The View from Above: Rethinking State-Labor Relations during Argentina's Proceso de Reorganización Nacional (original) (raw)

2013

Abstract

This study focuses on the enactment and effects of economic and labor policies during the first four years of Argentina's most recent military dictatorship, the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional (1976-1983). Given the historical importance of work as a fundamental criterion for citizenship and political voice, I contend that the regime sough to redraw the ideological boundaries of the nation and redefine what the role of "the worker" would be for this new Argentina. Despite an extensive historiography on violence during the Proceso, the day-to-day operations of the state remain generally uninvestigated. Concentrating on the military government's new labor laws and economic strategies, I argue that the junta attempted to establish a new praxis of citizenship by restructuring the parameters of the practice of work. This research focuses on the labor conflict at the Mercedes-Benz Argentina factory in González-Catán, in the province of Buenos Aires, between 1975 and 1980. Beginning in October 1975, MBA workers engaged in an ongoing struggle with management and the state over the composition of the plant's internal commission. Prior to the advent of the Proceso in March 1976, workers employed a diverse vocabulary that highlighted their social and political voice. After the coup, and the repression that followed, these same workers had to gradually develop a new language of protest, centered on economic concerns. This thesis suggests that the policies of the military government shaped this transformation, which demonstrated the ambitions and consequences associated with redefining citizenship.

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