Within half an hour, a large number of people had congregated at the CGT building. The same Avenida de Mayo, where five days earlier the silent Corpus Christi procession had taken place, was now filled with vehicles carrying workers coming to the rescue of Perón, as they had done one decade earlier. A number of workers were killed by machine-gun fire as they arrived at the Casa Rosada.77
The final aerial assault took place around 3:30 P.M., when a squadron dropped their bombs and killed many soldiers and civilians in the zone of action before the pilots fled to Uruguay. Army troops loyal to Perón succeeded in reconquering the Plaza de Mayo. The toll of the four-hour insurrection was 355 dead and more than 600 wounded.78 For the first time in Argentine history, a popular crowd had been attacked with weapons of war. Peronists were dumbstruck. The boundless Peronist crowd had revealed its weakness, and this awareness had a traumatizing effect that changed forever the self-perception of Peronist street mobilizations. The excessive violence, the hundreds of dead and the impunity of the attacking forces would be recalled in future decades whenever a Peronist crowd was under the threat of repression.
Perón was equally shocked. He had been dismayed earlier that day by the call of mobilization. “Go back to the CGT,” he told a messenger, “and tell the CGT that not one worker should go to the plaza.”79 However, it was only after the fighting had ceased that Perón’s message was received. Clearly, Perón had temporarily lost control over the Peronist crowd. Even his plea to the workers, in his 6:00 P.M. radio address, to control their anger, and reseal the indestructible bond of people and army, fell on deaf ears. The acute social trauma incurred by the brutal killings made the Peronists seek revenge.
The metropolitan curia at the Plaza de Mayo was the first target of the angry crowd. The interior was destroyed and its valuable archive torched. Reminiscent of the assault on churches by rioters upon the assassination of the popular Colombian leader Jorge Gaitán in April 1948 or the iconoclastic attacks by the Republican Left on the Church during the Spanish civil war, the demonstrators mutilated statues and dressed themselves in sacred vestments. Seventeen churches were ransacked and partly destroyed by fire as police and firemen looked on.80 The gutting of the curia of Buenos Aires on 16 June 1955 became the symbolic reversal of 17 October 1945. Here was finally the true face of the popular crowd, according to the political opposition. Typical LeBonian terminology pervaded their language. The editor of the Catholic magazine Criterio described the protesters as subhuman, “totally immoral, without sensitivity, without education, with a smell of alcohol, living off women, gambling and theft….”81 The crowd had finally raised its ugly head and revealed its true nature.
Street protests continued to be a means of political pressure and legitimization in the months ahead. John William Cooke, the head of the Peronist party, favored street mobilizations and the formation of an armed militia with the slogan “Another 1945” (volver al 45).82 Perón began to have grave doubts about his power base. He admitted to having curtailed civil liberties, declared the end of the Peronist revolution, and promised to be president of all Argentines.
Perón’s offer of a truce was too late. The Church hierarchy continued with its critique, dissident officers were planning another coup, and anti-Peronists held frequent street demonstrations. Perón had a daring answer. He announced his resignation on 31 August 1955. The CGT union central had been privy to Perón’s decision, and had already planned a large demonstration at the Plaza de Mayo to express the support of the Peronist workers. Once more, 17 October 1945 cast its shadow over the crowd.
The people were in a joyous mood on 31 August, eating the soup, bread, and oranges distributed by the Eva Perón Foundation.83 The tone of Perón’s speech contrasted sharply with the crowd’s peacefulness. Perón said that he had offered his hand to the opposition during the two-month truce, but that they had responded with violence. Now, there were only two roads open: the government must repress the subversion, or the people must retaliate. Unleashing his following and giving free reign to violence, Perón authorized every Argentine to kill whoever undermined or conspired against the public order. “And from now on we establish as permanent rule for our movement: Whoever in any place tries to disturb order against the constituted authorities, or against the law and the Constitution, may be killed by any Argentine…. The watchword for every peronista, whether alone or within an organization, is to answer a violent act with another violent act. And whenever one of us falls five of them will fall.”84 Perón’s terrible threat and the CGT’s insistence on the formation of an armed militia convinced his opposition within the armed forces that the time was ripe for a final assault.
The Liberating Revolution (Revolución Libertadora) was launched on 16 September 1955 when General Lonardi rose in rebellion in Córdoba together with all major naval bases. Perón declared a state of siege but did not advance on the rebels with loyalist troops. On 18 September, Rear-Admiral Rojas broke the stand-off by threatening to bomb the oil deposits in Buenos Aires harbor and the oil refinery in La Plata. The next morning, naval salvos destroyed the oil deposits in Mar del Plata. Perón feared a further escalation, delegated his army command, and took refuge in the Paraguayan Embassy on 20 September. Later, he moved to a Paraguayan gun boat anchored in the harbor of Buenos Aires, and finally left Argentina on 3 October by a twin-engine flying boat with Asunción as its destination.85
Why did Perón give up his presidency so easily? By late August 1955, only a handful of the around ninety generals were committed to Perón’s overthrow. Once the rebellion got under way, Lonardi’s rebel troops were surrounded and outnumbered ten to four by General Iñíguez’s loyalist troops.86 Close associates advised Perón to open the weapons deposits and arm the workers but Perón dreaded the idea of civil war and the scenes of destruction he had seen in Spain in 1939.87 Instead, he placed his hopes on a peaceful solution by mobilizing his Peronist following as he had done a fortnight earlier, on 31 August. Yet, the people remained at home. Perón realized that he had lost the crowd contest with the opposition.
The crowd mobilizations of 17 October 1945 and 16 June 1955 had shown that something more was needed than a union directive to make people take to the streets. Somehow, the feelings were no longer there among the people to motivate another massive show of force at the Plaza de Mayo. We can only guess at the passiveness of the Peronist workers, but it is reasonable to assume that the bombardment on 16 June 1955 had traumatized the Peronist crowd. The crowd had responded with retaliatory violence, but could not redress the real and symbolic losses incurred. The bombardment had revealed the vulnerability of the street crowd, demolished the edifice of invincibility and historical destiny erected by Perón, and raised fears of future attacks. After the initial rage against the metropolitan curia at the Plaza de Mayo, the Peronist masses demobilized as if a defeated army. The memories of the hundreds of dead were still too fresh to carry through a massive resistance. Personal feelings of self-preservation, a lack of faith in Perón, and a sense that the tables had turned made most Peronists stay at home. There were small violent demonstrations in Buenos Aires on 23 September and in Rosario between 24 and 28 September but the repressive response of army and police ended the protests swiftly.88
The Coming of Age of Argentine Crowds
The figure of Perón looms large in the history of Argentine crowds. The streets and squares of Argentina became the scene of a variety of crowd demonstrations after the end of World War II. There were protest marches, religious processions, strike crowds, election rallies, commemorations, celebrations, belligerent crowds, and festive crowds.89 Mass mobilizations had also occurred before World War II, but they only became a constant in Argentine politics when the populist leader Juan Domingo Perón came to power in 1945. The year 1945 marked a watershed in the history of Argentine crowds because it saw the birth of the working class as a principal player in the public arena.
The crowd on 17 October 1945 that rose to the defense of Perón was a cathartic crowd that shed an “infamous decade” (década infame) of frustration and disenfranchisement
