Agrarian Cooperatives in marginal regions. Successes and Failures in the Argentine North East, 1920–1960

Abstract

The North-Eastern region of Argentina covers 17% of the almost 3-million-square-kilometer territory of the country. Its economy is sustained by forest exploitation and by two distinctive agricultural products: cotton and tobacco. It is through these two products that the regional economy plays a role in the agricultural export model of Argentina, which was established in the last two decades of the 19th century and which continued well into the 20th century. From the first post-war period, both tobacco and cotton gained importance as they were produced for a domestic market that had grown with the import substitution industrialization. The textile industry and the manufacture of cigarettes found the roots for their expansion in these two products. In the case of cotton, the cooperative movement played a significant role for the producer promoting associationism while selling raw material and acquiring supplies. Cooperatives often channeled their interests. For tobacco the cooperative movement did not flourish in the same way, in spite of being an agricultural product from the same region and in spite of the fact that the producers were precarious landholders. In both cases, it is worth analyzing the degree of industrial density, the origin of the work force, the kind of process the raw materials went through, and the dialogue with the State, in order to recognize the successes and failures of agrarian cooperatives between 1920 and 1960 in marginal economies where the reinvestment of profits is scarce.