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The People's Revolutionary Army ( es, Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo, abbreviated as ERP) was the military branch of the
communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, ...
Workers' Revolutionary Party (, PRT) in
Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest ...
.


History


Origins

The ERP was founded as the armed wing of the PRT, a
communist party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of '' The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engel ...
emerging from the
Trotskyist Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a ...
tradition, but soon turned to the
Maoist Maoism, officially called Mao Zedong Thought by the Chinese Communist Party, is a variety of Marxism–Leninism that Mao Zedong developed to realise a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of Ch ...
theory, especially the
Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, and lasting until his death in 1976. Its stated goa ...
. During the 1960s, the PRT adopted the '' foquista'' strategy of
guerilla warfare Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare in which small groups of combatants, such as paramilitary personnel, armed civilians, or irregulars, use military tactics including ambushes, sabotage, raids, petty warfare, hit-and-run tactic ...
associated with
Che Guevara Ernesto Che Guevara (; 14 June 1928The date of birth recorded on /upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Ernesto_Guevara_Acta_de_Nacimiento.jpg his birth certificatewas 14 June 1928, although one tertiary source, (Julia Constenla, quoted ...
, who had fought alongside
Fidel Castro Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (; ; 13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 20 ...
during the
Cuban Revolution The Cuban Revolution ( es, Revolución Cubana) was carried out after the 1952 Cuban coup d'état which placed Fulgencio Batista as head of state and the failed mass strike in opposition that followed. After failing to contest Batista in co ...
. The ERP launched its guerrilla campaign against the
Argentine military dictatorship The National Reorganization Process (Spanish: ''Proceso de Reorganización Nacional'', often simply ''el Proceso'', "the Process") was the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983, in which it was supported by the United Sta ...
headed by
Juan Carlos Onganía Juan Carlos Onganía Carballo (; 17 March 1914 – 8 June 1995) was President of Argentina from 29 June 1966 to 8 June 1970. He rose to power as dictator after toppling the president Arturo Illia in a coup d'état self-named ''Revolución Argen ...
in 1969, using targeted
urban guerrilla warfare An urban guerrilla is someone who fights a government using unconventional warfare or domestic terrorism in an urban environment. Theory and history The urban guerrilla phenomenon is essentially one of industrialised society, resting bot ...
methods such as assassinations and kidnappings of government officials and foreign company executives. For example, in 1973 Enrique Gorriarán Merlo and Benito Urteaga led the ERP kidnapping of
Esso Esso () is a trading name for ExxonMobil. Originally, the name was primarily used by its predecessor Standard Oil of New Jersey after the breakup of the original Standard Oil company in 1911. The company adopted the name "Esso" (the phonetic ...
executive Victor Samuelson and obtaining a ransom of $12 million. They also assaulted several companies' offices using heavily armed commandos of the ERP's elite "Special Squad". Although claim and counter-claim are invariably difficult to reconcile, figures released for an official publication, ''Crónica de la subversión en la Argentina'' (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Depalma) at least give an indication of the kind of guerrilla activity undertaken, with claims that the rural guerrillas occupied 52 towns, robbed 166 banks and took US$76 million in ransoms for the kidnappings of 185 people. The group continued the violent campaign even after democratic elections and the return to civilian rule in 1973, with
Juan Peron ''Juan'' is a given name, the Spanish and Manx versions of '' John''. It is very common in Spain and in other Spanish-speaking communities around the world and in the Philippines, and also (pronounced differently) in the Isle of Man. In Spanish, ...
's return. On 20 June 1973 the
Peronist Peronism, also called justicialism,. The Justicialist Party is the main Peronist party in Argentina, it derives its name from the concept of social justice., name=, group= is an Argentine political movement based on the ideas and legacy of A ...
movement split after the Ezeiza massacre, that started when Lieutenant-Colonel Jorge Osinde's crowd monitoring right-wing Peronist militia reported the arrival of heavily armed Montoneros in two buses the day that Peron returned from exile. Victor E. Samuelson, an
Exxon ExxonMobil Corporation (commonly shortened to Exxon) is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Irving, Texas. It is the largest direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, and was formed on November 3 ...
executive, was abducted on 6 December 1973 by the ERP. He was released after 144 days in captivity, after the Exxon Corporation paid a record ransom of $14.2 million. The avowed aim of the ERP was a
communist revolution A communist revolution is a proletarian revolution often, but not necessarily, inspired by the ideas of Marxism that aims to replace capitalism with communism. Depending on the type of government, socialism can be used as an intermediate stag ...
against the Argentine government in pursuit of " proletarian rule." The ERP publicly remained in the forefront. ERP guerrilla activity took the form of attacks on military outposts, police stations and convoys. In 1971, 57 policemen were killed fighting the left-wing guerrillas, and in 1972 another 38 policemen lost their lives in the guerrilla violence. On 28 December 1972, Marine Private Julio César Provenzano of the ERP, is killed when the bomb he planted in one of the lavatories of the Argentine Naval Headquarters went off prematurely. On 3 April 1973, ERP guerrillas kidnapped Rear-Admiral Francisco Agustín Alemán. In January 1974 the ERP ''Compañía Héroes de Trelew'', named in commemoration of the 1972 Massacre of Trelew, during which 16 left-wing guerrillas who had attempted to escape detention had been shot dead, attacked the barracks at Azul, killing the Commanding Officer (Colonel Camilo Arturo Gay) and his wife (Hilda Irma Casaux) and kidnapping and later executing Lieutenant-Colonel Jorge Ibarzábal, with Patricia Gay the daughter of Gay and Casaux later taking her own life. However, in August, an assault on the Argentine Army's Villa Maria explosives factory in Cordoba and the 17th Airborne Infantry Regiment at Catamarca by 70 ERP guerrillas dressed in army fatigues, met mixed fortune after killing and wounding eight policemen and soldiers but losing 16 guerrillas shot dead after they surrendered to 300 paratroopers of the 17th Airborne Infantry Regiment under Lieutenant-Colonel Eduardo Humberto Cubas. During the attack in Villa Maria was kidnapped Colonel Argentino del Valle Larraburu. On 23 October 1974, ERP guerrillas shot and killed Lieutenant-Colonel José Francisco Gardón as he was leaving the Buenos Aires hospital where he specialized in blood diseases. On 18 August 1975 Captain Miguel Alberto Keller, accompanied by an NCO and five conscripts were forced to stop their army lorry at what they believed to be a military checkpoint, and Keller was shot dead as he approached the ERP guerrillas waiting in ambush. In December 1975 a force of some 300 ERP guerrillas and supporting militants attacked the Monte Chingolo barracks outside Buenos Aires but lost 63 dead, many of whom were wounded in the attack and subsequently killed. In addition, seven army troops and three policemen were killed and 34 wounded (including 17 policemen). In all, 293 Argentine servicemen and police were killed fighting left-wing guerrillas between 1975 and 1976. In 1976 there had been plans to send a large part of the Uruguayan '' Tupamaros'' (MLN-T), the Chilean '' Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria'' (MIR) and the Bolivian '' National Liberation Army'' (ELN) to fight alongside the ERP and Montoneros in Argentina, but the plans failed to materialize largely due to the military coup.


Operations in Tucumán and Buenos Aires

After the return of
Juan Perón Juan Domingo Perón (, , ; 8 October 1895 – 1 July 1974) was an Argentine Army general and politician. After serving in several government positions, including Minister of Labour and Vice President of a military dictatorship, he was elected ...
to the presidency in 1973, the ERP shifted to a rural strategy designed to secure a large land area as a base of military operations against the Argentine state. The ERP leadership chose to send the ''Compania del Monte Ramón Rosa Jimenez'' (Ramón Rosa Jimenez Mountain Company) to the
province of Tucumán A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''Roman province, provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire ...
at the edge of the long-impoverished Andean highlands in the northwest corner of Argentina. Many of the officers in the rural ''guerrilleros'' company were trained in Cuba. In July 2008, Cuban leader Fidel Castro admitted that he supported the guerrilla forces in South America: ''"The only place where we didn't attempt to promote a revolution was in Mexico. Everywhere else, without exception, we tried"''. Politician Gustavo Breide Obeid, who fought as an army captain against ERP guerrillas in Tucumán Province, claimed in 2007 that mercenaries from Jordan, Nicaragua and Angola served in the 'Ramón Rosa Jimenez' Mountain Company. By December 1974, the guerrillas numbered about 100 fighters, with a 400-person support network from the Montoneros. Led by Mario Roberto Santucho, they soon established control over a third of the province and organized a base of some 2,500 sympathizers. Santucho's armed guerrillas in the northwestern province of Tucuman never exceeded 300 in the first year of the campaign. The growth in ERP strength in the northwest, together with an increase in urban violence carried out by the left-Peronist
Montoneros Montoneros ( es, link=no, Movimiento Peronista Montonero-MPM) was an Argentine left-wing Peronist guerrilla organization, active throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. The name is an allusion to the 19th-century cavalry militias called Montone ...
following Perón's death in 1974, led the government of
Isabel Perón Isabel Martínez de Perón (, born María Estela Martínez Cartas, 4 February 1931), also known as Isabelita, is an Argentine politician who served as President of Argentina from 1974 to 1976. She was one of the first female republican heads ...
to issue "annihilation decrees" and expand the military's powers to fight a
counter-insurgency Counterinsurgency (COIN) is "the totality of actions aimed at defeating irregular forces". The Oxford English Dictionary defines counterinsurgency as any "military or political action taken against the activities of guerrillas or revolutionar ...
campaign in February 1975. In all, 83 servicemen and policemen were killed in fighting the left-wing guerrillas, between 1973 and 1974. Some 3,500 soldiers of the 5th Mountain Infantry Brigade, and two companies of elite
commando Royal Marines from 40 Commando on patrol in the Sangin">40_Commando.html" ;"title="Royal Marines from 40 Commando">Royal Marines from 40 Commando on patrol in the Sangin area of Afghanistan are pictured A commando is a combatant, or operativ ...
s, placed under the command of Brigadier-General Acdel Vilas began immediately deploying in the Tucumán mountains in '' Operacion Independencia'', joined later by 1,500 more troops from the 4th Airborne Infantry Brigade and 8th Mountain Infantry Brigade. The pattern of the war was largely dictated by the nature of the terrain, the mountains, rivers and extensive jungle denying both sides easy movement. The A-4B Skyhawk fighters and B.62 Canberra bombers of the Argentine Air Force were used for offensive air support while the North American T-34 and
FMA IA 58 Pucará The FMA IA 58 Pucará ( qu, Fortress) is an Argentine ground-attack and counter-insurgency (COIN) aircraft manufactured by the Fábrica Militar de Aviones. It is a low-wing twin-turboprop all-metal monoplane with retractable landing gear, capa ...
served as a light ground-attack and reconnaissance aircraft. While fighting the guerrilla in the jungle and mountains, Vilas concentrated on uprooting the ERP support network in the towns, using
state terror State terrorism refers to acts of terrorism which a state conducts against another state or against its own citizens.Martin, 2006: p. 111. Definition There is neither an academic nor an international legal consensus regarding the proper de ...
tactics later adopted nationwide during the "
Dirty War The Dirty War ( es, Guerra sucia) is the name used by the military junta or civic-military dictatorship of Argentina ( es, dictadura cívico-militar de Argentina, links=no) for the period of state terrorism in Argentina from 1974 to 1983 a ...
", as well as a civic action campaign. By July, the Argentine Army commandos were mounting search-and-destroy missions. The Army special forces discovered Santucho's base camp in August, then raided the ERP urban headquarters in September. Most of the ''Compania del Monte's'' headquarters staff was killed in October and the remainder dispersed by the end of the year. While most of the leaders of the movement were killed outright, many of the captured ERP subalterns and sympathizers were incarcerated during the government of
Isabel Perón Isabel Martínez de Perón (, born María Estela Martínez Cartas, 4 February 1931), also known as Isabelita, is an Argentine politician who served as President of Argentina from 1974 to 1976. She was one of the first female republican heads ...
, but little mercy was shown to captured guerrillas and civilian collaborators during the military dictatorship. In May 1975, ERP representative Amilcar Santucho was captured trying to cross into
Paraguay Paraguay (; ), officially the Republic of Paraguay ( es, República del Paraguay, links=no; gn, Tavakuairetã Paraguái, links=si), is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to t ...
to promote the JCR unity effort. As a way to save himself, he provided information about the organization to Secretaría de Inteligencia (SIDE) agents that enabled Argentine security agencies to destroy what was left of the ERP, although pockets of ERP guerrillas continued to operate in the heavily wooded Tucuman mountains for many months. The case, during which an FBI official transmitted information obtained from the prisoners (Amilcar was detained along with a
MIR ''Mir'' (russian: Мир, ; ) was a space station that operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, operated by the Soviet Union and later by Russia. ''Mir'' was the first modular space station and was assembled in orbit from 1986 to&n ...
member) to the Chilean
DINA Dina ( ar, دينا, he, דִּינָה, also spelled Dinah, Dena, Deena) is a female given name. Women * Dina bint Abdul-Hamid (1929–2019), Queen consort of Jordan, first wife of King Hussein * Princess Dina Mired of Jordan (born 1965), Princ ...
, was one practical operation of
Operation Condor Operation Condor ( es, link=no, Operación Cóndor, also known as ''Plan Cóndor''; pt, Operação Condor) was a United States–backed campaign of political repression and state terror involving intelligence operations and assassination of op ...
, which had started in 1973 Meanwhile, the guerrilla movement switched its main effort to the north and on 5 October 1975 guerrillas struck the 29th Mountain Infantry Regiment. The 5th Brigade suffered a major blow at the hands of ''Montoneros'', when over one-hundred—perhaps several hundred—Montoneros guerrillas and ''milicianos'' (militants) were involved in the planning and execution of the most elaborate Montoneros operation in the so-called "Dirty War", which involved the hijacking of a civilian airliner, taking over the provincial airport, attacking the 29th Infantry Regiment's barracks at
Formosa province Formosa Province () is a province in northeastern Argentina, part of the Gran Chaco Region. Formosa's northeast end touches Asunción, Paraguay, and the province borders the provinces of Chaco and Salta to its south and west, respectively. Th ...
and capturing its cache of arms, and finally escaping by air. Once the operation was over, they made good their escape towards a remote area in
Santa Fe province The Province of Santa Fe ( es, Provincia de Santa Fe, ) is a province of Argentina, located in the center-east of the country. Neighboring provinces are from the north clockwise Chaco (divided by the 28th parallel south), Corrientes, Entre R� ...
. The aircraft, a
Boeing 737 The Boeing 737 is a narrow-body aircraft produced by Boeing at its Renton Factory in Washington. Developed to supplement the Boeing 727 on short and thin routes, the twinjet retains the 707 fuselage width and six abreast seating with two u ...
, eventually landed on a crop field not far from the city of Rafaela. In the aftermath, 12 soldiers and 2 policemen were killed and several wounded. The sophistication of the operation, and the getaway cars and safehouses they used to escape from the crash-landing site, suggest several hundred guerrillas and their civilian supporters were involved. In December 1975 most 5th Brigade units were committed to the border areas of Tucumán with over 5,000 troops deployed in the province. There was however, nothing to prevent infiltrating through this outer ring and the ERP were still strong inside Buenos Aires. Mario Santucho's Christmas offensive opened on 23 December 1975. The operation was dramatic in its impact, with ERP units, supported by ''Montoneros'', mounting a large scale assault against the army supply base ''Domingo Viejobueno'' at the industrial suburb of Monte Chingolo, south of Buenos Aires. The attackers were defeated and driven off with 53 ERP guerrillas and 9 supporting militants killed. Seven army troops and three policemen were reported killed. In this particular battle the ERP and supporting Montoneros militants had about 1,000 deployed against 1,000 government forces. This large-scale operation was made possible not only by the planning of the guerrillas involved, but also by their supporters who provided houses to hide them, supplies and the means of escape. On 30 December a bomb exploded at the headquarters of the Argentine Army in Buenos Aires, injuring at least six soldiers. In the eyes of the military, the credibility of the government was now destroyed and the strategy of attrition was bankrupt. The guerrillas had even successfully utilized divers of the Grupo Especial de Combate of the Montoneros: the modern
type 42 destroyer The Type 42 or ''Sheffield'' class, was a class of fourteen guided-missile destroyers that served in the Royal Navy.Marriott, Leo: ''Royal Navy Destroyers since 1945'', , Ian Allan Ltd, 1989 A further two ships of this class were built for and ...
was severely damaged by explosives placed under her keel by frogmen of the
Montoneros Montoneros ( es, link=no, Movimiento Peronista Montonero-MPM) was an Argentine left-wing Peronist guerrilla organization, active throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. The name is an allusion to the 19th-century cavalry militias called Montone ...
on 22 August 1975 while moored in the port of Ensenada. The damage was so great that the ship remained unseaworthy for several years. By the end of 1975, a total of 137 servicemen and police had been killed that year by left wing guerrillas. Elements within the armed forces, particularly among the junior officers, blamed the weakness of the government and began to seek a leader who they considered was strong enough to ensure a preservation of Argentinian sovereignty, settling on Lieutenant-General Jorge Videla. On 11 February 1976, colonel Raúl Rafael Reyes, the commander of the 601st Air Defence Artillery Group, was killed and two army conscripts (Privates Tempone and Gómez) wounded in an ambush by six ERP guerrillas in the La Plata suburb of Buenos Aires. The Argentine armed forces moved ahead with the "
Dirty War The Dirty War ( es, Guerra sucia) is the name used by the military junta or civic-military dictatorship of Argentina ( es, dictadura cívico-militar de Argentina, links=no) for the period of state terrorism in Argentina from 1974 to 1983 a ...
", dispensing with the civilian government through a
coup d'état A coup d'état (; French for 'stroke of state'), also known as a coup or overthrow, is a seizure and removal of a government and its powers. Typically, it is an illegal seizure of power by a political faction, politician, cult, rebel group, m ...
in March 1976. In his editorial immediately after the military takeover, Santucho wrote that ''"a river of blood will separate the military from the Argentine people"'', and this would result in a popular uprising followed by a civil war.Political Violence and Trauma in Argentina, Antonius C. G. M. Robben, Page 201, University of Pennsylvania Press (25 January 2005) On 29 March 1976, the ERP leadership lost twelve killed in a gun battle in downtown Buenos Aires with army elements (including the ERP Chief of Intelligence) but Santucho along with fifty guerrillas were able to fight their way out of the ambush. The Argentine Army and police scored more success in mid-April in Córdoba, when in a series of raids it captured and later killed some 300 militants entrusted with supporting the ERP operations in that province. During the first few months of the military junta, more than 70 policemen were killed in leftist actions In mid-1976, the Argentine Army completely destroyed the ERP's elite "Special Squad" in two violent firefights. The ERP's commander, Mario Roberto Santucho, and Benito Urteaga were killed in July of that year by military forces led by captain Juan Carlos Leonetti of the 601st Intelligence Battalion. Several hundred guerrillas of the Guevarist Youth Group in training for operations to coincide with the 1978 World Cup in Argentina, were captured and killed in a series of raids in Zárate soon afterwards. Although the ERP continued for a while under the leadership of Enrique Gorriarán Merlo, by late 1977 the guerrilla threat had been eradicated or gone underground. In 2008, the PRT-ERP reported the loss of 5,000 of its members killed in action or having disappeared after being detained. By that time the
military dictatorship A military dictatorship is a dictatorship in which the military exerts complete or substantial control over political authority, and the dictator is often a high-ranked military officer. The reverse situation is to have civilian control of the ...
had expanded its own campaign against "subversives" to include
state terror State terrorism refers to acts of terrorism which a state conducts against another state or against its own citizens.Martin, 2006: p. 111. Definition There is neither an academic nor an international legal consensus regarding the proper de ...
against active civilian collaborators, non-violent students, intellectuals, and political activists who were presumed to form the social, non-combatant base of the insurgents. According to different sources, 12,261 to 30,000 people, are estimated to have disappeared and died during the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. Admittedly there were 12,000 disappeared in the form of PEN detainees that survived the dictatorship, thanks to international pressure to release them from the clandestine detention camps. Some 11,000 Argentines have applied for and received up to US$200,000 each as monetary compensation for the loss of loved ones during the military dictatorship. The PRT continued political activities, although limited to few members, organizing conventions even after democracy returned to the country. In December 2015, Professor Gustavo Morello (SJ) in his book ''The Catholic Church and Argentina's Dirty War'' (Oxford University Press, 2015) concluded that during the "Dirty War" in Argentina "15,000 people were killed, 8,000 were jailed and some 6,000 were exiled."


Aftermath

After the destruction of the left-wing in Argentina, some revolutionary cadres made their way to Nicaragua, where the
Sandinista The Sandinista National Liberation Front ( es, Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, FSLN) is a socialist political party in Nicaragua. Its members are called Sandinistas () in both English and Spanish. The party is named after Augusto C� ...
s had taken power in 1979. An ERP commando team comprising veterans of the "Dirty War" under Gorriarán Merlo, for example, demonstrated their active involvement in the revolutionary struggle by killing ex-dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1980. Gorriarán returned to Argentina in 1987 to become a leader of the ''
Movimiento Todos por la Patria The Movimiento Todos por la Patria (MTP) was an Argentine guerrilla movement active from 1986 to 1989, whose leader was Enrique Gorriarán Merlo. He was responsible for carrying out the 1989 attack on La Tablada Army Regiment. Background By the ...
'' (All For the Motherland Movement or MTP). Claiming another military coup by the ''
Carapintadas The ' ( en, Painted Faces) were a group of mutineers in the Argentine Army, who took part in various uprisings between 1987 and 1990 during the presidencies of Raúl Alfonsín and Carlos Menem in Argentina. The rebellions, while at first thought ...
'' was imminent against the new democratic government of Raúl Alfonsín (which at the time was leading a series of trials against members of the Argentine Military accused of
human rights Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of hu ...
violations), Enrique Gorriarán Merlo led the
1989 attack on La Tablada Regiment The 1989 attack on La Tablada barracks was an assault on the military barracks located in La Tablada, in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, by 40 members of ''Movimiento Todos por la Patria'' (MTP), commanded by former ERP leader Enrique Go ...
, during which the Argentine army used white phosphorus as an anti-personnel weapon,'' El Clarín''
El ataque a La Tablada, la última aventura de la guerrilla argentina
23 January 2004
and in which the guerrillas used captured army conscripts as 'shields' and ended in the capture of the surviving MTP members. Alfonsín countered the claim that the MTP were trying to forestall a military coup and declared that the attack had the ultimate goal of sparking a massive popular uprising, that could have led to civil war. In their newspapers and in the Argentine press, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo denounced the way Alfonsín had handled the La Tablada incident, making a connection between what had happened to their disappeared children and the treatment endured by the MTP guerrillas. Gorriarán was given a life sentence along with other MTP comrades, but was freed by interim president Eduardo Duhalde two days before
Néstor Kirchner Néstor Carlos Kirchner (; 25 February 195027 October 2010) was an Argentine lawyer and politician who served as the President of Argentina from 2003 to 2007, Governor of Santa Cruz Province from 1991 to 2003, Secretary General of UNASUR and ...
's access to power in 2003. In protest to Duhalde's decision, former Lieutenant-Colonel Emilio Guillermo Nani who took part in the fighting to recover the La Tablada barracks and lost an eye as a consequence, formally announced that he would be returning the medal for wounded military personnel that he won during the administration of Argentine president Raúl Alfonsín. The MTP still exist today as a political movement which has abandoned
armed struggle War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...
. In January 2016 for the first time in decades, Mauricio Macri (the previous president of Argentina) through the new Human Rights Secretary Claudio Avruj, granted an audience to CELTYV (Centre for Legal Studies on Terrorism and its Victims) representing the victims of left-wing terrorism in Argentina in a move that drew strong condemnation from Estela Barnes de Carlotto, head of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo.


See also

*
Dirty War The Dirty War ( es, Guerra sucia) is the name used by the military junta or civic-military dictatorship of Argentina ( es, dictadura cívico-militar de Argentina, links=no) for the period of state terrorism in Argentina from 1974 to 1983 a ...
*
Montoneros Montoneros ( es, link=no, Movimiento Peronista Montonero-MPM) was an Argentine left-wing Peronist guerrilla organization, active throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. The name is an allusion to the 19th-century cavalry militias called Montone ...
* ''
Nicaragua Betrayed ''Nicaragua Betrayed'', published by Western Islands in 1980, is the memoir of former President of Nicaragua Anastasio Somoza Debayle (as told to Jack Cox), who had been toppled the previous year by the Sandinista insurgency. At the time of the ...
'' * Raúl Argemí


References

{{reflist


Bibliography

* ''Guerrillas and Generals: The Dirty War in Argentina'', by Paul H. Lewis (2001). * ''Nosotros Los Santucho'', by Blanca Rina Santucho (1997, in Spanish). * ''Argentina's Lost Patrol : Armed Struggle, 1969-1979'', by Maria Moyano (1995). * ''Argentina, 1943-1987: The National Revolution and Resistance'', by Donald C. Hodges (1988). * ''Monte Chingolo, la mayor batalla de la guerrilla argentina'', by Gustavo Plis-Sterenberg (2003). Defunct communist militant groups Guerrilla movements in Latin America History of Argentina (1955–1973) History of Argentina (1973–1976) Dirty War Trotskyist organisations in Argentina Military wings of socialist parties Terrorism in Argentina Paramilitary organisations based in Argentina