People's Revolutionary Army (Argentina)
Encyclopedia
The Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP) was the military branch of the communist Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores
(PRT) in Argentina
. The name means "People's Revolutionary Army".
The ERP was founded as the armed wing of the PRT, a communist party
emerging from the Trotskyist tradition, but soon turned to the Maoist theory, especially the Cultural Revolution
. During the 1960s, the PRT adopted the foquista
strategy of insurgency
associated with Che Guevara
, who had fought alongside Fidel Castro
during the Cuban Revolution
.
The ERP launched its guerrilla campaign against the Argentine military dictatorship
headed by Juan Carlos Onganía
in 1969, using targeted urban guerrilla warfare
methods such as assassinations and kidnappings of government officials and foreign company executives. For example, in 1974 Enrique Gorriarán Merlo
and Benito Urteaga led the ERP kidnapping of Esso executive Víctor Samuelsson and obtaining a ransom of $12 million . However most kidnappings ended in the death of the hostage, especially when not a person of particular importance . 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 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
's return. On June 20, 1973 the Peronist movement split after the Ezeiza massacre, perpetrated by far-right Peronists the day of Peron's return from exile. Victor E. Samuelson, an Exxon executive, was abducted on 6 December, 1973 by the ERP. He was released after 49 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
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, and in 1972 another 38 policemen were gunned down.
In January 1974 the ERP Compañía Héroes de Trelew, named in commemoration of the 1972 Massacre of Trelew, during which 16 political prisoners who had attempted to escape had been mowed down, attacked the barracks at Azul, which resulted in the death of the Commanding Officer and his wife and the capture of a lieutenant-colonel. The trick did not work twice: in August an assault on the Argentine Army's Villa Maria explosives factory in Cordoba and 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 and they lost 16 men who were shot after they surrendered to 300 paratroopers of the 17th Airborne Infantry Regiment under Lieutenant-Colonel Eduardo Humberto Cubas. 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. In all, 293 Argentine servicemen and police were killed fighting guerrillas between 1975 and 1976.
In 1976 there had been plans to send great 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.
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 Compania del Monte Ramón Rosa Jimenez to the province of Tucumán at the edge of the long-impoverished Andean highlands in the northwest corner of Argentina. Some guerrilleros were trained in Cuba. By December 1974, the guerrillas numbered about 100 fighters, with a 400 person support network . 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 forces 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 in increasing urban violence carried out by the left-Peronist Montoneros
following Perón's death in 1974, led the government of Isabel de Perón to issue the "annihilation decrees" and expand the military's powers to fight a counter-insurgency
campaign in February 1975. In all, 83 servicemen and policemen were killed in fighting the guerrillas, between 1973 and 1974.
Some 3,500 soldiers and two companies of elite commando
s under Brigadier-General Acdel Vilas began immediately deploying in the Tucuman mountains in Operacion Independencia, joined later by 1,500 more troops from the Fourth Airborne Infantry Brigade and Eighth 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 and the F-86F Sabre were used for offensive air support while the North American T-34 and FMA IA-58 Pucara served as light ground-attack aircraft. While fighting the guerrilla in the jungle and mountains, Vilas concentrated on uprooting the ERP support network in the towns, using state terror tactics later adopted nation-wide during the "Dirty War
", as well as a civic action campaign. By July, the commandos were mounting search-and-destroy missions. Army forces discovered Santucho's base camp in August, then raided the ERP urban headquarters in September. Most of the Compania del Monte's general staff was killed in October and was dispersed by the end of the year. While most of the leaders of the movement were killed, many of the ERP soldiers and sympathizers were incarcerated during the government of Isabel Martínez de Perón
.
In May 1975, ERP representative Amilcar Santucho was captured trying to cross into Paraguay
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 infest 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
member) to the Chilean DINA, was one practical operation of Operation Condor
, 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 where involved in the most elaborate 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
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 aircraft, a Boeing 737
, eventually landed on a crop field not far from the city of Rafaela
. In the aftermath, 12 soldiers and 2 policemenwere 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 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. The In this particular battle the ERP and Montoneros guerrillas and milicianos 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.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
A.R.A. Santisima Trinidad was severely damaged by explosives placed under her keel by frogmen of the Montoneros
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.
The Argentine armed forces moved ahead with the "Dirty War
", dispensing with the civilian government through a coup d'état
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.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 actionsIn 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 it had been eradicated. In 2008 PRT-Santucho estimated the loss of 5,000 of PRT-ERP members killed in action or disappeared after having been detained. By that time the military dictatorship
had expanded its own campaign against "subversives" to include state terror against 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. Some 11,000 Argentines have applied for and received up to US$200,000 as monetary compensation for the loss of loved ones during the military dictatorship.According to The Wall Street Journal, some 13,000 Argentines were victims of left-wing terrorism.
The PRT continued political activities, although limited to few members, organizing conventions even after democracy returned to the country.
in 1980. Gorriarán returned to Argentina in 1987 to became a leader of the Movimiento Todos por la Patria (All For the Motherland Movement or MTP).
Believing in the danger of another military coup by the Carapintadas
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
violations), Enrique Gorriarán Merlo led the 1989 attack on La Tablada Regiment
, during which the Argentine army used white phosphorus
as an anti-personnel weapon, and which ended in the capture of all MTP members. Alfonsín declared that the attack, with the ultimate goal of sparking a massive popular uprising, 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 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
's access to power in 2003. The MTP still exist today as a political movement which has abandoned armed struggle.
Workers Revolutionary Party (Argentina)
The Workers' Revolutionary Party is a Trotskyist political party of Argentina, mainly active in the 1960s and 1970s....
(PRT) in Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
. The name means "People's Revolutionary Army".
Origins
Communist party
A political party described as a Communist party includes those that advocate the application of the social principles of communism through a communist form of government...
emerging from the Trotskyist tradition, but soon turned to the Maoist theory, especially the Cultural Revolution
Cultural Revolution
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution , was a socio-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976...
. During the 1960s, the PRT adopted the foquista
Foco
The foco theory of revolution by way of guerrilla warfare, also known as focalism , was inspired by Marxist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, based upon his experiences surrounding the rebel army's victory in the 1959 Cuban Revolution, and formalized as such by Régis Debray.Its central principle...
strategy of insurgency
Insurgency
An insurgency is an armed rebellion against a constituted authority when those taking part in the rebellion are not recognized as belligerents...
associated with Che Guevara
Che Guevara
Ernesto "Che" Guevara , commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat and military theorist...
, who had fought alongside Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
during the Cuban Revolution
Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement against the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista between 1953 and 1959. Batista was finally ousted on 1 January 1959, and was replaced by a revolutionary government led by Castro...
.
The ERP launched its guerrilla campaign against the Argentine military dictatorship
History of Argentina (1966-1973)
Revolución Argentina was a period of military dictatorship from 1966 to 1973, spawned by the June 1966 military coup, and self-proclaimed by the Military junta as "the Argentine Revolution"....
headed by Juan Carlos Onganía
Juan Carlos Onganía
Juan Carlos Onganía Carballo was de facto president of Argentina from 29 June 1966 to 8 June 1970. He rose to power as military dictator after toppling, in a coup d’état self-named Revolución Argentina , the democratically elected president Arturo Illia .-Economic and social...
in 1969, using targeted urban guerrilla warfare
Urban guerrilla warfare
Urban guerrilla redirects here. For the Hawkwind song, see Urban Guerrilla.Urban guerrilla refers to someone who fights a government using unconventional warfare in an urban environment...
methods such as assassinations and kidnappings of government officials and foreign company executives. For example, in 1974 Enrique Gorriarán Merlo
Enrique Gorriarán Merlo
Enrique Haroldo Gorriarán Merlo was an Argentine guerrilla insurgency leader, born in San Nicolás de los Arroyos, Buenos Aires Province....
and Benito Urteaga led the ERP kidnapping of Esso executive Víctor Samuelsson and obtaining a ransom of $12 million . However most kidnappings ended in the death of the hostage, especially when not a person of particular importance . 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 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 Perón
Juan Domingo Perón was an Argentine military officer, and politician. Perón was three times elected as President of Argentina though he only managed to serve one full term, after serving in several government positions, including the Secretary of Labor and the Vice Presidency...
's return. On June 20, 1973 the Peronist movement split after the Ezeiza massacre, perpetrated by far-right Peronists the day of Peron's return from exile. Victor E. Samuelson, an Exxon executive, was abducted on 6 December, 1973 by the ERP. He was released after 49 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
Communist revolution
A communist revolution is a proletarian revolution inspired by the ideas of Marxism that aims to replace capitalism with communism, typically with socialism as an intermediate stage...
against the Argentine government in pursuit of "proletarian rule
Dictatorship of the proletariat
In Marxist socio-political thought, the dictatorship of the proletariat refers to a socialist state in which the proletariat, or the working class, have control of political power. The term, coined by Joseph Weydemeyer, was adopted by the founders of Marxism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in the...
."
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, and in 1972 another 38 policemen were gunned down.
In January 1974 the ERP Compañía Héroes de Trelew, named in commemoration of the 1972 Massacre of Trelew, during which 16 political prisoners who had attempted to escape had been mowed down, attacked the barracks at Azul, which resulted in the death of the Commanding Officer and his wife and the capture of a lieutenant-colonel. The trick did not work twice: in August an assault on the Argentine Army's Villa Maria explosives factory in Cordoba and 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 and they lost 16 men who were shot after they surrendered to 300 paratroopers of the 17th Airborne Infantry Regiment under Lieutenant-Colonel Eduardo Humberto Cubas. 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. In all, 293 Argentine servicemen and police were killed fighting guerrillas between 1975 and 1976.
In 1976 there had been plans to send great part of the Uruguayan Tupamaros
Tupamaros
Tupamaros, also known as the MLN-T , was an urban guerrilla organization in Uruguay in the 1960s and 1970s. The MLN-T is inextricably linked to its most important leader, Raúl Sendic, and his brand of social politics...
(MLN-T), the Chilean Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) and the Bolivian National Liberation Army
National Liberation Army (Bolivia)
The National Liberation Army was a Marxist-Leninist guerrilla organization that operated in Bolivia during the 1960s and 1970s. It was formed by Che Guevara and backed by Fidel Castro's government in Cuba and the Soviet-led alliance in the Cold War...
(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
After the return of Juan PerónJuan Perón
Juan Domingo Perón was an Argentine military officer, and politician. Perón was three times elected as President of Argentina though he only managed to serve one full term, after serving in several government positions, including the Secretary of Labor and the Vice Presidency...
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 Compania del Monte Ramón Rosa Jimenez to the province of Tucumán at the edge of the long-impoverished Andean highlands in the northwest corner of Argentina. Some guerrilleros were trained in Cuba. By December 1974, the guerrillas numbered about 100 fighters, with a 400 person support network . Led by Mario Roberto Santucho
Mario Roberto Santucho
Mario Roberto Santucho was an Argentine revolutionary. He was the leader of ERP . He was killed by the military in a shootout after his hideout was undercovered in 1976. His wife Liliana Delfino was also killed by the military of Argentina the same year.-References:*...
, they soon established control over a third of the province and organized a base of some 2,500 sympathizers.
Santucho's forces 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 in increasing urban violence carried out by the left-Peronist Montoneros
Montoneros
Montoneros was an Argentine Peronist urban guerrilla group, active during the 1960s and 1970s. The name is an allusion to 19th century Argentinian history. After Juan Perón's return from 18 years of exile and the 1973 Ezeiza massacre, which marked the definitive split between left and right-wing...
following Perón's death in 1974, led the government of Isabel de Perón to issue the "annihilation decrees" and expand the military's powers to fight a counter-insurgency
Counter-insurgency
A counter-insurgency or counterinsurgency involves actions taken by the recognized government of a nation to contain or quell an insurgency taken up against it...
campaign in February 1975. In all, 83 servicemen and policemen were killed in fighting the guerrillas, between 1973 and 1974.
Some 3,500 soldiers and two companies of elite commando
Commando
In English, the term commando means a specific kind of individual soldier or military unit. In contemporary usage, commando usually means elite light infantry and/or special operations forces units, specializing in amphibious landings, parachuting, rappelling and similar techniques, to conduct and...
s under Brigadier-General Acdel Vilas began immediately deploying in the Tucuman mountains in Operacion Independencia, joined later by 1,500 more troops from the Fourth Airborne Infantry Brigade and Eighth 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 and the F-86F Sabre were used for offensive air support while the North American T-34 and FMA IA-58 Pucara served as light ground-attack aircraft. While fighting the guerrilla in the jungle and mountains, Vilas concentrated on uprooting the ERP support network in the towns, using state terror tactics later adopted nation-wide during the "Dirty War
Dirty War
The Dirty War was a period of state-sponsored violence in Argentina from 1976 until 1983. Victims of the violence included several thousand left-wing activists, including trade unionists, students, journalists, Marxists, Peronist guerrillas and alleged sympathizers, either proved or suspected...
", as well as a civic action campaign. By July, the commandos were mounting search-and-destroy missions. Army forces discovered Santucho's base camp in August, then raided the ERP urban headquarters in September. Most of the Compania del Monte's general staff was killed in October and was dispersed by the end of the year. While most of the leaders of the movement were killed, many of the ERP soldiers and sympathizers were incarcerated during the government of Isabel Martínez de Perón
Isabel Martínez de Perón
María Estela Martínez Cartas de Perón , better known as Isabel Martínez de Perón or Isabel Perón, is a former President of Argentina. She was also the third wife of another former President, Juan Perón...
.
In May 1975, ERP representative Amilcar Santucho was captured trying to cross into Paraguay
Paraguay
Paraguay , officially the Republic of Paraguay , is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. Paraguay lies on both banks of the Paraguay River, which runs through the center of the...
to promote the JCR unity effort. As a way to save himself, he provided information about the organization to Secretaría de Inteligencia
Secretaría de Inteligencia
Secretaría de Inteligencia is the premier intelligence agency of the Argentine Republic and head of its National Intelligence System....
(SIDE) agents that enabled Argentine security agencies to destroy what was left of the ERP, although pockets of ERP guerrillas continued to infest 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
Revolutionary Left Movement (Chile)
Revolutionary Left Movement is a Chilean political party and former left-wing guerrilla organization founded on October 12, 1965...
member) to the Chilean DINA, was one practical operation of Operation Condor
Operation Condor
Operation Condor , was a campaign of political repression involving assassination and intelligence operations officially implemented in 1975 by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America...
, 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 where involved in the most elaborate 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
Formosa Province is in northeastern Argentina, part of the Gran Chaco Region. Its northeast end touches Asunción, Paraguay, and borders the provinces of Chaco and Salta to its south and west, respectively...
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
Santa Fe Province
The Invincible Province of Santa Fe, in Spanish Provincia Invencible de Santa Fe , is a province of Argentina, located in the center-east of the country. Neighboring provinces are from the north clockwise Chaco , Corrientes, Entre Ríos, Buenos Aires, Córdoba, and Santiago del Estero...
. The aircraft, a Boeing 737
Boeing 737
The Boeing 737 is a short- to medium-range, twin-engine narrow-body jet airliner. Originally developed as a shorter, lower-cost twin-engine airliner derived from Boeing's 707 and 727, the 737 has developed into a family of nine passenger models with a capacity of 85 to 215 passengers...
, eventually landed on a crop field not far from the city of Rafaela
Rafaela
Rafaela is a city in the province of Santa Fe, Argentina, about 96 km from the provincial capital. It is the head town of the Castellanos Department. It has a population of 99,150 per the ....
. In the aftermath, 12 soldiers and 2 policemenwere 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 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. The In this particular battle the ERP and Montoneros guerrillas and milicianos 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.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
Type 42 destroyer
The Type 42 or Sheffield class, are guided missile destroyers used by the British Royal Navy and the Argentine Navy. The first ship of the class was ordered in 1968 and launched in 1971, and today three ships remain active in the Royal Navy and one in the Argentinian Navy...
A.R.A. Santisima Trinidad was severely damaged by explosives placed under her keel by frogmen of the Montoneros
Montoneros
Montoneros was an Argentine Peronist urban guerrilla group, active during the 1960s and 1970s. The name is an allusion to 19th century Argentinian history. After Juan Perón's return from 18 years of exile and the 1973 Ezeiza massacre, which marked the definitive split between left and right-wing...
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.
The Argentine armed forces moved ahead with the "Dirty War
Dirty War
The Dirty War was a period of state-sponsored violence in Argentina from 1976 until 1983. Victims of the violence included several thousand left-wing activists, including trade unionists, students, journalists, Marxists, Peronist guerrillas and alleged sympathizers, either proved or suspected...
", dispensing with the civilian government through a coup d'état
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...
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.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 actionsIn mid-1976, the Argentine Army completely destroyed the ERP's elite "Special Squad" in two violent firefights. The ERP's commander, Mario Roberto Santucho
Mario Roberto Santucho
Mario Roberto Santucho was an Argentine revolutionary. He was the leader of ERP . He was killed by the military in a shootout after his hideout was undercovered in 1976. His wife Liliana Delfino was also killed by the military of Argentina the same year.-References:*...
, 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 it had been eradicated. In 2008 PRT-Santucho estimated the loss of 5,000 of PRT-ERP members killed in action or disappeared after having been detained. By that time the military dictatorship
Military dictatorship
A military dictatorship is a form of government where in the political power resides with the military. It is similar but not identical to a stratocracy, a state ruled directly by the military....
had expanded its own campaign against "subversives" to include state terror against 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. Some 11,000 Argentines have applied for and received up to US$200,000 as monetary compensation for the loss of loved ones during the military dictatorship.According to The Wall Street Journal, some 13,000 Argentines were victims of left-wing terrorism.
The PRT continued political activities, although limited to few members, organizing conventions even after democracy returned to the country.
Aftermath
After the destruction of the left in Argentina, some revolutionary cadres made their way to Nicaragua, where the Sandinistas had taken power in 1979. An ERP commando team comprising veterans of the "Dirty War" under Gorriarán, for example, demonstrated their active involvement in the revolutionary struggle by killing ex-dictator Anastasio SomozaAnastasio Somoza Debayle
Anastasio Somoza Debayle was a Nicaraguan leader and officially the 73rd and 76th President of Nicaragua from 1 May 1967 to 1 May 1972 and from 1 December 1974 to 17 July 1979. As head of the National Guard, he was de facto ruler of the country from 1967 to 1979...
in 1980. Gorriarán returned to Argentina in 1987 to became a leader of the Movimiento Todos por la Patria (All For the Motherland Movement or MTP).
Believing in the danger of another military coup by the Carapintadas
Carapintadas
The were a group of mutineers in the Argentine Army, who took part in uprisings during the presidency of Raúl Alfonsín in Argentina.In December 1986, the Ley de Punto Final was introduced...
against the new democratic government of Raúl Alfonsín
Raúl Alfonsín
Raúl Ricardo Alfonsín was an Argentine lawyer, politician and statesman, who served as the President of Argentina from December 10, 1983, to July 8, 1989. Alfonsín was the first democratically-elected president of Argentina following the military government known as the National Reorganization...
(which at the time was leading a series of trials against members of the Argentine Military accused of human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
violations), Enrique Gorriarán Merlo led the 1989 attack on La Tablada Regiment
1989 attack on La Tablada Regiment
The 1989 attack on La Tablada Regiment 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 , headed by former ERP leader Enrique Gorriarán Merlo. 39 people were killed and 60 injured when the...
, during which the Argentine army used white phosphorus
White phosphorus (weapon)
White phosphorus is a material made from a common allotrope of the chemical element phosphorus that is used in smoke, tracer, illumination and incendiary munitions. Other common names include WP, and the slang term "Willie Pete," which is dated from its use in Vietnam, and is still sometimes used...
as an anti-personnel weapon, and which ended in the capture of all MTP members. Alfonsín declared that the attack, with the ultimate goal of sparking a massive popular uprising, 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 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 Kirchner
Néstor Carlos Kirchner was an Argentine politician who served as the 54th President of Argentina from 25 May 2003 until 10 December 2007. Previously, he was Governor of Santa Cruz Province since 10 December 1991. He briefly served as Secretary General of the Union of South American Nations ...
's access to power in 2003. The MTP still exist today as a political movement which has abandoned armed struggle.