The Ejercito Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP) was the military branch of the communist PRT (Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores, or Workers' Revolutionary Party) in Argentina. The name means "People's Revolutionary Army".
Origins
The ERP was founded as the armed wing of the PRT, a communist party emerging from the Trotskyist tradition, but soon turned to the Maoist theory, especially the Cultural Revolution. During the 1960s, the PRT adopted the foquista strategy of insurgency associated with Che Guevara, who had fought alongside Fidel Castro during the Cuban Revolution.
The ERP launched its guerrilla campaign against the Argentine military regime in 1969, using targeted urban guerrilla, such as assassinations and kidnappings of government officials and foreign company executives. For example, in 1974 Enrique Gorriaran Merlo and Benito Urteaga led the ERP kidnapping of Esso executive Victor Samuelsson and obtaining a ransom of $12 million . However most kidnappings ended in the death of the hostage, specially when he/she wasn't a VIP . They also assaulted several companies offices using heavily armed commandos. Although claim and counter-claim are invariably difficult to reconcile, figures released for an official publication, Cronica de la subversion en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Depalma) at least give an indication of the kind of guerrilla activity undertaken, with claims the guerrillas occupied 52 towns, robbed 166 banks and took US $76 million in ransoms for the kidnappings of 185 people.
The group continued the violent campaign even after democratic elections and the return to civilian rule in 1973, with Juan Peron's return. On June 20, 1973 the Peronist movement split after the Ezeiza massacre, perpetrated by far-right Peronists (including the Triple A death squad) the day of Peron's return from exile. The avowed aim of the ERP was a communist revolution against the Argentine government in pursuit of "proletarian rule."
The ERP-PRT joined with the Chilean Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR), the Tupamaros of Uruguay, and the National Liberation Army of Bolivia to form the Junta Coordinadora Revolucionaria (JCR). However, the latter did not manage to have any real existence.
Operations in Tucuman
After the return of Juan Peron to the presidency in 1973, the ERP shifted to a rural strategy designed to secure a large land area as a base of military operations against the Argentine state. The ERP leadership chose to send Compania del Monte Ramon Rosa Jimenez to the province of Tucuman at the edge of the long-impoverished Andean highlands in the northwest corner of Argentina. Some guerrilleros were trained in Cuba. By December 1974, the guerrillas numbered about 100 fighters, with a 400 person support network . Led by Mario Roberto Santucho, they soon established control over a third of the province and organized a base of some 2,500 sympathizers . Santucho's forces in the northwestern province of Tucuman never exceeded 300 in the first year of the campaign.
The growth in ERP strength in the northwest, together with in increasing urban violence carried out by the left-Peronist Montoneros following Peron's death in 1974, led the government of Isabel de Peron to issue the "annihilation decrees" and expand the military's powers to fight a counter-insurgency campaign in February 1975.
Some 3,500 soldiers and two companies of elite commandos under Brigadier-General Acdel Vilas began immediately deploying in the Tucuman mountains in Operacion Independencia, joined later by 1,500 more troops from the Fourth Airborne Infantry Brigade and Eighth Mountain Infantry Brigade. The pattern of the war was largely dictated by the nature of the terrain, the mountains, rivers and extensive jungle denying both sides easy movement. The A-4B Skyhawk and the F-86F Sabre were used for offensive air support while the North American T-34 and FMA IA-58 Pucara served as light ground-attack aircraft. While fighting the guerrilla in the jungle and mountains, Vilas concentrated on uprooting the ERP support network in the towns, using state terror tactics later adopted nation-wide during the "Dirty War", as well as a civic action campaign. By July, the commandos were mounting search-and-destroy missions in the snow-capped mountains. Army forces discovered Santucho's base camp in August, then raided the ERP urban headquarters in September. Most of the Compania del Monte's general staff was killed in October and was dispersed by the end of the year. While the leadership of the movement was mostly eradicated, many of the ERP soldiers and sympathizers were taken into custody as political prisoners during the government of Isabel Martinez de Peron.
In May 1975, ERP representative Amilcar Santucho was captured trying to cross into Paraguay to promote the JCR unity effort. As a way to save himself, he provided information about the organization to Secretaria de Inteligencia (SIDE) agents that enabled Argentine security agencies to destroy what was left of the ERP, although pockets of ERP guerrillas continued to infest the heavily wooded Tucuman mountains for many months. The case, during which an FBI official transmitted information obtained by the captured prisonners (Amilcar was detained along with a MIR member) to the Chilean DINA, was one practical operation of Operation Condor, which had started as soon as 1973 Operation Condor, John Dinges (free access in French and in Portuguese)
Meanwhile, the guerrilla movement switched its main effort to the north and in October 1975 the guerrillas struck the 29th Mountain Infantry Regiment at their barracks in Formosa province, killing twelve soldiers and two policemen.
Elements within the armed forces, particularly among the junior officers, blamed the weakness of the government and began to look around for a leader in the form of Lieutenant-General Jorge Videla whose strength would ensure a preservation of Argentinian sovereignty.
The Argentine armed forces moved ahead with the "Dirty War", dispensing with the civilian government through a coup d'etat in March 1976. The ERP's commander, Mario Roberto Santucho, was killed in July of that year, although it is not clear if he was killed by the military or his former comrades. Although the ERP continued under the leadership of Enrique Gorriaran Merlo, by late 1977, it had been eradicated. By that time, the military dictatorship had expanded its own campaign against "subversives" to include state terror against non-violent students, intellectuals, and political activists who were presumed to form the social, non-combattant base of the insurgents. The PRT continued political activities, although limited to few members, organizing conventions even after democracy returned to the country.
Aftermath
After the destruction of the left in Argentina, some revolutionary cadres made their way to Nicaragua, where the Sandinistas had taken power in 1979. Gorriaran, for example, worked for the Nicaraguan security service and was implicated in the assassination of ex-dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1980. Gorriaran returned to Argentina in 1987 to became a leader of the Movimiento Todos por la Patria (All For the Country Movement or MTP).
Believing in the danger of another military coup by the Carapintadas against the new democratic government of Raul Alfonsin (which at the time was leading a series of trials against members of the Argentine Military accused of human rights violations), Enrique Gorriaran Merlo lead the 1989 attack on La Tablada Regiment, which ended in capture of all MTP members and use of white phosphorus by the Argentine army E/CN.4/2001/NGO/98, United Nations, January 12, 2001 - URL accessed on February 9, 2007 ANSA cable quoted by RaiNews24: Alcune testimonianze sull'uso militare del fosforo bianco . El Clarin. El ataque a La Tablada, la ultima aventura de la guerrilla argentina, January 23, 2004 . Gorriaran was given a life sentence along with other MTP comrades, but was freed by interim president Eduardo Duhalde two days before Nestor Kirchner's access to power in 2003. The MTP still exist today as a political movement which has abandoned armed struggle.
References
Bibliography
- Guerrillas and Generals: The Dirty War in Argentina, by Paul H. Lewis (2001).
- Nosotros Los Santucho, by Blanca Rina Santucho (1997, in Spanish).
- Argentina's Lost Patrol : Armed Struggle, 1969-1979, by Maria Moyano (1995).
- Argentina, 1943-1987: The National Revolution and Resistance, by Donald C. Hodges (1988).
See also
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