Political Violence and Trauma in Argentina. Antonius C. G. M. Robben
with which people went to the rally foreshadowed the confrontation with Perón: “We went with clenched teeth. With anger and prepared for everything. We knew that this was not going to be just another assembly. This was different. We had to show many things. Assert ourselves. We had to find ourselves again with our best weapon: the mobilization.”46 The tone of the upcoming May demonstration was summed up by El Descamisado in the title of the account of the Atlanta gathering: “What’s happening, General…. The Popular Government is full of anti-Peronists [gorilas].” In this mood, they were going to the 1 May meeting, and asking Perón to account himself for his failed policies. The belief in a leader-crowd dialogue as the heart of political activity, where policies are forged among conflicting social interests, remained firm.
The long-awaited day finally arrives. The unmistakable sound of the large bass drums leaves no doubt that this is a Peronist event. The first small groups arrive at 10:00 A.M., and policemen check them for concealed weapons. The square is adorned with flags, and two large podia for invited guests have been erected in front of the Casa Rosada, bearing a CGT emblem. The official slogan is: “We agree, my General.” The first large JP and Montonero columns arrive at 3:30 in the afternoon. Rivaling chants are shouted across the invisible division between the two factions, and intermittent skirmishes occur when the youth columns press against the labor union columns to occupy the left side of the large square facing the Casa Rosada. Both parties had accepted a lengthwise division of the Plaza de Mayo to prevent another Ezeiza tragedy and agreed to display only Argentine flags and union signs.47 In a surprise move, they lower the Argentine flags and quickly spray-paint “Montoneros” on them.
The atmosphere becomes tense when Perón appears close to five in the afternoon on the balcony of the Casa Rosada, accompanied by his wife Isabel and López Rega. The military band plays the national anthem. As the last sounds die out, the public announcer asks one minute of silence “for comrade Evita and the dead of the struggle for liberation.” As the quiet descends over the Plaza de Mayo, the Montoneros begin a roll call of their most illustrious dead: “Fernando Abal Medina … Present! Carlos Gustavo Ramos … Present! José Sabino Navarro … Present!”48 The band strikes up the Labor March (Marcha del Trabajo). As the music dies down for the second time, Vice-President Isabel Martínez de Perón crowns the Labor queen, but the tens of thousands of revolutionary Peronists shout that they do not want a carnival but a popular assembly.
Finally, Perón steps up to microphone and, to his fury, is welcomed with the chant: “What’s happening, what’s happening, what’s happening, General? That the Popular Government is full of anti-Peronists [gorilas]?” Perón is beside himself with anger, and after recalling that twenty years ago on this same spot he had asked the labor organizations to discipline themselves, he lashes out at the Peronist left: “I was saying that throughout these twenty years, the labor unions have remained standfast and that today some beardless young men pretend to have more merit than those who fought for twenty years. For this reason, comrades, I want that this first reunion on Labor Day will pay homage to those organizations and prudent, wise leaders who have maintained their organic strength, and who have seen their murdered leaders fall without yet having meted out punishment.”49 The revolutionary Peronists feel trampled. Perón humiliates them by calling them immature, while he embraces the orthodox labor unions that have been harassing the Peronist left with increasing intensity.
Some labor union columns begin to chant “Let them leave. Let them leave.” And depart they do, chanting “Sawdust, sawing [Aserrín, aserrán], these are the people leaving” as well as “We agree, we agree, we agree, General. The anti-Peronists agree, and the people are going to fight.”50 Tens of thousands of Peronist Youth and Montoneros vacate the left side of the Plaza de Mayo in the most dramatic crowd rupture in Argentine history. Skirmishes flare up in the streets surrounding the Plaza de Mayo but fortunately there are no fatal casualties. The situation returns to normal at 7:30 P.M.51
Perón’s political life has come full circle. Rescued by a crowd on 17 October 1945, he is now repudiated by a new generation of Peronists who has contributed most to his political resurrection. The deadly factionalism within the Peronist movement has extended into the Plaza de Mayo, can no longer be contained by the charismatic leader, and causes the first crowd defection in Perón’s long political career.
The larger political conditions had been conducive for a rupture but Perón’s humiliating remarks were the catalyst that drove people away. The torn feelings of identification and betrayal were profound. People turned their backs to the man for whom many had risked their lives and some endured years in prison. Rebelling against Perón was in a way reneging on the years of struggle and hardship. Political violence became the outlet for the crowd humiliation, and soon this violence was not just directed at the Peronist right but at an Argentine society which had rejected them.
From the crowd perspective I have been developing in these last four chapters, the 1974 Labor Day break with Perón was the sundering of the Peronist crowd along lines of conflicting horizontal and vertical loyalties. The horizontal identification among the rebellious second-generation Peronists was greater than the vertical identification with Perón. Comradeships nurtured during the Fight and Return campaign of 1972, the joint mourning of the fallen, and the growing embattlement from the Peronist right were centrifugal forces which drove them off the Plaza de Mayo when publicly humiliated by Perón. The Peronist crowd, divided since the day of Perón’s arrival in June 1973, parted ways on 1 May 1974.
The crowd division had its origin in different types of identification. The Peronist left exalted Perón the revolutionary, to whom they attributed many of the radical ideas they had acquired during the fight for his return. The Peronist right adhered to Perón the justicialist for bringing dignity and social justice to the Argentine working class. The left had as its example the insurrectional crowds of 1969–1972, while the right cherished the leader-inspired crowds of 1945–1955. The 1973–1974 crowd rivalries, albeit violent at times, were part of the political process of a movement trying to find its proper course. Perón’s alignment with the Peronist right meant an end to the crowd contest. The hegemonic Montoneros turned their backs to Perón and delivered themselves to a guerrilla warfare against the union hierarchy and the Argentine military. Perón had lost his aura as a revolutionary savior. From now on, as the editors of the leftist magazine De Frente concluded, “only the people can save the people.”52
But how could the people save themselves? Faith in the voting booth had been lost, and the Labor Day tragedy had dismantled the crowd as a political instrument. It drove the movimientista Montoneros to vanguardism, elitism, and military action which quickly increased their distance from their popular backing. Instead, the alternativista groups, such as the Columna José Sabino Navarro from Córdoba, called for strengthening the grass roots organization in factories and working class neighborhoods. It is dubious whether this grass roots strategy would have been successful. The relation between the Montoneros and the masses had been affective rather than organizational and ideological. People were drawn to their crowds by the defiant “Montoneros, dammit!” chant, by the intoxicating bass drumming, and by an awe for their armed resistance against the Lanusse dictatorship. Still, the average Peronist worker was too firmly attached to the labor unions, whether orthodox or combative, to follow the lead of the Montoneros. Once the emotions of the crowd gatherings waned, the political support was gone. In the international mood of the times, vanguardism won out, and urban guerrilla warfare was embraced as the tit-for-tat killings with the right-wing death squads increased at an eerie pace.
The Final Farewell
The pressure on the Peronist left intensified on all sides after the Labor Day crowd rupture. Right-wing death squads continued to eliminate revolutionary Peronists and increased their bombings of local chapters. The left also lost administrative ground. After the forced departure of Bidegain and Obregón Cano in early 1974, three more governors with sympathies for the Revolutionary Tendency were dismissed.53
The political situation was not much better in the street as several public demonstrations were prohibited by the police. In fact, there were not any significant crowds during May and June of 1974. There was, however, one exception. On Wednesday morning 12 June, the