Workers Fill the Plaza de Mayo to Free Perón

In the early hours of October 17, 1945, thousands of Argentine laborers began marching from industrial suburbs toward the heart of Buenos Aires. Packing plants, factories, and workshops emptied as workers headed north across the Riachuelo river. When authorities raised the bridges to halt the influx into the capital, marchers crossed on makeshift rafts or swam through the water until the crossings were lowered again. Their destination was the Plaza de Mayo, outside the presidential palace, where they gathered to demand the freedom of Colonel Juan Domingo Perón.

Perón had built a powerful constituency over the preceding two years within the military regime that took power in June 1943. Appointed head of the Department of Labor, later raised to a secretariat of state, he collaborated with various trade union leaders to implement longstanding labor demands. His administration introduced employment tribunals, retirement benefits, severance compensation, and a wave of collective bargaining agreements. These measures drew massive numbers of recent internal rural migrants into organized labor, but they also provoked intense resistance from traditional political parties, conservative officers, and business elites.