Journal of Latin American Studies

http://journals.cambridge.org/LAS

Additional services for Journal of Latin

American Studies:

Email alerts: Click here

Subscriptions: Click here
Commercial reprints: Click here
Terms of use : Click here

The Peronist Left, 1955–1975

Daniel James

Journal of Latin American Studies / Volume 8 / Issue 02 / May 1976, pp 273 - 296
DOI: 10.1017/S0022216X00022008, Published online: 05 February 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/

abstract_S0022216X00022008

How to cite this article:

Daniel James (1976). The Peronist Left, 1955–1975. Journal of Latin American
Studies, 8, pp 273-296 doi:10.1017/S0022216X00022008

Request Permissions : Click here

Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/LAS, IP address: 132.174.254.155 on 06 Apr 2015

/. hat. Amer. Stud. 8, 2, 273-296 Printed in Great Britain 273

The Peronist Left, 1955—1975

by DANIEL JAMES*

The ' Peronist Left' has become one of the chief actors in the often violent
drama of Argentine politics today. It is the object of this article to place the
events of the more recent past, at least since the return of Peronism to power
in 1973, within die framework of the development of die ' Peronist Left'
since the fall of Peron in 1955. Obviously die article makes no claim to be a
comprehensive treatment of the subject. Such a treatment could only be part
of a much more extensive study of the Argentine working class and die
Peronist movement. In particular, die article concentrates on an analysis of
die political ideology of the different currents that have made up die
' Peronist Left' since 1955, whilst recognizing diat diis ideology must ultima-
tely be seen in die far wider context of die social and economic development
of Argentine society. The first part will highlight die main features of this
Left in the 1955-73 P er i°d and analyze die main currents widiin it. In the
second part of die paper die events of die last two to diree years will be
looked at within this context.

Several main features need emphasizing in this period if we are to arrive

at a valid characterization of the ' Peronist Left'. Firstly, in a very real sense
a ' left' current only emerged widiin Peronism as a ' reflex' action, when
diere was a growing acceptance by odier sectors of die movement of a modus
vivendi widi a system that excluded Peronism from political power and
which continually attacked the gains of die working class. A ' left' emerged
widiin this context as die defender of die working class, anti-capitalist strain
of Peronism, looking back to die euphoria of October 1945 and the organiza-
tion and advances of die working class in the first Peronist government rather
dian to die Peron of 1954-5. ^ drew constantly on the moral capital, die
symbolism of die years of die Resistance,1 its arrests, its martyrs, die experi-

• The author wishes to thank the Foreign Area Fellowships Programme and the Social Science
Research Council for financial assistance which made possible his research.
1
The Resistance is the name generally given by Peronists to the opposition to the military
government that followed the overthrow of Per6n in 1955. The forms of resistance varied,

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 06 Apr 2015 IP address: 132.174.254.155

274 Daniel fames

ence of ' those who struggled'. It was when the dominant forces within the
Peronist leadership, particularly the trade union bureaucracy, moved towards
agreement with the ' status quo', with governments and with employers and
betrayed what the Left considered to be the true essence of Peronism that a
strongly definable ' left' current emerged. In 1959-60 with the growing
agreement with Frondizi, and the attraction of integracionismo2 for large
sectors of die movement diere was the development of the linea dura 3 centred
on the militant trade unions who demanded absolute intransigence vis-h-vis
Frondizi, no participation in elections, and no compromise on the labour
front. Again in 1965-6, widi the consolidation of die growing vandorista *
domination of Peronism and the direat to turn Peronism into a union-based
party within the traditional system, the Left emerged from relative obscurity
to join in a rival Peronist union organisation, the 62 Organizaciones de Pie
junto a Perdn 5 to oppose the domination of Vandor. In 1968-9, with the

ranging from individual terrorism, through organised opposition in the unions, to attemp-
ted military risings. It continued throughout the government of Frondizi, although it be-
came increasingly centred on youth and student sectors as the large union battalions reached
agreement on a modus vivendi with Frondizi. For those who participated actively in the
Resistance - and they were mainly rank and file workers - it was a time of repression,
imprisonment and torture, and throughout the following decade and even now, almost 20
years after, it has continued to be a dominant reference point in Peronist political culture.
2
Integracionismo was the dominant concept behind the political strategy of Frondizi. It re-
ferred to the hope of integrating the Peronist working class, mainly through its trade
unions, into the social and political structure of the country through a judicious policy of
concessions and promises. Specifically it was aimed at the union leaders who, in return
for concessions such as the Law of Professional Association, would play their part by hold-
ing the workers in line and gradually, but surely, loosen the ties with Per6n. It was con-
sidered by some sectors of that dominant political group to be a far more subtle and modern
strategy for dealing with Peronism than the outright repression of the Aramburu
government.
' The linea dura was the name given to those unions which completely rejected Frondizi's
overtures. It was centred mainly on the Textile Workers Union, the Telephone Workers,
Health Workers and Rubber Workers, and many of the union branches in the interior. Its
leading figure was the Textile Workers' leader, Andre's Framini.
4
Augusto Vandor was the leader of the Metalworkers Union and the dominant Peronist
union figure throughout the 1960s. His growing power and his contacts and negotiation*
with governments and army were considered a real threat to Peron's control of his move-
ment. He was killed in July 1969.
5
The 62 Organisations was the name given to the organisation of Peronist unions within
the General Confederation of Labour. They were the original number of unions under
. Peronist control after the failed CGT congress of 1957. The number no longer bore any
relevance to the actual number of Peronist unions. When Peron moved against the power
of Vandor in 1965, those unions loyal to him set up a rival organisation 62 de pie junto a
Perdn, leaving the original set-up in Vandor's hands. It was an extremely heterogeneous
organisation with little other than loyalty to Per6n and opposition to Vandor to sustain it.
It took in the extreme right of Peronist unionism, led by Jose1 Alonso, and the old linea dura
unions, as well as a sizeable middle sector, who were not prepared to appear to challenge
Peron. The fact that in the linea dura unions, the left re-emerged to unite with the right

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 06 Apr 2015 IP address: 132.174.254.155

 The Peronist Left, 1955-1975 275

capitulation of an important sector of the union leadership into participation

with the government of General Onganfa, the Left once more came into
prominence to lead a separate union central, the Confederation General del
Trabajo de los Agentinos, based on total opposition to the military govern-
ment. It is only from this period onward that the Left managed to maintain,
to varying degrees, a relatively separate existence and importance within the
movement independent of the need to react to the domination of the Right.
Secondly, if the existence of a Left as a clearly defined tendency within
Peronism depended on the development of a growing Right so it equally
depended on Peron and his tactical manoeuvrings. The Left in this period
usually appeared in the space provided for it by Peron's decision to move
against a dominant current that was threatening his control of the movement
— it was traditionally Peron's weapon against potential usurpers. It was,
therefore, in general, as strong and clearly defined as Peron needed and wanted
it to be, and when there was relative harmony between the leadership in
Argentina and Peron in exile the Left was marginalised as an important
and distinctive current within the movement and confined to a few small
groupings and unions.
Thirdly, and arising from the first two points - the important thing to note
about the emergence of this reflex leftism is that politically it developed very
little alternative ideology, very little separate existence. Politically, it remained
firmly rooted within the Per6n-anti-Per6n dichotomy that was the chief
defining characteristic of Argentine politics in this period. This meant that
the distinguishing characteristic of the Left, the duros, could only be defined
objectively as loyalty to Peron and his orders. As their chief slogan said,
Perdn o Muerte — and this was more than a conventional emotional slogan,
though it was that too. It also expressed precisely the effect in political terms
of the continuing dichotomy Per6n—anti-Peron on the possibilities for develop-
ing coherent, independent left-wing politics within Peronism.
To explain the point better, the following factors should be noted. In the
eighteen years from 1955 to 1973, Argentina experienced military rule, 1955—
8, indirect military rule, 1962-3, and direct intervention again, 1966-73;
military interventions in the first period to overthrow Peron and to prepare
the way for an acceptable non-Peronist government and in the second two
cases interventions precisely to prevent the possibility of a return of Peronism
to power. All this was against the background of fairly consistent proscrip-

purely and simply on the basis of loyalty to Per6n emphasizes my description of them as
an essentially ' reflex ' tendency. The 62 Organisaciones de pie disappeared after the mili-
tary coup of June 1966 and after Peron's quarrel with Vandor had been patched up. The
right under Alonso were to be leading figures in the collaborationist wing of Peronist unions
under the government of Ongania.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 06 Apr 2015 IP address: 132.174.254.155

276 Daniel James

don and repression of Peronist militants. Peronism, then, was truly the hecho
maldito of the Argentine ruling class. The resistance and repression that
followed 1955 and continued until 1962 thus pre-empted, at least for the vast
majority of the ' Peronist Left', the need to develop anything like a critique,
an analysis of what Peronism had been, what it was, what forces there were
within it - in a word the development of anything like a distinctively leftist
Peronist ideology. Peronism, within the Peron-anti-Peron dichotomy that
dominated the political and social context, was per se leftist, anti-establish-
ment, and revolutionary, and loyalty to the exiled and vilified leader was
enough of a definition of a political strategy. This continued to be the case
after 1962 and in many ways the military government after 1966 reinforced
this feature: hence, the consistency of the terminology in which the Peronist
Left defined its enemies, defined its own distincdveness since 1955 — its
political vocabulary was essentially a moral one. The Right were those who
' betrayed ' the hard struggle against anti-Peronist governments, those who
were corrupted and betrayed the essence of Peronism - ultimately in fact
those who betrayed Peron. Concepts like leales, traidores, duros, fe, lealtad
have been the traditional stuff of the terminology of the ' Peronist Left'.
Fourthly, it needs to be pointed out that the picture presented up to this
point is inevitably one-sided. Dario Canton has described the left wing of
the Radical Party as left only in so far as it opposed the right and that it was
more properly the centre.* The same is not true of Peronism for what also
needs to be emphasized is the ambiguity of the development of the Peronist
Left. It was not simply a tool of Peron, nor merely a ' reflex ' reaction to the
Right. Programmatically left wing Peronism enunciated a series of pro-
grammes of a radical anti-imperialist nature. The first of these, the Pro-
gramme of Huerta Grande put forward by the 62 Organisations in 1962, set
out a list of ten demands calling for such things as the nationalization of the
banks, state control of foreign commerce, protective tariffs, expropriation of
large landowners without compensation and the nationalization of key areas
of the economy. In addition state planning of production through the fixing
of production priorities was demanded.7 Subsequent programmes such as
the Declaration of Tucuman, 19668 and that issued by the CGT de los
Argentinos in 1968 differed little in content. In the last years of the military

0
Dario Canton, Elecciones y partidos politico! en la Argentina (Buenos Aires, Siglo Veintiuno,
'973). P- 2 37-
7
For a full statement of the programme of Huerto Grande and for much else of interest on
left Peronism sec 'Peronism: El Exilio (1955-1973)', Cuadernos de Marcha, No. 71,
Montevideo, 1973.
8
The Declaration of Tucuman was drawn up by the founding conference of the 62 Organi-
zaciones de pie junto a Peron. For text see Cuadernos de Marcha, op. cit.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 06 Apr 2015 IP address: 132.174.254.155

 2
The Peronist Left, i9S5~'975 77
government the Left started to define such programmes as being blueprints
for Socialismo National.9
Nevertheless, these radical nationalist programmes put forward as a response
to the attacks on working class conditions, as a response to economic crisis
and as a general response to military government repression of Peronist mili-
tants, contained virtually no concrete political strategy of any sort that would
distinguish them from other sectors of Peronism. In fact, the Programme of
Huerta Grande contained no specifically political demands. In general, the
political demands of other programmes of the Peronist Left were limited to
vague calls for respect of the popular will in free elections and the return of
Peron. Yet this was logical since if Peronism was per se revolutionary and
its leader was the quintessential expression of this revolution, then all that
was needed was his return to power for the programmes put forward to be
implemented.
A survey of the main divisions within the Peronist Left up to 1973 will give
a better idea of the ambiguity mentioned above and give a more genuine
picture of the process involved. There have been essentially three main divi-
sions, (i) the Combative Unions, (ii) Revolutionary Peronism; (iii) the Youth
section of the movement and the guerrilla groups.

(i) The Combative Unions

In many ways this is the most traditional ' left' current within Peronism
with its roots in the linea dura unions of the Frondizi period. It had been the
majority section of the union sector (and by extension of the movement in
general) during the Resistance period and for most of the Frondizi govern-
ment. In response to the political proscription of Peronism and attacks on
trade union organization and workers' living standards, the need for a
detailed strategy and political programme was hardly felt. The return of
Peron, the regaining of the unions for Peronism through free elections were
the essential aims to be achieved through the maintenance of what they
vaguely called intransigencia in the labour and political arenas.
It was not until 1962 and the Programme of Huerta Grande that anything

9
The literal translation is, of course, national socialism, but it would give totally the wrong
impression to the English speaking reader with its explicit Nazi connotations. Socialismo
national represents for the Peronist left an adaptation of the international principles cf
socialism to the national peculiarities of Argentina. It has an evident connection with Per6n's
concept of the Third Position between U.S. capitalism and Soviet Communism, although
most of the Peronist left, apart from the most traditional sectors, criticize this concept and
simply regard their socialism as an independent Argentine application of traditional socialist
principles. The national emphasis also stems from their conception of the first stage of the
transformation process of Argentine society being the anti-imperialist, national liberation of
the country, which will lay the basis for a future socialism.
L.A.S.—7

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 06 Apr 2015 IP address: 132.174.254.155

278 Daniel James

like a detailed set of demands was systematized. With its leading figures
formed in the Resistance and its chief hall-mark being opposition to the union
bureaucracy and unquestioning loyalty to Peron, this sector most closely
approximates to the ' reflex ' leftism described above. With the eclipse of the
Resistance in the early 1960s, the strength of this tendency came to lie essen-
tially in a few small unions such as the Telephone Workers, the Naval Con-
struction Union and the Printworkers. In addition, from the late 1960s,
combativos 10 came to dominate many of the union branches in the interior
of the country and to control the majority of regional CGTs. It was they who
formed the basis for Peron's challenge to Vandor in 1965-6 and formed the
rival 62 Organizaciones de Pie junto a Perdn, they again who responded to
Peron's move against the participationists in 1968 and went into die CGT de
los Argentinos and who followed Peron's instructions to retire from diat body
in 1969 and unify the movement.11 When the CGT was handed back to an
alliance of Vandor's heirs and participationists in 1970, the Combative Unions
respected Peron's plea to stay within such a body and later to give their
backing to the electoral front formed in 1972.
Since they were the sector who had most clearly stuck to loyalty and
obedience to Per6n as their defining characteristic and who most clearly
equated the return of Peron with the solution to the economic and social
problems of die working class, they had the least problems in adapting to the
successive changes of direction forced on diem by Peron's decision to accept
the electoral opening offered by President Lanusse in 1972.
Despite the fact that they, like otlier sectors of die Left, had originally
denounced die Gran Acuerdo National12 of Lanusse as ' just another trick ',
by late 1971 Julio Guillan, the leader of die Telephone Workers, was justify-
ing participation by combativos in die electoral front by saying ' Peron has

10
Combativos was the name given to those unions who consistently opposed the mili-
tary governments between 1966 and 1973.
11
Evidently the problem of specifying why certain Peronist unions adopted ' combative '
stances and why others opted for compromise and greater moderation becomes relevant here.
To deal with the question adequately would be far beyond the scope of this paper. Suffice
it to say that there is no simple correlation between, for example, the economic fortunes of
an economic sector a particular union operated in and the political attitudes which that
union adopted. Thus, to take one example, the attempt to explain the moderate, concilia-
tionist attitude adopted by some Peronist unions by their position in the most advanced, high
salary areas of industry - a type of ' aristocracy of labour ' theory in fact - is not borne out
by empirical investigation. Conversely, there were many unions representing the more crisis-
ridden sections of the Argentine economy that were not to be found amongst the Peronist
left. Factors such as the ideology of particular union leaders have to be taken into account^
This question will be the subject of a future article.
11
The Gran Acuerdo National was the name given to the rapprochement between the political
parties, including Peronism, and the armed forces which formed the basis of the process
leading to free elections in 1973.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 06 Apr 2015 IP address: 132.174.254.155

 The Peronist Left, 1955-1975 279

convoked this National Liberation Front in which we the Peronist workers

have to fight for the triumph of the ideas of socialismo national'."
In other words, they were now seeing the electoral front as a balance of
forces where the Left had to fight for their position - which, of course, was
assumed to be Peron's too. A variant of this rationale was to be found in the
statement of Peronismo Combativo in March 1972 on the occasion of the
official formation of the Justicialist Liberation Front (FREJULI). They were
entering the Front, they said: ' to put those who are disloyal, as Peron says,
in a position where it is no longer convenient for them to be disloyal so that
the unity, solidarity and organization ordered by our leader can fulfil their
tactical purpose of gaining power ' . "
After this limited objective had been achieved, unity with the Right, the
trade union bureaucracy, would be discarded and the path of socialismo
national embarked on. The implementation of the programe of sotialismo
national was premised entirely on ' the fundamental condition which cannot
be renounced: the return of Juan Domingo Per6n ' . "

Revolutionary Peronism
This tendency largely took its inspiration from John William Cooke who
had been Peron's chief representative in Argentina in the 1955-9 Pefiod- It
drew its chief support from many who, like Cooke, had lived through the
experience of the Resistance, the failure of the linea dura opposition to
Frondizi and the gradual demise of the movement into conciliation with the
status quo on the union and political plane. Out of this they began to reassess
the nature of Peronism, to analyze the contradictions within it and to look
for the reasons for the dead end arrived at after so much heroism.
Cooke in his letters to Peron very clearly denounced what he called the
fetishism of el lider 14 - the substituting of hard concrete analysis by what he
called' tribal fanaticisms ' . " I n one of his letters he said:
Instead of concrete positions in the face of an equally concrete reality we are given
general formulas - we all want to be free, sovereign and that there should be social
13
Interview in Panorama, 28 March 1972.
14
Quoted in Avanzada Socialista, 1 March 1972.
15
El programa de los gremios combativos, Jan. 1972. See El Combativo, No. i, Nov. 1972.
18
Perdn-Coo^e Correspondencia, 11 (Buenos Aires, June 1973), 189. Cooke himself had been
PeVon's chief personal representative in Argentina from 1956 until 1959, after which he lived
in exile from Argentina, spending much of the early 1960s n Cuba, where he fought in the
Cuban militia at the Bay of Pigs. He returned to Argentina in the mid-1960s and died in
1968. His correspondence with Per6n is an invaluable source for any study of post-1955
Peronism, though it also accurately charts the growing isolation of the extreme left of the
movement from the early 1960s onwards. Per6n's letters become increasingly less informative
as Cooke moves further to the left.
» Ibid., p. 189.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 06 Apr 2015 IP address: 132.174.254.155

280 Daniel James

justice but this is pure rhetoric if it is not translated into concrete strategic
proposals."
Cooke, too, was one of the first to attempt a real analysis of the political-
union bureaucracy that dominated Peronism - to move away from the
moralism of trmdores and leales and to recognise diat the roots of the bureau-
cracy lay in the very nature of Peronism as a polydass alliance and that it
needed to be fought politically and ideologically. This could only be done,
he maintained, not by a retreat into a reassertion of the traditional values of
Peronism, nor into the rhetoric of loyalty, but by actually changing a hetero-
geneous movement into a revolutionary party. Cooke thus very directly con-
fronted the problem of the seizure of political power. In an article written in
1966, he developed this point:
While Peronism does not structure itself on the lines of a political party - i.e. with
a revolutionary politics understood as the unity of theory, action and organisational
method — it will continue being subject to spontaneism, to the juxtaposition of
tactics that are not integrated into a strategy, into dead-ends that successive bureau-
crats lead it into; leaders who can conceive of no other solution save electoral
fronts or army coups. Yet both golpismo and electoral fronts imply renouncing the
seizure of power.10
Thus the problem of the bureaucracy was a political one, not a moral one.
Cooke defined the task of Revolutionary Peronism as the creation of a van-
guard that sought to reconcile the politics of Peronism with the role that
objectively the confrontation of social forces in the everyday life of workers
gave to it. As he expressed it: ' Peronism, as a mass movement, is and always
has been superior to Peronism as a structure for these masses; for this reason
spontaneism has always dominated the planned action of the masses '.20 And
this was the core of Cooke's analysis. Peronism for him was by its very social
composition revolutionary in essence - it was the expression of the integral
crisis of the Argentine bourgeois regime. As such, any meaningful institu-
tionalization of a democratic bourgeois regime was ruled out - since Peronism
would win elections and gain power and this by the very nature of Peronism
would not be tolerable for the ruling class. Proscription, the antinomy Per6n-
anti-Peron were manifestations of the ' irreducible incompatibility between
the regime and Peronism '. 21 Given the impossibility of any peaceful accession
to power of Peronism, Cooke's concrete strategy for the seizure of power by a

18
Ibid., p. 190.
19
See Cristianismo y Revolution (Buenos Aires, Nos. 2-3, Oct.-Nov. 1966), pp. 14-15. Also to
be found in Cuadernos de Marcha, loc. cit., pp. 18—20.
20
See letter of Cooke's A los companeros revolucionarios de la came, Agrupacidn ' Blanca y
Ncgra ' de Rosario (1965), in mimeo. Pamphlet in the author's files.
21
Cristianismo y Revolucidn, loc, cit., p. 15.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 06 Apr 2015 IP address: 132.174.254.155

 The Peronist Left, •'055-/0.75 ^l

Peronism constructed as a revolutionary party was guerrilla warfare -

jocismo"
Revolutionary Peronism remained throughout the 1960s confined to small
marginalised groups such as the Revolutionary Peronist Youth led by
Gustavo Rearte, the Revolutionary Peronist Movement, and the Revolutionary
Peronist Action group of Cooke himself. After the Cordobazo " of 1969 and
the radicalisation process of the early 1970s, more opportunities presented
themselves for Revolutionary Peronism to insert itself into the rank and file
of the Peronist movement, and groups like Peronismo de Base, formed in the
post-Cordobazo period, gained a not inconsiderable influence, particularly in
the interior. The differences between them and the Combative Unions were
clearly evidenced in this period - especially in 1971 when, at the Plenario of
Combative Unions and Groups held in Cordoba, Peronismo de Base sided
with the clasista " groups in calling for the enunciation of a revolutionary
political programme and the formation of a revolutionary party. The Comba-
tive Unions maintained that the Peronist movement as it existed was suffi-
cient, its ideology revolutionary, and that what was mainly needed was the
return of Peron.
For a long time Revolutionary Peronism refused to admit the possibility of
a genuine electoral opening for the movement. One of their leaders explained
their point of view:
the climax is therefore approaching where all known variants, including elections,
have been tried . . . the regime cannot allow an electoral solution because one of
two things will happen - either Peronism will win with a huge majority or they
will have to resort to proscription which will make a farce of the elections.25

-'-' The inllucncc of Cookc's Cuban experiences is evident here. After an initial hostility to the
Cuban Revolution, due mainly to their identification of it with the anti-Peronist left in
Argentina, and also to the lack of definition of the Cubans themselves in the early years,
the Peronist left was to become increasingly influenced by the Cuban experience - thanks in
no small measure to Cooke himself. Indeed, it was under Cooke's overall guidance that the
setting up of the first Peronist joco was attempted in i960 — the Uturuncu guerrilla in the
far north of the country. See Pcr6n-Coo\e Correspondencia, 11, 372-3. It would appear
that contact between Cuba and the extreme left of Peronism continued throughout the 1960s
and that the Cubans provided training for some of the guerrilla groups that sprang up in
the early 1970s.
23
The Cordobazo refers to the general strike and near insurrection in the city of C6rdoba in
1969. It marked a decisive turning point for the military government and the beginning of
the return to traditional politics.
24
The clasista groups were those non-Peronist Marxist groups that appeared in the wake of
the Cordobazo, rejecting what they considered the bourgeois nationalist emphasis of Peronism
and emphasising the primacy of the class struggle in the factories. Their strongest base was
in the SITRAM-SITRAC Unions in the Fiat plants in Cordoba.
- 5 Interview with Raimundo Ongaro, Extra, Feb. 1970, N o . 55. Ongaro was the leader of the
Buenos Aires printworkers and head of the CCT de los Argentinos. Although not strictly
within the Revolutionary Peronist current, he was far closer to them thnn to the rombati-

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 06 Apr 2015 IP address: 132.174.254.155

282 Daniel James

Peronism by its social composition was revolutionary, inassimilable within

the traditional system as Cooke had said. Therefore, the ultimate political
solution could only be an armed one — for this, Revolutionary Peronism con-
sidered it essential to prepare. The basis for die revolutionary party which
would lead this armed struggle had to be prepared in the bases of die unions,
in the working class neighbourhoods, and in the shanty towns. The structure
for the armed party had to be formed in this way - attempts to take over die
structure of Peronism institutionally were useless since in die coming civil
war such a structure would be irrelevant.

The Peronist Youth and Guerrilla Groups

With the radicalization of large sections of middle class youth during the
military government and in particular after 1969, diere was a rapid influx of
new recruits into the different youth and student organizations of Peronism.
In fact, many were created for die first time during this period. The youth
sector of Peronism had always been very weakly organized and, until the
various factions that had sprung up in the early 70s united into one body, the
Juventud Peronista, in 1972, there was really little co-ordination between
them. At about the same time the Juventud Universitaria Peronista was
created. The largest group prior to 1972 — based almost entirely on die uni-
versities - was die Juventud Argentina por la Emancipacidn Nacional. The
leader of JAEN, Rodolfo Galimberti, was to become the leader of the united
JP in 1972, die feted guest of Peron in Madrid and die bete noire of die anti-
Peronist forces in the lead-up to the elections of March 1973. It was, in fact,
die JP who created most of die mobilisation in die Peronist election campaign.
Parallel with this development there was the growth of a number of
guerrilla groups. Such groups were not new to Peronism: during the early
1960s several bands had tried to secure a base in the far north of die country.
Widi die general radicalisation process of the late 1960s, a whole new impetus
was.given to die formation of such groups. A number were formed and
operated to varying degrees of effectiveness — the Fuerzas Armadas Revolu-
cionarias, Fuerzas Armadas Peronistas, and the Montoneros.™ The most

vos as witness his continued mobilization of his union on wage issues during the governments
of both General Peron and his widow. He was, until very recently, in prison for precisely
this. Certainly the view expressed in this interview was that of Revolutionary Peronism.
26
One should distinguish between the groups in that they came from different backgrounds.
The FAR were mainly composed originally of independent marxists who had split from
various traditional left parties in the early, mid-1960s and moved towards Peronism. The
FAP were very closely tied to Revolutionary Peronism and can basically be considered as the
armed expression of Peronismo dc Base. The Montoneros came largely from a third world
Catholic background - some even from the far right of catholic nationalism. The FAR and
Montoneros united in one organization after March 1973.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 06 Apr 2015 IP address: 132.174.254.155

 The Peronist Left, 1955-1975 283

important of these groups in terms of size and influence was the Montoneros,
and for our purposes here we will concentrate on them.
To all intents and purposes, the political thought of the Montoneros
coincided with that of the Juventud Peronista. They had their origins in the
same process and their members had similar backgrounds. Many had entered
the ambit of Peronism through the student struggles centred around the
CGT de los Argentinos against the repression and crudity of the military
government of Ongania. The point emphasized previously about the anti-
Peronist left is most clearly evidenced by analysing the JP and the Montoneros
development of an independent, coherent left wing politics within the
Peronist left is most clearly evidenced by analyzing the ]P and the Montoneros
in die pre-1973 stage. Having no previous experience or history in the Peronist
movement, they had an idealised vision of the Peronist past, of the movement
and, of course, of Peron himself.
They were ignorant of the experience of many of those who had been
through the Resistance and had attempted to draw lessons from it. Although
they claimed Cooke as one of their heroes in a pantheon of figures stretching
from Guevara and Mao to Peron and Nasser, they in fact ignored the really
significant aspects of his thought and took merely his tactical conclusions as
their guidelines — his jocismo. As one of their number has since written:
' the reality of a dictatorship against which a response was desperately sought
facilitated the development of fodsta conceptions'." And, one may add, it
also prevented the development of a really coherent analysis of Peronism.
Three features of the ideology of the JP and the Montoneros need emphasis:
(i) Ignoring Cooke's insistence on a political/ideological understanding of
the union bureaucracy, they reverted to the moralizing level of traidores and
lealtad. From this they developed a crucial underestimation of the nature
and strength of the trade union bureaucracy. While Cooke had maintained
that the fight against the right wing of the movement and particularly the -
union leadership was basically a class struggle reflecting the polyclass origin
of Peronism, the JP and the Montoneros tended to translate this into a
generational conflict. The bureaucracy represented for them a previous
generation that through personal corruption had betrayed the ideals of
Peronism; it could either be eliminated physically through assassination or
more generally it would be surpassed by what Peron called trasvasamiento
generational.2* Taking Peron's assurances that the youth would inherit the
movement at face value, they assumed in this period that the bureaucracy
would either wither away or would be discarded by Peron once it had served
27
En lucha, Organo del Movimiento Revolucionario ty de Octubre, N o . 13, Dec. 1973.
28
Literally meaning generational transference/transfusion, the concept implied the injection
of new blood into the movement which would mature into the future leadership.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 06 Apr 2015 IP address: 132.174.254.155

 284 Daniel James

its tactical use to him. (ii) The emphasis of Revolutionary Peronism on the
need to give Peronism a revolutionary party structure was totally missing.
In its stead was substituted an idealised Peronist movement virtually as it
existed already - only minus the superfluous strata of bureaucrats. The vital
relationship Leader-Masses would find its political expression in themselves,
the Montoneros and JP. This not only involved the assumption that their
political and social goals were those of Per6n; it also on the practical level
involved the ignoring of the Peronist working class. Whereas for all their
tactical jocismo, Cooke and Peronismo Revolucionario had firmly rooted
their idea of armed struggle in the need to organize in the working class, to
create the structure of the armed party through the everyday struggles of the
workers, for the Montoneros and the fP the working class remained a
rhetorical expression. Once the bureaucratic caste was discarded, die existing
structure and ideology of the Peronist movement and working class would be
quite sufficient to re-establish the necessary link between the revolutionary
leader and the masses and thus form the basis for the seizure of power
through ' Revolutionary Warfare'. Thus it was not until April 1973, after
the election victory, that they considered it necessary to set up a distinctive
working class organization to compete inside the unions with the union
leaderships. The organization created was the Juventud Trabajadora Peron-
ista. (iii) They assumed an identity between their objectives and those of
Per6n. Starting, as they did, from the a priori assumption that the working
class was the dominant force within Peronism, that, therefore, it was intrinsi-
cally revolutionary, it was logical that Per6n as the sole leader and head of
that movement should be considered the sole and authentic leader of the
revolution. Peron himself encouraged this and it must again be stressed that
in the situation of military dictatorship it hardly seemed necessary to challenge
the assumption. Nor indeed should one underestimate the degree to which
- the JP and Montoneros provided a mobilising force that badly frightened the
military and the traditional anti-Peronist forces. Programmatically, they
championed a radical nationalism that they defined as socialism - practically
they developed a high level of efficiency in guerrilla actions and a high
capacity for mass-mobilizations. Indeed, the situation since 1973 is inexplicable
if one does not take into account the depth of the convictions held by the JP
and Montoneros, the radical nature of those convictions and the fact that they
found a certain echo in the population. The point that needs to be made
however - perhaps to labour the point - is that with the institutional break-
down of the Argentine traditional democratic system, with the seemingly
inevitable incompatibility between Peronism and the status quo, the constant
military repression and the constant militant response, anything seemed pos-

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 06 Apr 2015 IP address: 132.174.254.155

 The Peronist Left, 1955-1975 285

sible. The need was for action, resistance, militancy against the all too obvious
enemy. The need for detailed analysis or questioned assumptions was hardly
felt; the contradictions, the mystifications of their ideology were certainly
neidier very noticeable nor crucial, though they were certainly there.
The Montoneros and JP, for example, like other left tendencies, dismissed
the possibility of Peronism taking part in elections. Popular Revolutionary
Warfare with themselves as the vanguard was their chosen strategy. They
assumed that at the most the electoral front was a tactical manoeuvre of
Per6n's.28 Peron, while never contradicting this outright, had at least im-
plicitly modified it by his concept of the Montoneros as a ' special formation '
within Peronism. But this was only implicit and certainly Peron's own words
and the situation in Argentina together with the pride of place given to the
JP in the organization of the election campaign of Campora 30 did not give
cause for them to question the ultimate goal of Peronism and of Per6n - the
creation of a socialist Argentina.

/97J-/075
The developments of two and a half years since the election of Hector
Campora as President represent, taken as a whole, a series of cumulative
blows for the ' Peronist Left'; the shattering of illusions, the running up
against contradictions inherent in their development and ideology. Before
going on to chart the reaction of the Left to this process, a brief chronology
of the main events on this road to disenchantment needs to be outlined.
(i) June 1973. The massacre at Ezeiza Airport. A massive crowd, gathered
to welcome Peron back to Argentina, was fired upon by those surrounding
the main platform where Per6n was due to speak. The event was never
clarified, but most of the evidence points to it being a warning given to the
Left by the union bureaucracy. In his speech afterwards Peron attacked the
infiltrados: ' We Peronists have to win back the leadership of our own
movement.' 3l
(ii) July 1973. Any doubts as to whom Peron considered the infiltrados
who had taken over the movement were soon dispelled. After repeated press
20
Sec, for instance, the letters exchanged between Per6n and the montoneros after they had
killed Aramburu in Feb. 1971, published in La Causa Peronista, No. 9, 3 Sept. 1974. In
reply to their affirmation that the electoral struggle could be no more than a tactic to harass
the enemy, Per6n stated, ' Concerning the electoral option, I don't believe in it either '.
30
Most observers of the Peronist election campaign of March 1973 commented on the weight
and importance of the youth sectors of the movement in mobilising support for Hdctor
Campora. Both in terms of mass rallies and in terms of the general tone and emphasis of
the campaign, they seemed to have a greater influence within the movement than the union
leadership — who had in any case opposed the original choice of Campora as candidate.
31
La Nacion, 25 June 1973.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 06 Apr 2015 IP address: 132.174.254.155

286 Daniel James

reports of his dissatisfaction with Campora for allowing his government to

drift too far to the left, the formula Peron Presidente was put forward by a
combination of the union bureaucracy and the party right wing.32 Later in
the same month the candidature for the vice-presidency of Peron's wife,
Maria Estella, ' Isabelita ', was announced. The JP had supported Campora
for this position.
(iii) August 1973. Peron began a series of lectures to union leaders in the
CGT generally praising their conduct. He confirmed a series of changes in
the Justicialist Party hierarchy giving almost total control to the right wing.
(iv) September 1973. Jose Rucci, head of the CGT, was killed. Almost
immediately the existence of a ' reserved document' was made known. Drawn
up by the Superior Council of the Justicialist Party and approved by Peron,
it called for ' ideological purification against marxist infiltration ' . "
(v) January 1974. Peron summoned a meeting of all factions of the youth
sector, both right and left. The JP refused to attend. At the meeting, attended
solely by the extreme right wing groups, Peron attacked the JP.
(vi) January 1974. The attack by the EjSrcito Revolucionario del Pueblo
(ERP)34 on the army base at Azul in the province of Buenos Aires was used
as the pretext to depose the governor of the province, Oscar Bidegain, who
was considered to be on the left of Peronism and whom the JP considered an
ally. Peron in a speech immediately after the attack implied that Bidegain was
partly responsible. He was replaced by Victorio Calabro, a leading figure in
the trade union bureaucracy.
(vii) March 1974. Police rebelled against the left Peronist governor and
vice-governor of Cordoba, Obregon Cano and Attilio Lopez. Peron con-
firmed the action and blamed the Left for troubles in the province.
(viii) May 1974. At a May Day rally in the Plaza de Mayo, Peron, angered

3S
Despite the Peronist left's claim that the handing over of the presidency to Per6n represen-
ted the fulfilment of the natural wishes of the people and that the process was only spoiled
by the ' ambition of four madmen ' (El Descamisado, No. 9, 17 July 1973), in fact, the re-
placement of Campora had all the hallmarks of a well-timed coup by the Peronist right.
However, it should also be noted that despite the undoubted liberalisation in matters of
human rights that took place during Campora's presidency, there was nothing in his past
record to justify the faith placed in him by the Montoneros and JP, and the euphoria that
surrounded his brief stay in office and his transformation in left Peronist language into el
Tio had a distinct air of unreality about it. What he did have in common with the Peronist
left was an absolute personal loyalty to Pcr6n.
•13 For the full text, see La Opinion, 2 Oct. 1973.
31
ERP, Eje'rcito Revolucionario del Pueblo, a guerrilla group of Trotskyist origin who had
refused to lay down their arms with the accession of Peronism to the government. They had
maintained that the new government was just a continuation of the old system under a
different guise. The attack against the army at the Azul barracks was their first major action
against the Peronist government.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 06 Apr 2015 IP address: 132.174.254.155

 2
The Peronist Left, 1955-1975 ^7

at the JP and Montoneros marching under their own banners calling for
socialism, launched a violent attack on them. They turned and marched out
of the square as he continued.
(ix) July 1974. Peron died and Isabelita became president. The extreme
right of the movement was now in complete control centred around the figure
of Jose L6pez Rega, Minister of Social Welfare and Peron's former private
secretary.
(x) September 1974. The Montoneros announced a total break with the
government and resumed guerrilla activities.
(xi) November 1974. A State of Siege was declared, giving the Army and
Police Force greater powers to deal with the Left.
These events have been accompanied by a series of legislative measures of
an equally right wing nature; these included a new Law of Professional
Associations which gives the union hierarchy carte blanche for strengthening
their control over the unions, a new security law which was in many ways
tougher than that in being under the military government, and a wage freeze
which was accompanied by the virtual outlawing of strikes. All of this has
been within die context of a mounting series of attacks by police and para-
police groups on JP and JTP offices and a growing list of murdered and
imprisoned militants. The response to this move away from the sort of
measures and the kind of emphasis that the ' Peronist Left' considered to
be die true programme of Peronism has varied in the three main groups
discussed earlier.

Combative Unions
In these unions the response has been very muted. They have seen their
main task as explaining the control on wage increases to their members. As
they had developed very little critique of the nature of Peronism and had
always defined themselves by their absolute loyalty to Peron, this was to be
expected. Former duros, now deputies in Congress, loyally voted for the new
Law of Professional Associations which was to strengthen immeasurably the
union bureaucracy tliey had spent their lives fighting.
In addition to obeying Peron, there was, of course, the additional factor
diat any overt opposition to government measures would bring down the
wrath of the all-powerful Minister of Labour and the CGT apparatus, and
lose the Combative Unions what precarious power bases they still had. In
fact, the caution of many combativo leaders availed them little, since many
were displaced by the CGT, armed with the powers granted it in the new
Law of Professional Associations.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 06 Apr 2015 IP address: 132.174.254.155

288 Daniel fames

Revolutionary Peronism
Since they had always considered the elections a mere diversion before the
coming war and as they had a more realistic and coherent analysis of the
power of the union bureaucracy in Peronism and the contradictions within
the movement, they were better prepared for the denouement when it came.
They considered it vital to use the breathing space given by Peron and the
reconstruction of a bourgeois democratic system to work in the bases, to
create groupings of militants and form cadres. They aimed to begin the task
of forging an authentic, independent working class ideology and organisation
to act as the basis for the future armed party that would fight the civil war.
They felt that it was useless to try and defend positions gained within the
structure of Peronism or try to dislodge the bureaucracy of the structure of
the movement. This they dubbed movimientismo and they attacked the
JP and Montoneros for it. Peronism as a meaningful anti-capitalist, work-
ing class movement - the peronismo de abajo as they called it - existed in
the barrios, the shanty towns and the factories, and it was there that it had
to be won for a revolutionary party not in an ultimately meaningless bureau-
cratic structure.
In this context they were far less loth to criticize Peron. After the forced
resignation of Obregon Cano from Cordoba, Peronismo de Base issued a
statement criticising those behind the action, including Peron:
It is not a case of General Peron being hemmed in or prevented from doing what
he would really like, here it is simply a case that we are seeing that Peron is far
from being what we thought we were voting for in September... not even
Peron can say who should be our representatives and who not; only we have the
right to say if they stay or not.35

By May 1974, in an Assembly to celebrate May Day, Peronismo de Base

was in a sense ready for a definitive break and for a drawing up of accounts.
One militant who spoke summed up his experience from the Resistance until
that time in these words :
Faith was one of our biggest mistakes. When we were bearing the brunt of the
struggle, when we were striking, when the working class was paying with torture
we had faith in our leaders. What faith can we have now? After it has been abused
on 11 March and 23 September . .. that was the vital point of departure and from
there we started to realize that the only faith we could have was in the working
class, the faith of the exploited . . . we have to understand that we must turn our
struggles into our own independent organisation.38

•15 El Mundo, 3 March, 1974.

36
EH Lucha, No. 16, June 1974.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 06 Apr 2015 IP address: 132.174.254.155

 The Peronist Left, 1955-1975 2%9
Peronist Youth and Montoneros
The JP and the Montoneros were the most disillusioned by the process and
they responded by a series of ideological improvisations, tactical manoeuvres
that often seemed to defy any coherent analysis. However, it can be shown
that there was a certain rationale behind their actions since 1973. The best
way to approach this is to analyse briefly the changes in their political thought
since 1973 as they appeared in a talk given by a leader of the Montoneros to
cadres of the JP," and to highlight the essentials of their modified concep-
tions.
Three main features of this modification can be discerned, (i) First, an
autocritique. Peron, they now said, understood far better than they the need
for a front of classes opposed to imperialism, the possibility of this coming to
power by elections and carrying out an anti-imperialist programme. They had
remained until the elections convinced that guerrilla war was the only way
of winning power. Peron rightly saw that the principal contradiction in
Argentine society was that between imperialism and national sovereignty,
and that this took precedence over the contradiction between capitalist and
worker. The logical political conclusion to draw from this was, therefore,
the need to create an anti-imperialist, multi-class front, such as FREJULI.
This they called Peron's strategic project, which, they said, they fully shared,
(ii) However, the contradiction between Per6n and themselves was now seen
as coming essentially on the ideological level. What for Peron was the ulti-
mate goal of this anti-imperialist front - the Organized Community, a sort
of beneficent state capitalism - for them was the mere transitional stage
towards a proper socialism. Therefore, while there was a political strategic
coincidence between them, there was also an ideological contradiction. And
what had happened was that Peron has opted for emphasising the ideological
contradiction; hence his attacks for deviating ideologically on the JP and
Montoneros. (iii) The political strategy to be drawn from all this was, in the
words of Mario Firmenich, the leader of the Montoneros, the following:
We have an ideological contradiction with Per6n, but we also have a strategic
coincidence. Per6n is objectively an anti-imperialist revolutionary leader. It is
stupid for us to fight with Per6n over ideology. We will fight to the utmost for
our conceptions but if we lose we are not going to leave Peronism - it wouldn't
have the least sense since we share the strategic project of Per6n.38
Therefore, according to the JP and Montoneros, what had to be done was to
defend the space they had won within the movement. This, according to
Firmenich, could be done by ' negotiating frontiers' 39 with the main enemy
3Y
The talk, given by Mario Firmenich, and transcribed, is in mimeo form.
38
Ibid., p. 17.
38
Ibid., p. 16. The whole document is extremely interesting as an example of the militariza-

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 06 Apr 2015 IP address: 132.174.254.155

290 Daniel James

within the movement — the union bureaucracy which Per6n was using to
attack them at the ideological level. It was important to maintain the hold
gained within the movement's structure because ultimately Peron would find
that the Union bureaucracy, being totally opportunistic, did not share his
strategic aim of an anti-imperialist, worker-based national state. In fact, when
the crunch came it would prove to be totally useless to him.
And it was at this stage of the scenario that the Montoneros and JP would
enter, from the left. Peron, it was maintained, would find it impossible to
stop the anti-imperialist project at the stage where, ideologically, he would
like to, because, practically, it would inevitably lead to socialism. But until this
happened they must stay within the movement at all costs.
When Per6n says on a concrete issue,' I will do this ', we will also say ' Well we'll
do that then ', although really we disagree. Because what really interests us is the
internal transformation of Peronism through the displacement of the union
bureaucracy.'10
In the light of this analysis, the reasons why the JP and the Montoneros
reacted as they did to the consistent blows they suffered becomes clear. To
stay in the movement was the important thing and, therefore, almost any
amount of abuse and attack could be absorbed. The zig-zags and contradic-
tions inherent in this strategy were numerous and bewildering - but under-
standable in the light of their analysis. The whole issue of ' verticality ', i.e.,
die unquestioning respect for the orders issuing from Peron and going down
through the vertical chain of command of the Justicialist Movement to the
rank and file militants at the bottom, which became dominant after the
reserved document of September 1973, was seen by them in the context of
this strategy. Unlike Revolutionary Peronism which rejected the concept out-
right, the Montoneros and JP considered respect for Peron's orders vital to
enable them to stay in the movement.
The Juventud Trabajadora Peronista found itself beset by the same contra-
dictions as its parent body. Although it saw its main purpose as attacking the
union bureaucracy, this often had to be subordinated to the tactical restric-
tions implicit in the dominant analysis of the JP and the Montoneros. This
meant that despite a considerable following, with thirty-seven agrupaciones
represented at the founding conference, the practical implementation of its
pledge to defend wages and attack the union bureaucracy was hindered by
the over-riding need to stay in the movement, maintain the leader-masses

tion of political concepts and shows the deep influence a guerrilla training has on the
guerrilla leader turned politician. Firmenich, for example, quotes with approval Clausc-
witz: ' Nobody can have a political ambition that is greater than their military power '.
«° Ibid., p. 18.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 06 Apr 2015 IP address: 132.174.254.155

 The Peronist Left, 1955-1975 291

relationship. It found itself, for example, in the position of admitting that the
Social Pact, signed by employers and unions in 1973 and which instituted
a wage freeze in return for promised price control, was an anti-working class
measure, but opposing any explicit attack on it as such. To demand an increase
in wages was legitimate - to demand this and explicitly repudiate the Social
Pact was not, since it involved an attack on Peron. The nearest they came
to open criticism of Per6n was to describe the wages policy of the government
as a' mistake '. 41
Ultimately they were able to justify anything - sometimes by denying that
what had happened had really happened.42 Sometimes they did so by intro-
ducing the fiction of the evil advisers who were cutting Peron off from his
people.43 As a last resort, they had to say that on certain issues Peron was
wrong. 44
If we look at the three basic assumptions of their position as described
above, it is interesting to see how they survived basically intact, though
modified in some aspects, in the 1973-5 period.
First, they underestimated die strength of the union bureaucracy. While
they had to recognise its logistical strengdi, its powerful apparatus, diey still
had no real analysis of its ideological or political basis. It was still for diem
an unnatural growth on the basically healthy body of Peronism. They
assumed that it had no project of its own, that what it did have had very
little coherence and certainly nothing to do with Peronism, and that Per6n

11
La Justa, Organo de la \uventud Trabajadora Peronista, No. I, Feb. 1974.
42
This occurred with the ' reserved document ' which despite all signs to the contrary El
Descamisado refused to believe existed. See El Descamisado, No. 21, 9 Oct. 1973.
43
The fantasy about el cerco that was cutting Peron off from his people first surfaced after the
events of Ezeiza; see El Descamisado, No. 6, 26 June 1973. In Firmenich's talk op. cit. he
denounces the infantilism of this analysis, but as late as April 1974 it reappears in the semi-
official organ of the IP and montoneros as an explanation for the consistent failure of the
much-hoped-for dialogue between Leader and people to take place, El Peronista, 19 April
1974-
44
It should, of course, be borne in mind that the acceptance of the need to stay in the move-
ment at any cost and the resultant cost of this in terms of swallowing unpalatable measures
was an extremely contradictory process which became progressively more difficult to accom-
plish. At times the strain was evident publicly. After Peron's speech of February 1974, ad-
vising all those who advocated socialismo national to get out of Peronism and join a socia-
list party, Dardo Cabo, the editor of El Descamisado responded with what was the nearest
thing to a direct attack on Peron from within the movement. ' Why didn't they tell us
before when we were fighting Lanusse that we ought to join another party? Nobody has
the right to throw us out, nobody can now just bid us farewell I ' El Descamisado, No. 39,
12 Feb. 1974. However, to appreciate the near schizophrenia involved, it should also be
borne in mind that this was the same Dardo Cabo who six months earlier had been telling
his readers that although they might disagree with some of Peron's tactics, they must always
accept them since at the end of the day Aqui manda Perdn, El Descamisado, No. 26, 13
Nov. 1973.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 06 Apr 2015 IP address: 132.174.254.155

292 Daniel James

backed this bureaucracy because it was easier to control than the JP and
Montoneros. That Peron might find more in common with the union leader-
ship's aims was never considered. The bureaucracy remained something it
was necessary to bargain with militarily.45
Secondly, the identity of Per6n's aims with theirs. Obviously this assump-
tion had had to be modified. But by creating the concept of the ideological
conflict and the political, strategic agreement, and confining their difference
with Peron to the former, they preserved the essentials of this assumption.
Peron remained in essence the revolutionary leader of the masses and as
such it was necessary to maintain contact with him at all costs.
Thirdly, the predominant attitude to the working class basically persisted.
The working class remained for them an idealized concept - the passive
spectator of much of the Montoneros' and fP's thought and action while
they struggled with the union bureaucracy over its fate.
The trait had gone back a long way - consistently' left' Peronism in general
had failed to analyze precisely the real level of consciousness of the working
class. Its struggles against military governments and against employers,
particularly in the 1955-62 period, were taken as proof of its revolutionary
consciousness. What were not taken into account were its defeats, its demobil-
isation for most of the 1960s - a demobilisation on which the union leadership
has concretely built its power. Some sections, particularly of Revolutionary
Peronism, did take some account of this fact - but the Youth and guerrilla
sections coming into Peronism, mostly for the first time, in the early 1970s
took the fact of fifteen years of anti-Peronist governments, and the high points
of working class response to this and created the a priori assumption of the
' revolutionariness' of the workers, and by extension of Peronism.
This is intimately connected with their analysis, or rather lack of one, of
the union bureaucracy. For, having assumed that the working class had
consistently had a revolutionary consciousness, then the only explanation for
the hold of the bureaucracy must be in terms of its physically imposing itself
on the workers. It could have no real basis in the consciousness of the work-
ing class, nor any real right to exist in Peronism. Conversely the union
bureaucracy became a convenient way of avoiding looking at the actual state
of the consciousness of the Peronist workers a deus ex machina that allowed
the avoidance of facing unpleasant reality. The ' masses' were revolutionary
and all that really needed to be decided was who was to lead them.

«5 Exactly how military this could be can be seen from Firmenich's reply to a questioner who
asked him what they could offer the union bureaucracy by way of a bargain ' We can
promise not to kill them '. Firmenich, op. cit., p. 21.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 06 Apr 2015 IP address: 132.174.254.155

 2
The Peronist Left, 1955-1975 93

Concluding Remarks
The characterisation of the Peronist Left so far in this paper has largely
emphasised contradictory, negative features - the ' reflex' nature of the
Peronist left, its dependence on Peron, its failure in general in the 1955-73
period to develop coherent, independent left-wing politics. And yet what
were the alternatives? I have already emphasised the effect of the continued
enforced dichotomy Peron-anti-Peron on the development of the ' Peronist
Left'. There were evidently also other factors at work which would require
detailed study in themselves. The whole question, for example, of the tactics
and strategy of Peron himself, how he viewed the nature of the movement,
had a great influence on the options open to the left wing.
Without going into the question in great detail, it would seem correct to
say that Per6n's very conception of the type of movement Peronism ought to
be militated against the development of any strong, independent, dominant
left-wing. He saw one of the movement's essential strengths as being its all-
embracing, umbrella nature, and indeed his often reiterated definition of a
Peronist as being simply anyone who worked in the movement emphasised
this heterogeneity. Evidently, any attempt to turn this heterogeneity into a
class-based political party would be to weaken what he considered to be one
of its strongest points.
And this leads on to another aspect. Peronism was never an institutionalised
movement in any meaningful sense in the period 1955—73, far less an institu-
tionalised party within which left and right could fight for domination in a
formalised political manner over specific and concrete political issues and
programmes. The movement, in fact, was essentially no more than a con-
glomeration of different groups loyal to Peron. This enabled Per6n, of
course, to manipulate both left and right whilst allowing a certain autonomy
to each - ' I have a right and left hand, and I use them both ' was a favourite
saying. It also meant that in meaningful terms the whole paraphernalia of
Peronist political organisational structure, Comandos Tacticos, Comandos
Superiores, Ramas Masculinas, etc., were comparatively irrelevant. In this
respect, it is interesting to note that it was precisely when the ' left', the
duros, dominated the official structure of Peronist unionism, the 62 Organisa-
tions, under Frondizi (and, therefore, had a predominant weight in the
movement as a whole), the series of retreats and accommodations they
considered betrayals took place, despite their formal control of the apparatus
of the dominant sector of Peronism. While the left in general treated this lack
of formalised, democratic political structure as a virtue, since it made easier
the maintenance of the essential link between the leader and his people, it
was, nevertheless, true that it also helped prevent a genuine independent
L.A.S.—8

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 06 Apr 2015 IP address: 132.174.254.155

294 Daniel James

political development and maintained the personalistic loyalty syndrome of

much of the Peronist left.
There is also a further point arising from this which it is necessary to
mention. From the beginning of the Peronist experience in 1946, Peron had
ensured that he himself should embody the political desires of Argentine
workers. With the crushing of the Partido Laborista in 1946, Peron stamped
on the possibility of any incipient political organisation of the workers, while
at the same time ratifying their union organisation - thus reinforcing the
fact that the political expression of the working class should pass through him.
This not only meant that the political reflection of the social and economic
gains of the workers should be embodied in himself, thus helping perpetuate
the paternalistic and personalistic nature of Peronism; it also meant that any
left, potentially radical elements within Peronism were largely restricted
from the beginning to the union field. This, of course, was only reinforced
after 1955 by the very nature of events — with the formal proscription of
political Peronism, the union sector became unquestioningly the dominant
part of the movement. What this implied for the mainstream element of the
union leadership in terms of the compromise forced on their political beliefs
has often been emphasised.46 Yet it also needs to be emphasised that it
profoundly affected the nature of the Peronist left.
The fact that left Peronism was centred on the trade unions and had firm
roots in the union rank and file was, of course, in one sense a great advantage.
It meant that the Peronist left, unlike the non-Peronist left, did not operate
in a vacuum cut off from its natural constituency and degenerate into the
ultra-left vanguardism of many left-wing sects. But it did have other effects.
One was that ' leftism', a seemingly radical political stance, could be seen
by some union leaders, particularly in times of economic crisis, as more a
response to a concrete union problem than a reflection of a coherent, indepen-
dent political viewpoint.47 To this, one should also add the fact that the left
Peronist trade unionist was also susceptible to the corrupting influence of
everyday compromises with employers and government. Indeed, a combina-

« Sec Roberto Carri, Sindicatos y Poder (Buenos Aires, Editorial Sudestada, 1967) and Miguel
Gazzera, Nosolros los dingcntcs, in Miguel Gazzera and Norbcrto Ceresole, Peronismo:
Autocritica y Perspectivas (Buenos Aires, Descartes, 1970).
47
E. J. Hobsbawm has emphasised the effect of the ' practicalities ' inherent in day to day
trade union practice on the ' spontaneous ' labour militant in Britain. ' Trends in the
British Labour Movement ', Labouring Men (London, 1964), pp. 339 et seq. There is also
much else of interest in the essay by comparison with the Argentina case. For example,
Hobsbawm's description of the political-union itinerary of Ernest Bevin is very relevant for
an understanding of the course taken by many former militant Peronist Labour leaders - in
term-i of the logic it represented, if not of the exact details of political allegiance.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 06 Apr 2015 IP address: 132.174.254.155

 The Peronist Left, 1955-1975 295

tion of these factors was at the root of the ' phenomenon of numerous duros,
leftists of yesteryear, becoming the traidores of today.
Moreover, even for the more consistent left the difficulties of leading a
coherent left from within a union structure became increasingly obvious
throughout the 1960s. It was dissatisfaction with what they saw as a left that
could never ultimately espouse more than a sort of militant sindicalism that
underlay the attempts of those like Cooke to rethink the needs and strategy
of the Peronist left. And it was a tension that existed increasingly within the
left and underlay the differences between Revolutionary Peronism and the
Combative Unions and also the JP and Montoneros.
Yet, having said this, it also needs to be said that the Peronist left of 1973-5
was a very different creature from that of a decade earlier, with far more
potential for separate development. The very nature of the context within
which the left has operated since 1973 has inevitably led to greater independent
development, on an organisational, practical level at least. The bypassing of
the Peron-anti-Peron dichotomy with the election victory of 1973, the grow-
ing disillusion with the post-1973 process, and, indeed, the fact of Peron's
death itself and the consequent de facto splitting of the movement have
radically altered the situation within which the Peronist left has had to work.
Indeed, it is scarcely realistic any longer to talk of the left Peronists as the
left wing of a single movement; rather there are now two Peronisms - a
right and a left.
An obvious illustration of the effect of this radically changed situation was
the fact that after Peron's death most sections of ' Left Peronism' were
overtly at war with his chosen successor. The capacity of the Montoneros to
function efficiently in their campaign against the government of Maria
Estella Peron was evident. Needless to say, it is impossible to assess at this
moment in time the extent to which they can continue to operate as efficiently
under the new military government. The JP's and JTP's continued effective-
ness in the new situation is, of course, even more problematic, given the
difficulties of illegality and repression, and it is certainly impossible to ascer-
tain from outside the country.
Nevertheless, for all its functional, organisational independence, I tJiink it
fair to say that there are clear indications that the nature of this left Peronism
will essentially be that of a revitalised version of a populist left with socialist
trimmings, rather than the development of a more coherent Marxist-oriented
left along the lines advocated by Revolutionary Peronism. The decision of the
Montoneros and JP to attack the government of Isabel Peron did not represent
a complete reappraisal of strategy. Indeed, it was never adequately explained
why a government they had supported two months earlier should suddenly

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 06 Apr 2015 IP address: 132.174.254.155

296 Daniel James

become so totally unacceptable. Except, of course, that it was no longer led by

Per6n himself. This was the crux of the matter for them. Peron had been the
guarantee of the anti-imperialist liberation project in spite of all their dis-
agreements with him. With his death, and the official inheritance in the
hands of the right, they saw their main task as the re-creation of Peron's
' strategic project', the anti-imperialist front as it had existed in 1973. Only
this time they would be better prepared militarily. In this, they coincided with
the mainstream ' combative' left — as witness of their joint support for
Peronismo AutSntico created in early 1975, which as its name implies, and
its leading figures personify, is essentially a reassertion of a traditional,' true '
Peronist essence/ 8 It would seem that the growing repression and, at best,
semi-clandestinity of much of the Peronist left has once again, as in the
1955—73 period, had the effect of freezing political development whilst
emphasising the urgency of a militant, and military, response to repression.
The direct take over of the government by the armed forces on March 24,
1976, can only reinforce this trend.

The list of main figures behind Peronismo Autentico reads like a Who's Who of the Peronist
left since 1955 ~ w ' t ' 1 t n e exception of the Revolutionary Peronism current. It also includes
many figures who have in the past been strongly criticised by the left. The movement was
officially proscribed in Jan. 1976.

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 06 Apr 2015 IP address: 132.174.254.155