State versus agricultural cooperatives. The construction of grain elevators (1930-1932)

Abstract

Cooperative experience among Argentinean farmers consolidates during the 20ies by the constitution of the Association of Argentinean Cooperatives (ACA), which was the first second grade cooperative institution created in the country. This agrarian cooperativism was clearly conscious of the fundamental problems that the rural sector was suffering: precarious situation of most of the farmers, scarcity of agrarian credit and obsolet infraestructure. Willing to contribute to the resolution of this last problem, ACA started from 1930 the construction of a grains elevators system. The present historical study intends to analyze two types of rural conflicts: 1) the reaction against public policies, produced between Central of Cooperatives and its associates and President Juan B. Justo, who suspended State subsidiary warranty for elevators building works; 2) inter-sectors conflicts between Association of Argentinean Cooperatives (ACA) and the Agrarian Federation, which related to the concession of elevators from Rosario harbour affluence area. The general aim of this work is to link integration and development of the cooperative movement with different proccesses: the interventionist agrarian state politics of the 30ies; the influence of ACa; the role of many different representative institutions of the heterogeneous social net that was knitted around the rural production. The purpose is not only to highlight the derivative changes of the decline of an outwards directed model of growth, but also to clarify the continuities that helped to preserve the more general and historical Argentinean agrarian profile.