It split into two wings in 1915, the larger of which merged into the Argentine Syndicates' Union [es] (USA) in 1922, while the smaller slowly disappeared in the 1930s.
From 1896, the labor movement started developing a clear working class program and the first sympathy strikes began taking place.
[3] Pietro Gori, an Italian anarchist who immigrated to Argentina in 1898, and Antonio Pellicer Paraire, who arrived from Spain in 1898, were two key figures on the pro-organization side.
[9] On May 25 and 26 and June 2, 1901, fifty delegates, both anarchists and socialists, representing between twenty-seven and thirty-five unions met at a congress in the capital to form the Argentine Workers' Federation (FOA),[10] with no more than 10,000 members initially.
[13] The principles proclaimed working class solidarity to be the only means of liberating workers, with the general strike their ultimate weapon in their fight against capital.
The founding congress had decided that La Organización was to serve as the Federation's official organ, but then the newspaper's socialist editors refused to allow this.
In September, the twelve socialist-oriented unions in charge of the newspaper declared that they regretted having agreed to the Federation taking over their publication.
At the FOA's second congress, a dispute over the admission of delegates who were not members of the unions they represented escalated into chaotic and angry shouting and the moderates left.
The most important strike of this year, that of the fruit handlers, was about to involve the whole membership of the FOA at the height of the harvest, but the government passed the Residence Law—which allowed the expulsion of subversive foreigners—to break it.
It also passed a resolution declaring "[t]hat it advises and recommends the widest possible study and propaganda to all its adherents with the object of teaching the workers the economic and philosophical principles of anarchist communism" becoming the programmatic basis of the union for the following years and reflecting the radicalization of the preceding.
[25] In 1909, however, its moderate wing left the organization to found the Argentine Regional Workers' Confederation (CORA) with syndicalists from the UGT.
Because the FORA could not afford the long trip and because of a lack of time, it did not send a delegate of its own, but gave its mandate to the Italian Alceste De Ambris.
The FORA considered the congress a great success and was confident it would lead to the founding of a "purely worker and anti-statist" international.
It did not "pronounce itself officially favorable to, nor advise the adoption of, philosophical systems or determined ideologies", effectively renouncing anarchist communism.
In a time of economic recession and falling wages, as the result of World War I, it was more intent on defending past achievements, rather than starting risky struggles.
[29] On January 7, 1919, a strike by an anarchist union with tenuous links to the FORA V in Nueva Pompeya led to a shootout between workers and police, troops, and firemen, killing five.
Having the support of socialists, communists, and syndicalists, the USA was more radical than the FORA IX and therefore joined neither the social democratic International Federation of Trade Unions nor the RILU.