In Argentina, the period that began with General José Félix Uriburu’s coup of September 1930 and ended with a further military intervention in June 1943 left an indelible mark on the nation’s popular historical consciousness, coming to be known – at least initially – as the ‘Infamous Decade’.Footnote 1 To shed fresh light on everyday experiences of state power and ideological conflict during the 1930–43 period, this article concentrates on the often-overlooked minutiae of political activists’ daily encounters with both the authorities and each other, including where and when they held their political gatherings; the symbols and clothing that they displayed and wore in public; and the ways in which they laid claim to the urban landscape through acts of political ‘vandalism’, such as daubing slogans on walls or uprooting flagpoles.
The years immediately preceding the coup of 1930 had seen growing hostility towards the Radical Civic Union (UCR) government of Hipólito Yrigoyen who, first elected president in 1916, had won re-election in 1928.Footnote 2 For the right, Yrigoyen increasingly embodied the ‘degeneracy’ of the democratic system and, against the backdrop of an economic downturn precipitated by the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and bolstered by the rising frustration towards the government within Argentina more broadly, a combination of ‘old right conservatives’ and ‘new right’ nationalists backed a military conspiracy to seize power.Footnote 3 The ensuing dictatorship ushered in a cycle of military coups that continued to interrupt democratic governance for the following fifty years.Footnote 4 Uriburu oversaw the suspension of civil rights and the repression of his political opponents.Footnote 5 Left-wing militants were tortured, deported, and – in some cases – executed.Footnote 6 His support eventually collapsed after he permitted the Buenos Aires provincial elections to go ahead in April 1931: convinced that the nationalists would triumph, his position became untenable when a majority of the electorate opted for the UCR, instead.Footnote 7
After Uriburu resigned, General Agustín P. Justo assumed the presidency in February 1932, leading a conservative coalition known as the Concordancia.Footnote 8 Nevertheless, though, formally, the dictatorship had ended, the following years were characterized by widespread electoral fraud and corruption.Footnote 9 Despite its ‘moderate’ appearance, Justo’s government presided over an increasingly efficient system of state repression, deploying both torture and surveillance as a matter of course.Footnote 10 Between 1931 and 1934 alone, the Capital Police’s Political Order unit imprisoned some 10,000 people, and tortured 500.Footnote 11 Whilst the governments of the Concordancia maintained a veneer of democratic legitimacy, their repressive practices encapsulate the ‘continuities’ between the Uriburu regime and the ostensibly more liberal administrations of Justo (1932–8), Roberto Ortiz (1938–42), and Ramón Castillo (1942–3).Footnote 12 Consequently, rather than focusing solely on the outright dictatorship of Uriburu, this article covers the whole of the 1930–43 period.
Of course, the repression of these years was not without precedent. For instance, prior to 1916, Argentine governments had regarded labour militancy generally as ‘a police matter’, introducing anti-labour legislation such as the 1902 Residency Law (which facilitated the deportation of foreign-born militants) and the 1910 Social Defence Law.Footnote 13 At times, Yrigoyen himself had adopted a belligerent attitude towards organized labour, using violence repeatedly to suppress strikers.Footnote 14 Yet the period discussed here not only saw the continuation of authoritarian trends already apparent before 1930, but their intensification, too, featuring both the expansion of state surveillance and, also, the rise to prominence of far right ‘nationalist’ forces in Argentine politics.Footnote 15
Early scholarship on the 1930–43 period emphasized mainly the ‘decadence and corruption’ of these years, as the term ‘Infamous Decade’ – coined in the 1940s – indicates.Footnote 16 At the same time, it often portrayed this period as merely ‘transitional’; bridging the gap between Argentina’s ‘old liberal republic’ and the Perón era.Footnote 17 In fact, until the late twentieth century, scholars continued to focus on this period as, first and foremost, a means of understanding the subsequent rise of peronismo.Footnote 18 For example, in his seminal 1983 study, Hiroshi Matsushita highlights what he sees as the ideological shifts that occurred within Argentina’s major trade unions between 1930 and 1945, to explain the widespread support that Juan Domingo Perón later enjoyed among workers.Footnote 19 Similarly, though he acknowledges that viewing the 1930s simply ‘as a prelude’ to Perón’s rise to power can prove reductive, David Tamarin’s 1985 book on the Argentine labour movement (another critical study of the years 1930–45) remains, as its title suggests, primarily a study of the ‘origins of Peronism’.Footnote 20 Since the 1990s, the historiography has situated the political developments of this period within broader historical processes (for instance, challenging the supposed exceptionalism of electoral fraud under the Concordancia) and within international and transnational frameworks.Footnote 21 To take just one example, Tulio Halperín Donghi has revealed the ways in which, during the 1930s and 1940s, political commentators in Argentina understood and related to the wider crises affecting the world at that time.Footnote 22 Above all, historical scholarship has posited increasingly more complex interpretations of the so-called ‘Infamous Decade’, by contesting binary understandings of ideological divisions, and stressing the complexity of the country’s political and cultural make-up.Footnote 23
Nevertheless, this article differs from most previous research on the 1930–43 period in two respects. Firstly, it adopts ‘the everyday’ as an analytical framework to explore the lived experiences of political activists during these years. The term ‘everyday life’ is difficult to define precisely, and the nature of everyday life history has generated considerable disagreement.Footnote 24 However, there is a common thread running through most historical studies of this kind: by focusing on the ‘micro-scale’, they emphasize individual subjectivities and the agency (albeit limited) of individual, historical actors.Footnote 25 Most importantly, the history of everyday life stresses the ‘messiness’ of historical experiences – the complexities and contradictions of events, practices, and relationships.Footnote 26 As a result, this approach is well-suited to examining the relationship between the state and the populace; a relationship that is itself ‘messy’, especially in the context of authoritarian regimes, where it can involve coercion, co-option, resistance, and consent, simultaneously.Footnote 27 In Argentina, everyday life history has already proved fruitful for scholars of the country’s last (and most violent) military dictatorship (1976–83), highlighting the experiences of both victims and perpetrators of state violence, including prisoners held in the state’s clandestine detention centres and, most recently, ‘military’ families.Footnote 28 For its part, this article illustrates how, in everyday life, rank-and-file political activists experienced and negotiated a particularly complex, contradictory, and – to put it simply – ‘messy’ period of governance in Argentina, worthy of study in its own right. After all, these years featured not only a military dictatorship, but also a series of governments that, despite claiming democratic credentials, exhibited highly authoritarian and antidemocratic tendencies – all within (as discussed below) an increasingly polarized political landscape.
Secondly, to further our understanding of the extent of state power during these years – and both the heterogeneity and variability of activists’ everyday experiences – this article explores a range of geographical and political contexts. Whilst scholars of the period have centred generally on the Argentine capital or the province of Buenos Aires, this study draws evidence from across the country, including both urban and rural areas.Footnote 29 Rather than focusing on a particular political party, organization, or ideological tendency, it incorporates experiences from across the political spectrum, ranging from anarchists to fascists.
The following sections focus on three core themes that were central to the politics of everyday life during these years: control, resistance, and ideological conflict. The first section explores one of the main ways in which state power continued to make itself felt in activists’ daily lives throughout the country: police control over public spaces. In turn, the second section illustrates how political activists resisted state control through ‘everyday’ practices (such as lying to the authorities) which, though not necessarily as ‘visible’ to historians as more overt forms of resistance (such as launching mass strike action), nevertheless remain important to assessing how, in everyday life, state power was experienced, negotiated, and contested. Finally, the third section highlights how the growing polarization of Argentine politics shaped activists’ everyday experiences, too. It concentrates, above all, on the ways in which ideological conflicts (for example, between fascists and antifascists) manifested themselves in everyday practices and encounters, and how they left their mark, spatially, on both rural and urban neighbourhoods.
The analysis draws mainly on police sources which, in Argentina, provide particularly valuable insights into the daily routines, behaviours, and experiences of historical actors, since police not only maintained a presence on the street, but also in tenement buildings, cafés, and bars, in large cities and rural communities alike.Footnote 30 Of course, as with all primary sources, records produced by police officers need to be treated with caution. Yet historians of political and social movements must be equally cautious with sources produced by activists, too: that is, neither the accounts of political dissidents nor those of their oppressors should be ‘accepted uncritically’.Footnote 31
I
As in earlier periods, the police were essential to repressing political dissent in Argentina between 1930 and 1943, and one of the main ways in which they did this was by imposing strict limits on the use of the street and other meeting places for political purposes; in other words, by ‘moulding’ and limiting the capacity for resistance within public spaces.Footnote 32 In the Argentine context, public space had long been a key site in the struggle for political representation and expression.Footnote 33 Since the earliest years of the Latin American republics, public spaces had often served as ‘sites for the display of protest and unrest’ and, as Hilda Sábato argues, mass demonstrations had proved integral to the emergence of a ‘public sphere’ in nineteenth-century Argentina.Footnote 34 Despite this, the right to public assembly remained ill-defined: it had never been codified formally and, though the 1853 constitution had implied the existence of such a right, it had not recognized the right to public assembly explicitly.Footnote 35 The resulting ambiguity meant that, in practice, it was police forces who determined what meetings were permitted within their jurisdictions: through a complex patchwork of police edicts, they had become the de facto arbiters of acceptable political activity in public spaces.Footnote 36 After toppling Yrigoyen, Uriburu imposed martial law and declared a ‘state of siege’.Footnote 37 Yet the police edicts and regulations issued during the 1930–43 period highlight how, even after Justo lifted the state of siege in February 1932, the authorities continued to exercise tight control over the use of public spaces for ‘political’ ends.Footnote 38
In March 1932, the Capital Police issued an edict regulating the right to public assembly in the city of Buenos Aires. This edict – justified by the ‘uncivilized’ nature of political assembles in the years leading up to Uriburu’s coup – stipulated that anyone wishing to organize a public meeting needed to provide at least five days’ notice, the names and addresses of all organizers, a list of speakers, and the location and time of the proposed meeting.Footnote 39 Those in breach of this edict faced up to thirty days in prison, and its proclamation led to the arrest of hundreds of political activists.Footnote 40 A federal police force would not be established until 1944, and the formation of centralized provincial police forces – under the direct command of provincial governors – was still incomplete (the police forces of Córdoba province, for instance, remained decentralized until the 1970s).Footnote 41 Accordingly, the extent and form of policing of public spaces in Argentina varied considerably. The Capital Police received orders directly from the central government: the March 1932 edict had been issued at the request of then-minister of the interior Leopoldo Melo.Footnote 42 In September 1936, the Ministry of the Interior requested information from all provinces and National Territories about edicts and regulations concerning the right to public assembly that had been issued in their jurisdictions since 2 June 1932.Footnote 43 In its (belated) response, on 12 May 1937, the National Territory of Chubut claimed that, rather than issuing formal regulations, it dealt with such matters simply on a ‘case-by-case’ basis.Footnote 44 Similarly, on 1 October 1936, police in the National Territory of Neuquén confirmed that they had not issued any relevant edicts or regulations either, or disbanded any meetings.Footnote 45 In contrast, in a letter dated 10 November 1936, the governor of La Rioja referred to the provincial police code, which required that organizers give twenty-four hours’ notice for all public meetings, including the day, time, location, and purpose of these events.Footnote 46
Whilst regulations concerning the right to public assembly varied between localities, sometimes they even varied within jurisdictions. For instance, on 15 August 1936, the head of police for the National Territory of El Chaco confirmed that, whilst organizers of public meetings in enclosed spaces in Resistencia – the Territory’s capital – were required to give forty-eight hours’ notice, organizers of similar events in the interior needed to alert the authorities at least four days beforehand.Footnote 47 Furthermore, local authorities often limited political activities in very specific areas. On 26 July 1933, Commissioner Leandro A. Berón in Posadas (National Territory of Misiones) issued an edict in response to ‘the continual meetings of a political character that often take place on the central corners of this city’, and which ‘straddle the limits of polite society’.Footnote 48 From that day onwards, neither ‘public nor trade union meetings’ would be permitted in the radius of the following streets: Rivadavia, Entre Ríos, Junín, and Santa Fe.Footnote 49 Equally, on 15 April 1935, the head of police in Tucumán complained that too many groups had sought permission to hold meetings in the city’s Independence Square.Footnote 50 As a result, future permissions would only be granted for meetings in private locales, or in one of five other local squares.Footnote 51 These edicts illustrate how local police adapted their control over public spaces on an ad hoc basis, in response to everyday political activities on the ground. In Tucumán, meetings were banned in Independence Square following a visit by Colonel Emilio Kinkelín – head of the Argentine Civic Legion (LCA), a paramilitary nationalist organization formed in 1931 – to the city in April 1935, which had culminated in violent clashes between LCA militants and antifascists.Footnote 52
As well as placing restrictions on where activists could engage in political activities, the authorities also sought to control when this could take place. For example, the 1934 police code for La Rioja specified that public meetings could only be held in places ‘accessible to all citizens, such as squares, streets, and promenades’ between seven o’clock in the morning and seven o’clock at night.Footnote 53 Similarly, on 11 December 1934, police in Mendoza issued an edict complaining that, given the ongoing ‘political campaigning’ – presumably for the provincial gubernatorial elections due to take place on 6 January 1935 – ‘political parties, mediated by their members, put up written propaganda during the hours of night and early hours of the morning’.Footnote 54Apparently, these activities led to ‘disorder with serious consequences for the peace and sleep of the rest of the population’.Footnote 55 Consequently, the police ruled that flyers and bulletins could not be put up between half past one and five o’clock in the morning.Footnote 56 In other words, activists were required to schedule their public political practices – such as holding meetings or distributing propaganda materials – within strict parameters and, in this sense, whether consciously or otherwise, police determined the temporality – or ‘rhythm’ – of political activism. In at least some jurisdictions, these parameters were enforced rigidly: in February 1934, a meeting in support of German Jews was denied permission for being scheduled to start at nine o’clock in the evening; too late, according to the Capital Police’s aforementioned public assembly edict.Footnote 57
Crucially, police records demonstrate repeatedly the limits placed on freedom of expression within activist spaces. Following the coup of 1930, the anarchist movement – which had once dominated Argentine labour – declined significantly, but the Argentine Communist Party (PCA) began to make considerable gains.Footnote 58 Under the presidency of Justo, the rise of communism became one of the authorities’ primary justifications for expanding the state’s repressive apparatus, and a range of anti-communist measures were implemented across the country.Footnote 59 In May 1936, the provincial governments of Buenos Aires, Salta, and Mendoza all issued decrees to suppress the communist movement, paving the way for a national Law for the Repression of Communism, approved by the Argentine Senate that same year.Footnote 60 Accordingly, local authorities refused permission for meetings regularly on the grounds of suspected communist involvement, even if the PCA was not implicated directly. In April 1936, Córdoba police prohibited a meeting organized jointly by the Socialist Party (PS) and the Pro Workers’ Unity Committee, following reports indicating that this committee was ‘clearly a communist organization’.Footnote 61 Similarly, the Capital Police denied the Pro Amnesty for Political and Social Prisoners Committee permission to hold a meeting on 16 September 1935 since it would be ‘comprised of delegates from various unions of communist ideology’.Footnote 62 In this context, police records also illustrate the particular difficulties that female activists faced when engaging in public political discourse. In Buenos Aires, a ‘women’s meeting’ of the Construction Workers’ Union, due to take place on 23 December 1935, was prohibited not because of its communist leanings – the Union, then leading a mass strike in the capital involving some 60,000 workers, was a PCA stronghold – but because, for the police, ‘the intervention of people of the female sex was not justified’.Footnote 63
When political assemblies did take place, police kept a close eye on proceedings and were prepared to disband meetings if speakers criticized the authorities. For instance, a report compiled by Córdoba’s Ministry of Governance on 10 November 1936 described an incident on 18 June 1932, when the University Federation – representing university students across Argentina – had held a meeting in the provincial capital.Footnote 64 Head of police Julio de Vertiz had ordered this meeting to be dissolved after the crowd had begun shouting ‘insults directed towards the authorities’.Footnote 65 Equally, in a report dated 14 May 1937, the head of police in Sastre (Santa Fe province) referred to three meetings in which his officers had intervened directly ‘because the speakers were expressing themselves in a pejorative way’ towards the country’s president and national government.Footnote 66 At all these meetings – the first two held by the UCR on 8 and 13 January 1937, respectively, and the third held by the PS on 21 February 1937 – the police had forced speakers to leave the podium.Footnote 67
To monitor what was said at political meetings, the authorities relied on an extensive programme of surveillance. By the 1930s, police in Argentina already boasted a long history of espionage: first formed within the Buenos Aires Police in 1875, the Bureau of Investigations (originally called the Bureau of Inquiries) was a ‘precursor to the state’s intelligence agencies’.Footnote 68 During the period under study here, the police’s surveillance capabilities expanded dramatically: in 1932, the Capital Police’s Special Section – a body formed in 1931 and tasked with the suppression of communism – carried out some 586 acts of surveillance on the locales of left-wing organizations, and 574 acts of surveillance ‘in squares and public places’; the previous year, these figures had been 311 and 388, respectively.Footnote 69 Police officers attended meetings of activist groups regularly, relaying to their superiors what had been discussed. For example, a report by the head of the Social Order Section of the Rosario police, dated 18 September 1938, noted that an officer had attended an event held at the Spanish Republican Union Centre, where he had observed Dr Ana Piacenza – a lawyer who occupied prominent positions in both the Argentine and Spanish anarchist movements – deliver a speech.Footnote 70 A further report, dated 29 April 1939, recounted how another officer had attended an event held by the anarcho-syndicalist Argentine Regional Workers’ Federation (FORA), in support of political prisoners.Footnote 71 As well as targeting specific groups and individuals, law enforcement agents listened in on conversations in public meeting places such as popular drinking spots. In a report for the governor of the National Territory of Chubut, dated 13 February 1939, Commissioner Víctor Panutto referred to discussions that had taken place ‘in the hotels or bars’ of Puerto Madryn, where locals debated the ongoing civil war in Spain.Footnote 72
Yet despite the expansion of police surveillance during these years, the authorities’ control over political activities was neither limitless nor consistent. The continued success of the PCA – which, despite the formation of specialist police bodies dedicated to containing the communist threat, managed to establish key industrial unions and led some of the largest strikes of the period – provides one of the clearest examples of these limitations.Footnote 73 At times, it was simply incompetence that rendered police measures ineffective. In a report dated 18 October 1933, Joaquín Cusell – head of the Capital Police’s Special Section – complained that, in the city of Córdoba, police officers’ ignorance of left-wing politics was seriously impeding their efforts to suppress communism: in many cases, they simply did not understand the distinction between ‘anarchists’, ‘socialists’, and ‘communists’.Footnote 74 Furthermore, police measures regarding public assemblies could change significantly, as police forces updated the edicts that they issued continually, both tightening and loosening their level of control. On 17 September 1936, the Capital Police issued a corrective to the edict of March 1932: from this point onwards, organizers of meetings in enclosed spaces had to give four days’ (rather than forty-eight hours’) notice.Footnote 75 In contrast, on 7 December 1934, police in La Plata revoked parts of an edict on public assemblies issued on 18 April 1932 because, in the intervening period, the Supreme Court had declared it unconstitutional.Footnote 76 In other words, examining evidence from across the country – rather than one specific locality or province – illustrates how, whilst the police exercised control over public spaces throughout the 1930–43 period, this control remained fluid; it oscillated over time and varied considerably from place to place, in response to developments at local, territorial, provincial, and national levels.
The fluctuating level of control exercised over public spaces not only reflects the fragmentary nature of Argentine policing at this time but, more broadly, the erratic policies of the state. Writing in 1983, Ricardo Gaudio and Jorge Pilone argue that the governments of the Concordancia increasingly assumed the role of mediator in industrial disputes whilst, conversely, Tamarin maintains that these governments were actually just as hostile to organized labour as Uriburu had been.Footnote 77 However, Joel Horowitz has pointed out that government policies towards the labour movement were, in fact, far from consistent.Footnote 78 Not only did the Concordancia governments tend to deal with unions ‘on an ad hoc and case-by-case basis’, but government ministries were often at logger-heads with one another, as provincial- and national-level state entities vied for influence, too.Footnote 79 On many occasions, and despite the range of anti-communist measures discussed above, government agencies – namely, the National Labour Department – actually negotiated with communist-led unions.Footnote 80 More generally, the political direction of the country was changing constantly: during the early years of the Justo administration – and throughout the tenure of Ortiz – the repression that had been unleashed under Uriburu was somewhat tempered but, upon assuming the presidency in 1942, Castillo again sought to restrict mass participation in the political system.Footnote 81 Crucially, for trade unions, this inconsistency meant that ‘the line between acceptable and unacceptable behavior was very thin and never defined’, and, undoubtedly, that same uncertainty was shared by rank-and-file activists from across the political spectrum when they attempted to meet and organize in public spaces.Footnote 82
II
Whilst political control (albeit inconsistent) was central to activists’ experiences of state power between 1930 and 1943, resistance to this control was a regular part of everyday life, too. At times, the Argentine state faced sustained – and, sometimes, violent – opposition. Given Yrigoyen’s previous hostility to workers (in 1920–22, for instance, his government had overseen the repression of striking labourers in Patagonia, resulting in some 1,500 deaths), the initial response of the labour movement to Uriburu’s coup was muted, but UCR-supporting military officers waged an armed struggle against the new regime, instigating military insurrections in July 1931 and December 1933.Footnote 83 However, due to the severity of political repression at certain points during this period, ‘open’, direct, and violent forms of resistance were not always viable. In February 1933, La Protesta – Argentina’s principal anarchist newspaper – announced that ‘without Justo having declared himself dictator or “de facto” governor, we are living through a period of dictatorship’.Footnote 84 Therefore, the authors proclaimed, ‘the [anarchist] movement cannot operate in public’, and so it was necessary to engage in propaganda activities ‘appropriate to a relative or total clandestinity, according to the scale of the repression’.Footnote 85 Anthropologist James C. Scott notes that the ‘political life’ of the oppressed often expresses itself ‘in the vast territory’ that lies between ‘overt collective defiance of powerholders’ and ‘complete hegemonic compliance’.Footnote 86 His term ‘everyday forms of resistance’ refers to what he calls ‘the circumspect struggle waged daily by subordinate groups’.Footnote 87 Specifically, it denotes ‘low-profile forms of resistance’ that might take place ‘offstage’ or be ‘disguised’ in some other way.Footnote 88 Of course, in this context, Scott is not referring primarily to the practices of those engaged in organized, ‘formal’ political activism. Yet whilst the people discussed in this article were self-consciously and explicitly ‘political’ actors, their everyday practices frequently bore a resemblance to what Scott describes: small, ‘indirect’ acts of resistance that formed a key part of their lived experiences.
Firstly, when left-wing activists came into contact with the authorities, they often resorted to what Scott calls ‘petty acts’ such as ‘insubordination and evasion’.Footnote 89 In a report concerning the PCA in Córdoba, dated 18 October 1933, Joaquín Cusell referred to meetings hosted by a local mechanic with communist sympathies.Footnote 90 Workers at a nearby factory had attended these meetings which, allegedly, had been organized to recruit communist sympathizers.Footnote 91 The attendees claimed that the purpose of these gatherings was to play chess but, upon raiding the mechanic’s home, the police found no evidence to corroborate this.Footnote 92 In a similar incident, on 15 August 1943, the Rosario police arrested a man after a raid turned up ‘a quantity of Communist propaganda material’ in his home, including copies of PCA newspapers La Hora and Orientación.Footnote 93 Crucially, this individual had also been arrested for his alleged ‘communist activities’ during the period under study here, in 1935.Footnote 94 When questioned in 1943, he denied being a member of the PCA, but he confessed that, when arrested previously – in a raid on the local party headquarters – he had concealed his true identity by giving a false name.Footnote 95
Communists also engaged in what Scott describes as ‘false compliance’, adapting their behaviour just enough to appear to comply with orders.Footnote 96 For instance, a police report dated 13 January 1937 noted that the governor of Córdoba had recently requested that the PCA take steps to conceal its presence in the centre of the provincial capital – in the areas ‘most visible to tourists’ – so as to ‘compromise the government as little as possible’.Footnote 97 Ostensibly, the PCA’s Regional Committee had assented, by installing a kiosk at the entrance to its locale on Alvear Street that sold ‘cigars, cigarettes, and magazines’.Footnote 98 Yet despite this concession, it also kept a display of ‘books by extremist writers and other publications from Moscow’ in the window.Footnote 99 The report even complained that ‘after seven o’clock at night one notes daily the influx of affiliates, [the locale] therefore maintaining the same characteristics and same activities as before’.Footnote 100 Of course, many dispute whether such acts of ‘coping’, ‘avoidance’, ‘survival’, or ‘accommodation’ should, in fact, be classified as acts of resistance.Footnote 101 However, in the examples cited above, efforts to avoid detection, stress one’s deniability, and continue propaganda under the guise of ‘false compliance’ all, to varying degrees, hindered the authorities’ efforts to exert and maintain control. Even if ‘avoidance strategies’ (such as giving a false name) do not necessarily constitute acts of resistance in and of themselves, they can, at least, prepare the ground for future resistant acts, not least by helping activists to continue their clandestine political activities.Footnote 102
Other forms of resistance were woven into the fabric of everyday life itself, manifesting in continual daily practices through which people communicated their opposition to the regime.Footnote 103 For example, dress became an increasingly important political signifier during this period, with activists asserting their ideological affiliations through what they wore. A report from the Rosario police, dated 15 May 1937, noted that members of the Committee for the Support and Reconstruction of Spain – which, after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, played a vital role in coordinating local antifascist activities – often flaunted clothing worn by Spanish Republican troops, such as ‘the classic militiaman’s cap with red brocade’ and ‘overalls and insignia representing a closed fist’.Footnote 104 Earlier that month, a local man had been arrested for wearing a Spanish Republican army hat (see Figure 1).Footnote 105 Sure enough, upon searching his home, the police had found materials pertaining to both the aforementioned committee and also the local Spanish Republican Union Centre.Footnote 106 A photograph confiscated during the raid appears to show members of one of these organizations wearing hats similar to the cap worn by the detainee himself (see Figure 2).Footnote 107
Mugshots of man arrested for wearing a Spanish Republican army hat. Source: General Archive of the Province of Santa Fe (Rosario).
Figure 1 Long description
The second mugshot, dated 2 May 1937, shows the same man in profile and front view, now wearing a Spanish Republican army hat. Both mugshots feature identification numbers above the man's head. The background includes handwritten text indicating the dates and identification numbers, reading: 'Photograph taken on 1 May 1937' and 'Photograph taken on 2 May 1937', respectively.
Sympathizers of the Spanish anti-fascist cause wearing Republican army hats. Source: General Archive of the Province of Santa Fe (Rosario).
Figure 2 Long description
The front row consists of six seated individuals, while the back row has eleven standing individuals. The backdrop features tall buildings, depicting an urban setting. The group includes both men and women, dressed in formal attire. All individuals are wearing hats and the overall composition suggests a formal gathering or event.
Dress infused with ideological meaning, and exemplifying the transnational influences and connections that united political movements on both sides of the Atlantic, was not the exclusive preserve of the left.Footnote 108 Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Argentine nationalist groups looked to emulate both Italian Fascism and National Socialism, with organizations such as the LCA adopting ‘fascist-style’ uniforms in imitation of their European counterparts.Footnote 109 Even children exhibited far-right symbols. On 22 June 1940, Juan Duboux, a national schools inspector, wrote to the San José school in Concordia (Entre Ríos province) to enquire about recent reports that a pupil had attended class wearing a Nazi symbol on her school uniform.Footnote 110 The school confirmed that, on 5 June, a girl had indeed turned up with a Nazi insignia on her clothing; when questioned, she had claimed that this had been simply a ‘joke’.Footnote 111 This rationale for donning Nazi paraphernalia resurfaced elsewhere in the locality, where Duboux was then investigating the supposedly subversive activities of this pupil’s older brother.Footnote 112 To this end, Duboux corresponded with the director of local newspaper La Época, who claimed that this brother was distributing copies of El Pampero – a German-funded pro-Nazi periodical – openly and that, on 24 May, he had handed out Nazi rosettes and flags publicly, alongside a local bank employee.Footnote 113 One of Duboux’s colleagues spoke with the District Chief of Post and Telegraphs who, in turn, stated that reports concerning the distribution of Nazi symbols had originated in a ‘joke’, too.Footnote 114 Apparently, the bank employee had wanted to play a prank on his English brother-in-law by adorning the bicycle of one of his nephews with little Nazi flags.Footnote 115 In other words, like their ideological opponents, Nazi sympathizers who wore and distributed items with far-right connotations were also engaging in acts of evasion, claiming deniability habitually to cover their clandestine political activities.
Police measures indicated repeatedly that the authorities were both aware of and concerned about the potential of certain bodily practices to undermine the prevailing order. On 14 February 1931, the head of the Rosario police proclaimed that, during the city’s upcoming carnival, attendees were forbidden from impersonating religious or military figures; from wearing masks or make-up that covered the face; and (in the case of men) from cross-dressing.Footnote 116 ‘Political’ clothing was of particular concern. The report compiled by the Rosario police in May 1937 confirmed that, earlier that month, the governor of Santa Fe had banned the Committee for the Support and Reconstruction of Spain from holding meetings.Footnote 117 Whilst this report did not single out the donning of militia-members’ gear as the primary reason for restricting the committee’s operations, it implied that such bodily practices had contributed to the decision: the governor’s decree was only drawn up after the Rosario police had informed his government of the nature of the committee’s meetings, including the tendency of its supporters to wear Republican garments.Footnote 118 On other occasions, the authorities were more explicit. A report sent to President Justo on 7 May 1937 described the activities of the Córdoba section of the Committee of Aid to the People of Spain, another organization established to coordinate support for the Spanish Republic.Footnote 119 This report described how ‘in public events, on the street just as in enclosed spaces, sympathizers attended wearing red caps, similar to those of the Spanish militia-members’.Footnote 120 These practices had ‘drawn the attention of the provincial authorities, including the Governor himself who … confirmed that he had given clear instructions … that the use of all garments of this type be prohibited’.Footnote 121
Items of clothing were not the only forms of political iconography that the authorities considered unacceptable. The edict issued by the Capital Police in March 1932 prohibited the display of banners, photographs, and engravings deemed ‘injurious’ to ‘morality and culture’ at popular gatherings.Footnote 122 Similar prohibitions appeared elsewhere: as well as echoing the Capital Police’s position on ‘injurious’ imagery, the edict issued by police in El Chaco on 15 August 1936 banned ‘the use of flags of foreign countries that do not maintain diplomatic relations with our own’.Footnote 123 The central government itself issued an edict on 15 May 1939 prohibiting the ‘use or display of symbols opposed to those of the Argentine State’.Footnote 124 Again, such repressive policies were not without precedent, resembling (or building on) authoritarian measures that had been adopted in earlier periods: to take one example, the Capital Police code drafted in 1895 had stipulated that officers remove from public spaces any banners or posters making fun of institutions or public figures.Footnote 125
Of course, throughout the 1930–43 period, measures to suppress the use of ‘political’ imagery were part of the regime’s wider efforts to limit the use of public spaces for overtly political purposes, discussed above. However, the fact that the authorities made such a concerted effort to eradicate ostensibly small and ‘indirect’ acts of resistance (like wearing ‘political’ clothing) from public spaces exemplifies how, despite being less visible than more ‘open’ or ‘direct’ forms of resistance (like armed uprisings), everyday acts of resistance played – at least from the perspective of the authorities – a significant role in obstructing state control. In other words, they fell under the umbrella of what everyday life historian Alf Lüdtke – one of the first practitioners of German Alltagsgeschichte – calls ‘manoeuvring’; through such practices, activists not only attempted to ‘get by or to survive’, but to carve out ‘space for themselves’ within the constraints of a repressive political system.Footnote 126 More importantly, they demonstrate, once again, the limits of state power during these years. As the previous section made clear, even with the expansion of their surveillance capabilities, the authorities were still unable to quash completely the political activities of the regime’s opponents.
III
The authorities’ efforts to exert control – and their opponents’ efforts to resist this – remained integral to the politics of everyday life during the 1930–43 period, but that is only part of the story. These years also saw rising ideological tensions in Argentina, with ‘rightist provocations and Radical and leftist responses’ taking the form of violent public encounters, ranging from fistfights to shootings.Footnote 127 Though Uriburu himself eschewed the term, historians such as Cristián Buchrucker, Sandra McGee Deutsch, and Federico Finchelstein have categorized the nationalist movement of 1930s Argentina as ‘fascist’.Footnote 128 Prominent nationalists such as Leopoldo Lugones, Julio Irazusta, and Enrique P. Osés came to advocate dictatorship explicitly, whilst the LCA – created at the instigation of Uriburu – not only adopted fascist uniforms but the fascist salute, too.Footnote 129 The administrations of Justo and Ortiz sought to sideline the growing nationalist faction but, despite this, nationalists continued to exert a notable influence over Argentine politics.Footnote 130 For instance, Justo maintained the LCA’s legal status (granted by Uriburu in January 1932) and rewarded members of its leadership with positions in his new administration.Footnote 131 On the other hand, these years also gave rise to a burgeoning antifascist movement: the Spanish Civil War and, later, the Second World War mobilized antifascists of various political persuasions; to take one example, the PCA – in line with the approach adopted by the Communist International – started to pursue a Popular Front policy in 1935.Footnote 132 In other words, by the end of the 1930s, the international situation (in particular, developments in Europe) had contributed to an increasingly polarized political landscape within Argentina, and an ideological ‘war’ between ‘democracy’ and ‘Nazi-Fascism’ throughout the country.Footnote 133 Therefore, to understand the everyday experiences of political activists between 1930 and 1943, one must not only consider the struggles between the regime and its opponents, but also the (often public) clashes between different ideological tendencies.
Unsurprisingly, political gatherings were frequently the site of public confrontations. The daily agenda issued to police in Rosario on 19 December 1930 stated that, the previous evening, a meeting held at the city’s ‘Social Theatre’ by the Independent Socialist Party – which had split from the PS in 1927 and later supported the coup of 1930 – had been interrupted when a woman and two men, positioned on the upper gallery, had thrown firecrackers and communist pamphlets into the crowd below.Footnote 134 Similarly, in a letter to the Chubut Section of the National Gendarmerie on 5 January 1943, Esteban Rondanina complained that, during a speech that he had given in the town of Trevelin the previous evening supporting Argentine Action – an organization founded in 1940 to oppose Nazi interference in the country – he had been heckled by two military officers seated in the front row.Footnote 135 For their part, antifascists anticipated such confrontations. On 16 June 1933, the Buenos Aires Regional Committee of the PCA issued a circular, informing members that an assembly of the Popular Committee Against Fascism would be held at La Boca’s Verde Theatre the following day.Footnote 136 The authors stressed that, if the police intervened, ‘we must defend ourselves and must also be prepared for the legionaries [members of the LCA]’.Footnote 137 To this end, they asked every neighbourhood represented at the assembly to ‘form groups … armed with clubs, guns, or whatever they have, to defend the event and the speakers’.Footnote 138 The authors even provided detailed instructions for where, exactly, these defence groups should position themselves: for example, groups from the neighbourhoods of Patricios, Mataderos, and Paternal would guard the entrance to the venue, whilst the group from La Boca would guard the stage.Footnote 139
The authorities were keenly aware of the possibility of violent confrontations between political groups, and police across the country took measures to limit (or avoid) the ‘bodily copresence’ of opposing political activists.Footnote 140 For instance, the Capital Police denied permission for public assembles of both left-wing and right-wing groups routinely on the grounds that they would lead to disturbances, citing ‘reasons of public order’. It employed this rationale to prohibit a public meeting that the Argentine Popular Commission Against Communism had scheduled to take place on 23 February 1934 and, equally, when it refused the Women’s Anti-War Group permission to gather on 22 December the following year.Footnote 141 A similar attitude was adopted in Tucumán where, as discussed above, on 9 April 1935 the head of police issued an edict declaring that political groups could no longer hold public meetings in the city’s Independence Square.Footnote 142 The edict explained that:
since the Square is surrounded by patisseries frequented by people of distinct ideologies, holding events that appeal to specific [ideological] tendencies does, apart from obliging [the public] to listen to speeches with which they disagree, represent an incentive or a provocation to arguments that can degenerate in acts of disorder.Footnote 143
Despite these measures, urban landscapes came to embody the political divisions of the day. On 26 July 1933, the Capital Police’s Special Section described a recent raid on the locale of the Boca-Barracas Communist Committee in Buenos Aires.Footnote 144 This raid had turned up a wealth of propaganda materials, including a circular from the Buenos Aires Regional Committee of the Communist Youth Federation, which listed a range of slogans for activists ‘to paint on the walls’ during an upcoming day of protest, scheduled for 1 August.Footnote 145 This list featured slogans such as ‘Down with Imperialist War’ and ‘Closure of the Fascist Organizations’.Footnote 146 Politically-motivated acts of vandalism – such as graffiti – had long been a regular feature of public spaces, the first academic study of graffiti in Buenos Aires, for example, appearing as early as 1904.Footnote 147 During the period discussed here, activists from across the political spectrum engaged in such practices. In a letter dated 26 June 1939, the Directorate of National Parks informed the minister of agriculture of several recent incidents of vandalism in San Martín de Los Andes (Neuquén).Footnote 148 In early April, the words ‘What Would the National Parks Be, If It Wasn’t for the Nazis?’ had appeared on trees lining the town’s main street and, subsequently, on the night of 25 May – a patriotic holiday in Argentina – the national flags flanking the town’s San Martín monument had been torn to the ground.Footnote 149 In a letter to the governor of Neuquén on 12 July 1939, a local resident complained that Nazi sympathizers had, in addition to vandalizing the San Martín monument, put up a pro-Nazi placard in the town’s central street, and defaced the Argentine flag situated outside a local school.Footnote 150
At times, multiple acts of graffiti occurred at the same site, with activists simply painting over the words of their opponents. In a report to the Capital Police’s Investigations Division on 18 October 1933, Cusell provided a detailed summary of the ongoing conflict between fascists and antifascists in the city of Córdoba. In particular, he referred to the activities of the Italian Antifascist Alliance, established in Buenos Aires in 1927.Footnote 151Initially, according to Cusell, the Córdoba branch of this organization had included communists, anarchists, and socialists, but the latter tendencies had abandoned the coalition when it became clear that it was controlled by the PCA.Footnote 152 Cusell noted that the Alliance was responsible for several instances of graffiti throughout the city; some Cusell claimed to have seen himself.Footnote 153 He also described fascist organizations such as the LCA, and another group called simply ‘Argentine Fascism’.Footnote 154 To Cusell’s knowledge, the latter group was the one that ‘most visibly agitate[d] against the Communists’, and this was evidenced by the numerous posters that it had put up.Footnote 155 Significantly, he stated that ‘one notes, in the working-class neighbourhoods, especially on the long wall parallel to the tracks of the FCCC [the Córdoba Central Railway], the existence of Communist mural propaganda … but, at the same time, fascist slogans are visible, in greater number and in many cases covering the Red ones’.Footnote 156 Cusell even included several photographs, including those featured in Figures 3, 4, and 5.Footnote 157
Communist graffiti partially crossed out by political opponents. Source: General Archive of the Nation (Buenos Aires).
Figure 3 Long description
The graffiti on the wall includes slogans like 'Italy 2,700,000 unemployed – the Soviet Union [not even] one. Why? '. A tree and a lamp post are visible in front of the wall, and the scene appears to be outdoors with a paved area in the foreground.
Communist graffiti alongside fascist graffiti. Source: General Archive of the Nation (Buenos Aires).
Figure 4 Long description
The slogan scrawled on the wall reads: 'Workers, let us all unite and stand against the Uriburuist dogs for the liberty of communist proletarians'. This graffiti is framed within a rectangular section of the wall. To the right, additional graffiti is partially visible, including part of the slogan 'Long live fascism!'.
Nationalist slogans alongside fascist graffiti. Source: General Archive of the Nation (Buenos Aires).
Figure 5 Long description
One of the slogans visible on this part of the wall reads 'Make people respect the colours of your fatherland'. To the right, further graffiti is partially visible, including the letters 'V' and 'F', most likely forming part of the slogan 'Long live fascism!'. The wall has a weathered appearance with some faded areas.
Graffiti has often been described as a ‘mark-making’ practice because, as well as reflecting the ‘social construction of space’, it also reflects ‘efforts to make claims over space’.Footnote 158 Equally, graffiti can be both ‘a voice and a response’, thereby constituting a dialogue.Footnote 159 In this sense, Cusell’s photographs illustrate how, as fascists and antifascists contested each other’s control over public spaces continually, the built environment mirrored, and became part of, that struggle.Footnote 160
Of course, though these ongoing ideological conflicts were a salient feature of everyday life, it is not always possible to draw a clear line between fascist-antifascist confrontations and the continual struggles between the authorities and subjugated populace, because these conflicts overlapped. For instance, throughout the 1930s, antisemitism reached fever-pitch in Argentina, spurred on by nationalist publications such as Clarinada and Crisol (the self-dubbed ‘anti-Jewish newspaper’), and manifesting in physical attacks on synagogues and venues showing anti-Nazi plays and films.Footnote 161 The regime itself dismissed Jewish professionals from their posts and, from the middle of the decade onwards, it accommodated increasingly ‘anti-liberal’ (including fascist) organizations.Footnote 162 In this context, some antifascist actions appeared to target the government specifically. In a letter dated 21 August 1939, an official from the Ministry of War reported that, at a gathering held in Rosario on 19 June by the Committee of Struggle Against Racism and Antisemitism – an organization that had counted a range of political luminaries among its members, such as Enrique Dickmann, leader of the PS, and Lisandro de la Torre, leader of the Democratic Progress Party – the audience had remained seated during the national anthem.Footnote 163 The author of this report was fully aware that the audience’s actions had been politically motivated, as he lamented that ‘this latest act against the dignity of one of our national symbols does nothing other than confirm that the Executive Power needs to regulate ceremonies and public acts in which playing the Anthem is permitted’.Footnote 164
Sometimes, political violence occurred within, as well as between, the left and the right. From its inception at the turn of the twentieth century, disunity had been endemic to the Argentine labour movement, with socialists, anarchists, and syndicalists all vying for dominance.Footnote 165 Despite periods of relative unity – aided, in part, by the outbreak of war in Spain – these internal divisions continued during the period discussed here.Footnote 166 For example, under the Uriburu dictatorship, the increasing level of violence between opposing left-wing factions led the authorities to separate political activists held in the capital’s Devoto Prison on the basis of their political affiliations, with communists, socialists, anarchists, and syndicalists confined to their own wings.Footnote 167 Disagreements between rightists boiled over into physical confrontations, too. At an event held in September 1934 to mark the fourth anniversary of the coup of 1930 (and intended as a show of unity for the nationalist cause), Carlos Silveyra – founder of the Argentine Popular Commission Against Communism – railed against the penchant of some nationalists for so-called ‘exotic uniforms, Roman salutes and other foreignisms’.Footnote 168 Silveyra’s speech caused fury among the audience, and the ensuing brawl ended in the dissolution of the assembly.Footnote 169 In other words, like the aforementioned graffiti adorning the wall of the Córdoba Central Railway, the politics of everyday life during this period had multiple layers: as well as reflecting the ever-shifting relations of power between the state and the populace, the everyday practices and encounters of political activists also reflected the ever-changing balance of forces both within and between opposing political groups.
IV
By examining the experiences of political activists between 1930 and 1943 through the lens of ‘the everyday’ (focusing primarily on their daily experiences of state control, resistance to state power, and ideological conflict), and by drawing on evidence from across Argentina (rather than a single locality), this article has illustrated three things. Firstly, it has demonstrated that the nature of state control remained fluid throughout this period, and that the degree to which rank-and-file activists could engage in political practices openly was contingent, in the first instance, on the actions of local (or provincial) police, rather than the central government. In turn, whilst police forces limited subversive political activism spatially and temporally, the level of control that the authorities exercised – and, by implication, the everyday experiences of political activists – varied considerably, which meant that, in practice, the regime’s opponents were forced to operate in perpetual uncertainty. However, this article has also highlighted that, despite the considerable expansion of the state’s surveillance capabilities during these years, resistance to state power was integral to many political dissidents’ everyday lives, even when they were unable to engage in those ‘open’ forms of resistance most visible to historians, such as large-scale strikes, mass protests, or armed insurrections. Therefore, adopting an everyday life history approach has underlined further how, as Lüdtke argued famously, experiences of dictatorship cannot be understood using a simplistic binary model of oppressor-oppressed, since those living under authoritarian regimes often exhibit considerable agency, even if this is not always apparent at first glance.Footnote 170 Lastly, this article has shown how the entrenched ideological divisions within Argentine society – which, to a large extent, mirrored the ideological divisions that polarized the global political landscape of the 1930s and 1940s – were, like state repression, integral to activists’ everyday experiences, too, manifesting in and shaping the urban landscape, and encapsulating the wider political conflicts then engulfing countries on both sides of the Atlantic.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Kate Ferris, the Principal Investigator on the ERC-funded ‘Dictatorship as Experience’ project at the University of St Andrews, for her continued support and guidance. In addition to Kate and the two anonymous reviewers, I am also grateful to Nicolás López for reading an earlier draft of this article, as well as to Lila Caimari and Viviana Barry for their advice relating specifically to police sources. Lastly, I would like to thank the staff at the General Archive of the Province of Santa Fe (Rosario) and the General Archive of the Nation (Buenos Aires) for their assistance.
Funding statement
This work was funded by Professor Kate Ferris’s European Research Council grant (DICTATOREXPERIENCE, 772353), held at the University of St Andrews between 2018 and 2024. Subsequently, I completed revisions and final edits to the article during my Simon Fellowship at the University of Manchester.
Competing interests
The author declares none.
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