EXTREMISTS AT WAR IN ARGENTINA
O'Mara, Richard Paul
Extremists at War in Argentina by RICHARD PAUL O'MARA Buenos Aires T ate in September, Interior Minister -*-J Juan S. Palmero assured the Jewish community here that "Argentina is a place to live...
...The source of this violent clash of ideas in modern Argentina lies deep in the country's history...
...He was shot through the head during an anti-American rally of students last May in front of the Congressional Palace...
...and finally, in 1963, Dr...
...The government has taken stringent measures to cut off the outflow...
...Today the Guardia Res-tauradora Nacionalista deifies Rosas, while Peron's influence from Madrid, though waning in a personal sense, is still formidable among labor's ranks, attested to in recent elections...
...After repeated acts of political, religious, and racial violence over the years, the National Congress had finally resolved to hold an investigation of extremist activities in Argentina...
...The black market price, which reflects its true value, was more than 250 in February, 1966...
...As for the left, the following was taken directly from the official publication of the Movement for National Liberation, one of the more sedate Communist factions, and, by police definition, not a terrorist organization: "Violence is useful, necessary, and conditional...
...Since the former dictator's wife has been in Argentina, a deep split has developed in the Peronist movement...
...Nazi refugees sought a haven in South America from the Allied prosecutors...
...A member of Tacuara recently stated his movement's purpose: "We think a profound change and revolution are necessary in Argentina...
...The majority of Argentines are moderate, even democratically inclined...
...Neither discrimination nor racial persecution exists in Argentina," the minister, said...
...The Universities Student organizations in the state universities are the source of most Communist activity...
...The Jewish information organ concurs...
...Invariably, every CGT rally turns into a running street fight with Peronists and Tacuara hoodlums ranged against the Communists, with the police flailing away against both...
...Even the Peronist parties, though noisier than the others, tend these days, more than in the past, to adhere to the democratic process to fulfill their aims...
...When asked why, he replied: "Because pigeons rest only on stationary objects...
...The police blame Tacuara for the killing of Horacio Grinbak, a young Jewish medical student...
...There were many at the DAIA gathering who remembered the reaction of the Argentine Congress to the Palmero statement in August...
...Besides his inflammatory speeches, Triki has been accused of providing financial support to Tacu-ara and the Nazi-like Guardia Res-tauradora Nacionalista...
...About 36,000 of them came here as refugees from Nazism...
...We want a change of the whole structure of the system, and if it were not for us, this change would come through Marxism...
...one legislator asked...
...This is demonstrably not true, for terrorism in Argentina is not perpetrated by Israelis, or Arabs, or Cubans, but by Argentines against Argentines...
...Some of the recent acts of terrorism against Jews, in addition to the killing of Grinbak and Alterman, include: % The appearance of trucks painted with the slogan "Death To All Jews" on the streets of San Miguel de Tucu-man in northern Argentina during riots by sugar workers in December and January...
...Arturo Illia, a sixty-three-year-old country doctor from Cordoba Province, was elected president...
...The extremists represent a greater danger to Argentina than the periodic disruption of peace and order because in addition to the war between the right and the left, both sides are arrayed against the moderate and liberal democratic elements in the country...
...The Communists seem to have little influence over labor, probably because of the abstract presentation of their doctrine...
...The most violent action group in Argentina is Tacuara, a Fascist organization composed generally of bored, upper-middle-class youths...
...Communism in the universities hews to the purist Marxist idea of the necessity for revolution...
...Besides Illia's UCRP, two other Radical parties exist: Frondizi's MID (Movimiento para Integracion y Des-arollo), and the UCRI (Union Civica Radical Intransigente) led by Oscar Alende...
...Many Argentines attribute the current state of affairs to foreign influences...
...Augusto Vandor, the metal workers union leader who personifies the growing trend in the movement toward emancipation from Madrid, and perhaps Peron, heads the other...
...Whether they were rev-olutionaires is open to question...
...What is becoming more likely every day is that the activities of the extremists will provoke a military coup...
...The Communist Party in Argentina is outside the law...
...The destruction by arson on August 5 of the library of Kadima Tzair, a Jewish fraternal organization...
...A full-scale revolution —which is what this would entail—is most unlikely, mainly because the country is not ready for it...
...Nearly all the demonstrations in Argentina against U.S...
...Peron sent his wife to Argentina in an attempt to retain his following...
...After the blaze was extinguished, anti-Semitic slogans were found painted on the walls...
...Argentina's future is uncertain...
...He joined Juan Carlos Cornejo Linares in the chamber...
...The depth of the schism in the Argentine people over the question of Peronism was never more apparent than this past October when Peronists and anti-Per-onists rioted through the streets of Buenos Aires over the presence in Argentina of Juan Peron's third wife— Maria Estela Martinez de Peron...
...Peronism in Argentina is a story in itself...
...The Peronist labor union, the Con-jederacion General de Trabajadores (CGT), endorsed a frankly Nazi rally last spring in Buenos Aires...
...The virus of anti-Semitism was given new vigor in Argentina after World War II, when thousands of RICHARD PAUL O'MARA is a free lance writer in Argentina...
...Postal and transportation strikes are frequent...
...On the other hand, the simplistic authoritarian nationalism expounded by the right wing is easier to digest...
...For this reason the official Argentine Communist Party, banned from the political process, languishes for lack of support...
...The Church Right-wing influence is strong in the Church...
...The United Front Against Anti-Semitism, a knowledgable organization set up to fight totalitarianism of all sorts, lays the blame for the continuance of neo-Nazism at the door of the 'Arab League...
...Yet that potential has never been realized...
...They ruled until 1930, when the era of military intervention began...
...Moscoso later tried to vindicate his behavior by telling the press he was not really "anti-Jew, only anti-Zionist...
...The Argentine Socialist Party offers a program of more state capitalism, while the Conservatives would like to see the government virtually divorced from the economy...
...The more realistic threat to the well-being of Argentina in the future is from the anti-democratic forces of the racial and religious extremists who place their own narrow interests before the interests of their country...
...It is true thal^ Argentina is suffering a flight of capital...
...The government and the military have been divided over what the latter considers Dr...
...In fact, the major criticism by political opponents of the UCRP is that it lacks dynamism...
...The Communists have been charged with the following: il The August 12 murder of Hernan Spangenberg, a thirty-year-old anthropology student, and a suspected member of Tacuara...
...These words, now echoed, were first spoken years ago in Nationalist Spain...
...Illia has been a sedative to Argentina these past two years...
...Tacuara is an old Indian word which has been incorporated into Argentine Spanish...
...More than 650 people were arrested during one night of raids on meetings of Communists and right-wing organizations...
...As for the Communists, government officials and politicians charge that all anti-United States demonstrations and terrorist activities perpetrated by them are ordered in Havana or Peking...
...Marxism came to Argentina in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries with the flood of European immigration...
...But because of the unstable economic situation, most Argentines who have wealth feel it is safer in a Swiss or American bank than in their own country...
...Although the students like to consider themselves revolutionaries, whether Marxist or otherwise, the police—who bend every effort to keep an eye on student activity—have found no evidence of any potentially threatening revolutionary organization in Argentina's universities...
...The September 5 bombing of the headquarters of Nueva Sion, a Jewish magazine...
...Because of such men as Father Julio Meinville, an extreme anti-Semite and virulent anti-Communist, the image of a Fascist clergy exists...
...f The June 14 bombing of D lar-cho, a Jewish school and temple...
...f The June 7 shooting of U.S...
...But that was short-lived, and it was the military which ousted him...
...A number of the new Peronist deputies are known for their anti-Semitic leanings...
...Polemics against the Nazis never carry the fervor of warnings against an imminent Communist takeover of Argentina, although the danger from the right is equal to, if not stronger, than that from the left...
...When Ongania suddenly retired in November many officials voiced fear that the chief bulwark protecting the government from the military had been removed...
...The intensity of the right-wing faction has presented a distorted picture of the Church...
...The value of the Argentine peso has dwindled from eighty-three to the dollar in January, 1962, to the present official exchange rate of 188 per dollar...
...This is revealed by a brief look at four of Argentina's major institutions: the Catholic Church, the Army, the universities, and labor...
...Ten years after the exile of Juan Peron his philosophy continues to exert a major force in Argentine politics...
...On May 25, 1965, he denounced most of Argentina's political leaders as "Jacobins," then railed against all liberal sectors of the population which, to his mind, were "only Reds...
...Recently the military has intensified its anti-Communist campaign, and one general even suggested the re-establishment of the death penalty for "political crimes...
...f The machine-gun killing in March, 1964, of two members of Tacuara and a Peronjst labor leader...
...Consul Allison Temple Wanamaker in Cordoba...
...It includes among its members twenty-eight-year-old Horst Adolph Eichmann, who has adopted his father's anti-Jewish prejudice...
...Peron's leadership of the movement he founded each day becomes more emotional and less real...
...This group, dressed in old Nazi uniforms, recently assembled in the Pla/a of San Martin and stood around the liberator's monument while its leader, Augusta Moscoso, read out a "declaration of war" against all "Freemasons, Communists, and Jews...
...The UCRP, for example, campaigns on what it describes as "continued honesty in government...
...The Communists and the right wing stand for only one thing: destruction of the existing social and political system...
...II-lia's indifference to Communist guerrilla action throughout Latin America and his passive attitude toward Communist activity in the state universities...
...Argentines share with most Hispanic peoples the admiration for the caudillo, the traditional strong-man leader...
...That goes for Jew and gentile alike...
...Violence is valid and legitimate, if it is used for a just purpose, and in the right moment with adequate method...
...But from the tenor of speeches in the Chamber of Deputies, and the attitudes of the military, the new crusade against extremism seemed to be turning into a Red witch-hunt...
...He has been replaced by General Pascual Angel Pistarini, whose attitude toward the government is not entirely clear...
...Soon after that influx a spate of anti-Semite publications appeared and various neo-Nazi organizations were formed...
...There is little danger, now, from Communism...
...The cost of living rose more than thirty-eight per cent during 1965...
...It is our mission to make the leadership of Argentina indisputable...
...If this should occur, Argentina would only intensify its basic problems...
...It reappeared later under the title, Patria Barbara, and is still being sold...
...Because of this we exist and offer an alternative of profound Christian content, not only in the spiritual but in the material, to obtain a true social justice...
...Peron's wife leads one faction on behalf of her husband...
...But there are some goals more specific...
...But now, twenty-three years later, it seems that Argentina's chance has passed...
...Students at the fewer Catholic institutions tend to be more conservative...
...The remarks caused concern in political circles because Ongania has a reputation as a taciturn soldier, one who believes an army's place is in the field...
...He is the son and ideological heir of General Ramon Molina, a leader of the pro-Nazi faction in the armed forces during World War II...
...f The riddling with bullets of a Buenos Aires synagogue on November 21...
...The right wing paints Jews and Communists with the same brush...
...Huessein Triki, the Arab League's delegate in Argentina, was expelled recently for his anti-Semitic activities...
...But it is not only the Radicals who suffer from lack of appeal to youth...
...Argentine parties present themselves less as champions of stated objectives and more as representatives of certain virtues...
...There is error in this assignment of blame to foreign influence, for it implies that if all the embassies were closed, and the flow of foreign propaganda turned off, terrorism would cease and the ideological battle abate...
...Before the outbreak of the war, General Molina was one of the participants in the abortive Fascist coup against the liberal nationalist president, General Augustin P. Justo...
...The same charge applies, more or less, to all the other legitimate parties in Argentina...
...Argentina's aim was stated quite clearly and frankly in a manifesto issued years ago by the military clique that engineered a coup in 1943: "In South America there are only two nations sufficiently big and strong enough to undertake leadership—Argentina and Brazil...
...Most parties, when they achieve power, govern by improvisation rather than plan...
...a policeman guarding the building was fired upon...
...He contributes regularly to The Christian Science Monitor and The Baltimore Sun...
...Social and political instability exists —and a sort of national malaise...
...The Army Regiment Commander Colonel Ramon Eduardo Molina used the 155th anniversary of the beginning of the revolution against Spain to state the position of most of the officer corps...
...It must be remembered that labor was the foundation on which Peron built his neo-Fascist nationalism...
...The ultra-right nationalists blame the economic mess on the Jews who, they claim, are taking capital out of the country...
...Politicians talk little about it...
...Linares, the most outspoken anti-Semite in the Argentine Congress, has written several anti-Semitic books, and has introduced legislation, since voted down, to have Jewish high schools investigated as "military organizations...
...The increased activity of the political terrorists in recent years has been heightened by the country's sick economic condition...
...A major reason for the malaise is what could be called "a national frustration...
...The new Congressional concern about extremists prompted quick police action...
...Because of the intensity of the extremists, the liberal and moderate sectors of the society are on the defensive...
...The sympathetic policy toward the Third Reich which had been followed by Argentina during the war was assurance to Nazis that they would be well-protected, and anti-Semitism has been an on-going problem ever since...
...Palmero was speaking at a luncheon sponsored by DAIA, the information organ for the Jewish community in Argentina...
...Students feel it is a mere arm of the Soviet Union, a feeling bolstered by the fact that one of the chiefs of the Argentine Communist Party is Vittorio Codovilla, who was one of Stalin's Comintern agents in Republican Spain during the Spanish Civil War...
...Another criticism is that the Radical movement, all three segments of it, has lost the allegiance of Argentina's young people...
...Molina's rank belies his stature among the military...
...The intellectualism of the creed explains why it has taken hold, for the most part, only in the universities...
...It was a question for which the answer should have been obvious...
...The Army is a powerful force in Argentine politics, and has been since 1930...
...Only Peron was able to hold it in check by his divide-and-rule tactics...
...Tacuara was formed about 1958, during the presidency of Arturo Fron-dizi...
...Labor Labor in Argentina is, in a word, "Pcronism," in spite of the split over leadership of the Peronistas...
...Generally they find expression through the Radical parties, and smaller parties such as the Christian Democrats, Socialists, and even Conservatives...
...The Peronist parties champion legislation in favor of the working people...
...Most Argentine Marxists are not so much revolutionaries as they are dialectical dilettantes...
...To further their anti-Israel foreign policy aims, the Arab states compete with the established neo-Nazi groups in the output of anti-Semitic propaganda...
...then the truncated presidency of Ar-turo Frondizi...
...policy in Santo Domingo and Vietnam are student-organized, and any excuse will bring the students into the streets to denounce "imperialismo...
...The governing Radical Party, Union Civica Radical del Pueblo (UCRP), last fall entered the third year of a six-year term...
...Argentina has always felt itself the destined leader of Latin America, and the world has always recognized her great potential...
...Most of the old issues, such as land reform, are no longer relevant, since most of the large holdings were broken up years ago...
...Since the elections in March, 1965, which brought thirty-six Peronists into the National Chamber of Deputies, and recent strong showings by Per-onist candidates in provincial elections —tnost significantly their landslide victory on January 30 in gubernatorial elections in Jujuy province—Peronism has been described as the strongest force of all...
...The country has heavy foreign debts which it is now trying to renegotiate...
...The seriousness of Alende's charge becomes apparent when it is noted that, for the most part, Argentina's terrorist groups are comprised of youths...
...Tax reform, which simply means imposing a more effective collection system, is urged by most parties, but few come up with any concrete proposals...
...According to a 1961 census, Jews comprise about two per cent of the population...
...Argentina still wastes her national energies on futile internal conflict...
...It has never been a strong force, and gained the influence it now wields only by association with the success of the major Communist countries during the past twenty years...
...The major threat is not so much that the extremists of one side or the other will win out...
...Each side blames the other for the Argentine predicament: The Communists say Argentina is a symptom of the decay of Western capitalism...
...It was one of shocked disbelief...
...Yet the military never denounces the activities of Tacuara...
...Literally, it means "bamboo," but because the Indians fought against the Spanish in the pampas and Patagonia with bamboo lances, it has come to mean "lance" or "spear...
...The objectives of those parties to which the liberal and moderate sectors of the population adhere are often clouded...
...The autocratic authoritarianism common to most right-wing organizations came to Argentina with the Spanish four centuries ago, was impressed more deeply into the national ethos by the twenty-three-year, fascist-type rule of Juan Manual Rosas (1829-1852), and received new life during the Peron years (1945-1955...
...It is also asserted that Tacuara ordered the assassination in March, 1964, of Raul Altarman, another Jewish student...
...What has been going on in Argentina since the fall of Juan Domingo Peron in 1955 is a war of the extremes, a terrorist battle between left and right...
...The traditional parties don't even try to reach the youth," complains Oscar Alende...
...In the current decade the peoples of Latin America have looked to Romulo Betancourt's Venezuela, or Ed-uardo Frei's Chile, or even Fidel Castro's Cuba...
...Until the liberal majority obtains some forceful leadership, this image will continue...
...Meinville, and Father Leonardi Castel-lani, are spiritual mentors to a Nazistyle organization called the Guar-dia Restauradora Nacionalista...
...In his address he reiterated a statement he made in August before the National Chamber of Deputies during an investigation of extremist activities throughout the country...
...Illia came to power at the head of a segment of the Radical movement...
...The popular Argentine cartoonist, Flax, always draws President Illia with a pigeon on his head...
...The liberal forces in the Church, which represent a large but passive majority, suffer from the lack of leadership since the death in 1964 of Monsignor Miguel de Andrea...
...If militarism reasserts its dominance in Argentina, it is certain to present itself to the people as the force that saved the country from Communism...
...After that came the decade of Peron, from 1945 to 1955...
...In 1964, police estimated that as many as 100,000 terrorists were operating throughout Argentina, a country with a population of about twenty-two millions...
...He has brought a quiet, un-theatrical style of government to the Casa Rosada (Government House...
...One magazine, Nacion Arabe, was so violently anti-Jewish that the Buenos Aires city government ordered it off the newsstands...
...Despite his assurances against religious or racial discrimination, Interior Minister Palmero has admitted that twenty-three extremist organizations are active in the country...
...One is Tecero del Franco, a professor at Buenos Aires' Catholic University of EI Salvador, who was elected with campaign help from Tacuara...
...Former Army Commander-in-Chief Juan Carlso Ongania caused a stir last September when he returned from a tour of Europe and Brazil and reportedly announced that Argentina and Brazil had an agreement to fight Communism...
...The liberally-oriented Radicals took over the task of governing Argentina in 1916...
...The Arab League's propaganda efforts find their response among confirmed anti-Semites and the Nasseristas, those members of the military who approve of Egyptian President Nasser's authoritarian nationalism...
...Grinbak and Altarman, who have been described by the authorities as convinced Communists, were active in Marxist circles at the University of Buenos Aires...
...The population of Argentina includes about 450,000 Jews, the fourth largest concentration in the world, following the United States, Russia, and France...
...Politically, almost the entire population had been divided—until last fall—according to their Peronist or anti-Peronist sentiments...
...For what purpose does the Interior Minister think we called him to testify...
...For example, Frondizi's MID claims to be the party of economic development, a generally desirable goal among all the population...
...In spite of his party's recent resurgence, few Argentines seriously expect Peron himself to return from Madrid...
...These elements comprise most of the Argentine middle class, larger than in any other country in Latin America, and are to be found even in the working classes and upper sectors of society...
...Extremists at War in Argentina by RICHARD PAUL O'MARA Buenos Aires T ate in September, Interior Minister -*-J Juan S. Palmero assured the Jewish community here that "Argentina is a place to live without fear...
Vol. 30 • April 1966 • No. 4
