People's Revolutionary Army (Argentina)
The Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP) was the military branch of the PRT (Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores, or Workers' Revolutionary Party) in Argentina. The name translates as "People's Revolutionary Army".
There was also a military organization affiliated to the guerrilla army FMLN in El Salvador with the same name.
Origins
The ERP was founded as the armed wing of the PRT, a communist group emerging from the Trotskyite tradition. During the 1960s, the PRT aligned itself with the revolutionary regime of Fidel Castro in Cuba and adopted the foquista insurgency strategy associated with Ché Guevara, an Argentine associate of Castro.
The ERP launched its armed struggle against the Argentine military regime in 1969, using targeted urban terrorist tactics, such as assassinations and kidnappings of government officials and foreign company executives. For example, in 1974 Enrique Gorriarán Merlo and Benito Urteaga led the ERP kidnapping of Esso executive Víctor Samuelsson and obtaining a ransom of $12 million. The group continued the violent campaign even after elections and the return to civilian rule in 1973. The avowed aim of the ERP was the replacement of the Argentine government, whether civilian or military, with a revolutionary socialist proletariat dictatorship.
The ERP-PRT joined with the Chilean Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria(MIR) and the Tupamaros of Uruguay to form the Junta Coordinadora Revolucionaria (JCR).
Operations in Salta and Tucuman
After the return of Juan Perón to the presidency, the ERP shifted to a rural strategy designed to secure a large land area as a base of military operations against the Argentine state. The ERP leadership chose the provinces of Salta and Tucumán in long-impoverished Andean highlands in the northwest corner of Argentina.
The growth in ERP strength in the northwest, together with in increasing urban violence carried out by the left-Peronist Montoneros following Perón's death in 1974, led the government of Isabel de Perón to expand the military's powers to fight a counter-insurgency campaign.
In May 1975 ERP representative Amilcar Santucho was captured trying to cross into Paraguay to promote the JCR unity effort. He provided information that enabled Argentine security agencies to disrupt the ERP. The case led to greater security cooperation among South American regimes that came to be known as "Operation Condor," [1]
The Argentine armed forces moved ahead with the "Dirty War," dispensing with the civilian government in a March 1976 coup. The ERP's commander, Mario Roberto Santucho, was killed in July of that year.[2]. Although the ERP continued under the leadership of Enrique Gorriarán Merlo, by late 1977, it had been eradicated as a military force. By that time, the military regime had expanded its own campaign against "subversives" to include state terror against non-violent students, intellectuals, and political activists who were presumed to form the social base of the insurgents.
Aftermath
After the destruction of the radical left in Argentina, some cadres made their way to Nicaragua, where the Sandinistas had taken power in 1979. Gorriarán, for example, worked for the Nicaraguan security service and was implicated in the assassination of ex-dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1980. Gorriarán returned to Argentina in 1987 to became a leader of the Movimiento Todos por la Patria (All For the Country Movement or MTP). Citing the danger of another military coup, the MTP sought to renew the revolutionary armed struggle by attacking La Tablada barracks in January 1989. Gorriarán was arrested in 1995 for his role in the attack and sentenced to life in prison in 1997.
References
- Guerrillas and Generals: The Dirty War in Argentina, by Paul H. Lewis (2001).
- Nosotros Los Santuchos, by Blanca Rina Santucho (1997, in Spanish).
- Argentina`s Lost Patrol : Armed Struggle, 1969-1979, by Maria Moyano (1995).
- Argentina, 1943-1987: The National Revolution and Resistance, by Donald C. Hodges (1988).