Argentine Workers' Federation

The Argentine Regional Workers' Federation (Spanish: Federación Obrera Regional Argentina; abbreviated FORA), founded in 1901, was Argentina's first national labor confederation. It split into two wings in 1915, the larger of which merged into the Argentine Syndicates' Union (USA) in 1922, while the smaller slowly disappeared in the 1930s.

From the second half of the 19th century up to around 1920, Argentina experienced rapid economic growth and industrial expansion, becoming a world economic power. Foreign capital was the driving force for this development, with 92% of the workshops and factories in 1887 being owned by non-Argentines, according to a census. Similarly, most of the workers in this period were immigrants; 84% according to the same census.

In 1876, the country's first trade union was founded, and in 1887, the first national labor organization. In 1879 an anarchist organisation, the International Socialist Circle, was founded in Buenos Aires. Both the industrialization of the country and its labor movement were centered on the capital Buenos Aires and by 1896, there were more thirty trade unions in the city alone. From 1896, the labor movement started developing a clear working class program and the first sympathy strikes began taking place.

The extent of anarchism's influence is disputed: Ronaldo Munck claims that the "dominant tendency in the labour movement was [...] represented by the anarchists of various persuasions", while Ruth Thompson holds that "a closer examination of Argentine trade unions around the turn of the century suggests that the importance of anarchism has been exaggerated", and Roberto P. Korzeniewicz contends "that anarchism was not as prevalent within the labour movement in Argentina around the turn of the century as studies of the period have generally maintained", although he concedes that "anarchism achieved greater labour support during the early 1900s". In any case, there was considerable anarchist union activity in the 1890s. Most of the European immigration to South America as a whole came from Spain and Italy, the two European countries in which anarchism was most influential. These immigrants included anarchists forced to flee their native countries for political reasons. During his 1885–1889 visit to Argentina, the anarchist Errico Malatesta encouraged anarchist involvement in the labor movement. The working class was hardly integrated into the political system at the time, with 70% of the adult males in Buenos Aires disenfranchised as foreigners in 1912.

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