By Carlos Aznárez on May 28, 2024.
It all began in June 1966 when a general who came to believe he was a God thought that through a coup d’état he could perpetuate himself in power for decades. Juan Carlos Onganía had achieved the singular “feat” of ousting the radical Arturo Illia from the government and, since his first day of reign, had the complicity (if not) of a sector of the trade union bureaucracy, the ultramontane Catholic nationalism and a meager middle-class consensus that imagined that “order” would finally be restored and “populisms” would be left aside. The atmosphere in the following days, after the repression in the universities (the famous “night of the long canes”), the arrests and the forced exile of several professors and scientists, was depressing. Even Perón himself had launched from his exile in Madrid, the well-remembered phrase: “It is necessary to desensitize until it clears up”. Everything seemed to close with the idea that those militiamen who called themselves as the “Argentine revolution” were here to stay for a long time.
Three years later, the Cordobazo exploded in the face of the dictatorship and generated a great commotion throughout the country which served to spur new popular insurrections.
It is worth remembering which were the factors that emerged as essential to develop a popular uprising of the magnitude of those days at the end of May 1969, especially to show that memory can help in the search for solutions in difficult times.
It must be taken into account that after the “Revolution” of 1955, a popular and rebellious breeding ground, with combative and pluralist trade unions, was being generated in Cordoba (precisely in the province that cradled the military who actively participated in the coup against Perón). It was not unusual to find Peronist and Marxist left-wing workers marching together in the mobilizations of 1967 and ’68. Thus, by mid-1969, the climate of repudiation of the dictatorship was one of the fundamental hinges of unity at the base, in a province full (especially in the outskirts of the city) of metallurgical and metal-mechanical factories, with relatively well-paid workers and with an important level of union consciousness. To this must be added a student population of almost 30 thousand students and a lot of organized neighborhood militancy, which had the support in some specific areas of working class priests attached to an increasingly numerous Movement of Priests of the Third World.
All these elements added to three strong union leaderships, that of Agustín Tosco (Luz y Fuerza and of the rebel CGT de los Argentinos), Atilio López (UTA and leader of revolutionary Peronism) and Elpidio Torres (of the Energy branch of Luz y Fuerza and of orthodox Peronism), generated the possibility, when the circumstances arose, of forging a counter-offensive against the dictatorial government.
There was no lack of reasons to take to the streets that convulsed month of May 69. On the 15th, the Correntinazo had taken place, when the student Juan José Cabral was assassinated in a demonstration in the province of Corrientes. That death brought another, the following day, in the city of Rosario, that of the student Luis Norberto Blanco, who was demonstrating in repudiation of the events in Corrientes.
For its part, the CGT de los Argentinos, called to confront the dictatorial repression throughout the country, and Cordoba was too important for it to remain on the sidelines.
Thus, after a meeting between Tosco and Elpidio Torres, in spite of the enormous ideological differences between them, they resolved that the two CGTs that Cordoba had at that time, would join forces to respond in the streets to the wave of murders of popular militants. It was only a few days before the date set, May 29th, and in the neighborhoods, factories and universities there was already the smell of a demonstration. Young students from the Clinicas neighborhood preparing Molotov cocktails, mechanical workers from the Fiat, Perkins or Thompson Ranco plants, or the Rubol metalworkers, making, against the clock, dozens of metal slingshots to throw steel bolts, or making miguelito nails to puncture the tires of police patrol cars. The same thing happened in the neighborhoods, where Peronist and communist militants painted banners or went out to collect abandoned cats to throw them as a “distraction” against the police dogs.
This is how D-Day was finally reached. From very early on, enormous workers’ columns marched from different points of the Cordoba conurbation, with the determination of those who are not only fed up with the arrogance of the powerful but who inexorably wish to seize power so that those from below can govern once and for all. Upon arriving in the city, the first major confrontations with the police arose and there began to be written pages that would fill with pride the fighters who would take the baton from then on. Police on horseback, those who had always boasted of punishing those who dared to confront them, backed away frightened, in the face of the fighting determination of the multitude. “Workers and students, united forward”, could be heard on every corner, while boys and girls from different faculties “assaulted” with young people like them but in blue jumpsuits, the headquarters of transnational companies or banks of the same origin, and once they had thrown bibles, furniture and even paintings into the street, they burned them to repel the police gases. Cordoba had been flooded with slogans and shouts, with smiling and animated faces, with strong feelings, side by side with others who until that day could not imagine having so much audacity. So much so that a few hours later the police were overwhelmed and had to hide in their police stations, which were also under siege. The common people, those who were almost always ignored by power, had taken control of the situation and were, no doubt, those who had achieved, at least for a few hours, to have in their hands the famous “baton” with which to direct the mass uprising. No more and no less.
After taking over the center of the city and demonstrating the courage that comes from fighting for a just cause, the crowd retreated to the neighborhoods and from there, generated several street blockades and walled up to continue the battle. If anything was missing, the workers of Luz y Fuerza “lowered the lever”, leaving the city in darkness as soon as the night began. The spectacle that was seen from that moment on is, even today, unforgettable: from the most combative neighborhoods one could hear the explosions of firecrackers, or the street was illuminated with barricades of fire, while from one end to the other one could hear with all clarity, the hymn of that unequal popular war: “The people united, will never be defeated”. To which others, who were preparing new uprisings, replied: “The armed people will never be exploited”.
In view of the dimension of the Cordobazo (this is how the front pages of the national media identified it) very soon from Buenos Aires, the dictatorship imposed a curfew and launched the invading army over the city, which with blood and fire entered the deserted center of the city with its tanks, raiding the trade union premises, arresting the main leaders and then advancing towards the neighborhoods where thousands of demonstrators confronted them body to body. At the same time, on the roofs of the houses and the different faculties, hundreds of students and neighbors threw stones, garbage cans or burning water at the uniformed officers.
The Cordobazo, in addition to hundreds of people arrested and wounded, left a balance that was far from being a defeat. It opened the possibility that new struggles by all possible means would make it possible that only four years later the military would leave the Casa Rosada in the hands of a popular government.
Analyzed from this dark present, where the assault on power by a fascist ultra-right wing is trying to destroy all the conquests of the working class after many years of struggle, the Cordobazo is a clear example that reality can be transformed. Its legacy, of popular unity for the struggle, the strength that the streets give when it comes to obtaining demands or protesting injustices, direct action against the oppressor and his uniformed men, the need for organization from below and fighting, the awareness of knowing that this is a class struggle where the decisive factor is knowing which side of the sidewalk each one stands on, and having the clarity that power, the bourgeoisie, capitalism and its international accomplices will never give in if they are not pressured and confronted with everything, are guidelines that on this 55th anniversary are not at all obsolete. On the contrary, they should give us strength to continue fighting for a future where the Revolution and socialism (which some are trying to make disappear with short-sighted tricks or with McCarthyist speeches and practices in the style of the current Argentine leader) will once again be the point of reference.