For commemorate the history It is always interesting to do so when anniversaries mark a considerable number of years, but there are not so many that they allow some protagonists and many witnesses to develop an interpretation of those events that remain present in memory and in other cases remember those that They have been immersed in the fog or darkness of minds. That is why it is extremely attractive to remember the events that occurred half a century ago.
Fifty years is a sufficient distance in time to to appreciate the past with less passion and greater detail, at the same time it allows us to put aside the temptation to return to old disputes as if the calendar had not passed. But we must not ignore that many of the wounds caused by political violence of the ’70s They reached a summit during 1974.
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The insurrectional left, especially the People’s Revolutionary Army (ERP) and the Montoneroshad already perfected their guerrilla methods, managing to sow terror among the civilian population. The state’s response was not institutional as it had been until then, through the federal and provincial police, to become the scene of the appearance of parastatal violence carried out by the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance, the dark Triple A.
It is important to be able to face this past with a fair criterion, without prejudice, attached to what happened, which implies in the task of the historian to be faithful to the facts and all the facts, and in citizen life the responsibility of assuming history. as a set of circumstances that meant great suffering for the social bodyand that produces in comparison a healthy joy to see certain paths that today seem distant overcome and above all without appealing to physical violence, beyond the resentments produced by certain speeches that are not very friendly to the coexistence of Argentines. .
From this place, we will go through some events of the year 1974 to consider again the causes and consequences of a strange, violent and unpleasant time.
A pivotal year in the history of the 20th century
1974 became a milestone that marked a before and after in modern history of the Argentines. Exactly in the middle of the year died Juan Domingo Perón, the man who dominated the political scene for three decades from 1945, just as another general, Julio Argentino Roca, had done between 1880 and 1910. 1974 coincides with the end of the third quarter of the 20th century, but a tour of The newspaper headlines put us in front of a historical intensity like few others in just 365 days. Here are some of those events.
The ERP attack on the Azul barracks
Between midnight of the 19th and the early morning of January 20th, a guerrilla attack to the military garrison of Azul by the ERP, with the participation of about 60 armed combatants under the command of Enrique Gorriarán Merlo, one of the most violent men in Argentine history. As a result of the operation, Colonel Arturo Gay, his wife Hilda, were murdered and Lieutenant Colonel Jorge Ibarzábal was kidnapped, who remained in a «town prison» for several months and was murdered on November 19. . Two soldiers also died. 12 guerrillas were arrested. 3 attackers die.
Two days later the president Juan Perón sent a letter to the officers, non-commissioned officers and soldiers of the Azul barracksin which he does not spare qualifiers for the attackers and pronounces premonitory phrases: «As Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces and an experienced soldier after more than sixty years of life in the Institution, I want to come directly before you to express my congratulations for the heroic and loyal behavior with which you have faced the treacherous attack on Saturday night January 19, 1974... You know that in this fight you are not alone, but it is the entire people who are determined to exterminate this evil and it will be the actions of everyone that will prevent more attacks and kidnappings from occurring. …the sovereign decision of the great national majorities to lead a revolution of peace and the unanimous repudiation of the citizens will cause the small number of psychopaths that remain to be exterminated one by one for the good of the Republic.» This is the first time that the possibility of use of the Armed Forces in the repression of the guerrilla.
That same January 22 at the Olivos residence, at the request of the deputies of the Revolutionary Tendency, the political branch of Montoneros, who They did not accept to vote on the law proposed by the Executive Branch to toughen penalties for acts of guerrilla terrorism through a reform of the Penal Code, President Perón received them. The deputies Armando Croatto, Santiago DÃaz Ortiz, Diego Muñiz Barreto, Nicolás Giménez, Jorge Glellel, Aníbal Iturrieta, Carlos Kunkel, Juan Ramírez, Enrique Sversek, Juana Romero, Roberto Vidaña and Rodolfo Vittar expressed their disagreements with presidential politics with the pressure that had come with the surprise that the meeting was televised live on official television.
After listening for about an hour, Perón took the floor and said: “This matter must be discussed within the Bloc. Discuss it until the majority decides. Once resolved by this, there is no choice but to abide by it. That’s what blocks are made for: so that the majority decides. And if the majority is willing, you have to accept or leave. There is no other middle ground… No one is forced to remain in a political faction. He who is not happy, he leaves. Whoever is in a different tendency than the Peronist one, what he should do is leave… He who is not happy… leaves. Because we lose a vote we are not going to be sad.†. The next day eight of these deputies they resigned from their seats.
Finally, the attack on the Azul barracks on January 26 caused the resignation of the governor of the province of Buenos Aires Oscar Bidegain, a man of the Tendencia who was sympathetic to Montoneros. Bidegain left his place to vice-governor Victorio Calabró, an orthodox unionist. This is Perón’s phrase that left Bidegain no other path than resignation: “It was not by chance that these actions occurred in certain jurisdictions. There was no doubt that they obey an impunity in which lack of knowledge and incapacity make it possible, or it would be even worse if a guilty tolerance were involved, as is suspected.â€
The expulsion of the Montoneros from the Plaza de Mayo
The internal tensions in the ruling party became evident between the two majority sectors: orthodox unionism that ordered verticalism against the leadership of President Perón and the peronist left hegemonized by the Montoneros, who ideologically challenged the government by proposing a Marxist reading of reality and the adoption of practical socialism. The celebration of Labor Day on May 1, 1974 was going to be the setting for the exacerbation of the confrontation when Montoneros, who occupied half of the Plaza de Mayo, began to interrupt Perón’s speech with chants such as – «What’s up, what’s up, what’s up, general, the popular government is full of gorillas,» in direct allusion to the president’s ministers who accompanied him on the balcony of the Casa Rosada, especially José López Rega.
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Perón picked up the glove and delivered a blow to the Peronist left, who continued singing: “Perón, Evita, the socialist homeland†, while the unions retorted “Perón, Evita, the Peronist homeland†. The elderly leader, who was already showing signs of physical deterioration, expressed, so that there would be no doubt about the choice of his allies: «Twenty years ago today, on this same balcony and on a bright day like today, I spoke © for the last time to the Argentine workers. It was then that I recommended that they adjust their organizations, because difficult days were coming. I was not wrong… in the quality of the union organization, which was maintained through twenty years, despite these stupid people who shout… union organizations have remained unmovedand today it turns out that some beardless people claim to have more merits than those who fought for twenty years.
While Perón spoke, amidst shouting from both sectors, The Montoneros decided to leave the plaza and with irreproducible chants They directly referred to Perón as a «cuckold», to Vice President María Estela Martínez de Perón as a prostitute, to Minister López Rega as a witch, and to themselves as bo…os. The president continued his speech saying: “I want… to pay tribute to those organizations and those wise and prudent leaders who have maintained their organic strength, and have seen their assassinated leaders fall, without the punishment having yet come. .. the coming days will be for national reconstruction… the Government is fully committed to that task… They will also be for liberation, not only from colonialism…, but also ©n of these infiltrators who work inside, and who treacherously they are more dangerous than those who work from outsidenot to mention that the majority of them are mercenaries at the service of foreign money.â€
There was no room for negotiation. Perón relied on the classic union structure and The Montoneros began the path towards clandestinity that would arrive in September of that same year, decreed by the first female president of Argentina, Perón’s widow, who in this regard strictly followed, with more sinister methods, the policies of her dead husband. There is much to say about the 1974 violence. This is a first approximation. But much remains pending… The murder of Father Carlos Mujica, the death of Juan Domingo Perón and much more. That story also deserves to be told.