Political Violence and Trauma in Argentina. Antonius C. G. M. Robben
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enemy of the government and threatened to release the Peronist masses into the streets.67
The surprising defeat of the Peronist mobilization in Córdoba was followed by an even stronger blow in Buenos Aires. On 8 December 1954 the Church was to celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and the end of the Marian Year. That same day, the Argentine people were invited to accompany Perón to the Aeroparque airport for a homecoming welcome of Pascual Pérez, the new world champion boxer. The arrival of the flyweight boxer had been deliberately planned to coincide with the religious ceremony at the Plaza de Mayo. A crowd of 100,000 to 200,000 faithful greatly surpassed the reception crowd of 4,000 at the airport. The people overflowed the cathedral and inundated the Plaza de Mayo.68 The crowd had symbolically ousted Perón from the square he had dominated for nine years. In revenge, Perón annulled the 1946 legislation that had made religious education compulsory in public schools.
No longer able to win the street, Perón harassed the Church by legalizing divorce and prostitution. These reprisals drove larger crowds of disaffected Argentines into the streets, and coalesced an array of anti-Peronist forces around the Church. In the ten months following the Immaculate Conception victory, twelve large Catholic demonstrations took place in Buenos Aires. These crowds formed generally after mass in the cathedral at the Plaza de Mayo, often resulted in violent confrontations with Peronist supporters, and ended in the arrest of Catholic demonstrators. Meanwhile, the retaliatory exchanges between the Peronist government and the Argentine Catholic Church continued unabated. Perón declared on 20 May 1955 the official separation of Church and State. The Church responded with a pastoral letter postulating the divinity of the Church and prepared for a massive show of force that developed into a tragic crowd contest.69 Many factors contributed to Perón’s downfall in 1955, such as a lackluster economy, military discontent, the restriction of civil liberties, and Perón’s growing authoritarianism, but most scholars agree that the ongoing power struggle with the Argentine Catholic Church was the most important cause.70 This conflict was fought out prominently in the street as crowd competitions between Peronists rallied around Perón and anti-Peronists galvanized around the Church.
June 9, 1955, was the day for the traditional Corpus Cristi procession around Plaza de Mayo. Pretending concern about the disruption of traffic in the business center, the archdiocese asked for permission to postpone the procession to Saturday June 11. The real objective was to maximize attendance. The request was denied but the Church went ahead as planned. A combative Perón responded to this challenge: “For every person our enemy can bring out, we shall bring out ten.”71 The boxer Pascual Pérez was enlisted to draw the competing crowd. Pasqualito had successfully defended his title in Tokyo, and a celebration was organized on June 11.
Perón’s bluff ended in total failure. Only a small Peronist crowd appeared at the Luna Park celebration against 100,000 to 250,000 people who gathered at the Plaza de Mayo. The crowd walked in silence through Avenida de Mayo to the National Congress, carrying the yellow papal flag and waving white handkerchiefs.72 The crowd was religious in name but political in nature. Even noted anti-Catholics participated in this demonstration congregating anti-Peronists from all political persuasions and walks of life.73
The Peronists had to respond to this public humiliation. An analogy with the 19 September 1945 Constitution and Liberty March was forced upon them. Perón warned that “those who sow winds can reap storms,” and added fuel to the situation by expelling two bishops from Argentina for inciting the troubles of 11 June. The CGT union central announced a 24-hour strike on Tuesday 14 June as a show of support to the government, and began to prepare its members for mobilization.
On Thursday morning 16 June 1955 Perón was warned of a possible navy insurrection. In fact, the coup d’état had been in the making since February but the organizers had not succeeded in gaining enough support from the army, even though there were widespread anti-Peronist sentiments in the force ever since the failed rebellions of September 1951 and February 1952. The discovery of the plot demanded swift action. An air strike on the presidential palace had been planned for 16 June at 10:00 A.M. to assassinate Perón. Armed civilian groups would move in to secure the seat of government. The attack planes would take advantage of a fly-over planned in tribute to the Argentine flag which had allegedly been burnt during the Corpus Cristi demonstration.74 Dense fog prevented the planes from taking off on time, but when they finally did and released their fragmentation bombs at 12:40 P.M., the devastation among the people assembled to watch the fly-over was horrendous. One bomber made a direct hit on the Casa Rosada. The first civilians were killed by the shattered glass of the Treasury Ministry. Many more casualties fell when a bomb hit a trolley. Perón was unhurt. He had taken refuge in the War Ministry that morning after hearing of rebellions at the Navy Mechanics School (ESMA) and Ezeiza international airport.75
A second bombardment was carried out at 1:10 P.M. which again caused many deaths. Meanwhile, groups of Peronists began arriving at the Plaza de Mayo. Shouting “Perón, Perón,” they gathered in front of the Casa Rosada. Was this crowd spontaneous or organized? A parallel appears with 17 October 1945. The rank and file had been put on the alert and acted when the crucial moment arrived. A small crowd had already congregated at the Plaza de Mayo before the call for a general mobilization went out. At 1:12 P.M., the CGT issued an urgent broadcast: “Comrades, the CGT gave a slogan on Tuesday: On the alert! The moment has arrived to carry it out. All workers of the Federal Capital and Greater Buenos Aires must gather immediately near the CGT building [Independencia and Azopardo streets]. All means of transport must be taken, willing or unwilling. Comrades! Instructions will be given at the CGT building. The CGT calls upon you to defend our leader. Gather immediately but without violence!”76 Within half an hour, a large number of people had congregated at the CGT building. The same Avenida de Mayo, where five days earlier the silent Corpus Christi procession had taken place, was now filled with vehicles carrying workers coming to the rescue of Perón, as they had done one decade earlier. A number of workers were killed by machine-gun fire as they arrived at the Casa Rosada.77
The final aerial assault took place around 3:30 P.M., when a squadron dropped their bombs and killed many soldiers and civilians in the zone of action before the pilots fled to Uruguay. Army troops loyal to Perón succeeded in reconquering the Plaza de Mayo. The toll of the four-hour insurrection was 355 dead and more than 600 wounded.78 For the first time in Argentine history, a popular crowd had been attacked with weapons of war. Peronists were dumbstruck. The boundless Peronist crowd had revealed its weakness, and this awareness had a traumatizing effect that changed forever the self-perception of Peronist street mobilizations. The excessive violence, the hundreds of dead and the impunity of the attacking forces would be recalled in future decades whenever a Peronist crowd was under the threat of repression.
Perón was equally shocked. He had been dismayed earlier that day by the call of mobilization. “Go back to the CGT,” he told a messenger, “and tell the CGT that not one worker should go to the plaza.”79 However, it was only after the fighting had ceased that Perón’s message was received. Clearly, Perón had temporarily lost control over the Peronist crowd. Even his plea to the workers, in his 6:00 P.M. radio address, to control their anger, and reseal the indestructible bond of people and army, fell on deaf ears. The acute social trauma incurred by the brutal killings made the Peronists seek revenge.
The metropolitan curia at the Plaza de Mayo was the first target of the angry crowd. The interior was destroyed and its valuable archive torched. Reminiscent of the assault on churches by rioters upon the assassination of the popular Colombian leader Jorge Gaitán in April 1948 or the iconoclastic attacks by the Republican Left on the Church during the Spanish civil war, the demonstrators mutilated statues and dressed themselves in sacred vestments. Seventeen churches were ransacked and partly destroyed by fire as police and firemen looked on.80 The gutting of the curia of Buenos Aires on 16 June 1955 became the symbolic reversal of 17 October 1945. Here was finally the true face of the popular crowd, according to the political opposition. Typical LeBonian terminology pervaded their language. The editor of the Catholic magazine Criterio described the protesters as subhuman, “totally immoral, without sensitivity, without education, with a smell of alcohol, living off women, gambling and theft….”81 The crowd had finally raised its