Agustín ''Gringo'' Tosco (May 22, 1930 – November 5, 1975) was an Argentine union leader, member of the

CGT de los Argentinos The CGTA (''CGT de los Argentinos'', or General Confederation of Labour of the Argentine) was an offshoot of the General Confederation of Labour created during the Normalisation Congress of the CGT of 28–30 March 1968, and which lasted until 19 ...

and an important participant in the historic local uprising known as the ''

Cordobazo The Cordobazo was a civil uprising in the city of Córdoba, Argentina, at the end of May 1969, during the military dictatorship of General Juan Carlos Onganía, which occurred a few days after the '' Rosariazo'', and a year after the global protes ...

''.

Thought and maturity

Tosco was born in

Coronel Moldes Coronel Moldes (Salta) is a town and municipality in Salta Province in northwestern Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argen ...

, Córdoba province,

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

. At 27 years old, he was the general secretary for ''Luz y Fuerza'' (Light and Power utilities workers) in the province of Córdoba. Tosco felt that nothing could substitute for general assemblies, which he considered superior to representative comities, and that labor struggles should not simply focus on salary demands. His ideology can be described as

anti-imperialist Anti-imperialism in political science and international relations is a term used in a variety of contexts, usually by nationalist movements who want to secede from a larger polity (usually in the form of an empire, but also in a multi-ethnic so ...

, anti-capitalist, and anti-

bureaucratic The term bureaucracy () refers to a body of non-elected governing officials as well as to an administrative policy-making group. Historically, a bureaucracy was a government administration managed by departments staffed with non-elected offi ...

. He constantly fought against bureaucracy in the union. One of his most famous enemies in this regard was

José Ignacio Rucci José Ignacio Rucci (5 March 1924 – 25 September 1973) was an Argentine politician and union leader, appointed general secretary of the CGT (General Confederation of Labour) in 1970. Close to the Argentine president Juan Perón, and a chief r ...

, another prominent leader in the CGT. About this, Tosco said the following, "Rucci and his disciples are prisoners of their commitment to the powerful, prisoners of the guardians who lend them the political apparatus, prisoners of a jail from which they can never escape: that of submission and indignity." Tosco and Rucci had many public confrontations. In addition to the struggles particular to his own union, he participated in the fight against the dictatorship of

Juan Carlos Onganía Juan Carlos Onganía Carballo (; 17 March 1914 – 8 June 1995) was President of Argentina from 29 June 1966 to 8 June 1970. He rose to power as dictator after toppling the president Arturo Illia in a coup d'état self-named ''Revolución Argen ...

His role in the ''Cordobazo''

On May 29, 1969, in the city of Córdoba, there was a popular uprising against the dictatorship of Onganía. Many workers and students confronted the military. After the Cordobazo, Tosco was condemned to eight years in prison by a military tribunal, but was free after 16 months. The Cordobazo was a milestone because is represented a loss of legitimacy for the Onganía government, and hastened its end. About the Cordobazo, Tosco said, "it was a rebellion for the workers and the people(...) it came out of the working class and the masses. The importance of the Cordobazo is that it came from the workers and the students and that for their convictions they came out into the streets to fight."

After the Cordobazo

When he got out of prison, Tosco returned to Córdoba. With the victory of Peronism in 1973, Tosco began to be persecuted. In 1974, after the police coup against the governor Ricardo Obregón Cano, the Luz y Fuerza labor union was abolished and Tosco was forced to go into hiding. A while later he fell ill, but could not go to the hospital for fear of execution. Agustín Tosco died at 45 years of age, on November 5, 1975, and thousands of people attended his funeral, despite threats from the government of Isabel Perón and the ''

Alianza Anticomunista Argentina The Argentine Anticommunist Alliance ( es, Alianza Anticomunista Argentina, links=no, usually known as Triple A or AAA) was an Argentine Peronist political action group operated by a sector of the Federal Police and the Argentine Armed Forces, ...

'' (Argentine Anticomunist Alliance, a far right death squad). Participation in Tosco's funeral was violently suppressed by the government. {{DEFAULTSORT:Tosco, Agustin Argentine activists Members of the General Confederation of Labour (Argentina) 1930 births 1975 deaths Argentine trade union leaders People from Río Cuarto, Córdoba