Domingo Trama

Born in the La Boca neighborhood of Buenos Aires (Argentina) the militant anarcho-syndicalist Domingo José Trama. Son of French father, a worker in the naval industry, and an Argentine mother, was the eldest of eight brothers. In 1922 he finished his primary education and in 1924 he began to do work as an apprentice in various shops in the area. When I was 17 years old, he enter as a rivet worker in the firm "Varaderos Ghioldi" and affiliated with the Union of Calderers and Annexes.

In 1928 his companions Hermenegildo Rosales and Juan Navone presented him in the Guild of Painters and Workers of Rasqueta, to which he joined and from then until 1950 he worked as a scarack in the repair of ships for the workshops «Lambertini e Hijos», «The Marina, "The Anglo-Argentina" and "Moore McCormack". When I was 20 years old, I started to frequent the bars Roma and Paulista de La Boca, where workers gathered socialists, communists and anarchists, through which he became interested in the Libertarian movement. At this time he met important figures of the politics of his time, such as the radical Crisólogo Larralde and the socialist Alfredo Palacios. In 1930 the dictatorship of Uriburu closed the Federation of Workers of Naval Constructions (FOCN) that grouped five unions, including to which It belonged. In the face of this climate of arbitrariness, his passion for Anarchism. In 1932 the assembly of the Guild of Painters and Works of Rasqueta He was appointed for one year's librarian of the group. Over the following years, he was He was arrested many times for his membership. In 1938 he was appointed treasurer of his union. In August of this year he participated in an assembly of the FOCN that resolved to send aid to the Spanish Revolution. From this until the end of the Civil War, he gave the revolutionary cause Spanish two percent of his salary. In March 1939 he refused to repair the Francoist ship "Cabo San Antonio", in charge of the government of Burgos and promoted, together with his companions, a five-day strike in the "Workshop Cariboni." On 9 September 1940 he was a member of a workers' commission who managed, after a day of unemployment, that the prefect of the port gave up of applying a provision of the police that forced the FOCN to remove from the his organic letter the words "boycott" and "direct action". Going forward, it goes to be part of all the delegations, representing the workers, who dialogue with employers in various conflicts and in matters of litigation with the police. For all these reasons, during the 1940s he was arrested numerous times. He was a delegate of the "Pro Prisoners Committee" of Bragado and on 20 of November 1940, on behalf of the Union of Painters and Workers of Rasqueta, delivered to Pascual Vuoto, one of the detainees in the Mercedes prison, the machine of writing that he had requested to draft his protest manifestos. Then, with other colleagues, he founded on October 21, 1941 the Ateneu de Youth of Workers of Naval Constructions and was elected secretary. In 1942 he be appointed for one year secretary of the Union of Painters and Workers of Rasqueta. On October 10 of that year, during the government of Ramón Castillo, He was part of a commission that was interviewed with the Minister of the Navy, Mario Fincati, due to the official attempt to impose an identification card of the Prefecture to allow the entry into the port for the workers.

For this reason it goes start a strike along with the rest of the workers and, after three days, the Ministry accepted the proposal put forward by the workers. In 1942, too, it was closed for the second time the FOCN. In 1945 the Assembly of the Union of Painters and Workers of Rasqueta re-elected him secretary and the following year he was appointed for one year delegated to the Federal Council of the FOCN. In 1947 he be part of the commission that presented, before the employers' body Union of Naval Construction Companies (UCN), the request of naval administrative employees to to constitute their own trade union. Due to the obstacles caused in this recognition, participated in the 110-day strike in solidarity with these workers. In 1947 the FOCN was closed for the third time and the government He created a new trade union under official control. As a Federal Council delegate of the naval guilds, in 1948 he was part of the commission that appeared before Juan Castro, Minister of Labor, to express the decision of the assembly trade union to reject ministerial oversight over the FOCN. In 1950 intervened in a 45-day strike in solidarity with the Maritime Federation and At the end of the conflict the government created the Argentine Maritime Association (AMA) and closed by fourth peak the FOCN that, however, continued to work clandestinely. In 1952 he left the repair work of ships and entered as to assistant electrician in the «Talleres Vignolo Hnos.», joining the Naval Metallurgical Union that, like the rest of the guilds of the FOCN, it worked clandestinely. That same year he was fired for having advised a group of workers before a maneuver of the employers. In 1955, with the fall of Perón, the Liberating Revolution lifted the closure of the FOCN and He was elected delegate of the Naval Metallurgical Guild before the Federal Council. which is also appointed Secretary General of the FOCN. In 1956, with colleagues of the Federa Council and the Regional Council, submitted a petition to the UCN and the "Tarena State Workshop" where the recognition of freedom was requested union of the FOCN and the acceptance of the six-hour working day.

In front refusal to access these claims and the application of a lock-out in October 1956 he headed, as Secretary General of the FOCN, a strike that lasts 13 months, the longest in the history of Argentina. In the end of that year was arrested by the police, during the conflict, accused of preventing freedom of work and for the use of firearms after an attack taken to the port while he and a group of delegates held a meeting with the patron of the "Tognetti Workshops", and was imprisoned for three months in the Villa prison I'm devoting. On 26 October 1957 the Ministry of Labour recognized as a guild only the Argentine Union of Naval Workers (SAON), formed by the state workshops Tarena. In November 1957 the strike ended without having achieved the He said goodbye to work. Then he performed several temporary jobs in various workshops ("El Anglo-Argentino", "Lambertini" and "La Marina") and continued to hold the position of Secretary General of the FOCN, but never He did not join the new union. In 1959 he was called, along with high eighty skilled workers, to work in the “Ryan Workshops”, but in a way clandestine since he was inscribed on the blacklists as a striker, and there he develop ship repair tasks a few months until the Closing the workshop. In 1960 he joined the "Luz y Fuerza" union, he signed up in the job bank of this guild and began to work in the area of retirements and pensions of the "Italo-Argentina Company". This year was also appointed member of a Commission for the Reorganization of the Regional Workers' Federation Argentina (OUTSIDE). In 1969 he retired and two years later he ceased his function of general secretary of the FOCN when it was dissolved due to the lack of affiliates and refusal to submit to the requirements of the Law of Professional Associations. During his last years he was secretary of the Ateneu d'Obrers en Construccions Navals and director of El Constructor Naval. Domingo Trama died on May 20, 2003 in Buenos Aires (Argentina) and on May 26 in October of the same year his ashes were thrown into the Riachuelo, a few meters from the workshops where he worked and fought, in a sense tribute of his colleagues and friends. Currently the Ateneu d'Obrers en Construccions Navals brings the his name.