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72-516: The Triple A was secretly led by José López Rega , Minister of Social Welfare and personal secretary of Juan Perón . Rodolfo Almirón , arrested in Spain in 2006, was alleged to be his chief operating officer of the group, and was officially head of López Rega's and Isabel Perón's personal security. He was extradited from Spain in 2006 and prosecuted; he died in jail in June 2009. SIDE agent Anibal Gordon

144-419: A car bomb . The AAA went on to kill 1,122 people, according to an appendix to the 1983 CONADEP report, including suspected Montoneros and ERP leftist terrorists and their sympathizers, but the group expanded its targets to other political opponents, including judges , police chiefs, and social activists . In total, it is suspected of having killed more than 1500 people. The group is strongly suspected in

216-548: A civilian airliner, taking over the provincial airport, attacking the 29th Infantry Regiment's barracks at Formosa province and capturing its cache of arms, and finally escaping by air. Once the operation was over, they made good their escape towards a remote area in Santa Fe province . The aircraft, a Boeing 737 , eventually landed on a crop field not far from the city of Rafaela . In the aftermath, 12 soldiers and 2 policemen were killed and several wounded. The sophistication of

288-582: A conservative guess). Under heavy criticism due to Celestino Rodrigo's economic policies, López Rega was forced to resign on 11 July 1975; he was hurriedly appointed ambassador to Spain by Isabel Perón and fled to Franco's Spain with Rodolfo Almirón; Almirón later became the chief of security of Manuel Fraga , leader of the People's Alliance post-Franco conservative party, but was arrested in Spain in December 2006. On 24 March 1976, President Isabel Perón

360-684: A large land area as a base of military operations against the Argentine state. The ERP leadership chose to send the Compania del Monte Ramón Rosa Jimenez (Ramón Rosa Jimenez Mountain Company) to the province of Tucumán at the edge of the long-impoverished Andean highlands in the northwest corner of Argentina. Many of the officers in the rural guerrilleros company were trained in Cuba. In July 2008, Cuban leader Fidel Castro admitted that he supported

432-744: 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. After the return of Juan Perón to the presidency in 1973, the ERP shifted to a rural strategy designed to secure

504-641: 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. In addition, seven army troops and three policemen were killed and 34 wounded (including 17 policemen). In all, 293 Argentine servicemen and police were killed fighting left-wing guerrillas between 1975 and 1976. In 1976 there had been plans to send

576-603: A passion for esoterism and occultism ). He married at the age of 27. In 1944 he joined the Federal Police; with the help of police chief Filomeno Velazco he joined the guard which protected the Casa Rosada , seat of the executive, with the rank of corporal . In 1951, he met Victoria Montero who introduced him in the subject of esoterism. López Rega was a frequent visitor in Montero's home, where he met members of

648-523: A powerful force in the Peronist movement. He exerted great influence over Perón , who was elected to the presidency and took office in 1973, and his wife Isabel Perón, elected as vice-president, who succeeded to the presidency upon Perón's sudden death on 1 July 1974. To support the paramilitary group, López Rega drew on funds from the Ministry of Social Welfare, which he controlled. Some of the members of

720-425: A ransom of $ 12 million. 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

792-692: A series of raids it captured and later killed some 300 militants entrusted with supporting the ERP operations in that province. During the first few months of the military junta, more than 70 policemen were killed in leftist actions In mid-1976, the Argentine Army completely destroyed the ERP's elite "Special Squad" in two violent firefights. The ERP's commander, Mario Roberto Santucho , and Benito Urteaga were killed in July of that year by military forces led by captain Juan Carlos Leonetti of

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864-582: The Montoneros , etc. On the following days, Mario Roberto Santucho , leader of the Guevarist Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP), held a press conference during which he accused López Rega and Colonel José Manuel Osind] of the massacre. Perón and López Rega, who, while in Spain, had supported left-wing Peronists, strongly criticized them this time around. López Rega openly criticized president Cámpora's position during

936-525: The Argentine peso by 50%, causing massive economic havoc, inflation , loss of savings, and general hardship on the middle and lower classes (in particular, public employees and retirees). López Rega came under attack from the leftist factions of the Peronist Party, accused of being a counter-revolutionary and a fascist . In July 1975 he was formally accused by the main party organ of instigating

1008-505: 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. For example, in 1973 Enrique Gorriarán Merlo and Benito Urteaga led the ERP kidnapping of Esso executive Victor Samuelson and obtaining

1080-579: The Ezeiza massacre , the split with the Peronist left-wing became even more visible with the resignation of eight deputies belonging to the Juventud Peronista (Peronist Youth). When Perón died on 1 July 1974, Isabel assumed power and López Rega became a sort of Prime minister, assuming the direction of all ministries in the Presidency's orbit. He decided almost by himself on the composition of

1152-705: The extradition order against former leader of the AAA Rodolfo Almirón , ruled in December 2006 that Triple A's crimes qualified as human rights violations and the "beginning of the systematic process directed by the state apparatus" during the dictatorship . Death threats caused many of the opposition to leave Argentina. Amongst many well-known and respected people who left are mathematician Manuel Sadosky ; artists Héctor Alterio , Luis Brandoni and Nacha Guevara ; politician and entrepreneur José Ber Gelbard ; lawyer and politician Héctor Sandler ; and actor Norman Briski . Main assassinations claimed by

1224-406: The freemasons organization. A common interest for esoterism linked him to Isabel, Perón's third wife, in 1965. (Evidently, Rega's esotericism included the writings of Alice Bailey: "Also found in his [Rega's] home were 12 volumes by Alice Bailey on telepathy and Cosmic Fire..." ) Sent to Argentina by Perón, exiled in Spain since the 1955 " Revolución Libertadora " coup, she organized a meeting in

1296-646: The "Dirty War" under Gorriarán Merlo, for example, demonstrated their active involvement in the revolutionary struggle by killing ex-dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1980. Gorriarán returned to Argentina in 1987 to become a leader of the Movimiento Todos por la Patria (All For the Motherland Movement or MTP). Claiming another military coup by the Carapintadas was imminent against the new democratic government of Raúl Alfonsín (which at

1368-699: The 17th Airborne Infantry Regiment under Lieutenant-Colonel Eduardo Humberto Cubas. During the attack in Villa Maria was kidnapped Colonel Argentino del Valle Larraburu . 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

1440-470: The 1970s and early 1980s. The Triple A was believed to have been organized in 1973 by José López Rega and Alberto Villar , deputy chief of the Argentine federal police , during the brief interim presidency of Raúl Lastiri in 1973. Reportedly, the movement was conceived at a high-level Peronist meeting on October 1, 1973, attended by President Raúl Lastiri , Interior Minister Benito Llambí , Social Welfare Minister José López Rega , general secretary of

1512-477: The 1974 assassination of Jesuit priest Carlos Mugica , a friend of Mario Firmenich , the founder of Montoneros. Other people murdered by the organisation include Silvio Frondizi , brother of former president Arturo Frondizi ; Julio Troxler , former-vice director of the police; Alfredo Curutchet , a defense attorney for political prisoners ; and Hipólito Atilio López , a key union leader of Córdoba . The CONADEP commission on human rights violations documented

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1584-538: The 601st Intelligence Battalion. Several hundred guerrillas of the Guevarist Youth Group in training for operations to coincide with the 1978 World Cup in Argentina, were captured and killed in a series of raids in Zárate soon afterwards. Although the ERP continued for a while under the leadership of Enrique Gorriarán Merlo, by late 1977 the guerrilla threat had been eradicated or gone underground. In 2008,

1656-676: The AAA: After the fall of López Rega in 1975 and Jorge Rafael Videla 's coup in March 1976 , many Triple A members fled to Spain, where they became involved in assassinations of Spanish leftists during the first years of the Spanish transition . Fifteen former AAA members (including Rodolfo Almirón ) were involved in the 1976 shooting of two left-wing Carlist members at a large annual gathering in Montejurra , Spain. Others implicated in

1728-568: The Argentine Air Force were used for offensive air support while the North American T-34 and FMA IA 58 Pucará served as a light ground-attack and reconnaissance aircraft. While fighting the guerrilla in the jungle and mountains, Vilas concentrated on uprooting the ERP support network in the towns, using state terror tactics later adopted nationwide during the " Dirty War ", as well as a civic action campaign. By July,

1800-626: The Argentine Army commandos were mounting search-and-destroy missions. The Army special forces discovered Santucho's base camp in August, then raided the ERP urban headquarters in September. Most of the Compania del Monte's headquarters staff was killed in October and the remainder dispersed by the end of the year. While most of the leaders of the movement were killed outright, many of the captured ERP subalterns and sympathizers were incarcerated during

1872-540: 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, 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

1944-425: The ERP and supporting Montoneros militants had about 1,000 deployed against 1,000 government forces. This large-scale operation was made possible not only by the planning of the guerrillas involved, but also by their supporters who provided houses to hide them, supplies and the means of escape. On 30 December a bomb exploded at the headquarters of the Argentine Army in Buenos Aires, injuring at least six soldiers. In

2016-575: The PRT-ERP reported the loss of 5,000 of its members killed in action or having disappeared after being detained. By that time the military dictatorship had expanded its own campaign against "subversives" to include state terror against active civilian collaborators, non-violent students, intellectuals, and political activists who were presumed to form the social, non-combatant base of the insurgents. According to different sources, 12,261 to 30,000 people, are estimated to have disappeared and died during

2088-590: The Presidency José Humberto Martiarena and various provincial governors. The group operated under the governments of Lastiri, Perón and Isabel Perón through López Rega resignation and exile in July 1975. Villar and his wife were murdered in 1974 with a bomb that was planted on his cabin cruiser in Tigre by members of the Montoneros , a militant, leftist group. López Rega, a devotee of occultism and self-styled divinator , became

2160-547: The Triple A had earlier taken part in the Peronist 1973 Ezeiza massacre . On the day Perón returned from exile, snipers shot and killed numerous (13 at least killed) left-wing Peronists at the mass gathering to welcome his return, leading to the definitive separation between left and right-wing Peronists. The Spanish Judge Baltazar Garzón 's investigations, directed at human rights abuses internationally, revealed that Italian neofascist Stefano Delle Chiaie had also worked with

2232-406: The Triple A's execution of 19 homicides in 1973, 50 in 1974 and 359 in 1975, while its involvement in several hundred others is also suspected. The 1986 study by Ignacio Jansen González is often cited; he estimates the group committed 220 terrorist attacks from July to September 1974, which killed 60 and severely wounded 44; as well as 20 kidnappings . Federal judge Norberto Oyarbide , who signed

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2304-661: The Triple A, and was present at Ezeiza. Delle Chiaie also worked with the Chilean DINA in Chile, and for Hugo Banzer , a Bolivian dictator . According to a 1983 article in The New York Times , the group was founded when there were an increasing number of guerrilla attacks by left-wing militant groups, which were met by harsh repression of political dissidents on the part of the military , paramilitary and police forces . This environment of social unrest

2376-752: The action of the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance ( Triple A ). A terrorist group organized with his other protégé Rodolfo Almirón and funded by the Ministry of Social Welfare, this death squad was responsible for the death of 1,500 people and the exile of hundreds more. Starting with the 20 June 1973 Ezeiza massacre, it initiated the " Dirty War " in Argentina which was later taken over by Jorge Videla 's military junta (1976–83) during which around 30,000 people were " disappeared " (the Argentinian army acknowledged 22,000 disappearances between 1975 and 1979 8000 more in 5 years are

2448-516: The arrival of heavily armed Montoneros in two buses the day that Peron returned from exile. 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. The avowed aim of the ERP was a communist revolution against the Argentine government in pursuit of " proletarian rule ." The ERP publicly remained in

2520-518: The cabinet's meeting. After finding out about Perón's meeting with José Ignacio Rucci and other right-wing CGT leaders and also with the Army , Cámpora and his vice-president Vicente Solano Lima resigned. All of Cámpora's followers were sacked from all government positions, and López Rega's son-in-law, Raúl Alberto Lastiri , also a member of P2 , became interim president and organized the elections. On 23 September 1973, Perón won them with almost 62% of

2592-629: The claim that the MTP were trying to forestall a military coup and declared that the attack had the ultimate goal of sparking a massive popular uprising, that could have led to civil war. In their newspapers and in the Argentine press, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo denounced the way Alfonsín had handled the La Tablada incident, making a connection between what had happened to their disappeared children and

2664-404: The closure of El Mundo , a left-wing newspaper. On 21 November 1973, radical senator Hipólito Solari Yrigoyen was seriously injured in the first terrorist attack claimed by the Triple A. Federal Police Chief Rodolfo Almirón had been suspected of organizing this attack. Among Juan Perón's first actions after taking office were tougher sentences against "sedition" and "subversion". Started after

2736-644: The command of Brigadier-General Acdel Vilas began immediately deploying in the Tucumán mountains in Operacion Independencia , joined later by 1,500 more troops from the 4th Airborne Infantry Brigade and 8th Mountain Infantry Brigade. The pattern of the war was largely dictated by the nature of the terrain, the mountains, rivers and extensive jungle denying both sides easy movement. The A-4B Skyhawk fighters and B.62 Canberra bombers of

2808-513: The commander of the 601st Air Defence Artillery Group, was killed and two army conscripts (Privates Tempone and Gómez) wounded in an ambush by six ERP guerrillas in the La Plata suburb of Buenos Aires. The Argentine armed forces moved ahead with the " Dirty War ", dispensing with the civilian government through a coup d'état in March 1976. In his editorial immediately after the military takeover, Santucho wrote that "a river of blood will separate

2880-544: The country. In December 2015, Professor Gustavo Morello (SJ) in his book The Catholic Church and Argentina's Dirty War (Oxford University Press, 2015) concluded that during the "Dirty War" in Argentina "15,000 people were killed, 8,000 were jailed and some 6,000 were exiled." After the destruction of the left-wing in Argentina, some revolutionary cadres made their way to Nicaragua, where the Sandinistas had taken power in 1979. An ERP commando team comprising veterans of

2952-447: The couple's personal secretary. When Héctor José Cámpora was elected president on 11 March 1973, for the first general elections since 1963, as Perón's stand-in since the latter was forbidden from running himself, José López Rega, sent by Perón, became Minister of Social Welfare. From there, he opposed himself to Esteban Righi and others representatives of the Peronist left-wing. Perón returned to Argentina on 20 June 1973, acclaimed by

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3024-466: The daughter of Gay and Casaux later taking her own life. 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

3096-591: The event were Italian neofascist Stefano Delle Chiaie and Jean-Pierre Cherid , former member of the French OAS and at the time part of the GAL death squad in Spain. Former Triple A member José María Boccardo took part with Cherid and others in the 1978 assassination of Argala , an ETA member involved in the 1973 assassination of Franco's prime minister Luis Carrero Blanco . Jos%C3%A9 L%C3%B3pez Rega José López Rega (17 November 1916 – 9 June 1989)

3168-583: The eyes of the military, the credibility of the government was now destroyed and the strategy of attrition was bankrupt. The guerrillas had even successfully utilized divers of the Grupo Especial de Combate of the Montoneros: the modern type 42 destroyer Santísima Trinidad was severely damaged by explosives placed under her keel by frogmen of the Montoneros on 22 August 1975 while moored in

3240-633: The forefront. ERP guerrilla activity took the form of attacks on military outposts, police stations and convoys. In 1971, 57 policemen were killed fighting the left-wing guerrillas, and in 1972 another 38 policemen lost their lives in the guerrilla violence. 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 3 April 1973, ERP guerrillas kidnapped Rear-Admiral Francisco Agustín Alemán. In January 1974

3312-498: The government of Isabel Perón , but little mercy was shown to captured guerrillas and civilian collaborators during the military dictatorship. In May 1975, ERP representative Amilcar Santucho was captured trying to cross into Paraguay to promote the JCR unity effort. As a way to save himself, he provided information about the organization to Secretaría de Inteligencia (SIDE) agents that enabled Argentine security agencies to destroy what

3384-650: The guerrilla forces in South America: "The only place where we didn't attempt to promote a revolution was in Mexico. Everywhere else, without exception, we tried" . Politician Gustavo Breide Obeid, who fought as an army captain against ERP guerrillas in Tucumán Province, claimed in 2007 that mercenaries from Jordan, Nicaragua and Angola served in the 'Ramón Rosa Jimenez' Mountain Company. By December 1974,

3456-530: The guerrillas numbered about 100 fighters, with a 400-person support network from the Montoneros. Led by Mario Roberto Santucho , they soon established control over a third of the province and organized a base of some 2,500 sympathizers. Santucho's armed guerrillas in the northwestern province of Tucuman never exceeded 300 in the first year of the campaign. The growth in ERP strength in the northwest, together with an increase in urban violence carried out by

3528-512: The house of major Bernardo Alberte, Perón's delegate and sponsor of various left-wing Peronist movement, among which the CGT de los Argentinos , a labor union federation which, between 1968 and 1972, gathered opponents to a pact with Juan Carlos Onganía 's dictatorship, and which had an important role in the 1969 Cordobazo insurrection. After winning Isabel's trust, López Rega traveled to Spain, where he worked first for Perón's security before becoming

3600-503: The left-Peronist Montoneros following Perón's death in 1974, led the government of Isabel Perón to issue "annihilation decrees" and expand the military's powers to fight a counter-insurgency campaign in February 1975. In all, 83 servicemen and policemen were killed in fighting the left-wing guerrillas, between 1973 and 1974. Some 3,500 soldiers of the 5th Mountain Infantry Brigade, and two companies of elite commandos , placed under

3672-414: The masses. The Ezeiza massacre , organized by López Rega on the day of Perón's return from an 18-year exile, led to a definitive split between left and right-wing Peronism, with Cámpora as representative of the left-wing and López Rega as representative of the right-wing. López Rega had positioned snipers under Perón's stage, who opened up fire upon the masses and the left-wing Peronist organizations, such as

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3744-462: The medal for wounded military personnel that he won during the administration of Argentine president Raúl Alfonsín . The MTP still exist today as a political movement which has abandoned armed struggle . In January 2016 for the first time in decades, Mauricio Macri (the previous president of Argentina) through the new Human Rights Secretary Claudio Avruj, granted an audience to CELTYV (Centre for Legal Studies on Terrorism and its Victims) representing

3816-547: The military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. Admittedly there were 12,000 disappeared in the form of PEN detainees that survived the dictatorship, thanks to international pressure to release them from the clandestine detention camps. Some 11,000 Argentines have applied for and received up to US$ 200,000 each as monetary compensation for the loss of loved ones during the military dictatorship. The PRT continued political activities, although limited to few members, organizing conventions even after democracy returned to

3888-554: The military from the Argentine people" , and this would result in a popular uprising followed by a civil war. On 29 March 1976, the ERP leadership lost twelve killed in a gun battle in downtown Buenos Aires with army elements (including the ERP Chief of Intelligence) but Santucho along with fifty guerrillas were able to fight their way out of the ambush. The Argentine Army and police scored more success in mid-April in Córdoba, when in

3960-476: The new cabinet, keeping for himself the title of Minister of Social Welfare. He was promoted to Comisario General , the highest rank in the Federal Police ; he had reached the rank of corporal when a member of the police force. As Isabel Perón's Minister of Social Welfare, López Rega conducted an unpopular policy of fiscal conservatism. In 1975 his protégé Celestino Rodrigo, Minister of Economy, devalued

4032-537: The nickname El Brujo ("the Warlock"). López Rega had one daughter, Norma Beatriz, who went on to become the spouse of President Raúl Lastiri . López Rega's mother died giving birth to him in Buenos Aires . According to his biography by Marcelo Larraquy (2002), he was a respectful, introverted boy, who had a library covering an entire wall and a special interest in spiritual topics (which would later turn into

4104-469: The north and on 5 October 1975 guerrillas struck the 29th Mountain Infantry Regiment. The 5th Brigade suffered a major blow at the hands of Montoneros , when over one-hundred—perhaps several hundred —Montoneros guerrillas and milicianos (militants) were involved in the planning and execution of the most elaborate Montoneros operation in the so-called "Dirty War", which involved the hijacking of

4176-522: The operation, and the getaway cars and safehouses they used to escape from the crash-landing site, suggest several hundred guerrillas and their civilian supporters were involved. In December 1975 most 5th Brigade units were committed to the border areas of Tucumán with over 5,000 troops deployed in the province. There was however, nothing to prevent infiltrating through this outer ring and the ERP were still strong inside Buenos Aires. Mario Santucho's Christmas offensive opened on 23 December 1975. The operation

4248-532: The port of Ensenada. The damage was so great that the ship remained unseaworthy for several years. By the end of 1975, a total of 137 servicemen and police had been killed that year by left wing guerrillas. Elements within the armed forces, particularly among the junior officers, blamed the weakness of the government and began to seek a leader who they considered was strong enough to ensure a preservation of Argentinian sovereignty, settling on Lieutenant-General Jorge Videla. On 11 February 1976, colonel Raúl Rafael Reyes,

4320-506: The rural guerrillas occupied 52 towns, robbed 166 banks and took US$ 76 million in ransoms for the kidnappings of 185 people. 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

4392-493: The time was leading a series of trials against members of the Argentine Military accused of human rights violations), Enrique Gorriarán Merlo led the 1989 attack on La Tablada Regiment , during which the Argentine army used white phosphorus as an anti-personnel weapon, and in which the guerrillas used captured army conscripts as 'shields' and ended in the capture of the surviving MTP members. Alfonsín countered

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4464-451: The treatment endured by the MTP guerrillas. Gorriarán was given a life sentence along with other MTP comrades, but was freed by interim president Eduardo Duhalde two days before Néstor Kirchner 's access to power in 2003. In protest to Duhalde's decision, former Lieutenant-Colonel Emilio Guillermo Nani who took part in the fighting to recover the La Tablada barracks and lost an eye as a consequence, formally announced that he would be returning

4536-556: The votes, naming his third wife Isabel Perón as vice-president. Beside Raúl Lastiri's interim presidency, López Rega's success in the expulsion of the left-wing Peronists from power was confirmed on 4 August 1973, during the National Congress of Perón's Justicialist Party , with the nomination of his protector Isabel as candidate for vice-presidency. On 23 September, the Perón-Perón ticket won comfortably, with 61.85% of

4608-426: The votes. Troubled by the right-wing shift of Peronism and of the government, the Montoneros, a left-wing Peronist group, assassinated CGT's leader José Ignacio Rucci on 25 September 1973. The latter had also been involved in the creation of the Triple A ( Alianza Argentina Anticomunista — Argentine Anticommunist Alliance). This assassination gave a pretext to López Rega to decree the prohibition of all armed groups and

4680-498: Was an Argentine politician who served as Minister of Social Welfare from 1973 to 1975, first under Juan Perón and continuing under Isabel Perón , Juan Perón's third wife and presidential successor. Lopez Rega exercised an allegedly Rasputin -like power and influence over Isabel Perón during her presidency, and used both this and his unique access to become the de facto political boss of Argentina. His orthodox Peronist and far-right politics and interest in occultism earned him

4752-457: Was another important member of the Triple A, although he always denied it. He was tried in Argentina in 1985 after the restoration of democracy and convicted in October 1986. Gordon died in prison of lung cancer the next year. In 2006, Argentine Judge Norberto Oyarbide ruled the Triple A had committed " crimes against humanity ," which meant their crimes were exempt from statutes of limitations. Suspects can be prosecuted for actions committed in

4824-747: Was arrested in the United States while trying to renew his passport, and extradited to Argentina, where he was wanted for corruption, conspiracy, and multiple homicides. He died of diabetes on 9 June 1989 in Buenos Aires, while awaiting trial in prison. In the 2013 film Puerta de Hierro, el exilio de Perón , Fito Yanelli plays López Rega during Perón's exile in Madrid. López Rega is dismissed by Perón but allowed back because of his wife's intercession. People%27s Revolutionary Army (Argentina) The People's Revolutionary Army ( Spanish : Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo , abbreviated as ERP )

4896-517: Was deposed by the military Junta, which in turn organized the so-called " National Reorganization Process " and generalized the "Dirty War". López Rega spent the following ten years fleeing prosecution abroad, leaving Spain for Switzerland , where he lived near Geneva until 1982. Discovered by a photographer, he then fled to the Bahamas . He lived between Miami and the Bahamas until 1986, when he

4968-407: Was dramatic in its impact, with ERP units, supported by Montoneros , mounting a large scale assault against the army supply base Domingo Viejobueno at the industrial suburb of Monte Chingolo, south of Buenos Aires. The attackers were defeated and driven off with 53 ERP guerrillas and 9 supporting militants killed. Seven army troops and three policemen were reported killed. In this particular battle

5040-441: Was left of the ERP, although pockets of ERP guerrillas continued to operate in the heavily wooded Tucuman mountains for many months. The case, during which an FBI official transmitted information obtained from the prisoners (Amilcar was detained along with a MIR member) to the Chilean DINA , was one practical operation of Operation Condor , which had started in 1973 Meanwhile, the guerrilla movement switched its main effort to

5112-463: Was the justification used by the subsequent military junta for its Dirty War against political opponents. But testimony at the 1985 Juicio a las Juntas trial established that by 1976, both the ERP and the Montoneros had been dismantled, and the political dissidents had never posed a real threat to the government. The group first came to national attention on 21 November 1973 in its attempt to murder Argentine Senator Hipólito Solari Yrigoyen by

5184-782: Was the military branch of the communist Workers' Revolutionary Party ( Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores , PRT) in Argentina . 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

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