The People's Revolutionary Army (, abbreviated as ERP) was the military branch of the communist Workers' Revolutionary Party (, PRT) in Argentina.
History Origins
The ERP was founded as the armed wing of the PRT, a communist party emerging from the Trotskyist tradition, but soon turned to the Maoist theory, especially the Cultural Revolution. During the 1960s, the PRT adopted the foquista strategy of guerilla warfare associated with Che Guevara, who had fought alongside Fidel Castro during the Cuban Revolution.
The ERP launched its guerrilla campaign against the Argentine military dictatorship headed by Juan Carlos Onganía in 1969, using targeted urban guerrilla warfare methods such as assassinations and kidnappings of government officials and foreign company executives.
Between 29 and 30 May 1969, the "Cordobazo", a massive civil uprising and general strike took place in the city of Córdoba, in the central region of Argentina. It brought together an unprecedented alliance of industrial workers and university students who initially successfully seized control of the city to rebel against the military dictatorship of General Onganía.
The Argentine Army's 4th Airborne Infantry Brigade (Brigada de Infantería Aerotransportada IV) was heavily involved in putting down the 1969 Cordobazo. Because the brigade was based directly in Córdoba, the military dictatorship ordered the elite troops into the city streets when local police forces were completely overwhelmed by striking workers and students.
In 1973 Enrique Gorriarán Merlo and Benito Urteaga led the ERP kidnapping of Esso executive Victor Samuelson and obtaining a ransom of $12 million (equivalent to over $80 million today). They also assaulted several companies' offices using heavily armed commandos of the ERP's elite "Special Squad". Although claim and counter-claim are invariably difficult to reconcile, figures released for an official publication, Crónica de la subversión en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Depalma) at least give an indication of the kind of guerrilla activity undertaken, with claims that the rural guerrillas occupied 52 towns, robbed 166 banks and took US$76 million (equivalent to approximately US$565 million today) in ransoms for the kidnappings of 185 people.Guerrillas and Generals: The "Dirty War" in Argentina, Paul H. Lewis, Page 52, Greenwood Publishing Group (2002) "Moyano classified her armed operations more carefully into arms thefts, attacks on property, takeovers (of towns buildings, broadcasting stations, or police and military posts), bombings, kidnappings, hijackings, and deaths (i.e., assassinations). She found that bombings ( 855 incidents), arms thefts (278) and takeovers (200) were the most frequent kinds of guerrilla action between 1969 and 1973."
The group continued the violent campaign even after democratic elections and the return to civilian rule in 1973, with Juan Peron's return. On 20 June 1973 the Peronist movement split after the Ezeiza massacre, that started when Lieutenant-Colonel Jorge Osinde's crowd monitoring right-wing Peronist militia reported the arrival of heavily armed Montoneros in two buses the day that Peron returned from exile.Guerrillas and Generals: The "Dirty War" in Argentina, Paul H. Lewis, Pages 88-89, Greenwood Publishing Group (2002) "Around midmorning they began to notice suspicious movements beyond the fields that flanked the airport highway. Men with different-colored armbands were positioning themselves behind the trees while others were climbing up into them. Then, just before noon, a huge column of armed men, led by Governor Oscar Bidegain, appeared at the southern approach to the overpass, flanked by two Leyland buses and some ambulances. A few minutes later someone fired a shot, and the battle was on. It raged for the next three hours (...) One of the Leyland buses was blown up by a grenade. Later, it was found to be full of weapons, with supports in the windows for machine guns (...) Thrown back, the Montoneros began to scatter, pursued by Osinde's men. Some of those who were caught were shot or badly beaten. Most were hauled to the International Hotel at the Ezeiza Airport, where Osinde had set up an emergency interrogation center, and were beaten unmercifully until they revealed who had ordered the attack." Victor E. Samuelson, an Exxon executive, was abducted on 6 December 1973 by the ERP. He was released after 144 days in captivity, after the Exxon Corporation paid a record ransom of $14.2 million.U.S. Executive Freed in Argentina; Guerrillas Got Record $14.2 Million. Los Angeles Times. (30 April 1974) The avowed aim of the ERP was a communist revolution against the Argentine government in pursuit of "proletarian rule."
The ERP publicly remained in the forefront. ERP guerrilla activity took the form of attacks on army outposts, police stations and convoys. On 29 July 1971, ERP guerrillas shot dead retired Major Julio Famatino, former prison warden in the city of Córdoba.¿Qué hubiera sido de la Argentina si los militares no tomaban el poder? On 6 September 1971, an ERP force took over the Villa Urquiza Prison in Tucumán Province, liberating 14 fellow guerrilla fighters that had been captured and killing 5 prison guards(Raúl Villagra, Saul Carlos Rojas, José Rosas Abregú, Néstor Lobos and Juan Ordóñez.Avanza el Enemigo, Gabriel Ruiz de los Llanos, Pg. 55, Editorial Del Nuevo Amanecer, 2000 In 1971, 57 policemen were reported killed at the hands of left-wing guerrillas, and in 1972 another 38 policemen lost their lives in the guerrilla violence. On 17 March 1972, ERP gunmen killed Lieutenant-Colonel Pedro Agarotti from the National Gendarmerie while he tended his garden on his day-off from duties.Tiempo de violencia y utopía: de Golpe de Onganía (1966) al Golpe de Videla (1976), Oscar R. Anzorena, p. 171, Ediciones Colihue SRL, 1998 On 20 March, ERP guerrillas set fire to a number of police vehicles undergoing maintenance in a garage repair shop in the suburb of Villa Devoto in Buenos Aires.Tiempo de violencia y utopía: de Golpe de Onganía (1966) al Golpe de Videla (1976), Oscar R. Anzorena, p. 171, Ediciones Colihue SRL, 1998 On 28 December 1972, Marine Private Julio César Provenzano of the ERP, is killed when the bomb he planted in one of the lavatories of the Argentine Naval Headquarters went off prematurely. On 23 May 1973, two Ford executives (Luis Giovanelli, manager of Ford's analysis department and Noemi Baruj de la Rin, supervisor of industrial relations )were wounded and hospitalized after their cars and several other executives were stopped near the entrance of a number of Ford plants and their cars shot-up with sub-machine‐gun fire by masked ERP gunmen. Ford Will Pay $1‐Million To Halt Argentine Terror On 3 April 1973, ERP guerrillas kidnapped Rear-Admiral Francisco Agustín Alemán.
Hector Cámpora’s first week as Argentina’s new president was marked by bloody street battles that left four dead and dozens wounded. On 25 May 1973, some 40,000 guerrilla sympathizers among the civilian population gathered at Villa Devoto prison demanding that all captured Montoneros and ERP members held inside be set free. To avoid a bloody confrontation, some 500 guerrillas and militants were physically let out of the gates that evening.ARGENTINA: El Tio in Trouble
The presidential pardon and subsequent congressional amnesty delivered a profound institutional shock to Argentina's security apparatus. Embittered by the reality that years of hard police work and supporting counterinsurgency operations on the part of the armed forces had been erased overnight, the military and police leadership forged a sinister plot to never rely on the judicial system again. This "take no prisoners" pact cemented the nature of the state violence in Argentina; when the security forces launched their new campaigns, they abandoned lawful arrests and public indictments in favour of nocturnal, deniable abductions on the part of the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance (Alianza Anticomunista Argentina or Triple A). These state-backed death-squads soon established a vast network of secret detention centres where suspected terrorists and their supporters were tortured without legal recourse and then executed. To erase the evidence of these murders and avoid leaving physical evidence, the death-squads turned to horrific disposal methods with prisoners buried anonymously in mass graves or remote plots, registered falsely under the acronym "N.N." (No Nomen, or No Name) and committing some of the worst crimes against humanity in Latin America.Chapter 5 The Cold War Struggle (1): Capitalist Atrocities
In January 1974 the ERP Compañía Héroes de Trelew, named in commemoration of the 1972 Massacre of Trelew, during which 16 left-wing guerrillas who had attempted to escape detention had been shot dead, in the form of 80 guerrillas dressed in captured Argentine Army uniforms attacked the barracks at Azul, killing the Commanding Officer (Colonel Camilo Arturo Gay) and his wife (Hilda Irma Casaux) and kidnapping and later executing Lieutenant-Colonel Jorge Ibarzábal, with Patricia Gay the daughter of Gay and Casaux later taking her own life because of the trauma of witnessing the killing of her parents. However, in August, an assault on the Argentine Army's Villa Maria explosives factory in Cordoba and the 17th Airborne Infantry Regiment at Catamarca by 70 ERP guerrillas dressed in army fatigues, met mixed fortune after killing and wounding eight policemen and soldiers but losing 16 guerrillas shot dead after they surrendered to 300 paratroopers of the 17th Airborne Infantry Regiment under Lieutenant-Colonel Eduardo Humberto Cubas.
During the attack in Villa Maria, Lieutenant-Colonel Argentino del Valle Larraburu was kidnapped, taken to a safehouse that also served as a prison before meeting his brutal death at the hands of the ERP. Larrabure, a devout Catholic, allegedly sang the Argentine national anthem or religious hymns to keep his spirits up in the subterranean cell he was confined to. According to the findings of American political scientist and professor Paul H. Lewis in his book Guerrillas and Generals: The "Dirty War" in Argentina (2002), angered by his resistance and refusal to cooperate in sharing his chemical formulas to help ERP manufacture military-grade explosives his captors strangled him with a wire or cord and inflicted a severe blow to his skull.
On 23 October 1974, ERP guerrillas shot and killed Lieutenant-Colonel José Francisco Gardón as he was leaving the Buenos Aires hospital where he specialized in blood diseases. On 18 August 1975 Captain Miguel Alberto Keller, accompanied by an NCO and five conscripts were forced to stop their army lorry at what they believed to be a military checkpoint, and Keller was shot dead as he approached the ERP guerrillas waiting in ambush. In December 1975 a force of some 300 ERP guerrillas and supporting militants attacked the Monte Chingolo barracks outside Buenos Aires but lost 63 dead, many of whom were wounded in the attack and subsequently killed.Gustavo Plis-Sterenberg, Monte Chingolo. La mayor batalla de la guerrilla argentina In addition, seven army troops and three policemen were killed and 34 wounded (including 17 policemen). In all, 293 members of the Argentine Armed Forces were killed fighting left-wing guerrillas and militants between 1975 and 1976.
In 1976 there had been plans to send a large part of the Uruguayan Tupamaros (MLN-T), the Chilean Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) and the Bolivian National Liberation Army (ELN) to fight alongside the ERP and Montoneros in Argentina, but the plans failed to materialize largely due to the military coup in Argentina.
Operations in Tucumán and Buenos Aires