Agustín ''Gringo'' Tosco (May 22, 1930 – November 5, 1975) was an

Argentine Argentines, Argentinians or Argentineans are people from Argentina. This connection may be residential, legal, historical, or cultural. For most Argentines, several (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their ...

union leader, member of the

CGT de los Argentinos The CGTA (''CGT de los Argentinos'', or General Confederation of Labour of the Argentines) 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 1 ...

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. It occurred a few days after the '' Rosariazo'' protests erupted in the Santa Fe Province against the military dictatorship of General Juan Carlos ...

''.

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, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of S ...

, Córdoba province,

Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...

. 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 committees, 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 opposition to imperialism or neocolonialism. Anti-imperialist sentiment typically manifests as a political principle in independence struggles against intervention or influenc ...

anti-capitalist Anti-capitalism is a political ideology and Political movement, movement encompassing a variety of attitudes and ideas that oppose capitalism. Anti-capitalists seek to combat the worst effects of capitalism and to eventually replace capitalism ...

, and anti-

bureaucratic Bureaucracy ( ) is a system of organization where laws or regulatory authority are implemented by civil servants or non-elected officials (most of the time). Historically, a bureaucracy was a government administration managed by departments ...

. 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 " Argentine Revol ...

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 Ricardo Obregón Cano (April 4, 1917 – June 19, 2016)Alejandro Dorrego, Victoria Azurduy, Rodolfo Puiggrós: „El caso argentino: hablan sus protagonistas“, Prisma 1977 was an Argentine Justicialist Party politician. Born in Río Cuarto, ...

, 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 Isabel Martínez de Perón (, born María Estela Martínez Cartas; 4 February 1931) is an Argentine politician who served as the 41st president of Argentina from 1974 to 1976. She was one of the List of elected and appointed female heads of s ...

and the ''

Alianza Anticomunista Argentina The Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (, usually known as Triple A or AAA) was an Argentine Peronism, Peronist and Fascism, fascist political paramilitary group operated by a sector of the Argentine Federal Police, Federal Police and the Armed ...

'' (Argentine Anticomunist Alliance, a

far right Far-right politics, often termed right-wing extremism, encompasses a range of ideologies that are marked by ultraconservatism, authoritarianism, ultranationalism, and Nativism (politics), nativism. This political spectrum situates itself on ...

death squad A death squad is an armed group whose primary activity is carrying out extrajudicial killings, massacres, or enforced disappearances as part of political repression, genocide, ethnic cleansing, or revolutionary terror. Except in rare cases in w ...

). Participation in Tosco's funeral was violently suppressed by the government.

Thought and maturity

His role in the ''Cordobazo''

After the Cordobazo

Further reading