Tropical Libertarians: Anarchist Movements And Networks In The Caribbean, Southern United States, And Mexico, 1890s–1920s

Abstract

The case of longshoremen and mariners in the coastwise merchant marine, however, suggests that anarchist traditions continued for decades to make their mark. This chapter argues that they permeated syndicalist practices in the country's ports, particularly in Buenos Aires; even when craft-based resistance societies and industrial unions clashed, sometimes violently, over ideology and tactics. The most sophisticated social historian of Argentine anarchism to date, whose narrative of its cultural dimensions is solidly based in archival research, concludes that it was an impoverished and ideologically incoherent ideology centred on spectacular protest and the short-term satisfaction of working-class demands, one that fuelled the flames of disillusionment, frustration, and resentment among disenfranchised European immigrants in America. The Maritime Workers' Union ( Union obrera maritima , or UOM), created in December 1924 with a prominent ex-FOM activist, the socialist Vicente Tadich, at its helm, became the instrument of this ambition. Keywords:anarchism; Argentina; mariners; syndicalism; Union obrera maritima (UOM)