Tendencia Revolucionaria

[3] Argentina felt the impact of the Cuban Revolution, and John William Cooke, a close associate of Perón who would emerge as the main representative of the Peronist left, moved to Cuba in 1960.

Che Guevara subsequently visited Perón in Madrid, and argued that Peronism is "a kind of indigenous Latin American socialism with which the Cuban Revolution could side".

Perón maintained a close relationship with Guevara and paid homage to him upon his death in 1967, calling him "one of ours, perhaps the best" and remarking that Peronism "as a national, popular and revolutionary movement, pays homage to the idealist, the revolutionary, Comandante Ernesto Che Guevara, Argentine guerrilla dead in action taking up arms to seek the triumph of national revolutions in Latin America.

This would change with the emergence of the "New Left" in the late 1950s which agreed with Guevara's description of Peronism as a genuine anti-imperialist movement that needs to be approached in order to mobilize the Argentinian working class towards the revolution.

The most radical expression at the Council was that of Maximos IV Sayegh, who declared that "true socialism is a full Christian life that involves a just sharing of goods and fundamental equality", and also Populorum progressio by Pope Paul VI that was a syntheiss of the Vatican II ideas, attacking "inequality, the profit motive, racism, and the selfishness of the richer nations".

[9] Vatican II further empowered the current of left-wing Catholicism and introduced new concepts and movements such as the option for the poor and liberation theology, and left-wing clergy then became overtly political with the creation of Movement of Priests for the Third World (Spanish: Movimiento de Sacerdotes para el Tercer Mundo) in Argentina, which praised socialism and condemned capitalism for "subjecting man to the economy and subordinating social to economic values".

Peronism became a part of revolutionary Catholicism and was infused with Guevarist ideas and liberation theology based on the beliefs of Camilo Torres, who was exalted as a martyr against "permanent exploitation and violence," the "structures of colonialism" and "imperialist penetration".

While Peronism was in itself a nationalist movement, its fusion with liberation theology allowed radicalized youth and clergy to extend Peronist anti-imperialism to solidarity with "nations of Latin America, Asia, and Africa" that were "exploited by colonialism and imperialism."

Perón also wrote: "The history of Peronism had confirmed that, within the capitalist system, there is no solution for the workers"; Peronist national socialism in his understanding had as its aim "to put society at the service of man and man at the service of society; to rescue moral and ethical values, honesty and humility, as the fundamental axis of this stage; to socialise the means of production, nationalise banking, carry out a profound cultural reform, hand over the administration of the land to those who work it through a profound agrarian revolution, nationalise foreign trade."

[19] The name Tendencia Revolucionaria del Peronismo was first used at the Second Congress of Revolutionary Peronism held in Córdoba in January 1969 to define the groups that were in favour of armed struggle.

Generically, the name included a heterogeneous group of actors and organisations that ascribed to Peronism as a political identity and proposed a revolutionary solution to the crisis of the system, i.e. they postulated the construction of "national socialism" (not to be confused with Nazism) and endorsed the methodology of armed struggle.

At first, the struggle against the dictatorship and the proscription focused on the possibility of a Peronist military uprising, supported by sabotage actions by civilian groups, mainly industrialists.

But after the failure of the Valle Uprising in 1956 and the state terrorism used to repress it, by means of illegal and clandestine shootings, a sector of Peronism began to take an insurrectional path, supported by the armed guerrilla struggle, identified with the nationalist and revolutionary processes of the national liberation that were multiplying in the Third World in those years, such as the Chinese Communist Revolution, the Algerian War of Liberation, the Vietnam War (1955-1973), and especially the Cuban Revolution (1958) and the leading presence in it of the Argentine Ernesto Che Guevara.

In this insurrectionary path of Peronism, Perón's decision to appoint John William Cooke (1919-1968) as his personal representative in Argentina and in his name to preside over the entire Peronist forces played a very important role.

In Argentina this current manifested itself through the magazine Cristianismo y Revolución and the Movimiento de Sacerdotes para el Tercer Mundo (1967), creating in turn the movement of curas villeros.

In 1972 Perón, seconded by Héctor J. Cámpora as personal delegate, FAR and Montoneros and the Peronist Youth, decided to disregard the GAN, to promote an electoral solution agreed exclusively among civilians (political parties, trade unions and business organizations).

After the Trelew Massacre committed by the Navy on 22 August 1972 in order to cancel the democratic solution, the Peronist Youth began to press for Perón's return to the country, in open defiance of the dictatorship.

Perón accepted the proposal and appointed one of the leading members of la Tendencia, Juan Manuel Abal Medina, then aged 27, as Secretary General of the National Justicialist Movement, with the mission of directing the Return Operation.

Peronism formed a large electoral front called Frente Justicialista de Liberación (Frejuli), with forces that in the past had been anti-Peronist, such as Frondizismo, popular conservatism and a sector of Christian democracy.

Due to the restrictions imposed by the dictatorship, Perón was unable to stand as a candidate, and Héctor J. Cámpora was nominated for the presidency, seconded by the popular conservative Vicente Solano Lima.

The Peronist Movement at that time was made up of four branches (political, trade union, women's and youth), among which the positions of power were to be equally distributed.

After the democratic government took office on May 25, 1973, la Tendencia deployed its mass organizations by front (JP-Regionales, JUP, UES, JTP, Agrupación Evita, MVP), which considerably increased its popularity and militancy, especially among young people.

From the national and provincial governments, la Tendencia promoted considerable social changes, such as agrarian reforms, the industrialisation of the interior of the country, the increase in real wages, adult education, unrestricted access to public universities, the strengthening of delegate bodies in companies, the entry of Argentina into the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), etc.

A decisive event in this conflict was the Ezeiza Massacre of 20 June 1973, on the occasion of Perón's definitive return to the country, when the columns of la Tendencia that tried to approach the stage were attacked and repressed by armed groups belonging to the orthodox Peronism sectors.