Democracy and freedom. The not official union arch and the unionists’ parties. Tucumán, 1945-1946

Abstract

In this article I will analyze the speeches and practices of the not official union; specially of the collective actor as was the Provincial Laborer Federation of Tucuman (PLF), from its beginnings in August of 1945 until the February elections of 1946. Regarding to the first, I will pay attention to the definitions of democracy, citizenship and freedom, and the ideals of the worker and syndicalist and its social role and relationship between the union and the State. Regarding to the second, I will analyze the relationships between the unionists’ parties and the Federation (frames, social networks, meeting spaces and roles in them), as well as the syndicalist actions promoted by the PLF in order to become in a legitimate representative of the workers. I will try to prove that the job of the PLF found itself in tune with the interpellations and unionists’ political actions, and that it worked to reaffirm, in continuity with the advanced syndicalist lefts of the previous years, an identity of “democracy and freedom” in the liberal key that appealed to subjects and political citizens, as opposed as to its pro-Peronists adversaries that spoke in the new language of social rights (James, 2005). Here might lie its biggest fallacy and incapacity to attract workers, union and politically.