In the past 10 years the Federación Obrera Regional Argentina (FORA, or Argentine Regional Workers’ Federation) has experienced growth and an uptick in activity as a new generation of organizers has claimed the organization’s heritage and methods, and has tried to organize in a new situation. Argentina has undergone deep changes in the years following the economic and political collapse of 2001 that rocked the country. As the economy came unhinged, unemployment surged, a popular revolt overturned a series of governments, new forms of collective resistance and organization emerged, and a neo-Peronist populist response strengthened nationalist politics in the country.
Today FORA has four locals called Sociedades de Resistencia (Resistance Societies) in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires. Historically, Resistance Societies came out of First International syndicalist thought in Spain and Latin American countries. This tradition remained strongest in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay. Resistance Societies were locals based in an area and often combined workers of different crafts. Today they function somewhat like IWW general membership branches (GMBs) with committees of workers within. FORA workers have been organizing in restaurants, bars, schools, and in printing. Organizers have taken on grievances and used direct action across Buenos Aires. The union has a constant presence of propaganda in various neighborhoods and workplaces, holds regular assemblies for workers in different workplaces, and organizes committees when possible. Nationally, the union has been active in publicizing and fighting for the release of oil workers sentenced to life in prison after a protest led to the death of a policeman and the workers were rounded up and locked up in 2014.
Similar to our own experiences in the IWW during the early 2000s, this push towards direct organizing of workers meant coming up against activist and political cultures largely insulated from workers’ struggles. Wobblies at the time experienced hostility from activists inside the organization and from outside groups. Organizing began to disrupt activists’ ability to use the union as their social space and clashed with the uniformity of those scenes. FORA distinguishes itself from political organizations and activist subcultures through its activity centered on workplaces and the needs of workers in their daily lives. Historically, unions modeled after FORA in Latin America called themselves “finalist,” meaning that they were built to meet final goals, the establishment of anarchist society freed from the state and capitalism. Today FORA is clear on these goals and stays focused in their day-to-day work. If people want to try and reform the existing bureaucratic unions, do activist work under the FORA banner, or agitate against the union’s goals, the membership has a culture of staying on target and keeping those activities outside the union. Meetings are set to discuss union-related activities of members and give organizing advice, and that is moderated and enforced.
In March 2015 I accompanied FORA members who were agitating workers across a large restaurant and bar district in Buenos Aires. The union played a message over a loudspeaker from their van, marched with flags with the image of rats (a symbol for the bosses), and distributed information about the union and how workers can improve their conditions.
I also was able to attend a meeting that aimed to organize teachers and was well-attended by teachers from the community. This consisted of a thorough discussion not only of conditions and unionizing, but also problems with pedagogical content taught in the schools, the social situation of students and families, and the intervention of the bureaucratic unions and state to perpetuate it. On March 24, FORA celebrated the day of memory and resistance commemorated nationally for the victory over the dictatorship in Argentina that lasted from 1976 to 1983. FORA participated in the march, distributing flyers about repression against the working class and the need for organization, playing drums and singing songs based on traditions from soccer and the working-class struggle in Argentina, and holding banners of the different resistance societies.
FORA has a long and rich history in being the largest and most active organization of its kind; perhaps only behind the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) in Spain. At its peak it was the dominant force in Argentina’s labor movement for decades. FORA was formed in the late 1800s out of anarchist organizing of the first unions of the country. The unions united in 1901 and founded a federation, which later grew to a height of hundreds of thousands of members. FORA set a model which spread across Latin America to Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Mexico and other countries. Throughout its history it took revolution seriously, leading revolutionary strikes that seized areas and began constructing a liberatory society in key insurrectionary moments. Also, it faced unparalleled repression with thousands murdered, deported, and arrested in the Semana Trágica (Tragic Week—a series of riots, led by anarchists and communists, and massacres that took place in Buenos Aires during the week of Jan. 7, 1919), the Patagonia rebelde (the name given to the violent suppression of a rural workers’ strike in the Argentine province of Santa Cruz in Patagonia between 1920 and 1922), the general strike of yerba mate workers, and throughout a series of dictatorships. The FORA was attacked repeatedly by the Radicales (social democratic party), the dictatorships of Hipólito Yrigoyen and later Juan Perón, but maintained active unions until its last congress of 1978 during the brutal dictatorship that took FORA decades to recover from. At its height it had multiple daily papers, countless locals and unions, and was unparalleled in the depth of its activity and thinking. This history is little known or discussed but continues today with the actions of young FORA members who maintain the same space occupied by the FORA for nearly a century in the working-class neighborhood of La Boca. The IWW would benefit from deepening our relationships and exchanges with our comrades in Argentina who share our same fight with their own contributions to give.
Transcribed by Juan Conatz