Problems of the rural workers' movement in the Argentine “green gold” zone: the expansion of soybeans, the hiring regime and the absence of proletarian conflicts between 1970 and 2010

Abstract

In the context of the Argentine agricultural expansion that began in the 1970s, rural workers in the Pampas region consolidated their role as the main direct producers of wealth in this sector of the national economy. Despite their strategic position and the difficult working conditions they endured throughout the period, there was no record of collective action led and directed by this sector of wage earners in accordance with their own interests as a specific collective of workers. This article addresses two aspects that contribute to explaining the absence of union or political demonstrations led by them. First, the predominant social organization of work since the 1970s, which contributed to objectively and subjectively dismantling the agricultural proletariat as a class fraction; and second, the absence of a political will capable of transcending the structural difficulties to unite the workers.