Montoneros
The Montonero Peronist Movement was an Argentine left-wing Peronist guerrilla group, active during the 1970s. Its motto was venceremos ("we will win"). After Juan Peron's return from 20 years of exile and the June 20, 1973 Ezeiza massacre, which marked the definitive split between left and right-wing Peronism, the Montoneros were expelled from the Justicialist party in May 1974 by Peron. The group was almost completely dismantled in 1977, during Videla's dictatorship.
From 1970 to Videla's military junta
The group formed around 1970 from the confluence of Roman Catholic groups with Social Studies students' groups and with left-wing supporters of Juan Domingo Peron. Their best-known leader was Mario Firmenich. Montoneros hoped that Peron would return from exile in Francoist Spain and transform Argentina into a "Socialist Fatherland".
Montoneros initiated a campaign to destabilize by force what they deemed was a pro-American regime. Claiming retaliation against the June 1956 Leon Suarez massacre and Juan Jose Valle's execution, Montoneros kidnapped and executed former dictator Pedro Eugenio Aramburu (19551958) and other citizens who they said collaborated with him, such as unionists, politicians, diplomats, and businessmen. They financed their operations by kidnapping and collecting ransom for businessmen or executives, making as much as $14.2 million in a single abduction for an Exxon executive in 1974.
On March 11, 1973, Argentina held general elections for the first time in ten years. Peron loyalist Hector Campora became president, before resigning in July to allow Peron to win the new elections held in October. However, a feud developed between right-wing Peronists and Montoneros. The right-wing of the Peronist party, the unions, and the Radical Party led by Ricardo Balbin, favoured a social pact between trade unions and employers rather than a violent socialist revolution. Right-wingers and Montoneros clashed at Peron's homecoming ceremony during the June 20, 1973 Ezeiza massacre, leaving 13 dead and more than 300 wounded. Peron supported the unions, the radicals led by Ricardo Balbin and the right-wing peronists, among whom Jose Lopez Rega, founder of the Alianza Anticomunista Argentina ("Triple A") death squad, which had organized the massacre, along with the Peronist right-wing.
In May 1974, Montoneros were expelled from the Justicialist movement by Peron. However, Montoneros waited until after the death of Peron in July 1974 to react, with the exception of the assassination of Jose Ignacio Rucci, general secretary of the CGT (General Confederation of Labour) on September 25, 1973, and some other military actions.
Montoneros claimed to have what they called the "social revolutionary vision of authentic Peronism" and started guerrilla operations against the government. In the government the more radically right-wing factions quickly took control; Isabel Peron, President since Juan Peron's death, was essentially a figurehead under the influence of former federal police corporal Jose Lopez Rega.
On July 15, 1974, Montoneros assassinated Arturo Mor Roig, a former foreign minister. In September, in order to finance their operations, they kidnapped two members of the Bunge and Born business family. They demanded and received as ransom $60 million in cash and $1.2 million worth of food and clothing to be given to the poor. This ransom is the highest ever paid according to the Guinness Book of Records.
The Triple A under Lopez Rega's auspices began hunting down, kidnapping, and killing Montoneros and members of Ejercito Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP) as well as other leftist militant groups.
Montoneros and ERP went on to attack business and political figures throughout Argentina as well as raid military bases for weapons and explosives. The Montoneros killed executives from General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. The group also sank an Argentine destroyer, the ARA Santisima Trinidad in 1975. On July 2, 1976 they detonated a powerful bomb in the Argentine Federal Police in Buenos Aires, killing 24 and injuring 66 people. Their numbers were no match against the highly organized and ruthless branches of the military, who under the cloak of paramilitary forces (operating out of uniform and without any accountability) didn't hesitate to kidnap and kill even remote acquaintances of militants, or force captured members, through torture, to become informers and turn in their comrades-in-arms.
By the time Videla's military Junta took power in March of '76, approximately ten thousand political prisoners were being held in various prisons around Argentina, some with political connections and some just guilty by association. These political prisoners were held throughout the years of the dictatorship, many of them never receiving trials, in prisons such as La Plata, Devoto, Rawson, and Caseros.
Under Jorge Videla's junta
On 24 March 1976 Isabel Peron was ousted and a military junta installed, led by General Jorge Rafael Videla. The Junta reinforced counter-revolutionary operations, leading to the so-called "Dirty War", which saw approximately 30,000 victims. The Junta relied on mass arrests, torture, and executions without trial to stifle any political opposition. The victims' bodies that were not helicoptered out into the Atlantic Ocean were left on the streets as an example to militants still at large. The Montoneros suffered heavy losses in 1976 - 1980 out of around 7000 active supporters were killed, with the rest forced to scatter.
Montoneros were effectively finished by 1977, although some did fight on until 1981. During the Falklands War against Great Britain, the Argentine military conceived the failed Operation Algeciras, a covert plan to support and convince some Montoneros (appealing to their patriotism) to sabotage British military facilities in Gibraltar. Argentina's defeat led to the fall of the Junta, and Raul Alfonsin became president in December 1983, thus initiating the democratic transition.
Members
Mario Firmenich
Dardo Cabo
Juan Gelman
Books
Guerrillas and Generals: The Dirty War in Argentina, by Paul H. Lewis (2001).
''Argentina's Lost Patrol: Armed Struggle 1969-1979by Maria Jose Moyano (1995).
Argentina, 1943-1987: The National Revolution and Resistance, by Donald C. Hodges (1988). Soldiers of Peron: Argentina's Montoneros, by Richard Gillespie (1982). Guerrilla warfare in Argentina and Colombia, 1974-1982, by Bynum E. Weathers, Jr. (1982). Guerrilla politics in Argentina'', by Kenneth F. Johnson (1975).See also
Dirty War
Argentine Anticommunist Alliance
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Montoneros
