Montoneros

   Of the many guerrilla organizations active in Argentina during the 1960s and 1970s, the Montoneros were the largest and most powerful. Unlike the other principal guerrilla group, the Ejercito Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP, People’s Revolutionary Army), which was more traditionally leftist, the Montoneros were militant Peronists. Organized in 1968 during the authoritarian regime of General Juan Onganía, they called themselves Montoneros after the gauchos who fought in the war of Argentine independence (montón being Spanish for “mob”). The name captured a romantic past and evoked the memory of Evita Perón, a cult figure for many Argentines. A common Montonero slogan was “¡Si Evita viviera, sería montonera!” (“If Evita were alive today, she would be a Montonero!”). The group’s ideology was a mixture of Catholic nationalism, liberation theology, and Peronism. Most Montoneros had been active in conservative Catholic movements like Acción Católica (Catholic Action) and the right-wing Tacuara. Three founding members-Fernando Abal Medina, Carlos Gustavo Ramus, and Mario Firmenich-started their political careers in a branch of Catholic Action called the Juventud Estudiantil Católica (Catholic Student Youth). Later they were converted to Peronism and radical Catholicism through the teaching of Father Carlos Mugica and Juan García Elorrio. From García Elorrio they were introduced to the ideas of the Colombian priest-guerrilla Camilo Torres Restrepo, who had fused Christian faith with revolutionary struggle. In 1967 the three went underground to form the Comando Camilo Torres, an armed group that evolved a year later into the Montoneros.

   Many of the actions claimed by the Montoneros were rich in symbolism, directed in retaliation for alleged offenses against Peronism. The first public act attributed to them is the kidnapping and murder on 29 May 1970 of former military president Pedro Aramburu, charged with the execution of Peronist rebels after the failed coup attempt of Juan José Valle in 1956. Whether the Montoneros actually did the killing, however, has become a subject of debate. In his book Dossier Secreto: Argentina’s Desaparecidos and the Myth of the “Dirty War,” Martin Edwin Andersen suggests that Aramburu and other high-profile victims claimed by the Montoneros—José Rucci, for example, the head of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (General Labor Federation)—may have been killed by the military with an aim toward justifying the use of force against leftist organizations. Linked to the theory is the further suggestion that Mario Firmenich, who became Montonero chief after the deaths of Abal Medina and Ramus in the repression following the murder of Aramburu, was a double agent working as an informant for the military. Regardless of questions surrounding Aramburu’s murder and Firmenich’s loyalties, the group was persecuted for the act and almost destroyed. The group showed remarkable resiliency. The survivors found refuge in the Peronist Movement, especially the Peronist Youth. And the group’s claim of responsibility for the murders of Aramburu and other targets, far from branding them as terrorists, earned them much popular support. Mergers with other Peronist left organizations followed, and they replenished their ranks from the Descamisados, the Ejército Nacional Revolucionaria, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias, and a wing of the Fuerzas Armadas Peronistas. In 1971 and 1972, the Montoneros increased their operations against the military government—including bank robberies, kidnappings, and bombings.

   They called a truce in May 1973 when Héctor José Cámpora, Perón’s left-leaning personal representative, took office. Working aboveground, they recruited followers from the ranks of university and secondary students, trade unionists, shantytown dwellers, and women. Their efforts paid off—so much so that during the period 1973–1974 their rallies sometimes drew as many as 100,000 people. In the September 1973 presidential election, the Montoneros supported the candidacy of Juan Perón, despite early signs—the Ezeiza Airport massacre and the right-wing palace coup that removed Cámpora—that he was moving to the right. Far from reversing direction, Perón snubbed the Peronist left, officially breaking ties in a speech in May 1974. Nevertheless, the Montoneros remained loyal to Perón until his death in July.

   The ascendancy of Isabel Perón to the presidency, however, removed any hope for a leftward shift and, in September, the Montoneros resumed armed struggle. Despite their earlier truce, political repression against them had continued after May 1973, increasing dramatically after Perón’s death. Still, drawing on the base of support they had established while aboveground, they built themselves into one of the most powerful guerrilla organizations in Latin America. Their kidnapping in September 1974 of the leaders of the multinational corporation Bunge and Born netted a ransom of over $60 million, which they used, in late 1975, to launch frontal attacks against the military—the most spectacular being their assault in October on an army garrison in Formosa. The government responded by finally banning the group (the ERP having been banned in 1973) and by giving the armed forces a free hand in combating subversion.

   With the military coming to power in the March 1976 coup and institutionalizing its “dirty war” against subversion, the Montoneros quickly declined. Their leader, Mario Firmenich, avoided becoming a desaparecido, escaping to Brazil. In 1984, after the return to civilian rule, he was extradited to Argentina and imprisoned. He was later freed in the amnesty granted by President Carlos Saúl Menem in 1990.