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The Peronist Left, 1955-1975Author(s): Daniel JamesSource: Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2, (Nov., 1976), pp. 273-296Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/156528Accessed: 01/06/2008 16:05

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J. Lat. Amer. Stud. 8, 2, 273-296 Printed in Great Britain 273

The Peronist Left, 1955-I975

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 the framework of the development of the 'Peronist Left' since the fall of Peron in I955. Obviously the 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 the Peronist movement. In particular, the article concentrates on an analysis of the political ideology of the different currents that have made up the ' Peronist Left' since i955, whilst recognizing that this ideology must ultima- tely be seen in the far wider context of the social and economic development of Argentine society. The first part will highlight the main features of this Left in the I955-73 period and analyze the main currents within it. In the second part of the paper the events of the last two to three years will be looked at within this context.

I955-I973 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 within Peronism as a 'reflex' action, when there was a growing acceptance by other sectors of the movement of a modus vivendi with a system that excluded Peronism from political power and which continually attacked the gains of the working class. A 'left' emerged within this context as the defender of the working class, anti-capitalist strain of Peronism, looking back to the euphoria of October 1945 and the organiza- tion and advances of the working class in the first Peronist government rather than to the Per6n of I954-5. It drew constantly on the moral capital, the symbolism of the years of the Resistance,1 its arrests, its martyrs, the 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. The Resistance is the name generally given by Peronists to the opposition to the military government that followed the overthrow of Peron in I955. The forms of resistance varied,

274 Daniel James

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 1959-6o with the growing agreement with Frondizi, and the attraction of integracionismo 2 for large sectors of the movement there was the development of the linea dura 3 centred on the militant trade unions who demanded absolute intransigence vis-a-vis

Frondizi, no participation in elections, and no compromise on the labour front. Again in 1965-6, with the consolidation of the growing vandorista 4

domination of Peronism and the threat 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 Peron 5 to oppose the domination of Vandor. In I968-9, 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 miodus 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 Integracionisnmo 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 Peron. 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. 3 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, Andr6s Framini. 4 Augusto Vandor was the leader of the Metalworkers Union and the dominant Peronist

union figure throughout the I96os. His growing power and his contacts and negotiations with governments and army were considered a real threat to Per6n's control of his move- ment. He was killed in July I969.

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 I965, those unions loyal to him set up a rival organisation 62 de pie junto a Peron, leaving the original set-up in Vandor's hands. It was an extremely heterogeneous organisation with little other than loyalty to Peron and opposition to Vandor to sustain it. It took in the extreme right of Peronist unionism, led by Jose 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

The Peronist Left, I955-I975 275

capitulation of an important sector of the union leadership into participation with the government of General Ongania, the Left once more came into

prominence to lead a separate union central, the Confederacion 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 Per6n and his tactical manoeuvrings. The Left in this period usually appeared in the space provided for it by Per6n's decision to move

against a dominant current that was threatening his control of the movement - it was traditionally Per6n's weapon against potential usurpers. It was, therefore, in general, as strong and clearly defined as Per6n needed and wanted it to be, and when there was relative harmony between the leadership in

Argentina and Per6n 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 Per6n and his orders. As their chief slogan said, Peron 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-Per6n 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 I955 to 1973, Argentina experienced military rule, i955- 8, indirect military rule, 1962-3, and direct intervention again, I966-73; military interventions in the first period to overthrow Per6n 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.

276 Daniel James

tion and repression of Peronist militants. Peronism, then, was truly the hecho maldito of the Argentine ruling class. The resistance and repression that followed I955 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 Per6n-anti-Per6n 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 distinctiveness since I955 - 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 Per6n. 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 Cant6n 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.6 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, 1966 8 and that issued by the CGT de los

Argentinos in I968 differed little in content. In the last years of the military

6 Dario Canton, Elecciones y partidos politicos en la Argentina (Buenos Aires, Siglo Veintiuno,

I973), P- 237. 7 For a full statement of the programme of Huerto Grande and for much else of interest on

left Peronism see 'Peronism: El Exilio (1955-1973)', Cuadernos de Marcha, No. 71, Montevideo, I973.

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.

The Peronist Left, I955-I975 277

government the Left started to define such programmes as being blueprints for Socialismo Nacional.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 Per6n. 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 I973 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 nacional represents for the Peronist left an adaptation of the international principles of socialism to the national peculiarities of Argentina. It has an evident connection with Peron'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

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 i96os, 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 I96os, 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 i965-6 and formed the rival 62 Organizaciones de Pie junto a Peron, they again who responded to Per6n's move against the participationists in 1968 and went into the CGT de los Argentinos and who followed Peron's instructions to retire from that body in 1969 and unify the movement.ll When the CGT was handed back to an alliance of Vandor's heirs and participationists in 1970, the Combative Unions

respected Per6n'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 Per6n with the solution to the economic and social

problems of the working class, they had the least problems in adapting to the successive changes of direction forced on them by Per6n's decision to accept the electoral opening offered by President Lanusse in 1972.

Despite the fact that they, like other sectors of the Left, had originally denounced the Gran Acuerdo, Nacional 12 of Lanusse as 'just another trick ',

by late I97I Julio Guillan, the leader of the Telephone Workers, was justify- ing participation by combativos in the electoral front by saying 'Per6n has

10 Combativos was the name given to those unions who consistently opposed the mili-

tary governments between I966 and I973. 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 bolrne 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.

12 The Gran Acuerdo Nacional 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 I973.

The Peronist Left, I955-1975 279

convoked this National Liberation Front in which we the Peronist workers have to fight for the triumph of the ideas of socialismo nacional '.1

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 Per6n 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 '.4

After this limited objective had been achieved, unity with the Right, the trade union bureaucracy, would be discarded and the path of socialismo nacional embarked on. The implementation of the programe of socialismo nacional was premised entirely on 'the fundamental condition which cannot be renounced: the return of Juan Domingo Peron .15

Revolutionary Peronism This tendency largely took its inspiration from John William Cooke who

had been Per6n's chief representative in Argentina in the 1955-9 period. 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 16 -- the substituting of hard concrete analysis by what he called ' tribal fanaticisms '.1 In 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 I972. 14 Quoted in Avanzada Socialista, I March 1972. 15 El programa de los gremios combativos, Jan. 1972. See El Combativo, No. I, Nov. I972. 16 Peron-Cooke Correspondencia, In (Buenos Aires, June 1973), I89. Cooke himself had been

P6ron's chief personal representative in Argentina from 1956 until I959, after which he lived in exile from Argentina, spending much of the early i96os in Cuba, where he fought in the Cuban militia at the Bay of Pigs. He returned to Argentina in the mid-I96os and died in I968. His correspondence with Peron is an invaluable source for any study of post-I955 Peronism, though it also accurately charts the growing isolation of the extreme left of the movement from the early I96os onwards. Per6n's letters become increasingly less informative as Cooke moves further to the left.

17 Ibid., p. I89.

280 Daniel James

justice but this is pure rhetoric if it is not translated into concrete strategic proposals.18

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 traidores and leales and to recognise that the roots of the bureau-

cracy lay in the very nature of Peronism as a polyclass 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 I966, 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.1'

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 '.0 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 Peron- anti-Per6n were manifestations of the 'irreducible incompatibility between the regime and Peronism '.2 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. I90. 19 See Cristianismo y Revolucion (Buenos Aires, Nos. 2-3, Oct.-Nov. I966), pp. 14-15. Also to

be found in Cuadernos de Marcha, loc. cit., pp. I8-20. 20 See letter of Cooke's A los companeros revolucionarios de la carne, Agrupacion 'Blanca y

Negra ' de Rosario (I965), in mimeo. Pamphlet in the author's files. 21 Cristianismo y Revolucion, loc. cit., p. I5.

The Peronist Left, 1955-1975 28I

Peronism constructed as a revolutionary party was guerrilla warfare -

focismo.22

Revolutionary Peronism remained throughout the g960s 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 23 of I969 and the radicalisation process of the early I970S, 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 I97I when, at the Plenario of

Combative Unions and Groups held in Cordoba, Peronismo de Base sided

with the clasista 24 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 Per6n.

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

22 The influence of Cooke'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 Peron-Cooke Correspondencia, II, 372-3. It would appear that contact between Cuba and the extreme left of Peronism continued throughout the I96os and that the Cubans provided training for some of the guerrilla groups that sprang up in the early I970s.

23 The Cordobazo refers to the general strike and near insurrection in the city of C6rdoba in

I969. 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 C6rdoba.

25 Interview with Raimundo Ongaro, Extra, Feb. 1970, No. 55. Ongaro was the leader of the Buenos Aires printworkers and head of the CGT de los Argentinos. Although not strictly within the Revolutionary Peronist current, he was far closer to them than to tihe conbati-

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 the revolutionary party which would lead this armed struggle had to be prepared in the bases of the 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 the structure of Peronism institutionally were useless since in the 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 I969, there was a rapid influx of new recruits into the different youth and student organizations of Peronism. In fact, many were created for the 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 I972, there was really little co-ordination between them. At about the same time the Juventud Universitaria Peronist was created. The largest group prior to 1972 - based almost entirely on the uni- versities - was the Juventud Argentina por la Emancipacion Nacional. The leader of JAEN, Rodolfo Galimberti, was to become the leader of the united JP in 1972, the feted guest of Per6n in Madrid and the bete noire of the anti- Peronist forces in the lead-up to the elections of March 1973. It was, in fact, the JP who created most of the mobilisation in the 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 i96os several bands had tried to secure a base in the far north of the country. With the general radicalisation process of the late I96os, a whole new impetus was given to the 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.2 The most

vos as witness his continued mobilization of his union on wage issues during tIe 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.

25 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-9I60s and moved towards Peronism. The FAP were very closely tied to Revolutionary Peronism and can basically be considered as the armed expression of Peronismo de 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.

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 JP and the Montoneros in the pre-I973 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 Per6n 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 Per6n and Nasser, they in fact ignored the really significant aspects of his thought and took merely his tactical conclusions as their guidelines - his focismo. As one of their number has since written: 'the reality of a dictatorship against which a response was desperately sought facilitated the development of focista conceptions '.7 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 Per6n called trasvasamiento

generacional.28 Taking Per6n'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 Per6n once it had served

27 En lucha, Organo del Movimiento Revolucionario 17 de Octubre, No. 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.

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 IP. This not only involved the assumption that their

political and social goals were those of Peron; it also on the practical level involved the ignoring of the Peronist working class. Whereas for all their tactical focismo, 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 JP the working class remained a rhetorical expression. Once the bureaucratic caste was discarded, the 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. Per6n 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 I973 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-

The Peronist Left, I955-1975 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 neither 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.29 Per6n, 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 Per6n'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 Peron - the creation of a socialist Argentina.

I973-I975

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 I973. The massacre at Ezeiza Airport. A massive crowd, gathered to welcome Per6n 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.' 3

(ii) July I973. Any doubts as to whom Per6n considered the infiltrados who had taken over the movement were soon dispelled. After repeated press

29 See, for instance, the letters exchanged between Per6n and the montoneros after they had killed Aramburu in Feb. I97I, published in La Causa Peronista, No. 9, 3 Sept. I974. In reply to their affirmation that the electoral struggle could be no more than a tactic to harass the enemy, Peron stated, ' Concerning the electoral option, I don't believe in it either '.

30 Most observers of the Peronist election campaign of March i973 commented on the weight and importance of the youth sectors of the movement in mobilising support for Hector

Csmpora. 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.

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 Per6n's wife, Maria Estella, 'Isabelita', was announced. The JP had supported Campora for this position.

(iii) August 1973. Per6n 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 Per6n, it called for 'ideological purification against marxist infiltration'."

(v) January 1974. Per6n 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 Ejercito 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. Per6n in a speech immediately after the attack implied that Bidegain was

partly responsible. He was replaced by Victorio Calabr6, a leading figure in the trade union bureaucracy.

(vii) March I974. Police rebelled against the left Peronist governor and

vice-governor of C6rdoba, Obregon Cano and Attilio Lopez. Peron con- firmed the action and blamed the Left for troubles in the province.

(viii) May I974. At a May Day rally in the Plaza de Mayo, Per6n, angered

32 Despite the Peronist left's claim that the handing over of the presidency to Peron 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 I973), 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 Peron.

33 For the full text, see La Opinion, 2 Oct. 1973. 34 ERP, Ejercito 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.

The Peronist Left, I955-I975 287

at the IP 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 I974. 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 I974. The Montoneros announced a total break with the

government and resumed guerrilla activities.

(xi) November I974. 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 the 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 the 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 Per6n, 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 they had spent their lives fighting.

In addition to obeying Per6n, there was, of course, the additional factor that 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.

288 Daniel James

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 denouenent when it came.

They considered it vital to use the breathing space given by Per6n 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 Per6n. After the forced

resignation of Obreg6n Cano from C6rdoba, Peronismo de Base issued a

statement criticising those behind the action, including Per6n:

It is not a case of General Per6n being hemmed in or prevented from doing what he would really like, here it is simply a case that we are seeing that Per6n 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 I974, 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 II 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.36

35 El Mundo, 3 March, I974. 36 En Lucha, No. i6, June 1974.

The Peronist Left, I955-I975 289

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 co.herent analysis. However, it can be shown that there was a certain rationale behind their actions since I973. The best

way to approach this is to analyse briefly the changes in their political thought since I973 as they appeared in a talk given by a leader of the Montoneros to cadres of the /P,37 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. Per6n 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 Per6n 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 Peron 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 '3 with the main enemy "' The talk, given by Mario Firmenich, and transcribed, is in mimeo form. 38 Ibid., p. I7. 39 Ibid., p. I6. The whole document is extremely interesting as an example of the militariza-

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 Mo,ntoneros and JP would enter, from the left. Per6n, 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."1

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., the unquestioning respect for the orders issuing from Per6n 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 Per6n'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 Clause- witz: ' Nobody can have a political ambition that is greater than their military power'.

40 Ibid., p. x8.

The Peronist Left, I955-1975 29I

relationship. It found itself, for example, in the position of admitting that the Social Pact, signed by employers and unions in I973 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 I973-5 period.

First, they underestimated the strength of the union bureaucracy. While

they had to recognise its logistical strength, its powerful apparatus, they still had no real analysis of its ideological or political basis. It was still for them 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 Peron

41 La Justa, Organo de la juventud 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. I973. 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 I973. In Firmenich's talk op. cit. he denounces the infantilism of this analysis, but as late as April I974 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 nacional 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 Per6n 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! ' El Descamisado, No. 39, 12 Feb. I974. 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 Per6n's tactics, they must always accept them since at the end of the day Aqui manda Peron, El Descamisado, No. 26, 13 Nov. I973.

292 Daniel James

backed this bureaucracy because it was easier to control than the IP and Montoneros. That Per6n 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 Per6n 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 JP'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 I955-62 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 i96os - 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 Ig70s 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.

45 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. 2I.

The Peronist Left, 1955-1975 293

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 I955-73 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-Per6n 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 Per6n 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 I955-73, 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

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, Per6n 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-

46 See Roberto Carri, Sindicatos y Poder (Buenos Aires, Editorial Sudestada, 1967) and Miguel Gazzera, Nosotros los dirigentes, in Miguel Gazzera and Norberto Ceresole, Peronismo: Autocritica y Perspectivas (Buenos Aires, Descartes, I970).

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 termn of the logic it represented, if not of the exact details of political allegiance.

The Peronist Left, I955-I975 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 I96os. 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 I973-5 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 I973 has inevitably led to greater independent development, on an organisational, practical level at least. The bypassing of the Per6n-anti-Peron dichotomy with the election victory of I973, the grow- ing disillusion with the post-I973 process, and, indeed, the fact of Per6n'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 Per6n'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 think 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 Per6n 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

296 Daniel James

become so totally unacceptable. Except, of course, that it was no longer led by Peron himself. This was the crux of the matter for them. Per6n 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 I973. 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 Autentico created in early 1975, which as its name implies, and

its leading figures personify, is essentially a reassertion of a traditional,' true Peronist essence.48 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,

I976, can only reinforce this trend.

48 The list of main figures behind Peronismno Autentico reads like a Who's Who of the Peronist left since 1955 - with the 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.