The new coup by the officers who have just replaced Levingston with Lanusse came as a shock to no one in Argentina. For some time, all of the classical symptoms of an impending coup had been appearing more and more plainly, and open polemics were taking place between the leaders of the different tendencies. Fundamentally, the events of recent weeks are simply a confirmation of a crisis involving actual political and social disintegration of the system, which is incapable of projecting even minimally effective solutions to the most pressing problems or to produce a political leadership of any homogeneity or stability whatever.
With the Ongania military dictatorship, which attained power in 1966, the Argentine bourgeoisie was able to think for a short period that it had entered a phase of relative stability. In fact, thanks to increased exploitation of the working class and pauperization of plebeian and petty-bourgeois strata, it was possible to achieve a certain economic recovery. At the same time, the maneuvers of the ultrabureaucratized trade unions, which in fact were collaborating with the regime, helped to bring about a stagnation in the mass struggle. The interlude, however, was brief. In May 1969 large mobilizations by the workers and students in Córdoba and Rosario marked an abrupt turn. The revolutionary crisis shaking the Latin American continent was also enveloping Argentina.
The history of the past two years is the history of the Argentinian bourgeoisie's desperate attempts to find an alternative solution. Its response to the 1969 upsurge was repression, but repression could not halt the mass movement. This is why the life of the Levingston regime-which, from the standpoint of its social content, was no different from that of Onganía - was distinguished by constant faction warfare taking place, broadly speaking, between the advocates of a policy of more determined repression and the advocates of a "nationalist-populist" operation aimed at winning a certain mass base for the regime and assuring the collaboration of the traditional political forces. The polemics over political orientation dovetailed, moreover, with those over economic policy. The supporters of a more "national" policy tinged with protectionism clashed with supporters of a "liberal" policy, which in fact would promote the penetration of foreign capital (American, in the first instance).
The question of whether a Peruvian-style solution should be expected in Argentina has in fact been discussed in Argentinian political circles.
A few weeks ago, for example, ex-President Frondizi made a prolonged visit to Peru, during which he voiced significant judgments. In the petty-bourgeois left also there are currents that openly praise the regime of Velasco Alvarado (e.g., the Izquierda Nacional [Nationalist Left] of Abelardo Ramos, which publishes the articles of the capitulationist Ismael Frias, who left the Fourth International in 1965 along with Michel Pablo).
For their part, the Argentinian revolutionary Marxists consider a Peruvian-style solution as a rather unlikely variant. In fact, Argentina differs structurally from Peru, where both before and after the 1968 coup the agrarian question has remained one of the key problems in the country, and which has not undergone industrial development of the scope Argentina has. At the same time, the Peruvian army, above all in a context of relative stagnation of the mass movement, offered assurances for carrying out a cold transformation. There were many opportunities for keeping a check on the process from above, at least for one entire stage. But this is not the case for Argentina, where the army itself is deeply divided and -- in the last analysis, the decisive factor -- the masses have been on the offensive since 1969.
In fact, a turn in the Argentinian political situation would be possible only on two conditions: (1) if the government made important economic concessions to the masses, thereby broadening the unions' margin for maneuver and refurbishing their credibility somewhat; (2) if an agreement were reached with the political formations believed to hold real influence over the electorate. This poses the problem of a compromise with Peronism. It could even, at last resort, raise the question of the exile returning from Madrid. But, in the specific case, in the context of militant mobilizations of the working class, of a radicalization of broad petty-bourgeois layers, of the development of new revolutionary vanguards (inside the Peronist movement as well), such operations would entail enormous dangers for the bourgeoisie. A process might be touched off that no one could control, and the system itself would be threatened with collapse. This is why it is easier for politicians or military officers playing political roles to talk about "national-popular," "constitutional," or "Peruvian" solutions than it is for them to indicate the precise forms by which such solutions could be implemented. This is why it is easier to promise elections as a basis for returning to "normality" than to set a date for voting and, most of all, stick to it.
During the last two months, student, popular, and working-class mobilizations have continued almost without letup. Sectors of the petty bourgeoisie and even the professionals have been involved. The epicenter was the large industrial city of Córdoba, where the workers staged several general strikes and organized big street demonstrations including thousands and even tens of thousands of participants. It was the working class in the big factories of the city that led a movement which, while stimulated by the continual deterioration in the standard of living (according to official figures prices rose 29.9 percent between February 1970 and February 1971), acquired the increasingly political content of a struggle against the military dictatorship and capitalist exploitation in general. Moreover, precisely in Córdoba, the process of the political ripening of the new working-class vanguard has gone the furthest. Militant unions like those in the automobile industry (SITRAC [Sindicato de Trabajadores de Concord -- Concord Workers Union] and SITRAM [Sindicato de Trabajadores de Materfer -- Materfer Workers Union]) have opposed the old capitulationist, corrupt bureaucracy. Student youth have participated in the struggles of the workers. Organizations devoted to armed struggle have won considerable influence and staged spectacular actions. The lessons of May 1969 and the latest repressions have made clear to thousands and tens of thousands of workers that class struggle in Argentina has now reached the level of armed confrontation and that the military dictatorship can be combated only by revolutionary violence.
During the last year Argentina has unquestionably been the Latin American country where urban guerrilla actions have developed most spectacularly (in certain aspects they have reached a higher level than in Uruguay itself). Five organizations have played a leading role -- the FAP [Fuerzas Armadas Peronistas - Peronist Armed Forces], the FAR [Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias — Revolutionary Armed Forces], the Montoneros, the FAL [Frente Armada de Liberación -- Armed Liberation Front], and the ERP [Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo- People's Revolutionary Army]. The first three groups claim to be Peronist (suffering deep-going differences that simply reflect the differentiation in the Peronista movement as a whole). The FAL claims to be Marxist-Leninist (it arose partially out of the PCR [Partido Comunista Revolucionario -- Revolutionary Communist party], which in turn was founded by youths who left the CP a few years ago). The ERP was created as the result of a decision by the PRT [Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores - Revolutionary Workers party], the Argentinian section of the Fourth International, which provides the political and organizational leadership. In the recent period, owing both to its own increase in strength and the difficulties experienced by the other organizations, the ERP has emerged as the most dynamic force, the one most capable of carrying out spectacular actions of the sort that can win very wide sympathies.
The strategic perspective the Argentine comrades are following is the one laid down by the Ninth World Congress of the Fourth International -- elaborated and made more precise by the last two national congresses of the PRT -- of a prolonged armed struggle, a revolutionary war, which might involve the intervention of the imperialists and thus could not be waged without profound ties to, and increasing participation by, the masses. The Argentinian comrades have no illusions that they can deal the class enemy a death blow through the activity of small vanguards, and they have rejected from the start foquista theories like those formulated in Régis Debray's celebrated pamphlet, which were more or less openly taken up by nuclei of revolutionary militants in Argentina and elsewhere. For the Argentinian revolutionists the battles of the last months are only the initial phase of the revolutionary war that is shaping up. Their actions represent only the beginning of a struggle that will of necessity be prolonged and very difficult. Their goal is to build up their forces, to train militants for combat, to win influence and sympathy by forms of armed propaganda, to establish the first direct links between armed struggle and the specific dynamic of workers' struggles.
These actions, which have come in rapid succession since the start of the year, especially in February and the first half of March, and which have made a very great impression on the daily and weekly bourgeois press, can be categorized as follows:
a. Actions aimed at acquiring funds by expropriations carried out in the old Bolshevik tradition (the most spectacular stroke was the one in Córdoba which, according to the Argentinian press, brought its organizers 121,000,000 pesos [350 old pesos equal US$1].
b. Actions aimed at acquiring arms and medical supplies (the most spectacular stroke in this area was at a clinic in Buenos Aires).
c. Actions designed to win the sympathies of the most deprived strata by handing out food (meat, milk, etc.) taken from big distributing firms.
d. Actions linked to workers' struggles (the most important so far was the one carried out by an armed detachment which invaded the FIAT factory in Córdoba and held a meeting there).
All these actions have effectively achieved their objective of armed propaganda. At the present time the ERP is the best-known revolutionary organization and has won very broad sympathy -- in some big plants, too. From the technical point of view, even the enemy has had to recognize that the ERP has scored some points.
Any fear that such armed actions might isolate the organization from the masses is absolutely without foundation in the Argentinian context today. The converse is true. The working masses, the student movement activists, and the plebeian strata of the big cities warmly welcome the initiatives of the revolutionary organizations. During a general strike in Córdoba, the banners of the ERP were greeted with strong applause by the thousands of demonstrators (even the bourgeois press itself had to admit this). The same day, despite the opposition of certain so-called revolutionary groups, including the pro-Chinese, thousands of persons went to the city prison, where the activists of the armed organizations were confined, and listened enthusiastically to short speeches that some prisoners (belonging, according to the press, to the Montoneros and the ERP) delivered from their cells. A few days later, 5,000 persons joined the funeral procession of a young worker killed by the police. The coffin was draped in the flag of the ERP. Finally, no food distribution could be carried through without the active participation of the population in the districts where these operations take place.
Let me repeat again. This is only the initial phase of a very prolonged struggle. Our PRT comrades are perfectly aware of this. They are aware also that future developments depend to a decisive extent on their ability to transform the sympathy and influence they have won into solid ties with the mass movement, on their ability to integrate armed action into the dynamic of the struggles of the working class and all the poor strata in their country. Their basic strategy does not prevent them, moreover, from exploiting the few opportunities that exist for legal or semilegal activity and will not prevent them from exploiting more extensive possibilities that may be offered by conjunctural turns in the political situation -- turns which at present are improbable but which cannot be absolutely excluded. In any case, the initiatives our comrades have taken in recent months are a milestone in the experience of the armed struggle in Argentina and will be analyzed with the greatest interest by other revolutionary movements in Latin America.
This is why the United Secretariat of the Fourth International at its last meeting drew "the attention of the International and of the revolutionary workers' movement to the importance of the Argentinian events and to the tasks of international solidarity which flow from it," sent its warmest greetings to the PRT and expressed "its fraternal solidarity with the militants who are victims of the dictatorship's repression and imprisonment." We have no doubt about the response to this appeal.
March 31, 1971