Santucho, Mario Roberto (“Robi”)

(1936–1976)

   Leader of the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP, People’s Revolutionary Army), a guerrilla movement in Argentina. Santucho was born into a large, prosperous family in the city of Santiago del Estero. He became interested in political ideas as an adolescent, having grown up in a household accustomed to debate. In the late 1950s he studied accounting at the University of Tucumán and became active in student politics. In 1961 he spent several months in Cuba, for whose socialist revolution he had already declared his support. While there, he received guerrilla training. In July 1961, during his absence, his brothers Francisco René and Oscar Asdrubal founded the Frente Revolucionario Indoamericano Popular (FRIP, Indo-American Popular Revolutionary Front). On his return, Santucho envisioned FRIP as the beginning of a revolutionary party. He began to recruit members in Tucumán province, where he was working as an accountant for the sugar workers’ union. The workers were receptive to his message—the local economy was dependent on sugar subsidies, which the federal government continually threatened to cut off. Santucho was active in the union’s many protests. In 1965 FRIP merged with Palabra Obrera (PO, Workers’ Word), a Trotskyist party, to form the Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores (PRT, Workers’ Revolutionary Party). The PO had been embroiled in an internal dispute over whether to engage in armed conflict. The dispute continued after the merger. Nahuel Moreno, the PO leader, opposed guerrilla warfare; Santucho—urged on by his friends Luis Pujals and Enrique Gorriarán Merlo—promoted it. In January 1968 Moreno was forced out, and Santucho, now head of the PRT, set the organization on a revolutionary course. The ERP, the armed branch of the PRT, was established in 1970.

   Over the next four years, Santucho led an urban guerrilla campaign of bank robberies, kidnappings, and assassinations. In 1974, frustrated by the ERP’s inability to win the support of urban workers, Santucho set up a rural front in Tucumán province. By then, the sugar industry had collapsed, and the many unemployed were eager to support a revolutionary cause. The rural front was defeated a year later, when President Isabel Perón sent in the army. By mid-1976 (four months after the coup that ushered in the “dirty war”), the ERP was in ruins, and Santucho was prepared to go to Cuba. In July, however, the army mounted a surprise attack on a house where he was to meet with other guerrilla leaders, including the Montonero chief Mario Firmenich. Santucho died in the resulting gunfight.