Mass protest

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October 17th and 18th, 1945: Mass Protest, Peronism and the Argentine Working Class Author(s): Daniel James Source: Journal of Social History, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Spring, 1988), pp. 441-461Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3787593Accessed: 04-08-2015 19:42 UTC

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OCTOBER 17th AND 18th, 1945: MASS PROTEST, PERONISM AND THE ARGENTINE WORKING CLASS

On 9 October, 1945 Juan Domingo Peron resigned his post as Vice-President and Secretary of Labor in the military government which had held power in Argentina since the coup of June, 1943. In the early hours of October, 13th he was placed under house arrest and later transferred to the prison island of Mart in Garcfa, in the estuary of the Rio de la Plata. In the preceding thirty months Peron had established himself as the dominant figure in the military government. From the Secretariat of Labor he had begun to address some long-standing grievances of Argentine workers and, through the judicious use of state patronage, had won important allies among existing union leaderships. His fall from grace in October, 1945 was due, in part, to his military colleagues, concern over this pro-labor policy and the potential political power with which it was furnishing Peron. Peron's resignation also reflected the growing wave of political and civic opposition which the military regime had been facing since the beginning of the year. This opposition ? which covered the spectrum of political parties from far left to right ? had increasingly directed its attack on the figure of Peron. It called for his resignation and the handing over of the government to the Supreme Court which would oversee elections which would be held in the shortest possible time.1

Despite the apparently definitive nature of his defeat, Peron's policy toward the working class was to bear fruit within a week of his resignation. From the early morning of 17th October columns of demonstrators began arriving in the center of Buenos Aires from both the Federal Capital itself and from far beyond. Their single demand was for Peron's release from confinement and for his return to government. By late afternoon they filled the Plaza de Mayo in front of the Presidential Palace, and by late evening their action had forced the government to release Peron and allow him to address the assembled mass of workers from the balcony of the palace. It was these events which would launch Peron on his path to victory in the elections of February, 1946, leading to the consolidation of a social and political movement which has dominated Argentine society for much of the last forty years.

The events of October have been a frequent topic of social and historical analysis, both of an explicitly political intent and of a more academic origin. Comment on the mass mobilisation of those days has, in general, formed part of a wider debate concerning the origins and nature of Peronism. The dominant intellectual interpretation for most of the 1950's and 60's was that formulated by Gino Germani and others.2 According to this interpretation, worker support for Peron in the formative period was a reflection of working class heteronomy. In particular, new workers from the more traditional interior provinces provided the core of Peron's support. They were attracted to the caudillo figure and were easily manipulated by his personal appeal and the gifts bequeathed to them by


442 journal of social history a paternalistic state. In addition, they were attracted by his nationalistic appeal in contrast to the 'foreign* rhetoric of traditional working class institutions and parties. These new workers overwhelrned the traditional sections ofthe working class, largely descended from the mass European immigration of the pre-1930 era, who remained loyal to their class institutions and ideologies. These new institutions were unable to relate to the new migrants who instead looked to Peron and the state to provide for their needs. The October mobilisation has been regarded within this interpretation as the quintessential emblem of these new masses, the definitive rupture between old and new working class.

What might be called a revisionist orthodoxy has established itself in the last fifteen years in response to this earlier interpretation. This revisionism has convincingly challenged the notion of a clear dichotomy within the working class in the years of the formation of the Peronist movement. Researchers have argued that in fact the traditional union movement played a crucial role in the years 1944 and 1945 in mobilising support for Peron. Miguel Murmis and Juan Carlos Portantiero, in a seminal essay in the late 1960's, placed the origins of Peronism, and specifically working class involvement within it, within the context of labor's development in the 1930's and early 1940's. With an experience of conservative government repression, and the inefficacy of union organisation, Argentine workers and their leaders saw in Peron a potential, if ambiguous, ally.3 Juan Carlos Torre has convincingly reconstructed the internal debate within the traditional working class which led to the mass mobilisation of October 17th and 18th, 1945. Far from being the elemental, spontaneous demonstration by 'new' workers which by-passed a hostile, or apathetic, union movement, Tbrre has argued that the success and scope of the event was largely determined by organised labor's mobilisation and structure.4

The image of the working class in the formative years of Peronism has, therefore, shifted from that of a passive, manipulated mass to that of class conscious actors seeking a realistic path for satisfaction of their material needs. The new/old dichotomy has been subsumed beneath the image of an increasingly homogeneous working class. Some authors have resisted this homogenising trend. Germani, in what was to be his final contribution to the debate on the origins of Peronism, offered a variation of his original emphasis on the pre-migratory traditional experience of the new workers. Rather than emphasising the peculiar relationship of the new worker with the charismatic caudillo as his early work had done, he now directed his attention to the peculiarity of the criollo political culture associated with the new migrants. This culture was characterised, according to Germani, by a spontaneity which expressed itself in a kind of 'inorganic democraey' based on direct political participation independent of the mediation of institutions and formal ideologies. The classic expression of this criollo political culture was the mobilisation of October, 17th.5 Germani's restatement of his position failed to convince most students and was subjected to a sustained criticism by Tulio Halperin Donghi, Juan Carlos Tbrre and others.6

In this paper I wish to suggest that the debate over the origins of Peronism, centered as it has been on the issue of new/old working class, and the related theme of the role of of formal working class organisation, has effectively ignored the eoncrete forms of mobilisation and social protest involved in the October


OCTOBER 17TH AND 18TH, 1945 443

events and therefore to a substantial extent the workers themselves. The October events and their participants have been marshalled more as heuristic weapons for contending sides of the debate than as worthy objects of study in their own right. Beyond that, the emergence from this debate of what we might call an instrumentalist orthodoxy concerning working-class participation within Peronism has, I want to suggest, limited our understanding of the working-class role within Peronism, and in particular the significance of its more diffuse social and cultural dimension. A study ofthe mass mobilisation of October 17th and 18th can help us to appreciate this dimension, utilizing approaches of the "new labor history" variety still uncommon in the Latin American context. While drawing on material from several important urban centers much of this study will concentrate on events in La Plata, the capital ofthe province of Buenos Aires, and the role of workers from the meat packing center of Berisso, a distant suburb of La Plata, in those events. Both written and oral sources will be used and the problems arising from the use of such materials will be analysed.

II

Rumblings of discontent, signs of concern among workers over the course of events initiated by Peron's resignation, were present before the days of the 17th and 18th October. Rumours of a national strike in support of Peron were circulating before the weekend of October 13th and 14th. On the 15th the Communist-led Federacion Obrera de la Industria de la Carne was complaining of elements "who are resorting to pistolerismo to get the meatpacking workers onto the streets."7 Yet, in general, the anti-Peronist forces had reason to feel safe. Since Peron's forced resignation on the 9th, and his subsequent confinement, the tide had turned, apparently definitively, both in the streets and in government circles, against the former vice-president and his followers. As for rumours of a general strike, the Confederacion General del Trabajo, (CGT), was clearly divided on the issue and an impressive array of established unions and workers' organisations had roundly denounced the idea.8

In La Plata the sense of satisfaction and confidence was, if anything, even more pronounced. The Universidad Nacional de La Plata, which like other universities had been in the forefront of opposition to the national government, and whose striking students had been forcibly ejected from the buildings they had occupied at the beginning of October, had apparently won its battle with both national government and the provincial authorities and police. Following Peron's ouster normality had been restored, the rector reinstated and an inquiry opened into police brutality during the strike and occupation.9 A new federal interventor ofthe province of Buenos Aires had been appointed and the head ofthe provincial police force and his chief inspectors were being investigated by a federal judge. Little attention was paid, in the midst ofthe general euphoria, to the meatpacking workers of Berisso.

Yet, Peron's fall from power and his later imprisonment had a profound impact within the Berisso community. By the 1940s Berisso had emerged as arguably the largest concentration of industrial workers in Argentina. With the boom in meat exports which accompanied the Second World War the community numbered perhaps some 45,000 people at the time ofthe 1943 coup which brought


444 journal of social history Peron to national prominence.10 In the two years prior to October 1945 Peron had established a particularly close relationship with the meat packing workers and their emerging union, the Sindicato Autonomo de los Obreros de la Industria de la Carne de Berisso. With the help of favourable intervention from the Secretariat of Labor, important first steps had been taken toward the consolidation of union organization within the Swift and Armour plants. Peron himself had visited Berisso on several occasions. The last of these visits had been in early September when he had attended the funeral of Doralio Reyes, the brother of Cipriano Reyes, the leader of the Berisso workers. Doralio Reyes had been killed in a skirmish with communist militants.11 Talk of a strike was rife in the Swift and Armour plants during the week following the fall of Peron. Cipriano Reyes recalls that the union leadership had to restrain the rank and rile from launching a strike before the weekend ofthe 13th and 14th.12 The union, together with other groups of workers in Avellaneda and the working class suburbs to the south of the capital, had decided to organize a strike for the 17th in the absence of any definitive lead from the CGT.13

Restraining the rank and file's enthusiasm was, however, not an easy task. At around 5:30 pm on Monday, 15th, at the close ofthe day shift, workers formed a demonstration in the principal street of Berisso, the calle Montevideo. The crowd of some 700 was dispersed by police, but workers soon came together again in smaller groups, and spent the following hours marching through the central streets of Berisso chanting Peron's name and demanding his release. At 9 pm they finally dispersed after rallying in front of the union headquarters.14 The following afternoon this scenario was repeated. At around 5 pm some 300 women congregated in the calle Nueva Y)rk chanting Peron's name; they were soon joined by male workers and a march was launched which was controlled by a number of policemen. In the meantime another contingent of workers from a suburb of Berisso, Villa San Carlos, had arrived and joined the others. Again they spent several hours marching through the streets of Berisso dispersing temporarily when the police fired tear gas, then reassembling immediately after. After rallying at union headquarters they dispersed at 9 pm. The only reported incidents were the stoning of a store owned by Carlos Bassano, a local Radical leader, and an attack by women demonstrators on a man who had dared to shout an anti- Peronist slogan.15

By the night of the 16th an atmosphere of expectation hung over Berisso. It was widely known that the 17th would be the day of the strike and news was

coming of strikes and rallies which had taken place that day in Avellaneda and the other working class barrios in southern Greater Buenos Aires. The Berisso workers were also in touch with the Tucuman sugar plantation workers and knew that they had already launched their movement. The lights in the union hall burned throughout the night as plans for the strike and demonstration were finalized. There was constant activity as union members and militants came to receive instructions and then departed to spread the orders for the following day amongst their neighbours and families. Given the close identity of work and residence, workplace relations and family ties in a one industry town of Berisso's size, it was easy for the union to spread the word among the entire community.



By daybreak of the 17th pickets were in front of the two meatpacking plants and the small textile plant. Construction, railroad and port workers had already been apprised of the plans. Pickets also went to all the access points to Berisso, especially the Puente Roma which linked Berisso to the town of Ensenada on the opposite side of the main canal. All trucks and trams coming from La Plata were turned back and by 8 am the town was effectively isolated. Union pickets had toured the commercial establishments warning the shopkeepers not to open. Schools were also closed since the teachers who lived in La Plata could not reach Berisso. As La Nacioris correspondent reported:

By 11 am Berisso had a frankly abnormal appearance with the stores shut, without any means of transportation, and with the neighbourhood on the sidewalks watching the columns of workers who had taken control of the streets and were marching about with large placards onto which they had pasted Peron's picture.16

In La Plata 'most disquieting rumours' about what would happen in the afternoon with the arrival of the workers of Berisso and Ensenada had been circulating since early morning. Vehicles plastered with pro-Peron slogans had spread word of the coming demonstration. Workers' delegations had toured stores urging them to close. Between 7 and 9 am the tramlines connecting Berisso and Ensenada to La Plata were cut. Bicycles and trucks began to circulate announcing a demonstration for later in the day. By mid-day a large number of demonstrators had also congregated in the Paseo del Bosque, at the intersection of calles 1 and 60, the main entry point of the Berisso road into the city. There they waited in the wooded park for the Berisso workers to arrive.

Around 2 pm a significant number of those waiting in the Paseo del Bosque began a march up diagonal 79. After marching for several blocks they came to a construction site and destroyed the wooden fencing surrounding it in an apparent attempt to see if any work was going on inside. Next they reached the workshops of the provincial sanitation department. While most stayed outside a delegation entered and convinced the personnel chief ofthe wisdom of closing the plant. The marchers then returned and joined those awaiting the arrival of the Berisso contingent.18

The Berisso column arrived at about 4 pm and joined forces with those awaiting them. Most had marched the ten kilometers from Berisso on foot. Others had made the journey on horseback and a minority had come in cars or trucks. The demonstrators then marched along calle 1 to the railway station and then turned up diagonal 80 toward the center of the city. At this stage the demonstration took on a far more ebullient and threatening tone. The marchers stopped in front of the offices of the newspaper uEl D ian and threw some stones; they also attacked some stores on calle 50 and calle 7. In front ofthe university the marchers stopped and sang the national anthem. As they passed the main buildings catcalls and jeers filled the air as they chanted "Alpargatas si! Libros no!"19 Finally, they rallied in the Plaza San Mart in, in front of the Casa de Gobierno, where they heard speeches from members of the Comite Intersindical which had organized the demonstration and they cheered loudly when the new federal interventor, General Saenz, appeared on the balcony of Government House. A delegation of workers' leaders entered to interview him and express their concern about


446 journal of social history Peron's safety and imprisonment.

In theory the officially organized demonstration was now over, and from the union committee's point of view it had been successful. They had paralyzed Berisso, Ensenada and La Plata and had impressed their concerns on the new authorities. Saenz had arranged for a delegation to travel to Buenos Aires to interview Peron. For significant numbers of the crowd, however, the event was far from over. As the demonstration in the Plaza San Mart in was breaking up "groups of workers armed with tree branches and projectiles" began marching down side streets of this fashionable central area. Passing the branch offices of La Prensa, the Banco Comercial, Casa Lutz Ferrando, Jacobo Peuser and the Jockey Club of the Province of Buenos Aires, all concentrated on calle 50 a few blocks from the Plaza San Martin, they began an intense stoning and attack on these buildings. At the same time in adjacent streets other groups began to attack and ransack stores and fashionable bars. The buildings of the Estudiantes and Gimnasia y Esgrima sports clubs were also attacked. A large crowd also returned to the head office of El D ia and after stoning it once more overturned and burned two of its delivery trucks. A little later the other major La Plata newspaper, El Argentino, was also stoned, as was the branch office of the Buenos Aires daily Critica. With the police conspicuously absent from the streets or content to stand by and watch the events, the violence escalated. In the words of one reporter:

Groups began to roam the streets molesting those whom they identified as students. One of these groups brutally beat a young man in front of the legislative building because he refused to cheer the name of Peron.20

Another report noted that: "In the streets it was common to see the tracking down of individuals who were surrounded and beaten."21 These attacks culminated at around 8 pm with an attack on the official residence of the university rector, Dr. Calcagno. The first attack by a group of adolescents was limited to stoning. This group was driven off by a small contingent of police. Twenty minutes later, however, a much larger crowd returned and succeeded in penetrating the house and destroying much of its interior. Police reinforcements finally arrived together with General Saenz. After inspecting the damage for half an hour Saenz left, leaving a small police guard. About an hour later a smaller crowd again returned and began to stone the building. By 10 am the police had reappeared on the central streets of the city and the crowds had begun to disperse.

The spectacle which greeted the citizens of La Plata as October 18th dawned was an unprecedented one:

The streets had not been cleaned, and in all parts all that could be seen was broken glass and wood torn from doors and windows.22

Prospects for the coming day did not seem good. The CGT had officially proclaimed the 18th a day of national strike, giving official backing to the de facto general strike launched by large sectors of the working class the day before.23 In addition many of the demonstrators from Berisso and Ensenada had spent the night in the city sleeping in the plazas and parks. Those who had returned to their homes were said to be marching once more on La Plata. From early on



small groups of adolescents roamed the streets with sticks and stones chanting Peron's name and ordering stores to remain closed. Many private houses were also attacked on this day and at about 10 am a group broke into the main depositary of the Quilmes brewing company and distributed large quantities of beer. As the crowds increased toward midday the principal targets ofthe previous day were again the objects of their anger. ElDia was the object of repeated attacks throughout the day. Bars and cafes in the central area were also once more a favorite target. On this day, too, some bakeries and stores in the less fashionable areas were broken into. With the continued absence ofthe police from the streets the city was by midday "at the mercy of the challenging anger of the demonstrators."24 Virtually all street lights, electric signs and billboards over a large area of the city had been smashed.

By the early afternoon the union coordinating committee was trying to regain some control of events. The leadership of the Berisso meat workers, above all Cipriano Reyes, had spent most of the previous day in Buenos Aires, and with their return a meeting was announced for five o'clock in the Plaza San Mart in to be addressed by Reyes and other leaders. As they toured the streets the cars also issued appeals for workers to lay down sticks and stones so as to demonstrate that it was not genuine workers who were causing damage to property. At the rally both Reyes and the Secretary of Government for the province, Colonel Benito, appealed for calm, the laying down of offensive weapons and a return home.

Although this appeal had some impact it by no means ended the disturbances. While the meeting was going on crowds were stoning the nearby offices of La Prensa and La Nacion. In the early evening, too, the whole block of fashionable bars and stores on calle 51 were attacked. By 7:30 long columns of workers had begun the march back to Berisso and Ensenada, and mounted police had reappeared on the streets. The final event of the day still involved, however, hundreds of strikers who around 10:30 gathered in front of El Dia with banners proclaiming, "This will be the night we will burn El Dia!*25 Once more stones and molotoffs fained down on the building. By midnight the crowds had finally dispersed as the police for the first time in two days reappeared in force on the streets and simple exhaustion took its toll of demonstrators. The return of the Berisso and Ensenada workers to their communities and their work had also removed the coherent nucleus of the crowds.

The tally of damage done during the two days was considerable. El Dia, which was itself only able to print its account of the events on the 20th, published a list of properties damaged by the crowds. The list details some 167 major incidents, though it was at pains to point out that this did not include many smaller depradations which were too minor to be reported. The majority of the incidents had taken place in the central area on calles 7, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53 and diagonal 80. The vast majority involved the breaking of shop windows, electrical signs and any other glass objects.26

III

How are we to interpret these events in La Plata, events which we find


448 journal of social history

duplicated to one extent or another in the other major Argentine urban centers during the days October 17th and 18th? Tb a considerable degree a return to the newspaper sources ? even one as relatively brief as that of the preceding section ? does much to complicate the received image of these days. The essence of that myth was encapsulated by Cipriano Reyes in his book 'Yo hice el 17 de octubre'. It was, said Reyes, "a popular and peaceful revolution of Latin America and the world, which raised the banners of liberation ofthe workers and liberation of the Republic."27 This view of a fundamentally harmonious and conflict free event was not without foundation as we shall see. Yet, were the events that we have just outlined for La Plata simply "isolated incidents" as Reyes went on to claim in his book? do they offer no worthwhile field for interpretation, no tentative clues as to perhaps the deeper significance?

A resort to oral testimony in order to penetrate deeper into the consciousness of workers who participated in these events seemed at first to add little to a better understanding of the deeper significance for them of this experience. Interviews I conducted with Berisso workers who had participated in the events were at first puzzling. Rich in details concerning the union struggles of the preceding years, their memories of the October days were frequently bathed in the unmistakable aura of an official discourse. I was often told how the workers had in these days, together with other sectors of el pueblo marched to defend their rightful claims to social justice and the defence of the nation's patrimony in a fundamentally harmonious and patriotic movement. Language itself often changed from the richness and vividness of working class dialect to the stilted phrases of formal rhetoric apparently taken from some official guide book to "Great Events in the History of Argentine Labor." The sense of unreality and conformity of much of this testimony was compounded by the fact that many times the events of October were related in terms of what had apparently happened in Buenos Aires, as indeed the official Peronist version was largely constructed around the events which occurred in the Plaza de Mayo; yet they themselves had not been participants in these events, but had, instead, acted in La Plata.

It became clear that attempts to go beyond this official version would often run up against "silences, suppressions, amnesias and taboos."28 Nor should this surprise us. Luisa Passerini commenting on her work around the memory of fascism among the Turin working class, has observed that:

Oral sources refuse to answer certain kinds of questions; seemingly loquacious they finally prove to be reticent and enigmatic, and like the sphynx they force us to reformulate problems and challenge our current habits of thought. . . Indeed I received what to my ears were either irrelevant or inconsistent answers. 'Irrelevant' answers consisted mainly of two sorts: silences and jokes.

Eclea Bosi in a similar vein in her work on recollection and memory amongst the elderly of Sao Paulo has emphasized the social dimension of memory and in particular the impact of culturally and ideologically constructed conventions on the process of recollecting past events. Memory for Bosi is, therefore, never pure and spontaneous evocation of past events or experience as they really happened or were originally felt. Memory involves a constant process of working and reworking of past events, and this is particularly true of the recollection of



publicly and politically significant events. These always involve in Bosi's acute phrase "a social reading of the past with the eyes of the present."30

Viewed in this context the reluctance of Berisso workers to recall, or accord significance to, many ofthe events ofthe 17 th and 18th, should be understood in terms of their later history, and the later symbolic function the October days came to embody. October 17th became emblematic of the emergence of the working class as an authentic and legitimate force within national society and polity.

This significance was compounded by the Peronist state's adoption of this day as a crucial date of public ritual and national celebration. Within formal Peronist rhetoric the October events attained a unique significance. In a fundamental sense the regime traced its origins and legitimacy to these events. On October 17th 1949, in her speech to the assembled masses of workers from the balcony of the Casa Rosada Evita Peron recalled the meaning of the events of four years before:

From these same balconies the leader began to appear like a sun, rescued by the people and for the people, without any more arms than his dear patriotic descamisados, forged in labor. . This is the pure origin of our leader.. .(the 17th October) was born in the factories and workshops. .. it was conceived by the workers, in the midst of labor.

Peron's birth as a national figure was, thus, tied to the intervention of the workers and, in a sense, he has no history prior to this date. The workers who rescued him also affirmed his vision of social justice. The purity of this action is also stressed. October 17th was not tainted by any relationship to traditional politics and self-interest. Evita stressed that:

Peron did not arise from the dealings of a political committee. He is not the product of the distribution of political patronage. He did not know, he does not know, he will never know about the conquest of wills, except through the pure path of justice. This is the root and reason for being of the 17th October.31

Within this context, therefore, a recognition of some of the violent and unruly events would tarnish the legitimacy and authenticity of the symbolic meaning the event came to represent. This was particularly so since it involved forms of behaviour and public action which were of dubious legitimacy even in the eyes of those who participated in them. With the institutionalization and integration of the worker's movement within the Peronist state many of the participants in the October events achieved positions of standing and respect. In the years following 1955 a working class which had to fight a constant defensive battle to reassert the legitimacy of its claim to full social justice and citizenship, also felt the need to protect the unsullied image of that crucial, seminal event.

All this was compounded, I think, by the existence of a strong, official anti- Peronist discourse which saw October 17th, and indeed the emergence of working class Peronism, as the work of uneducated, less cultured ? even lumpen ? elements of the working class. The recollections of Berisso workers are, then, framed very much in terms of an implicit dialogue with this alternative version of the October mobilization. Their overriding concern was to assert the authenticity of the event as a genuine working class action, with all that implied


450 journal of social history in terms of responsible actions and respectable behavior. \et, if the silences of these testimonies are symptomatic, so, too, are the anecdotes which were eventually offered, often half-jokingly, usually told about someone else and always offered after the informant had recounted the formal dignity and importance of the event. Using some of this oral testimony, together with written sources, we can now try to probe deeper into the mobilization of October 17th and 18th.

IV

Perhaps the dominant memory among Berisso workers of these days concerned their festive, familial atmosphere. Michelle Perrot has commented that "if revolutions are the great vacations of life, strikes are those of the proletariat."32 Certainly this was a crucial element of the October mobilization: the release from factory discipline, the enjoyment of the absence of rigorous routine. A typical recollection of a Berisso worker clearly stressed this aspect:

It was a wonderful day. . .whole families went along; my daughter came with us. I carried her on my shoulders part of the way. . . Some buses had been pressed into service for those who could not make it all the way. The people were singing, chanting, joking and playing around. People passed around food and drink.. . the weather was beautiful and when we reached the Paseo del Bosque it was like an enormous picnic with people resting, lying under trees, playing soccer.. .No there wasn't any anger, people were happy.

This dominant memory is now so easily recalled in part because it was reinforced and legitimized by the Peronist state's officially created vision of October 17th. In popular culture of the Peron era and in government propaganda the events of that day embodied social harmony and individual and family happiness: in stark contrast to the vision of that other crucial date in the workers' calendar, May 1st, which was portrayed as symbolic of pain, bitterness and defeat in the pre-Peron era.34 Yet this image has also endured because it was based strongly in historical fact. Newspaper accounts for other major urban centers amply confirm the Berisso workers' recollections in this regard. In Avellaneda on the morning of the 17th:

Adolescents and women confronted with the unexpected break formed long lines, and began to snake their way through the streets near their homes. Soon they got hold of banners from the different clubs which proliferated in the barrio, and in this way throughout the morning the ambience of the citizenry was a special climate of raucous good humour.

In the Capital, too, a festive atmosphere predominated:

The majority of the public who marched in the many different columns did so in shirt sleeves. One could see men dressed as gauchos and women as peasants.. . boys who turned the avenidas and plazas into roller skating rinks, and men and women dressed outrageously, carrying placards of Peron, with flowers and cockades tacked onto their clothes and posters. Men on horseback and youngsters on bicycles with ill matching clothers, singing ditties and breaking out in hurrahs.36

In Rosario the reporter for La Capital commented on "the men, women and



children many of whom were exotically dressed and dancing in the streets."37 This carnivalesque atmosphere, emphasized in both oral and written testimony,

draws our attention to the novelty of the events as a form of working class expression, and introduces us to their possible deeper significance. While this festive spirit was later glorified and legitimized, it was, within the cannons of the time concerning acceptable working class public behaviour, a radical departure. Nowhere was this violation of traditional norms of working class demonstrations, these deviations from accepted repertoires, more keenly felt than amongst the Communists, Anarchists and Socialists. Not only were the violent incidents denounced; the whole tone and style of the demonstration was an affront to them. These were not proletarians who sang the workers' anthems traditional on working class demonstrations such as May 1st; nor did they march in disciplined columns and obey the tacit rules of civic decency and restraint. They adopted popular tunes as their anthems, danced in the streets, whistled and chanted and they were often led by horsemen dressed in gaucho costumes. Their constant accompaniment on the march was the insistent throbbing of huge drums. They also covered everything they passed with slogans in chalk ? an apparently noteworthy departure from tradition given the insistence with which the press commented on it. In short, the crowds of October 17th lacked the dominant tone of solemnity and dignity which impressed by its dignified embodiment of reason and principle.

The Communists spoke of the "clanes con aspecto de murgas", (clans with the appearance of carnival)38 led by elements of the uhampa" (underworld) and typified by the figure of the compadrito?9 La Vanguardia, the Socialist Party paper, emphasized that these could not be real workers:

.. Those who for many years past have sustained and now sustain in their union organizations the struggles against capital; those who sustain the dignity of their functions.. .as citizens.. .were not present on that day.. .it could not be the same worker as the one who marched through the streets of the capital and has raised his voice since the turn of the century in search of the realization of social justice and his hymns of affirmation and hope; this was not the workers' world so often grave and taciturn but always imposing in the potential demonstration of its strength... it could not be these workers, or this workers' world which gave us the spectacle of the horde, of the masquerade...40

La Vanguardia ended by asking the question:

What Argentine worker acts in a demonstration demanding his rights as he would in a carnival parade... ?

The answer of the traditional working class organizations to this rhetorical question was simple: these were not genuine workers, but rather lumpen, marginal elements.

Much of this carnivalesque festive behaviour involved what we might describe as a form of secular iconoclasm. Iconoclasm in this sense involves, anthropologists tell us, "the deliberate and public shattering of sacred symbols with the implicit intent of dissolving all loyalty to the institution which employs these symbols and, further, of dissipating all respect for the ideology which that institution propagates."41 If we look carefully at the forms of action, and the targets of that



action, in the October events ? which La Vanquardia likened to a form of candomble - we will see that this involved the frequent violation of institutions, symbols and norms which performed the function of transmitting and legitimizing social wealth and prestige. By violating these institutions, blaspheming against these symbols and flouting the norms of propriety and behaviour the October crowds were, we may suggest, demonstrating the powerlessness of these institutions, negating their authority and symbolic power.

Everything was not, however, pure carnival celebration. A strong undertone of explicit class resentment and bitterness was also clearly present. This was, at times reluctantly, recalled by witnesses:

I remember turning a corner - it must have been near the centre of La Plata, quite early on in the day ? and seeing this huge fellow standing there on the sidewalk in front of the shattered window of a jewelers. He was holding his arm in the air, like in a clenched fist salute and with an enormous grin he was pointing to a watch on his wrist and shouting to his comrades "Never in my goddamn life did I own a watch." I could tell from his clothes that he came from Berisso. He was still wearing his work clothes.42

This secular iconoclasm could also be expressed very directly by attacks on the social and leisure centres of the elite. The Jockey Club was a favorite target in La Plata, Cordoba and Buenos Aires, as were certain cafes and bars. In La Plata the social centers attached to the soccer clubs, Estudiantes and Gimnasia y Esgrima, were also attacked.

Yet, such direct looting was an exception. The violence perpetrated in many of these attacks seemed to have a strong ritualistic character. Rather than inflicting individual violence on persons, the object was the public shattering of prestige and inviolability, an expression of public humiliation which would violate the sanctity and privilege of these institution.43 Often, too, secular iconoclasm could be expressed in relatively trivial ways. Much of this seems to have involved mockery and ridicule. The central column of demonstrators in Rosario was headed by an ass on which had been placed a placard with a slogan "offensive to university professors and a certain evening paper."44 Many of the demonstrators in this column "were dancing around an effigy of Peron at the same time as they chanted burlesque slogans against the press, the universities and democraey."45 In La Plata during the disturbances of the 18th a group of demonstrators entered a funeral parlor and demanded a coffin which they then paraded through the fashionable area in the center of the city shouting slogans "hostile to the students and newspapers."46

Much of this would seem to correspond to E.P. Thompson's notion of counter- theater which consists essentially of "ridicule or outrage against the symbolism of authority."47 The flouting of dress codes was clearly part of this as it was manifested in the flaunting of bizarre costumes, or simply the wearing of work clothes ? alpargatas and bombachas (overalls) ? in settings other than the workplace or the barrio. In La Plata the crowds explicitly vented their anger toward the sons of the gente bien (well to do people) whom they identified specially by their clothing and hair styles, deriding those they called 'jovenes engominados\ refering to the slicked back hair style fashionable at the time.48 In Buenos Aires La Vanguardia spoke of insults and mockery directed against people simply because



they were wearing well polished shoes and clean shirts.49 Particularly outrageous, too, was the daubing of many of the monuments to national heroes with pro~ Peron slogans.

In a similar vein Berisso workers recalled certain events which they ascribed either to kids or 'some of the lads who had got carried away:'

.. .well yes... I remember seeing a group of lads stopping in front of an appartment building in the central area, near the university I think, and after chanting some songs they began to make some gestures ? you know, putting their hands down there and making exaggerated movements.. .or making loud noises with their mouths like they were farting.

Others recalled some of the lads' making as if to drop their pants in full view of women of respectable society. This testimony was often offered with an indulgent, reluctant chuckle which seemed designed to rob it of any true significance. Again one is reminded of Thompson's analysis of the contest for symbolic authority which "on occasion has no further objective than to challenge hegemonic assurance, strip power of its symbolic mystification, or even to just blaspheme."51

This does not, however, exhaust the issue. A close look at the nature of the principal targets chosen by the demonstrators can tell us more about the nature of this secular iconoclasm. The targets chosen for direct attack, ridicule and derision were not random. While the unions provided a structure for the mobilization there was an almost complete absence of attacks on factories. Large crowds demonstrated outside many of the principal plants in Avellaneda, Berisso and the Capital but once they had succeeded in closing them and getting the workers to join them they moved on. Nor were government buildings or police stations involved. Indeed, as we have seen in the case of La Plata, government buildings, especially the offices ofthe Secretariat of Labor, were considered suitable sites for the final rallies. With the absence of the police from the streets for almost two days clashes with the forces of law and order were rare. Indeed the principle rally held in Avellaneda on the 18th was held in front of the 1st police precint and the orators used the building's balcony to address the crowds. The major targets were, instead, universities, students and the press.

In La Plata from early on the 17th groups of workers had sought out those they could identify as students; student lodging houses were also a special target for attack. The march of the afternoon directed itself specially through the university area chanting slogans such as, Alpargatas si, libros no\y and *Menos cultura y mds trabajo! (Less culture and more work). The antipathy toward the University culminated in the ransacking of the rector's house. Similar incidents were repeated in the other major university centers. In Cordoba and Rosario the private residences of the rectors were sought out, and the pattern of abuse and hostility toward both students and the institutions of higher learning was repeated.

The attention given to the organs of the press in La Plata has already been chronicled. In fact, shortly after dawn on the 17th one of the first acts of the workers in Berisso was to ceremonially burn all copies of the La Plata newspapers whose delivery trucks they had allowed to enter the city.51 It would seem significant that they were not content to stop distribution of the press which



they could have easily done by preventing the entry of the trucks. Instead they were intent on almost ritualistically burning them and thus publicly negating their status and power. The insistent return to the offices of El D ia during the course of the day and the final return on the night of the 18th also points in this direction. In Buenos Aires the single most violent event of those days was the attack on the offices of Critica as the crowd dispersed from the Plaza de Mayo after listening to Peron.53 In Cordoba the major paper, La Voz del Interior, was attacked with stones and molotoffs. Smaller local newspapers were also targets. In Lomas de Zamora, a working class suburb of Greater Buenos Aires, the local paper, La Union, was singled out for special attack.54

Now clearly the reason for the anger directed at both the press and the university was in part due to the recognition by the pro-Peron crowds of their importance as political enemies. The Argentine press was in general openly hostile to Peron and his policies, and in the absence since 1943 of functioning political parties the universities were the focal point of opposition to the military government and to Peron in particular. Yet, more was at stake here than political hostility. In the absence of the direct involvement of the state and its organs ? the police and the armed forces ? in the October days; with the suspension of party activity and with the absence of a direct conflict between capital and labor a situation emerged in which the contest for symbolic domination and cultural power within civil society was revealed in a peculiarly transparent fashion. The working class, for long excluded from 'the public sphere' where such forms of power and domination were generated, directed its attacks precisely at two of the sites which most clearly determined notions of social and cultural legitimacy - what Pierre Bourdieu has defined as 'cultural and symbolic capital.'55

In so doing they attempted to assert their own symbolic power and the legitimacy of their claim for representation and a recognition of the social relevance of working class experience, values and organization within the public sphere. It is in this context that much of the anti-cultural, anti-University nature of these days must be placed. Rather than a reflection of a plebeian philistinism it represented an affirmation that despite their exclusion from an elitist education system, participation in which they knew bestowed far more precious commodities than simple knowledge and expertise, working class experience had its own value and cultural worth. As the workers marched past the university in La Plata they were exhorted to show "that the workers do not need to go to the university to have education and that they must demonstrate that they still have it."56 La Plata with its particular concentration of many ofthe key institutions of legitimate culture ? museums, libraries, university and theatres ? was a peculiarly intense reminder to workers of the unequal distribution of cultural power.

Who were these workers who took to the streets and adopted the forms of activity we have been analysing? While a detailed crowd sociology of the October events is impossible, it seems clear that no simple division between a new migrant working class and a traditional, European-oriented one can be imposed on these events. Of all the working class communities in Argentina Berisso might have been expected to have shown evidence of this division if such had existed. Its original workforce had, in the 1910s and 1920s, been drawn from European immigrants. In the 1930s and 40s new entrants to the labor force had been



recruited from the interior provinces of Argentina. Yet, there is no evidence that the latter group supported Peron and were the driving force behind the October mobilization, nor that the former were opposed, supporting the traditional working class parties. Such a distinction seems to have had little meaning among Berisso workers in the 40s. If a differentiation within the working class can be found in the October events it would seem to have been related to different life experiences in the preceding decade within the working class rather than to different ethnic and cultural origins. Above all such a distinction would seem to have been generational.

The youthfulness of the participants in the events of October 17 and 18th was a feature emphasized by nearly all commentators. The press frequently noted that most of the demonstrators in Buenos Aires, Rosario, Cordoba and La Plata were under 25 years of age. A typical newspaper report described a column of ten thousand demonstrators in the Federal Capital marching on the Ministry of War: "In their great majority they were young people of less than twenty years of age."57 From the lists of those treated for injuries, it would seem that those who took part in the most violent incidents were even younger, with an average age of nineteen. Oral testimony also seems to associate the October mobilization with youth. The words pibes and muchachos (kids, youngsters) were constantly used to describe participants in the events. Cipriano Reyes linked the generational issue to the emergence in the early 1940s of a militant unionism in the Swift and Armour plants after more than a decade of quiescence:

Many of us were muchachos who had entered the plants in the early years of the war. We had a different attitude from the older workers. I suppose you could say that we were more cocky, less worried, less respectful. We knew about the terrible early struggles but that was from talking to old militants, we hadn't experienced them in our bones. Of course there were older militants who joined us and we learned from them. But we definitely felt like we were a new wave. That is what you saw on October 17; it was the younger workers who took the initiative and felt like really doing something for Peron.58

The editorial writer of the Rosario newspaper, La Capital, attempted to warn his contemporaries of the significance of this factor:

It is a great danger that the groups of demonstrators who were most bold, the most aggressive, those who denied the necessity to partake of social culture through the university, books and the press are made up overwhelmingly of young people... It therefore behoves the leaders of our political parties to turn their eyes and concentrate their attention on this mass of citizens whom they are at present ignorant of, who do not figure in the antiquated party registers.59

Closely allied to the contest for access to, and recognition within, the public sphere was an implicit contest over what we might call spatial hierarchy and territorial proprieties. A constant metaphor which runs through both the bourgeois and working class press concerning the October days was that of the city and the periphery. The city was hallowed territory, defined as the old established residential and administrative centers where political power resided


456 journal of social history and where, by extension, socially and culturally relevant activity occurred. Beyond was the periphery, the suburbs, the non-city, the unknown, indeed the not worthy of being known: and it was from here, they all stressed, that the crowds who marched on the city came. Time and again reporters felt the need when describing the events in Buenos Aires to emphasize the suburban zones from which the marchers originated. Avellaneda, Lomas de Zamora, Gerli, Laniis, Banfield, Remedios de Escalada, Valentin Alsina, Pirieyro, Quilmes, Bernal, the names were repeated as part of a litany as if to under score their strangeness and to differentiate them from the true city.

In La Plata the contrast was even more pronounced. The city itself was almost exclusively an administrative, educational and cultural center: a model of urban planning with wide streets, small houses with gardens, planned open spaces and public monuments and buildings. Berisso and Ensenada could scarcely have presented a greater contrast. Though technically part of the city of La Plata they were in cultural and social terms part of a different world. Berisso was separated from La Plata proper by some six miles of open countryside. Dominated by the two huge packing plants whose stench hung over the town, many of its houses were constructed of brightly coloured corrugated tin giving shelter to more than one family. The point of the contrast is not, of course, simply geographic. The two inhabited different social universes and this distinction was both reflected and reinforced by spatial separation. The cities proper, and in particular their most central zones, were the territory of those with some degree of political, social and cultural status. Once more the October events violated such established conventions: the suburbs invaded the center.

Such a violation was not a trivial affair. During the preparations for the Centennial of 1910 a small, though telling, incident took place. On the corner of calle Florida and Avenida Cordoba, in the heart of downtown Buenos Aires, only a few blocks from the mansions of the Plaza San Mart in and Avenida Alvear, the elite Barrio Norte and the main Ministry buildings, a sort of popular variety palace was installed on an empty lot to offer entertainment to the populace coming from the suburbs and beyond to observe the centennial celebrations. Called the Circo Florida it was in La Prensas dismissive words: "a construction more appropriate to country villages, or suburban barrios, than to the heart of the aristocratic zone of a great capital like Buenos Aires."60 On May 5th, 1910 students from the University of Buenos Aires burned it to the ground and were roundly cheered by La Prensa and the gente bien of Buenos Aires for preserving the dignity of the city center as an aristocratic and cultured preserve. Clearly the maintaining of such rigid norms of spatial hierarchy and territorial proprieties in the following thirty-five years became increasingly difficult. Things certainly changed in this period. Nevertheless, much of the same tone of outrage at, and contempt for, those who violated the city's sanctified space ? La Vanguardia had referred to Buenos Aires' streets as "these classic streets" ? can be detected in Criticas disdainful complaint that:

The crowds committed offenses against good taste and against the aesthetics of the city, made ugly by their presence in our streets. The people (el pueblo) watch them pass by, a little surprised at first, but then with a glacial indifference.61



It would be difficult to imagine a more precisely encapsulated expression of the clash of behavioural codes and notions of propriety involved in the October days. The city has acquired a personality whose aesthetic sense could, apparently, be offended. In addition, those who can legitimately inhabit the city's space are clearly limited to the porteno middle class who read Critica, hence the reference to "our" streets; were these not the streets of all Argentine citizens? This sense of social exclusiveness expressed in notions of the city, the us and them divide implicit in the affirmation of the legitimacy of territorial hierarchy, is reinforced by the identification of those who can legitimately inhabit the city's space as el pueblo (the people). The corollary to this is apparently the supposition that the intruders, those who make ugly with their presence the city's space, are the 'non-people', those unworthy of citizenship. It was to shatter "the glacial indifference" of the city and all that such indifference and disdain symbolized that the crowds took to the streets on October 17th and 18th, 1945.

VI

This essay has not been an attempt to offer a critique of a structuralist approach to Peronism in the name of a 'culturalist' alternative. It is clear that in a basic sense October 17th and 18th reflected a fundamental capacity of Argentine workers to mobilize and defend their perceived class interests. The actions of the Berisso workers, for example, cannot be examined outside the context of their developing sense of organization and consciousness formed in their battles with the meatpacking employers in the preceding two years. Their experience of union organization and the self confidence which that had given them were a crucial part of what took them onto the streets in the October days. In a larger sense, too, Peronism was from the workers' point of view in a fundamental way a response to economic grievance and class exploitation. Working class support for Peron can be regarded as a logical involvement of labor in a state-directed reformist project which promised labor concrete material gains. This allegiance clearly reflected a basic social and economic rationalism and class pragmatism. My point in this paper has not been to deny this, but rather to suggest the limits of a reductionist instrumentalism as an explanatory paradigm.

Reductionism has particularly unfortunate results in the study of social protests and crowd behaviour. This is clear in the case ofthe October events. While they demonstrated a class consciousness of the need to defend economic and social interests they also expressed a more diffuse social challenge to accepted forms of social hierarchy and symbols of authority. Most attention has been directed to the ultimate political object of the demonstration ? the personal figure of Peron and his release from confinement ? and to the role of formal union organization in the success of the mobilization. ^et the mobilization itself and the forms it took suggest, I have tried to show, an ampler social significance which directs our attention toward a more complex understanding of the meaning of Peronism for the working class.

Peronism was a complex and profoundly ambiguous phenomenon, and no? where was this more so than in terms ofthe working class's role within it. Indeed, the October events themselves caution us against the drawing of too simplistic


458 journal of social history conclusions. Against the carnivalesque upheaval, the shattering of existing norms, what we have defined as secular iconoclasm, must be placed the open fraternising with the forces of law and order, the subordination of working class action to the state authorities. The ultimate homage paid by the working class in these events was, moreover, to an authoritarian military figure. Rather than attempt to resolve this fundamental ambivalence, which lies at the heart of Peronism, in favor of one or another of its opposing terms it would seem more productive to accept it and to probe its deeper meaning.

It is in this spirit that this essay has been written. The October events represented the drawing back, for a brief time, of the veil which generally hides the essence of social and cultural relations. In the strange hiatus caused by the unique conjuncture of October 1945, these relations, and the struggle they implied, were far more transparently exposed. By studying these events we may achieve an insight into a dimension of Peronism which was, ultimately, far more enduring and heretical than wage increases and union vacation resorts.

Yale University Daniel James Dept. of History New Haven, CT 06520

FOOTNOTES

The research for this article was carried out in Argentina thanks to a grant from the Yale Center for International and Area Studies. A first draft of this paper was presented to the Yale Conference on Latin American Labor History, April 1986. My thanks to the participants; especially useful were the comments of Herbert Braun, Steve Stein, William Roseberry and Emilia Viotti da Costa.

1. For the background to the political events of these months see Felix Luna, El 45; cronica de un ano decisivo (Buenos Aires, 1969). Alberto Ciria, Parties and Power in Modern Argentina, 1930-1946 (Albany, 1969). 2. See Gino Germani, Pol itica y Sociedad en una epoca de transicion (Buenos Aires, 1962). For an explicitly Peronist version see Rodolofo Puiggiros, El peronismo: sus causas (Buenos Aires, 1963). On October 17th specifically see Hugo Gambini, El 17 de octubre de 1945 (Buenos Aires, 1969). For an overview of this approach, as well as a critique of its basic empirical assumptions, see Walter Little, "The Popular Origins of Peronism," in David Rock, ed., Argentina in the Twentieth Century (Pittsburgh, 1975). 3. Miguel Murmis and Juan Carlos Portantiero, El movimiento obrero en los origenes del peronismo, in Murmis and Portantiero, eds., Estudios sobre los origenes del peronismo, Vol. 1 (Buenos Aires, 1973).

4. Juan Carlos Tbrre, "La CGT y el 17 de octubre de 1945," Todo es Historia (March, 1976). 5. Gino Germani, "El surgimiento del peronismo: el rol de los obreros y de los migrantes internos," Desarrollo Economico (October/December, 1973). 6. See Tulio Halperin Donghi, "Aigunas observaciones sobre Germani, el surgimiento del peronism, y los migrantes internos" Desarrollo Economico (January/March, 1975); Tbrre, El 17 de octubre; Louise Doyon, "Conflictos obreros durante el regimen peronista, 1946-1955," Desarrollo Economico (October/December, 1977).



(October/December, 1977).

7. La Capital, 16 October 1945. "Pistolerismo" can be loosely translated as "gangsterism."

8. On labor in the 1943-1946 era see David Tamarin, The Argentine Labor Movement, 1930-1945; a study in the origins of Peronism (Albuquerque, 1985); Hiroschi Matsushita, El movimiento obrero argentino 1930-1945: sus proyecciones en los origenes del peronismo (Buenos Aires, 1983). 9. See Richard J. Walter, Student Politics in Argentina: the University Reform and its effects, 1918-1964 (New York, 1968). 10. See Lia E.M. Sanucci, Berisso: un reflejo de la evolucion argentina (La Plata, 1983), pp. 55-64. The 1946 census for Buenos Aires province shows some 16,000 workers employed in La Plata in the food processing industry. The vast majority of those would have been in the Berisso meat packing plants.

11. For different perspectives on early struggles to organize meat packing workers see Jose Peter, Cronicas Proletarias (Buenos Aires, 1969), for a communist version. Cipriano Reyes, Yo hice el 17 de octubre, 2 Vols. (Buenos Aires, 1985), gives an account from a different perspective. 12. Reyes, Yo hice el 17 de octubre, Vol. 2, p. 214.

13. ibid.

14. La Nacidn, 16 October 1945.

15. La Prensa, 17 October 1945.



18. El Dia, 20 October 1945.

19. El Dia, 20 October 1945; La Nacidn, 18 October 1945. Alpargatas were a cheap cloth shoe worn by the poor.

20. La Capital, 18 October 1945.


22. Ibid.

23. See Torre, La CGT y el 17.



26. El Dia, 20 October 1945.

27. Reyes, Yo hice el 17, p. 225.

28. Popular Memory Group, "Popular memory: theory, politics, method," in Richard Johnson, et. al., Making histories: studies in history writing and politics (London, 1982), p. 217. 29. Luisa Passerini, "Work ideology and consciousness under Italian Fascism," History Workshop


460 journal of social history journal (Autumn, 1979). 30. Eclea Bosi, Memoria e Sociedade: lembrangas de velhos (Sao Paulo, 1979), p. 271.

31. El Mundo, 18 October 1949.

32. Michelle Perrot, Les ouvriers en greve, France 1871-1890 (Paris, 1974), p. 548.

33. Interview with Alfonso Lopez, La Plata, July, 1985.

34. See Ernesto Goldar, La literatura peronista, in Gonzalo Cardenas, et.al., El peronismo (Buenos Aires, 1969). 35. La Nation, 18 October 1945.



38. Cited in Angel Perelman, Como hicimos el 17 de octubre (Buenos Aires, 1961), p. 78. Murga means in porteno slang, a group of musicians who at Carnival wander the streets giving impromptu recitals.

39. A "compadrito" was a term taken from Buenos Aires slang and tango. It referred to a street corner tough, a neighbourhood 'spiv' who adopted a particular code of machista behaviour and dress code. A clear implication of petty criminality was attached to the term.

40. La Vanguardia, 23 October 1945.

41. Bruce Lincoln, "Revolutionary exhumations in Spain, July 1936", Comparative Studies in Society and History 27 (April, 1985).

42. Interview with Jose P. Lunazzi, La Plata, July, 1985.

43. See Perrot, Les ouvriers en greve. Also note Elias Canetti's general comment: "The crowd particularly likes destroying houses and objects: breakable objects like window panes, mirrors, pictures and crockery; . . .the destruction of representative images is the destruction of a hierarchy which is no longer recognized. It is the violation of generally established and universally visible and valid distances." Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power (New \brk, 1984), p. 19.


45. Ibid.


47. E.P. Thompson, "18th Century English society: class struggle without class," Social History (May, 1978). 48. La Capital, 20 October 1945.

49. La Vanguardia, 23 October 1945.

50. Interview with Alfredo Panelli, La Plata, July 1985.

51. Thompson, "18th Century English Society."




53. Critica was situated about 100 meters from the Plaza de Mayo. The shooting lasted for more than two hours before any police detachments arrived. For details see La Nacidn, 18 October 1945.

54. Ibid.

55. For the notion of the 'public sphere' see Michael Bommes and Patrick Wright, "

'Charms of residence:' the public and the past," in Johnson et.al, Making histories, pp. 253-260; Pierre


57. Critica, 17 October 1945.

58. Interview with Cipriano Reyes, La Plata, August 1985.


60. La Prensa, 5 May 1910.

61. Critica, 17 October 1945.


Article Contentsp. [441]p. 442p. 443p. 444p. 445p. 446p. 447p. 448p. 449p. 450p. 451p. 452p. 453p. 454p. 455p. 456p. 457p. 458p. 459p. 460p. 461

Issue Table of ContentsJournal of Social History, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Spring, 1988), pp. 413-606Front Matter [pp. 462-538]'That Disposition to Theft, with Which They Have Been Branded': Moral Economy, Slave Management, and the Law [pp. 413-440]October 17th and 18th, 1945: Mass Protest, Peronism and the Argentine Working Class [pp. 441-461]The "Vie Chre" Riots of 1911: Traditional Protests in Modern Garb [pp. 463-481]Girls in Trouble: The Social and Geographical Setting of Illegitimacy in Early Modern Scotland [pp. 483-497]Divorce and the Law in England and France Prior to the First World War [pp. 499-513]The Limits of Responsibility: Social Welfare and Local Government in Seneca County, New York 1860-1875 [pp. 515-537]ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 539-542]Review: untitled [pp. 542-544]Review: untitled [pp. 544-545]Review: untitled [pp. 545-547]Review: untitled [pp. 547-550]Review: untitled [pp. 550-552]Review: untitled [pp. 553-554]Review: untitled [pp. 555-557]Review: untitled [pp. 557-558]Review: untitled [pp. 559-561]Review: untitled [pp. 561-563]Review: untitled [pp. 563-566]Review: untitled [pp. 566-569]Review: untitled [pp. 569-571]Review: untitled [pp. 571-574]Review: untitled [pp. 574-577]Review: untitled [pp. 578-579]Review: untitled [pp. 580-582]Review: untitled [pp. 582-583]Review: untitled [pp. 584-587]Review: untitled [pp. 587-589]Review: untitled [pp. 589-594]Review: untitled [pp. 594-595]Review: untitled [pp. 596-597]Review: untitled [pp. 597-599]Review: untitled [pp. 599-601]Review: untitled [pp. 601-603]Review: untitled [pp. 604-606]

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Mass protest

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