Montoneros
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The Montonero Peronist Movement (Spanish: Movimiento Peronista Montonero) was an Argentine radical leftist nationalist catholic guerrilla group, active during the 1970s. Its motto was venceremos ("we will win").
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[edit] 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 Perón. Their best-known leader was Mario Firmenich. The Montoneros hoped that Perón would return from exile in Francoist Spain and transform Argentina into a "Socialist Fatherland".
The Montoneros initiated a campaign to destabilize the pro-American regime then in power. In retaliation against a massacre, the Montoneros kidnapped and executed former dictator Pedro Eugenio Aramburu (1955–1958) and other citizens who colaborated with him among them, unionists, politicians, diplomats, and businessmen. They financed their operations by ransoming rich businessmen or foreign executives, gaining as much as $14.2 million in a single deal in 1974 for an Exxon executive.
On March 11, 1973, Argentina held general elections for the first time in ten years. Perón loyalist Héctor Cámpora became president, before resigning in July to allow Perón to win the new elections in October. However a feud developed between right-wing Peronists and the Montoneros. The right-wingers, the unions, and the Radical Party leaded by Ricardo Balbín, favoured a social pact between trade unions and employers rather than a socialist revolution. Right-wingers and Montoneros clashed at Perón's homecoming ceremony during the June 20, 1973 Ezeiza massacre, leaving 13 dead and more than 300 wounded. Perón supported the unions, the radicals leaded by Ricardo Balbín and the right-wing peronists, among whom José López Rega, founder of the Alianza Anticomunista Argentina ("Triple A") death squad, which had organized the massacre, along with the Peronist and non-Peronist guerrilla groups.
In May 1974, the Montoneros were expelled from the Justicialist movement by Perón. However, the Montoneros waited until after the death of Perón in July 1974 to react, with the exception of the assassination of José Ignacio Rucci, general secretary of the CGT (General Confederation of Labour) on September 25, 1973, and some other military actions.
The Montoneros claimed 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 Perón, President since Juan Perón's death, was essentially a figurehead under the influence of former police officer José López 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 Guinness Book of Records.
The Triple A under López Rega's auspices began hunting down, killing, and arresting Montoneros and members of Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP) as well as other leftist militant groups.
The 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 naval ship in 1975. On July 2, 1976 they detonated a powerful bomb in the Federal Intelligence Department of Buenos Aires, killing 18 and injuring 66 people.
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. 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.
[edit] Under Jorge Videla's junta
On 24 March 1976 Isabel Perón was ousted and a military junta installed, led by General Jorge Rafael Videla. The Junta responded to guerrilla groups with a Dirty War to counter terrorism. At least 9,000 people were disappeared by regular units of the armed forces and sanctioned vigilant organizations between 1976 and 1983. They relied on mass arrests, torture, and executions without trial, the bodies that were not helicoptered out into the Atlantic Ocean, being left on the streets as an example to the militants still at large. The Montoneros suffered heavy losses, out of around 7000 active supporters 1600 were killed in 1976 and the rest forced to scatter.
The Montoneros were effectively finished by 1977, although some did fight on until 1981. During the Falklands War, the Argentine military conceived the failed Operation Algeciras, a plan to convince some Montoneros to, out of patriotism and with some covert support, sabotage the British military facilities in Gibraltar.
Argentina remained under military rule until December 10, 1983, finally achieving democracy following the Falklands War.
[edit] Members
[edit] Books
- Guerrillas and Generals: The Dirty War in Argentina, by Paul H. Lewis (2001).
- Argentina's Lost Patrol: Armed Struggle 1969-1979 by María José Moyano (1995).
- Argentina, 1943-1987: The National Revolution and Resistance, by Donald C. Hodges (1988).
- Soldiers of Perón: 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).
