Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, a
Speaker 2: podcast that comes out every week that talks about cool
Speaker 2: people who did cool stuff. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy,
Speaker 2: and this is part three of four, so go back
Speaker 2: and listen. But also I have a guest. It's Mia
Speaker 2: Hi Miya Hi.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Mia Wong. I am back once again to Patagonia.
Speaker 3: I'm very very excited.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, they totally wrapped up in a plastic fleece.
Speaker 2: What does the company sell? Is that what they sell?
Speaker 2: I imagine they'm selling fleeces. Our producer is Sophie, who
Speaker 2: is not a ghost who died five years ago. Accounts
Speaker 2: not that no one, No one's ever seen Sophie in person.
Speaker 2: Sophie does the whole thing with the video often has
Speaker 2: as long as I've known her, I actually think that
Speaker 2: you might actually be in early AI voice. Was never
Speaker 2: a person at.
Speaker 1: A long time, but I preferred being called a ghost.
Speaker 2: Oh I'm sorry, fucking bought Definitely a ghost, not a
Speaker 2: ghost in the machine, a ghost outside of the machine.
Speaker 2: So uh oh. And our producer, so before this, Sophie
Speaker 2: was like, oh you didn't write your pre amboy, You're
Speaker 2: going to suck it up, and I was like, I'm
Speaker 2: not going to suck it up, but I did, and
Speaker 2: our audio engineers Ian every wants to say, Hi Ian,
Speaker 2: Hi Ian, Hiene.
Speaker 3: Wow, that was a tertle Hien.
Speaker 2: Hold on, that's okay. We can't do anything till Sophie
Speaker 2: says it anyway, So hi Hienne, okay ya are you
Speaker 2: going to give it another shot?
Speaker 3: Oh? You know, yes, yes I will, Hien.
Speaker 1: And as we record this, today is Ian's birthday.
Speaker 2: Happy Birthday, Happy birthday, Ian, and anyone should flood Ian's
Speaker 2: social media. Our theme music was written by Unwoman And
Speaker 2: as I already mentioned, this is part three or four,
Speaker 2: you could start here. I guess it would make some sense.
Speaker 2: If you can handle comic books, you can handle it.
Speaker 2: So last week we talked about Argentina's anarchist movement. We
Speaker 2: talked about all the crazy stuff that they got up
Speaker 2: to from the startup to about nineteen nineteen or up
Speaker 2: to specifically nineteen nineteen and the Tragic Week, but none
Speaker 2: of it had to do much with Patagonia. And the
Speaker 2: whole point was that I promised you Patagonia. So now
Speaker 2: we're gonna talk about fucking Patagonia. You ready to learn about.
Speaker 3: I'm very excited. I'm very excited to Patagonia.
Speaker 2: I guess actually the whole fleece thing, it really ties
Speaker 2: the two together. Patagonia used to be basically just exploited
Speaker 2: for sheep farming. That was like its economic purpose from
Speaker 2: a capitalist exploit, primitive accumulation, lens whatever, to be basically
Speaker 2: just exploited for sheep farming. But mia, don't worry, things
Speaker 2: have changed. It's now also exploited for oil and gas
Speaker 2: as well. It was waiting for the petrochemicals to show up.
Speaker 2: They always do. I now, that's what they do until
Speaker 2: it's too hot for anything, and they'll probably continue on
Speaker 2: after that. So it used to be all wool. Now
Speaker 2: it's also meat production because refrigeration got better enough that
Speaker 2: people can kill an animal in one part of the
Speaker 2: world and then eat it in a different part of
Speaker 2: the world, which is cool and good. And sheep farming
Speaker 2: is slowly desertified in the area it's like already a desert, right,
Speaker 2: But it's like desertifying doesn't mean just like literally making
Speaker 2: a desert has to do with like actually changing the
Speaker 2: way the ecology works. There was a huge sheep farming
Speaker 2: boom in the late nineteenth century that followed the war
Speaker 2: against the indigenous people across Patagonia that we talked about
Speaker 2: last time. The conquest of the desert and Patagonia was
Speaker 2: largely controlled by these I don't have another word form
Speaker 2: besides sheep barons. There are other words, but I like
Speaker 2: the words sheep baron. They are generally foreign nationals or
Speaker 2: foreign companies who buy up all the land and had
Speaker 2: the sheep tended by what was functionally a surf class,
Speaker 2: essentially a neoliberal form of feudalism. The translation I read
Speaker 2: called them mostly mostly called them peons. Sheep shit the
Speaker 2: literal shit of the sheep, fucked up lagoons, sheep eating,
Speaker 2: eroded the soil. The serfs and the peons are they're
Speaker 2: mostly mixed race descendants of indigenous people, or they're foreign
Speaker 2: born immigrants rather than being native born European Argentinians. Right,
Speaker 2: and so this is like where like the class and
Speaker 2: the race stuff of the rural society comes in. A
Speaker 2: lot of the peons are Chileans, or they're called Chileans.
Speaker 2: It's a very complicated thing. I believe these are mostly
Speaker 2: mixed race or indigenous Chileans, And okay, you know how
Speaker 2: the US has like the sort of one drop rule
Speaker 2: around race where if someone is like has one is
Speaker 2: someone is considered black in our society if they have
Speaker 2: like one parent or one grandparent or one great grandparent, right,
Speaker 2: And indigenousity is like often discussed in the same way,
Speaker 2: and like blood quantum is an evil thing that indigenous
Speaker 2: folks are very mad at. But that is like largely
Speaker 2: how the racialized structure of the United States works. You know,
Speaker 2: Latin America has different everywhere in Latin America has different
Speaker 2: ways of creating different racialized categories, so you have a
Speaker 2: more complex racial caste system rather than like, if you
Speaker 2: have indigenous ancestry, you're indigenous. Most of the poor rural
Speaker 2: workers that we'll be talking about would largely be considered
Speaker 2: indigenous by US racial standards, but not necessarily by Argentinian
Speaker 2: racial standards. I don't know how they themselves identified. They
Speaker 2: seem to the like little bit I know is that
Speaker 2: they seem to have identified as being descended from the
Speaker 2: original inhabitants of the land. So I'm going to largely
Speaker 2: refer to them as indigenous to this land because I
Speaker 2: think it ties into the fact that they keep being
Speaker 2: referred to is these like invading immigrants and all this
Speaker 2: racialized bullshit. So there's wool. World War one sends wool
Speaker 2: prices sky high, and the boom gets boomier. The benefits
Speaker 2: of this boom economy do not trickle down to the
Speaker 2: workers in a pattern that will be familiar to literally
Speaker 2: everyone who works for a living instead of anyone who
Speaker 2: owns shit for a living. The problems of a bust
Speaker 2: economy do trickle down, So boom nothing good, you know whatever,
Speaker 2: there's a good thing. It doesn't affect the poor. There's
Speaker 2: a bad thing. It does affect the poor. During the war,
Speaker 2: the rich in Patagonia got even richer. By nineteen twenty, however,
Speaker 2: the wool market was saturated around the world and Patagonian
Speaker 2: wool was sitting in port with nowhere to go. This
Speaker 2: was taken out on the workers. Argentina itself isn't a
Speaker 2: bit of a funk. The peso's at an all time
Speaker 2: low versus the dollar. The rich people blame populism instead
Speaker 2: of you know, their economy being based on exports that
Speaker 2: aren't worthshit. Now that the war is over, Yeah, who
Speaker 2: could have guessed? Yeah, And at the beginning of the crisis.
Speaker 2: The landowners were like, hey, government, help us out. We're
Speaker 2: not as rich as we wore a couple of years ago.
Speaker 2: But the liberal government, you know, we have his new
Speaker 2: government since nineteen sixteen, the Radical Civic Union. They're like, now, whatever,
Speaker 2: fuck you, kick rocks. This is about the peak of
Speaker 2: good the Radical City Union is going to do. In
Speaker 2: this story, President President Dagoshin is the guy who took
Speaker 2: over in nineteen sixteen. He reinstates a customs office in
Speaker 2: the south of the country, and he starts looking at
Speaker 2: how all the the ranch owners like did all this
Speaker 2: shit where they stole all their land, right, But that
Speaker 2: was like never enough for them, So they also just
Speaker 2: exaggerated how much land there was there was theirs. They're like,
Speaker 2: oh no, it's just like it keeps going. That's that's
Speaker 2: mine too, right, And no one was checking them on it.
Speaker 2: So they just claimed to own even more land than
Speaker 2: they did own. They already owned too much land, but
Speaker 2: they were steeping where were they getting, Like where was
Speaker 2: the rest of the land there claimed own? Like coming
Speaker 2: from it was there? Like was there a bunch of
Speaker 2: state land there was?
Speaker 4: It?
Speaker 2: Just like the pushing borders I'm under the impression a
Speaker 2: lot of it with state land. And then the only
Speaker 2: one instance that I specifically know of was like a
Speaker 2: guy died and then rather than like someone coming and
Speaker 2: assessing the property and giving it to like his descendants
Speaker 2: or whatever, the nearby rancher was like and mine and
Speaker 2: just like took over the nearby land because the guy
Speaker 2: was dead. That's the one instance that I read specifically about.
Speaker 2: So President Ergoshen is like, all right, we got to
Speaker 2: take some of the stuff back. We got to make
Speaker 2: it state land, either again or for the first time.
Speaker 2: And I mean Argentina had stolen it in the first place,
Speaker 2: you know. But like whatever one judge doctor Ismail p. Vignas,
Speaker 2: he actually starts chant charging landowners with tax evasion, and
Speaker 2: they're not happy about this, that supposed charge rich people
Speaker 2: with that come on right, the unreasonable. Yeah, he is
Speaker 2: woven throughout this story. He's a really interesting character. The
Speaker 2: Radical Civic Union, like they do some interesting stuff. You know,
Speaker 2: interesting is not always the right word for it. But
Speaker 2: but vin Yas he's actually kind of a he's a
Speaker 2: pretty upstanding guy. Most of the region that we're gonna
Speaker 2: be talking about is in the province of Argentina called
Speaker 2: Santa Cruz and Irrigoshian. Let this other falcon. Remember there's
Speaker 2: a falcon who got blowed up last time, right, there's
Speaker 2: another falcon. I don't know if this guy's related or not.
Speaker 2: I couldn't find out. I was like googling this falcon
Speaker 2: related to falcon in the internet. Leave me alone, you know.
Speaker 2: And I was like, and I would like type in
Speaker 2: their full names, and it was like, no one knows
Speaker 2: or cares about this guy, right, And I'm like, I care.
Speaker 2: So this other falcon, Ellemiro Correa falcon. He stays the
Speaker 2: governor of the province, even though he's like he's the
Speaker 2: old right wing party, right, he's not the new radics
Speaker 2: of a union, which I think makes him a national
Speaker 2: autonomist or whatever. And he's also it's totally not a
Speaker 2: conflict of interest. He's the secretary of the Santa Cruz
Speaker 2: World Society, which is basically the rich Bastards Union where
Speaker 2: they like get together and plan how to rule everything.
Speaker 4: Ah.
Speaker 1: I love it, like that the rich Bastards Union.
Speaker 2: They're everywhere like this was like, are they are like
Speaker 2: wherever the workers rise up, everyone else is like like
Speaker 2: we did the newsies episode and the ostensibly mad at
Speaker 2: each other. Big newspapers in New York were like absolutely
Speaker 2: meeting to fix prices and absolutely meeting to strike, break
Speaker 2: and do all of that kind of stuff. Right. So
Speaker 2: you've got this judge Vignats and he's trying to stop
Speaker 2: the oligarchs in Santa Cruz. And there's this cross class
Speaker 2: alliance of the middle class and the unionized workers.
Speaker 3: For a while.
Speaker 2: Because the radical Citvic union represents the middle class primarily
Speaker 2: and the workers won't help them do it, this alliance
Speaker 2: doesn't stick around. Push comes to shove. The middle class
Speaker 2: backs the oligarchs, but for now they're doing good. The
Speaker 2: rich are organizing too without the government. They have the
Speaker 2: things like the Rural Society and the Patriotic League. We
Speaker 2: talked about them last time. They're the right way thugs.
Speaker 2: They're the Proud Boys of Argentina. The rich are organizing
Speaker 2: too without the government. They have things like the Rural
Speaker 2: Society and they have the Patriotic League we talked about
Speaker 2: them before. That's like the right wing thug, you know,
Speaker 2: proud boys, bullshit thing. And this bands together the upper class,
Speaker 2: in the upper middle class, even though the actual government
Speaker 2: is more on the side of liberal unions and shit.
Speaker 2: The army is firmly held by the oligarchs still, so
Speaker 2: you start getting this tension between the army and the government,
Speaker 2: which spoilers that we're not going to talk about this week,
Speaker 2: leads to all of the horrible military dictatorships of Argentina
Speaker 2: that come starting about ten years after where we're at now.
Speaker 2: But here where we are Patagonia, things are gearing up
Speaker 2: for a showdown. The Patriotic League at this point has
Speaker 2: militias all over, full of bosses, managers, foreman, cops, retired officers,
Speaker 2: and the sellouts among the workers. And I hate to
Speaker 2: say it, I think this means the diehard Catholics. Whenever
Speaker 2: a boss has trouble with the world, the militia's there
Speaker 2: to make sure that the oppressed stay oppressed. They even
Speaker 2: have a women's auxiliary of the Patriotic League, led by Yeah,
Speaker 2: these are led by quote respectable Catholic women.
Speaker 3: Oh boy. Yeah.
Speaker 2: This paramilitary force entirely unregulated by the government. It is
Speaker 2: ready to put down the anarchists, those immigrants scum. Well
Speaker 2: they're not actually capable of it, but they want to. Right,
Speaker 2: they're allowed to carry guns the unions are not allowed
Speaker 2: to carry guns.
Speaker 3: They might they were, they may start getting ideas if
Speaker 3: you let Tom do armed pickets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean I guess that's happened a couple
Speaker 2: of times already.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we are what this is what like nineteen twenty
Speaker 3: were seven years out from from the Shanghai Uprising, so
Speaker 3: like you know, oh, I don't know about that. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean that's the thing for another time. But okay,
Speaker 3: one of the ways that they took the city was
Speaker 3: they had these massive armed pickets that would just like
Speaker 3: everyone has to picket, everyone shows up with a gun,
Speaker 3: and they took the city with it.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, so much more. I love that history is
Speaker 2: like it's never ending. It's so much from aac because
Speaker 2: I learn one thing, and I'm but then there's another thing.
Speaker 2: There's always a new shiny thing. Yeah, and it's all
Speaker 2: happening at the same time, which is totally it's impossible
Speaker 2: to keep track of. And then I'm like historians on
Speaker 2: a hundred years ago had such an easy life because
Speaker 2: right because they didn't have the whole twentieth century to
Speaker 2: think about. It's not true, I mean that part whatever. Anyway, Okay,
Speaker 2: so on the other side, you got your proud boys
Speaker 2: on one side. The other side we have our unions.
Speaker 2: We have the Rio Diegos Workers Society affiliated with FURA,
Speaker 2: the Cyndicalist Union, and actually I think they're associate with
Speaker 2: the anarchists, the Anarcho Communist Union the other about the
Speaker 2: ask yeah, usually when I say synicalis, I mean the anarchists.
Speaker 2: But now we're talking about different Someone says, I mean
Speaker 2: the centrist says, like the one of the like three
Speaker 2: places as ever battered. I know, I know. And so
Speaker 2: the worker Society has dock workers, cooks, waiters, hotel staff,
Speaker 2: and farm workers. And as per usual, the left is
Speaker 2: full of splits, but mostly only in the cities, even
Speaker 2: in the south. In the cities you've got some of
Speaker 2: these splits. Right, You've got the two different Fora's you
Speaker 2: have the socialist one and the anarchist one. The socialist
Speaker 2: one is split between the democratic socialists and the authoritarian
Speaker 2: socialists like basically the Bolsheviks. Then among the anarchists you
Speaker 2: have a three way split. You have the moderate anarchists
Speaker 2: like our buddies at La Protesta. You have the leftist wing,
Speaker 2: and then you have the anarcho Bolsheviks who support the
Speaker 2: Russian Revolution. This is before. Oh I forgot about that.
Speaker 3: Ah yeah, yeah, I forgot about a couple of years.
Speaker 2: Split. Yeah. The rural leftists, however, they know what's up.
Speaker 2: They don't give a shit about any of these splits,
Speaker 2: or they don't. I don't know what's up, and they
Speaker 2: are blessed for their ignorance, and they just ignore all
Speaker 2: the splits because they don't affect them. The overall spirit
Speaker 2: is anarchism, with people tending in one direction or another
Speaker 2: within that, but they have bigger fucking issues right. The
Speaker 2: Rio Diego's Workers Federation started in nineteen ten. It's not
Speaker 2: going to survive this week's story. It dies alongside its
Speaker 2: members in nineteen twenty one, in nineteen twenty two. But
Speaker 2: we're gonna mention its founder, mostly because I want to
Speaker 2: mention the name of his kids, because nineteenth century radicals
Speaker 2: named their kids the coolest shit. Jose Mata was a
Speaker 2: Spanish anarchist with five kids. Progresso, progress Elisio, Elysium, Allegria, Happiness,
Speaker 2: Libertario Libertarian, and Bena Venita welcome.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, yeah, incredible stuff.
Speaker 2: Libertario is just like going around the rest of his live.
Speaker 2: He becomes like he joins the Patriotic League and he's
Speaker 2: just like, oh god, or no, no, it becomes a
Speaker 2: Bolshevik and he's like, it's like, yeah, this is a
Speaker 2: first guy purge from the Argentinian Communist Party. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: So the rural workers, they want some pretty basic shit.
Speaker 2: They want their lives to be livable. They wanted to
Speaker 2: be not be treated like actual garbage, they want to
Speaker 2: not be literal serfs. So nineteen fourteen, they have their
Speaker 2: first strike and their demands are bosses stop charging farm
Speaker 2: workers for their meals and also stop charging farm workers
Speaker 2: for tools broken during shearing. Plus, at the time, all
Speaker 2: the migrant farm workers were subject to mandatory medical examinations,
Speaker 2: so they wanted those to either be voluntary or to
Speaker 2: be paid for by the boss. They were willing to
Speaker 2: have fucking mandatory medical examinations, which is the early twentieth century,
Speaker 2: so it probably is really sketchy now when it would
Speaker 2: still be really sketchy. But they just wanted to like
Speaker 2: not have to pay for it on their own pocket, right,
Speaker 2: and they wanted really slightly better pay. This is the
Speaker 2: wild shit the anarchists struck four and this strike spreads
Speaker 2: to a total of three ranches. The right wing government
Speaker 2: they're like, nah, nah, this isn't going to be the way,
Speaker 2: so they arrest the leaders under an anti anarchist law.
Speaker 2: Anarchism is a few strategic weaknesses, but an over reliance
Speaker 2: on central leadership and authority figures, yeah, is not one
Speaker 2: of them. So this is gonna this is There's gonna
Speaker 2: be some patterns that repeat today. The arrest of the
Speaker 2: organizers doesn't stop the strike, it does not slow it down.
Speaker 2: The strike instead spreads across the entire region. Shearing stops
Speaker 2: basically everywhere as other organizers step in, because as soon
Speaker 2: as you're a striker, you're an organizer. Forty eight year
Speaker 2: old Chilean Carpenter took over the official position of like,
Speaker 2: you know, secretary of the union or whatever the fuck.
Speaker 2: The bosses shipped in scabs from the north and gave
Speaker 2: them guns, and the union was defeated in battle. Essentially,
Speaker 2: this leads to sixty eight arrests. This is heard of
Speaker 2: at the time. Mostly arrested were Spanish or Chilean, but
Speaker 2: a bunch of other immigrants were arrested as well. But
Speaker 2: you know who else will get you arrested us if
Speaker 2: you don't buy these things. We are the police, the
Speaker 2: capitalism police, here to enforce the purchasing of goods and
Speaker 2: or services. You know what, Actually you don't even have
Speaker 2: to get them from our advertisers, just any good or service, Like,
Speaker 2: just find someone selling something on the street and purchase
Speaker 2: whatever they're selling. That's good. Here's some stuff, and we're back.
Speaker 2: And in nineteen fifteen, meat packing anarchists went on strike.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately that's not the name of a sick porn that's
Speaker 2: actually just what their job was. And police beat it
Speaker 2: down and then arrested some of the organizers. And for
Speaker 2: years they would do these strikes. The Workers Society would
Speaker 2: do these strikes in both the city and the countryside.
Speaker 2: And they didn't win. And this didn't stop anyone. Right,
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventeen, there's a general strike, a solidarity strike.
Speaker 2: One of their one demand for this strike, it's really wild,
Speaker 2: you know, it's nineteen seventeen. They probably want it all, right.
Speaker 2: Their demand is stop corporal punishment of underrange farm workers.
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ, that's they're one thing. Look, you can beat
Speaker 2: the adults, right, you can employ the children. You just
Speaker 2: can't beat the children you employ. Ah. Yeah, I wasn't
Speaker 2: exaggerating when I called the serfdom.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess they are allowed to I would say
Speaker 2: they're allowed to go different places, but fairly often they
Speaker 2: actually can't go anywhere unless they have papers that are
Speaker 2: given to them by the right wing government.
Speaker 3: So it is just surf too. It's more credible stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we've reinvented serfdom. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Whenever Argentinian Patagonia went on a general strike the
Speaker 2: northern anarchists like rail workers and shit up in Buenos Aires,
Speaker 2: they supported it, and so did the Chilean labor movement
Speaker 2: who had solidarity strikes and vice versa. Some of the
Speaker 2: ones in Chile actually won, and then things really start
Speaker 2: kicking off, and they start kicking off because of solidarity
Speaker 2: and because of Simon Radowitski, the Ukrainian Jewish anarchist assassin
Speaker 2: we talked about last week. It all comes back together.
Speaker 2: I'm so excited about how well woven this story. Anyway.
Speaker 2: Oh hell yeah. Simon is in prison in the south
Speaker 2: of the country, in the Siberia of Argentina. And remember
Speaker 2: his escape attempt where he tried to get out by sailboat.
Speaker 2: The guy the manager of the newspaper La Protesta, the
Speaker 2: one that everyone everyone who runs this newspaper keeps getting arrested,
Speaker 2: deported and shit. So the guy who's running it at
Speaker 2: one point, and this is the voice of the moderate anarchists,
Speaker 2: and I suspect this is me. I'm one of these
Speaker 2: moderate anarchists as long as US moderate anarchists are still
Speaker 2: down for shit like this. The manager of the paper
Speaker 2: was appall and Nadio Bedada. He went down to Patagonia
Speaker 2: and personally helped get Simon onto the boat and accompanied
Speaker 2: him on what should have been his journey to freedom.
Speaker 2: But they were caught by the Chilean navy like we
Speaker 2: talked about, and so for their boldness, the pair spent
Speaker 2: twelve days shackled to an iron bar on deck, and
Speaker 2: Benda was sent to the same horrible Yeah it didn't
Speaker 2: go gray for him, I gotta admit, yeah, but like
Speaker 2: nothing ventured, nothing gained, you know, like and actually it
Speaker 2: leads to some wild shit. He gets sent to the
Speaker 2: same horrible death prison as Simon, and as well as
Speaker 2: his other anarchist who helped organize a general strike in
Speaker 2: Chile that we don't even have time to get into,
Speaker 2: because that's how much shit happened during this time, right
Speaker 2: even though there was a whole general strike where the
Speaker 2: organizers were arrested, but people kept rioting until all the
Speaker 2: organizers won put one were freed anyway, So now there's
Speaker 2: even more anarchists in Argentinian death jail, and our Rural
Speaker 2: Workers Federation has a meeting and they're like, should we
Speaker 2: just do a general strike until all of our anarchists
Speaker 2: get let out, like until we have make them let
Speaker 2: them go? And the cops are like, actually, you're not
Speaker 2: even allowed to consider that. So they storm the union
Speaker 2: hall and arrest basically all of the organizers, which, again,
Speaker 2: not a very good way to stop anarchists.
Speaker 3: Yeah, how do you think this is gonna go?
Speaker 2: Like, I know, what is your plan here? I will
Speaker 2: say the one thing that's said about twentieth century history
Speaker 2: is that eventually governments learn, oh, if you arrest and
Speaker 2: kill the organizers doesn't stop anarchists. You have to arrest
Speaker 2: and kill all of them. Yeah, but that's several years
Speaker 2: from now in this part of the story. So they
Speaker 2: arrest all the organizers and then another group of workers
Speaker 2: just immediately steps up into that role, right, like all
Speaker 2: of the you know, Okay, I'm third secretary of blah
Speaker 2: blah blah or whatever. You know, Because if you are
Speaker 2: irreplaceable in your radical movement, you have failed at one
Speaker 2: of your core responsibilities. You need to train others, like
Speaker 2: otherwise you create a weak movement. This isn't even just
Speaker 2: an anarchist ethos thing. This is just a way to
Speaker 2: have a strong resistance. Yeah, you cannot be irreplaceable. Yeah,
Speaker 2: your job is to organize yourself out of a job. Yeah, totally. Anyway,
Speaker 2: while the anarchists men are off to jail, the anarchists
Speaker 2: women are like, well whatever, we're here too, So they
Speaker 2: take over. The anarchists women organize a we'll call it
Speaker 2: a protest, but it's a riot. They take over two streets,
Speaker 2: They throw rocks at the chief of police, they jump
Speaker 2: another cop from behind the woman who's accused of organizing it.
Speaker 2: The cops arrest her, and during the arrest she kicks
Speaker 2: him so hard in the nuts that he couldn't go
Speaker 2: to work for two days. And there was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: there's so many newspaper articles about this in the time
Speaker 2: from both sides, right, because the anarchist papers are like, hell, yeah,
Speaker 2: we if I get that cop in the nuts they are,
Speaker 2: and then the other ones are like quite unfortunately due
Speaker 2: to the irresponsible behavior of these women one officer that is,
Speaker 2: you know whatever, anyway, And now I want to reference
Speaker 2: the single most frustrating thing I've ever written a history book.
Speaker 2: It is not the fault of the history book that
Speaker 2: I'm reading. So much shit was happening in the southern
Speaker 2: half of the southern chunk of in Patagonia. So much
Speaker 2: shit is happening that the following is only a single sentence.
Speaker 2: The anarchist workers of the Chilean province of maggiyanis quote
Speaker 2: occupied the city and administered it through workers' councils. That
Speaker 2: is one sentence in a four hundred and seventy five
Speaker 2: page book. If this had happened in Europe, we'd be
Speaker 2: singing songs about it. I would know the name of
Speaker 2: the city where it happened instead of just the province.
Speaker 2: What that is wild? Yeah, I don't know how long
Speaker 2: it was for. All I know is that the worker
Speaker 2: took over an entire city and ran it through workers
Speaker 2: councils in Chile in nineteen I think I'm in nineteen
Speaker 2: nineteen or so at this point, I'm not sure. So
Speaker 2: all this wild shit leads to the temporary suspension of
Speaker 2: the Rio Diegos Worker Society, but new folks are going
Speaker 2: to step up, including the main guy who becomes the
Speaker 2: sort of big man of history style credit. He gets
Speaker 2: the credit for this whole rebellion, and he's fucking cool.
Speaker 2: He deserves credit. He didn't run the thing. But people
Speaker 2: always pick a guy, right, Yeah, and the guy they
Speaker 2: pick is Antonio Soto. And I know what you're thinking.
Speaker 2: You're thinking, Margaret, how come there's only been one theater
Speaker 2: kid so far in this week's episodes. Well, I've got you,
Speaker 2: don't worry. Second theater kid has hit the towers about aging.
Speaker 2: You just can't fucking handle theater kids, That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Antonio Soto was born in Spain in eighteen ninety sive
Speaker 2: and he was born porous.
Speaker 3: Fuck.
Speaker 2: His family made its way to Buenos Aires when he
Speaker 2: was thirteen years old. His parents tried to put him
Speaker 2: in school whenever they could, but they couldn't really afford it, right,
Speaker 2: he needed to be working, so soon enough, He's an narcosyndicalist,
Speaker 2: and then even worse, he becomes a theater kid. A
Speaker 2: when he's twenty two, he joins a Spanish operetta company.
Speaker 2: I had to look this up operettas I just assumed
Speaker 2: they were short operas, but nothing that I was like
Speaker 2: reading it as if an operetta was a short opera.
Speaker 2: Do you know what an operetta is?
Speaker 3: Not the little opa?
Speaker 2: So I guess not right, It's like sort of it
Speaker 2: is technically it comes from the category of things called opera,
Speaker 2: and it is shorter. They're more lighthearted. They are shorter,
Speaker 2: and they have spoken parts and singing and dancing. They're
Speaker 2: fucking musicals. Oh god, is that kind of theater kid?
Speaker 3: Eh?
Speaker 2: Oh No. And he's a techie because he's like joins
Speaker 2: the company and he's in charge of like setting up
Speaker 2: the stage, the background.
Speaker 3: Nothing has nothing about anarchism has ever changed.
Speaker 2: No, st the same people. No. We did an episode
Speaker 2: about Chicago nineteen twenty around almost the exact same time
Speaker 2: and the Dill Pickle Club where the guy who ran
Speaker 2: it was the guy who painted the set scenery for musicals.
Speaker 3: It's just every I know, like twelve of this guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he's great. He rules like no notes, Antonio
Speaker 2: Soda like he's fucking straight edged vegan. Okay, we talk
Speaker 2: about that part. Oh my god, nothing ever change notes
Speaker 2: And he does the most theater kid anarchist thing ever.
Speaker 2: They're traveling through the small town in January nineteen twenty
Speaker 2: and some of the retail workers go on strike and
Speaker 2: almost the entire city backs the workers. Why does the
Speaker 2: almost the entire city back the workers because the stage
Speaker 2: hand of the traveling feeder company is up there giving
Speaker 2: fucking baller speeches and rallying everybody like he's in newsies.
Speaker 2: He's just like.
Speaker 3: Incredible.
Speaker 2: This naturally gets him arrested and the entire troop kicked
Speaker 2: out of town when they he doesn't stay in jail
Speaker 2: for very long. When they make it to Rio Gee Goos,
Speaker 2: the which is the capital of the province of Santa Cruz,
Speaker 2: folks are like, hey, you should stay here and be
Speaker 2: an organizer. You're kind of good at this thing. And
Speaker 2: he's like, I guess I do give pretty good speeches.
Speaker 2: So he stays and he gets a new job. His
Speaker 2: new job is beach. Yes, I made a pop culture reference.
Speaker 2: He referred to it as beach worker. He was a
Speaker 2: Steve Ador, but for some reason he made a thing
Speaker 2: where he was like, I'm not a Steve Adoor, I'm
Speaker 2: a beach worker. And I think it was like a
Speaker 2: I think it was like a proletarian thing, right. I
Speaker 2: think he was like, Steve Door sounds fancy. I'm a
Speaker 2: beach work. We'll just want to get Steve Doors is
Speaker 2: not a fancy job, right, No, but his job is
Speaker 2: beach He loads and unloads ships. And I like it
Speaker 2: because he's a six foot tall, blonde, blonde haired, blue
Speaker 2: eyed guy, so he's just kind of ken.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: He does have dirty blonde hair and one of his
Speaker 2: eyes is lazy, which makes him even cooler. By May,
Speaker 2: he is Secretary General of the Workers Society, which is like,
Speaker 2: not like haha, I'm so good I got promoted. This
Speaker 2: is a sucker's job, right, You're in charge, you're the figurehead,
Speaker 2: You're the person with your head on the chopping block.
Speaker 2: But somebody's got to do it. And if not Antonio's
Speaker 2: Ken Soto, that's what people call him, then who. It
Speaker 2: is a time of strange bedfellows. The Anarchist Union is
Speaker 2: hanging out with that judge I mentioned earlier vignats As
Speaker 2: they figure out a way to break the power of
Speaker 2: the oligarchs right and Vignas starts selling off the assets
Speaker 2: of one of the rich assholes who claimed land he
Speaker 2: didn't own. But the right wing governor arrests the auctioneer
Speaker 2: and a bunch of other people. So you have the
Speaker 2: government fighting itself at this point, and the landowners they're
Speaker 2: getting worried. They're freaked out because an anarchist pamphlet called
Speaker 2: is a really scary name, social justice. Oh, a pamphlet
Speaker 2: called social justice has been going around the farm hands.
Speaker 2: In April nineteen twenty, the anarchist workers take over a ranch.
Speaker 2: The governor swiftly puts it down, cracking heads and deporting
Speaker 2: three organizers. Meanwhile, Antonio can Soto is organizing the city.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile Antonio can Soto is organizing in the city. The
Speaker 2: beach workers and the hotel workers go on strike and
Speaker 2: they get a partial victory. The beach workers lose, but
Speaker 2: the hotel workers. The hotels agree to better pay for them.
Speaker 2: Two hotels hold out and hire scabs and are like, nah,
Speaker 2: fuck the workers, we don't give a shit. So Antonio
Speaker 2: Soto and one other guy I'll quote from the historian
Speaker 2: Oswaldo Bayer so Soto and a compatriot enter one of
Speaker 2: the hotels and use their fis to try to convince
Speaker 2: the holdouts to stop work. This shockingly ends in his arrest,
Speaker 2: but he's friends at the liberal judge who's trying to
Speaker 2: destroy the oligarchs, So who hates the governor, so Vigna
Speaker 2: sets him free.
Speaker 3: That's that's incredibly funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, like you're just trying to beat up scabs.
Speaker 2: Nothing wrong with that. I'm the government. The rest of
Speaker 2: the workers boycott these hotels, and honestly, the boycotts that
Speaker 2: these that the this union organizes are some of the
Speaker 2: most effective things that they do. Taxis won't take passengers there,
Speaker 2: guests are informed about their political the political choice they
Speaker 2: were making by accident, and so many go to other hotels.
Speaker 2: I have no idea whether this involves fisticufs or not.
Speaker 2: The end of this, the end of this boycott is
Speaker 2: that the two hotel owners, the two who were like
Speaker 2: holding out, who specifically hate the union, and the anarchists,
Speaker 2: they have to go personally to the anarchist union hall,
Speaker 2: hat literally in their hands, and beg forgiveness. They had
Speaker 2: to rehire and organize.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they had to rehire fired organizers, and one of
Speaker 2: them had to pay. The one who was like worse
Speaker 2: somehow or something had to pay a hefty fine in
Speaker 2: person to Antonio Soto, who then just he just counts
Speaker 2: the money in front of a cheering crowd. Yeah. So
Speaker 2: the anarchists they buy a printing press and they start
Speaker 2: sending organizers out to more of the ranches. So the
Speaker 2: cops realized that the strike is about to go general,
Speaker 2: so they buy a bunch of machine guns. Anarchists call
Speaker 2: for a day of mourning on the eleventh anniversary of
Speaker 2: previous hero of the pod, Francisco Ferrere, who's a Spanish
Speaker 2: anarchist who revolutionized education. They went to the cops to
Speaker 2: ask for a permit, because these are the moderate anarchists.
Speaker 2: They usually come in like they want a society with
Speaker 2: no state, no capitalism, right, but usually their demand is
Speaker 2: like stop beating children, were not serfs, you know. So
Speaker 2: the moderate anarchists they want to have this this protests,
Speaker 2: so they go to the cops and ask for a permit.
Speaker 2: The cops say no, So the anarchists call a general strike.
Speaker 2: The cops throw out the pretense of law and made
Speaker 2: everyone in the city stay in their homes and like
Speaker 2: paraded around with rifles. The judge Vignas is.
Speaker 3: Like, what are you fucking doing? You can't just.
Speaker 2: Suspend these what? No, and he grants workers the right
Speaker 2: to gather. Soon, the right wing bosses union is boycotting
Speaker 2: newspapers sympathetic to the strike. So the workers then boycott
Speaker 2: the businesses that are against whatever. It's all fucking every Yeah,
Speaker 2: So the chief of police personally raids the union hall
Speaker 2: and files all the organized off at bayonet point to jail. Yeah.
Speaker 2: They confiscate all the flyers calling for people to boycott businesses.
Speaker 2: This is what makes them angry. Boycotts right, because the
Speaker 2: police existed to protect business and capital. Fortunately those days
Speaker 2: are long gone. But Vignas, the federal judge orders the
Speaker 2: governor to release all the organizers. The governor refuses, and
Speaker 2: it's like, I don't care that the federal judge told
Speaker 2: me I have to do this. So for the third
Speaker 2: or fourth time in the past thirty minutes of me
Speaker 2: reading a script, the government has failed to learn the
Speaker 2: lesson that you cannot stop anarchists by arresting their leaders.
Speaker 2: The strike spreads, and ironically, the strike was going to stop.
Speaker 2: It was just going to be these boycotts. But since
Speaker 2: they arrested ten people, yeah yeah, and now the rural
Speaker 2: workers are getting in on it. They pour into the city.
Speaker 2: Cops start beating up anyone they suspect of being Chilean,
Speaker 2: which is to say, they start beating up all the
Speaker 2: brown people. Twenty seven people are arrested. Now the government blinks,
Speaker 2: the governor, sorry, the government. It's like, the government is
Speaker 2: the federal government, then the governor is the rural government.
Speaker 2: They're mad at each other, you know. So the governor
Speaker 2: blinks and he's scared, so he freeze fifteen of the
Speaker 2: twenty seven, and so the strike is like, what, there's
Speaker 2: still twelve people in jail.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like oh you it's like, well you've you've
Speaker 3: proven that this works.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so he freees all but two. Like he's like, nah,
Speaker 2: but these two. So the strike is like yeah, no,
Speaker 2: those two two, and the strike continues. The demand is
Speaker 2: that all workers are set free, not some workers. So
Speaker 2: by November one, nineteen twenty, the remaining workers are freed,
Speaker 2: and so once again the workers are like, oh we
Speaker 2: we like kind of got this right, Like, our boycotts
Speaker 2: are working, our strikes are working. So November three, Antonio, Sorry,
Speaker 2: the state just tries to murder Antonio Soto. They send
Speaker 2: some one with a knife at him in the street,
Speaker 2: but sorry, you can't keep this man down. He gets
Speaker 2: cut up a little bit, but the fatal blow is
Speaker 2: supposedly stopped by a pocket watch. Right, incredible.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 3: It's also like not a great like not an incredible murder,
Speaker 3: Like you'd think it's the state. They'd give him a
Speaker 3: gun at.
Speaker 2: Least, you know, I know, maybe they like didn't want
Speaker 2: to make a scene. I have no fucking clue.
Speaker 3: But even even the assassins, you're getting affected by budget cuts,
Speaker 3: I guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So what Soto does is he pretends to reach
Speaker 2: for a gun, and that scares the attacker off. So
Speaker 2: didn't have a gun. He's just like what you want
Speaker 2: some of this, you know, like reaches for his waistband
Speaker 2: and the guy's like, never mind, it runs away.
Speaker 3: Long, long and glorious history of anarchists threatening people will
Speaker 3: suff it doesn't exist.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah. So now the workers they decided they're like,
Speaker 2: all right, we've won the last couple things. We should
Speaker 2: go on the offensive. We should start actually trying to
Speaker 2: get more people, more rights and freedoms. And they already
Speaker 2: know what the urban workers want, right they want a
Speaker 2: living wage, but they don't know what the rural workers want.
Speaker 2: And they're not a vanguard party, which is cool. So
Speaker 2: they send delegates around the country to figure out what
Speaker 2: the rural workers want before they make demands. They go
Speaker 2: and ask people, what demands are you willing to fight for?
Speaker 2: And then the two groups go on strike together. The
Speaker 2: rural workers have already thrown down for the urban workers.
Speaker 2: It's time for the urban workers to throw down for
Speaker 2: the rural workers. The city is shut down, ranches are
Speaker 2: shutting down. Two and this one. This is the big strike.
Speaker 2: This is the reason we have this whole episode. Right
Speaker 2: wing militias try to shut it down. They can't there's
Speaker 2: not enough of them. Ay, within three days, the ranch
Speaker 2: owners are at the negotiating table and they're willing to
Speaker 2: concede to all of the demands except one. They were
Speaker 2: used to recognize the union. They want to negotiate directly
Speaker 2: with their own workers in the future. So the union's like, nah,
Speaker 2: it's not gonna fucking work. Yes, no, and finally, at
Speaker 2: the top of all of this, last Monday, I promised
Speaker 2: you a man with a number for a name. But first,
Speaker 2: but first, oh, well, you know what else cares about numbers?
Speaker 1: And you know what else? Do you know who else
Speaker 1: breaks their promises and things they're gonna tell you quickly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, here's some ads and we're back and we are
Speaker 2: about to meet Elsa Santa Yoto. Sixty eight, so fucking cool.
Speaker 1: But yeah, cool, fucking name.
Speaker 3: I should do. It was gonna be a low number, No, No,
Speaker 3: sixty eight. Soon, it's gonna be like eleven nine. No.
Speaker 2: I once met when I was like a street kid,
Speaker 2: I once met this guy in Tucson. And in Tucson
Speaker 2: at the time, I don't know the laws. Now, you
Speaker 2: were allowed to like just carry any weapon you wanted,
Speaker 2: as long as it wasn't like a gun. You probably
Speaker 2: all to carry guns too, But so the street kids
Speaker 2: all carried like swords at the time. And so I
Speaker 2: met this guy. His name was like fifty two or
Speaker 2: something like that, and he had like a brace of
Speaker 2: throwing knives across his chest, and he lived by the
Speaker 2: train tracks. And I think of him every time I
Speaker 2: read about sixty eight and he hung out with a
Speaker 2: guy named Diesel Daisy.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, yeah, incredible.
Speaker 2: Anyway, sixty eight he's an Italian bandit who spent years
Speaker 2: in the horrid death prison that we've been talking about,
Speaker 2: whose name I keep not writing because I'm not actually
Speaker 2: one hundred percent sure about the pronunciation and it's very
Speaker 2: complicated to spell, so I keep writing death prison instead,
Speaker 2: which I'm now recognizing is not the way that I
Speaker 2: should have written the script. So sixty eight he goes there,
Speaker 2: and that's his inmate number, And why would he his
Speaker 2: sick new name just because he's free now? So he's
Speaker 2: sixty eight, you.
Speaker 3: Know, reasonable?
Speaker 2: And not only would I say he is free, I
Speaker 2: would say he is one of the freest people who
Speaker 2: ever lived. The rural organizers, they are hard riding, hard
Speaker 2: fighting motherfuckers. They go ranch to ranch evading bosses, handing
Speaker 2: out union cards and teaching people that together, collectively, workers
Speaker 2: can have self determination. And while they're there they rob
Speaker 2: the ranch owners. Ay, before these guys were anarchists, they
Speaker 2: were regular outlaws. I don't know what sixty eight did,
Speaker 2: but one of his compatriots is referred to as a
Speaker 2: brawler who spent five years in prison for stabbing a guy.
Speaker 2: Another is most notable because all of his teeth are gold.
Speaker 3: What.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's like the character when it's like listing all
Speaker 2: of the guys right and you're like, ah, this guy's
Speaker 2: from Russia and it's like, oh, and this guy has
Speaker 2: all gold teeth, you know, does he just like take
Speaker 2: them from people? Well, it's the cheaper way to get
Speaker 2: a crown, right, Like a cheaper gold tooth is a
Speaker 2: longer lasting, cheaper crown than an enamel one. So it's like,
Speaker 2: I don't know, I find it interesting. So work stops
Speaker 2: at all the ranches within two weeks. The ranch owners
Speaker 2: have given up. They will talk directly to the union.
Speaker 2: They make a serious counteroffer. The demands that the workers
Speaker 2: are making are reasonable. The one that they're like going
Speaker 2: to war for and like robbing everyone over and shit.
Speaker 2: These are their demands that they will stop doing this over.
Speaker 2: They want no more than three men in a four
Speaker 2: square meter room. They want cots or beds instead of bunks.
Speaker 2: They want ventilation and disinfection of their bedrooms. They want
Speaker 2: a fucking bathroom. They want the workers to not have
Speaker 2: to pay for their own lighting. They want three meals
Speaker 2: a day with actual variety. They want once a week laundry.
Speaker 2: They're even, I think, willing to fucking pay for the laundry.
Speaker 2: But I'm not sure workers will buy their own clothes,
Speaker 2: but owners must buy the beds. They want to not
Speaker 2: have to work and shit weather unless there's an exception.
Speaker 2: There's an exception for emergencies. They're like, oh, if this
Speaker 2: thing doesn't happen to day, will never happen, right, because
Speaker 2: they're like not being unreasonable. They want a first aid
Speaker 2: kit available, and they want anyone who is fired or
Speaker 2: let go to be driven back to where they were
Speaker 2: hired from rather than just like, oh, sorry, you're fired
Speaker 2: and you are in the middle of nowhere with no
Speaker 2: money and they want decent pay. They're like not even
Speaker 2: asking for a lot of money. Yeah, this is like
Speaker 2: these are all just like incredible. This isn't even this
Speaker 2: is like we what like, the thing we are striking
Speaker 2: for is conditions that are like we want a really
Speaker 2: really shitty dorm room. Yeah totally, but we want a
Speaker 2: bathroom attached to our dorm room, you know. Yeah. They
Speaker 2: didn't even demand closed shops, which is to say they
Speaker 2: didn't demand that all workers at the ranch be unionized.
Speaker 2: They only demanded that workers have the right to be
Speaker 2: unionized and that bosses cannot prevent workers from unionizing. This
Speaker 2: is a this was this is a moderate position. This
Speaker 2: is less than what the centrist unions in the US
Speaker 2: ask for. And the owners are like, you know what,
Speaker 2: we're willing to go to war over bunks. So they don't.
Speaker 2: They're like, nope, we're not going to do it. We
Speaker 2: we our counteroffer included that we get to people put
Speaker 2: people in bunks. So the owners bring in scabs who
Speaker 2: are unionized into a right wing union. There's like these
Speaker 2: like right wing unions that are like the Good Workers
Speaker 2: Faction or whatever the fuck bullshit. But there's a there's
Speaker 2: a problem with bringing in scabs. That problem is named
Speaker 2: el sciente Yojo. He is a fucking bandit. He's not
Speaker 2: a moderate anarchist in a city who picks moderate demands.
Speaker 2: And again he's getting the big man of history thing
Speaker 2: he's got like there's like two hundred or six hundred
Speaker 2: or the numbers change wildly, like month to month as
Speaker 2: you read the history books. But like there's a lot
Speaker 2: of other people with him, and they are actually all
Speaker 2: democratic and we'll talk about some other they like literally,
Speaker 2: when there's like a big thing that they're deciding what
Speaker 2: to do, they like sit down and vote. You know.
Speaker 2: He just has the cool name. So he's the one
Speaker 2: I'm writing about. When the scabs from the who get
Speaker 2: shipped in from the north, When they head into the
Speaker 2: hills towards the ranches, men on horseback with guns block
Speaker 2: their path, firing into the air, appearing and then disappearing
Speaker 2: out of the hills. The strike breakers and their police
Speaker 2: escorts turn tail and just run. When the army shows up,
Speaker 2: there's no trace of them because they're fucking mantles in
Speaker 2: the It's incredible, and like most of them have been
Speaker 2: there for a thousand like from cultures that have been
Speaker 2: there for thousands of years.
Speaker 3: You know, oh yeah, we know, we know how to
Speaker 3: get gone when these assholes show up here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So they run off into the hills like they're
Speaker 2: cutting fences on the ranches. They're setting sheep free. Probably
Speaker 2: not for animal rights reasons, but that is a nice
Speaker 2: headcanon that I like to have. I think they're killing
Speaker 2: a lot of ranch animals. I think that is a
Speaker 2: thing that rural uprisings do, is that they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm going to fuck up the owner's property. So I'm
Speaker 2: going to kill all these like sheep and shit we
Speaker 2: talked about in some of the Irish Irish Rebel episode
Speaker 2: a lot while back, the Molly Maguire episode. Do you
Speaker 2: want to hear about more otherwise cool people killing animals?
Speaker 2: I don't know why you would want to hear that.
Speaker 2: What's wrong with you? So the owners come back to
Speaker 2: the table and their counteroffer is rejected, and the strike continues,
Speaker 2: and a minority of the less radical organizers are starting
Speaker 2: to get pretty mad at the like more radical organizers.
Speaker 2: They're like, we kind of want to accept the offer
Speaker 2: and the strike. Now, we got a lot of what
Speaker 2: we want. But the strike continues. In cities, hotel owners
Speaker 2: are personally serving their guests because they have no waiters.
Speaker 2: They have no workers. Right right wing militia guys are
Speaker 2: having their houses bombed. In small towns where no one
Speaker 2: has printing presses, people are just handwriting the flyers and posters.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Small business owners are mostly on the side of the workers,
Speaker 2: and they offer striking workers goods on credit. One anarchist
Speaker 2: business owner who I guess owned several stores. He offers
Speaker 2: good on credit, and he goes beyond that. He's like,
Speaker 2: you strike until the last man every time workers, and
Speaker 2: he gives them something on credit. So cops are just
Speaker 2: going around shutting down all the businesses that are extending
Speaker 2: credit to workers, because again, no one is acting within
Speaker 2: the comp No one is considering law when they're making
Speaker 2: decisions right now, no one on any side. You know,
Speaker 2: this is the hour of the class war, in which
Speaker 2: the law just sort of vanishes mysteriously to like reappear
Speaker 2: at the next full moon. Yeah, totally. And it's not
Speaker 2: hypocritical for anarchists to about the law, but it is
Speaker 2: hypocritical for statists. It's never stopped them, but it always annoys.
Speaker 3: No, not a single time.
Speaker 2: No, No Vignas is like the only guy who cares
Speaker 2: about law, and even he's likes just setting people free.
Speaker 2: So are like lawful neutral judge is And so there's
Speaker 2: no legal justification for shutting down the businesses that extend credit.
Speaker 2: It's just about power and control. The army is beating
Speaker 2: up shopkeepers and quote requisitioning liquor and shit from them,
Speaker 2: aka just like running around stealing shit. Sometimes the marauding
Speaker 2: cops are driven off with gunfire by sympathetic hotels and
Speaker 2: like like they'll like show up to try and do
Speaker 2: one of these things and then the workers will be
Speaker 2: like fuck you and shoot at the cops and drive
Speaker 2: them away. Arrested workers are tortured and told they will
Speaker 2: be killed if they don't work for nothing for the landowners,
Speaker 2: because like I'm not exaggerating, they're like, you better go
Speaker 2: actually admit that you're worth nothing, otherwise we're gonna kill you.
Speaker 2: L sixty eight and his crew of two hundred anarchist
Speaker 2: bandits are chasing cars on horseback and driving off the
Speaker 2: marauders at gunpoint. At one point, they're so fucking mad
Speaker 2: that they're also taking ranchers hostage and that they release
Speaker 2: the ranchers once the ranchers promised they'll give into the
Speaker 2: workers demands, which is not a fair way to extract
Speaker 2: a promise from anyone. I will concede that point. Well,
Speaker 2: I mean, I think the tactical problem is okay, So
Speaker 2: you have to threaten to kidnap them a second time,
Speaker 2: because they could just say that and then go back
Speaker 2: and then not given to the promises. So you have
Speaker 2: to keep this is not it seems like not a
Speaker 2: great way to do a hostage situation. Yeah, in one
Speaker 2: small town. One small town is mostly immigrants and or
Speaker 2: Chileans who are presented as immigrants, the tiny Argentinian population,
Speaker 2: the Europeans, the whites, the Native whites. They open fire
Speaker 2: on a demonstration, killing one person, wounding many. Both sides
Speaker 2: are actively comparing the whole thing to the Indian Wars, well,
Speaker 2: the Conquest of Desert. I'm using Indian Wars for the
Speaker 2: American way of phrasing it. You know, the government and
Speaker 2: owners are like, oh, they're evil bandits, just like the Indians,
Speaker 2: and the workers are like, there are a bunch of
Speaker 2: marauding thieves stealing from us, just like they stole the
Speaker 2: place from the Indians. Finally, the ostensibly liberal liberal government
Speaker 2: decides to act in the name of law and order.
Speaker 2: Ostensibly they're on neither the owner's side nor the worker's side,
Speaker 2: and they this time that's sort of true. On December thirtieth,
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty sixty of Irrigotian soldiers arrive to find a
Speaker 2: city in flames, actually, because by January third, the strikers
Speaker 2: in the city have just set fire to a warehouse
Speaker 2: full of gasoline and oil tanks, which like I hate
Speaker 2: to be like a place is asking for it based
Speaker 2: on what it decides to store, but it is a
Speaker 2: warehouse full of gasoline and oil tanks. The arsonists fire
Speaker 2: off guns to wake people up and warn them of
Speaker 2: the fire. The owning class once again realizes that half
Speaker 2: Argentina is about to go full on fucking communists if
Speaker 2: they don't do something, and it would have been sick
Speaker 2: because it would have been libertarian communists with workers council
Speaker 2: democracy instead of Vanguard Party rule. So it's put down.
Speaker 2: The liberal president is like, actually, we can't have this happening, right.
Speaker 2: Rich British landowners are like, aren't you going to protect
Speaker 2: our private property which we will use to extract the
Speaker 2: wealth of your country and have all the profits go
Speaker 2: to England, And the President's like, sir, yes, sir, that's
Speaker 2: my impression of their conversation. So they arrest the leaders.
Speaker 2: They try to burn the printing presses, a curfew is
Speaker 2: put in place, and the urban side of the strike
Speaker 2: is successfully shut down. Soto Antonio Soto, he travels up
Speaker 2: to Buenos Aires and he's trying to get the syndicalist FA,
Speaker 2: the more liberal one to actually fucking support this strike, right,
Speaker 2: And he's like, if we had better support nationwide, we'd
Speaker 2: be able to do this. And his journey is harrowing.
Speaker 2: The government keeps trying to arrest him en route, but
Speaker 2: each time they do this twice, each time hundreds of
Speaker 2: dock workers and sailors off the cops. Wow, and they
Speaker 2: escort him all the way up the coast of Gwenne Sarah's.
Speaker 2: But the liberal fa he gets there and the liberal
Speaker 2: foura is like, how dare you criticize us? We are
Speaker 2: great and perfect, and so it's for nothing and he
Speaker 2: goes back empty handed. H The rural workers they're not done.
Speaker 2: They are harder repress. They've got horses and guns, and
Speaker 2: a fuck ton of them have lived there for thousands
Speaker 2: of years. There's now six hundred bandits in the hills
Speaker 2: waging war on the bosses and the cops, slipping past
Speaker 2: police cordons to network with their comrades in the city.
Speaker 2: Like literally they'll be like parts where like thirty bandits
Speaker 2: on horses like sneak their way into the city somehow,
Speaker 2: which is amazing.
Speaker 3: This whole thing just sounds like it. This whole thing
Speaker 3: just sounds like the absolute wildest Western. Yeah, well, actually
Speaker 3: there is one. There's a movie based on this that
Speaker 3: is the Wildest Western, but it's not long enough.
Speaker 2: I want like a four season i want West World
Speaker 2: level quality. But just this, they're taking cops hostage left
Speaker 2: and right, ambush every military force that tries to stop them.
Speaker 2: Slowly the federal forces ramp up, and so enters our
Speaker 2: main villain of the day, the quote unquote radical Lieutenant
Speaker 2: Colonel Hector Benigo Verella. He's sent to the South with
Speaker 2: the vague orders of do your duty.
Speaker 3: That's not good.
Speaker 2: No, No, he's the kind of guy who's so into
Speaker 2: being a military guy that he's learning German. This is
Speaker 2: like nineteen twenty, right, So it's not like I'm a Nazi,
Speaker 2: but it's like I'm sketchy. You know. The Germans were
Speaker 2: seen as the best militarists in the world. And a
Speaker 2: new governor of Santa Cruz is actually appointed to It's
Speaker 2: no longer the conservative, it's now a radical. This doesn't
Speaker 2: really make any difference to our story. More to the
Speaker 2: people who are acting within it. Ranches all across the
Speaker 2: country are entirely controlled by their armed workers, with bosses
Speaker 2: and cops hostage, and the ranchers are finally like, we
Speaker 2: give up no bunk beds. So they're like all right,
Speaker 2: and the strike ends.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: The workers win, and Virella, the lieutenant colonel, the militarys guy,
Speaker 2: he actually oversees this, and he oversees the signing of
Speaker 2: the thing, and like he he like doesn't he's actually
Speaker 2: okay this time around, kinda we'll talk about him more.
Speaker 2: It is not entirely uncontested on either side. The workers
Speaker 2: agree to give up their hostages. The government agrees to
Speaker 2: give up theirs like let the imprison people out. The
Speaker 2: workers agree to give up their weapons. The government, of course,
Speaker 2: agrees to no such thing. You know who else won't
Speaker 2: give up their weapons.
Speaker 3: Else?
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, it's not amazing. It's Saneojo and
Speaker 2: two hundred other bandits that's to say, sixty eight. Yeah,
Speaker 2: sixty eight doesn't give it up his fucking guns. No,
Speaker 2: he is a cold, dead hands motherfucker. And because it's
Speaker 2: an anarchist union, it's kind of fine. Most of it
Speaker 2: gives up, right, But then the bandits are like, okay, well,
Speaker 2: we'll take most of the weapons and disappear into the hills.
Speaker 2: And then the like moderates are like, okay, that's fine,
Speaker 2: you do you know. So the more moderate anarchists show
Speaker 2: up and they turn over all their weapons and Virella
Speaker 2: like the government's like, wait, this is all your weapons.
Speaker 2: This is like three rusty revolvers, and they're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: there's totally all our weapons. This is definitely it. All
Speaker 2: demands are met and they have until then, like and
Speaker 2: basically it's like will they be complied with? They're waiting
Speaker 2: for the next shearing season, which is like September or
Speaker 2: October or something. Total fucking victory for the workers, if
Speaker 2: only the owners and government weren't a bunch of lying,
Speaker 2: fucking shit bags, which we'll talk about on Wednesday, Part four. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you gotta wait for the part four.
Speaker 1: Go ahead one day, Well, one day we'll have a
Speaker 1: part sixty eight.
Speaker 2: And he's gonna be somebody. He's going to be the
Speaker 2: money so good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it'll be somebody so good that we need sixty
Speaker 1: eight parts.
Speaker 2: Mala testa one day whenever earned all of y'all's trust,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna take a year and a half. Oh no, wait,
Speaker 2: half a year. I do two a week more sewing machines,
Speaker 2: but If you also want something that happens every day,
Speaker 2: you should listen to me A's podcast.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it could happen here. It's the podcast that
Speaker 3: happens five days a week about the world falling apart
Speaker 3: and how you can put it back? How you sorry,
Speaker 3: Jesus Christ. I say this tagline literally, you're like, not
Speaker 3: every episode, but like a lot of episodes. It's the
Speaker 3: world for Jesus Christ's falling apart. Put it back together again,
Speaker 3: that's the I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure I came
Speaker 3: up with that too, which makes it even more embarrassing.
Speaker 4: Gus.
Speaker 3: Somehow, hell yeah, somehow, in my hour of indeed, my
Speaker 3: ability to say it has vanished.
Speaker 2: I wish y'all could see the way that Mia gesticulates
Speaker 2: when she talks. One day, Mia, you gotta do a YouTube.
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, I can't think of anything Mia would hate more.
Speaker 2: It's okay, because you still have the gesticulations. It'd be
Speaker 2: worth it. I'm not trying to make your self conscious.
Speaker 2: I genuinely find it good.
Speaker 3: Anyway. It would be funny. But yeah, my middle name
Speaker 3: is face does not appear on camera.
Speaker 2: So what else do we have to plug? Well, on
Speaker 2: both of our feeds, my feed and MIA's feed, you
Speaker 2: can find the Cool Zone Media book Club, which we
Speaker 2: have finally come up with an official title. It's Cool
Speaker 2: Zone Media book Club. I can't believe you all have
Speaker 2: been calling it cool Zone book Club. That is incorrect.
Speaker 2: And next time you hear someone say cool Zone book Club,
Speaker 2: you should just hit them. Wait. No, that teams a
Speaker 2: bit much that you should say. I too like the
Speaker 2: show Cool Zone Media book Club and like passive aggressively
Speaker 2: correct the way they say it, So you should do. Sophie,
Speaker 2: what do you have.
Speaker 4: To I want to plug a really amazing episode that
Speaker 4: our very own Shrien Lana Units did on It could
Speaker 4: happen here, I dropped on today. So that's October nineteenth,
Speaker 4: nineteenth technically, I think it'll be eighteenth if you're depending
Speaker 4: on your time zone. And it's called discussing Palestine in Israel,
Speaker 4: and it's it's it's long and worth it.
Speaker 2: Okay, see y'all Wednesday.
Speaker 4: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 4: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media,
Speaker 4: visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
Speaker 4: out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you
Speaker 4: get your podcasts,