Workers' associations, protests and social policies in Tucumán (1890-1907)

Abstract

This report seeks to comment on what was done within the framework of the Scientific and Technological Research Project (PICT) 2010 No. 1929, of the National Agency for Scientific and Technical Promotion (ANCYPT), Argentina, of which I was the Responsible Researcher. In these pages I will outline the purposes , the main hypotheses, the concepts used and some of the results obtained in the research.

Overall objective

The project had the general objective of analyzing the practices and discourses of workers 'associations (mutuals, unions, workers' centers and Catholic circles) aimed at improving living and working conditions in Tucumán. This purpose included two dimensions of analysis: the sectorial one that involved the demands and protests to the employers and the questioning aimed at the different public powers such as the municipality and the provincial state. The workers' actions had different voices as interlocutors: the hygienist doctors, philanthropic societies such as the Charitable Society and the press that spoke on issues of health and hygiene, housing, working conditions, the situation of working women, the role of mothers and the problem of child labor. Some of these topics crystallized in projects and laws, coming from various ideological and political coordinates, which were intended to mitigate the harsh working and living conditions of workers in the late Tucumán.

The deepening of the sugar specialization involved the formation of a heterogeneous mass of workers gathered around the mills and promoted a disorderly urbanization, especially in the city of San Miguel de Tucumán, which degraded living and working conditions in the areas rural and urban. In such a scenario, the concern for health and housing issues was activated by the influence of the first organized demonstrations of workers' protest, whose peak of conflict manifested itself in 1904 with the first strike of sugar workers that implied in the next five years the adoption of the First labor laws and measures to correct hygiene and safety conditions in work spaces.