Action for Liberation
Notes, testimonials and debate about the recent liberation struggle
of the Argentinean people.
Second part of:
THE HOUR OF THE FURNACES
Advertise your product or brand here contact www. OpenSubtitles. org today
Our thanks to the workers, farmers, revolutionary activists,
intellectuals, workers' unions and people's organizations
who helped in the making this film.
To the Perónist proletariat, who built the national conscience
of the Argentineans.
GENERAL ORDER JULY 27:1819
Comrades in the Andes army: We must fight however we can.
We may have no money, but we won't lack meat and tobacco.
When our clothes run out, we'll wear those our women make for us,
or we'll be stark naked, like our fellow countrymen, the Indians.
We'll be free, and nothing else matters.
Let's swear never to stop fighting until the country is totally free,
or else let's die fighting as brave men.
Tri-continental brothers:
Revolutionary violence will put an end to imperialist crimes.
Liberation or death!
"The nature of imperialism is what turns man into a beast".
Imperialism is international and must be fought internationally.
The Third World!
"The people defend their rights. Neither Wessin nor the Yanks
nor death will stop us".
"Coexistence" with imperialism legalises its barbarity.
Unity!
Active solidarity with the peoples that have been attacked!
"Many Vietnams is the objective. To create two, three, many."
Long live internationalism at the roots of combat!
Revolution is our greatest cultural manifestation.
The nationalism of the oppressed countries
negates the nationalism of oppressing countries.
Motherland or death!
The destruction of imperialism will free all men.
Death to US imperialism.
Either a socialist revolution or a mock revolution.
The new man.
The victory for Third World countries
will be a victory for the whole of mankind.
Comrades, this is not just the showing of a film,
neither is it merely a spectacle.
It is first of all an action
for the liberation of Argentina and Latin America:
an action of anti-imperialist unity.
There's room for all those who identify with this struggle.
This is not a place for spectators, or the enemy's accomplices,
but for the authors and main actors
in the process that this film tries to document and explain.
This film is a preamble for dialogue,
for the search, for different wills to meet.
It's an open report that we offer for your consideration,
for you to discuss after the screening is over.
The most important thing
is to create this unitary space,
this dialogue for liberation.
Our opinions are as valuable as yours,
and you can add to this action
any other view or experience
to enrich this chronicle of the liberation.
To finish, our comrade narrator is going to speak.
He will update the nature of this act, based on current circumstances.
I ask all of you, as a first act of united will,
to pay homage to all peoples and their armed fronts,
who are now violently fighting imperialism and colonialism.
To politicize is to open, waken, give birth to the spirit.
It is, as Cesaire said, to invent souls.
Unit and committee meetings are religious acts.
They are privileged opportunities for man to hear and speak.
"if everybody must compromise in the struggle for common salvation,
there are no pure hands, nor spectators, nor innocents.
We all soil our hands in the marshes of our land,
in the open space of our minds.
Every spectator is a coward or a traitor". Frantz Fanon.
Space for the intervention of our narrator.
CHRONICLES OF PERONISM 1945-1955
National and popular movements were the first appearances
in history of most Latin American peoples.
They were the first actions of breaking with neo-colonial serfdom.
OCTOBER 17
On 17 October 1945
the Argentinean masses burst for the first time
onto the national political scene.
The eternal dispossessed, the marginalised,
became the great actors in our history.
The 17th October was the start of the current process
of liberation for Argentina.
Hundreds of thousands of workers
spontaneously assaulted the iron and stone city.
They submerged their feet in the forbidden fountains
to the horror of civil servants and colonial administrators.
The "shirtless" who spontaneously invaded
the streets of Buenos Aires
are none other than the direct descendants of those nationals
who followed San Martín on the Andes,
or of the "Montoneras" who went with Varela or El Chacho.
The people claimed that day their leader's freedom.
October 17th marked the birth of Perón.
Perón emerged as the national expression
of a people determined to achieve their definitive independence.
Evita is the flag carrier for the lowest and most exploited groups.
The working people are the motherland's humble people,
standing here and across the whole country
to follow Perón, as he has risen the flag of redemption
and justice for the working masses.
They'll follow him against oppression from domestic and foreign traitors.
Because I want my people to know
that we are all willing to die for Perón.
And let the traitors know
that we will no longer appear to them,
as Perón did on 28th September.
We will die while taking justice in our own hands.
The enemy is lurking,
he never forgives.
And those who would sell the country for a few coins
are also lurking,
to strike at any moment.
But we are the people,
and I know that if the people are vigilant
we are invincible,
because we are the motherland itself.
Perónism came to put an end to the effects of an infamous decade,
the era that started in 1930
with the oligarchic military dictatorship
that overthrew Irigoyen.
The years of national corruption,
soup kitchens,
ignominious frauds,
and assassins paid by the committee.
A time when Argentinean politics were managed
between the British embassy and the army.
A shameless handover of the national wealth.
Intellectualism, pseudo-Leftism and Perónism.
What was the world in 1945?
The inter-imperialist war was ending.
A new parting of the world was starting.
The Chinese Revolution did not exist,
nor the so-called popular democracies.
The Arab countries had not freed themselves.
India was not yet a republic.
Colonialism ruled in most of Asia and Africa.
In the name of Marxism
the idea was encouraged that Soviet and US armies
marched together for the liberation
of all peoples.
The Third World was hardly an active project.
What did the rise of Perónism mean at that time?
Perónism was a precedent,
and a new one in our country.
The Argentinean intellectuals
would lose direction again,
as with the "Montoneras" and Irigoyenism.
The Justicialist revolution was to challenge all their preconceptions.
It wasn't fronted by a clear leadership,
but a group of military men.
No red flags were raised,
but Argentinean blue and white flags.
How could this not worry
an intellectual sector
dependant on European revolutionary models?
In 1945, the intellectuals were not engaged with the needs of the country.
In those days, the university federation
declared mourning for Roosevelt's death,
and Borges praised the Allies.
One was either with the Allies or a Nazi,
never an Argentinean.
Anything "national" was alarming and suspicious.
The middle classes, influenced by the intellectuals
and with neo-colonial blessing,
saw in Perónism just a
Nazi-fascist-falangist conspiracy.
The Communist Party leaders
called it a clan of the "classless",
of prostitutes and rogues.
They joined with antinational groups
in the Democratic Union Front.
We are going to witness the solemn creation of the
Democratic Union.
Rodolfo Guioldi, leader of the Communist Party will now speak.
The people will vote for the Democratic Union formula because
firstly it will mean a constitutional normalization,
and a democratic peace process for the Argentineans.
Secondly, its program will guarantee the progress of the nation
and wellbeing for the people.
Voting for this formula, the people will beat the Nazi-fascist axis
in the Argentinean Republic.
From the Progressive Democratic Party, Dr. Díaz Arana.
The Progressive Democratic Party
has long stood for
the need to unite democratic forces
to recover, through common action,
constitutional normality and a fully democratic regime
not subjugated by dictatorship.
Those who could write
had nothing to say.
They marched arm in arm,
cheered by US ambassador Braden.
Those still illiterate
"wrote" alone, through their action, the National Liberation.
That old sing-song of "yes to shoes, no to books"
would be the fair response from the people
to the distant and foreign-influenced intellectuals.
The movement was seizing the power
which the National Revolutionary intellectualism lacked.
The phenomenon of a dependant intellectualism
occurred in Argentina both on the Left and the Right.
The Socialist Party conformed to the liberal models
of European social democracy.
The Communist Party followed the international precepts.
The so called "Popular Fronts", with the bourgeoisie,
"Centrism" and Browderism,
were political expressions of Stalinism.
J. Abelardo Ramos says
"Stalinism has never supported truly national movements
in Latin America, but rather, anti-national coalitions."
Due to this politics, from 1945 in Argentina
the words Communism, Marxism and Socialism
were synonyms with treason for the proletariat,
through no fault of real Communism, Marxism and Socialism.
Perónism in Power.
Perónism displaced oligarchy and imperialism from positions of power,
causing their first great defeat in the history of the country.
The mass movement which reached power in a few months
originated from very particular
national and international circumstances.
The strong proletariat and bourgeoisie created by industrial development
didn't feel represented by the traditional parties.
A national army and a leader,
Perón, brought together those new forces
at a good time for the Argentinean economy.
The National Front comprised the army,
some sectors of the industrial bourgeoisie,
the church, the middle classes from inner regions,
rural workers, and the whole of the young proletariat.
Three themes unified the movement:
Economic independence, political sovereignty,
and social justice.
Perónism is the attempt to go from a semi-colony of shepherds
to an independent nation.
This attempt was carried out by a movement
whose axis was the proletariat
and for whom the revolution of 1945
had a deeply anti-imperialist meaning.
Perón did not assume power as a Marxist,
but as a national politician
forced to improvise politics
and a party.
He was the embodiment of a popular force,
still too historically immature to be anything other than
a national movement and its leader.
The movement's popular nationalism
unleashed in 1945 the most advanced
liberation process which, at that time,
could take place in our country.
1945-1955: Ten years of national democracy.
For the first time, the whole external debt is brought home
and no deals are signed with imperialist countries.
External commerce is centralized.
Industry is protected.
High wages. No unemployment.
The central bank is nationalized, as are railways, gas, telephone,
public services and bank credits.
Women vote for the first time.
A Workers Central and industrial unions are established.
76,000 public works.
More schools are built in 10 years
than in the last one and a half centuries of national history.
Contradictions of a national movement.
A national and popular movement in power
implies deep contradictions:
some external, in fighting imperialism and oligarchy,
others internal, due to the many social classes being integrated.
The multi-class base of the movement,
which had been its strength in 1945, would later be its weakness.
The industrial bourgeoisie was accommodating
and had no national consciousness.
It was more scared of the proletariat's demands
than of submission to imperialism.
Perónism had taken power from the oligarchy,
but it had within it the oligarchy's allies.
So, oligarchic economic power remained the same.
The old regime's institutions were not substantially modified.
A national revolution that
doesn't eliminate its main contradiction with the enemy
is weakened by its internal contradictions.
Its politics become hesitant.
It attacks the oligarchy,
but does not eliminate its underlying base.
It calls for social revolution,
but doesn't fully carry out the national revolution.
It oscillates between a people's democracy
and a bureaucracy’s dictatorship.
Crisis in the Perónist Circle.
From 1950
the circumstances that made the National Front possible
disappeared.
Political and union leaderships
entered a clear bureaucratization process.
Evita died
and the movement lost its most combative figure.
The proletariat was unwilling to face the problems alone.
The class struggle, contained for some time,
started to show within the movement.
In 1955, the National Front finally divided itself completely.
The church, some sections of the army
and the whole of the bourgeoisie surrendered to the oligarchy
and became an enemy of the revolution.
The Party was a bureaucratic fiction.
The lack of a revolutionary organization and leadership
was the movement's weakness.
Without this, any mass organization
is an easy target for the enemy.
On 16 June 1955
aircraft supported by some navy units
attacked the government and the city centre.
As in 1945, workers suddenly left their factories
and flooded into the city
to support Perón.
For the first time in the country's history,
civilians were the target of a mass bombing.
They demanded weapons from the army, to no avail.
Equipped with old shotguns, sticks and tiles
they tried to assault the Navy Ministry
and were repelled by machine guns.
The workers collaborated with the army
in a battle lasting just a few hours.
The movement had gone through its first blood and fire ordeal.
The victory cost over 300 civilian deaths.
A few days later
Perón requested a ceasefire from the enemy.
In consternation at the facts and circumstances,
we offer an open hand in good faith
hoping that our enemy will hold on to it.
To prove our good will
and our discipline in the Party, I ask all our members
for a political ceasefire.
We will await the results of this sincere call,
staying calm in the face of comments that will surely be made
by malicious factions.
As in our past ordeals,
the way to act is the same:
from home to work and back home again.
Always alert and watching.
But a country divided in two does not accept ceasefires.
On August 31st
Perón resigned the presidency.
The people took to the streets again
and forced him to withdraw his resignation.
In the meantime, the oligarchy prepared their strike.
The most significant groups of the Left joined Perónism
only when it was too late.
Perón was isolated by a servile bureaucracy
which was already making deals with the enemy.
The army deserted him.
From the balconies of Government House
Perón invited the movement to fight the oligarchy.
That would be his last speech to the people.
How long ago
did this Mayo Square
witness yet another infamy committed
by the enemies of the people?
They will look for countless excuses.
Reasons of freedom, justice, religion.
But what they want is one thing only,
to bring the situation back to 1943.
To violence, we must respond with even greater violence.
The way to act for every Perónist,
whether isolated or within an organization,
is to respond to a violent action with even greater violence.
And when one of ours goes down,
five of theirs will fall too.
Either we fight to consolidate
what we have achieved
or the oligarchy will destroy the country.
Every one of you must remember:
the word now is "fight"
and we are going to fight everywhere!
To finish, I want to remind all of you
that today a new armed vigilance begins for us.
We all must consider
that the people's fight rests on our shoulders
and we must show every day, in all our actions,
the necessary will to conduct the people's fight.
The National Defeat.
A few days later, the army removed Perón from power.
The only base left for the movement
was the organized proletariat
and some middle class sectors.
Perónism went down without a fight.
The CGT, which a few days before called for workers' militias,
now made announcements calling for peace.
The Perónist high council did the same.
The points of resistance
erected in some workers' neighbourhoods
were easily annihilated by the army.
On a gray and desolate day
a formerly national army, now a "Gorilla",
occupied the city.
Why did Perón abandon power?
How could a government with two-thirds of the vote
go down without a fight?
Was it Perón's error not to arm his people?
He could have done.
Was the movement ready for a civil war?
In what direction?
With what organization?
The rest is a chronicle.
The Gorilla Party.
The city of stone and iron celebrated.
Rural society sang their victory on the streets.
The shops closed.
Flags were ordered to hang from all churches.
The Vatican flag was cheered by liberals at Mayo Square.
Again, Argentinean intellectuals were serving the enemy.
The Argentinean writers' society greeted Perón's fall.
The University Federation said
"Let today's joy and anxiety
give us the measure of our responsibility."
The Socialist Party said
"We greet the great liberation effort
that the Argentinean people have just made."
Victorio Codovila, leader of the Communist Party, said
"This revolution is positive as it removed a fascist
dictatorial regime."
Ernesto San Martino, a radical leader
who in the past had compared the people to a zoological horde,
said
"I believe the Party must fight united.
Radicalism is the only organic, serious and responsible solution
that the country expects after this deep political, social
and moral crisis that has shaken the Republic."
The Liberator's Violence.
Meanwhile, the system plans its violence.
The Congress will be dissolved.
Perónism will be persecuted, and there will be a ban
on mentioning, publishing or exhibiting its symbols.
There will be an attempt to erase
10 years of history from the people's memory.
150,000 trade union leaders will be suspended.
Tens of thousands will be arrested.
Many of them will be sent to Patagonia.
The trade unions, assaulted by the army and civil "gorilla" commandos,
with 4,000 teachers and university clerks,
will be suspended without trial.
Raul Previs will set the grounds for an economic plan
based on the free market.
At the time of Perón's fall there was no external debt.
10 years later, the debt reached 6 billion dollars.
The IMF will start to influence national economic policy.
The economy will start a de-nationalization process,
and the Constitution of 1949, which granted the rights
of workers, family, the elderly, education and culture,
will be abolished.
The violent decade was about to start.
Reflections for a Dialogue.
The defeat of 1955 was the defeat of the most advanced attempt
for a national multi-class front in Argentina.
The inability of the bourgeoisie to carry out the liberation process
was blatant.
The defeat of 1955 shows again that the fight for national liberation
cannot be separated from the class struggle,
that there is no winning a national revolution
if it is not also a social revolution.
It is important to look into the past to extract critical conclusions
to reinforce the present struggle:
only those within the battles will lose or win them.
A national movement's limitations can only be dealt with from inside,
through the struggle for national and social liberation.
Perónism can be blamed for making errors while in power,
but these can only by judged within the limitations
of a given historical moment.
In September 1955,
it had been one year since American mercenaries had invaded Guatemala
and defeated the government elected by the people.
Vargas committed suicide in Brazil blaming imperialism.
One year later, Fidel Castro landed in Playa Giron.
Two years later, the war in Algeria shook the world.
In five years the name of Lumumba
assumed continental significance in Africa.
After five years
Cuba became the first free state of America.
The Justicialist revolution was only one additional expression
of the continental revolution
which was also occurring in Mexico, Bolivia, Guatemala,
and which would gain its first great victory against imperialism in Cuba.
THE RESISTANCE
Comrades,
in realising this film, our intention was to collect
information on the fights carried out by our people starting from 1955.
We knew that this information had been diminished by the system
and did not appear in the official files,
nor in the libraries, nor in the cineclubs.
But we discovered that the popular organizations themselves, trade unions,
even political organizations, did not have the necessary information.
How could this be?
Is it the organizations? The limited number of national intellectuals?
In a certain way, yes.
A people not yet free
cannot gather information
nor crystallize firm ideas
or conclusions about a fight not yet defined.
The urgency of the immediate struggle
does not make the people conscious of the importance of the ongoing battle.
History remains in the collective subconscious.
That's why we have directed our research towards this collective memory
while speaking with workers, activists,
trade unions, and political leaders,
the peasants, the students and the employees.
The experience showed us
the distance between the intellectuals and the people.
Many comrades avoided speaking out
for fear of reprisals from the system, certainly,
but especially from a natural distrust. We had to show
that there existed in the country a nationalized intellectual substrata
and that others are on this path.
The reality of working clandestinely
certainly did not facilitate easier access to information.
In spite of that, we bring to you here
the elements, the notes, the experiences,
to submit them for your consideration, comrades.
The purpose of this compilation
is to draw certain conclusions at the end of the projection
about the most effective way to conduct the fight today.
SPONTANEITY
As we said in the story about Perónism,
September 1955 is only one tactical defeat
in a long war of liberation.
Spontaneously, the proletariat went down into the streets
to show that it was not overcome.
The flags were torn
from those who believed they were jubilant.
The young people climbed the lower wall
and withdrew flags from the balconies.
Many trucks full of people came
and some leaders came in a car.
They said "Guys, do not go to the bridge, the army is there"
but no one listened,
enthusiasm was at its highest.
Suddenly there were people on horses.
A comrade, member of the textile union,
speaks about the first spontaneous demonstration
which took place in Buenos Aires on September 1955,
on the same day that the oligarchy took over power.
We moved towards the bridge and started to shout:
Mayo Square! Mayo Square!
As if we wanted to revive 17 October 1945.
And we arrived at the bridge, but the army was already there.
On seeing the soldiers, the people stopped
and the army began to shoot.
People fled, then someone said
"They're firing blanks. Let's go forward.
Let's shout: Viva Perón!"
Enthusiasm was at its highest.
However they didn't use blanks.
It was live ammunition, as we could see
holes in the walls and asphalt!
It became serious. Some fell.
I remember someone who was in front of us.
I don't know what happened to him, but he fell down
and didn't get up again.
Then the commotion began.
We were a good thousand.
Our enthusiasm was at its peak, but each of us was alone
because we didn't know what we wanted to do.
Everyone had followed the demonstration.
We were numerous, we wanted to do something,
but we didn't have orders of any kind.
We did not know
how to attack, or retreat.
Essentially, we didn't know how to fight.
There was no one to lead us.
Everything was spontaneous.
People fled on all sides. - Without adequate organization,
people joined in resistance by spontaneous mobilization.
Perónism had given to this mobilization
a national cohesion, an objective.
During the last decade,
this spontaneous movement became the great virtue of the Argentinean masses.
It didn't try to reform the system, but to destroy it.
The goal of all the political struggles and trade unions
was to re-capture power for the people.
Action always came before a theoretical formulation.
It was insolent, disrespectful.
It was ignorant of the old theoreticians of the revolution.
Instead of fixed ideology, it had the advantage
of being the project of an ideology, of seeking, of invention.
THE UNDERGROUND
The experience of comrade Martiniano Martin
leader of two automobile unions,
was identical to that of the entire Argentinean proletariat.
After 1955 there was a fundamental change.
In 1955 one did not know the labour laws.
One went to the trade union and made a complaint.
If there was a problem,
the functionaries would say "pay him his due, he is entitled"
and that was it.
But after 1955, we could file a complaint when we wanted
but there were no more delegations, they were out,
there were only pursuits and arrests.
Many comrades had to leave the country and ask the neighbouring countries for asylum.
Our comrades were afraid because of the constant persecution.
One even feared to confide in comrades
for fear the other would denounce you
to the personnel manager, which meant persecution.
That is to say, being taken from your bed at midnight
and finding yourself in the street with your children.
Then we began a resistance, we organized a clandestine resistance.
We met at coffee bars, or at comrades' homes,
at risk of being caught by the police.
Often we even organized the resistance while in prison.
When comrades were arrested
we somehow tried through intermediaries
to continue our activities.
By any means. Many comrades
died in prison,
many were struck down by the police.
But in two years, we obtained the restoration of the Confederation.
General of Work. Angel Taborda, trade unionist.
I worked in metallurgy. I remember that each day
patrols came to teach a lesson to one of the directors,
a comrade of the board of management or commissioner of the company.
And they tried... they took them, they came to punish them,
because they were told there was a Perónist resistance group there.
I remember that the police force had once tried
to remove a bust of Evita.
The resistance entered a new stage of the national struggle,
which would become the first act of the underground movement.
During this fight, the proletariat invented, or discovered,
some forms of resistance which it had never used before.
CHRONICLE 1955-1959
Perónism constitutes a cursed event
for the political system.
Supported by the trade union organizations
it would cause, during the last 10 years,
the most serious crises of democratic-liberal institutions.
Around the world, the Argentinean proletariat was seen as
carrying out the greatest number of politico-trade union battles.
After the 1955 coup d’état,
the country seems to have been occupied by an invading army.
Tanks, soldiers, gendarmes,
occupy the streets, evacuate the factories,
mobilize against trade unions.
In the underground, the proletariat organize the first few strikes.
The General Confederation of Labour calls for a nationwide strike in November 1955.
Later, the metal workers' strike will last 50 days and will cause the dismissal
of 30,000 workers and the arrest of 2,000 activists and delegates.
Each mobilization of the proletariat leads to the hardest of repressions.
In June 1956, on the waste ground of Léon Suarez,
many national militants were shot without legal procedure.
In spite of the repression,
in 1957, 252 trade union strikes were organized,
most of them national strikes.
And 397 strikes in 1959.
The Gorilla revolution calls for new elections.
The forbidden Perónists deliver the voting cards blank
and obtain a majority of the votes.
The trade unions
are the principal bastions of the movement in each meeting.
In 1958, the Perónist vote allow Frondizi to win.
That same year, the oil industry goes on strike
and in the confederation of trade unions, there is resistance
to the contracts signed by Frondizi with the imperialists.
Some time before, sixty-two organizations,
which emerged after the General Confederation of Labour's intervention,
approved the "Falda" program in Cordoba.
This program proposed
the liquidation of foreign monopolies,
expropriation of large estates,
the cancellation of treaties that were hindering the national economy,
nationalization of the main sources of our economy,
and workers' control of production and trade.
THE TRADE UNIONS
In 1955, Argentinean trade unions
ceased being semi-public institutions
and transformed into authentic engines of resistance,
becoming for the proletariat the first school, its only university.
Many comrades have entered the struggle,
but we shouldn't fool ourselves.
The working class no longer had a political party
after the fall of Perón.
A legal party, I mean to say, by the means of its legal organization.
The trade unions could only carry out
limited action.
Delegates and trade union leaders constituted
the only forward-looking intellectuals from which the movement could profit.
In a neo-colonized country like Argentina in the last decade,
the trade unions had a double role
as both organization and political party.
Victor Guilder, nationalist militant.
Where the minimum demand is to shake the whole system
and disturb the economic, social and political equilibrium.
Very different from developed, independent countries
where the different sectors in the political fight
arise relatively independently, with their own demands,
which can be in conformity with the demands of power.
Here that's not the case. On the contrary, many have tried
to equate our situation with that of a developed country,
hiding the real goals of the workers movement while wanting to make us believe
that we were in an independent country, whereas we are
underdeveloped, dependent and colonized.
And the trade unions wanted to be limited to an impossible reformism
because of the economic situation
of the working class.
The failure in Argentina of the parties of the left and the supposedly popular parties
made it possible for the trade unions to replace
what the people had not known,
solidarity for the great mass of the workers.
Angel Perelman, one of the founders of the union of the metal-workers.
Argentinean trade unionism
does not fight solely for wages.
We dream and believe particularly in the possibility
of a large national social revolution,
in favour of the working class
and of the entire country,
for which we have fought since independence.
It has been thousands of years already.
A patriarch named Job said
Militia est vita hominis super terram,
the life of humans on earth is a continual fight.
Raimondo Ongaro, Recently Appointed Secretary-General
of the New General Confederation of Work (CGT), in March 1969.
We can't speak only about the role which trade unionism must assume,
because today we live at a time of mobilization,
of combat, in a state of emergency.
What would it accomplish
to have rich trade unions, having important property,
and certain sectors of workers
profiting from right living conditions, elevated, worthy,
in a poor fatherland,
in a dependent country,
in a nation
whose people are poor, people who miss
all these good things that civilization
regards as essential for each citizen, each individual?
That's why we take to heart a definition of trade unionism
which thinks with an Argentinean dimension,
which includes the entire country and not the restricted zone of a trade union.
Everything else is old history;
in a country which does not develop itself,
nobody can develop themselves,
neither as a group nor a person.
Those of us who are ready to write history
have the same animated spirit
as these men who, in the catacombs, faced the governments,
faced the power and the lion's dens.
The weapons and the methods of repression are modernized.
The blood of the worthy Argentinean is ready,
disposed to rebel against all repression.
They will not be made to kneel down.
We believe that the rifles
of those who want to shoot us will miss
because there will always remain Argentineans disposed to fight,
to achieve the will of the Argentineans.
ERA OF DEVELOPMENT
This same middle-class which, in 1955, had accepted oligarchic hegemony,
tried with Frondizi, 3 years later, an intermediate policy,
aiming at harnessing the proletariat.
In new industrial sectors.
Integration seeks to involve
some sectors of Perónism
in an initiative which favours only the middle-class related to imperialism.
Frondizi personifies the most obvious, bourgeois opportunism.
Naively, the policy of development
hoped to find, in the USA, a generous sponsor
like the old oligarchy had found in England.
The outcome of this policy was
the promotion of private free enterprise
and an open door for foreign capital,
privatization of national enterprises,
liquidation and removal of small industry,
subjection to the International Monetary Fund,
and a repression of the people.
This was compatible with the interests of the investors.
Popular resistance had not been
foreseen by the planned Kennedy development.
In January 1959, the slaughterhouse workers went on strike
and occupied it to prevent its return to private management.
The police force, in armoured cars,
evacuated the buildings, crushing resistance.
Three months later, it's the bank clerks who strike for sixty days.
100 employees find themselves imprisoned in the barracks.
Students also take part in the fight.
During this year, there are 250 student protests.
Never before had the proletariat trusted so much in its own strength.
Never as in the course of this year
had the limits of various directions of politico-union activists
become so obvious.
In 1959, the fight for popular power
became extremely violent.
Perónism combined the trade union struggle with terrorism,
sabotage and military action.
The first guerrillas went into action in Tucuman under the command of Uturunco.
General Iniguez
sponsored the military mutiny of Rosario.
The tanks of the Shell oil company in Cordoba are blown up a little later
and more than 300 million litres of fuel burn.
The repression of the police,
which bore the name of "Plan Conintes",
led to brutal torture and murder.
The resistance against the force of the system did not diminish.
From 1959 to 1964,
one can count 1400 acts of terrorism and sabotage.
The Perónist terror tactics do not succeed in winning power
but succeed in avoiding, between 1959 and 1962,
the integrationist traps of Frondizism,
to which certain sectors of the national movement belonged.
Frondizi, like Betancourt, Haya de la Torre,
Figueres and so many others,
symbolized the sterility of the Latin American Bourgeoisie,
their historical death.
THE MIDDLE CLASS AND INTELLECTUALS
The fight of the mass movements
started to weaken the antinational front
which had seized power from them.
The oligarchy
lost its traditional influence on the middle class.
There developed, and strengthened gradually
in intellectual circles,
the idea of understanding Argentina as a nation.
It seems important to me, to explain the role of the intellectual in Argentina,
in particular the intellectuals of the Left.
Franco Moni, writer, journalist.
Until today the left-wing intellectual in Argentina
did not play any serious part,
no coherent role for the Left or the revolution.
He was a very elegant alibi of the system, playing its game
so the system incorporated him.
Why did he not understand
the most brilliant moments of the Argentine people?
Why was the intellectual of the Left not tied,
for example, to the Perónist process?
Because he always thinks in the shadow of old Europe,
that hands are either dirty or clean.
I believe it is time to clear up this old problem
of the conscience, of purity, of the Oedipus complex.
As long as the Argentinean left
operates under this shadow created by Europe,
besides being magnificently propagated by our system
and liberal education,
quite simply it has no purpose.
THE MILITARY
The provincial elections of 1962 surprise the military.
The Secretary-General of the textile trade union, Andres Framini,
is elected governor of the most important province in the country,
Buenos Aires.
The army intervenes and cancels the elections,
overturns Frondizi, dissolves the national congress
and installs an appendage like a president: Guido.
The national movement is unable to uphold the will of the people.
Large sectors of the movement had done nothing except
engage in an electoral game which was completely fraudulent.
The facade of the bourgeoisie had already begun to crumble long before.
The only two previous times, in 1916 and 1946,
when the government
was elected by the people,
it was reversed by a military coup.
The continual action of Perónism through to 1962 places the authorities
in a difficult crisis.
Their greatest concern is
to find the best way to neutralize the movement.
From 1962, the trade unions begin a new form of resistance:
the occupation of factories.
In 1964, the confederation of trade unions
deepens the so called "Conflict Plan".
For the first time in Latin American history,
a thousand premises are occupied simultaneously.
More than three million workers take part in these occupations.
1964 is also
the year in which Perón tries to return.
The Brazilian military force the issue, obeying instructions from the Pentagon
to return him from exile.
It is in 1964 that new groups of guerrillas appear
who are decimated before they even enter into action.
The most intense battles at this time are by the proletariat of the interior
with strikes, occupations and hunger strikes.
The Perónists victory at the 1965 elections
shakes the system again.
To counter the threat of another Perónist success, in 1967
the army decides to forestall them, becoming an arm of the government.
It becomes the government itself.
The only thing the Communist and Socialist parties can do
is to ask for
the democratic-civil institutions to be maintained.
The local centre of Perónism
places their hopes in allegedly nationalist sectors of the army,
however the goals of the so-called Argentine revolution
soon become obvious.
By prohibiting the political parties,
they do not want to limit the generous freedom
that the civil parties enjoy,
but to suffocate the Perónist movement.
By dismantling the autonomy of the universities,
they want to act against the radicalization
of important sectors of the middle class.
By the continued threat of an intervention,
in opposition to the confederation of trade unions,
it wants to push them into an open collaboration
with the system in place to give victory to neo-colonialism.
THE STUDENT MOVEMENT
Leader of the new reform movement.
What are the most important actions
of the student movement in the last ten years?
In the first place,
the establishment of the great force of mobilization of student movements.
It is also important to see
that this fight has been directed in only one political direction
with liberal goals,
established by facts,
such as for example in 1955
when they were deceived by the oligarchy to contain the popular movement.
The great strike of 1958,
with more than 100,000 students,
was about the issue of "liberal or national training"'
while Frondizi sold off the riches of Argentina
to imperialist Yankees.
In the more recent battles, in 1964/65,
the student movement perceived a new reality
and realized that it was to deviate from its old positions
and stick to the most important question of the moment:
anti-imperialism or colonial dependence.
Octavio Getino questioned Julio Barbarao, a student,
about how he sees the current situation of the student movement
after the last coup d’état.
I think that the coup d’état contributed,
like all the methods which the right wing tested,
to slow down historical development
and in the final analysis, the revolutionary process.
That is, it forced us students to leave our island.
For most of us, who come from a Christian background,
we break the patterns and return to the origin.
This situation has really important and interesting aspects for us.
We collaborate with people who come from Marxism,
from orthodox Marxism, the Marxism
which is regarded as the historical axis,
and with those who reason with old values,
and with the Perónist revolutionary groups.
These three currents will fight together with the people
for national liberation.
Roberto Grabois, leader of the student national front,
talks about the current political position of the student movement.
Perhaps we could say
that what characterizes the process of the student movement
comes from the nature of the universities.
In other words, the fight for great ideals,
which conforms to a narrow, specific prospect for the students,
and to a paternalism for the popular movement,
leads towards a national conscience, together with the
popular movement.
We are conscious that the fight for a liberated fatherland,
a socialist fatherland, inevitably implies our fusion
with the essential axis of the Argentinean revolution
which is the working class,
not understood as an abstraction,
but understood by its battles and its feelings.
From that fundamental point, the process of national consciousness,
understanding, re-evaluation of the Perónist process
and of its significance for the Argentine working class,
becomes our business, our own business.
Not the Perónism of the bureaucrats,
which does nothing but negotiate and concede, but the Perónism of the masses,
that of the anti-imperialistic and revolutionary fight,
which leads to socialism.
In this sense, the Cuban revolution,
a national, nationalist and anti-imperialist revolution,
had a great influence.
Its heritage for us is Marxist-Leninist, a guide
which establishes the link with the history, with the life, of our working class,
and which opens the way
towards national liberty and the construction of socialism and unity with our people.
THE OCCUPATION OF THE FACTORIES
What was the high point reached by the resistance in the last 10 years?
Generalizing we could say
what was said to us by many comrades...
the demonstration of a national consciousness.
Able to resist the executions, repressions, tortures,
the traps of the system,
to quote an example, let us announce
the most important of these demonstrations -
occupation of the factories.
Cirillo Ramallo speaks about one of the first occupations of a factory,
the metallurgy factory, Siam de Montechingolo.
The occupation resulted from the dismissal of 300 comrades.
What measures were taken to defend the factory?
All measures likely to guarantee to us
that the police would not make us evacuate,
and at the same time to maintain the normal functioning of the factory
in order to avoid disorders.
We distributed the gasoline in various places,
likewise fire extinguishers, to be used
in case of an attack by the police force.
The defence of the factory, I'm the one who organized it,
with the comrades of the internal commission.
I personally instituted the strike pickets
which circulated in the factory
and in the district
who always showed solidarity with us.
We feared that the police would drive us out.
Rudy Taborda speaks of the first occupation,
the one large textile mill under worker administration: La Bernalesa.
In the country, there were many occupations
like ours.
But it acted as a historical event,
of a unique kind, because, for the first time,
a factory functioned under workers control.
For the first time, we felt ourselves
the absolute owners of a factory
where for 30 years the comrades had been
exploited and crushed by the employer class.
We had a double responsibility:
to show the employer class
that we were able to keep up production,
to work and, at the same time, to manage the production.
We were going to show that we were capable of production.
We had to succeed in doing both things at the same time.
And we succeeded there rather well, it seems to me.
For example: the quality of the products
compared with that of those
which had been stored, appeared, at the end of the 13 days during
which we had ensured the management of the factory, to be definitely superior.
Another fact important to announce is the participation of the employees.
They joined with us unanimously.
A really extraordinary fact.
For the first time,
two thousand workers assumed autonomous responsibility for their work.
For the first time, they discovered that they are worth as much, or even more,
than those who always benefited from them.
They became aware of their own capacities,
their own possibilities.
The workers, this time, took the occupation very seriously.
During the previous occupations
people came with their portable radios,
the workers organized barbecues,
the comrades played cards
or football in the streets bordering the factory.
This time, however, it was very different.
The truth is that the majority of us are illiterate.
We grew up in absolute misery,
working since tender childhood
without learning how to read and write.
I worked in various places for a mouthful of bread.
I am not ashamed to say that I had to beg to eat.
And then, at 17 years old, I came to Buenos Aires
to seek my fortune.
All of that was before 17th October. And then General Perón appeared.
I was not the only one to arrive from my province.
We were very numerous, in total ignorance of the social laws.
In fact, in the countryside, we do not profit
from any protection.
In view of this panorama of total misery,
like many Argentineans I came to the capital.
But the trade unions were not yet well organized,
and there were still some difficulties.
However it was still better than living in poverty in the country.
One afternoon the Minister of Justice from La Plata came.
We received him at the gates.
And he said to us that we must evacuate the factory
because we had taken possession of a private property.
I replied to him: you are Minister of Justice? And your justice
is to lay off 300 workers!
He replied to me that he was not a Minister for Labour,
and that this was a trade union problem.
Then, I said to him that, if this was the case,
he had nothing to do with this factory.
But he repeated that we must evacuate,
that there were 150 police officers ready to employ force.
I told him 150 police officers were not enough.
He would have to call the army.
He was completely surprised.
And I added
that if they evacuated us by force,
we would blow up the plant.
I showed him where we had the gasoline containers
which were ready
in case of any aggression.
As a representative of the government,
he had the police force and the owners.
Me, I had the support of all the comrades
to face any aggression.
Occupations are violent acts,
traumatic,
which erase from the workers' memory
many myths, lies, and oppressions.
Through occupations, the worker accelerates his own decolonization,
finds the conscience of his own work,
re-conquers his own humanity.
THE LIMITS OF SPONTANEITY
Up to which point can one carry out, inside the system,
the battle for the means of production?
The dominant classes control
all the other levers of power.
Resistance, at its spontaneous level,
has arrived today at a critical moment.
If, until yesterday, the trade unions were the axis of resistance,
today they've lost their political effectiveness.
As an instrument of revolutionary struggle
they have reached the limits of their possibilities.
Spontaneity
is the great virtue of the Argentinean masses.
But it also indicates their limits.
It is to spontaneity that the Argentinean proletariat
owes its most memorable day,
but also its greatest defeats.
On October 17th and the month of September 1955,
the combativeness and the heroism of resistance
are not enough to overcome the enemy.
When spontaneity and the initiative of the masses
do not take the path resulting in seizure of power,
everything is transformed into dispute, resistance, self-defence.
In this case, the initiative is always taken by the enemy.
THE WAR TODAY
If the war is the sum of partial battles,
we've lost some of them, but on the level of creating conscience,
we have won many others.
Imperialism also has its experiments.
Since the Cuban revolution, it's learned better ways
to fight the revolution,
ways that the revolutionaries themselves did not learn.
This is a "miguelito," a small iron rod
about an inch in length.
The points are sharpened and then folded into a right angle
in order to form a base which hangs.
Before, we'd make a larger model
of one centimetre in thickness.
Then we couldn’t get rods of that type any more.
Now we make them from
the bars, which we can get.
I cut it out, sharpen it.
Because I know the people can make use of it.
Where is that? In the streets.
We hide them the best we can
in a heap of garbage or in a puddle.
The vehicles pass without seeing them, and the tires are punctured.
We especially use them during the strikes.
We leave at dawn, each one with his bag,
and we place them.
From 1963 to 1966, the Pentagon
gave special training
in its centres in Panama, to 19,000 soldiers of Latin America.
The armies of the continent behave like troops of occupation
and they all have the advantage of blending in easily.
These are the Peruvian "hunter commands",
the Bolivian "Rangers", the Argentine gendarmerie.
The ODECA: the American defence council,
the military operators, are all directed by the Pentagon.
Latin America
is the theatre of a silent escalation
devoted to genocide.
I remember a demonstration, on November 5th
after the fall of Perón.
With a comrade, we had gone to Plaza Alsina in Avellaneda,
where the police force charged ferociously.
They used horses to turn back the crowd.
There was a comrade sitting on a bench.
The police came from behind and threw him to the ground
and almost trampled him with their horses.
I felt such indignation
that I remembered a trick from back home.
I went to a grocery store and bought packets of pepper
and launched them in the direction of the wind.
When the horses inhaled pepper,
they started to sneeze and reared up.
That made the police even more angry.
We were sorry for the horses, but not for them, certainly not
after the brutality with which they treated our brothers!
Pepper is effective, certainly!
We knew it worked. We used it in the countryside!
And can it stop the police force?
That is a little more difficult!
What can trade union organizations achieve these days
in the face of a well trained, well equipped modern army,
that also has mercenary forces?
But is this army really invincible?
Algeria,
Cuba, Vietnam,
prove the opposite.
People determined to liberate themselves
are invincible.
But victory over these armies
is only possible with the will of the people.
Power is held exclusively
by those who possess weapons,
or those who decide to obtain them.
The language of weapons is, in our time,
the most effective political language.
Is it therefore necessary to teach the people this language?
Does this mean a long and painful war?
Are there any other alternatives for liberation?
INTRODUCTION TO THE DEBATE
Comrades,
the reflections which we have just talked about
arise from the current national situation
and from the experience accumulated during years of resistance.
Let us point out the facts.
The military government has been in place since 1966
destroying the resistance
of different trade unions, like the trade union of the dock labourers
who closed the sugar factories of Tucuman.
They have assigned the energy reserves, giving no rights to the people,
and has found no opposition which could confront and overcome it.
This is one symptom.
At the same time, certain proletarian tendencies have begun to stray from their roots,
bureaucratic, confused by the enemy
moving closer towards them.
These tendencies existed before
but they'd never acted in such a sneaky way.
This is another symptom.
Thoughts and reflections which are contributions to this discussion
are also based on experiences encountered during filming.
Rudy Taborda was recently laid off
together with the most active comrades.
Cirillo Ramallo, was also laid off
and the factory where he worked was closed down.
Angel Taborda was arrested
and laid off because of his trade union engagement.
Martiniano Martin is no longer on the committee of the car factory.
Employers have blacklisted him and he can't find work anymore.
At Tucuman we spoke with the most combative leaders of FOTIA:
Can you talk about the fight carried out by the Tucuman workers?
I'm Leandro Foté. I'm the secretary-general of the Trade Union of San José.
Let me say that it's only four hours ago
that I left prison.
I was arrested for organizing the fight of the sugar workers.
However that's not important.
The important thing is that in Tucuman
we have valuable combat experience.
We have occupied factories,
we've fought on the streets,
we've had victims. Recently we lost
one of our comrades at Bella Vista, where the fight was particularly tough.
Did these fights bring us any solutions?
Comrade, these fights did not bring any solution.
No solution for the sugar workers.
That's why I believe the workers fight must be quite different.
We have recognized that one should not only fight for
wage increases, but against government and its domination.
The workers must understand
that we need a popular government of the workers.
This is the only way we can provide for the future of the country
and for the workers, to worry about the proletarian people of the country.
Now, comrade, at this moment,
the situation of the Tucuman workers is disastrous.
There are 24,000 unemployed from the closed factories.
These people will emigrate to other provinces,
which will increase unemployment elsewhere in the country,
like in Tucuman in the past year.
Resistance and self-defence,
by reaching their culmination,
expose the people to lassitude,
and exhaustion.
Each point of defence is located by the enemy, isolated, and eliminated.
But the people's memory assimilates the experience.
One day I asked:
Father, where is God?
My father became serious,
but answered nothing.
My father died in the mine.
In the bottom of the gallery.
Colour of blood of the mine.
Where the owner's gold piles up.
One day I asked:
My brother, what do you know about God?
My brother lowered his eyes,
but answered nothing.
My brother lives on the mountain
where no flowers grow.
Sweat, malaria, snakes.
This is the life of the logger.
And nobody asks of him
if he knows or has found God.
Another important person.
Me, I sing on the streets.
And when I am in prison,
I listen to the voices of the people
who sing much better than me.
Does God take care of the poor?
Perhaps yes, perhaps no.
What I know,
is that he sits at the owner's table.
If there is anything on this earth
more important than God,
it is that nobody has to spit blood
so that others can live better.
I am Andina Lizarraga,
Chief of Perónist Youth of Tucuman.
Although the experiences
of the population of Tucuman were invaluable after 1955-
mobilizations, street battles, occupations of factories
and fights against the oppressor -
for the historical process,
I believe they
are not applicable today,
and that it would be a great mistake to repeat them.
People don't want these battles any more.
They want another form of action.
An action for the political seizure of power
which can only be carried out
by an armed struggle.
However, an armed struggle is not possible
without a revolutionary organization prepared to make
sacrifices and to risk their lives
like the Argentinean people have done until now.
The time of the chief bureaucrat is over.
That depends only on us, on yourselves,
to contribute to the foundation of this revolutionary organization.
Otherwise we will waste our time miserably.
We crossed vast parts of the country
and found in many provinces a similar situation,
more dramatic, perhaps, in the North,
specially in Tucuman.
However, the proletariat doesn't appear defeated, or overcome.
Many means of struggle were tested in the course of time,
but the truth is that no organization, no direction is yet in sight
which could direct the proletariat towards victory.
In the meantime we experience a kind of dynamic waiting.
The search continues.
Comrades, the conclusions you can draw now are important.
You, as the true authors and protagonists of this story.
The experience which we have gathered here
and our conclusions are valuable to a certain extent.
They are helpful depending
on how useful they are to the present and the future of the liberation struggle,
of this liberation which you represent.
The importance is the action which can follow these conclusions,
an agreement based on facts shown here.
This is why our film ends here.
For you to continue it.
You have the floor.
OPEN SPACE FOR DIALOGUE
Support us and become VIP member to remove all ads from www. OpenSubtitles. org