At first glance Roy Hora's new book appears to be just an expansion of an element of his excellent and perceptive The Landowners of the Argentine Pampas (2001). It is that, but it is also something more.
In the work under review, Hora examines the Liga Agraria (Agrarian League) and its political thought from its founding in 1892, in the wake of the economic and political turmoil of 1890, to its collapse in the early 1920s. Founded by important estancieros from the Province of Buenos Aires, the Liga was intended to restore the landholding class to what its founders saw as their rightful place in politics. The book is both an examination of the development of a political ideology by elements of an extraordinarily important economic and social class and an insightful overview of the nature of Argentine politics from the 1880s to the first years of the Radical era. Although Hora is very careful to focus on the manner at hand, it is difficult not to see parallels to the rhetoric of recent years. The current accusations that politicians represent a separate class with few direct ties to the larger society and use the political system to acquire power and make money sounds much like the rhetoric of the rural elites at the beginning of the twentieth century. Similarly, the recent arguments by rural elites that they underwrite the economy without any real say in politics runs parallel to the complaints of their counterparts a century earlier.
The key to understanding the thrust of Hora's work is his argument, building upon the work of a generation of historians, that following the victory of Julio Roca in 1880 the Argentine state was controlled by a political class that came largely from the interior provinces. The ever more economically and socially important estanciero class of the Province of Buenos Aires increasingly felt itself to be a natural ruling class similar to landed elites in Europe and many parts of Latin America, despite its rather recent rise to prominence. However, estancieros saw the political world as controlled by professional politicians from the provinces who used their political dominance to create their own wealth (many of the political class were provincial elites, who while originally far from poor were much less wealthy than the elites of Buenos Aires). The professional politicians depended upon machines to win elections and were therefore, according to their critics, divorced from society.
The growing unhappiness of the Buenos Aires economic elite was in the 1880s tempered by their great prosperity and services provided by the state, such as the opening up of new land after the so-called conquest of the desert. The economic crisis of 1890 and the subsequent political revolt and temporary upsetting of the political order helped crystallise estanciero discontent. In 1892 a group of prominent landed elites founded the Liga Agraria with the intention of regaining a political position for what they believed were the rightful leaders of Argentina. They essentially argued that there was a disconnect between the political world and the productive world, and that the productive elements within society ought to run society. They also argued strenuously for free trade, fearing retaliation from their customers. Fascinatingly, their views cannot be seen as totally backward-looking. From early on the Liga advocated for fair voting, since its members believed that the division within society was between the political class and the rest of society. They saw themselves as the natural recipients of votes, since the average citizen would defer to their betters.
The Liga never achieved political power, but it did make several major efforts to defeat the political establishment. In late 1901 the Partido Demócrata (Democratic Party) was created to contest elections in March 1902 in the city of Buenos Aires, where most of the estancieros lived. In order to mobilise the small number of registered voters, however, the party needed the help of electoral machines which they lacked. The party turned to established but dissident politicians such as Roque Sáenz Peña for candidates, but it was decisively crushed.
In 1911 and 1912, confronted with increased land taxes and revaluation of land, the Liga and the Sociedad Rural (Rural Society) formed the party Defensa Rural (Rural Defence) to contest elections in the Province of Buenos Aires, but lost badly. Rural interests tried again several years later but were equally unsuccessful.
The long-hoped-for defeat of the oligarchic regime in the presidential elections of 1916 – or perhaps as importantly, the defeat of the Partido Conservador (Conservative Party) in the Province of Buenos Aires in 1918 – proved deeply disappointing. Despite the election of many important estancieros to congress and as governor of the Province of Buenos Aires, politicians still seemed motivated only by a search for votes and seemed as divorced from the interests of the landed elite as their predecessors. Social upheaval rocked Argentina between 1917 and 1921, but the Liga lacked the ability to mobilise voters; as its founders died it became increasingly irrelevant, and it was dissolved in 1923. The last section dealing with the Radical period is the least satisfying, perhaps because the nature of politics had become vastly more complex with the dependence on the popular vote, and the situation is more difficult to describe with any brevity.
Hora has written an important book that does several things. It makes clear, despite the mythology to the contrary, that the estanciero class, while not without influence, lacked direct political power. The work is a perceptive overview of the politics of the period between 1880 and the early 1920s, and it also examines and takes seriously the ideology of the estancieros. While their movement died after having little direct impact, the ideas that they expressed still have resonance in Argentina today. This is a book well worth reading.
