Bombing of the Plaza de Mayo
The bombardment of the Plaza de Mayo, also known as the Plaza de Mayo massacre, was part of the attempted coup in Argentina on June 16, 1955 in the city of Buenos Aires. That day, a group of opposition soldiers and civilians tried to assassinate constitutional president Juan Domingo Perón and bombed the Casa Rosada and the Plaza de Mayo. It failed in its objective, but in the course it murdered more than three hundred unarmed civilians.
The attacking planes, once the downloads were made, went to seek refuge in Montevideo, Uruguay. During the attack, several squadrons of planes belonging to the Argentine Navy bombed and machine-gunned Plaza de Mayo and Casa Rosada, as well as the CGT (General Labor Confederation) building and the then presidential residence, with 20 mm ammunition. killing more than 308 people and injuring more than 700, between civilians and military, in the bombardment and the fighting that followed.
Perón had withdrawn to the Ministry of the Army, located 200 meters from the Casa Rosada, for which reason he was not there when the air attacks began and the attempted assault by ground forces. The attack was characterized by a high degree of violence and political-social hatred, as well as by the impunity of those responsible decreed by the dictatorship calling itself the Liberating Revolution, which took power three months later. It is linked to State terrorism, appeared years later in the country.
Later, the self-styled Liberating Revolution would affirm that "the main cause of the increased number of victims" was the decision of the CGT to mobilize its militants to the Plaza de Mayo in defense of the constitutional order, which the Book black of the second tyranny described as an "absurd determination".
In 2010, the National Archive of Memory of the Human Rights Secretariat published an official investigation in which it identified 308 deaths, clarifying that to this number must be added "an uncertain number of victims whose corpses could not be identified, such as consequence of the mutilations and charring caused by the deflagrations".
It was the first air attack against ground targets carried out by the Argentine air forces, both the Air Force and the Naval Aviation. Such action has been described as the baptism of fire for both bodies, although it is not officially recognized in that way.
Background
On February 24, 1946, elections were held in which Juan Domingo Perón was elected president of the Argentine Nation with fifty-two percent of the votes. The first government of Perón developed with a strong anti-Peronist opposition and against the power that the unions reached, this opposition was formed and organized even before the elections, in which British and American interests in the region were combined, confrontations of a racial nature and social, and on democratic legitimacy.
In 1951 there was a first attempt at a coup d'état, by some members of the Army with the support of some civilian sectors. From then on, some soldiers had remained in a state of latent conspiracy. That same year the presidential elections were held in which Perón won again, expanding his support to reach 62.49%.
Among the members of the Argentine Navy, Perón had little support.
In 1951, some naval officers had been linked to the Menéndez attempt, but the Navy Intelligence Service did not help detect them.
The officers of the Navy tended to identify themselves, for the most part, with the social classes that Perón constantly denounced as the oligarchy and looked with ill-dissembed hostility at his social programs, as well as his own person.Robert Potash
In 1953, an Air Force pilot flying the new British Gloster Meteor jet planes had offered Captain Francisco Manrique a daring plan. It consisted of machine-gunning the plane in which Perón would travel. The attempt failed and a year later in 1954, a group of Navy officers planned an ambush: taking advantage of an official visit to the VII Air Brigade of Morón, arresting Perón and shooting him, however, Perón missed the appointment, when an officer arrived. The French ambassador was a day earlier than planned, so Perón suspended his schedule to receive him at the Government House.
On April 15, 1953, an anti-Peronist commando group carried out a terrorist attack in the Plaza de Mayo against a union demonstration organized by the CGT, which left 6 people dead and 95 injured (including 20 disabled for the entire life). Once the coup d'état was consummated, those responsible were amnestied by the dictatorship called Revolución Libertadora.
The Seamen's Conspiracy
After the 1953 attack, the conspiracy was reactivated and several plans were even drawn up within the Argentine Navy whose purpose, under the guise of war exercises, was to prepare for a future uprising from the Puerto Belgrano Naval Base with the support of the Sea Fleet.
Frigate Captain Jorge Alfredo Bassi embarked on the routine annual training trip of the Sea Fleet, taking with him the latest Bulletin from the Naval Center. There he read an article by Mitsuo Fuchida in which he recounted how he had planned and directed the first wave of naval bombers in the attack on Pearl Harbor. From here Bassi got the idea of carrying out a similar maneuver against the Casa Rosada.
How nice to imagine the Pink House like Pearl Harbor!Jorge Alfredo Bassi, 1953.
The frigate captain Francisco Manrique had been interested in the idea and together with the frigate captains Antonio Rivolta and Néstor Noriega they went to ask for help from Lieutenant General Eduardo Lonardi to get elements of the Army to join the revolt. Lonardi, when he heard the plan to assassinate Perón by bombing the Plaza de Mayo, said that he disliked the idea and that he had no desire to participate.
Shortly after, a plan was hatched to capture the president on a Navy ship. On the occasion of the celebration of Independence Day, Perón with his entire cabinet, with the head of the Federal Police and with the presidents of both legislative chambers, would be honored on board the ARA Nueve de Julio.
The operation was directed by the 2nd commander of the ship, frigate captain Carlos Bruzzone, seconded by Jorge Alfredo Bassi and Carlos Bonomi. Bassi met again with Lonardi. The general said he accepted the call, but after meeting with some other people he came to the conclusion that the plan was only supported by too small a group and without sufficient elements to carry out the operation successfully. For this reason he decided to revoke his participation; In any case, the plan of the conspirators became impossible when the government leadership canceled the act with the Navy. Lonardi's refusal cut him off from his contacts in the Navy and he did not meet with them again until after the events of 1955.
The frigate captains Noriega and Bassi were the center of sedition at the Punta Indio Naval Air Base. The latter's plan, to bomb the Government House imitating the attack on Pearl Harbor, although it lacked the support of the Army. This was the main impediment they had to take immediate action.
In August 1954, Raúl Lamuraglia, a businessman, had financed the campaign of the Democratic Union, which faced Perón's formula in the 1946 elections, through millionaire checks from the Bank of New York destined to sustain the National Committee of the Radical Civic Union and its candidates José P. Tamborini and Enrique Mosca. In 1951, the businessman had contributed resources to support the failed coup of General Menéndez, which led him to prison, after being released he went to Uruguay. However, with the industrial promotion policies of Peronism, his fortune had expanded in a decade of economic growth. This allowed him to buy a combat plane in the United States, a light fighter-bomber that he took to Montevideo to carry out the mission of killing Perón and bombing the Plaza de Mayo. Manned by a naval aviator, Luis Baroja, the fighter-bomber would fly to the Plaza de Mayo, in the midst of Peronism's act, to machine-gun the balcony where Perón would speak. Lamuraglia frequently met with representatives of the Colorado Party of Uruguay. Days before finalizing the plan, he met secretly, in 1954, with President Batlle Berres and the Argentine businessman Alberto Gainza Paz at his summer residence in Punta del Este, who offered him support for the assassination plan. Once again installed in Buenos Aires, the radical businessman Lamuraglia offered his villa in Bella Vista to organize the conspiracy and promised to finance a future coup. In November 1954, Bassi, Lamuraglia, Francisco Manrique, Néstor Noriega, the former captain of the army Walter Viader, Carlos Bruzzone, the commander of troops of the Air Force Agustín de la Vega, and opposition politicians among them the radical politician Miguel Ángel Zavala Ortiz, the socialist intellectual Américo Ghioldi, Jaime Mejía, Mario Amadeo and the lawyer Luis María of Pablo Pardo, future Minister of the Interior of the dictator Eduardo Lonardi, Adolfo Vicchi future ambassador to the United States during the Aramburu dictatorship and Alberto Benegas Lynch. Although they explored the possibility of summoning Generals Gibert, Aramburu and Anaya, the meetings did not they had no concrete results.
In December 1954, the movement definitively incorporated the subversive group of civilians led by Walter Viader, but had difficulties finding a leader until two Marine officers joined: frigate captain Carlos Nielsen Enemark and lieutenant commander Fernando Suarez Rodriguez. They suggested Rear Admiral Samuel Toranzo Calderón, chief of the General Staff of the Marine Infantry Command, who enthusiastically declared himself the leader of the revolutionary group, and immediately met with Adolfo Vicchi and Miguel Ángel Zavala Ortiz to confirm the direction of a possible government.. After this, Toranzo Calderón sought the support of the anti-Peronists, who were General Aramburu and Lieutenant Colonel Labayru, but they refused to participate. At the end of February 1955, a second group of civilians joined the conspiring sailors: they belonged to the circle led by doctors Mario Amadeo and Luis María de Pablo Pardo. More contacts with the Army were sought, but they failed to convince Lonardi or Aramburu. Thus, the conspirators only managed to add General Justo León Bengoa, who as commander of the Third Infantry Division, based in Paraná (Entre Ríos), he had troops under his command. Interviewed by Amadeo, Bengoa was enthusiastic, but did not commit himself to the uprising. They also added Colonel Eduardo Señorans, chief of staff of the General Staff of the Army with a seat in the Ministry of the Army, one block from the Government House. The purpose of the bombardment was, after assassinating the constitutional president of the Nation, to establish a triumvirate made up of Miguel Ángel Zavala Ortiz (leader of the UCR), Américo Ghioldi (leader of the Socialist Party) and Adolfo Vicchi (of the Conservative Party).
As for the Air Force, Commander Dardo Eugenio Ferreyra managed to enlist the support of Captain Julio César Cáceres, First Lieutenant Carlos Torcuato de Alvear (grandson), as well as a few retired Vice Commodores and Brigadiers. However, interrogations by the Air Force's internal information service alerted the plotters to the suspicions raised against them, and they abandoned all contact with the sailors.
On Sunday, April 23, 1955, General Justo León Bengoa, who had traveled to Buenos Aires, met with Toranzo Calderón and promised him his support. Thereafter several officers traveled regularly between Paraná and Buenos Aires to organize the preparations. A detailed study of the president's movements allowed the sailors to know that on Wednesdays from 9:30 to 10:30 he met with all his ministers in the Casa Rosada: during that time the highest level of government could be annihilated with a single stroke. "Hour 0" would be 10 in the morning: Toranzo Calderón would call the President, threatening him to avoid bloodshed if he did not surrender within 15 minutes. The admiral had planes from the Punta Indio Naval Base, and about 700 troops from the Marine Infantry.
The first lieutenants of the Air Force, Carlos Enrique Carús and Orlando Arrechea integrated into the plot many officers of the VII Morón Air Brigade who would also participate in the attack, groups of civilians identified by a white ribbon tied around their arms, would have by mission to neutralize the operations of the CGT, the Nationalist Liberation Alliance, and various radio stations. The rebels considered that everything could be ready to carry out the coup around July 9. An official air drill, scheduled in the city of Bariloche, was used to carry out the administrative transfer of explosives from the Comandante Espora air base, from Bahía Blanca, towards Punta Indio and Ezeiza.
The VII Brigade was a military objective of the conspiracy. In this case, the shot was more delicate. There were aeronautical officers interested in the fall of the government, but many airmen were loyal by discipline. Control of the brigade would allow the taking of the Gloster Meteor jet-powered fighters. With its 20mm cannons—each round contained the energy of a grenade—the aircraft added versatility and efficiency to the rebels' air power. In addition, the taking of Morón blocked the possibility of an immediate response. It was the closest aeronautical base to the Capital. Elsewhere in the Buenos Aires suburbs, a column of soldiers from the La Tablada Infantry Regiment was also bombed from coup planes. Three soldiers were killed and six wounded. The surroundings of the headquarters of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), in Azopardo and Independencia, were machine-gunned.
In the early morning of June 10, Toranzo Calderón and Pablo Pardo left for the Litoral in the car of notary public Raúl Medina Muñoz. On the 11th they were able to meet with General Bengoa and agreed on the causes they would invoke: the "internal state of war" that had been in force since the uprising of Benjamín Menéndez in 1951. They did not set a date, rather, Bengoa promised to always be alert and mobilize all its troops as soon as the news of the uprising of the Armada was known.
Many impatient captains urged Toranzo to attack as soon as possible. It was not known what reaction the elements of the army based in Buenos Aires would have, nor what kind of support or opposition would be given by Toranzo's direct superior, Vice Admiral Benjamín Gargiulo, who was aware of the existence of a conspiracy plot but did not give any indication. of wanting to interfere.
There are many who want the Church to be independent of the State; others, let the Church be in the State, as it is today. The fair thing is to wait for the election and for the majority of the people to decide, and not to decide for violence.Juan Domingo Perón,
On June 11, there was a large opposition mobilization that brought together 250,000 demonstrators during the Corpus Christi Procession moving from the Cathedral to the National Congress. Groups that sympathized with Perón clashed with Catholic opposition groups, Catholic activists damaged commemorative plaques to the figure of Eva Perón (the popular leader who died of cancer two years earlier, whom the Peronists considered a saint and martyr for the poor). On the mast of the Congress they lowered the Argentine flag and raised the pontifical flag (white and yellow) the conflict between the Government and the Church ―due to the laws of divorce and legal recognition of extramarital children, the suppression of religious teaching in public schools, the regulation of brothels and the call for a constituent convention that would decide the separation of Church and State ― Perón's position was supported by Monsignor Ferreyra Reinafé of La Rioja and Monsignor Antonio Caggiano, Archbishop of Rosario.
The Federal Police denounced that the Argentine flag was burned during the procession. The following day the photograph of Perón and Ángel Borlenghi (Minister of the Interior) looking at the remains of the burned flag would be published in the newspapers. On June 30, the deputy inspector of the Federal Police, Héctor Giliberti, confessed to his brother José María (lieutenant commander) that the flag had been burned by his police colleagues, and later ratified his statements by declaring in the Superior Council of the Armed Forces. This was also confirmed by police officers Juan Laperchia and Isidoro Ferrari, for which reason the agency asked Perón to remove the police chief and arrest Interior Minister Ángel Borlenghi. But the day after that communication, Borlenghi left the country for Montevideo. Once the Government was deposed and in the course of the investigations to accumulate evidence against Perón, Rear Admiral Alberto Tessaire ―who had been Perón's vice president, affirmed that he had executed under the authorization and inspiration of Perón. On June 13, Perón expelled Monsignors Manuel Tato and Ramón Novoa from the country On Monday, June 13, both houses of Congress entered into an extraordinary session to repudiate the burning of the flag.
On June 14, in a message to the crowd gathered in the Plaza del Congreso, Perón said:
To unravel our flag in our days has for me the deepest meaning. The flags have, according to the countries and communities they represent, the reflection of the spirit of a time and a time. Our flag [...] should not have been aggrieved by men.Juan Domingo Perón
The Government organized an act of reparation to the national flag, which would take place three days later, on Thursday, June 16. The Minister of Aeronautics, Major Brigadier Juan Ignacio de San Martín, arranged for the aviation to testify his adherence to the President of the Republic, at the same time redressing the memory of General José de San Martín. For this he decided that a formation of planes would fly over the Cathedral of Buenos Aires, where the remains of the Liberator rest. The announcement of the parade gathered a large audience in Plaza de Mayo. It was a civic-military act in solidarity with the Government in the face of the attacks of the opposition.
Information services
While these events were taking place, Rear Admiral Toranzo Calderón was warned by the Naval Intelligence Service that his personal involvement in the movement had been discovered by the Air Force Information Service (an organization that sympathized with Perón) for which, Fearing that he would be arrested and turned over to the Executive Branch, he decided to hasten forceful military action.
Days before, ultra-Catholic commandos (called “doves”) called for armed action. They previously negotiated a loan with the Rural Society to finance destabilizing activities, such as sabotage of the electrical network, the cables of the Entel telephone company, shooting at the wheels of fire trucks and ambulances, days before representatives of the UCR and civilian commandos They traveled to Uruguay meeting with Emilio Eduardo Massera, Horacio Mayorga, Oscar Montes, and Osvaldo Cacciatore.
On the night of June 15, 1955, the Minister of the Army, Major General Franklin Lucero, was informed by his aide-de-camp that a rebellion would break out in the early hours of the morning. the next day, but Lucero did not believe the news or report it to Perón. According to writer Daniel Cichero, the government possibly knew of the uprising from other sources, but did not try to defuse the coup.
Rebel Action Plan
The rebel forces were commanded by Rear Admiral Samuel Toranzo Calderón and was executed by officers of the Navy and the Air Force. Several civilians participated in the uprising: the radical leader Miguel Ángel Zavala Ortiz, the conservative leader Adolfo Vicchi, the socialist leader Américo Ghioldi, the diplomat Luis María de Pablo Pardo -the four fled to Uruguay-, and the Catholic nationalist militants Mariano Grondona, Carlos Burundarena, Santiago de Estrada, Rosendo Fraga, Felipe Yofré and Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo.
The plan consisted of taking advantage of a flight-tribute to pay homage to the national flag that would take off at 08:00 hours, and bomb the Government House and the Ministry of the Army with the aim of eliminating Perón or causing a heavy blow psychological against his administration.
The units that would participate were: aircraft from the Punta Indio Naval Air Base, other aircraft from the VII Morón Air Brigade (Air Force), some 700 Marines and various groups of armed civilians., Rear Admiral Samuel Toranzo Calderón informed his immediate superior, Vice Admiral Benjamín Gargiulo, of the plan, who joined the movement and at noon contacted the Minister of the Navy, Aníbal Olivieri, who described the plan as "crazy". After all these events, around three in the afternoon, Olivieri suffered a decompensation and had to be admitted to the naval hospital. That same day, a car was sent urgently to Entre Ríos, to contact the conspirator General Bengoa and notify him that the next day he was to rebel. However, when night fell, the messenger discovered that Bengoa had traveled to Buenos Aires that morning.
The objective of the bombardment was in charge of Bassi, copying the Japanese attack strategy to Pearl Harbor. It was to kill Perón and his entire cabinet. Although there were easier ways to commit this assassination (Perón left every day at exactly 05:45 AM from the Presidential Residence driving his own unarmored Cadillac car, accompanied by another car with guards) they sought to do it in such a way that spectacular that he took away the will to fight from his millions of followers. Given the sudden unraveling of events, there was little planning for the uprising of the bases. For example, Agustín Héctor de la Vega, responsible for the uprising at the Morón base, learned that same night that the uprising would take place the following day. Simultaneously, Captain Noriega, responsible for the Punta Indio Base, received a weather report that He announced terrible conditions for the next day, but he no longer had the chance to change anything.
Troops from the Marine Infantry Battalion No. 4 (BIM4) under the command of Vice Admiral Benjamín Gargiulo ―who a few hours before had been informed about the sedition and had joined it― would advance from the North Dock of the Port of Buenos Aires Aires to take the Government House, with the armed support of civilian groups stationed in the Plaza. The takeover of the Radio Miter station and the State Telephone exchange had been planned to broadcast a revolutionary proclamation written by Miguel Ángel Zavala Ortiz. It had been planned to mobilize the naval units of the Navy. The revolutionaries also counted on receiving support ―once the events began― from other sectors of the Army and the opposition that had not been consulted.
The perpetrators of the bombing would later affirm that the objective was not to kill the President of the Nation, but to "break him in his fortress of command".
Christ Wins
Many of the planes that participated in the bombing of Plaza de Mayo had been painted with the sign of "Cristo Vence", a cross drawn inside a letter V. After Perón's exile, his supporters modified this symbol: adding to it a curved arc to the upper right sector of the cross, formed the sign of "Perón Vuelve" (or according to others "Perón Vence", "Perón Vive", "Perón Viene").
The Attack
On the morning of June 16, Vice Admiral Gargiulo harangued his men from the Marine Infantry Battalion No. 4, who were unaware of the action they would be asked to undertake. After a few minutes they were ordered to return: the takeoff of the rebels from Punta Indio (scheduled for 08:00 in the morning) had been delayed until 10:45 due to morning mist, and the plan required coordination with the attack aerial. The Sea Fleet was also unable to leave Puerto Belgrano due to lack of coordination and alleged technical problems in the boilers of their ships.
At 8 in the morning, Perón was informed of the military movements by the Army Minister Lucero, who asked him to leave the Government House, as it could be the object of an attack, so Perón then moved to the headquarters of that Ministry.
Bombing and strafing
At 12:40, the squadron of 30 Argentine Navy planes, which had been flying over the city for quite some time (twenty-two North American AT-6, five Beechcraft AT-11, three Catalina patrol and rescue seaplanes), began their bombing and machine-gunning of the Plaza de Mayo area.
American historian Robert Scheina claims that the pilots first tried to avoid civilian casualties,[citation needed] by repeatedly flying over the Casa Rosada, but the crowd believed they were flight demonstrations.
The surprise of the attack caused it to fall on the population, which was carrying out its normal activities because it was a business day. Among the first victims were the occupants of public passenger transport vehicles. The first bomb fell on a trolley bus full of children, killing all its occupants.
Under the cover of the air attacks, Argerich's troops attacked the grenadiers who defended the Casa Rosada: when trucks with reinforcements arrived, the insurgents killed the conscripts who were driving them to prevent the troops from reaching their destination. Learning that the Casa Rosada was under attack, thousands of workers mobilized to support the loyal troops, but were attacked on arrival by a second wave of bombing, and then suffered further casualties when they took part in the takeover of the Ministry of the Navy..
This attack against civilians was the first air attack against surface targets by both the Naval Aviation and the Argentine Air Force. The forces dropped a total of 9,500kg of bombs and fired countless 7.65mm and 20mm caliber bullets. According to one version, since the conspirators did not obtain high-explosive bombs, they used fragmentation bombs of 50 kg of trotil against the open city, quickly causing dozens of victims and material damage, while another version maintains that common bombs were used. demolition. A theoretical estimate indicates that the total weight of the bombs dropped could have been 13.8 tons.
It was the fourth bombardment on Buenos Aires; the first had been on the occasion of the English invasions of 1806 and 1807, the second on the occasion of the combat of Los Pozos (1826) and the third when the Parque Revolution (1890) took place.
Medevacs began immediately, some even between aerial bombardments, and were carried out by residents in the immediate vicinity.
In low flight, a Gloster machine-gunned the CGT building, killing the labor leader Héctor Passano, and also shot at the Police Department and the Ministry of Public Works on Avenida 9 de Julio. An officer was hit by gunfire. He died in his office. From behind the dome of Congress another Gloster appeared. It was flying just above Avenida de Mayo. He headed towards Government House to machine-gun it. Ezeiza, meanwhile, was being attacked by soldiers from the 3rd Regiment of La Tablada. The presidential residence was also attacked. Every plane that flew over it dropped a bomb. One fell in the Unzué Palace park and did not detonate. Another killed a street sweeper. The third, which missed the target by 200 meters, fell on Pueyrredón street, killing a motorist and a 15-year-old boy. The attack outside the palace had a reason for being: they supposed that Perón had taken refuge in a building on Gelly and Obes streets.
City Fights
From inside the Government House and the Ministry of the Army, the loyalist side began to organize resistance. For their part, the rebel troops of the 4th Battalion were transported in trucks early in the afternoon and deployed around the Casa Rosada, with the intention of taking it. north, and the other took refuge in the parking lot of the Automobile Club, between Parque Colón and Correo Central, 100 m from the rear. However, they were repelled from the inside by troops from the Horse Grenadier Regiment and from the outside by Army troops marching from the Ministry of Finance sector, under the command of General Lucero. The defense of the Casa Rosada was made up of two 12.7 mm Browning M2 machine guns located on the roof, while various light weapons were used from the lower floors, including Mauser 1909 rifles. The loyal troops were accompanied by Peronist sympathizers who took up arms.
At 1:12 p.m., the union leader Héctor Hugo Di Pietro, who was in charge of the CGT due to the absence of the general secretary, spoke on the national radio broadcasting network and called all the workers in the Federal Capital and Greater Buenos Aires to immediately gather around the CGT to defend their leader. On the other hand, union delegates were mobilizing workers from the factories in the outskirts of Buenos Aires to the center of the city.
Perón ordered his assistant, Major Cialceta, to inform Di Pietro that not a single man should attend the Plaza de Mayo, since it was "a confrontation between soldiers." Historian Joseph Page claims, citing a US Embassy report as a source, that this order was not given until 4:00 p.m.
The civilians summoned by the CGT and by the leaders of the Nationalist Liberation Alliance concentrated in the northwestern sector of the square, and the Ministry of the Army also fired at the rebels. A doctor who was passing through the square ran to the Casa Rosada, despite the danger of being at the target of the bombardment, and spent several hours treating the wounded while the events unfolded.
The dominant position of the rebels began to reverse before three in the afternoon. The artillery had installed its headquarters in a building located on the corner of Leandro N. Alem and Viamonte, from where they would attack the infantrymen who were standing in front of the northern esplanade of the Casa Rosada. Olivieri made contact with the Navy Mechanics School in search of reinforcements, but it was too late for it to turn to the uprising, as it was surrounded by elements of the I Palermo Regiment.
The elements of Battalion 4 retreated in disorder to the Ministry of the Navy (a short distance from the Government House) fighting in the streets, leaving the rebels surrounded there along with their leader Samuel Toranzo Calderón and the Minister of the Navy, Aníbal Olivieri, the latter folded into the coup due to a surprising act of "moral identification" with the rebels: he abandoned his hospitalization in the naval hospital and, upon his arrival at the Ministry of the Navy, took command of the operations.
Civilian commandos went into action under the command of the radical Miguel Ángel Zavala Ortiz, harassing the loyalists, clashing with the police and firing like snipers from the roofs of the then Banco Nación building. They also occupied various radio stations to broadcast a proclamation. During the afternoon, from the Central Post Office sector, additional troops from Battalion 4 tried to pierce the fence around the Ministry of the Navy.
The conspirators were fighting in stoppage time. Lucero had ordered a multiple attack with 80 mm mortars from the Government House and the Ministry of the Army. At 3:17 p.m., after two telephone conversations between Olivieri and Lucero, the rebels waved a white flag from the Ministry of the Navy, but when Generals Carlos Wirth and Juan José Valle arrived in a jeep at the building to speak with the besieged, a second wave of bombardments began, longer and more extensive than the previous one. The attack destroyed two floors of the south wing of the building and killed a soldier and a general. An M4 Sherman tank fired on the second floor of the Admiralty, causing a hole and a fire in the admirals room.
The rebels feared that the loyalist forces would not be able to control the Peronist people and did not want to risk the rebellion ending with a lynching. While the Navy was negotiating the surrender terms, Noriega made the decision to send an Ezeiza Douglas DC-3 to the Morón Brigade to evacuate the plotters who were still fighting against the official forces. The sailors also managed to get the Glosters off the ground. In flight to Uruguay, they machine-gunned the Casa Rosada. By then, from the Morón and Ezeiza bases, thirty-six planes with one hundred and twenty-two coup leaders had fled to Uruguay. One of them was the radical Zavala Ortiz. In a later communiqué, the UCR reported that the bombing was a corollary of Perón's policies. He exalted the guilt of the President but excluded that of the naval power. Several conspirators were arrested, including Jorge Rafael Videla, Suárez Mason, Bignone, Díaz Bessone, Harguindeguy, Menéndez, Montes, Riveros, Nicolaides, Suárez Nelson, Villareal, Vañek, Etchecolatz, Guañabens, and Lambruschini.
The fight in the air
The Naval Air Squadron No. 3 (EAN3) commanded by Commander Osvaldo Guaita and equipped with 5 Beechcraft AT-10 Wichita planes, left for the government palace at 12:25.
The first naval plane registration 3B-3 piloted by Lieutenant Commander Jorge Imaz Iglesias had Lieutenant Alex Richmond as bombardier, the crew was completed by Commander Osvaldo Guaita (co-pilot), Chief Corporal Roberto Nava (gunner) and midshipman Miguel Grondona (supernumerary). The aircraft arrived at its target and dropped its bombs, whose fuzes were activated manually by midshipman Miguel Grondona and chief corporal Roberto Nava. The first hit a trolleybus causing all the passengers to die, while the second hit in front of the Casa Rosada.
The second of them, registration number 3B-4, was equipped with two bombs of 110 kilograms each, just like the other planes in the squadron, it was flown by frigate lieutenant Carlos Fraguío and had Captain frigate Néstor Noriega (head of the Punta Indio naval base, expressly asked to occupy that place on the plane), his bomber navigator was Lieutenant Roberto Benito Moya and First Petty Officer José Radrizzi was a gunner. The first of the bombs from Moya's 3B-4 plane made a full impact in the center of the Casa Rosada, while the second went long and ended up exploding in the Palace of Finance of the Ministry of Economy). The rest of the crew was made up of: frigate captain Néstor Noriega, ship lieutenant Carlos Fraguío, the already appointed corvette lieutenant Roberto Moya and first petty officer José Radrizzi.
The third patent aircraft 3B-11 was piloted by Lieutenant Jorge Alberto Irigoin, the prompter was Lieutenant Augusto Artigas, Lieutenant Santiago Martínez Autin was the navigator and Chief Corporal Francisco Calvi was the mechanic and artilleryman.
The two remaining planes were: the 3B-6 piloted by Lieutenant Alfredo Eustaquio and accompanied by Lieutenant Hugo Adamoli (prompter) and first noncommissioned officers Maciel and Girardi as navigators and gunners. The plane with 3B-10 was piloted by frigate lieutenant Alfredo del Fresno, accompanied by lieutenant Carlos Corti and first noncommissioned officers Mario Héctor Mercante and Ricardo Díaz.
While the fire intensified in downtown Buenos Aires, the loyal command ordered the Morón Air Base to take off jet interceptors. The pilots were then in heated discussions about whether or not they should join the revolutionary movement. A squadron of four Gloster Meteors loyal to the Government quickly took to the air. Although they were unable to arrive in time to prevent the bombardment, they managed to intercept a rebel naval squadron that was withdrawing from the area.
The squadron of loyal Meteor interceptors was made up of First Lieutenants Juan García (flying I-039, in command), Mario Olezza (I-077), Osvaldo Rosito (I-090) and Lieutenant Ernesto Adradas (I -063). For their part, the rebel AT-6 Texans were piloted by Lieutenant Máximo Rivero Kelly (0342/3-A-29), Midshipman Armando Román (0352/3-A-23, shot down), Lieutenant Commander Santiago Sabarots, lieutenants of the ship Héctor Florido, Eduardo Velarde, Tomás Orsi; Frigate Lieutenants Alfredo Mac Dougall, Raúl Robito, Heriberto Frind, Carlos García Boll, Corvette Lieutenants José M. Huergo, Julio Cano, José de Demartini, Eduardo Invierno, Luis Suárez; midshipmen Arnaldo Román, César Dennehy, Eduardo Bisso (shot down over Ezeiza), Héctor Cordero, Sergio Rodríguez, Horacio Estrada and Juan Romanella.
The combat took place at a low altitude over the Jorge Newbery Aeroparque and the Río de la Plata. Texan 0352/3-A-23 fell under Adradas' 20 mm cannons and Román was able to parachute, fell into the river and was later captured. Adradas achieved the first kill of the Argentine Air Force, and the first kill of a jet aircraft in the American continent. It was the force's first air combat.
Upon landing, the loyalist pilots found that the Morón Air Base had fallen into rebel hands and they were reduced by them, who took over the Meteors. They made them take off to continue strafing the Plaza de Mayo area in support of the rebels located in the area of the Ministry of the Navy, extending their actions until 5:20 p.m. The planes of the Air Force, together with all those of the Navy, carried out that second attack on the Casa Rosada when the rest of the uprising was on the brink of failure: all the rebels were in the Ministry of the Navy, surrounded by much superior forces. President Perón was visibly shocked to see that members of the Air Force that he had created rose up against him. Not having bombs, one of these aviators used his auxiliary fuel tank as if it were an incendiary bomb, that fell on the cars that were in the parking lot of the Government House.
Retreat and Surrender
Given the failure of the combat on the ground and after being shot down two times by the anti-aircraft batteries set up in the area, plus one in the air, the rebel pilots were ordered to flee to Uruguay and ask for asylum.
The rebel planes crossed the Río de la Plata towards the Carrasco Airport, to seek refuge in the neighboring country. "On the way they machine-gunned everything that moved in the Plaza de Mayo." A Douglas DC-3 managed to take off to Uruguay, carrying Miguel Ángel Zavala Ortiz and 50 other conspirators. Some aircraft did not land in Uruguayan territory due to the excessive consumption of fuel invested in the machine-gunning, for which reason their pilots had to descend forcibly to the Río de la Plata or in fields in the Carmelo area.
Until the self-styled Liberating Revolution overthrew Perón in September, the seditious fugitives continued in exile in Uruguayan territory.
In a radio message broadcast at 5:15 p.m., Perón stated:
The situation is totally dominated. The Ministry of Marine, where the revolutionary command was, has surrendered and is occupied, and the culprits, arrested. [...] We, as a civilized people, cannot take measures that are advised by passion, but by reflection.Juan Domingo Perón
Around 5:40 p.m., when Perón had been speaking on the national network for about ten minutes and the Plaza de Mayo had once again filled with people, an Air Force Fiat G-6 made one last low-flying flight, machine-gunning the crowd, before escaping to Uruguay.
After the hard ground combat, which included an incident of false surrender by the rebels, they decided to hand over the Ministry of the Navy to the Army units stationed outside.
Of the twenty planes that dropped approximately thirteen tons of bombs, G. Chávez said: “The most perversity was Carlos Enrique Carus, who dropped the last bomb and also dropped the additional fuel tanks on 30,000 workers who were in the Plaza, to set them on fire."
Victims
In 2010, an official investigation carried out by the Human Rights Secretariat's Memory Archive identified 308 deaths, clarifying that to this number must be added "an uncertain number of victims whose corpses could not be identified, as a consequence of the mutilations and charring caused by the deflagrations". Among the murdered people, 111 CGT union activists were identified, of whom 23 were women. 6 dead boys and girls were also identified, the youngest of whom was 3 years old. Most of the dead were Argentines, but 12 Italians, 5 Spaniards, 4 Germans, and 6 Bolivian, Chilean, American, Paraguayan, Russian, and Yugoslav nationals were also identified.
Consequences
Later events
The bombardment-strafing is one of the direct antecedents of the coup that would take place three months later, managing to depose President Perón on September 16, 1955 and establishing the dictatorship that called itself the Liberating Revolution.
In retaliation, the burning of churches on June 16, 1955 ―in the knowledge of the close relationship between the ecclesiastical leadership and the rebels who caused the terrorist attack― they set fire to the Metropolitan Curia, the basilicas of Santo Domingo and San Francisco, along with eight other churches. The newspapers El Líder and Democracia on June 17, 18 and 19 reiterated information about the discovery of “communist arsonists” by the Police as well as vast plans of agitation and aggression against Catholic temples. When Perón was overthrown, the folders with all the documentation referring to the burning of the churches were found in a state office, but their conclusions were dismissed because they accused a lodge of being responsible for the fires. masonic linked to the revolutionaries, for which Fernando Paolella opined that said fires, which he describes in fact as "less than in the long run is oversized" Regarding the very serious fact of the bombing that occurred that day, it is not clarified. For her part, Mariana Broz attributes the fires to followers of Perón.
After the coup failed, the machines flew to Uruguay, where they found shelter. There too, aboard a specially chartered DC-3, the political leaders involved in the coup landed. The massacre, according to some historians, gave rise to all the expressions of state terrorism in Argentina that came later. Even some perpetrators would also have participated in the coup d'état of March 24, 1976.
The pilots who fled to Uruguay were received by Guillermo Suárez Mason, a fugitive from Argentine justice since his participation in the 1951 coup attempt. Among the pilots and plane crew members was Máximo Rivero Kelly, who was later accused of crimes against humanity as head of the Almirante Zar de Trelew Base and of Task Force 7 in the northern zone of Chubut. Horacio Estrada, head of the ESMA task force; Eduardo Invierno, head of the Naval Intelligence service during the dictatorship; Carlos Fraguio, head of the general naval directorate in 1976 with responsibility for detention centers such as ESMA and the Navy NCO school; Carlos Carpineto, Navy press secretary in 1976; Carlos Corti, his successor, and Alex Richmond, naval attaché in Asunción. From the Air Force, Jorge Mones Ruiz, who was a delegate of the dictatorship in the SIDE of La Rioja and Osvaldo Andrés Cacciatore, future mayor of the city of Buenos Aires. The three assistants of Rear Admiral Aníbal Olivieri, Minister of the Navy and head of the conspiracy were the frigate captains Emilio Massera, Horacio Mayorga and Oscar Montes. Massera was a member of the first of the Military Juntas, starting in 1976, Mayorga was involved in the Trelew massacre and Montes was chancellor of the National Reorganization Process.
At 03:00 in the morning of June 17, the leaders of the uprising, Olivieri, Gargiulo and Toranzo Calderón, were informed that they would be tried under martial law and each one was offered a weapon to put an end to their attacks. lives[citation required]. Olivieri and Toranzo refused this invitation, but Vice Admiral Benjamin Gargiulo chose to commit suicide. At 05:45, shortly before dawn, he shot himself in his office Olivieri, under whose orders were lieutenants Emilio Eduardo Massera and Horacio Mayorga, was dismissed and sentenced to one year and six months in prison. His defense attorney at trial would be Isaac Francisco Rojas. Another direct culprit, Samuel Toranzo Calderón, was demoted and sentenced to indefinite prison time.
Among the masterminds were the social democrat Américo Ghioldi, the unionist radical Miguel Ángel Zavala Ortiz, the conservative Oscar Vichi and the Catholic nationalists Mario Amadeo and Luis María de Pablo Pardo. One hundred and ten people, including Zavala Ortiz, arrived in Montevideo aboard the 39 planes used in the attack.
Acknowledgment and compensation
In 2013, the Senate unanimously converted into law a project of the Executive Branch that includes the victims of the attacks and bombings that occurred from June 16 to September 16, 1955, as beneficiaries of the compensation laws for having been detained or have suffered forced disappearance or another act of illegal force on the part of the State. The measure also recognizes the military who suffered reprisals or were discharged for not joining the bombardment. The surviving victims have received tributes from the National Archive of Memory.
Sentences
Although the leaders of the massacre feared receiving the death penalty for treason, the harshest sentence was imposed against Toranzo Calderón, sentenced to life imprisonment. The soldiers who took refuge in Uruguay were discharged on charges of rebellion and, after the coup d'état on September 16, they were reinstated by the new commanders. No civilians were convicted. Marine Infantry Battalion 4 was disbanded and the Navy was stripped of its firepower (the fuzes for their large-caliber naval guns were removed),[quote required] and soldiers involved or sympathizers requested the discharge to the head of the force. The rest of the culprits were not tried.
In the 2000s, several cases were opened aimed at qualifying the act as a crime against humanity. In 2008 the Federal Chamber of the City of Buenos Aires classified the act as a crime against humanity and ordered Judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corral to proceed with the investigation to establish the corresponding responsibilities and sentences. Canicoba Corral ruled that it was not a crime against humanity, but "an assassination that sought to kill Juan Domingo Perón, then constitutional president of the country", and filed the case.
Documentation and audiovisual productions
1966 censored documentary
During the Peronist government there was no reference to the bombings in the Sucesos Argentinos newscasts or in Noticiero Panamericano, which had audiovisual material. The latter issued a report at the end of September 1955, after Perón had been overthrown, from a perspective favorable to the Liberating Revolution that included some images of the bombings. During the de facto government of Juan Carlos Onganía, the documentary series Argentina in this century planned to broadcast the episode Time of violence on Channel 13 in Buenos Aires, where the events of the massacre of the Plaza de Mayo. Despite having been announced by critics, who mentioned the events as "revolutionary", the episode was censored and the television cycle was removed from the programming schedule. This was due to the fact that the aesthetics of the documentaries prior to Time of Violence, tended to minimize the massacre, showing the bombings with distant shots and focusing mainly on the overflight of the planes. The most serious circumstances that were exposed were the buildings in the city were destroyed and the victims of the bombings and the presence of civil resistance to the attack were never present. victims and the perpetrators". There were no images referring to the resistance, except for the burning of churches that it carried out after the bombing, where the loss of "temples that are relics [...] of great spiritual value" was lamented. and historical". violence.
The documentary short film Tiempo de Violencia by journalist Carlos Alberto Aguilar was the first to narrate the historical events of the attack in a chronological and objective manner, without politicizing or censoring his speech. that disputed the "official version" of the events installed by the related discourse of the Liberating Revolution. Contrary to the interpretations of previous documentaries, where the bombing and the subsequent coup d'état were presented as part of a "liberation deed", in Tiempo de violencia they were "emerging from a progressive process of violence that confronted Argentines".: uprisings, coups d'état, bombs and burning of temples". The violence prior to Aguilar's audiovisual was justified by the established order and shifts the more violent connotation towards the Peronist sectors, while in Time of violence directly assumed the problematization of violence and proposed to overcome its origin: the Peronism-anti-Peronism antinomy. The neutral position built by the documentary and the condemnation of violence made it possible to configure "the idea of horror or barbarism as a of the meanings of violence" and the words with which the bombing was identified —destruction, terror, devastation, death, war— highlighted the irrational nature of the events represented. Aguilar's documentary sought to draw attention to the political moment of the country, of marked confrontation between political sectors and trying to make a "call for restraint". For its part, it is the production that most morally condemns violence and is the only one in which the argument, rather than challenging sectors or marking responsibilities, he rehearses a rhetoric "destined to overcome confrontation." This narrative, however, was possibly the least convincing in a context of strong politicization and growing legitimization of violence. Despite the fact that the documentary Tiempo de violence was integrated into the film collection of the General Archive of the Nation for its conservation and restoration with an original duration of 23 minutes, the available copy only has 19 and a half minutes and lacks the first two parts, relative to the events of June 11 and 13, for which 3 and a half minutes were removed.
Open Files
In July 1993, the personal documentation of Isaac F. Rojas was delivered by his three sons to the General Archive of the Argentine Navy. After various ups and downs, in 2012 the Department of Naval Historical Studies of the Argentine Navy (DEHN), during the tasks of surveying the documents contained in the so-called "Fondo Rojas", discovered a bound book containing the "Military House Report of June 16, 1955". Said report, produced by Captain D. Miguel Ángel Siniscalchi, attaches graphs of the situation and the areas attacked, and important photographs that allow us to reconstruct the history of what happened during the bombardment inside the Government House.
In 2015, on the 60th anniversary of the bombing, the Ministry of Defense – headed by Agustín Rossi – inaugurated at the Casa Rosada Bicentennial Museum, an exhibition called "1955 Hit the House", with the intention of making visible facts of history that for many years were hidden. Within this framework, a copy of the declassified report was published. Likewise, access to declassified documents was enabled, such as the "Report on the revolutionary events of June 16, 1955" and the "Act No. 1 - Of the Navy in Operations of September 16, 1955", contained in the "Fondo Rojas".
A film testimony of the attack
On May 27, 2007, a 25-minute medium-length film was released, in 16 mm with optical sound, filmed by a French film crew, who was in the Argentine capital taking images that were not were related to this event. The film was never released in Argentina or France, and contains unpublished images of the bombing of Plaza de Mayo and remained hidden until the Argentine journalist Roberto Di Chiara managed to discover it and recover with it a testimony of great historical value. This document is preserved in the DiFilm Archive.
On June 11, 2015, Canal Encuentro used fragments of these unpublished files to honor the victims of the bombing, on the 60th anniversary of the bombing.
Fictional series
In June 2016, TV Pública premiered Las palomas y las bombas, a fictional miniseries directed by Maximiliano González, based on stories by Ricardo Piglia, which covers the events of June 16, 1955. The cast was made up of Luis Machín, Violeta Urtizberea, Martín Slipak, Arturo Bonin and Osvaldo Santoro, among others.