Political Violence and Trauma in Argentina. Antonius C. G. M. Robben
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the country, while the union leaders feared his desire to cut their clientelism and improve the internal union democracy.35 The opposition to Illia’s government began with nationwide Peronist demonstrations on 17 October 1963 to commemorate the Day of Loyalty and proclaim a popular mobilization. The protesters demanded new general elections, the withdrawal of all repressive measures, an embargo on the export of capital, extensive nationalizations, and the return of Perón.36 Perón had declared on New Year’s eve of 1963 that he would return to Argentina before the end of 1964. Economic and political demands merged again. The political climate added increased credibility to the slogan “Perón returns” (Perón vuelve) which began to appear on street walls throughout Argentina. A massive rally was held at Plaza Once on 17 October 1964 attended by more than one hundred thousand people. On the economic front, almost four million workers participated in the occupation of eleven thousand factories during seven operations between 21 May and 24 June 1964.
Ironically, it was Perón’s attempt to return to Argentina which provided Augusto Vandor with an opportunity to displace him from the pinnacle of the Peronist movement.37 Perón tried to enter Argentina on 2 December 1964 but the Argentine military asked the Brazilian authorities to deny him free passage. Perón was ordered to disembark in Rio de Janeiro, and forced to await the return flight to Madrid.38 The failure of Operation Return gave Vandor an important political victory. He had demonstrated his unfailing loyalty by accompanying Perón on his ill-fated trip, and could now return to Argentina with the laurels of his heroism.
Vandor tried to use his newly gained prestige to consolidate his political influence in the Peronist movement during the March 1965 congressional elections as he maneuvered his candidates into the key tickets of the Peronist Unión Popular. When the votes had been counted, there were seventy seats in the House of Representatives for Illia’s Radical party UCR and fiftytwo seats for the Unión Popular.39 For the first time since 1955, Peronists returned to Congress, now under the tutelage of the UOM leader Augusto Vandor. The victory would be short-lived because a military coup on 28 June 1966 deposed President Illia and brought retired General Juan Carlos Onganía to power.
The Onganía dictatorship proclaimed the beginning of the Argentine Revolution which sought to consolidate the nation’s moral and spiritual values, jump-start the stagnant economy, improve labor relations, and uphold the ideals of dignity and freedom which were the patrimony of Argentina’s Christian and Western civilization.40 These ideals were implemented by closing Congress, dissolving the political parties, and dismissing the Supreme Court.41
The coup was initially welcomed by the principal union leaders José Alonso and Augusto Vandor because the Onganía government suspended many measures of the Illia government intended to curtail the political power of the labor unions.42 The Cordoban union leader Tosco stood practically alone in his condemnation of the military takeover, while Vandor and Alonso were prominently present at the swearing in ceremony.
The first blow to the unions came in August 1966 when the government imposed obligatory arbitration on labor conflicts and denied collective bargaining and the right to strike.43 In line with the hitherto successful hit and negotiate strategy, Alonso and Vandor organized strikes. In Córdoba, auto workers went on strike and the Independent union leader Tosco organized work stoppages. The Onganía government, on the instigation of the National Security Council (CONASE) headed by General Osiris Villegas, responded with surprising harshness. Unions were placed under the control (intervenido) of inspectors-general, bank accounts frozen, and strikes and street demonstrations prohibited. In 1967 there were only six strikes in Greater Buenos Aires, in which no more than 547 workers participated.44
In the two years following the defeat of the union protests, the union leadership disintegrated into a collaborationist, a participationist, and a combative bloc. The collaborationists, headed by Juan José Taccone and Rogelio Coria, were willing to submit workers to the government’s tutelage. Instead, Vandor and Alonso wished some degree of participation in the collective negotiations with the government to bargain for more favorable labor conditions. Finally, the combative union leaders condemned the accommodating attitude of the other two blocs and demanded a return to active resistance. In their opinion, the pact between labor, government, and capital had led the labor movement away from the class struggle and the pursuit of a socialist revolution. The combative unionists provoked a breach within the CGT union central in March 1968 and formed the CGTA (Confederación General de Trabajo de los Argentinos), also known as the CGT de Paseo Colón, under the leadership of Raimundo Ongaro. The CGTA received the support of most unions in the provinces, including Tosco’s electricians union and the UOM metal workers union in Córdoba.45 The collaborationists and the participationists constituted the CGT de Azopardo under the control of Augusto Vandor.46
The incendiary speech in Córdoba on 1 May 1968, by CGTA leader Ongaro, had all the tenets of the revolutionary discourse of the coming unruly years. He denounced the growing power of foreign multinationals and the dependence on the IMF and the World Bank. He condemned the high infant mortality, the slums on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, and the many infectious diseases that troubled the poor. He verbalized the images of an impoverished Argentina many had seen in Fernando Solanas’ impressive 1966 documentary The Hour of the Furnaces (La Hora de los Hornos).47 Ongaro called upon students and intellectuals to join the workers in combating the nation’s social ills.48 Precisely in this period, the struggle of the combative Peronists took a revolutionary turn, as Carlos Villagra testifies: “The revolution became possible for us and we began to talk about organizing ourselves in a totally different way. The people wanted to fight, wanted to confront the system…. It wasn’t just the return of Perón, it was no longer throwing a stone or placing a pipe bomb. We said already that the system had to be changed, that a revolution had to be made. People were already saying that the struggle was going to be long and extensive. Peronism must make a revolution, yes or yes.”49 The CGTA combatives embarked on a collision course with the Onganía dictatorship that culminated in June 1968 in a series of street protests in Argentina’s major cities.
After initially backing Ongaro for mobilizing the Peronist following, Perón became suspicious of the Marxist leaning of the combative CGTA and had in the end more faith in the institutional continuity of the old union establishment than a revolutionary union leadership which was hard to control.50 However, the CGTA had put a militant momentum in motion which was hard to stop. Perón sensed the widespread resentment and emphasized in September 1968 the importance of a civil disobedience and mass protests comparable to Gandhi’s anticolonial struggle in India.51
Vandor also sensed the growing discontent among the rank and file. He declared war on the dictatorship in May 1969, and began to regain some of the ground lost after the partition of the CGT in March 1968. The influence of the CGTA dwindled rapidly. Their street mobilizations were repressed, they lost the support of Perón, and Vandor’s new oppositional strategy preempted their struggle. Nevertheless, the combatives continued to be a power to reckon with in Córdoba.52
The institutional pragmatism and participationism of the 1960s had provided basic subsistence needs to many workers in times of political disenfranchisement.53 Yet they had also created enduring hatreds within the labor movement. Vandor and Alonso were assassinated in 1969 and 1970 by hit squads of the revolutionary left for being traitors to the Peronist movement. The reign of the imposing union bosses had come to an end, and it was up to the rank and file to take the initiative again. A new generation of mostly young Peronists began to take the crowd initiative which the pragmatic union leaders had abandoned in the early 1960s. These revolutionary Peronists succeeded in dominating the streets with large demonstrations that would eventually contribute to the return of Perón in 1972. They created the means for an expression of Peronist sentiments submerged for a decade. Crowds gave the participants an identity and esprit de corps that could never be attained in equal emotional measure by institutional pragmatism, clientelism, and participationism. The political vigor was in the hands of a new generation of Peronist leaders who were untainted with the comforts of a union office, and who dreamed of seeing Perón raising his arms in salute from the balcony of the presidential Casa Rosada. The longing for these crowd sentiments was nowhere stronger than