On the chilly and rainy afternoon of Thursday, May 1, 1890, a crowd of around fifteen hundred people, mostly workers of German and Italian origin, gathered in a large meeting hall under the watchful eyes of disguised police officers and the more menacing presence of dozens of policemen stationed on the pavement.
The event began with a speech by a Swiss man named Joseph Winiger, followed by several speakers appointed by the organizing committee. One spoke in Spanish, the next in French, then one in German, one in Italian, and finally one in Dutch. After a couple of hours, the crowd dispersed peacefully.
The following week, a German-language newspaper called Vorwärts celebrated the event’s success in honoring the decision of the first congress of the Second International, held in Paris in July 1889, to hold simultaneous internationalist meetings on May 1.
The participants in this cosmopolitan gathering could indeed be proud of having taken part in one of the few dozen meetings held around the world to inaugurate the working-class tradition of May Day. They could also take pride in having managed to do so almost seven thousand miles away from Paris: the meeting had been held in Downtown Buenos Aires, in the distant Argentine Republic.
It is not surprising that the May Day meeting of 1890 has acquired an almost mythological status in accounts of the history of the labor movement and the Left in Argentina, both among those who wish to emphasize that their movement was part of the vanguard of international socialism, and among those who despise the local…
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Auteur: Lucas Poy
