Peruvian politics and eight-hour day: rethinking the 1919 general strike.

Parker, David S.

PERUVIAN POLITICS AND THE EIGHT-HOUR DAY: RETHINKING THE 1919 GENERAL STRIKE

Demanding that their workday be limited to a maximum of eight hours, workers in Lima and Callao initiated a general strike on 13 January 1919. The movement succeeded in surprisingly short order: only two days later, Peru's president, Jose Pardo y Barreda, issued a decree giving the eight-hour day to workers in state-owned industries, and to all those in the private sector who could not otherwise arrive at an agreement with their employers. Since that moment, the 1919 general strike has come to be seen as a watershed for the Peruvian working class: its "trial by fire," the end of its organizational prehistory, in effect, the dawn of a new age. Even today, this vision of the eight-hour day as a defining landmark continues to dominate Peruvian labour historiography.(1)

The January 1919 general strike resonates so deeply for two reasons. First, the eight-hour day forms a part of the heraldry of organized labour worldwide, a legacy of Chicago's notorious Haymarket dots of 1886. Second, the eight-hour movement figures centrally in the mythologies of both the Communist party and APRA, the two political movements with the strongest historical ties to Peruvian workers. Most scholars on the left have seen the general strike as a defining moment of working-class formation, the first time that militants directed the labour movement as a whole, and the first time that modern industrial workers rather than artisans took centre stage. In other words, the eight-hour movement was not only a major victory for labour, but also a signal that the advance of capitalism had transformed Peru's economic base, and a new kind of working class, more revolutionary in character, had come of age.(2) For APRA, arguably the most influential "populist" movement in Latin American history, the 1919 general strike was momentous because it inaugurated the political career of the party's charismatic founder, Victor Raul Haya de la Torre. As a leader in the University of San Marcos, Haya de la Torre brought student support to the strike and acted as an intermediary in negotiations between the workers and the government. According to an Aprista version of history, the events of January 1919 proved instrumental in forging Peru's historical alliance of students and labour - the "United Front of Manual and Intellectual Workers" - the very essence of official Aprismo.(3)

Yet the heroic aura surrounding the eight-hour movement in Peru, and the partisan battles that inform so much of the writing on the topic, have generated a number of misconceptions. Most problematic is the lack of attention accorded to President Pardo's reasons for accepting the strikers' demands. Leftist and Aprista versions of the story concur in the assumption that Pardo had no choice. Faced with an overwhelming show of force, confronting a national emergency of unprecedented proportions, he simply capitulated. This interpretation is clearly incomplete. In fact, Jose Pardo had a number of compelling reasons for seeking a negotiated solution, and the much-touted "conquest" of the eight-hour day was by no means an unambiguous victory for workers.

I

The idea that the strike of January 1919 marked an entirely new era in Peruvian working-class history appears compelling, at least on the surface. Before 1919, few of Lima's workers belonged to any labour organization, and those who did tended to join mutual aid societies or religious brotherhoods called cofradias.(4) The typical mutual aid society was led by a master artisan who owned his own shop or perhaps worked as a foreman. These leaders enjoyed power and respectability, many had ties to one faction or another of the ruling Civil party, and some held local office. The societies often reproduced the vertical social relations of the workplace, and resembled corporate guilds more than trade unions or pressure groups. Indeed, as late as November 1918, a U.S. consular official in Lima sent the following report to his superiors in Washington:

As far as known by the legation, there are no socialistic organizations whatever, and the few working men with socialistic tendencies have no influence whatsoever. The working classes in Peru have formed several organizations, but more as cooperating and protective associations than for political purposes. They have no organization with a definite political program. They lend their adherence to one or another of the branches of the Civil Party.(5)

The general strike that erupted only two months later not only surprised most observers, it also appeared to mark a fundamental turnabout in workers' attitudes. For the first time, self-described anarchists mobilized a broad cross-section of the labouring masses of Lima and Callao - from textile workers to bakers, tram drivers to stevedores - all with a common purpose and a single demand.

The depth of this new labour militancy gave credence to the idea that some essential structural change had occurred: some pointed to the rise of a new industrial working class, while others blamed the economic crisis brought about by World War I and its aftermath.(6) Both points have some merit. The strike was indeed instigated and led by factory operatives, specifically textile workers, who walked off their jobs in December 1918. Demanding an eight-hour day, the weavers spearheaded efforts to broaden the movement, and tirelessly met with other workers and unions throughout Lima and Callao. Similarly, Peruvian workers did feel the economic impact of the First World War. The disruption of European trade during the war had thrown the economy into a tailspin, bringing widespread layoffs and pay cuts. The postwar recovery was substantial, but brought inflation levels not seen in over a generation. The recovery created conditions of almost full employment, thereby improving workers' bargaining power, but the depressed wartime wage levels were slower to rebound. The combination of full employment and falling real incomes provided a classic formula for the emergence of a new and more militant labour movement.

Yet this vision of 1919 as a watershed obscures important continuities. For one thing, while most studies of the Peruvian labour movement have assumed an enormous historical schism between "mutualists" and "anarchists," the distance between the two was often far less than imagined. While "anarchist" newspapers like Los Parias and La Protests launched blistering attacks against the mutual-aid societies, criticizing both their preoccupation with "curing the sick and burying the dead" and their tendency to become mired in elite politics, such debates were typically more about praxis than philosophy.(7) The writings of anarchist intellectuals could be ideologically sophisticated, but the internal debates and correspondence of Peru's nascent labour organizations betrayed a surprising degree of doctrinal vagueness. The words "anarchist", "socialist", and "libertarian" appeared almost indiscriminately, as did such varied terms as "revolution", "evolution", "progress", and "renovation."(8) The sheer novelty of ideas of workers' rights and social change attenuated ideological rigidity, as Peruvians seemed to lack a firm grasp of the wars of ideas raging elsewhere. Indeed, many of Peru's so-called anarchists held views that their European counterparts would have rejected out-of-hand. A case in point: one regular contributor to La Protests, Angel Origgi Galli, wrote militantly Francophile propaganda during World War I, even as European anarchists denounced the war as a matter of rival imperialisms.(9) Origgi Galli also supported binding government arbitration of labour disputes, hardly an orthodox anarchist position.(10) Furthermore, "anarchists" and "mutualists," radicals and moderates, were no strangers to one another. For years they had vied for control of Peru's various mutual aid societies. Whenever the militants were ascendant, they played a double game - promoting a radical agenda, yet taking advantage of the prestige and access to government that the informal guild system provided. Most anarchist leaders therefore took pains not to alienate their mutualist rank and file. While the mutual aid societies seldom went on strike without anarchist pressure, the anarchists were rarely effective unless they could count on the participation of the mutualist societies and the legitimacy that came from acting in their name.(11)

The general strike of 1919 stands out, at least in part, because the anarchists were able to convince the mutualist membership to use tactics viewed as extreme, on behalf of a demand that some saw as revolutionary for the time. That accomplishment was significant, and was a clear break with the past, but we need not look for long-term structural changes in the nature of the working class in order to explain it. Anarchists took control of Peru's labour movement in large part because the traditional mutualist leaders had been discredited politically the previous year. Their failure began in September 1917, when several politicians started to build a coalition for the election of Victor Larco Herrera as Mayor of Lima. Calling themselves the Liga de Progreso Comunal, Larco Herrera's backers courted artisan, white collar, and other labour organizations, which by that time comprised an important urban voting bloc. The Liga extolled Larco Herrera as a "man of progress," whose sugar plantations provided workers with every modern convenience, and they promised to enact a pro-labour agenda, though their candidate felt it premature to mention any specifics.(12) The main incentive for the mutualists was the Liga's offer to place a large number of worker representatives on the party list for city councilmen [consejales]. Of some sixty posts, ten were initially promised to the Sociedad Empleados de Comercio (white-collar employees), and an equal or greater number to the artisan confederation, the Asamblea de Sociedades Unidas.(13)

As the November elections approached, however, the Liga failed to honour its promises. The powerful and well-connected arrived to collect on outstanding political debts, claiming most of the consejalias for themselves; inevitably, it was the workers and employees who ended up getting pushed off the list. In the end, the Liga's slate included only one commercial employee and two artisans. After the elections, the Asamblea de Sociedades Unidas denounced the process, noted that only 540 people had actually voted, and charged that the results did not represent the popular will.(14) Nevertheless, the familiar odour of political manipulation poisoned the atmosphere in the artisan societies, and many workers blamed their leaders for having participated in the first place.

Had this been the fast time, the leaders of the Asamblea and of the mutualist organizations that comprised it might have survived to fight another day. Had economic conditions been different, people might have maintained a cynical apathy. But the election fiasco reminded Peruvians of how little the mutualist leadership offered a working class whose real wages were in decline. Tainted by their continuing forays into Peru's corrupt political world, the artisan societies fell into factional strife. Even during the 1917 campaign, some Asamblea meetings had been marred by violence and abuse of authority; now its leaders lost even the pretense of speaking for all workers. A year later, when on the eve of the general strike Lima's workers met to debate strategy, the mutualist leaders were still important participants; now, however, their voices no longer prevailed.(15)

Because the mutualists had been discredited, comparatively small numbers of anarchist militants were able to move into an organizational vacuum. Their claim to speak for the working class was in many ways equally preposterous, but they won converts with their emphasis on direct action for concrete ends. The anarchists mobilized the aid societies' rank and file, and in so doing, began to speak with a far more powerful voice.

II

Without the anarchists' new-found power, the eight-hour movement never would have succeeded, let alone emerged. Yet it is equally doubtful that the strike could have succeeded if not for the sympathy of a significant number of wealthy and powerful Peruvians. On this point, some clarification is necessary. During January 1919, the general strike was roundly denounced in the press, on the floor of congress, and throughout the aristocratic salons of the capital. However, while elites repudiated the general strike as a tactic, a surprising number were ready to concede that the demand for the eight-hour day was justified. Not all employers agreed, but a growing cadre of government officials, legal scholars, newspaper publishers, senators, and other opinion makers had begun to contemplate the benefits of taking a more progressive approach to the labouring population. As early as 1900, well before Peru's working class had been powerful enough to threaten public order, several important figures had already begun to discuss ways to solve the "social question."(16) In the following years, they and many others came to view the eight-hour day as perfectly reasonable.

To understand why reforms like the eight-hour day enjoyed increasing sympathy in respectable circles, it is important to remember that like many Latin Americans of that era, a large and growing number of Peruvian elites were captivated by the fever to consume and assimilate everything European: from clothing styles to philosophies, from business practices and agricultural techniques to urban hygiene. Their Europeanizing fervour was rooted in a generalized ideology of progress, an unbridled urge to make Peru more "civilized." One of the most curious elements of this vision was a precocious turn to reformism. As European governments confronted their growing social problems with a barrage of new legislation, Peruvians quickly followed suit: legal scholars at the University of San Marcos diligently studied and adapted statutes from the so-called paises cultos [civilized countries] to fit local conditions. These reformers felt that Peru needed an advanced labour code just as much as it needed railroads, electric lighting, bowler hats, and everything else in vogue across the Atlantic. Each was a step on the road to modernity.

Many early spokesmen for advanced labour laws were of unimpeachable aristocratic pedigree. In 1901 Luis Miro Quesada published a thesis on "the modern social crisis," one of the first such tracts in Peru, followed in 1904 by a study of the labour contract.(17) Jose Matias Manzanilla waged a never-ending battle in congress for pro-worker legislation, his victories scattered but significant. In 1911 he developed the Law of Professional Risk, which established the principle of employer responsibility for workplace accidents. In 1918 he achieved a law that protected women and child labourers by providing them the eight-hour workday and eliminating night shifts, and in the same year, he pushed through a Sunday-closing law.(18) Jose Pardo himself recounted his active support for those and several other similar laws, "in accord with the most advanced principles of social legislation."(19) Nor did this new social awareness end in the legislative sphere. For example, elite reformers both in and out of government worked with mutual aid organizations to promote savings and consumer co-operatives, following the ideas of French reformer Charles Gide.(20) Each reform provides more evidence that for many intellectuals and politicians, nineteenth-century ideals of laissez faire were giving way to a new, albeit limited, social concern.

Still, the root of that concern must not be misconstrued: the aristocratic reformers were driven by the positivism of Herbert Spencer, suffused with the "scientific" racism of the age.(21) Not only did elites blame the poor for their own poverty; they also believed that the poor were responsible for Peru's backwardness as a nation. Economic progress, they argued, required a civilized, cultured working class. So just as the Peruvian race had to be improved through European immigration, just as the Indian had to be assimilated through education and intermarriage, so workers had to be "uplifted" through good hygiene and the suppression of vice. This explains, for example, why so many co-operative programmes declared as their purpose "to foment the healthy and moralizing habit of savings."(22) Progressive labour legislation served a similar purpose, its rationale primarily developmentalist, only secondarily humanitarian, and in no way egalitarian.

Reform also had its practical limits. Throughout the first two decades of the twentieth century, a long string of proposed legislation, including the eight-hour day, had died of neglect in the Peruvian congress. In most cases the bills never faced any direct opposition, but fell victim instead to dilatory tactics, dispute over trivial details, and other forms of legislative subterfuge. Even when labour laws were passed, they were widely violated in practice, often with little effort made to enforce compliance. For businessmen, the positivist impulse to "improve" the masses had to be balanced against the economic costs of social legislation, and, more importantly, against the tradition of paternalistic labour relations that sanctioned the (ostensibly beneficent) exercise of undisputed control over one's "inferiors." Laws that circumscribed management's prerogatives always met with some resistance.

Nevertheless, positivist reformism had become a powerful and highly legitimate component of elite discourse in Peru, particularly by the end of World War I. The eight-hour day, a flagship example of "advanced" legislation, was in many ways essential to that discourse. A letter sent by rising politician Lauro A. Curletti to the newspaper El Tiempo clearly illustrates this point:

Allow me to offer my collaboration in the study of the problem presented by the weavers, which could be the beginning of identical demands for the entire working class of Peru, enlightened by the socialist reaction that today agitates the civilized world, and stimulated by the want and poverty that they presently suffer, because of the unfavourable disequilibrium that exists between the cost of living and the salary that they receive . . .

In all the countries that have given practical application to the dictates of Science in the administration of State, it has been established that the eight-hour workday is an essential condition in the progress of industry, and in all the factories in which it has been adopted, output has been higher, the product of better quality, and workers healthier and more punctual.(23)

Curletti's favourable reference to "the socialist reaction that today agitates the civilized world" may at first glance seem surprising; in the context of the time, however, there was little unusual about it. A growing number of Peruvian elites routinely used the term "socialism" to describe this brand of positivist reformism. As Jose Carlos Mariategui, at that time a young journalist, wrote in his political column in 1918:

Today even a decent, clean and well-dressed person can, with all tranquillity, proclaim his socialism without anyone getting alarmed, without anyone thinking he has lost his mind. Today one hears without surprise and without repulsion that the socialists are governing the world. Today people know that socialist ideas are easily reconciled with clean shirts and elegant suits. Today Mr. Victor Maurtua, the great and noble intellectual of the House of Deputies, stands up in the middle of just about any debate and shouts, loudly and serenely:

- I am a socialist!

And no one is startled. In fact, the people in the galleries applaud enthusiastically . . . And not even the gendarmes of the city think a dangerous man of Mr. Maurtua, who, of course, continues to preserve the best British correctness in his suits, his manners and his attitudes.(24)

Lawyers and politicians led the way in promoting this conception of socialism as just one more step in the evolutionary march of civilized society, but they were not alone. At times, even avowed capitalists called themselves socialist. As early as 1911, when someone tried to convince import house owner Jorge Schmitt to fire his employee Enrique Bezada (president of the Sociedad Empleados de Comercio), Schmitt reportedly told Bezada that "having himself eminently socialist ideas, he would always lend him his moral support."(25) By 1919, rhetorical support for an undefined "socialism" had gone so far that a clothing store actually ran the following advertisement in one of Lima's most important dailies:

SOCIALISM!!!!

means progress for the good of humanity. Down with the monopolies! Cut the cost of living! Learn from Valles and Son, which daily sells at a lower price with high quality. To enter our store, to see our prices, is to buy.(26)

Dedicated to bringing their nation into the twentieth century, a growing number of elite reformers embraced both capitalism and what they called socialism simultaneously. They saw no contradiction between the two, as both were integral components of a single crusade for progress, in keeping with the advances of the modern world. The eight-hour day was part of that crusade.

For their part, many businessmen undoubtedly opposed the eight-hour day on principle. The West Coast Leader, a weekly serving the British and American colony in Peru, editorialized in these terms:

[The eight-hour day] will involve a great deal of industrial reorganization and adjustment, and its application in many industries will doubtless be found to be commercially impracticable. An arbitrary law running counter to commercial and industrial laws of supply and demand must inevitably sooner or later give way. . . . The complexities of a highly organized industrial nation may admit the luxury of debate over labour questions, but in a country merely on the threshold of industrial development such as Peru, where labour is still largely confined to the "hewers of wood and haulers of water," such debate merely serves to weaken the foundations of national development.(27)

Such ideas, expressed openly in the English-language press, were almost certainly shared in private by many - indeed perhaps most - Peruvian entrepreneurs. What stands out in 1919, however, was the nearly complete absence of this position from the public transcript. The debates surrounding the eight-hour day and the January general strike focussed on many different issues - the denunciation of violence, accusations of outside agitation, criticism of the tactic of sympathy strikes - but even the most conservative writers seemed extraordinarily quick to concede the basic legitimacy of the demand for the eight-hour day. To understand why this was the case, we must look more closely at the initial conflict that set off the general strike.

III

At first glance, Peru's businessmen might be expected to fight workers' demands for an eight-hour day to the bitter end. Many employers did indeed run excessively long shifts and showed no desire to change. In the construction industry, example, peons typically received the same jornal, or day-wage, whether worked eight, ten, twelve hours or more. Agricultural and domestic labour followed much the same pattern, and even salaried white-collar employees were expected put in as many hours as their employer required.(28) In all these cases, employers had a strong economic incentive to keep people working as long as possible.

In the textile mills where the eight-hour strike first began in December 1918, however, a very different situation existed. Textile factories paid most operatives piecework rates rather than jornales, so wages depended on output.(29) Under such an arrangement a longer workday was hardly a curse, since more hours meant more pay. Indeed, many workers avidly sought the opportunity to put in extra time. From the employers' point of view, lengthening the workday was not always necessarily profitable, since the wage cost per unit remained constant. As a result, hours of work tended to vary according to the demand for textiles. When demand was high, both employer and employee benefitted from longer hours; when demand was low, employers shortened the workday, often over their operatives' protests. Conflicts between workers and owners might still be intense, but they revolved around machine speeds, quotas, and piece rates, not work hours.

Given this situation, textile factories were the last place one would expect workers to demand the eight-hour day. Had it not been for public policy, the movement would have originated elsewhere, if at all. However, the unanticipated effects of a government measure ended up forcing the workers' hand. The problem began in early 1918, when congress passed the law drafted by Jose Matias Manzanilla giving the eight-hour day to women and children. The rationale behind the law was clearly paternalistic: legislators were appalled that women and children were forced to endure the rigours of factory labour, and hoped to limit the hours of their travail. Opposition to the bill dissipated quickly, as congressmen found themselves unable to vote for the exploitation of women and children, irrespective of the fact that female workers themselves had never expressed any interest in a law that would reduce their piecework incomes by up to 20 per cent.

In this climate of unbridled public humanitarianism, few considered the law's hidden consequences, not just for women workers, but for the entire textile industry. Giving women and children the eight-hour day severely disrupted production in several factories, because male and female workers executed different steps in the manufacturing process. Typically, women spun cotton into yam, which they passed on to male loom operators for weaving. As the plants adhered to the so-called "Manzanilla Law," the female spinners worked fewer hours, thus producing less yarn. The male weavers began to run out of material before the end of their ten-hour shift, causing frequent production shutdowns. Since they were making less cloth, their piecework wages also dropped considerably. Even worse, in some cases they were unable to meet required production quotas, and so were further penalized.(30) The male weavers faced a dilemma. While they approved of the shorter workday in principle, their main concern was with their falling incomes. They knew the current situation was intolerable, but the solution was less apparent. As a result, when desperate male weavers walked off the job in the El Inca textile mill in December 1918, they acted spontaneously and did not at first present any formal demands.(31)

In the days following the walkout, the striking weavers met continuously. Consulting with workers in other textile plants and with anarchist militants from all sectors, they argued over what course to follow. Weaver Julio Portocarrero recalled his part in the discussion:

I said: "We cannot be against this law that has been passed on behalf of the women and children, because if we are, what do we demand? That they leave the factory? That they be thrown out into the street? . . . By no means. We have to defend them, and the eight-hour day has to be extended to all of us."(32)

The workers eventually agreed on demands that both satisfied the male textile operatives' concrete need to protect their incomes, and fit the broader agenda of their anarchist leaders, most of whom were highly literate men with ideas shaped by the experiences of workers around the world. On 16 December 1918, the strikers sent the mill owners their conditions, including the eight-hour day for all workers and a 30-50 per cent increase in piecework rates.(33) By the end of slightly over a week, the entire textile industry in Lima had been paralysed.

The predominantly male strikers contended that the primary objective in demanding the eight-hour day was to solve their factories' production problems in such a way that would protect women and children:

The laudable act of the legislators would be frustrated if we did not carry out this action, protecting the women and children's best interest, as well as our own . . .

If we did not proceed in this way, if we did not defend the stability of our working companions in order that they be given a wage to support their home and live honorably, then we would not deserve the name of conscientious workers . . .

It is [our] duty to be the spokesmen for one of the most beautiful conquests of the proletariat: the eight-hour day, and for one of the most sacred duties of man: to defend the woman.(34)

Unfortunately, as a strategy to win over public opinion, their argument had a fatal weakness. For the workers, the eight-hour day had to be accompanied by higher piecework rates so that their total pay would not be compromised. This was perhaps the only reasonable solution to the problem that had already emerged under the Manzanilla Law. Factory owners, however, focussed on the wage demand, obscuring the issue of piecework rates in order to misrepresent the origins of the strike. private meetings, several employers offered to accept the shorter workday, but rejected all wage increases.(35) In their public statements, they blamed the strike on outside agitators and portrayed the workers as extremists who not only wanted to work less, but to get paid more!(36)

Employers had good reason to emphasize wages rather than hours. They could concede the eight-hour day because it did not affect production costs per unit, while higher piecework rates directly hurt their bottom line. But more importantly, the argument worked. Much of the elite and middle class did not fully understand the difference between a piecework wage and a jornal, and as a result were easily convinced that reasonable workers might ask for either shorter hours or higher wages, but not both.(37) In other words, factory owners successfully distorted the facts to put the strikers in the worst possible light, yet they did so in a way that still permitted them to pay lip service to the idea of the eight-hour day.

IV

Throughout late December 1918 and early January 1919, tensions escalated as the weavers faced a standoff with employers. The strikers continued to expand the movement, meeting with other unions as well as with sympathetic groups like the Federation of Students and the opposition paper El Tiempo. Soon new strikes broke out - the most important by bakery workers, who walked off their jobs on 2 January. They were joined by tannery and sawmill workers in Lima, and independently by miners in other parts of the country. Lima's workers formed a strike committee, and after short but enthusiastic deliberations, they called for a general strike to begin on 13 January.(38)

Most Peruvians went to work on the morning of the 13th only to find well-organized militants outside their places of employment, exhorting them to join the strike. Pickets also blanketed the commercial centre of Lima, sending the message that all establishments should close their doors. By noon, most businesses had shut down, and a majority of Lima's workers went home. The strike succeeded through an effective combination of worker solidarity, strategic planning, and intimidation. The fear of looting and violence was foremost in many employers' minds, whether or not their employees had appeared for work in the first place.(39) Once momentum had been generated, it was relatively easy for the strike to continue into its second and third day. Militant workers kept the threat of violence in the air, while the vast majority of workers were able to stay home without jeopardizing relations with their bosses. After all, most employers were afraid to open their doors.

Instrumental in the success of the strike were two groups mobilized at the last minute: stevedores and streetcar drivers. The dockworkers of nearby Callao were a notoriously rough group of men, feared and respected by Peruvian authorities. Despite having won the eight-hour day themselves in 1913, the stevedores patrolled the streets and forcefully discouraged would-be strikebreakers.(40) The streetcar drivers proved even more important, paralysing operations throughout Lima and Callao. The tram company tried to enlist its white-collar employees as replacements, but rock-throwing strikers forced the streetcars to stop running. Militants also dynamited the Central Railway line between Lima and Callao. With public transport out of commission, replacement workers were not easily mobilized, and uncommitted workers found another reason to justify their absence from the job.(41)

Had the strike lasted longer than three days, things might have reached a breaking point. Employers might have carried out their threat to dismiss absent workers. Strikebreakers might have been mobilized, forcing all workers to choose sides openly. In the event of a protracted strike, anarchist leaders might or might not have proved capable of securing the solidarity of a majority of the working class. That test never came, however. Before strike leaders learned the strength or weakness of the workers' commitment to the cause, President Jose Pardo ended the conflict. On 15 January, Minister of Development Dr. Manuel A. Vinelli publicly read the President's decree:

1. In government workshops, railroads, agricultural and industrial establishments, and public works projects, the duration of work is set at eight hours daily, maintaining the current wage levels.

2. In privately-owned factories, railroads, and industrial, agricultural and mining establishments, the duration of work is to be set by mutual agreement . . . In the absence of agreement, the duration of work will be ruled by the official regime of eight hours, maintaining the current wage levels.

3. The disputes that arise . . . will be resolved by arbitration when the parties do not arrive at a direct agreement.(42)

Upon hearing the decree, some militants - fearing the government would not enforce the ruling - called for the strike to continue. A majority of workers attending the strike committee's open meeting, however, voted to end the action. In the following weeks, many ad hoc groups that had participated in the conflict now became formal unions. Given the history of police union-busting in the past, this development was as significant as the eight-hour day itself.(43)

V

In their moment of glory, few workers thought to reflect on the reasons for their victory. Textile worker Portocarrero, whose own role was significant, said in his memoirs:

After these events, I stop to think about the triumph of the struggle . . . Did we win the eight-hour day just because we had gone out and fought for it? What other factors could have intervened? On this point, first of all, I want to make clear that at the time I did not consider what other motives might have aided in the conquest . . . For me the fundamental thing was that we could take no path except to fight for the eight-hour day. And the only way to achieve it was through the general strike that we had proposed. But was it that and nothing more?(44)

With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that it was not "that and nothing more." Many factors contributed to the strike's success in winning the eight-hour day - factors that protagonists like Portocarrero did not perceive and subsequent historians have underestimated.

It seems evident, to begin with, that the strike was by no means economically crippling. During December, textile factory owners weathered the storm with apparent ease. The largest plants were owned by Peru's leading commercial houses, who also imported textiles on a regular basis. While it may be true that their foreign suppliers had not yet fully recovered from World War I, no known reports indicate a textile shortage in Lima. When bakers joined the effort in early January, the papers reported that bread continued to be readily available. And since only the government-regulated, controlled-price panaderias were affected, the only consumers hurt by the strike were those too poor to buy their bread in pastry shops [pastelerias].(45) Throughout December and early January there was little disruption of the import-export activities on which Lima's economy primarily depended. Markets remained open, goods travelled freely, and life continued.

Only with the general strike on 13 January, and the resulting clashes between pickets and police, did most Peruvians find their daily routine disrupted. The forcible closing of factories, markets, and stores, the paralysation of public transportation, and the presence of determined (and often armed) bands of strikers roaming the city, obviously changed the strike's dynamic. Banks, import houses and retail stores, most of whose employees had dutifully appeared for work on the 13th, closed their doors for fear of violence, and did not try to reopen for three days.(46) The government, too, saw the strike as a danger to public order, and did not hesitate to arrest some of its leaders, to surround the strike committee's headquarters, to close the sympathetic El Tiempo, and to mobilize troops to patrol the streets. In other words, while the strike's economic impact may have been limited, its threat to the stability of the regime was presumably far greater. This does not mean, however, that a well-founded fear of unrest forced the government to make a concession it was otherwise unwilling to make. In fact, the actual violence on both sides was rather limited. Some severe fighting occurred on the day and night of the 13th, but things calmed down considerably as businesses remained closed on the 14th and 15th. Over the course of those three days there was no reported loss of life, as Development Minister Vinelli publicly worked to restrain the police and promote negotiations.(47)

If anything, therefore, the president's decree was pre-emptive, rather than a reaction to overwhelming pressure. But what did he seek to pre-empt? For one thing, Pardo lacked our hindsight, and the challenge from Peru's workers in 1919 surely appeared more threatening than it really was. The Bolshevik revolution and unrest in postwar Europe caused elites everywhere to view the working class with growing unease, but more importantly, news of the bloody semana tragica in Argentina brought the spectre of revolution right to Peru's doorstep. In early January striking metalworkers in Buenos Aires had been fired upon by police, leaving five dead. The Argentine capital then erupted into generalized violence, pitting thousands of workers against government troops and self-appointed vigilante groups. Hundreds more were killed or wounded before the uprising was eventually brought under control.(48) These events received sensationalized coverage in the Lima papers just at the moment that the weavers' strike had begun to spread to other sectors, and not surprisingly, the idea that a similar bloodbath might occur in Peru terrified President Pardo and the Peruvian elite.(49) As a result, despite the fact that Lima's working class was far smaller and less militant than that of Buenos Aires, Pardo nonetheless interpreted the events of January through a decidedly unsettling prism.

Public opinion - or elite and middle-class opinion, to be more precise - appears to have overwhelmingly favoured a negotiated solution. Politically relevant Peruvians, it is true, generally opposed the strikers and feared the threat to public order, especially given events in Argentina. Most were convinced that dangerous foreigners lay behind the general strike, and considered the demand for both shorter hours and higher pay to be unjustified. But in many cases these were the same people who in principle supported the eight-hour day as an "advanced" solution to the social question. As a result, entreaties for restraint on both sides far outnumbered inflammatory calls for the military and police to take a hard line. And while opposition journals like El Tiempo were alone in their active support of the strikers, even mainstream La Prensa published numerous letters and editorials calling for compromise.(50) In short, the strikers of 1919 by no means stood alone against a monolithic and reactionary power structure.

Indicative of the climate of the time was the behaviour of the Federation of Students, which played a pivotal role in negotiations between the government and workers. The fact that there were student mediators, and that the mediators had the ear of Development Minister Vinelli, underscores the nature of a movement that was somewhat less than a frontal assault on the entire status quo. Without denying the resolute, even revolutionary, nature of the strike, the point is that the government viewed the strikers' demands as legitimate points of negotiation. This acceptance, of course, probably owed much to the success of the strike and the force of worker solidarity. Had the movement been weaker, it would have been ignored. Still, public opinion was an important part of the political equation, and public opinion called for negotiation, not repression.

If any single factor proved critical in the president's decision, it was the impending 1919 election campaign. Pardo himself was not a candidate for reelection, but his actions affected the future of his Civil party, which faced a serious threat from Augusto B. Leguia. Leguia's candidacy - at that moment not formally announced but clearly imminent - was the civilistas' worst nightmare.(51) Leguia had begun to build a strong opposition coalition of artisans, workers, white collar employees, students, and professionals, but at the same time he was one of the elite's own. A dissident party member and former president, intensely hated by the civilista faithful but still well-connected socially, Leguia could not be discredited as a dangerous radical. Moreover, the civilista candidate, Antero Aspillaga, was vulnerable: a wealthy sugar plantation owner from Peru's northern coast, he had few reformist credentials and little popular base in Lima.

As Pardo and the civilista strategists realized, the working class had become a significant force in Peruvian politics. Only six years earlier, Lima's workers and artisans had successfully pressured congress to ratify the election of Guillermo Billinghurst as president. The latent threat of unrest had clearly influenced the congressional vote, and it had taken a later military coup to oust the former Lima mayor and stall his vaguely reformist program.(52) Knowing that their upcoming campaign against Leguia would be difficult, Pardo and the civilistas understood that in order to win, they had to make extensive use of the party's traditional patronage networks, not to mention their physical control of the ballot boxes. Party leaders also knew that in recent years, their command of the electoral process had become less effective. The last thing the civilistas wanted, therefore, was an organized, angry worker's movement, willing to do for Leguia what it had done for Billinghurst. Pardo may have thought that by decreeing the eight-hour day, he could win the workers' support and take potential votes away from his party's adversary. More likely, he hoped simply to prevent urban workers from becoming so upset with the civilista order that they would later serve as shock troops for Leguia, if and when he challenged the election results as tainted. Pardo doubtless thought that he could mollify workers by enacting the eight-hour day. Although this would not likely win him many converts, it might just demobilize workers as a potentially violent opposition force, and thereby assure that the civilista electoral machinery might do its job.(53)

The final key to understanding Pardo's decision is to realize that the eight-hour decree was neither designed nor expected to disrupt the economy or to antagonize the business class. First, the eight-hour day was hardly imposed by fiat: in fact, the decree was issued after a meeting between Vinelli and the directors of the textile plants on strike.(54) Secondly, President Pardo had an intimate and detailed understanding of what the owners were willing and unwilling to accept. After all, before embarking on his political career, Pardo had himself been the founder and director of the "La Victoria" textile mill, established in 1898.(55) Such a man was not about to give away the proverbial store, and indeed, the 15 January decree did nothing of the kind. The wording of the decree was clear: in the private sector, the eight-hour standard would apply only when workers and employers failed to reach an agreement of their own. This meant that the decree was designed to be provisional in nature, in effect only until government arbitrators had made their final decisions on a case-by-case basis. Moreover, the government made little effort to enforce the measure outside of Lima and Callao, which meant that the law was rarely observed in either mining or agriculture, at that time the largest employers in the country. Salaried employees in Lima's important commercial sector were also excluded from the law.(56)

But most importantly, the decree denied the textile workers' central demand: that the shorter workday be accompanied by higher wages, in order to maintain previous income levels. The decree ignored the crucial issue of piecework rates, and in so doing, Pardo supported the employers' position in the dispute. Textile plant owners had always been willing to accept the shorter workday as long as their production costs per unit did not rise. With Pardo's decree, that is essentially what they got. In other words, the only employers consistently held to the eight-hour standard were those for whom it posed the least problem.

Some factory owners did attribute a decline in profits to the eight-hour day. All plants had some workers who earned day-wages, and a few factories paid jornales rather than piece rates across the board. Some other plants decided that their production needs required that they stay open beyond the eight-hour limit, forcing them to pay higher overtime rates. Still, little evidence indicates that Peruvian factories were that severely affected. The "El Progreso" textile plant alleged that it was taking a 22 to 35 per cent loss, but that also included the impact of an earlier Sunday closing law. Moreover, there is no way to judge the credibility of this self-reported figure, except to note that it was vague on specifics and unusually high. Indeed, another factory owner openly admitted that he had just passed the difference on to consumers.(57) All in all, the eight-hour day as decreed by President Pardo seems to have had a relatively minor impact on company profits. Commercial and import-export activities were not affected because the law did not apply. Mining and agriculture were largely unaffected because the law was rarely enforced outside of the capital. Private construction projects, a major employer in Lima, also escaped the regulation, taking advantage of their temporary character and ad hoc employment practices.

It would be a mistake to conclude that the eight-hour day was nothing more than smoke and mirrors. The decree did establish a standard to which unions eventually held their employers accountable. Even when observed only in the breach, Pardo's decree stood as an ideal of what the standard workday should be, a public statement that gave workers a legal and moral leg on which to stand in their negotiations with employers. To this extent, Lima's organized workers indeed had won a major victory. But it must also be recognized that the eight-hour decree did not give Lima's workers much that factory owners had not been willing to concede from the outset, if push came to shove. Beyond that, the decree was consistent with increasingly influential currents of positivist reformism. President Pardo adopted the innovation of the shorter workday as a modern, European solution to the social question. He and his advisors believed that in so doing, they had taken a significant step toward bringing Peru into the community of paises cultos. In the president's own words to the assembled workers: "I am happy to have signed a resolution which establishes for you, the men who toil, the principles of right and justice already obtained by other cultured peoples."(58) At the same time, by calling for arbitration and refusing to decree a pay raise, Pardo held the line on demands that were eminently reasonable, but which the business community had successfully painted as extreme and illegitimate. At best, the eight-hour day proved to be only a partial victory for workers: by no means did it signal the government's prostration in the face of overwhelming force.

VI

At the time of the decree, most workers hailed the eight-hour day as a glorious victory. Triumphant editorials filled the working class press, including this piece of hyperbole in El Obrero Textil: ". . . the eight-hour day is due to the direct action of the people. The State gave in to the justice of the people and capitalism bit the dust of defeat."(59) Yet mainstream and pro-business papers scarcely complained about the outcome; unconvinced that capitalism had bitten any dust whatsoever, they praised the peaceful resolution of the conflict and yet again gave lip service to the eight-hour day as an "advanced" measure. One retail store even sought to capitalize on the climate of the moment, announcing in an ad: "La Samaritaine" Decrees: 8 Hours of Work and 8 Days of Sale!(60)

While labour leaders remained convinced that the power of the proletariat finally had made its mark on Peru, jubilation soon gave way to the hard reality that the eight-hour day had not resolved the wage issues behind the January strike. Moreover, the terms of the decree remained sufficiently ambiguous that thousands of workers were left not knowing whether the law applied to them or not. The months of February and March 1919 were filled with formal and informal negotiations between workers and their bosses. In some of these cases the eight-hour standard held, in others it did not. Of workers who received the eight-hour day, some won modest pay raises, others did not. Not surprisingly, a new series of conflicts soon erupted, severely testing the elites' faith that social conflict could be averted through the timely adoption of the latest European reforms.

In March, labour leaders announced the formation of the Comite Pro-Abaratamiento de las Subsistencias [Committee for Cheaper Essentials, or CPAS]. Spearheaded by such stalwarts as the shoemakers, bakers, and the newly-formed textile and printers' federations, the Comite hoped to force the government to lower food prices. Inflation provided an ideal issue for the anarchist leadership to exploit, since the cost of living had risen some 100 per cent since 1913, and the unchecked price spiral affected Peruvians of many different backgrounds (see table).

The CPAS was quickly joined by a range of more moderate organizations, including the mutualist societies organized in the Asamblea de Sociedades Unidas; the white-collar Sociedad Empleados de Comercio; a new Socialist party led by elite reformer Luis Ulloa; and several pro-Leguia groups. In organizing the coalition, the anarchists hoped to duplicate their success of January, this time using the issue of inflation to draw the mutualist rank-and-file into a radical challenge to the established order. For their part, the moderate groups hoped that by joining the coalition they might capitalize politically on what appeared to be a powerful and growing popular movement.

Official Cost of Living Indexes 1913-1920
(1913=100)

Year Food Lodging Clothing Misc. Total

1913 100 100 100 100 100
1914 107 100 100 98 104
1915 115 100 117 109 112
1916 123 115 129 125 123
1917 145 130 146 144 142
1918 162 150 192 169 164
1919 188 180 223 172 188
1920 208 200 268 182 210

Source: Oscar Arrus, "El costo de la vida en Lima," in El costo de
la vide en Lima y causas de su carestia (Lima, 1927).

Originally planning their campaign for March 1919, the CPAS decided to postpone action until after the May elections, which Leguia won. Once the elections were over, CPAS leaders organized a women's hunger march, followed by a general strike. After police attacked the women's' march and arrested three anarchist leaders, the general strike escalated into a wave of spontaneous mob violence. Angry crowds sacked markets and shops, terrorized small businessmen, especially Asians, and upset public order for several days. The West Coast Leader made a "conservative" estimate that the strike had left over a hundred people dead, hundreds more wounded, and 300 to 500 people in jail, although subsequent casualty estimates varied.(61) In response, elite reformers and most mutualist organizations publicly repudiated the CPAS and withdrew their representatives.(62)

It is worth examining why the CPAS, based on a similar coalition as the eight-hour day movement, led in this case not to a peaceful victory, but to government repression, violence, internal division, and failure. The difference cannot be explained by looking just at the relative strength or weakness of workers. If anything, the CPAS was a larger, better organized, and more imposing force than the eight-hour strike committee had been. What had changed were the nature of the demands and the conditions shaping the government's response. Elite opinion-makers did not give lower consumer prices the kind of legitimacy they had conceded the principle of the eight-hour day. Controlling inflation involved more than the adoption of practices already common in the paises cultos. The prices of some basic commodities in Lima were traditionally regulated by the city government, but the strikers' demands went beyond the scope of all previous intervention. The CPAS called for the lowering of train and streetcar fares; the reduction of rents; an end to the exportation of needed foodstuffs; government coercion so that farms would plant food crops rather than export crops; and fixed maximum prices on milk, charcoal, grains, beans, and "all foods that serve for daily sustenance."(63) No Peruvian leader in 1919 could have accepted all of those demands, which together constituted a substantial attack on private capital. Just as importantly, the political environment had changed fundamentally between January and May. Jose Pardo had become a lame-duck president with no need to court worker support, and hence, no compelling reason not to call the gendarmes.

Emboldened by their victory of January, the anarchist leaders did not make these calculations. They continued to believe that the organized force of will had won them the eight-hour day, and, overestimating their strength, they asked Peruvian workers to support ever more revolutionary tactics. But this time, in the face of government repression, the still predominantly mutualist rank-and-file was caught in a battle that afforded no safe haven. Forced to make a choice, a large number of workers proved unwilling to risk their jobs (or their lives) for the sake of revolution or lower food prices. Moreover, unlike January's events, the May strike unleashed a powerful and unpredictable force that struck fear into the moderates' hearts: namely, the destructive potential of unorganized urban masses. Elite reformers and most of the mutualist leaders wanted nothing to do with what they perceived as a crazed rabble bent on mindless destruction. Indeed, many of the same people who had supported the eight-hour day turned around and joined the conservative Guardia Urbana, an ad hoc brigade led by politicians, firemen, urban elites, and members of the foreign colonies, to patrol the streets and re-establish order.(64)

Subsequent anarchist accounts of the strike severely criticized the mutualists and reformers for betraying the workers' movement. While their rancour was doubtless justified, their analysis of what had happened suffered from false assumptions. They argued that the strike for the eight-hour day had been successful because the organization in January was unified and homogeneous, truly a workers' movement. In contrast, they explained, the CPAS failed because it was weakened by the adherence of moderates and opportunistic Johnny-come-latelies.(65) (Pardo, interestingly enough, took the exact opposite view, contrasting the January strikers' correctness and respect for authority with the "pernicious" and violent attitude of the so-called "agitators" of May.)(66) The truth is that moderates and radicals, anarchists and elite reformers, were equally present in both movements. If the moderates betrayed the CPAS, it was because government repression finally forced them to make the difficult sacrifice that unionism required. This was a sacrifice that the eight-hour decree in January had spared them, and which much of Peruvian labour remained unwilling or unable to make.

The failure of the general strike in May dealt a major blow to the labour movement in Lima. The split between moderates and radicals proved nearly impossible to bridge. On one side, the events of May did much to dissipate the moderate reformers' faith that the social question could be solved, even before it arose, by timely legislation or the education of the working class. The cautious mutualist leaders similarly realized that they could no longer cast their lot with the radicals unless they were prepared to face the consequences. Most chose not to challenge the established order, and instead looked to the new President Leguia to provide them benefits from above. On the other side, working-class militants largely abandoned the idea of mobilizing the mutualist rank-and-file. What they gained in ideological clarity and sense of purpose, they lost in numbers. At first they, too, publicly welcomed Leguia, whom they thought would bring a new freedom to organize. When Leguia took power in a July 4 coup against the remnants of civilista power, jubilant workers occupied the meeting hall of the Confederacion de Artesanos, deposing the old leaders and declaring an end to the age of yellow unionism. And for a brief moment in September and October of 1919, textile workers, tram drivers, and several other groups were able to strike successfully, winning at least a portion of the wage increase that Pardo's decree had denied them.(67) But over the long term, neither Leguia nor the 1920s were kind to organized workers. Leguia eventually exiled, repressed, or corrupted much of the labour movement, using the resources of a growing, interventionist government to neutralize potential rivals as never before.

At the same time, economic and social conditions of the 1920s contributed in Peru, as elsewhere, to a weakening of the workers' movement. The labour scarcity that had characterized 1918 and 1919 was gone by the early 1920s. Construction workers intermittently found their services in high demand, but those temporary and often low-skilled jobs did little to enhance other workers' bargaining power. Moreover, the steady rise in rural-urban migration that characterized Leguia's eleven-year regime further eroded whatever force urban labour might have exercised. Rural labour made some organizational strides in this decade, particularly on the sugar plantations of Peru's northern coast, but the workers of Lima saw few major gains.

For those Peruvians who saw the eight-hour day as the result of an unstoppable flood of working-class organization, the triumph in January was to be but a portent of triumphs to come. Yet labour's strength proved illusory. The general strike of 1919 was indeed a milestone in the formation of the Peruvian working class, but it was at the same time a limited victory achieved under highly extraordinary and fleeting circumstances. The temporary ascendancy of anarchist leaders, the rising currency of positivist reformism, the role of piecework in defining the terms of the conflict, the reverberation of events beyond Peru's borders, and the political challenge faced by the civilista regime, all served to weight the scale toward negotiation, and facilitated the concession of the eight-hour day to some - but only some - occupational groups. Once many of those conditions no longer held, the apparent power of Peru's workers revealed itself for the ephemeral thing it was. In short, the mystery that has long plagued Peruvian labour historians - why the victory of January 1919 so quickly gave way to defeat, disunity, and disillusion in the 1920s - may be less puzzling after all.

Queen's University

Research for this article was supported financially by the Social Science Research Council, Inter-American Foundation, and Fulbright Foundation (I.I.E.), all of the United States, and by Queen's University. The author would also like to thank Barbara Weinstein, Geoff Smith, and several anonymous referees.

1 Ricardo Martinez de la Torre, El movimiento obrero peruano 1918-1919 (Lima, n.d.). Cesar Levano, La verdadera historia de la jornada de las ocho horas (Lima, 1967); Victor Raul Haya de la Torre, "La jornada de ocho horas," Apra 14: 3 (Feb. 22, 1946); Pedro Parra V., Bautismo de fuego del proletariado peruano (Lima, 1969); Carlos Barba, "Las luchas obreras en 1919," Rikchay Peru #2 (Jan. 1971), #3 (Feb. 1971), #4 (Dec. 1972); Wilfredo Kapsoli, Luchas obreras en el Peru por la jornada de ocho horas (Lima, 1969). The dominance of this interpretation is confirmed by its recent repetition in Ruth Berins Collier and David Collier, Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin America (Princeton, 1991), p. 133.

2 Denis Sulmont, El movimiento obrero en el Peru 1900-1956 (Lima, 1975), esp. pp. 73-79.

3 Jose Barba Caballero, Historia del movimiento obrero peruano (Lima, 1981), pp. 99-101.

4 Peter Blanchard, The Origins of the Peruvian Labor Movement, 1883-1919 (Pittsburgh, 1982); Ricardo Temoche Benites, Cofradias, gremios, mutuales y sindicatos en el Peru (Lima, 1987).

5 McMillin to Sec. of State, 20 Nov. 1918. United States National Archives and Records Service, Records of the Department of State Relating to Internal Affairs of Peru 1910-1929 [hereafter cited as USNA/DS], 823.00/239.

6 Sulmont, Movimiento obrero, emphasizes the new industrial workforce. Piedad Pareja Pflucker, Anarquismo y sindicalismo en el Peru (1904-1929) (Lima, 1978), pp. 30, 44-47, points to the postwar crisis.

7 In La Protesta 13 (Feb. 1911), "Fabrica de tejidos Sta. Catalina," La Protesta 6 (July 1911), and "Triunfos Proletarios," La Protesta 21 (1 May 1913), mutualist leaders are accused of being management lackeys or themselves exploiters of labour. On "curing the sick and burying the dead," see Sociedad Empleados de Comercio, Actas Generales, Vol. I (1903-1915), 18 Apr. 1912, p. 10.

8 Federacion de Obreros Panaderos "Estrella del Peru," Correspondencia 1905-1907. Arturo Sabroso Archive, Centro de Documentacion, Programa de Ciencias Sociales, Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru, Lima. Guillermo Rochabrun, "Las ideas socialistas en el Peru," Los Caminos del Laberinto 4 (Dec. 1986), pp. 5-6.

9 L'alliance: Semanario Defensor del Derecho, la Justicia y la Civilizacion, 1915-1918.

10 The case involved the mutual aid society of commercial employees, to which he belonged. Sociedad Empleados de Comercio, Actas Generales I, 20 Nov. 1913, p. 91.

11 Luis Tejada R., La cuestion del pan (Lima, 1988), especially pp. 246-300.

12 El Tiempo (Lima), 15 Sept. 1917, p. 3; 8 Oct. 1917, p. 3.

13 Sociedad Empleados de Comercio, Actas Generales Vol. II (1915-1920), 27 Sept. 1917, pp. 3-4; 4 Oct. 1917, p. 11.

14 El Tiempo, 31 Oct. 1917, p. 1; 1 Nov. 1917; 10 Nov. 1917, p. 5.

15 Julio Portocarrero, Sindicalismo peruano: primera etapa, 1911-1930 (Lima, 1987), pp. 58-60.

16 Carl Frederick Herbold, Jr., "Developments in the Peruvian Administrative System, 1919-1930: Modern and Traditional Qualities of Government Under Authoritarian Regimes" (Ph.D. Diss., Yale University, 1973), pp. 69-87; Jesus Chavarria, Jose Carlos Mariategui and the Rise of Modern Peru, 1890-1930 (Albuquerque, 1979), chs. 1-2; idem., "The Intellectuals and the Crisis of Modern Peruvian Nationalism: 1870-1919," Hispanic American Historical Review 50: 2 (May 1970), especially pp. 267-69.

17 Luis Miro Quesada, Albores de la reforma social en el Peru (Lima, 1966).

18 Jose Matias Manzanilla, La reglamentacion del trabajo de la mujer y el nino y el descanso obligatorio: Discursos parlamentarios de Jose Matias Manzanilla (Lima, n.d.).

19 Jose Pardo, Four Years of Constitutional Government (New York, 1920), pp. 59-60.

20 Jose Carlos Mariategui, "Cooperativas," Mundial (16 March 1928), pp. 38-39.

21 This argument appears in Eduardo A. Zimmerman, "Racial Ideas and Social Reform: Argentina, 1890-1916," Hispanic American Historical Review 72: 1 (Feb. 1992), esp. pp. 38-41.

22 Sociedad de Beneficencia de Lima, Caja de Ahorros de Lima [Carlos Camprubi Alcazar], Un siglo al servicio del ahorro (1868-1968) (Lima, 1968), p. 13.

23 El Tiempo, 26 Dec. 1918, p. 2.

24 Mariategi's early newspaper columns appeared under the pseudonym Juan Croniquer. See his column "Voces," El Tiempo, 9 Apr. 1918. Also reprinted as "Bolschevikis aqui," in Alberto Flores Galindo, ed., El pensamiento comunista 1917-1945 (Lima, 1982), pp. 50-53.

25 SEC, Actas Directivas Vol. I, 16 July 1911, p. 125.

26 El Tiempo, 11 May 1919, p. 7.

27 The West Coast Leader, 18 Jan. 1919, p. 1.

28 Ilustracion Obrera #60 (May 1917), p. 56.

29 Portocarrero, pp. 23, 26. On piecework in the bread-baking industry, Tejada, pp. 264-67.

30 Portocarrero, pp. 45-46. La Protesta #73 (Dec. 1918), #74 (Jan. 1919). "Questions/Answers: Steve Stein to Arturo Sabroso M." Document #AI 98, Arturo Sabroso archive.

31 Portocarrero, p. 46.

32 Portocarrero, p. 47.

33 Unificacion Obrera Textil de Vitarte, Segundo libro de actas, pp. 252-83. These meeting minutes are also reproduced as Appendix No. 3 in Portocarrero, pp. 227-53. El Tiempo, 22 Dec. 1918, p. 4.

34 El Tiempo, 23 Dec. 1918, p. 5. Reprinted also in Martinez de la Torre, pp. 67-68, Portocarrero, pp. 230-31n.

35 The workers rejected this offer. Martinez de la Torre, p. 82.

36 This argument appeared in most of the factory owners' communiques during late December and early January: See particularly La Prensa, El Comercio, La Cronica, and Variedades. The anarchists responded, among other places, in La Protesta #74 (Jan. 1919), also reprinted in Martinez de la Torre, pp. 79-80.

37 The confusion was understandable, considering that the textile worker's daily wage was typically still called a jornal, even though the amount paid was determined by piecework.

38 Blanchard, Origins, pp. 151-52. On the bakers' decision to join the strike, Tejada, pp. 386-93.

39 The West Coast Leader, 18 Jan. 1919, p. 1; Variedades #568 (18 Jan. 1919), pp. 39-46.

40 On the stevedores' role in the strike: Portocarrero, pp. 61-62. On the history of their conquest of the eight hour day in 1913: Blanchard, Origins, pp. 89-91.

41 Portocarrero, p. 62. Handley to Sec. of State, 14 Jan. 1919, USNA/DS, 823.5045/7; McMillin to Sec. of State, 15 Jan. 1919, USNA/DS, 823.5045/5. La Cronica, 14 Jan. 1919. Lo Prensa, 13 Jan. 1919 (afternoon ed.), p. 2; 14 Jan. 1919 (morning ed.), p. 3. Martinez de la Torre, p. 87.

42 La Cronica, 16 Jan. 1919, p. 6.

43 The two most important new organizations were the weavers' Federacion de Trabajadores en Textiles del Peru [FTTP], and the linotypists' Federacion de Obreros Graficos.

44 Portocarrero, pp. 67-68.

45 La Prensa, 5 Jan. 1919 (morning ed.); 7 Jan. p. 4.

46 Variedades #568 (18 Jan. 1919), p. 39. Also Martinez de la Torre, p. 93.

47 Martinez de la Torre, p. 88. He described Vinelli as "a man of liberal tendencies and progressive ideas for the time."

48 Jeremy Adelman puts the number of deaths in the semana tragica at between 100 and 700, with some 800-2,000 wounded. Jeremy Adelman, "State and Labour in Argentina: The Port Workers of Buenos Aires, 1910-21,"Journal of Latin American Studies, 25: 1 (Feb. 1993), p. 91.

49 See La Prensa throughout the week of 10 Jan. 1919; The West Coast Leader, 18 Jan. 1919, p. 1.

50 La Prensa 11 Jan. 1919, p. 3; 12 Jan. 1919, p. 7; 13 Jan. 1919, p. 1.

51 Howard J. Karno, "Augusto B. Leguia: The Oligarchy and the Modernization of Peru, 1870-1930" (Ph.D. diss., UCLA, 1970), pp. 212-15.

52 Blanchard, Origins, pp. 84-101; Peter Blanchard, "A Populist Precursor: Guillermo Billinghurst," Journal of Latin American Studies, 9 (1977): 251-73.

53 On the workings of electoral machinery in late 19th and early 20th century Peru, see Steve Stein, Populism in Peru: The Emergence of the Masses and the Politics of Social Control (Madison, 1980), pp. 207-8.

54 Martinez de la Torre, p. 97.

55 Pardo, Four Years of Constitutional Government, p. iii.

56 On the limitation of enforcement to Lima and Callao, The West Coast Leader, 18 Jan. 1993, p. 1. On the exclusion of commercial employees, David S. Parker, "White-Collar Lima, 1910-1929: Commercial Employees and the Rise of the Peruvian Middle Class," Hispanic American Historical Review, 72: 1 (Feb. 1992), pp. 59-60.

57 Jose Vila, "La jornada de ocho horas" (22 Oct. 1919), and Roberto Gutierrez, "Los efectos de la jornada de ocho horas" (31 Oct. 1919). Manuscript collection, Sala de Investigaciones, Biblioteca Nacional, Lima.

58 The West Coast Leader, 18 Jan. 1919, p. 1.

59 Reprinted in Martinez de la Torre, p. 107.

60 La Prensa, 2 Feb. 1919 (morning ed.), p. 7.

61 The West Coast Leader, 31 May 1919, pp. 1, 9-10. USNA/DS, Handley to Sec. of State, 6 June 1919, #823.5045/26. Also Blanchard, Origins, pp. 164-69; Martinez de la Torre, pp. 15-44.

62 See, for example, the letter from Enrique Berrios in La Cronica, 4 June 1919, p. 4. Also SEC, Actas Generales Vol. II, 5 July 1919, p. 251.

63 Martinez de la Torre, p. 16.

64 La Prensa, 29 May 1919 (morning ed.), pp. 2-3; 30 May 1919 (morning ed.), pp. 2-3; 30 May 1919 (afternoon ed.), p. 1.

65 Ricardo Martinez de la Torre typifies this interpretation. He wrote that the eight-hour day "was a battle won by the working class, only the working class, and nobody else but the working class," while the CPAS failed because it made the mistake of "delegating to bourgeois politicians the defense of the people." Martinez de la Torre, Movimiento obrero, pp. 35, 45.

66 Pardo, Four Years of Constitutional Government, pp. 63-64.

67 The West Coast Leader, 4 Oct. 1919, p. 1; 16 Oct. 1919, p. 1.