Acción colectiva agraria y configuración regional. Los productores frutícolas del Alto Valle del río Negro (1956-1976)

Abstract

The objective of the present work consists on a diachronic and procesual analysis of the actions of the Fruit Producers Federation of Río Negro and Neuquén, between the years 1956 and 1976. The study of the agricultural assosiation´s work is a part of the renewal process of the agrarian studdies undertaken since the 1980´s from a multidisciplinary perspective. This paper then aims to advance on the understanding of the contemporary processes of social movilization, featuring collective subjects associated with fruit-growing, in this case, the "chacareros" of the Alto Valle del río Negro that towards mid20th century conformed the Fruit Producers Federation of Río Negro and Neuquén. The temporary cut made was carried out considering the start of the provicialization process of the national territories, process that coincides with the change of the economic model, with the implementation of the development policies at a national level and with the formation of the asociation that groups the fruit producers cameras of Río Negro and Neuquén (Fruit Producers Federation of Río Negro and Neuquén), on june of 1956. The year 1976 was selected to finish this study since the dictatorship started there implies a turn on the economic policies towards the neoliberal model. During this twenty years three organizations represented the interests of the fruit producers at the Alto Valle del río Negro and they turned into the main interlocutors with the provincial and national State in a context signed by an impredictable alternance between constitucional governments and facto governments and by changes in the regional agro that preanounced the rise of the agroindustrial cycle. The actions of this asociations - guild, in the case of the Fruit Producers Federation of Río Negro and Neuquén and the Regional Movement of Producers of Río Negro and Neuquén, and nonguild, in the case of CORPOFRUT- helped capture a spatial configuration that exeded the provincial political and administrative boundaries, constructed regardless the complex regional dynamics own by northern Patagonia before the provincialization process. The formation of this three entities during a complex transition, was a part of the strategies for support of demands and interests of the Alto Valle del río Negro fruit producers that, far from reaching form a homogeneous block, a social class, in the process of struggle and vindication of their interests began to present principles of differentiation that conspired against a unified action, sustained over time. In the case of the region this work is about, the Alto Valle del río Negro, the three production processes of space articulated within the framewok of capitalist logic: the production -mercantile-, the dominance -statal- and the appropiation -social- of the space, helped shape the region under study in this work, while allowing to understand why the unionized forms of collective action emerged from the Alto Valle and specifically in Cinco Saltos, Cipolletti, Allen and Villa Regina, then spread to the rest of the region. From a methodological point of view it was resorted to conceptual and research strategies loans from of other social sciences but without forgetting the historical research method and its aim: to offer global an explanation of the studied historical processes contextualizing the boarded issues considering their internal exchange dynamics. In the case of the issues to address in the present investigation, the combination of documentary written sources with oral testimonies of individuals involved intentionally selected, pointed to rescue two kinds of records that are different but contrastable and at the same time complementary, to "listen" to two or more voices. Thus, the theoretical and methodological triangulation which was used from a qualitative approach, is based on the premise that there is not one single way to solve a specific problem and that the research strategies must be adapted to the studied problem, in this case, the collective actions of collective subjets asociated whit fruit-growing in the Alto Valle del río Negro during the period of time between the years 1956 and 1976.