Political Violence and Trauma in Argentina. Antonius C. G. M. Robben
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of the Cordobazo and its social consequences. The strike and march that preceded the events had been carefully planned by militant union leaders, but the massive adhesion, the violent response to the repression, the raising of barricades, and the attacks on police stations were not. These manifestations cannot be explained by delineating the structural or political conditions of the social sectors among which the protest arose. Instead, the analytical lead of Brennan and James must be followed into the crowd itself.
The protest march on 29 May was carefully planned, including the tactical decisions to distribute defensive weapons and to approach the center from various directions preventing a concentration of police forces. However, as had happened on 17 October 1945, the street mobilization developed a distinct crowd dynamic once the protesters stood face to face with the heavily armed police. The union leaders Torres and Tosco tried to prevent an escalation into violence, but were overtaken by the more militant protesters. The collective violence manifested feelings of repression among the mass of Argentine society, among workers, Peronists, and students. Their anger was released in the crowds and transformed into a sense of empowerment.
In their public declarations, the authorities portrayed the Cordobazo as an irrational outburst of collective violence. Yet the protesters were never entirely out of control. For example, the fire brigade was allowed free passage when the fire at the Xerox corporation threatened to consume the homes of residents. Policemen were stripped of their helmets and weapons, but five policemen who had been briefly taken hostage were released unharmed.
Several eyewitnesses described the protesters as festive and euphoric. Around noontime on 29 May, an area of about one hundred and fifty blocks was in festive turmoil. The pastries and hams taken from expensive upper class stores were eaten with delight.19 The piano at the junior officers’ club was dragged outside and became the center of an impromptu dance. The sabers were taken off the walls and used to parody medieval duels. One of the participants remarked later: “But do you know why there was also so much happiness as the events progressed and the whole city was being taken? Do you know why the emotions ran so high at Plaza Colón when we were having the party? Because everyone was also settling a personal score. The Radical against the coup against Illia, the Peronist because he rejected once more the coup against his leader and was fighting for his return to the country, the leftist because he felt that he was taking revenge for so many exiles, prisoners, and dead comrades since times unknown….”20 Another experience by one witness makes this emotional release even clearer: “Very special moments were lived at Plaza Colón because there men of seventy years old embracing youths of fifteen, and they both cried. The youngest because he had been born under repression and felt that he was liberating himself; the older because after many years he felt that it was possible to win.”21 These stings of the past did not motivate the general strike, but they did emerge during the crowd mobilization and were temporarily relieved through the outbursts of collective violence and euphoria.
The collective violence was not the work of an irrational horde, but was highly organized. The shop floor politics and grass roots participation, so distinctive of the Cordoban unions and student organizations, found their expression in the street actions. A division of labor emerged in building barricades which resembled the typical organization of any production process. There were groups specializing in the extraction of raw materials from construction sites, their transformation into suitable components for the barricades, their distribution and transportation to the various barricades, and the actual building of the obstacles. Other groups were specialized in making molotov cocktails, while messages and molotov cocktails were distributed by motor bike to various locations. Logistic support was provided to supply young activists at the front lines with a continuous supply of bricks to throw at the police. Small groups of women prepared food for the various teams. These small production and defense teams emerged throughout Córdoba without any preestablished plan.
The spontaneity of the grass roots movement and the rapid organization of the resistance undermined the repressive state. The Cordobazo gave people confidence in the power of mobilization, the strength of their number, the ability to organize a protest, and the force to make the government change its authoritarian policies. Particularly worrying to the military junta was the presence of snipers, and the attempt of a revolutionary vanguard to organize the protests and assume its leadership. The nightmare of a revolutionary insurrection was becoming a likely reality for the Argentine military, and they intended to discourage future protests with massive displays of force. The military junta did not just move into action to protect property and lives but to quell the challenge to their authority and the order which they sought to impose on society. These deeper motives become clear after a close examination of military crowd control tactics.
Military Conceptualization of Crowds
The Cordobazo was military doctrine come true. Contemporary field manuals of the Argentine army explained that vanguardism and mass mobilization were the two principal strategies of revolutionary warfare.22 Attempts had been made in the 1960s to start a guerrilla insurgency, but they failed because of the lack of resonance within Argentine society and the energetic military response. The Cordobazo proved to the military and the left that the consciousness of the working class was ripe for a mass insurrection.
Army instructions on how to control violent crowds began with the assumption that mass mobilizations were inevitable because every society has malcontents. The causes of popular dissatisfaction and collective violence identified by Argentine military analysts and revolutionary thinkers such as Marx, Lenin, Mao, and Guevara were remarkably similar: social and economic inequality, authoritarianism, frustrated expectations, and relative deprivation among large segments of the population. The roots of mass protest were subdivided into economic, social, psychological, and political causes.23 Typical of the Argentine army field manuals was the complete absence of any reference to concrete situations or historical events. The instructions were presented in an objectifying language as if they built on universal and timeless knowledge, but behind the neutral, almost clinical, descriptions rested a keen awareness of national circumstances.
The social, economic, and psychological causes of popular dissatisfaction relate largely to the unequal distribution of wealth in society: widespread poverty, high unemployment, and an unjust concentration of land and capital. Social factors, like stark class divisions, high illiteracy rates, a poor educational system, and inadequate health services, will make people feel frustrated and hopeless. These feelings translate psychologically into a lack of faith in the government. People have a profound feeling of injustice and believe that the government does not intend to make amends. There reigns uncertainty and anxiety about the future provoking alternatively aggressive and apathetic behavior.24
Finally, the Argentine army manuals identify the political causes of unrest: a repressive government which does not respond to the aspirations of its people, proscribes certain political interests, and does not tolerate a political opposition. The field manuals indicate furthermore the danger of a polarization in society between the middle class and an extreme right and left wing.
Did President Onganía recognize the political situation in Argentina of the late 1960s in this diagnostic instrument devised by the staff of Army commander Lanusse? Onganía ruled in an authoritarian fashion, Peronism was proscribed, a large part of the Peronist movement was swinging to the political left and talking about class struggle, while there was also a noticeable growth of right-wing nationalist splinter groups. Furthermore, there was widespread indignation about the proscription of political parties, the concentration of wealth, thwarted social mobility, an unjust land tenure system, the dependency on multinationals, and rising unemployment. Finally, the feelings of injustice pervading the angry protests in Córdoba resonated throughout the country.
Why did Onganía not change his political course? Onganía decided to follow his original long-term strategy for transforming Argentina. One of his principal advisers, General Osiris Villegas, convinced him that the development of Argentine society was a matter of national security. The communist incursion in Argentina would have less chance if the government stimulated the country’s industrial, regional, political, scientific, and military development.25 Onganía envisioned a three-stage development that began with a rapid modernization of the economy, was followed by economic