Agrarianism and social conflict in Tucumán in the 1920s Abstract

Abstract

In the framework of a persistent situation of sugar cane overproduction, the «cañeros» (sugar cane farmers and peasants) of Tucumán held an agrarianist conception that gave them support in the deep social conflict against the «ingenios» (sugar factories), which led to the first agrarian producers’ strike in the Province in 1927. The solution of the strike, trough the arbitration of President Marcelo T. de Alvear, brings substantial changes in the operation of the sugar industry, especially in their distributive patterns. This «cañeros’ version» of agrarianism vindicated the necessary participation of small and medium- sized sugar cane producers as a proof of the social democracy in the rural scene, denounced the abuses by the ingenios and maintained the necessity that sugar cane producers obtained an adequate retribution by their production. This conception not only gave life to this social movement; its peculiarity consisted in its political projection, because the political parties that integrated the provincial legislative body adopted these postulates, and besides it gave birth to a new organization, the Agrarian Party, that obtained a legislative representation at the end of the decade.