Political Violence and Trauma in Argentina. Antonius C. G. M. Robben
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protests continued to be a means of political pressure and legitimization in the months ahead. John William Cooke, the head of the Peronist party, favored street mobilizations and the formation of an armed militia with the slogan “Another 1945” (volver al 45).82 Perón began to have grave doubts about his power base. He admitted to having curtailed civil liberties, declared the end of the Peronist revolution, and promised to be president of all Argentines.
Perón’s offer of a truce was too late. The Church hierarchy continued with its critique, dissident officers were planning another coup, and anti-Peronists held frequent street demonstrations. Perón had a daring answer. He announced his resignation on 31 August 1955. The CGT union central had been privy to Perón’s decision, and had already planned a large demonstration at the Plaza de Mayo to express the support of the Peronist workers. Once more, 17 October 1945 cast its shadow over the crowd.
The people were in a joyous mood on 31 August, eating the soup, bread, and oranges distributed by the Eva Perón Foundation.83 The tone of Perón’s speech contrasted sharply with the crowd’s peacefulness. Perón said that he had offered his hand to the opposition during the two-month truce, but that they had responded with violence. Now, there were only two roads open: the government must repress the subversion, or the people must retaliate. Unleashing his following and giving free reign to violence, Perón authorized every Argentine to kill whoever undermined or conspired against the public order. “And from now on we establish as permanent rule for our movement: Whoever in any place tries to disturb order against the constituted authorities, or against the law and the Constitution, may be killed by any Argentine…. The watchword for every peronista, whether alone or within an organization, is to answer a violent act with another violent act. And whenever one of us falls five of them will fall.”84 Perón’s terrible threat and the CGT’s insistence on the formation of an armed militia convinced his opposition within the armed forces that the time was ripe for a final assault.
The Liberating Revolution (Revolución Libertadora) was launched on 16 September 1955 when General Lonardi rose in rebellion in Córdoba together with all major naval bases. Perón declared a state of siege but did not advance on the rebels with loyalist troops. On 18 September, Rear-Admiral Rojas broke the stand-off by threatening to bomb the oil deposits in Buenos Aires harbor and the oil refinery in La Plata. The next morning, naval salvos destroyed the oil deposits in Mar del Plata. Perón feared a further escalation, delegated his army command, and took refuge in the Paraguayan Embassy on 20 September. Later, he moved to a Paraguayan gun boat anchored in the harbor of Buenos Aires, and finally left Argentina on 3 October by a twin-engine flying boat with Asunción as its destination.85
Why did Perón give up his presidency so easily? By late August 1955, only a handful of the around ninety generals were committed to Perón’s overthrow. Once the rebellion got under way, Lonardi’s rebel troops were surrounded and outnumbered ten to four by General Iñíguez’s loyalist troops.86 Close associates advised Perón to open the weapons deposits and arm the workers but Perón dreaded the idea of civil war and the scenes of destruction he had seen in Spain in 1939.87 Instead, he placed his hopes on a peaceful solution by mobilizing his Peronist following as he had done a fortnight earlier, on 31 August. Yet, the people remained at home. Perón realized that he had lost the crowd contest with the opposition.
The crowd mobilizations of 17 October 1945 and 16 June 1955 had shown that something more was needed than a union directive to make people take to the streets. Somehow, the feelings were no longer there among the people to motivate another massive show of force at the Plaza de Mayo. We can only guess at the passiveness of the Peronist workers, but it is reasonable to assume that the bombardment on 16 June 1955 had traumatized the Peronist crowd. The crowd had responded with retaliatory violence, but could not redress the real and symbolic losses incurred. The bombardment had revealed the vulnerability of the street crowd, demolished the edifice of invincibility and historical destiny erected by Perón, and raised fears of future attacks. After the initial rage against the metropolitan curia at the Plaza de Mayo, the Peronist masses demobilized as if a defeated army. The memories of the hundreds of dead were still too fresh to carry through a massive resistance. Personal feelings of self-preservation, a lack of faith in Perón, and a sense that the tables had turned made most Peronists stay at home. There were small violent demonstrations in Buenos Aires on 23 September and in Rosario between 24 and 28 September but the repressive response of army and police ended the protests swiftly.88
The Coming of Age of Argentine Crowds
The figure of Perón looms large in the history of Argentine crowds. The streets and squares of Argentina became the scene of a variety of crowd demonstrations after the end of World War II. There were protest marches, religious processions, strike crowds, election rallies, commemorations, celebrations, belligerent crowds, and festive crowds.89 Mass mobilizations had also occurred before World War II, but they only became a constant in Argentine politics when the populist leader Juan Domingo Perón came to power in 1945. The year 1945 marked a watershed in the history of Argentine crowds because it saw the birth of the working class as a principal player in the public arena.
The crowd on 17 October 1945 that rose to the defense of Perón was a cathartic crowd that shed an “infamous decade” (década infame) of frustration and disenfranchisement in a liberating identification with Juan Domingo Perón. Perón transformed the popular masses into impressive crowds which took center stage in Argentine political life. He provided the Argentine working class with a public forum to express their resentment of social, economic, and political wrongs. He established a link between the dignity of Argentine workers, their rights as full citizens of Argentine society, and their assembly in crowd mobilizations. The Peronist crowds affirmed and renewed these newly won privileges by gathering periodically in the symbolic heart of the nation, at the Plaza de Mayo with its Cathedral, presidential palace (Casa Rosada), and town hall (cabildo) where Argentina’s independence from Spain had been secured.
The importance of the physical assembly of the Peronist following in a crowd cannot be overestimated. The Peronist crowd was essential for the transformation of injustice into dignity. According to Elias Canetti, crowds evoke irresistible feelings of unity and equality.90 “It is for the sake of this equality that people become a crowd and they tend to overlook anything which might detract from it. All demands for justice and all theories of equality ultimately derive their energy from the actual experience of equality familiar to anyone who has been part of a crowd.”91 These sensations relieve people temporarily of society’s “stings of command” left by institutional inequality and exploitation, precisely the social injustices and restrictive civil rights which Perón addressed. Such stings of command leave residues of resentment which can be shed temporarily in a crowd.92 In other words, people can give free rein to their innate aversion of unjust authority and social injustice when gathered in a crowd. Even though Canetti’s imagination took flight in essentialism and romantic extravagance, his suggestive ideas about society’s stings of command help us understand the collective experiences of oppression, injustice, and exploitation that existed in Argentina at the end of World War II when V-Day celebrations were forbidden by an authoritarian regime fearful of a popular insurrection.
The 17 October crowd took on the mythic proportions of a popular mobilization which emancipated the Argentine workers, united them with fellow Argentines behind the banner of social justice, and represented for every Peronist the most supreme manifestation of identity, belonging, togetherness, dignity, and equality. These gatherings gave Peronists a sense of comradeship and community that transcended narrow class boundaries. The momentous 17 October 1945 and the tragic 16 June 1955 framed an era in which crowds made their presence felt in Argentine politics. Within one decade, Perón had inserted the working class into national politics and had turned the crowd into a familiar tool to achieve political ends. Winning the streets with a large crowd became an equally favorite weapon of power and legitimization for Peronists as well as nonPeronists.
Perón’s crowd manipulation was condoned as long as he curbed the political radicalization of the Argentine working class. This tolerance ended when Perón became increasingly authoritarian and threatened to turn the Peronist crowds loose on the middle and upper