Argentina 1875-1902

Synopsis

Argentina gained its independence from Spain in 1810. By the middle of the 1800s, workers had started organizing mutual aid societies. Beginning in the 1870s, the Argentine labor movement gradually established its presence with the development of important trade unions. As economic development spread across Argentina in the last half of the nineteenth century, trade unions had to change with the changing times. Most members of the labor movement had originated as immigrant workers from Spain, Italy, Portugal, Germany, and other European countries. Many of these workers had been affiliated both with trade unions and with radical political groups in their native countries. As a result, socialists and anarchist philosophies played important roles in the establishment of Argentina's first national congress of Argentinean trade unions and the founding of the Federación Obrera de la República Argentina (Workers' Federation of the...