[The following article on the May 25 inauguration of Argentine President Héctor Cámpora was published in the May 30 issue of Avanzada Socialista, the weekly newspaper of the Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores (PST- Socialist Workers party). The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
What went on May 25 in the Congress and outside the government house, in the demonstrations in the downtown area, and in the column of thousands of persons who went to Devoto Prison to free the prisoners, were scenes like nothing Buenos Aires has seen in the last seven years. Nevertheless, the main actor in the great demonstrations of the Peronist movement and of the resistance to the dictatorship - the organized workers movement-was absent. Its absence was reflected in the slogans, in the objectives, and in the strength of the popular mobilizations.
When all the rest of the country was being shaken by rebellions in the interior, beginning with the Cordobazo, political activists were asking themselves the question: "When is Buenos Aires going to join in?" Thus we saw rebellion after rebellion, a chain of mobilizations in the streets that stretched from Tucumán in the north to General Roca in the south, while in the streets of the capital reigned a social peace that was imposed by the menacing presence of the repressive forces and by the apparatus of the trade-union bureaucracy-
This May 25 we saw the chiefs of the repression making a retreat, negotiating with the Peronist Youth, and handing over to them the task of maintaining order with a crowd that they could not control. We saw how the church was unable to do its Te Deum, how the military could not stage its parade. We saw the heads of the armed forces helplessly enduring the insults of people expressing their hatred for the armed branch of the exploiters. We saw the banners of the guerrilla organizations that were mercilessly hunted down until only yesterday waving outside the Congress, at the Pink House, and even on the walls of Villa Devoto Prison. We saw a column of thousands of demonstrators surrounding the prison, freely carrying on a dialogue with the prisoners, and getting the Peronist leadership to agree to free them.
We also saw how the forces of repression, even as they were retreating, did not refrain from firing their weapons and producing new victims among the people's fighters.
What is new is this: After long years, though still on a small scale, the people in Buenos Aires began to make use of the only method by which the workers and the people can attain the goals they have set for themselves —active mobilization and taking to the streets to debate in action the question of who holds power. This is how the workers and students in the interior won an end to the wage freeze, the introduction of democratic freedoms, the calling of elections, and the agreement to go along with a Peronist victory. This is how the military dictatorship was defeated. And this is the way the struggle must continue if new gains are to be won at the expense of imperialism, the oligarchy, and the bosses.
But the great shortcoming of the meeting and the demonstrations was the absence of the organized workers movement. Most of the participants were not workers but students or persons from the middle class. Unfortunately, there was nothing like the huge worker actions of the Peronist movement, such as the one in 1946 when the working class won the Christmas bonus and other benefits and filled the streets of the city.
The contingents of participants from the unions were pitiful. The steelworkers numbered less than 2,000; they were practically lost in the crowd. There were fewer than 1,000 textile workers. The turnout from most of the unions amounted to no more than a poster surrounded by a handful of people.
The union bureaucrats limited themselves to calling a few assemblies and renting buses. But this is not enough nowadays to mobilize the workers. After so many years of betrayals and sellouts, no one is prepared to take to the streets just because some executive board says it should be done. And even less if the mobilization does not set itself the goal of obtaining solutions to the most pressing problems of the working class: wages, high prices, unemployment. In addition, the workers do not have complete confidence in a government they supported with their votes but whose candidates were not selected on the basis of any consultations with the rankand-file workers.
Imagine what would have happened if a million workers had taken to the street demanding an immediate increase in wages, nationalization of the monopolies, and the rehiring of all the companeros who were fired for leading the struggles that ended up by bringing down the dictatorship. Imagine if the hundreds of workers who are occupying the EMA and Lozadur factories had been present, demanding solutions to the problems they face, and if the personnel at Citroën and Peugeot, and the packinghouse workers, had mobilized to demand the rehiring of those who were fired. Imagine thousands of other examples like these, examples that are occurring every day.
But this did not happen. The workers limited themselves to following the events on television - with great joy, but passively. This was reflected in the slogans at the action: They ridiculed the gorillas and the military, and urged long life to "Uncle Cámpora," but there were none directed against the bosses and the oligarchy or pressing for working-class goals.
Lessons of May 25
The Peronist Youth did not attempt to fill this gap by raising issues for which it has itself been fighting, with the exception of the demand for freeing the political prisoners. Thus, between the sabotage (conscious or unconscious) of the bureaucracy and the absence of an organization to put forward a workers program, the net result of the mobilizations-in spite of the fact that they pushed the problem of the prisoners much further than seemed to be in the official script - was to give a blank check to the Justicialist government. It is a blank check that the workers did not signnot the municipal workers who have embarked on a course of struggle, nor the state workers in Santa Fe with their barricades, nor those in San Luis, who twice occupied the government house.
These mobilizations are pointing to what is coming inevitably: more and more struggles by the exploited against the bosses, imperialism, and leaders who have sold out. If we are to be prepared for this, the good and bad sides of May 25 must be pointed out. On the positive side: It showed that the streets belong to the people when they decide to take them over with their own forces, and that just as the mobilization won the release of the political prisoners, many additional goals could have been achieved by continuing along this path. On the negative side: The working class is still not making itself felt because of the failures of the union leaderships and because there is still no recognized organization that expounds its needs and knows how to present them in a clear and concrete way.
From now on there will be a new field of struggle for the workers of the capital and Greater Buenos Aires who, since the Cordobazo, have been struggling for their demands on the factory level. Like their class brothers, the workers in the interior, they will now take to the streets in their struggle for nationalizations, to impose workers control over the books and to find out company profits, to win an immediate wage increase, to get rid of the traitorous leaderships ensconced in the unions, and to get those who have been fired rehired.
In order to prepare for these future and imminent struggles, the workers must organize and fortify a powerful organization -the revolutionary party of the Argentine working class.