Summary

The Montoneros were the main guerrilla organization in Argentina, in terms of their proximity to power and the influence of their youth, trade union, territorial, and women’s organizations, which could mobilize thousands of followers. In some respects, their trajectory represents a chapter in the history of urban guerrillas in the Southern Cone region, with social roots in the middle and upper classes of the large cities and a political culture renewed by the New Left in the 1960s, which in the Montoneros was expressed by the fusion of Catholic youth and the Marxist Left. But what made this armed vanguardist organization unique, with its goal of taking power in order to build socialism, was its conflict-ridden inclusion in the populist movement headed by the charismatic leadership of General Juan Domingo Perón. Between 1970 and 1983, the Montoneros carried out small- and large-scale armed actions, embedded themselves in public institutions and governmental structures, and developed their own network of publications, clandestine printworks, and arms factories. After the military coup in 1976, the Montoneros leadership in exile forged links with sectors as diverse as the Palestine Liberation Organization, the international human rights movement, and European social democratic parties, although it could not prevent the mass assassination of its militants by the illegal repression of the dictatorship.