Urban conflict, politics and the state: the 1907 tenant strike inBuenos Aires
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.34096/bol.rav.n64.17269Keywords:
Urban conflict, tenant strike, Argentina, oligarchic regime, politicsAbstract
This article examines the most significant urban conflict of Argentina’s oligarchic era (1880-1916): the 1907 Buenos Aires tenant strike. Over the course of three months, a substantial number of tenants collectively refused to pay their rents. This protest is frequently portrayed as the product of a deeply divided society and of the ruling elite’s indifference, if not hostility, towards popular demands. This article presents a different interpretation of the 1907 strike. It shows that the press and public opinion largely supported the tenant’s demands for lower rents. Furthermore, it demonstrates that state institutions –namely, the municipal government, the judicial system, and the police– played a crucial role in shaping the political environment that facilitated the protest, and to a significant extent, they also aligned with the tenants. Contrary to the views that portray the oligarchic regime as solely repressive, this article argues that the 1907 tenant strike highlights the opportunities provided by the liberal political and institutional framework of early 20th-century Argentina for expressing popular demands.
Downloads
References
Albornoz, Martín (2021). Cuando el anarquismo causaba sensación. La sociedad argentina, entre el miedo y la fascinación por los ideales libertarios. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI.
Álvarez, Carlos (2022). “La huelga de inquilinos en Rosario: una aproximación”. Sociohistórica, 49.
Baer, James A (1993). “Tenant mobilization and the 1907 rent strike in Buenos Aires”. The Americas, Vol. 49, n° 3, pp. 343-368.
Barrancos, Dora (2007). Mujeres en la sociedad argentina. Una historia de cinco siglos. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana.
Buonuome, Juan (2017). “Los socialistas argentinos ante la 'prensa burguesa'. El semanario La Vanguardia y la modernización periodística en la Buenos Aires de entresiglos”. Boletín del Instituto de Historia Argentina y Americana Dr. Emilio Ravignani, Tercera serie, núm. 46, primer semestre, pp. 147-179.
García Ferrari, Mercedes y Galeano Diego (2016). “En búsqueda del vigilante lector. Cuatro décadas de la Revista de Policía (Buenos Aires, 1879-1939)” en Diego Galeano y Marcos Bretas (coordinadores), Policías escritores, delitos impresos. Revistas policiales en América del Sur, pp. 57-88. Buenos Aires: Teseo.
Hora, Roy (2023). Historia económica de la Argentina en el siglo XIX. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI.
Hora, Roy, (2020). “Trabajadores, protesta obrera y orden oligárquico. Argentina: 1880-1900”. Desarrollo Económico. Revista de Ciencias Sociales, vol. 59, nro. 229, pp. 329-360.
Hora, Roy (2018). ¿Cómo pensaron el campo los argentinos? Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI.
Pérez, Santiago (2017). “The (South) American Dream: Mobility and Economic Outcomes of First- and Second-Generation Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century Argentina”. The Journal of Economic History.77,4, pp. 971-1006.
Poy, Lucas (2021). “A tale of two cities: The Tenants’s strike of 1907-8 in Buenos Aires and New York. Exploring the global historical roots of tenants’ organizations”. Radical Housing Journal, 3:1, pp. 131-147.
Rojkind, Inés (2012). “’El gobierno de la calle’. Diarios, movilizaciones y política en el Buenos Aires del novecientos”. Secuencia. Revista de historia y ciencias sociales. N°84, pp. 99-123.
Suriano, Juan (1984). “La huelga de inquilinos de 1907 en Buenos Aires”. En José Pedro Barrán, Benjamín Nahum y Diego Armus, Sectores populares y vida urbana, 201-232. Buenos Aires: CLACSO.
Yujnovsky, Inés (2004). “Vida cotidiana y participación política: «la marcha de las escobas» en la huelga de inquilinos, Buenos Aires, 1907”. Feminismo/s. 3, pp. 117-134.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Martín Albornoz, Roy Hora
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
The copyright is transferred to the Boletín, but the authors may retrieve them and reproduce their work in other media or formats by means of a written request to the Editorial Committee. In such cases, the Boletín will be cited as the first publication of the work.
The works are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, which allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of their authorship and initial publication in this journal.
Also, by written request to the Editorial Committee of the Boletín, the authors may separately establish additional agreements for the non-exclusive distribution of the version of the work published in this journal (for example, placing it in an institutional repository or publishing it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication here. No commercial uses are allowed.
