to rebuild the country was great, but the myth of the Cordobazo kept haunting the nation.
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.
