been revitalised within Peronist trade unionism in the form of the Confed-eracion General del Trabajo de los Argentinos (CGTA) as well as the specific

history of the IKA-Renault and Fiat plants which had given the workers

ample reason to believe that a traitorous labour bureaucracy was not just

part of the revolutionary left's revolutionary praxis.9 The negative image of

the Peronist trade union leader, of the deal-cutter who remained entrenched

in power and failed to represent honestly and effectively the workers'

interests, especially on the shop floor and in questions related to production,is universal among former clasista militants and is their own favourite

explanation for the rank and file support they enjoyed in these years.

Indeed, their belief is echoed in the testimonies of auto workers who did

not come to positions of leadership and who frequently used such adjectives

as 'honest', 'upright' and 4good comrades' to describe clasista leaders,









though admittedly here the interpretation of the movement elaborated from

positions of state power during the military governments from 1976 to 1983

and the current Peronist government has had its effects and a minority of

auto workers assotiate clasismo, and to a lesser extent specific clasistaleaders, with 'subversion' and 'terrorism'.

THE LEFT, THE CORDOBAZO AND THE VIA ARMADA

This latter point raises another issue of crutial significance for the later

emergence of clasismo: the presence sustained by the Marxist left in the local

labour movement. Marxist labour activists in Cordoba enjoyed the unoffi?

cial blessing ofthe state and business in Cordoba, as they did throughout the

country, during the anti-Peronist hysteria of the late 1950s. In IKA, for

example, the first union elections held in 1956 were won by a Communist

slate, thanks largely to the proscription of the Peronists by General Pedro

Aramburu's government (1955-1958) and the willingness of Kaiser to accepta Marxist leadership as union interlocutors. Marxists with varying politicalaffiliations were found in many other unions in the city, most notably in Luz

y Fuerza, and managed to survive the Peronist purges of the early 1960s, in

no small part due to the protection local Peronists afforded them. After the

1966 coup, Cordoban Peronists often proved far more hostile to Vandor and

the porteno labour bureaucracy than to the local Marxists in the labour

movement, individuals who were generally friends, neighbours and compa-

neroswith whom

theyshared a

dailycontact. In the case of the SMATA

especially, this pluralism made possible the survival of a group of young

union activists with various leftwing ties, hardened in the struggles between

1966 and 1969, some of whom would emerge as clasista militants after the

Cordobazo.

The result was the most politically and ideologically pluralist labour

movement in the country, one in which the historic animosities between

Peronism and Marxism were at least less acrimonious and obstructive than

elsewhere. Such diversity allowed a core of highly disciplined and committed

Marxist trade unionists, most notably in the IKA factories and in Luz y

Fuerza, to prevent a monopoly on working class loyalties by the Peronistsand to compete respectably with the Peronists in union elections, indeed in

Luz y Fuerza through the figure of Agustin Tosco, to control the union

presidency uninterruptedly until 1974, thereby keeping alive an alternative

working class tradition that was largely moribund elsewhere in the country.

The strength of the political left in the city, underground but active since

1966, was also an important factor in the emergence of clasismo. The ability

of the left to appropriate and claim credit for the May 1969 Cordobazo, a

complex popular rebellion which, with regard to the political identity of the

local working class would have to be said to have had a far greater Peronist

than Marxist participation, the Cordoban left's success in transforming the

uprising into its own legitimising epic event, as powerful for the clasistas as

the 17-18 October 1945 working class protests were for the Peronists, attests

to the powerful presence the left maintained in Cordoba.10 As a result ofthe

strength of this Marxist left in the city in both the unions and political

organisations, the very idea of 'socialism' retained a prestige within the local









working class that was unusual elsewhere in the country. Among other

consequences, this probably permitted a greater receptivity to the leftwingcurrents which emerged within Peronism in the form of the Peronist left in

the early 1970s than was the case for the Argentine working class generally.

Sympathy or at least tolerance for the left and Marxist ideas of class

struggle, however, only remained latent in the city. It would take a profound

disruption in convention for such feelings to crystallise into active supportSuch a disruption was provided by the Cordobazo. For Masera, Bizzi and

Nagera, indeed for every clasista militant I interviewed, the Cordobazo was

the genesis of their increasing involvement in politics and a clasista identity:

The Cordobazo shook up everything in the (Concord) plant, even

though we Fiat workers had not really participated in it. In the

months that followed, the union bureaucrats who ran SITRAC startedto get nervous. There was more grumbling, we workers started to think

differently (Masera).

There was an electric atmosphere in the city after the Cordobazo, both

politically and at the trade union level. We (the clasista organizers ofthe

lista marron union slate which runs for union elections for the first time

in 1970) woke up with the Cordobazo, we started asking ourselves what

the hell was going on? This explosion that was the Cordobazo affected

us deeply . . . it made us look for explanations and then to believe in

utopias (Nagera).

After the Cordobazo, a lot of us started to believe that a revolution was

about to take place in the country and that we were going to be an

important part of it (Bizzi).

The Cordobazo, however, was also the start of an entirely new phenom?

enon: the insertion of the guerrilla left into local trade union politics. This

remains the most sensitive issue in the entire history of clasismo and a full

reconstruction of the history and accurate assessment of its extent probably

is impossible. While willing to recognise the support and even tutelage by

certain leftwing organisations and parties in their unions, the former clasista

militants adamantly deny any connection to guerrilla organisations such as

the Montoneros and the Ejercito Revolucionario Popular (ERP). Though it is

clear that the image perpretated by the Peronist labour bureaucracy and the

right of clasismo as merely the trade union appendage of the guerrilla is a

gross distortion, there is nonetheless reason to believe that the organisations

which supported the via armada did have some influence in clasista move?

ments, even if indirectly.

My research uncovered few organic links between the clasista unions and

the guerrilla organisations. Though some clasista militants drifted over toguerrilla organisations after the intervention of their unions and especially

after the 1976 coup d'etat, during the length of clasista experience (1970?

1975), the clasista trade unionists had only fleeting contacts with guerrilla

organisations. Rather, the influence exerted by the latter was in terms of

ideology. That is, the combined influence of the Cordobazo and the revolu?

tionary utopias of the guerrilla left, led to a certain apocalyptic vision and









sympathy for revolutionary solutions on the part of some clasista militants,

particularly those who were not exercising the greatest authority as members

of the union executive committees. Clasista shop stewards, members of the

cuerpo de delegados, were those most influenced by the idea of a revolu?tionary struggle and who accepted a certain degree of violence as a legitimatetool in the union struggle. The maximalist tactics adopted by the clasista

SMATA and SITRAC-SITRAM, the taking of hostages during strikes and

the violent confrontations with police and security forces, responded to such

influences. Such sentiments ran counter to the Peronist sensibilities of the

vast majority of workers, however, and ultimately cost clasismo much of its

hard-won prestige.The hostility of at least the Marxist left to mainstream Peronism had

another baleful influence on the clasistas' dealing with the Peronist rank and

file:

... our vision of things became too dialectic, we interpreted Peronism as

something that the oligarchy had created, something it promoted to

prevent the Argentine working class from becoming revolutionary and

we were therefore unable to see that it was their movement, that theyheld a deep belief in it. . . . for those of us clasistas who reached

positions of union leadership in those years, we were treated with great

respect by the Peronist workers. That is, because we were honest

leaders, they respected our ideas. I'm not so sure we had the same

respect for theirs (Nagera).

THE GENDER FACTOR: WIVES, MILITANTES AND

GUERRILLERAS

I have argued elsewhere that, at least in the case of Cordoba, the importance

generally given to the community as an explanation for the militancy of the

new working class in Latin America has been greatly overstated. My

argument goes against the prevailing wisdom in labour and working class

history which stresses the influences of culture and community over those

related to production and power politics. Similarly, the virtual absence ofwomen among the Cordoban automobile proletariat has led to a study in

which gender issues barely appear. Though they were, I believe, of far less

importance than other influences, there was a 'gender politics' which

certainly was a part of the history of Cordoban working class militancyand political radicalism in these years.

One such influence has more to do with the ability of the local trade union

movement to maintain a high degree of militancy rather than the elaboration

of any radical political project in the form of clasismo. Oral testimony

reveals over and over again the importance of the solidarity of workers'

wives in the great union struggles and social protests of these years, of the

succour of their companeras in difficult moments, of their establishment of

soup kitchens during the prolonged strikes, of wives' participation and

sometimes leadership in support networks for imprisoned labour leaders,

even their presence in demonstrations and at the barricades.

It is tempting to look for some kind of political awakening or proto-









feminist sensibility in these women's participation in the political and union

struggles of these years, but oral testimony reveals more traditional motiva-

tions. These women, like their husbands, were predominantly migrants from

the countryside and small provincial towns who brought with them some

very conservative ideas about the family and women's role in society.

Moreover, and in this unlike their husbands, many were very religious and

frequent attenders of Church where, the existence of radical tercermundista

priests in some neighbourhood churches notwithstanding, these traditional

attitudes were reinforced all the more. The solidarity of these women was the

result of some very basic values brought with them from the countrysideabout 'fairness', 'honesty', and, to put it crudely, standing by their man. It

was also certainly, inevitably, the result of their position as the adminis-

trators of the household economy.

Moreover, the utter absence of any sensibility on the part of either the

Marxist or Peronist left to the woman's condition, the framing of the

political struggle strictly in class or anti-imperialist terms without the

slightest reference to gender issues, gave these women nowhere to go, even

if they had been interested in looking for one, which I would argue few were.

Thus, these women's participation in the struggles of these years was not the

result of a break with their traditional attitudes and conservatism, much less

did it encourage a critique of capitalism as it effected the gendered divisions

of society or women's exploitation. It did, perhaps, have some effect, both on

themselves and their husbands, in reevaluating women's traditional rolesand perhaps weakening the appeal of the heavily patriarchical mainstream

Peronist ideology. But these influences should not be exaggerated. Working

class' women's presence in the labour struggles of these years was due

overwhelmingly to their crucial role in maintaining the household economy

and to some traditional values; and those very values served as a break on

labour militancy developing into an alternative, radical political project.

The influence of women party militants and even guerrilleras is a rather

more complex question. In interviews conducted in the workers' homes, with

wives present, often listening to the conversation, naturally no worker was

going to acknowledge a past relationship with a student girlfriend. In private

conversations, however, it was striking the number of times former clasistas,

particularly those who became more politicised and active in leftist organi?

sations, mentioned the importance of relationships with women, usually

students drawn from the city's large university community, in creating a

political consciousness. These women were apparently overwhelmingly of

middle class origins and 'tutored' their working class boyfriends politically.

They frequently introduced such workers to anti-capitalist ideologies and to

the debates taking place within the left and probably played at least as great

a role as the formalparty

organisations in constructing clasismo as a

minority ideological current within the local trade union movement.

THE 'MORAL ECONOMY' OF THE CORDOBAN AUTOWORKER

Even in searching for 'cultural' explanations for clasismo, the workers' own

testimonies inevitably lead us back to the factory. Time and again, workers

stressed work place relationships as the most important ones in their lives,









greatly overshadowing even those of family and community. This is perhapsnot surprising among a labour force with a large percentage of workers in

their early twenties and unmarried, but it did lead to a working class with

some unique characteristics which allowed clasismo to have greater reso-nance than it would elsewhere in the country. A moral economy in the

Thompsonian sense existed in the work place, a lens through which social

relations, the labour process, and politics were all evaluated. This moral

economy was comprised in good measure of mainstream Peronist national?

ism and anti-imperialism:

All the workers knew that the imperialist companies, the multina-

tionals, paid the highest wages. But we all were also aware that the

price for working for one of those companies was that while the worker

wasmaking

outbetter, they

weregobbling up (morfandose)

the

country's riches (Masera).

As this testimony indicates, there is often very little to distinguish the

clasistas1 ideology from what one could have expected from their Peronist

counterparts in these years. The two exceptions are their insistence on a

radical, grass roots union democracy and a greater receptivity to socialism

than was characteristic of the average Peronist worker nationally. The

insistence on a participatory union democracy, the rejection of a strictly

pragmatic, results-oriented Peronism or unquestioning fealty to the Peronist

hierarchy, or verticalismo, remain powerful components of the clasista

workers' popular memory:

We had a real union democracy in the SMATA. There was none of the

intimidation and corruption that the Peronists practised. We not onlyhad honest union elections, we tried to get all the workers involved in

running their union, instead of just letting things being decided by some

union boss (Nagera).

The other component of clasista ideology which apparently sets it apartfrom mainstream Peronism is that of the former's unambiguous identifica?

tion with a socialist

project.Cordoba's unique regional context,

specificallythe strength of the Marxist left in the city, as well as changes taking place

nationally in Argentina's political culture, especially the increasing weightof leftist ideas within Peronism, allowed the local working class in generalto reconcile its Peronist identity with a socialist project. This question holds

the key to establishing the extent and depth of the Cordoban working class'

identification with clasismo. My interviews with workers indicate to me

that, except for an admittedly not-negligible number of workers who

became clasista militants, the vast majority of workers retained an essen?

tially Peronist ideology, rejecting for example the idea of the abolition of

all private property and sotialisation of the means of production. Amongthe former clasista militants, their testimony reveals the recollection of a

kind of classic Marxist, workplace alienation, class consciousness-raising

process:

As a result of our lives in the factory, we came to realize that society was

divided into two classes, the exploited and the exploiters, and that there









was only one class without which the other classes couldn't survive, and

that was the working class. We became convinced of the need to

establish socialism to put an end to this exploitation (Bizzi).

However accurate this reconstruction of his own personal ideological

development is, the testimonies of this same clasista militant, and those of

other workers, reveal, nonetheless, that the same process was not at work

among the auto workers in general:

The Fiat workers in general never really had a clear idea of what

clasismo was in ideological terms . . . when we spoke in the assemblies

about being members of a certain social class, that is the working class,with certain characteristics and our own problems, that the workers

understood instinctively ... and when we were able to illustrate the ideaof social classes with a problem like the 'premio de production' (a work

incentive productivity prize) this sense of class grew . . . on the other

hand, we took another problem like the 'acople de maquina' (the'machine yoke') and gave it a political, even an ideological interpreta?

tion, and that hit home with the workers, but not necessarily the way we

wanted. It didn't necessarily turn them into socialists. They tended to

see this as something the bosses would not get away with if Peron were

back (Bizzi).

Indeed, the political message which the vast majority of workers tookaway from such exhortatory tactics seems precisely to have been to reinforce

longstanding grievances and to have intensified the demand for lifting the

proscription weighing against the Peronist movement and especially to

return Peron from exile. With the old caudillo himself extolling the Cuban

Revolution and the socialist struggle, these same workers may have had

more sympathy for socialist solutions at the time than a reconstruction of

their ideology ten years post facto would indicate. As Daniel James (1988)

has noted, there was a strong obrerista component in Argentine workers'

traditional Peronist ideology which included a latent anti-capitalist content.

This point needs further analysis and, again, holds the key to weighing the

real possibilities which existed for establishing a revolutionary trade union

movement in the conjuncture of the early 1970s. My research on Cordoba

indicates that it was limited, but there is also some reason to believe that it

may have developed further than is generally thought. That is, the various

discourses of the left intersected with certain facets of the workers' Peronist

ideology, an ideology itself in a state of redefinition, and permitted some

degree of political evolution in the direction of clasismo. In Cordoba, this

process was cut short by the restoration of Peronist rule in 1973 and

especiallywith Peron's return to

powerlater that same

year.

CONCLUSION: CLASISMO AND CONSCIOUSNESS

I have argued in my recent book (Brennan, 1994) that clasismo must be

understood above all as an ideology and revolutionary praxis elaborated by

non-working class elements that found resonance in the Cordoban auto

plants, partly because of an established militant union tradition, the specific









case of the IKA-Renault workers, and partly because of the concrete shopfloor conditions in the local automobile industry generally, problems which

existed in the peculiar local context and historical conjuncture foilowing the

Cordobazo. Clasismo was never printipally a working class ideology and theCordoban working class overwhelmingly retained its Peronist identity. The

lived experience of the city's Peronist auto workers allowed them to

sympathise with certain elements of clasista discourse, such as the wide?

spread image of the traitorous (porteno) burocracia sindical or of inalienable

shop floor rights, because such things were either already a part of tradi?

tional Cordoban Peronist ideology or had emerged as important compo-nents of the reified Peronist ideology of the early 1970s. Nevertheless, it is

true that small groups of workers in both the IKA-Renault and Fiat plantsdid renounce altogether their Peronist loyalties and embrace clasista ideas of

revolutionary trade unionism, an historically significant development which

merits explanation and which this essay has attempted to address.

Clasismo's influence as an ideology, albeit a distinctly secondary one,

within the Cordoban working class is best analysed through oral testimony.

Since the published clasista discourse was in large measure written by

intellectuals and non-working class party militants for the consumption of

their similars, the 'working class' press and pamphletary literature is of

limited use in deciphering workers' consciousness. Oral testimony also has

its problems. Significantly, few workers in Cordoba have recollections of

anything called clasismo, despite the fact that their memoriesare

quite sharpand detailed when relating other aspects of working class life in those years:

the great working class protests in 1969 and 1971 or shop floor problems, to

mention just two examples. Most important, the past is always reconstructed

in light of the needs of the present and historical memory can therefore only

ever be the approximation of any ideology. Those problems aside, con?

sciousness can really be detiphered for this history only through oral

testimony, most fruitfully, I believe, through the handful of individuals

who became clasistas and who retained this ideology in something

approaching its original state at the time the interviews were conducted, in

the mid to late 1980s.

My previous writings on clasismo were not intended to argue for the

primacy of structural factors over cultural influences, or in Thompsonian

terms (or better-said, neo-Thompsonian terms), over the subjective experi?

ence of workers in interpreting their reality and developing their own modes

of organisation and political mobilisation. I have suggested, it is true, that

determined industrial sectors do exhibit certain structural characteristics

which establish the objective conditions for certain kinds of political

behaviour. In the Latin American automobile industry, such sectoral

characteristics as oligopoly and autonomous industrial relations systems

are certainly of relevance in explaining the history of these workers there.

But even more important were the influences of distinct corporate and

workplace cultures and management practices. I believe that studies of the

sources of working class politics need to return to the labour process and to

reevaluate the importance of the workplace as another social arena and

important influence in shaping class consciousness and determining political









behaviour in distinct historical and cultural contexts. Similarly, accountingfor divergent political behaviour in the Latin American automobile industry,and even within the same industry of the same country, seems illuminated by

attention to workplace issues. In Argentina, the history of the Cordobanautomobile workers' unions is poorly explained without some understand-

ing of the question of production and the factory regimes in the local auto

industry.

But, undoubtedly, other factors help explain clasismo. One already

mentioned, related more to clasismo's ideological expression, were the

changes in Argentina's political culture and the particular conditions exist-

ing in the Cordoban labour movement in these years. In Cordoba, the legacyof the Resistance and the Cordobazo also profoundly influenced this history.Other factors not discussed

mayalso have contributed to the

shopfloor

rebellions of the early 1970s. The relatively high incidence of labour stabilityin the Cordoban automobile industry, for example, may have led to a deeper

questioning of the relations of production in the plants by both workers and

activists alike. The fact that this was a sexually and ethnically homogeneouslabour force may also have made the capital-labour conflict more direct and

kept it from moving onto other tracks that complicated and redefined

labour-management conflicts in other automobile industries. A recognitionof the multiplicity of explanations for Cordoban clasismo, among them the

specific influences of the workplace, will help to dispel its image as something

foreign to the development of the Argentine working class and will placeclasismo's history firmly within the lived experiences, at work and elsewhere,

of those who led and supported its struggles.

NOTES

1. The best general study of the Latin American automobile industry and its workers is

Kronish, R. and Mericle, K. S. (eds) (1984), The Political Economy ofthe Latin AmericanMotor Vehicle Industry, MIT Press (Cambridge). There is a growing literature for the

Brazilian and Mexican automobile workers. The most important studies for Brazil remain

Humphrey, J. (1982), Capitalist Control and Workers' Struggle in the Brazilian Auto

Industry,Princeton UniversityPress

(Princeton)and Tavares De Almeida M. H.

(1978),'Desarrollo capitalista y accion sindical', Revista Mexicana de Sociologia 2 (April-June).For Mexico, Ian Roxborough (1984), Unions and Politics in Mexico: The Case of the

AutomobileIndustry,Cambridge University Press (Cambridge) and Kevin J. Middlebrook

(1995), The Paradox of Revolution.Labor, the State and Authoritarianism n Mexico, Johns

Hopkins University Press (Baltimore) are the leading scholars. The Argentine automobile

workers have been much less studied than their Brazilian or Mexican counterparts.There is

a good but general treatment in Judith Evans, Paul Heath Hoeffel and Daniel James,'Reflections on Argentine Autoworkers and Their Unions' in Kronish and Mericle (1984).The Cordoban automobile workers have been studied by the author in, TheLabor Warsin

Cordoba, 1955-1976. Ideology, Work, and Labor Politics in an Argentine Industrial City,Harvard University Press, 1994.There is still no study of the workers in the Buenos Aires-

based companies.2. An example ofthe sectoral argumentcan be found in Roxborough, I. and Bizberg I. (1983),

'Union Locals in Mexico: The "New Unionism" in Steel and Automobiles', JournalofLatinAmerican Studies 15 (May): 117-135.

3. This has been a favourite explanation for the Brazilian autoworkers' recent history

especially. See, for example, Durand, V. M. (1987), Crisisy movimiento obrero en Brasil.

Las huelgas metalurgicasde 1978-1980, p. 211, UNAM (Mexico).4. Middlebrook's arguments are summarized in Middlebrook, K. J. (1989), 'Union Demo-









cratization in the Mexican Automobile Industry:a Reappraisal',LatinAmericanResearchReview 24 (Spring): 69-94. For a fuller discussion, see his, The Paradox of Revolution.

Labor, the State and Authoritarianismn Mexico.5. See Brennan,J. P.

(1992),'El clasismoy los obreros. El contexto fabrildel 'sindicalismode

liberaciori en la industria automotrizcordobesa, 1970-75', DesarrolloEconomico32 (abril-junio) and (1994), The Labor Wars in Cordoba, 1955-1976. Ideology, Work,and LaborPolitics in an ArgentineIndustrialCity, Harvard University Press (Cambridge).In these

studies,I concentratedon thepolitical, regional, and industrial nfluenceswhich contributedto the formation of a militant trade union movement in Cordoba, emphasising theconstraintson translatingthat labor militancy into a radicalpolitical project.In this articleI will consider the ideological and cultural underpinningsof clasismo and the possibilitieswhich existed for the development of a revolutionarytrade union movement.

6. The outstandingcontributionby an historianis, of course,James, D. (1988),Resistanceand

Integration.Peronismand the Argentine WorkingClass, 1946-1976, CambridgeUniversityPress (Cambridge).

7. Reyna, R. (1988), 'La izquierda cordobesa', Crisis (septiembre):44-45. See the reply toReyna's criticisms by former SITRAC secretary general, Carlos Masera, 'SITRAC ySITRAM: la autonomia obrera', Crisis79: 78-79.

8. Unfortunately, no copies of the SITRAM union newspaperhave been preserved.9. See Brennan, J. P. (1994), The Labor Wars in Cordoba,1955-1976. Ideology, Work,and

Labor Politics in an Argentina Industrial City, pp. 171-205, Harvard University Press

(Cambridge).10. On the Cordobazo,see Brennan,J. P. and Gordillo, M. B. (1994), 'WorkingClass Protest,

Popular Revolt, and Urban Insurrection in Argentina: The 1969 Cordobazo1, ournal ofSocial History 27 (Spring):477-498.

REFERENCES

BRENNAN, J. P. (1994), The Labor Warsin Cordoba,1955-1976. Ideology, Work and LaborPolitics in an ArgentineIndustrialCity, HarvardUniversity Press (Cambridge).

BRENNAN, J. P. (1992), 'El clasismo y los obreros. El contexto fabril del sindicalismode

liberacion en la industria automotriz cordobesa, 1970-1975', Desarrollo Economico 125

(abril-junio).BRENNAN, J. P. and GORDILLO, M. B. (1994), 'Workingclass protest,popular revolt, and

urban insurrection in Argentina: the 1969 Cordobazo', Journal of Social History 27

(Spring):477-498.

DURAND, V. M. (1987), Crisisy movimientoobreroen Brasil. Las huelgasmetalurgicas,1978-

1980, UNAM (Mexico).HUMPHREY, J. (1982), Capitalist Control and Workers' Struggle in the Brazilian Auto

Industry,Princeton

UniversityPress

(Princeton).JAMES, D. (1988), Resistance and Integration. Peronism and the Argentine WorkingClass,

1946-1976, CambridgeUniversity Press (Cambridge).KRONISH, R. and MERICLE, K. S. (1984), The Political Economy of the Latin American

Motor VehicleIndustry,MIT Press (Cambridge).MIDDLEBROOK, K. J. (1989), 'Union democratizationin the Mexican automobileindustry:a

reappraisal',Latin AmericanResearchReview24 (Spring):69-94.

MIDDLEBROOK, K. J. (1995), The Paradox of Revolution.Labor, the State and Authoritar?

ianism in Mexico, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore).ROXBOROUGH, I. (1984), Unions and Politics in Mexico. The Case of the Automobile

Industry,CambridgeUniversity Press (Cambridge).ROXBOROUGH, I. and BIZBERG, I. (1983), 'Union locals in Mexico: the "newunionism" in

steel and automobiles', Journalof Latin American Studies 15 (May): 117-135.

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