Montoneros
The Movimiento Peronista Montonero , the Peronist Movement Montonero , is an Argentine urban guerrilla . It emerged around 1970 within the left- wing revolutionary wing of the Peronist movement and developed into one of the most famous urban guerrilla organizations in Latin America . Before and during General Videla's military dictatorship, their assassinations , assaults and ransom extortions led to conditions similar to civil war and in 1977 to their de facto end. The Montoneros appealed ideologically to Peronism and their nationalistic sentiments, strategically to the focus theory of Ernesto Che Guevara .
Its main leaders included Mario Firmenich , Fernando Vaca Narvaja and Roberto Cirilo Perdía. Two of the key founding members, Gustavo Ramus and Fernando Abal Medina, are often said to come from the right-wing nationalist and anti-Semitic Tacuara movement ( Movimiento Nacionalista Tacuara ). This is not certain, but it is likely that you belonged to this organization when you were fourteen, but that says little about your convictions, as the Tacuara was the only group to which revolutionary-minded youth could feel they belong.
history
Originally the Montoneros were followers of a "Montonera". "Montoneras" were armed private armies of powerful large landowners , which were founded in the civil war-like episodes of the Argentine nation-state formation phase in the 19th century. They fought with guerrilla tactics alongside the often poorly equipped government troops or, in the event of conflicting interests, against them. The best known leader of a "Montonera" was Juan Facundo Quiroga .
Around 1970 the Montoneros were formed from various components of the Tendencia Revolucionaria (TR) of Peronism . The TR as a decidedly left-wing movement of Peronism had well-founded support in the youth movement. The TR was particularly strong in the Juventud Peronista (JP), the school and student organization UES (Union de Estudiantes Socialistas), the Peronist movement in the slums MVP (Movimiento Villera Peronista), and the JTP, the Peronist working-class youth. But they also had considerable influence in the trade unions and in left-wing Catholic circles.
Until Juan Domingo Perón's return in June 1973, the TR or the Montoneros tried to bring Peronism to the left, to its supposed national and social roots of the 1940s. At the same time, the Montoneros used terrorist means against the government. The Montoneros were convinced that Perón would make Argentina - with the support of the Peronist left - a socialist country.
With the kidnapping and murder of the former Argentine President (1955-1958), General Pedro Eugenio Aramburu , in May 1970, the Montoneros initiated a whole series of violent actions. It was financed by kidnapping and extorting ransom from business leaders. The kidnapping of an Exxon manager alone brought the Montoneros a ransom of 14.2 million US dollars in 1974. They also got money through bank robberies. They also stole the military equipment of the regular army .
Armed clashes broke out between the Montoneros and right-wing peronists , reformist trade unionists and the Radical Party of Ricardo Balbins at the welcome rally for the return of Perón, for which over three million people gathered at Ezeiza International Airport . The result was thirteen dead and over three hundred injured. The Ezeiza massacre , apparently instigated by the right, sealed the separation of left and right-wing Peronism. Perón supported the opponents of the Montoneros and in May 1974 excluded the Montoneros from the Judicialist Party , the largest Peronist organization. After Peron's death on July 1, 1974, Isabel Martínez de Perón became president; The strong man in the background was José Ignacion Rucci , former subordinate police officer and minister of social affairs in the Perón government and, together with José López Rega, co-founder of the pro-government death squad Alianza Anticomunista Argentina (Triple A or AAA).
On July 15, the Montoneros hit back and killed the former Foreign Minister Arturo Mor Roig. In September 1974, the Partido Auténtico was founded as its "political arm", which, however, could hardly gain influence and was declared illegal as early as 1975 by decree 4060/75. The decree 2452/75 banned the Montoneros.
Another left-wing armed organization, the PRT-ERP, the military arm ( Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo ) of the Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores , had also become a real threat to the government. Under the leadership of Mario Roberto Santucho , around three hundred ERP fighters and their sympathizers controlled a third of the north-western province of Tucuman .
In the years from 1974 to 1977 the Montoneros carried out their most spectacular actions. From the kidnapping of two members of the Bunge y Born entrepreneurial family , Jorge and Juan Born, the Montoneros received $ 60 million in cash and $ 1.2 million in clothes and groceries that they distribute in the slums let. A frigate of the Argentine Navy under construction was badly damaged on August 22, 1975 at the shipyard. On December 30, 1975, the headquarters of the Argentine Army in Buenos Aires was successfully attacked.
In 1973/74, 83 members of the army and police died, in 1975 there were 137 dead soldiers and police. In the week leading up to the military coup, the Montoneros killed 13 police officers as part of their Third National Military Campaign. Even after the military coup in 1976, the Montoneros were still militarily successful. A total of 156 soldiers and police officers died.
In March 1976 , the military under Jorge Rafael Videla carried out a coup . As early as mid-1976, the elite unit of the ERP was defeated in two missions, after which its important leaders soon fell. The dirty war wiped out the ERP by the end of 1977, about 5,000 of its activists were killed, they fell or "disappeared" . The Brigadier General and Military Governor of the Province of Buenos Aires, Ibérico Saint Jean, described the procedure as follows in 1977:
"First we will kill all subversives, then their collaborators, then their sympathizers, then the undecided and finally the lukewarm."
A total of at least 12,261 died, according to estimates up to 30,000 opponents of the military dictatorship during its rule from 1976 to 1983. ERP and Montoneros killed around 1,500 people, including 600 civilians.
The military dictatorship had also made use of the right-wing extremist death squad Triple A ( Alianza Anticomunista Argentina ), which were integrated into various task forces of the armed forces. The opponents were tortured and murdered, and their children, some of whom were born under inhumane conditions in secret prisons , were handed over to “reliable” families of officers or entrepreneurs . Around three to four hundred young people who were forcibly adopted by the military and who are now in their mid to late 30s have not been found despite an intensive search. To this day (as of 2019), the Madres and Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo , mothers and grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, remember the disappeared and their children every Thursday at 3:30 p.m. by silently making their rounds in this square in front of the presidential palace.
At the end of the 1970s, the Montoneros were broken up as urban guerrillas with heavy losses (around 5,000 deaths). In 1977 the leadership of the organization went into political exile . In the 1980s, the remnants of the organization were split up in exile, such as the Montoneros 17 de Octubre group in 1980 (Miguel Bonasso, Jaime Dri, Pablo Ramos and others) or Peronismo Revolucionario in 1985 (Mario Firmenich, Fernando Vaca Narvaja, Roberto Cirilio Perdía, Pablo Unamuno et al).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Berthold Zilly in the notes on Domingo Faustino Sarmiento , Barbarism and Civilization . The life of Facundo Quiroga , rendered & commented by Berthold Zilly, Eichborn: Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 390.
- ↑ See Michael Riekenberg , Kleine Geschichte Argentiniens , CH Beck: München 2009, p. 174.
- ↑ See Michael Riekenberg, Kleine Geschichte Argentiniens , CH Beck: München 2009, p. 174.
- ↑ LAS MADRES REALIZARON SU MARCHA Nº 2133 EN PLAZA DE MAYO - Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo. Retrieved March 11, 2019 (Spanish).