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Chapter 4

Crowd Clashes: Euphoria, Disenchantment, and Rupture

On Friday 17 November 1972, a seventy-seven-year-old Juan Domingo Perón steps on Argentine soil after an absence of seventeen years. Tens of thousands of Peronists walk through the rain to Ezeiza airport to welcome him, but they are stopped by a barrier of police cars, armored vehicles, tanks, and an army force thirty-five thousand strong. Numerous tear gas shells are spent to detain throngs of people trying to make their way to Ezeiza along railroad tracks or wading across the brooks and streams surrounding the airport. Only a select group of three hundred spectators and fifteen hundred reporters are present to witness Perón’s historic return. A loyal following, including his wife Isabel and his private secretary López Rega, accompany him on the flight from Rome to Buenos Aires. Surprisingly, the representatives of the Peronist Youth are absent from Perón’s entourage.¹ Yet the crowd that tries in vain to welcome the aged leader home consists mostly of young, second-generation Peronists whose street mobilizations and guerrilla activities forced Lanusse into accepting Perón’s return to Argentine politics.

Upon arrival, Perón is not allowed to leave the morose Ezeiza airport hotel until dawn of the following day, supposedly for security reasons.² It is only in the afternoon of Saturday 18 November 1972, that thousands of young Peronists can finally see Perón as he appears in the window of his temporary residence in Vicente López, a suburb of Buenos Aires. Initially, the police block Gaspar Campos Street but they withdraw after Perón complains that the people are being kept away from him. A festive mood surrounds the villa, with ice cream vendors, bass drummers, and young Peronists who serenade the leader to sleep with lullabies. Perón is deeply moved.³ The next morning, he confirms the growing political influence of these young Peronists: “If the past is history and the present struggle, then the future is the youth…. the Peronist Organization has already for a long time begun with its generational rejuvenation….”⁴

Peronist Youth leaders blamed not just the military but particularly the Peronist right wing for the foiled reception at Ezeiza. They had kept Perón from meeting with his people to prevent the leader-crowd dynamic from taking place that had characterized the Peronist rallies of the 1940s and 1950s. The Peronist Youth interpreted Perón’s demand for free access to his residence as an indication that he himself tried to break the isolation imposed from the inside. This tug-of-war about the public access to Perón remained the central focus of the crowd competitions between the Peronist left (Peronist Youth and Montoneros guerrilla organization) and the Peronist right (Peronist party and labor unions) until Perón’s death in 1974.

The Peronist left saw their mobilizations as the means to carry the Peronist revolution forward because historical change was forged in the physical encounter of leader and crowd. This covenant about political rule and power through popular assembly had been sealed on 17 October 1945. As older Peronists had told their children, the people entered into dialogue with Perón during rallies in which for instance the crowd shouted its disapproval of a particular union leader, or answered “yes” or “no” to a question from Perón.⁵ The second-generation Peronists interpreted these verbal exchanges as expressions of the true union of people and Perón in which they shaped one another’s political direction. Hence, the strategy of the Peronist Youth consisted of enhancing its political influence on Perón through the mobilization of large crowds.

This conception of historical change has three important implications for political practice. One, only a frequent reunion of crowd and leader guarantees their political attunement under ever changing national and international circumstances. Two, competing political groups and factions need to show their might continuously at rallies to influence the leader. Finally, if the crowd really possesses the power of legitimacy then a disaffection between people and leader will dethrone the leader.

This chapter focuses on the turbulence within Peronist crowds between 1972 and 1975 with respect to these three implications. The belief in the crowd as the impetus of history propelled many, mostly young Peronists, to risk beatings, imprisonment, and even death. The collapse of the military government demonstrated the importance of crowd mobilizations and the force of the masses. The Peronist left tried to persuade, if not force, Perón to embrace their radical political project. Convinced that most Peronists supported their revolutionary ideals, they believed that the leader-crowd dynamic would turn the tables in their favor. This continuous crowd mobilization and its tutelage by growing guerrilla organizations raised the apprehension of the military and contributed in an important degree to the coup of March 1976.

Crowd Offensive and Generational Rejuvenation

The reunion with Perón at Ezeiza airport on 17 November was to have been the culmination of the increasing crowd mobilizations of the Peronist Youth or JP (Juventud Peronista).⁶ In July 1972, the Peronist Youth had spearheaded the Fight and Return (Luche y Vuelve) campaign to allow the exiled Perón to return to Argentina and hold free elections.⁷ The JP mustered a grass roots power which battled the Lanusse dictatorship with continuous street mobilizations and provided support to Peronist guerrilla organizations, such as the Montoneros. The young, second-generation Peronists rose to political prominence by the inclusion of Rodolfo Galimberti in the Superior Council of the National Justicialist Movement in early 1972, and the appointment of Juan Manuel Abal Medina as secretary-general of the Peronist Organization in late 1972.⁸

Perón used his month-long 1972 sojourn in Argentina to negotiate the elections of 11 March 1973. Before returning to Madrid, he hammered out a coalition of the Peronist party with most other political parties. As head of the Justicialist Liberation Front or FREJULI (Frente Justicialista de Liberación), Perón appointed Héctor José Cámpora as the presidential candidate. Perón could not lead the Peronist ticket because he was living in Spain and thus not a permanent resident of Argentina.⁹ Meanwhile, he played the roles of warmonger and peacemaker. He instructed the JP and the Montoneros to maintain pressure on the military government with mass demonstrations and guerrilla attacks, but at the same time promised to resolve the discord within Argentine society.¹⁰ Perón was playing with fire by encouraging the Peronist guerrilla groups to attack the Lanusse dictatorship, but believed that he would be able to control them once in power. Perón and Lanusse understood very well that hell would break loose if the elections were canceled or the victory of Cámpora was annulled.

An important source of inspiration for the political involvement and Peronization of many young Argentines had been the documentary Political and Doctrinal Actualization for the Seizure of Power. This film was made between June and October 1971 by Fernando Solanas and Octavio Gettino, and consisted of an interview with Perón cast in fashionable revolutionary language. Frequent references to Mao Zedong and the liberal use of terms such as national liberation, Argentine socialism, imperialism, and revolutionary war from the mouth of the aged leader made a great impression on a young generation raised with the conservative speeches of Lieutenant-General Onganía.

What also made the interview attractive was that Perón accorded the younger generation a leading role in the political transformation of Argentina.¹¹ This so-called generational rejuvenation (trasvasamiento generacional) was called upon by the Peronist Youth, and especially the Montoneros, to see themselves as the political and ideological heirs of Perón. This entitlement was formalized by the creation of a youth branch of the Peronist Organization—in addition to the political, women’s, and labor branches—assigning it twenty-five percent of the offices under electoral dispute. The candidates were mostly hand-picked by the Montonero leadership.¹² This unprecedented chance for a new generation of Peronists to exert political influence in Argentina gave a unique élan to an electoral campaign surrounded by incessant street demonstrations and frequent guerrilla operations.

A Taste of Revolution

Héctor Cámpora won the elections with nearly fifty percent of the vote.¹³ He attributed his victory to the incessant street mobilizations: “The reality is that Peronism had won over the street and that there wasn’t any space left for anybody else…. we were certain that our method was preferable: take direct contact with the people through mobilizations and popular gatherings.”¹⁴ The elections had returned the Peronist crowds to center stage after eighteen years of repression and proscription. These crowds, however, did not consist of the first-generation Peronists who had suffered the disenfranchisement but mainly of young, revolutionary Peronists who demanded their share of the victory. Miguel Bonasso wrote during these expectant days in his diary: “Happiness exists. I believe that this is the happiest moment in my life…. [because of] the unsurpassed sensation to participate in a collective project of real historic significance.”¹⁵

The Plaza de Mayo was filled with an immense crowd on 25 May 1973, the day of Cámpora’s inauguration as president. The placards of the various labor unions were dwarfed by the display of banners by the Peronist Youth and the guerrilla organizations FAP, FAR, and Montoneros. Was this a sign that Perón’s special guerrilla formations were now laying down their arms and entering the democratic fold or did they wish to demonstrate their political strength and preparedness to grab power by force?

If anything was an indication of the times ahead, then it was not the torching of several automobiles in downtown Buenos Aires or the hasty departure of most military officials by helicopter from the roof of the Casa Rosada, but the shouting and shoving match between orthodox and revolutionary Peronists. The chants of the left for a Socialist Fatherland were answered by the right with a call for a Peronist Fatherland. The mounting tensions between the left and right wings of the Peronist Organization were still contained by the electoral victory but they would soon ignite.¹⁶

The revolutionary Peronists in general, and the JP and Montoneros in particular, sensed their influence on Cámpora, and succeeded in occupying many mid-level administrative positions in the national and provincial governments.¹⁷ They constituted the Revolutionary Tendency (Tendencia Revolucionaria) which had in Cámpora its most important official ally, but was ruled by the Montonero leadership.

The right-wing Peronist union centrals and first-generation politicians may have had to admit to a defeat in the crowd competitions but they had won the struggle for supremacy within the Peronist Organization and in the new government. The appointments of Perón’s private secretary López Rega as Minister of Social Welfare, López Rega’s son-in-law Raúl Lastiri as president of the Chamber of Deputies, and the integrationist union leader Ricardo Otero as Minister of Labor, as well as the signing of a Social Pact on 8 June between the government, the employers’ organization CGE and the union central CGT, confirmed the growing influence of the right wing.

A volatile contest had erupted between left and right within the Peronist movement. The tensions found their most concrete expression in the administrative and political seizure of hospitals, cemeteries, universities, high schools, scientific institutes, prisons, ministerial departments, holiday camps, cooperatives, radio and television channels, and state-owned enterprises such as the railroads. Ostensibly, these seizures were carried out to depose the authorities that had been appointed under the 1966–1973 military rule, but factionalism was responsible for their haste. Takeovers were carried out at gunpoint, and extensive security measures were mounted to prevent counter-takeovers.¹⁸

The reception of Perón at Ezeiza airport on 20 June 1973 would be the ideal occasion for a showdown between the revolutionary and orthodox Peronists. Whichever wing succeeded in mobilizing the largest crowd would reap political power and would influence the ideological direction of the Peronist movement. The unshaken belief in the leader-crowd dynamic stood behind the efforts of both wings to try to dominate the historic reunion of Perón with the Peronist masses in one of the largest crowds ever to gather in Argentina.

The Ezeiza Tragedy

Perón was to arrive at Ezeiza international airport in the late-afternoon of 20 June 1973. Eighteen thousand pigeons would be released upon his arrival, one thousand for each year spent in exile. Since the previous day, people had been gathering near the highway overpass where the reception stage had been built. Small tents were raised in a makeshift encampment, and people passed the time singing the Peronist march and preparing barbecues. The day had been declared a holiday, and public transport was free throughout the country. At daybreak of June 20, hundreds of buses, trucks and cars jammed Avenida Ricchieri to Ezeiza airport. Most passengers abandoned their vehicles and continued on foot. The newspaper La Nación spoke of “genuine human rivers,” as if to express the tendency of crowds to grow without bounds.¹⁹ More than one, two, some claim even four, million people were converging on the reception stage from which Perón was to address the crowd.

The mood was festive and expectant, but not free of tension. The contest between the right and left wings of the Peronist movement continued unabated. The organizing committee consisted of retired Lieutenant-Colonel Jorge Manuel Osinde as head of security and the four committee members José Rucci, Lorenzo Miguel, Norma Kennedy, and Juan Manuel Abal Medina, representing each of the four branches of the Peronist Organization.²⁰ This composition seemed reasonable from an organizational point of view, but was highly unbalanced from a factional and political perspective. The revolutionary youth organizations were outnumbered four-to-one with only Abal Medina as their representative, while all others pertained to the orthodox right wing. Furthermore, the orthodox wing also controlled the security of Perón’s reception.

The ongoing contest between the two Peronist factions soon turns violent. The first incident takes place near the podium at 3:00 A.M. on June 20 when left-wing Peronists begin chanting “Perón, Evita, the Socialist Fatherland,” and the right-wing Peronists reply with “Perón, Evita, the Peronist Fatherland.” The shouting match provokes an exchange of gunfire that leaves three persons wounded. A second incident occurs at 10:00 A.M. In their urge to be as close as possible to Perón, a group of young revolutionary Peronists presses towards the stage. They are repelled by the security people with blows, kicks, and gunfire. More people are wounded. Later that morning, the podium is transformed on the orders of Lieutenant-Colonel Osinde. The open rostrum with its three large canvas portraits of Perón, Evita, and Isabel is replaced by a closed stand with bulletproof glass.

The conflict escalates at two o’clock in the afternoon. Large contingents of young people, carrying banners of the FAR, Montoneros, and ERP 22 de Agosto guerrilla organizations, converge on the stage. At 2:35 P.M., the clamor between the proponents of the Socialist Fatherland and the Peronist Fatherland erupts again. An intense exchange of gunfire bursts loose. According to the reconstruction by La Nación newspaper, the podium is taken under fire with carbines, machine guns, and pistols by gunmen hiding in a forest about 150 meters away. The security guards at the podium return fire. Frightened bystanders fall on the podium floor for protection, while the throngs of people near the reception area run for cover. The firing lasts for forty minutes. Meanwhile, the eighteen thousand pigeons are released. The newspaper La Prensa reports that at 3:40 P.M. a group of five hundred Montoneros try to take the podium by force. They are thrown back by the security guards, whereupon they flee to a nearby forest and suddenly turn around to shoot at their rivals. Another intense exchange occurs at 4:30 P.M. when security people fire at snipers hiding in the trees close to the podium. The most intense exchanges take place between 6:00 and 7:00 P.M. The crowd disperses when the firing finally stops. The official casualty count at 7:00 P.M. is thirteen dead and 250 wounded.²¹

Once again, after the obstructed reception of November 1972, the Peronist crowd failed to reunite with its leader. The violence at Ezeiza airport obliged the plane carrying Perón from Madrid to Buenos Aires to land at Morón air force base. Perón touched Argentine soil at 4:49 P.M., was taken for the night to the presidential residence at Olivos, and left the next day for the villa in Vicente López where he had stayed in 1972.

There are conflicting interpretations of the Ezeiza tragedy. The orthodox Peronists accused the revolutionary Peronists of using their numerical superiority to overtake the reception platform in a pincer movement with heavily armed shock troops, and opening fire when their attempt was frustrated by official security personnel.²²

The most detailed analysis of the so-called Ezeiza massacre has been written by Horacio Verbitsky in a style that resembles the investigative journalism of his mentor and fellow-Montonero Rodolfo Walsh. He writes that on the fated morning, columns of Peronist Youth and Montoneros were advancing towards the airport but were forbidden to pass behind the reception stage to move to its front. These people came from southern Greater Buenos Aires, and would have had to make a detour of six to twelve hours by way of the Federal Capital if they wanted to approach the north-facing stage from the north. The column organizers suspected political motives when their maneuver was forbidden. So, they decided to ignore the order, approach the stage from an eastern direction, and circle around the over-pass. Once behind the platform, they were fired upon. The Peronist Youth security people responded with small arms they were carrying for personal defense but were struck down by a barrage of heavy weapon fire. Verbitsky, whose interpretation of events is the same as that of the Peronist left at the time, concludes that “the massacre was premeditated to displace Cámpora and grab power.”²³ The JP and Montonero leaders stated that the Peronist right had provoked the violence to prevent Perón from meeting his people because such an encounter would have persuaded him that his power base did not rest with the right-wing unionists but with the revolutionary Peronists.²⁴

Whether the confrontation was provoked by left or right, whether one or the other took advantage of a shouting match that arose spontaneously, or whether the shootings were the accidental spark in a factional powder keg cannot be determined with certainty. Conspiracy or not, what matters are the political conclusions that were drawn from the Ezeiza tragedy, the strategies that were devised, and the traumatization of the crowd, factors which all together influenced the political events of the following months. The Peronist right had earned a public and political victory over the revolutionary Peronists. They had ingratiated themselves with Perón, had a strongally in the overbearing presence of Perón’s secretary López Rega, and had interrupted the crowd mobilization of the revolutionary Peronists.

The events at Ezeiza reminded the military once more of the dangers of popular crowds. The pincer movement by the Montoneros column on the reception stage showed most vividly the level of organization reached by the revolutionary left. The discipline of the column, the dutiful execution of the order to advance, the tactical engagement with adversary groups, and the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of sympathizers betrayed a revolutionary potential of menacing dimensions. Such crowd operation could only be achieved by a vanguard which had far from dismantled its organization upon the return of democracy but was craving for more power.

The leaders of the revolutionary Peronists concluded that Perón was surrounded by a cordon that prevented him from reuniting with the Peronist masses. They believed that the orthodox Peronist union leaders, the Peronist political right, and Perón’s secretary López Rega acted in collusion to isolate Perón from the people and take control of the Peronist government after the leader’s death. The Peronist left was convinced that the right wing had resorted to violence at Ezeiza because they had been unable to mobilize their following in equally large numbers. They disturbed the welcome party to prevent the left-wing majority from pulling Perón into their camp and proceeding with a revolutionary line of government that had been initiated by Cámpora.²⁵

Breaking the Cordon

The cordon theory fitted like a glove around the crowd conception with which young Peronists had been raised. Their interpretation of Peronism rested on the dialogue between Perón and the crowd, and on the belief in a spiritual and political alignment of people and leader during Peronist rallies.²⁶ This public dialogue was described as follows: “Between Perón and his people there is always this mutual nourishment: the crowd creates, Perón incorporates, Perón creates, the crowd recreates, and so the movement advances…. The same happened with the Peronist doctrine. Perón proposes and the people pick up and reshape this proposal. And Perón finally synthesizes it and puts it into practice. Let us remember those extraordinary dialogues between Perón and the People assembled, there the President heard what the people wanted.”²⁷

The cordon conspiracy obsessed the leaders of the Peronist left. They wanted to outmaneuver the right wing by showing Perón that they could mobilize much larger crowds than the labor union centrals, and believed that this convocational power translated into political power. The superior numbers of Peronist Youth, FAR, and Montoneros that covered Ezeiza with flags and banners had to be demonstrated again and again until Perón became convinced that most Peronists belonged to the left wing. As in 1972, the key phrase became “to win the street” (ganar la calle), but this time the mobilization was not directed at Lanusse, but against the so-called reactionary forces within the bosom of the Peronist movement.

Perón clearly wished the street mobilizations to end. First, the conflict with the military dictatorship was over and now Argentina had to get back to work. Second, verticality had to reign again within the Peronist Organization, and the youth organizations, guerrilla formations, and their leaders had to subscribe to the party line. Third, the Peronist revolution was not going to happen by way of a grass roots movement, but by Perón leading the people. This demobilization would mean the death blow to the revolutionary Peronist left and prevent the social revolution from taking place at a moment of high political consciousness. Perón wanted to consolidate the Peronist Organization, head a pragmatic government based on a social pact of labor and capital, and appease the political violence that disrupted Argentine society.

On 13 July 1973, President Cámpora presented his resignation to Congress. Raúl Lastiri was sworn in as president until the general elections of 23 September 1973.²⁸ Cámpora’s withdrawal was widely expected, and kept the promise of the electoral slogan “Cámpora into the government, Perón into power.” The Montoneros had their own explanation of events. In a public statement on 17 July titled “Perón confronts the conspiracy,” they quoted Perón as saying that Cámpora’s forty-five days in office had been excellent. Perón had thus no reason to end Cámpora’s presidency. Nevertheless, Perón felt forced to step in, so the Montoneros reasoned, to curtail the growing power of the conspiratorial Peronist right.²⁹ A public display of support was the most effective means to aid the aging leader.

This show of support was made on 21 July 1973. A column of eighty thousand Peronist Youth members marched on Perón’s residence at Gaspar Campos Street. Perón was not at home but invited four representatives to meet him in Olivos.³⁰ The JP leaders felt that they had finally gotten through to Perón, but soon after their departure, the government press agency announced that Perón had appointed the right-wing López Rega as his go-between with the Peronist Youth.

A new public display became now the only recourse to break the cordon, and tip the balance in favor of the left wing. The opportunity arrived on 31 August 1973 when Perón reviewed a parade in support of his presidential candidacy from the balcony of the CGT union headquarters. The Peronist left regarded this parade both as a showdown with the labor unions and as an opportunity to convince Perón that their political line mustered the greatest popular support.

The extraordinary importance given to the crowd competition can be inferred from the meticulous reporting by the Peronist Youth magazine El Descamisado about the amount of time each column spent passing before the CGT headquarters. The labor unions took two hours and forty-five minutes, while the Peronist Youth groups marched for two hours and forty-two minutes in much tighter columns and at a faster pace.³¹ The Peronist left believed they had won the contest and broken the cordon around Perón. The revolutionary process could start afresh.³²

This belief was strengthened by the visit of the FAR and Montoneros leaders Roberto Quieto and Mario Firmenich to Perón on Wednesday 5 September, and again three days later in the company of the principal leaders of the Peronist Youth. Unbeknownst to them, Perón was playing a Machiavellian game with stakes he soon failed to control. He raised their expectations because he needed their support for the upcoming elections, but had already cast his lot with the unions, the traditional vertical backbone of the Peronist movement. As Perón remarked at the beginning of September 1973, the time had not yet come for a generational rejuvenation because the country’s reconstruction would take several years: “the boys will be in charge three years from now.”³³ But the revolutionary Peronists were unwilling to wait three years while the Peronist right continued its advance into power.

Perón into Power

The presidential elections of 23 September 1973 were won overwhelmingly by Juan Domingo Perón.³⁴ Perón had not toured the country during the election campaign, and there were no massive rallies. The victory was as expected, but the ballot needed to be ratified by a massive Peronist crowd at Perón’s inaugural speech at the Plaza de Mayo. El Descamisado expressed this sentiment of 12 October 1973, as follows: “The square almost came down when he said ‘Comrades.’ How much did that moment cost, that word and spoken from up there, from that balcony…. Many felt a shiver running down their spine. There were tears. Embraces. Others shouted like crazy. And some even lowered their head. This ‘Comrades’ was, crystal clear, the end of ‘the battle of eighteen years.’ And those present in the square were the witnesses of the signing of the triumph of this first battle.”³⁵ The deaths of Ezeiza and Cámpora’s resignation seemed forgotten when Perón dedicated a special word to the second-generation Peronists: “I want to send our deepest affection to these young people who are our hope, together with the most sincere appeal that they should work and become qualified. Because young people will be the artisans of the future we are dreaming of.”³⁶

These words gave new hope to the revolutionary Peronists. The cordon had been broken, Perón was now in charge, and the generational rejuvenation remained firm in place. The leader-crowd dynamic was once again the compass of Peronist rule. Perón told the crowd that “following an old Peronist custom, I will present myself each year on the first day of May at this same place to ask the people gathered here whether they agree with the government we are leading.”³⁷ Little did Perón know that the belief of the second-generation Peronists in the mythical leader-crowd dialogues would precipitate their falling out with him on 1 May 1974. Nevertheless, in October 1973 the crowd romance was still in full bloom, and the revolutionary Peronists were convinced that their tireless crowd mobilizations had paid off.

Once Perón was in power, the Peronist Youth and Montoneros realized that he did not accept their radical proposals. He continued to advocate a pact among labor, capital, and government, while rejecting the class struggle.³⁸ Perón stated that the labor unions constituted the vertical backbone of the Peronist movement, and he passed legislation which increased the power of the Peronist union centrals at the expense of the more radical Independent and clasista unions.³⁹ The revolutionary Peronist left was dumbfounded and concluded that Perón was surrounded again by traitors and bureaucrats incapable of defending the true essence of Peronism. In their eyes, the political situation of 1973 resembled that of 1955, and they were not going to stand by passively and watch the revolution being crushed. They also concluded that street mobilizations had outlived their political usefulness.

Crowd mobilizations were abandoned and replaced by two tactics: grass roots organization and guerrilla actions. The grass roots work consisted of recruiting new members, developing local organizations in neighborhoods and slums, and founding new chapters (unidades básicas).⁴⁰ The guerrilla actions entailed an increased harassment of labor union chapters, and the elimination of union leaders. A deadly feud developed between the Peronist right and the Peronist left which will be discussed in chapter seven.

Crowd Rupture with Perón

The tense relationship between Perón and the revolutionary Peronists deteriorated further between late 1973 and early January 1974. Five elements contributed to this situation. One, the government proposed in December 1973 tougher laws on political violence.⁴¹ The Montoneros declared that Perón had always maintained that the violence from above generates the violence from below. If a truly popular Peronist government had been in power, then there would not have been any cause for political violence.⁴² Two, Perón stated on 10 January 1974 that he would “impose the Social Pact” if need be.⁴³ The revolutionary Peronists felt betrayed. In their eyes, Perón was making common cause with the Peronist right, the oligarchy, and the multinational corporations. Three, on 19 January 1974 the Marxist People’s Revolutionary Army (ERP) attacked the Azul army base. Perón was furious, and insinuated a complicity of the governor of Buenos Aires, Oscar Bidegain. Bidegain sympathized with the Revolutionary Tendency, and was replaced by his vice-governor Victorio Calabró, an important right-wing union leader. Four, the guerrilla attack gave Perón further reason to pass his tough laws on political violence. He cowed eight left-wing Peronist congressmen into stepping down in case of dissent.⁴⁴ The congressmen resigned on 24 January, and the new legislation was approved on 25 January. The next day a dozen Peronist Youth chapters were bombed. The political position of the Peronist left was caving in rapidly with the loss of governor Bidegain, the eight congressmen, and the assaults on local branches. Finally, the Peronist Youth leaders had a personal falling out with Perón on 1 February. When Perón invited thirty-six representatives of an array of youth organizations, including many small right-wing groups, to reopen a dialogue, the Peronist Youth leaders refused to attend. This affront worsened the relations even more, and the pressure increased on the Peronist left in the party, the movement, and on the street. Prominent leaders were arrested, the left-leaning Peronist governor of Córdoba was deposed, the popular magazine El Descamisado was forbidden, and street demonstrations were repressed.

To make matters worse, the Peronist left was also weakened from the inside. Political differences made several groups turn away from the principal Peronist Youth and Montonero leaders in January 1974. One dissident group expressed its unswerving loyalty to Perón, a second group favored grass roots mobilization, and a third wanted a more confrontational opposition to the Peronist right.⁴⁵ The Peronist left was falling apart and losing political ground. They embarked deliberately on a collision course with Perón. Aside from guerrilla operations, their principal weapon became once again the crowd. They were going to demonstrate their power of mobilization at Perón’s appearance at Plaza de Mayo on 1 May 1974.

The 11 March demonstration in the Atlanta soccer stadium was the general rehearsal for Labor Day. Twenty-five thousand people gathered to listen to the political state of affairs. The anxiety and defiance with which people went to the rally foreshadowed the confrontation with Perón: “We went with clenched teeth. With anger and prepared for everything. We knew that this was not going to be just another assembly. This was different. We had to show many things. Assert ourselves. We had to find ourselves again with our best weapon: the mobilization.”⁴⁶ The tone of the upcoming May demonstration was summed up by El Descamisado in the title of the account of the Atlanta gathering: “What’s happening, General…. The Popular Government is full of anti-Peronists [gorilas].” In this mood, they were going to the 1 May meeting, and asking Perón to account himself for his failed policies. The belief in a leader-crowd dialogue as the heart of political activity, where policies are forged among conflicting social interests, remained firm.

The long-awaited day finally arrives. The unmistakable sound of the large bass drums leaves no doubt that this is a Peronist event. The first small groups arrive at 10:00 A.M., and policemen check them for concealed weapons. The square is adorned with flags, and two large podia for invited guests have been erected in front of the Casa Rosada, bearing a CGT emblem. The official slogan is: “We agree, my General.” The first large JP and Montonero columns arrive at 3:30 in the afternoon. Rivaling chants are shouted across the invisible division between the two factions, and intermittent skirmishes occur when the youth columns press against the labor union columns to occupy the left side of the large square facing the Casa Rosada. Both parties had accepted a lengthwise division of the Plaza de Mayo to prevent another Ezeiza tragedy and agreed to display only Argentine flags and union signs.⁴⁷ In a surprise move, they lower the Argentine flags and quickly spray-paint “Montoneros” on them.

The atmosphere becomes tense when Perón appears close to five in the afternoon on the balcony of the Casa Rosada, accompanied by his wife Isabel and López Rega. The military band plays the national anthem. As the last sounds die out, the public announcer asks one minute of silence “for comrade Evita and the dead of the struggle for liberation.” As the quiet descends over the Plaza de Mayo, the Montoneros begin a roll call of their most illustrious dead: “Fernando Abal Medina … Present! Carlos Gustavo Ramos … Present! José Sabino Navarro … Present!”⁴⁸ The band strikes up the Labor March (Marcha del Trabajo). As the music dies down for the second time, Vice-President Isabel Martínez de Perón crowns the Labor queen, but the tens of thousands of revolutionary Peronists shout that they do not want a carnival but a popular assembly.

Finally, Perón steps up to microphone and, to his fury, is welcomed with the chant: “What’s happening, what’s happening, what’s happening, General? That the Popular Government is full of anti-Peronists [gorilas]?” Perón is beside himself with anger, and after recalling that twenty years ago on this same spot he had asked the labor organizations to discipline themselves, he lashes out at the Peronist left: “I was saying that throughout these twenty years, the labor unions have remained standfast and that today some beardless young men pretend to have more merit than those who fought for twenty years. For this reason, comrades, I want that this first reunion on Labor Day will pay homage to those organizations and prudent, wise leaders who have maintained their organic strength, and who have seen their murdered leaders fall without yet having meted out punishment.”⁴⁹ The revolutionary Peronists feel trampled. Perón humiliates them by calling them immature, while he embraces the orthodox labor unions that have been harassing the Peronist left with increasing intensity.

Some labor union columns begin to chant “Let them leave. Let them leave.” And depart they do, chanting “Sawdust, sawing [Aserrín, aserrán], these are the people leaving” as well as “We agree, we agree, we agree, General. The anti-Peronists agree, and the people are going to fight.”⁵⁰ Tens of thousands of Peronist Youth and Montoneros vacate the left side of the Plaza de Mayo in the most dramatic crowd rupture in Argentine history. Skirmishes flare up in the streets surrounding the Plaza de Mayo but fortunately there are no fatal casualties. The situation returns to normal at 7:30 P.M.⁵¹

Perón’s political life has come full circle. Rescued by a crowd on 17 October 1945, he is now repudiated by a new generation of Peronists who has contributed most to his political resurrection. The deadly factionalism within the Peronist movement has extended into the Plaza de Mayo, can no longer be contained by the charismatic leader, and causes the first crowd defection in Perón’s long political career.

The larger political conditions had been conducive for a rupture but Perón’s humiliating remarks were the catalyst that drove people away. The torn feelings of identification and betrayal were profound. People turned their backs to the man for whom many had risked their lives and some endured years in prison. Rebelling against Perón was in a way reneging on the years of struggle and hardship. Political violence became the outlet for the crowd humiliation, and soon this violence was not just directed at the Peronist right but at an Argentine society which had rejected them.

From the crowd perspective I have been developing in these last four chapters, the 1974 Labor Day break with Perón was the sundering of the Peronist crowd along lines of conflicting horizontal and vertical loyalties. The horizontal identification among the rebellious second-generation Peronists was greater than the vertical identification with Perón. Comradeships nurtured during the Fight and Return campaign of 1972, the joint mourning of the fallen, and the growing embattlement from the Peronist right were centrifugal forces which drove them off the Plaza de Mayo when publicly humiliated by Perón. The Peronist crowd, divided since the day of Perón’s arrival in June 1973, parted ways on 1 May 1974.

The crowd division had its origin in different types of identification. The Peronist left exalted Perón the revolutionary, to whom they attributed many of the radical ideas they had acquired during the fight for his return. The Peronist right adhered to Perón the justicialist for bringing dignity and social justice to the Argentine working class. The left had as its example the insurrectional crowds of 1969–1972, while the right cherished the leader-inspired crowds of 1945–1955. The 1973–1974 crowd rivalries, albeit violent at times, were part of the political process of a movement trying to find its proper course. Perón’s alignment with the Peronist right meant an end to the crowd contest. The hegemonic Montoneros turned their backs to Perón and delivered themselves to a guerrilla warfare against the union hierarchy and the Argentine military. Perón had lost his aura as a revolutionary savior. From now on, as the editors of the leftist magazine De Frente concluded, “only the people can save the people.”⁵²

But how could the people save themselves? Faith in the voting booth had been lost, and the Labor Day tragedy had dismantled the crowd as a political instrument. It drove the movimientista Montoneros to vanguardism, elitism, and military action which quickly increased their distance from their popular backing. Instead, the alternativista groups, such as the Columna José Sabino Navarro from Córdoba, called for strengthening the grass roots organization in factories and working class neighborhoods. It is dubious whether this grass roots strategy would have been successful. The relation between the Montoneros and the masses had been affective rather than organizational and ideological. People were drawn to their crowds by the defiant “Montoneros, dammit!” chant, by the intoxicating bass drumming, and by an awe for their armed resistance against the Lanusse dictatorship. Still, the average Peronist worker was too firmly attached to the labor unions, whether orthodox or combative, to follow the lead of the Montoneros. Once the emotions of the crowd gatherings waned, the political support was gone. In the international mood of the times, vanguardism won out, and urban guerrilla warfare was embraced as the tit-for-tat killings with the right-wing death squads increased at an eerie pace.

The Final Farewell

The pressure on the Peronist left intensified on all sides after the Labor Day crowd rupture. Right-wing death squads continued to eliminate revolutionary Peronists and increased their bombings of local chapters. The left also lost administrative ground. After the forced departure of Bidegain and Obregón Cano in early 1974, three more governors with sympathies for the Revolutionary Tendency were dismissed.⁵³

The political situation was not much better in the street as several public demonstrations were prohibited by the police. In fact, there were not any significant crowds during May and June of 1974. There was, however, one exception. On Wednesday morning 12 June, the aging Perón gave a televised speech to the nation, criticizing union leaders, businessmen, and the conservative press alike for endangering the Social Pact. Rumors about food shortages had led to sudden price hikes, while workers had demanded substantial salary increases. The strike activity was picking up again, and inflation was on the rise. Perón threatened to abandon the presidency if these political attacks on his government did not cease.

In a last masterful stroke, Perón orchestrated his final crowd gathering. The CGT leaders had been notified in advance of Perón’s threat to resign, and called for a mass mobilization at the Plaza de Mayo in his support. Hundreds of buses were waiting at factory gates to transport the workers. A large crowd gathered that afternoon in the cold winter weather of 12 June. The labor union centrals had not lost their power of mobilization, as the Peronist left had believed, but continued to count on the support of most Peronist workers.⁵⁴ Perón was certainly warmed by the welcome as he appeared on the balcony at 5:15 in the afternoon. He took in the chants as if they were a political nourishment, and confessed: “I carry in my ears what to me is the most remarkable music of all, the voice of the Argentine people.”⁵⁵ It was to be his last crowd appearance, and it seemed as if the Peronist crowd had died with him.

For weeks, Perón had been suffering from a cold contracted on his 6 June visit to Paraguay. The 12 June speech on the freezing balcony of the Casa Rosada had deteriorated his condition. Bedridden for a week, Perón delegated his presidential powers on 30 June to the vice-president, his wife Isabel Martínez de Perón. The seventy-nine-year-old Juan Domingo Perón died of cardiac arrest on Sunday 1 July 1974 at 1:15 P.M. at the presidential residence in Olivos. The funeral was held on Tuesday 3 July at the Metropolitan Cathedral on Plaza de Mayo, after which the remains lay in state at Congress. The line of mourners stretched for many blocks in the pouring rain, but “Neither the cold drizzle, nor the wet clothes stopped the crowd from saying goodbye to the president’s remains.”⁵⁶ Unlike the wake of two weeks after Evita’s death, the grieving public was given less than forty-eight hours to pay their respects. The principal Peronist Youth and Montonero leaders also bid farewell to Perón, giving a V-victory salute.⁵⁷ Despite their falling out with Perón, they could not afford not paying homage. It would have been political suicide, and most important, they were as profoundly grief-stricken as all Peronists, left or right. Miguel Bonasso confessed in his diary at the day of Perón’s death: “Several of us have cried this afternoon. For him and for ourselves. Because we were his soldiers and his children and his chosen and his rejected ones…. we felt that the old bastard, whom we had loved and hated as one loves and hates a father, was taking our own youth with him into his crypt. We knew that difficult times were ahead….”⁵⁸

Two generations of Peronists had come of political age since Perón founded his popular movement in 1945. Their political identities were as much linked with Perón as with the victories they reaped and the defeats and hardships they suffered in his name. Many Peronists might have lost faith in Perón’s political ability to govern a country rapidly falling apart through political violence, but their Peronist identity stood firm. This Peronist identity had been shaped by the crowd and by resistance, by street mobilizations and collective violence. Mobilization and violence continued again as important expressions of political practice after Perón’s death, even though the first was more rhetorical and the second frightfully real.

The transference of power to Vice-President María Estela Martínez de Perón on 1 July 1974 might have been constitutional, but it was not accepted by the Peronist left, which considered itself the true political heir of Perón.⁵⁹ On 6 September 1974, the Montoneros declared that a new period of Peronist Resistance had begun, and that their organization would go underground to resume the armed struggle. Their crowd mobilizations ceased entirely. The state of siege declared on 6 November 1974 further discouraged mass meetings. Public demonstrations between July 1974 and March 1976 consisted either of small crowds in support of Isabel Perón or street protests by striking workers. These strikes and protests were mostly about internal union disputes, shop floor democracy, poor working conditions, and deteriorating wages.

After Perón’s death, the UOM and CGT union centrals, which counted on the support of the Ministry of Economy, the federal police, and the death squads headed by López Rega, began a crackdown on Independent and clasista unions. The arrest of combative labor leaders, like Ongaro, Tosco, and Salamanca, was ordered, the legal status of Independent and clasista unions was taken away, militant workers were assassinated, and union locals were bombed. Strikes and factory seizures declined rapidly because of this repression.

The first stand in this retreat was made in Villa Constitución. On 25 November 1974, steelworkers voted en masse for a clasista slate in the UOM metal workers union elections. Combative local union leaders began to demand better safety measures, higher wages, and control over production speeds. On 20 March 1975, a security force of over four thousand men entered Villa Constitución with helicopters and assault cars, and arrested the forty principal labor leaders on the charge of organizing a subversive plot to paralyze the regional industry.

The workers mounted a massive strike that lasted for fifty-nine days until several union leaders were released. This spirited protest awakened the worker opposition in Argentina. The ensuing open confrontation of forces led to the only significant crowd eruption between Perón’s death in July 1974 and the military coup in March 1976 as a last gasp of the groundswell of mass protest which had begun in 1969.

On 27 June 1975, the CGT organized a demonstration to ask Isabel Perón to ratify negotiated wage increases of up to 150 percent. The crowd filled the Plaza de Mayo to capacity and turned rapidly against Isabel Perón, López Rega, and the Minister of Economy Celestino Rodrigo. President Isabel Perón announced the next day that only a 50 percent wage correction would be granted. The CGT declared a forty-eight-hour strike for 7 and 8 July. This national strike triggered a series of wildcat strikes and factory occupations called the Rodrigazo. Thousands of workers took to the streets in Argentine cities to voice their disenchantment with the Peronist government. The protest was successful. Once more, a popular crowd shook the foundations of the Argentine government. Celestino Rodrigo resigned on 18 July, López Rega was forced out of the country two days later, and Isabel Perón ratified the negotiated wage raise after all.⁶⁰

The crowd had won a Pyrrhic victory because the Rodrigazo further destabilized the Peronist government: a government which had already lost the support of various factions within the Peronist movement and was now also facing a fractured and hostile working class as inflation skyrocketed to an annual rate of 335 percent in 1975.

The year 1975 had been the most combative year in Argentine labor history in terms of strike activity and loss of working days. The crisis was heightened in January 1976 by work stoppages, factory seizures, the threat of more strikes, and more wage demands. Rather than rallying at the Plaza de Mayo under the tutorship of once powerful union leaders, the Argentine workers were organizing in independent, grass roots coordinating committees (coordinadoras) of shopfloor activists and workers’ commissions. A lockout of workers on 16 February 1976, organized by employers dissatisfied with the government’s new economic policies, shut down newspaper stands, grocery stores, and small commercial establishments.⁶¹ The military takeover was only weeks away.

The Demise of Argentine Crowds

Crowds exert a strange attraction on people. They are menacing and enticing, inspire fear and incite captivation. What lured the Argentine people during the second half of the twentieth century to streets and squares in increasing numbers, often at the risk of death? And what made Argentine military rulers so fearful of and at the same time so fascinated by large crowds? Is it that unpredictable power of the dense crowd packed shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip that both fascinates and frightens, threatens and beckons? The crowd seems possessed of a strange, passionate quality which when dominated invigorates their masters with omnipotence, but when unleashed paralyzes them with fear. What made crowds so mesmerizing to both Argentine leaders and the Argentine people?

Argentine crowds had created and toppled governments and dictatorships since the end of World War II. Crowds brought Perón to power in 1945, supported his deposition in 1955, contributed to the palace coups against Onganía in 1970 and against Levingston in 1971. Finally, popular crowds accomplished the downfall of Lanusse in 1973, and enforced Perón’s return to power that same year. Argentine crowds have of course also often failed to achieve their objectives because of their severe repression by police and military. The defeated crowd stands in stark opposition to the victorious crowd. Fear takes the place of aggrandizement as people fall left and right, and the crowd flees in panic. Whether victorious or defeated, the crowd constituted between 1945 and 1975 the groundswell of Argentine political life.

Argentine crowds have during the third quarter of the twentieth century been leader-inspired, vanguard-inspired, mass-inspired or issue-inspired. The crowds between 1945 and 1958 were leader-inspired. People assembled in crowds till 1955 because of the presence of Perón. As I demonstrated in Chapter 1, Juan Domingo Perón drew on his knowledge of crowds to mobilize a political following in the 1940s and played on widespread fears about either a leaderless rioting crowd or a revolutionary insurrectional crowd to silence his critics. As an army officer, he sensed better than anyone else the ambiguous feelings about crowds among the Argentine military and conservative civilian circles. Yet Perón believed that he had the political acumen and charisma to domesticate the crowd and prevent the popular masses from falling victim to the enchanting call of communism.

After Perón’s fall in 1955, the Argentine middle classes gathered in leader-inspired crowds to support the military junta that had deposed Perón. The forced exile of Perón left the Peronist movement without its leader but not without the desire to express its political convictions and protest its disenfranchisement.

The year 1959 witnessed several major protest crowds that arose around matters of economic policy. These issue-inspired crowds would most likely have continued to appear were it not for the harsh repressive measures taken against street protests in 1960, and the increasing ability of union leaders to negotiate settlements before major strikes and street marches would break out. The period between 1961 and 1969 was by and large a crowd interlude with only a few leader-inspired outbreaks of Peronist sentiment in 1963 and 1964, and occasional issue-inspired street marches by striking workers.

The issue-inspired crowds evolved by 1969 into mass-inspired crowds mobilized by grass roots organizations. Slowly, the notion began to emerge among Peronists that the initiative for crowd formation did not come from the leader but from the people themselves. The period from 1969 to 1972 was characterized by mass-inspired crowds. Students and workers took entire city centers in an insurrectional atmosphere, despite the efforts of union leaders to discourage such collective violence.

The revolutionary left interpreted the belief among Argentine workers in the grass roots crowd model as a sign of an emerging class consciousness. Leaning heavily on Leninist insurrectional theory, the revolutionary left embraced a vanguard crowd model. The vanguard-inspired model implied that the popular masses would arise in protest against the injustices of capitalist society but needed the guidance of a revolutionary vanguard to be successful in overthrowing the exploitative socioeconomic order. The grass roots and vanguard crowd models both departed from the understanding that leaders did not elicit and dominate crowds but that crowds allowed leaders to usurp and feed on them. In other words, behind each leader-inspired crowd lurked the force of a spontaneous and uncontrollable mass-inspired crowd.

The period between 1972 and 1974 gave rise to composite crowds that were partly leader-, partly vanguard- and partly mass-inspired. The presence of Perón drew his following into the streets and squares of Argentina, but these people were equally impelled by the grass roots mobilization of the Peronist left, and the appeal of a revolutionary Peronist vanguard. Finally, issue-inspired crowds appeared again in 1975. Perón had died in 1974, the grass roots organizations of the Peronist left had been dismantled, and the revolutionary organizations had decided to wage a guerrilla insurgency. The worsening economic situation became therefore the central focus of worker protest in 1975.

Twenty-five years of crowd mobilizations had formed a mold in which other political expressions matured. Strikes, sabotage, armed struggle, factionalism, guerrilla insurgency, and state repression occurred in a climate of crowd mobilization which shaped Argentine political culture. The roles accorded to leader and crowd were recognized by all but were weighed differently by opposed social sectors. Conservative and right-wing segments—the military, landowners, industrialists, and political elites as well as corporatist labor leaders—regarded leaders as the architects of history who organized the at heart irrational masses. The revolutionary and political left considered the masses, the people, as the driving force of history—whether or not this force was delegated to a revolutionary vanguard.⁶²

It is on these two political practices, mass mobilization and vanguardism, that the Argentine armed forces began to concentrate their repression when they took power in 1976. As the Generals Martínez and Jáuregui declared at a press conference in 1977: “The subversion develops two lines of action to obtain power: armed action and the insurrectional action of the masses. The Army, with the support of the other two armed forces, is defeating the executive organs of the armed action and the activists of the insurrectional action of the masses.”⁶³

The military strategy was guided by a multidimensional conception of crowds. Each dimension corresponded to one of several relations between armies and crowds. First of all, there was an instrumental conception based on repressing crowds, irrespective of their origin or objective. Military field manuals gave the same tactical directions for a disorderly soccer crowd, a strike crowd, or a crowd of people in a state of panic after a major natural disaster. The instrumental treatment of crowds by the Argentine army was built on classic notions of crowd psychology, and was almost identical to the tactical instructions used by other armed forces, and in particular the U.S. army.⁶⁴

There was also a political conception of crowds. Crowds were evaluated in terms of their political origins and objectives. This analysis was more directed towards preventing and redirecting future crowd demonstrations than repressing them in the present. The political conception varied much more with the ideological mood of the times than the instrumental treatment. In the late 1960s, the understanding of crowds was framed by the Cold War, the Cuban Revolution, and the political radicalization of broad layers of Argentine society. The political crowd conception was geared towards understanding the revolutionary potential of popular protest crowds.

The instrumental and political crowd conceptions were anchored in a cultural conception. This conception was seldom spelled out, but can be understood by analyzing the complex relation among army, crowd, and society. This perspective owed much to nineteenth-century thinking about crowds as irrational, destructive, and vulnerable to deceit. Popular crowds were believed to be antithetical to Argentine society, and a denial of its natural hierarchy.

In chapter 1, I mentioned how Perón’s understanding of crowds carried the stamp of Gustave Le Bon, and how the fear of crowds by the Argentine ruling class was fed by a rendition of Le Bon’s ideas in the work of Ramos Mejía. Le Bon, and his late nineteenth-century contemporaries Taine, Sighele, Fournial, and Tarde, feared the irrationality and unpredictability of the crowd. The individual in the crowd was reason transformed into passion, and identity into animal anonymity. Swept away by mass hysteria, the individuals in the crowd acted as one and could be driven to destruction by their collective mind.⁶⁵ The concern of nineteenth-century mass psychologists was not merely the violence of a rioting crowd but a much deeper fear of the dominance of the multitude over the individual. These conservative social scientists feared that Western civilization might be torn asunder by violent popular masses determined “to destroy utterly society as it now exists, with a view to making it hark back to that primitive communism which was the normal condition of all human groups before the dawn of civilisation.”⁶⁶ They regarded the popular riots in nineteenth-century Europe as symptoms of a deep cultural and moral crisis of Western civilization, very much as the Argentine military perceived the incessant street mobilizations of the 1970s.

Still, the Argentine military were less worried by the destructive capacity of the violent crowd itself—a fury which could never surpass the army’s capacity for repression—than that people would disengage themselves from hierarchy and authority, and negate the vertical structure of society by feelings of equality and solidarity generated among crowd participants. The Argentine military had an ideological mistrust of crowds. Imbued by a Thomist world view, as will be shown in Chapter 9, they believed firmly that society was an expression of a divine hierarchy. The leaderless crowd subverted the divine social order temporarily as in a ritual reversal.

The military commanders who took power in 1976 wanted to end the cycle of recurrent political conflict incited by violent street mobilizations because they feared that the crowds might come under the influence of revolutionary leaders. The junta wanted to inoculate the Argentine people against their subversion in future crowd mobilizations.⁶⁷ The conviction that the antiauthoritarian tendency of spontaneous crowds had to be broken for the good of the nation by inculcating notions of hierarchy led the military to stage parades, religious processions, commemorations, and celebrations of military victories.

The military’s fear of the revolutionary potential of crowds was complicated by a fascination with their spiritual cohesion and dogged resolution. Such force made Argentine dictators beam with an air of potency and invincibility in the sight of a crowd chanting their name; a crowd that was excited yet disciplined. There seemed among Argentine rulers a need to measure their power by freeing a leviathan which thereupon was dominated. It is this fascination with the gift to harness crowds that made these leaders fond of summoning them. The crowd empowered them by submitting to their authority. The everexistent danger that the crowd might turn against them, as happened several times in Argentine history, enhanced their appeal as proofs of legitimization, power, and authority.

In a series of thirty-four communiqués on 24 March 1976, the military junta declared first its total control over the country, and in its second communiqué prohibited all street demonstrations and crowd formations. “With the objective of maintaining order and calm, the population is reminded that the state of siege is in effect. All inhabitants must abstain from assembling along public routes and from spreading alarming news. Those who disobey this communiqué will be detained by the military, security or police authorities. It is forewarned, likewise, that any street demonstration will be severely repressed.”⁶⁸

Silence fell. The streets were empty. Now, an entirely different crowd stood in the wings to impress its stamp on the streets and squares of Argentina. The armed forces were determined to end the internecine fighting between right and left in the Peronist movement, the increasingly audacious assaults by the guerrilla organizations, and the legitimacy crisis of a crippled government. This repression was not merely antirevolutionary or a measure of state security, but it rested on a profoundly different conception of the place of leaders and crowds in Argentine society. Crowds were feared for creating an uncontrollable horizontal solidarity among people which threatened to disentangle them from the powerholders. Therefore, crowds had to be domesticated so that they would uphold authority and reproduce the hierarchical values of the natural order. Thus, an attempt was made at social engineering, at altering people’s sociality away from a unifying gregariousness and towards obedience, discipline, respect for God, and awe of the nation’s military leaders who had saved the country from a communist revolution and the loss of its Western, Christian civilization.