(The following article appeared in the June 2 issue of Combate Socialista, the weekly newspaper of the Portuguese Partido Revolucionário dos Trabalhadores (PRT-Revolutionary Workers party, a group that has declared its adherence to the Fourth International). The author is a European correspondent for Revista de América, a monthly magazine that was published in Buenos Aires before the March 24 military coup. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
A few days after it happened, I received a telephone call informing me of the death of Comrade Arturo Gomes, a leader of the Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores [PST-Socialist Workers party, revolutionary-socialist organization in Argentina], who suffered a fatal heart attack.
Arturo joined the Trotskyist movement in 1958 as a student leader in the midst of the big student mobilizations that were then sweeping Argentina. He fought to link up these struggles with the heroic battles being waged simultaneously by the proletariat, which culminated in the great general strikes of 1959.
After he joined the Palabra Obrera group (the organization of the Argentine Trotskyists in that period), he rapidly became one of its principal leaders. In fact, he was the cadre who, through long and patient work, played the leading role in establishing the party in the La Plata region, not only among the large student population there but also in the strong concentrations of workers employed in the packing houses, heavy metalworking complexes, textile plants, and service industries.
The effectiveness of his work is reflected by the solidity of the PST organization in La Plata, where, despite the murder of about ten comrades over the last year, there has been no retreat in building the party. On the contrary, after every blow, the influence of the Trotskyists has been extended by their tireless work in the schools and factories.
However, several years ago the demands of the class struggle obliged Arturo, a member of the Central Committee, to take on additional responsibilities in the day-today leadership of the party. Thus, in the last period of the Onganía-Levingston- Lanusse dictatorship, during the electoral campaign in 1973 when the PST challenged Peronism, and in all the great struggles that helped the PST develop a working-class base on the national level and qualitatively increase its forces, Arturo was a member of the Executive Committee and the Secretariat of the organization. For more than a year, continuing as a member of the Executive Committee, he was the political editor of the party's organ, Avanzada Socialista.
Arturo was a member of the Argentine delegation to the Tenth World Congress of the Fourth International. At that time, he was elected to the International Executive Committee of the Fourth International with consultative status (reactionary Argentine legislation prevents the PST from affiliating to international organizations).
Death came upon him unexpectedly, as our comrade was beginning a new and difficult struggle in the underground against the repression of the military dictatorship, the same kind of fight he fought so many times before, a fight in which the party continued its work among the masses, and on a higher level than before, organizing the resistance and gaining strength as an alternative political leadership to the fading Peronists.
This is a loss we feel deeply, because it will be hard to fill the place he left. His loss is also deeply felt by those who knew him, because of the extraordinary human and moral qualities that made him comrade who was always approachable and ready to deal patiently and goodhumoredly with the most difficult problems. He corrected the errors of others without giving offense and without pointless rebukes. He always taught us that building the party is the task of a team in which we all have an important and necessary place.
An Argentine Trotskyist has died, a militant supporter of the Fourth International, a Bolshevik leader, a beloved comrade. We take leave of him with a fond farewell and a promise to carry on the revolutionary endeavor to which he contributed so much and through which he will remain with us.