Montoneros

Montoneros (Spanish: Movimiento Peronista Montonero, MPM) was a far-left, revolutionary guerrilla organization in Argentina, which emerged in the 1970s during the "Argentine Revolution" dictatorship. The Montoneros advocated an ideology combining revolutionary Peronism, Falangism, and Camilism; they were officially Roman Catholic. The organization's name referred to the 19th-century cavalry militias called Montoneras, which fought for the Federalist Party in the Argentine civil wars. The Montoneros were radicalized by the political repression of anti-Peronist regimes, the influence of the Cuban Revolution, and liberation theology worker-priests; they grew from the 1960s Catholic revolutionary guerrilla Comando Camilo Torres as a "national liberation movement", and they synthesized revolutionary Peronism, Guevarism, and the revolutionary Catholicism of Juan García Elorrio shaped by Camilism. The Montoneros fought for the return of Juan Perón to Argentina and the establishment of "Christian national socialism", based on "indigenous" Argentine and Catholic socialism; this was seen as the ultimate conclusion of Peronist doctrine. The Montoneros' first public action occurred on 29 May 1970, with the kidnapping, revolutionary trial, and assassination of the anti-Peronist ex-dictator Pedro Eugenio Aramburu. He was one of the leaders of the 1955 coup that had overthrown the constitutional government led by President Juan Domingo Perón. Montoneros kidnapped the ex-dictator to put him on "revolutionary trial" for being a traitor to the homeland—for having shot 27 people to suppress the 1956 Valle uprising—and to recover the body of Eva Perón, whom Aramburu had kidnapped and made disappear. Montoneros was the armed nucleus of a set of nonmilitary social organizations ("mass fronts") known as the Tendencia Revolucionaria del Peronismo (or simply La Tendencia); these included the Juventud Peronista Regionales (JP), the Juventud Universitaria Peronista (JUP), the Juventud Trabajadora Peronista (JTP), the Unión de Estudiantes Secundarios (UES), the Agrupación Evita, and the Movimiento Villero Peronista. In 1972 Montoneros merged with Descamisados,...