La Forestal

Halfway through the 19th century, the Chaco Santafesino was an untamed land with wetlands and red quebracho forests, still partially inhabited by Abipones and Mocovíes who would soon be displaced or eliminated by military campaigns and with some agricultural colonies and scattered farms. Life passed within the circumstances and conflicts characteristic of the border areas, until, protected by a law of 1872, the provincial government contracted a loan with a London firm, "Murrieta & Co.", whose attorney was the Argentine Lucas González.[1]

In March 1874, 37 iron boxes with GBP180,187 left the port of Liverpool, destined to make up the initial capital of the Banco Provincial de Santa Fe.[6] The loan was not paid on time and, after lengthy negotiations, the National Government, advised by González, introduced a bill in 1880 to honor one third of the debt with Treasury bonds and the other two thirds with public land "to be demarcated and sold in England and other parts of Europe." The law was promulgated that same year and authorized González as agent of the London firm to sell 668 square leagues. Subsequently gonzález sold the lands to Murrieta & Co. They consisted of 2 million hectares covered with quebrachos, the largest tannin reserve in the world, thus passed into English (and also German and French) hands. The transaction was no questioned at the National Parliament, it was rumored that the lands would be subdivided into colonies: for the new national state, the region was in need of settlers (indeed, for some time the Southern Chaco was considered as "zone of excellence for the installation of Anglo-Saxon settlers"). A few years and several business mergers later, in 1906, "The Forestal Land, Timber and Railways Company Limited", better known as "La Forestal", was constituted.[1]

The company had its own railway lines to transport goods and workers

Between the end of the 19th century and the middle of the 20th century, the tannic industry occupied an important position in the economy of the Chaco region. During that period, in the north of the province of Santa Fe, several tannin factories were built, attended by thousands of workers. Thus new urban centers arose, the so-called "forest towns". Some of them were Villa Guillermina, Tartagal, La Gallareta and Villa Ana. A larger number of workers worked in the forestry obrajes, where living conditions were hard.[4]

La Forestal solved the problem of the lack of labor by investing in adequate infrastructure to attract workers to the forest and retain them there, separating them from any other work activity. In this way, the factory towns arose in the solitude of the quebracho colorado forests, or as they were named at the time by contemporaries, "forest towns". The obrajes brought together the workers dedicated to the extractive stage, and the towns, the workers linked to the industrial process. The division of labor established very marked hierarchical differences between the workers, and between them and the company.[4]

With their sidewalks of low houses and their wide streets covered with reddish sawdust, the main towns had a tannin factory, a general store, elegant English-style residences for married managers and employees, a "bachelorette" to house the bachelors, rough ranches for workers and laborers, sports club and golf courses. They also had electricity, running water, a sewer system, and a free doctor. In the depths of the closed forest, the workers and their families lived in taperas (local term for shack) or in enramadas (structure of wooden logs covered by branches of cedar, reed or other perishable material). [1]

Banknote issued by La Forestal

Most of the loggers were internal migrants from the provinces of Corrientes, Santiago del Estero and others. They spent their days in the forests, isolated from the towns and in many cases they moved with their wives and children. Payment was generally in tokens which they used in exchange for food and clothing. Food could only be bought in La Forestal stores, and retail trade were prohibited throughout the region, thus ensuring complete monopoly. The obrajes were places of transitory population, populated until the exploitation of the quebracho in a certain area was finished, and then, the worker families were transferred by rail to new virgin areas, where they settled, once again, in precarious ranches. Most of the workers slept on the ground or in ditches dug to protect themselves from the cold.[3]

Workers of La Forestal lived in poor conditions

Wives of the workers and mothers, teachers, nurses, prostitutes, midwives, healers, seamstresses, cooks, laundresses and ironers, bowlers who sold drinks at the dances of the obrajes, employees in the factory warehouses, domestics of the hierarchical and the singles were some of women who supported the exhausted workforce in the north of Santa Fe without remuneration.[7]

Private railway lines (which network totalised 140 km)[8] were also deployed from the territory of La Forestal to Argentine ports. Being the only existing railways in that area of the country, the company also made a profit from them, charging so that other state or private companies could transport their goods, something that they could not have done otherwise. This resulted in an increase in costs for the production activity in northern Argentina, but also, in return, an export capacity that it would never have had otherwise.

In 1919, during the presidency of UCR's Hipólito Yrigoyen (1916–22), the workers of La Forestal built a solid union organization and declared a general strike that ended with the signing of an advanced collective agreement.[9][3] The first strike came in 1919. Workers demanded for wage increases, suspension of dismissals and 8 daily working hours. The conflict was resolved when the rail workers blocked the route of the trains. The company promised to comply with the increase.[3]

Gendarmería Volante, the parapolice group of La Forestal

In the following two years, the company breached the agreement and managed to get the radical government of Santa Fe to create a parapolice group financed by the company to look after its interests, called the Gendarmería Volante. Simultaneously, the civil organization Argentine Patriotic League (Liga Patriótica Argentina) installed armed groups in the area with which, at that stage of its history, it carried out parapolice actions, confronting strikers.[10]

Nevertheless on December 14 1919 another strike began, which lasted until mid-January 1920; a harsh conflict in which the strikers seeked to expand the influence of the Workers' Center in all workplaces, through daily picketing. The company summoned a body of prison guards from Santa Fe and a hundred infantry soldiers, reinforced with the police and the Gendarmería Volante. The fight worsens when the rail and works railway workers removed the needles from the railway signals, preventing the movement of trains. La Forestal responded by cutting off electricity and water in the towns. But the workers' resistance finally leaded the company to commit to a new wage increase and three 8-hour shifts. The conflict showed the strategic role played by the railway workers, in support of the rest of the workers, by preventing the movement of goods.[3]

Armed members of the Patriotic League (photographed in Buenos Aires) were one of the armed groups that confronted strikers

Under these conditions, in December 1920, La Forestal began a prolonged lockout, closing its factories and laying off thousands of workers, exposing various towns to starvation (Villa Guillermina, La Gallareta, Villa Ana, Tartagal, etc.). On January 29, 1921, there was a general social outbreak in the region, with dozens of armed clashes in the towns and forests for three months.[10]

On January 29, 1921, "the final workers' revolt" took place. A group of between 300 and 400 workers, whose origin is very difficult to determine, tries to take over the factories that were located in Villa Ana and Villa Guillermina, and raises a frontal fight against the Flying Gendarmerie. Despite the fact that they arrived by train and armed, they are repelled into the thickness of the mountain. There the "hunt" of the strikers and the final massacre took place, with an indeterminate number of deaths and injuries. According to socialist newspaper La Vanguardia, there were between 500 and 600 fatalities.[10]

The outbreak was savagely repressed by the Gendarmería Volante and the Patriotic Legion, causing the murder of some 600 workers, torture, rape and burning of houses. It was not until November 1922 that La Forestal reopened its factories. By then the Tanino Union and all traces of union organization among the quebracho workers had disappeared.4

Three decades later, with the quebrachales cut down, La Forestal would definitively close its plants in Argentina, causing the greatest social and ecological disaster that a company has been able to generate in Argentine history.

The rebellion of January 1921 was the final episode of more than two years of open conflict in the north of Santa Fe. It began at the end of 1918, when the workers in the tannin factories, workshops, forests, trains, and boats had begun to organize and demand improvements.[4]

They formed the first union in the region and broke the order imposed by the company. They united wills in the different towns and places and obtained the support of the national labor federations. They went on strike and presented an extensive list of demands. They sought to improve working and living conditions. The last item demanded greater respect from the hierarchies towards the workers.[4]

In 1963 the last factory closed its doors and the activity in the obrajes ceased.[8] La Forestal moved its production to South Africa where Apartheid demanded fewer controls and promised cheaper labor leaving behind a trail of abandoned towns and ordinary workers.[5] The company had previously operated in South Africa in the 1910s by taking over two competing companies, the South African Extract Company Ltd. and the Natal Tanning Extract Company. Later, around 1920, when the workers' rebellion in Argentina was at its crucial moment, it founded The Kenya Tanning Extract Company in Kenya and Wattle Company in Zimbabwe (1945). As the company had consolidated business in Africa[6] and the costs in Argentina increased as well, La Forestal decided to cease operations in the country.[5]

By the time it left Argentina, the company had cut down almost 90% of the quebracho forests.[1][11]