The Montoneros emerged in 1970 and became one of the most targeted urban guerrilla movements by the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. It formed part of the left-wing faction that supported former President Juan Domingo Perón and his return from exile in 1973. Perón was overthrown by a military coup in 1955, fleeing first to Paraguay and eventually Spain. Over the course of four years, between 1969 and 1972, Argentina experienced a series of mass political mobilizations by pro-Perón supporters and opponents of the dictatorship. The most significant, dubbed El Cordobazo, took place in the city of Cordoba, northwest of Buenos Aires, under the direction of labor groups that formed part of the General Confederation of Labor of the Argentine Republic (Confederación General del Trabajo de la República Argentina), or CGT. Government repression was swift and vicious, leading to the arrest of several leaders and numerous deaths. A second Cordobazo erupted in 1971 in response to the assassination of a famous unionist. In the end, dictator Roberto Marcelo Levingston was forced out of power, paving the way for Perón’s return. Upon his return, unions and leftists had high expectations and presumed Perón would reinstate reforms taken away by past regimes. However, a falling out between the Montoneros and Perón catalyzed radical change, and tensions flared up. When Perón died unexpectedly in July 1974, just under a year after taking power, the political situation became increasingly unstable when Perón’s second wife, Isabelita, assumed the presidency. Isabelita unleashed the notorious Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (Alianza Anticomunista Argentina), better known as the Triple A, against armed revolutionary groups. Her mismanagement of the political crisis paved the way for the military to take power in 1976 and carry out a “dirty war” against domestic subversion. The following year, the Montoneros, led by the controversial figure Mario Firmenich, issued “Grounds for National Unity Against the Military Dictatorship,” which eloquently describes the prevailing political and economic crisis that beset the nation. Moreover, the document reads like a step-by-step blueprint on how to build a united and fearsome front against the military dictatorship.
Grounds for National Unity Against the Military Dictatorship
The Crisis of the Dictatorship
Nine months after it took power, the dictatorship is already in crisis because its Economic Plan generates popular opposition (currently a worker can only buy half of the items they could purchase in June 1973) and does not please some sectors who had staunchly backed the military coup. What is happening is that the oligarch [José Alfredo] Martínez de Hoz is developing a plan that privileges the agro-exploiting oligarchy more than industrial monopolies. Thus, the monopolies want to modify the economic program to benefit them more than the oligarchy. This is very possible given that in our country, the monopolies have more economic and political leverage than landowners.
The monopolies need to implement an economic plan that permits them to increase their production in order to boost profits. To do this, they want to widen the domestic market since the bulk of the industrial output is not export-oriented but for domestic consumption.
These adjustments to the economic plan would also require some modifications in the dictatorship’s political schemes, since the monopolies, in their efforts to enhance the production and consumption capacity of the internal market, need an intermediary (collaborationist unionism) to negotiate and keep the workers under control. We have to take advantage of this to demand greater legality for our struggle and union organizations.
That’s why by the end of 1976, the generals, admirals, and brigadiers were all fighting among themselves to try to solve this mess. These clashes came to light when each side began accusing the other of vying for their positions. These conflicts also show the dictatorship’s profound deficiencies, which, only nine months since the coup took place, is already in crisis and without a way out.
This crisis is the product of not only internal contradictions but mostly the people’s resistance to the implementation of its anti-popular and anti-national projects. Isolated and repudiated, they will find themselves in need of giving into more inclusive participation as a means to alleviate widespread tensions. We must take advantage of this by putting “one foot in the door” so that they can no longer close it on us, pushing hard to open it definitively.
Unity and Resistance Against the Military Dictatorship
In one of the many speeches that the military made, Admiral [Armando] Lambruschini stated that they are not for national unity between “Civilization and Barbarism.” According to this gorila, “Civilization” is the oligarchy and US monopolies’ livestock, whereas “Barbarism” is the workers and the people. We, on the other hand, do want NATIONAL UNITY, but not by that “Civilization,” whether it be with the sectors represented by Admiral Lambruschini, the oligarch Martínez de Hoz, Alsogaray, or Ford and General Motors. We want the unity of the working class, workers, peasants, merchants, students, professionals, small and medium-sized entrepreneurs, the people’s priests and bishops, and military patriots. We want the unity of all Peronism and all popular and national political and social forces.
This national unity is the reconstruction of an alliance by 10 million voters who voted for change on March 11, 1973, for freedom based on the support of each of their respective parties (Frejuli [Justicialist Liberation Front], UCR, [Radical Civic Union], APR [Popular Revolutionary Alliance]), and who witnessed their expectations frustrated.
We must fight so that this national unity is represented in a single body that stands for all workers without exclusions of any kind, functions as an effective tool to secure wage increases and contract improvements, and respects labor rights, and the recovery of unions and the CGT currently under the military dictatorship’s control.
We support the need to strengthen, develop, and consolidate the General Confederation of Labor in the resistance, and organic bodies (Delegates, Internal Commissions, and Unions) to fight for demands and recover the CGT and the unions that have been seized. It is necessary to unite these struggles with those of all the unions and internal commissions that have not been affected and can carry out the legal battle.
Thus, from the unions, the CGT, and the legal bodies that still exist, it will be possible to consolidate the struggle of the working class as a whole to defend its victories, achieve its demands, and recover the CGT, which will be led by the authentic representatives of the workers and not by the colonels, the commodores, or collaborationist bureaucrats. This will permit us to reclaim the unions and the CGT as we did 20 years ago when the so-called “Liberating Revolution” also tried.
National Unity and the National Liberation Front
We will ensure that national unity is expressed politically through a single structure in which all popular and national forces prepared to face the military dictatorship of the oligarchy and imperialism can converge.
We propose the formation of the National Liberation Front (FLN) based on the program and the candidates voted for by a majority on March 11, 1973. This Front will be a body capable of fighting for the dictatorship, calling for free elections without proscriptions, and imposing once again a people’s government that satisfies the interests of the national majority.
The Montoneros, through the different branches of the Montoneros movement, will vigorously promote the development of the CGT in the resistance and the construction of the National Liberation Front to end this exploitative and murderous dictatorship as soon as possible, as we did in 1973 with the so-called “Argentine Revolution.”
On the other hand, through militias and the Montoneros army, we will actively participate in the popular resistance to ensure the program and the Front’s candidates triumph.
A Calling
To restore justice and peace in our country, the Montoneros call on all the people to consolidate the CGT’s union structures in the resistance, reorganize the Peronist Movement into the Montoneros movement, and build the National Liberation Front in order to fight for these five minimum points.
Modification of the Current National Policy
The Withdrawal of the Military from the Unions and the CGT
The immediate return of labor unions
Restitution of gains made during the last Peronist government (Law on Professional Associations, Employment Contracts, and Joint Ventures)
The Absolute Establishment of Human Rights
