Mario Roberto Santucho

Mario Roberto Agustín Santucho (Santiago del Estero, August 12, 1936-Villa Martelli, July 19, 1976) was an Argentine leftist militant. He was a university activist, a FRIP militant and one of the founders of the Workers' Revolutionary Party (PRT) in 1965. He also commanded the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP), the largest Marxist-oriented guerrilla group in Argentina. Santucho was called Roby by his comrades, and he also had several aliases or nom de guerre such as Miguel , Comandante Carlos Ramírez , Enrique Orozco and others. He died during a confrontation with a task force of the Argentine Army in Villa Martelli (Buenos Aires province) on July 19, 1976.

Family

He was the son of the well-known radical lawyer Francisco del Rosario Santucho and Manuela del Carmen Juárez. His siblings were Francisco René Santucho, Amilcar Santucho, Julio Santucho, Oscar Asdrúbal Santucho, Manuela Elmina Santucho, Raúl Santucho Blanca Rina Santucho, Carlos Hiber Santucho and Omar Rubén Santucho. Several of them were political protagonists of the FRIP or the PRT-ERP. Julio Santucho was a seminarian and later a writer, Amilcar and Manuela studied law. Raúl was a provincial judge. Carlos Hiber was manager of a company in Buenos Aires and Blanca worked in the family notary.

Mario Roberto Santucho had four children.

Political activity

Youth

Mario Roberto Santucho, who came to be nicknamed "Roby," was born in 1936 in the northern Argentine city of Santiago del Estero, the result of the union of Francisco del Rosario Santucho, a radical leader from Santiago, with his second wife, Manuela del Carmen Juárez, who was previously his sister-in-law, because she was the sister of his deceased wife. Being the seventh son of his father and by Argentine tradition, he was sponsored by the president of that country at that time, Agustín Pedro Justo.

From a very young age, he was interested in politics. One of his brothers, Amílcar, belonged to the Communist Party of Argentina, and another, Francisco René, was a writer who later belonged to the ERP, kidnapped and disappeared during the government of María Estela Martínez de Perón.

His first political contacts came from the Center for Socio-Economic Studies and Research of the Province of Santiago del Estero, and from his contact with the magazine Dimension, in which his brother Francisco René occupied an important role.

His time as a university student

During his time as a student at the National University of Tucumán, Santucho joined the Independent Movement of Economic Sciences Students (MIECE) and was elected representative to the Academic Council. He graduated as a Public Accountant and became a delegate of the Student Center thanks to his participation in MIECE. MIECE triumphed in the 1959 elections, winning the Student Center and consecrating Mario Roberto Santucho as student delegate in the Tripartite Council of the Argentine University Federation (FUA). In April 1960 Santucho traveled to Paraguay and Brazil. In Buenos Aires he had a last meeting with the Polish writer Witold Grombrowicz during the autumn of that same year.

Marriage and first trip abroad

On June 15, 1960, he married Ana María Villarreal in San Miguel de Tucumán. Later, in January 1961, the couple undertook a trip through Latin America, with the aim of reaching Cuba. With Ana María he had three daughters: Ana, Marcela Eva and Gabriela. During his stay in Peru he met Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, who exerted some influence on his thinking. He was disappointed in the meeting with the famous Peruvian politician. In the United States, Santucho participated in debates and conferences at some universities. He visited Harvard University and spent two months in the North Country. There he got the contacts to travel to Cuba. He arrived when the US blockade of Cuba began, on the eve of the Bay of Pigs invasion. He was at the massive demonstration on July 26 in which Fidel Castro proclaimed rapprochement with the USSR. He joined the voluntary work in the harvest and began his first guerrilla training together with other revolutionaries, including members of the Tupamaros.

FRIP and FOTIA

In July 1961, Mario Roberto Santucho actively participated in the founding of the Popular Indo-Americanist Revolutionary Front (FRIP) together with his brothers. In 1963 he graduated as a public accountant. According to Seoane (1992) Santucho never practiced as a lawyer and finished his studies due to a promise made to his parents. Santucho used to lament having lately discovered his interest in the economy. He linked up with the FOTIA union militancy in Tucumán where he met Leandro Fortunato Fote, the union doctor Hugo Santilli and the young sugarcane worker Antonio del Carmen Fernández. The first two were members of the Trotskyist Palabra Obrera party led by Nahuel Moreno. Santucho participated in the takeover of the San José mill on July 28, 1962. He began working in the union's accounting. In May 1963, together with his brother Francisco René, he toured the quebracho mills in Santiago del Estero. He learned Quechua and taught several FOTIA leaders, including Antonio del Carmen Fernández, to read and write. He is detained for a few hours.

In the winter of 1963, Santucho met Nahuel Moreno in the city of Tucumán after a series of preliminary contacts. This alliance generated a discussion with his brother Francisco René Santucho, who was opposed to the transformation of the FRIP into a cell organization and cadres, according to María Seoane (1992). In 1964 he met with some members of the Uturuncos who had been released from prison.

The PRT

On May 25, 1965, during the government of President Illia, Santucho promoted the unification of the Popular Indo-Americanist Revolutionary Front (FRIP) that he led, together with the Trotskyist organization Palabra Obrera, thus giving birth to the Workers' Revolutionary Party (TRP). The new party is founded in the Once neighborhood of the city of Buenos Aires. That was the first congress of the PRT. After several internal disputes, the party is defined as Marxist-Leninist and the immediate objective is to carry out actions in support of the resistance of the sugar workers in Tucumán. The PRT was going to have a clandestine cellular organization and would have a party newspaper called La Verdad. Nahuel Moreno was elected general secretary and Mario Roberto Santucho was a member of the Central Committee. In August 1966, the second congress of the PRT was held at the El Greco confectionery in the Caballito neighborhood, in the city of Buenos Aires.

In 1967, Santucho participated in the FOTIA protests against the closure of the 11 sugar mills in Tucumán during the government of the dictator Juan Carlos Onganía. He participated in sabotage actions. The PRT described Onganía as " Bonapartist" and to his regime as a pro-imperialist dictatorship. Santucho is arrested, processed and imprisoned in the Villa Urquiza prison for 24 days. His family's accounting firm was raided by the police. In mid-July 1967, a group of Latin American intellectuals who attended the first meeting of the Latin American Solidarity Organization (OLAS) had met in Havana, Cuba. The meeting disseminated a document known as the OLAS Declaration. The PRT adhered to it.

On October 9, 1967, Che Guevara died in Bolivia. That same afternoon, Santucho gathered some compañeros from the San José mill and said: "he was our commander, he was the best... Now it is up to us to follow his example, pick up his rifle until we win or die for the socialist revolution in Argentina" (Seoane, 1992). From then on, the internal debates in the PRT about the feasibility of the armed struggle increased. In January 1968, at a meeting of the Central Committee in the city of La Plata, Nahuel Moreno opposed the start of guerrilla activity and favored continuing the union struggle. It was the last time Santucho and Moreno saw each other. Santucho began preparing the Fourth Congress for February 1968, which was held in La Boca. Some fifty militants participated in it and the morenistas or supporters of Nahuel Moreno did not attend. Oscar Prada was appointed general secretary of the PRT and Mario Roberto Santucho as the maximum head of the military committee. A newspaper titled El Combatiente (EC) would be published. A short time later, Santucho traveled to Cuba to receive military training. He was accompanied by Luis Pujals, Rubén Bonet and Antonio del Carmen Fernández. In Cuba he was only two months. He then traveled to Spain to visit his brother Julio Santucho in Santiago de Compostela. In May 1968 Santucho arrived in the city of Paris. He lived through the French May of 1968. He stayed at the house of Janneth Havel. He was on the barricades of the Latin Quarter and attended workers' marches. In that city, he participated in the meeting with the Fourth International and its representatives of the French Communist League to discuss the documents that in December of that year would join the IX Congress of the Trotskyist International, which declared itself in favor of the WAVES and the armed struggle.. At the beginning of June 1968 he returned to Argentina.

PRT Division

In 1968 the PRT divided between the faction of Nahuel Moreno, which was renamed PRT-La Verdad, and the PRT-El Combatiente, led by Mario Roberto Santucho. The division is made due to different positions in relation to the armed struggle. The congress of the Trotskyist International at the end of 1968 recognized the PRT El Combatiente as the official delegate of the IV International in Argentina. In Tucumán, on his return from Europe, Santucho began setting up a camp in Caspichango, near the Las Calaveras river, on the route to Tafí del Valle. At the beginning of 1969, Santucho directed the Sergeant Cabral commando that assaulted the Banco Provincia in Belén de Escobar, in the province of Buenos Aires on January 7, 1969. He obtained a booty of 75 million pesos, about 213,000 US dollars. There were no victims and it was the first expropriation operation carried out by the PRT or the proto ERP. Two members of the commando were arrested, including Rubén Batallés. Santucho managed to escape on a bicycle (Seoane, 1991).

Santucho participated in the popular revolt of May 29, 1969, known as the Cordobazo along with other PRT leaders such as Domingo Menna and Carlos Germán. In an emergency meeting of the central committee of the PRT on October 12, 1969, Santucho proposed starting guerrilla activity throughout the country, but the arrest of the Tucuman student Tirso Yáñez and his statements under pressure put the police on alert. There were several detainees and prosecutions and Santucho was identified as the head of the group of " subversives". In November of that year, 1969, the Chief of Public Order of the Tucumán Investigations division, Commissioner José Antonio Neme, prepared an intelligence report on Mario Roberto Santucho in which he detailed his political activity. By then, Santucho's relationship with his wife was over and Santucho began an affair with the also militant Lea Place. On November 24, 1969, a police patrol stopped him in the center of San Miguel de Tucumán. Santucho was beaten by the police, he testified but denied all the accusations. He was transferred to the Villa Quinteros police station, in the town of Monteros. While he was in prison Oscar Prada and Elías Prieto decided to annul the resolutions to initiate the guerrilla and dismissed Santucho from the leadership for " focus puller". Santucho responded with strong letters and demanded the convocation of the V Congress. There was an attempt to rescue Santucho on February 4, 1970 at the Villa Quinteros police station that was unsuccessful. Consequently, Santucho was transferred to the police station in the city of Concepción. Prada and Prieto broke away from the PRT and founded the GOR (Grupo Obrero Revolucionario). Two tendencies remained in the PRT, the Leninist Tendency headed by Benito Urteaga and who maintained correspondence with Santucho, and the Communist Tendency that proposed the suspension of guerrilla activity for a while to analyze the disaster of the arrests in Tucumán.

V PRT Congress

At the end of May 1970, Menna and Urteaga began planning Santucho's escape from the Villa Urquiza prison. Santucho escaped on his own account. On July 8, 1970, he took a pill of picric acid to simulate a picture of hepatitis. The prison authorities transferred him to the Padilla hospital from where Santucho escaped on July 9, 1970 through a window. On July 28, 1970, Santucho arrived in the town of San Nicolás. He crossed the delta in a dilapidated boat to an abandoned house on the Lechiguanas Islands where the V PRT congress was held. Fifty PRT militants attended. Participants: Benito Urteaga, Domingo Menna, Asdrúbal Santucho, Ana María Villareal de Santucho, Clarisa Lea Place, Luis Pujals, César Cerbato, Rubén Pedro Bonet, Osvaldo de Benedetti, Enrique Haroldo Gorriarán Merlo, Jorge Carlos Molina, Lionel Macdonald, Antonio del Carmen Fernández, Leandro Fortunato Fote, Carlos Germán, Guillermo Pérez, Ramón Arancibia and Luis Mattini. They came from Tucumán, Salta, Chaco, Córdoba, Rosario, Santiago del Estero, Santa Fe and Buenos Aires.

The V Congress of the PRT created the ERP (People's Revolutionary Army) on July 29, 1970. The name was proposed by the delegate of Salta Roberto Ramón Arancibia. The flag of the Army of the Andes was chosen as a symbol, to which a five-pointed red star was added in the center. Although the ERP is not officially established as the armed wing of the PRT, its ranks were made up of all Party militants plus those combatants from different social classes and dissimilar political backgrounds who agree to fight for the organization's program: this program is defined as anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist, while the PRT program is clearly and definitely socialist. Likewise, the PRT performs the function of political-military leadership of the People's Revolutionary Army, with Santucho as one of its commanders. The slogan was " Win or die for Argentina". Santucho read the program that was approved. Santucho explained the sanctions to be applied to those who violate discipline and morality, or who steal for their own benefit, desert or betray. They had to continue using a false name, hide their address from others, contribute part of their salary to the PRT, have a sober and modest life (Seoane, 1991). Then Pujals took the floor on the question of the PRT's membership in the Fourth International, which was questioned by delegates from Córdoba and Buenos Aires, particularly Domingo Menna and Luis Mattini. Instead Pujals, Joe Baxter and Bonet were proud of their Trotskyist tradition. Santucho leaned towards the critical side of the Fourth International, although the PRT did not break its ties with the International at that time. From that moment on, the PRT became a political-military organization (OPM). The PRT would be a cadre party with severe requirements to enter. The intellectuals had to work in the factories and the workers had to become intellectualized. The organization was led by a six-member political bureau that met daily, an eleven-member executive committee with monthly meetings, and the 24-member central committee as a deliberative body whose meetings would be quarterly or semi-annual. Those most responsible would be the members of the political bureau. It was integrated by Santucho, Pujals, Menna, Urteaga, Germán and Carrizo. Santucho remained as military and propaganda chief. The ERP's first military plan included actions to expropriate money, recover weapons, take over towns, release prisoners and kidnappings. It should be noted that in May 1970 the kidnapping and death of Aramburu had taken place, in which the Peronist military-political organization Montoneros emerged.

Operations in Rosario Tucumán and Córdoba

After the V Congress, Santucho settled in Córdoba along with Sayo and her children. Menna and Germán also settled in Córdoba. Pujals went to Buenos Aires. Urteaga, Carrizo and Baxter to Tucumán. Baxter was entrusted with developing the rural guerrilla. Baxter defaulted and was removed from management a year and a half later. On September 18, 1970, an ERP commando assaulted the 24th police station in the city of Rosario. Two policemen resisted and were killed. The Gendarmerie launched an operation to find the perpetrators. The ERP assumed responsibility for the act and argued that the deaths of the police officers were in self-defense. In November, a commando led by Urteaga and Carrizo assaulted the Banco Comercial del Norte in the city of Tucumán. They took a loot of five thousand dollars. However, they were later recognized and arrested.

On January 13, 1971, Domingo Menna was arrested after resisting shots in Córdoba. Days later, on January 28, Clarisa Lea Place, near Tucumán, was captured. On February 12, Santucho drives a truck to assault an armored transporter of funds belonging to the company Yocsina in Córdoba. They took a booty of 121 million pesos26 thousand dollars from that time. Ana Villareal was arrested on March 11, 1971 when she was distributing food in a working-class neighborhood and was injured during the procedure. On March 28, Santucho organized a command to rescue his wife along with other detainees in the Buen Pastor prison in Cordoba, but the operation failed. Several guerrillas were arrested. The second cordobazo or viborazo is produced in Córdoba. Santucho encouraged rapprochement with other guerrilla organizations such as the FAR and the FAP with whom he reached political agreements. On May 23, 1971, the ERP kidnapped the British honorary consul and manager of Rosario's Swift refrigerator, Stanley Silvester, who was released days later. On June 11, 1971, the Buen Pastor women's prison in Cordoba was captured. According to press reports, Santucho entered the same disguised as a priest. On June 28, 1971, the ERP gave its first press conference. The journalists were summoned to a corner and transferred to a house. The five ERP speakers were armed and hooded. Santucho participated in the conference. At the end of the conference, he took off his hood.

Shortly after, Santucho traveled to Cuba, invited by the Cuban communist party. This time he did not meet with Fidel Castro, but he did meet with other important leaders, including General Arnaldo Ochoa. There he made contact with the Tupamaros organization of Uruguay, the Revolutionary Left Movement of Chile and with the remnants of the Bolivian National Liberation Army founded by Che Guevara. On August 10, 1971, Santucho returned to Buenos Aires and met the Trotskyist leader of the Fourth International, Hubert Krivine, whose nom de guerre was Sandor. Luis Mattini, Pujals and Baxter participated in the meeting. Krivine criticized the growing militarism of the PRT-ERP. these differences would end with the distancing of the PRT from the IV International. Santucho was going to start contacts with the leader of Luz y Fuerza from Córdoba, Agustín Tosco, and with Armando Jaime of the Peronist Revolutionary Front from Salta to discuss the electoral strategy before the upcoming elections, when he was arrested again in August 1971.

Trelew's escape

On August 31, 1971, Mario Roberto Santucho was arrested in the city of Córdoba and transferred to the Villa Devoto Prison in Buenos Aires. He was going to meet with members of the FAR, FAP and Montoneros. He was subjected to torture for ten days at the Cordoba police Investigation Department. During his stay in the Villa Devoto prison, Santucho strengthened political ties with members of the Communist Party, Montoneros, the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) and the Peronist Armed Forces (FAP). He was later transferred to the Rawson prison on April 5, 1972. Benito Urteaga was in charge of the PRT-ERP. On September 17, 1971, the de facto president Alejandro Agustín Lanusse announced the call for elections for March 1973. That September 17, 1971, Luis Pujals was illegally detained. He was the first to disappear from the PRT-ERP. Santucho named Eduardo Luis Duhalde and Rodolfo Ortega Peña as defense attorneys. In October 1971, the Santucho family home in Santiago del Estero was raided and Don Francisco, Mario Roberto's father, published a protest request to Lanusse.

On January 31, 1972, the robbery of the century took place, the assault by the ERP of the National Development Bank (Banade) on January 31, 1972. They took a record loot of 401,835,895 pesos national currency, about 40 thousand dollars at the value of the time. After the assault, Santucho gathered his lawyers to file a complaint for torture. Santucho denounced that after his arrest in Córdoba he had been transferred to the Federal Police station, Santucho affirmed that he had been prodded, beaten and lacerated (Seoane, 1991). In March, the kidnapping of Oberdan Sallustro from FIAT took place, which had international repercussions. In April Santucho is transferred to Rawson as is his wife and several of his companions: Gorriarán Merlo, Alejandro Ulla, Pedro Cazes Camarero and Eduardo Copello. Santucho met with the Italian Peccei about Sallustro's kidnapping before his transfer to the south.

On August 15, 1972, he escaped from the Rawson maximum security prison to Chile along with other leaders of the FAR and Montoneros, in a resounding operation during which they assassinated prison guard Juan Gregorio Valenzuela, which included the kidnapping and diversion of a commercial airliner. Shortly after, the armed forces murdered his wife, Ana María Villareal -who was pregnant- and 15 other militants from various popular organizations in the so-called Trelew Massacre. After tense days of waiting in Chile, the escaped group was authorized by the government of Salvador Allende to leave the country and head for Havana, Cuba. Before leaving for Cuba, President Allende's daughter met with Santucho and handed him a gun as a gift from his father.

Santucho in Cuba and Europe

Little is known of Santucho's activities in Cuba during that trip. There was a meeting between Santucho and Fidel Castro. In mid-October 1972, Santucho and Menna arrive in Brussels, Belgium via Prague to meet Ernest Mandel and other members of the French Communist League. The IV International was in the process of reviewing its support for the armed struggle and a break between the PRT and the IV International was foreseeable. Santucho had two meetings with Mandel, Hubert Krivine, Daniel Bensaid and Trotsky's former private secretary, Raymod Molinier. Santucho landed in Santiago de Chile on November 5, 1972 and met with his brother Francisco René. There he found out that on October 16 Ramón Rosa Jiménez had been beaten to death. Joe Baxter was about to split from the PRT while an internal current in the pro-Peronist PRT had emerged in the city of Buenos Aires that was ready to support Cámpora in the March 1973 elections: the ERP 22 de Agosto. In Chile, Santucho met with the head of the Chilean MIR, Miguel Enríquez. In those two meetings the foundations of what would be the JCR were built. Santucho was one of the propelling members of the Revolutionary Coordination Board (JCR), an organization made up of the PRT (from Argentina), the ELN (from Bolivia), the MIR (from Chile) and the MLN-T (from Uruguay) that he would be born in 1973. On November 20, 1972, Santucho returned to Argentina and met Benito Urteaga in La Plata. to resume conducting the PRT-ERP, which was in a dire situation.

He settles in the northern area of Greater Buenos Aires and from there he travels to the provinces. The press warns about his presence in Argentina. Santucho held a meeting to assess the situation. Although the falls had been numerous, the PRT had grown a lot in that troubled year of 1972. Perón returned to Argentina on November 17, 1972 and a crowd went to receive him at Ezeiza. The PRT meeting was held on December 13, 1972 in a farm on the outskirts of the city of La Plata. The central committee of the party met. Seoane (1991) points out that Benito Urteaga was considered responsible for the numerous falls and excessive militarism. Santucho and Carlos Germán from Cordoba defended Benito Urteaga at the meeting. Osvaldo Debenedetti was demoted as a member of the organization and Joe Baxter was expelled. Juan Eliseo Ledesma joined the central committee. The meeting ended on December 15. Santucho was prohibited from participating in any guerrilla activity to preserve the PRT-ERP from his possible fall. That same day FREJULI proclaimed the Cámpora-Solano Lima formula in the elections of March 11, 1973.

On December 28, the ERP gunned down retired Rear Admiral Emilio Berisso. The calculations of the losses for that year were: one disappeared person, 30 deaths and 203 prisoners (Seoane, 1991). Santucho traveled to Córdoba at the end of December 1972 and met with Agustín Tosco. Santucho's idea was to put together a Tosco-Armando Jaime electoral formula. Tosco replied that he had rejected the Popular Revolutionary Alliance's (APR) proposal to be a candidate when he was released from prison because he understood that he could not confront Peronism and declined the offer. On January 14, 1973, Santucho met in Córdoba with the highest perretista leaders. It was decided to encourage electoral abstention or blank voting in the March elections.

In February, Santucho worked on planning the first attack on a unit of the Argentine Army: the Communications Battalion 141, which was a success. It happened on February 18, 1973. The PRT had thousands of ballots printed with the five-pointed red star and a series of slogans for the purpose of annulling the vote. The elections of March 11, 1973 gave victory to FREJULI.

In the following months, the ERP kidnapped Rear Admiral Francisco Alemán on April 3, 1973, and the commander of the National Gendarmerie Jacobo Nasif on April 26. On April 18, the correspondent for the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Gian Giacomo Foa, was invited to a PRT press conference that took place on April 21. He was taken to a house in San Antonio de Padua. In addition to the Italian Foa, the journalist Tom Streithourst of the National Broadcasting System (NBC) was present. Santucho spoke in English in that interview. Santucho explained the reasons for Alemán's kidnapping and the position of the PRT against the Cámpora government. The ERP would not attack the Peronist government but it would attack the armed forces and multinational companies. The PRT intended to exchange prisoners.

Santucho and the Cámpora government

In mid-May 1973, the PRT-ERP established its position in writing against the future Peronist government in the document entitled: " Why the ERP will not stop fighting. Response to President Cámpora". There was what was said at the April press conference. The decision not to lay down their arms was based on the recent history of Argentina, marked by permanent coups. Lanusse said goodbye to the government in a speech on May 24, 1973. The next day Héctor Cámpora assumed the presidency on May 25, 1973 and that day the devotion took place. The political prisoners were freed by an amnesty law that was hastily voted on May 26 in light of the events of the previous day. 371 political prisoners were released, many of whom were members of the PRT-ERP. Repressive legislation was repealed. On May 28, Cámpora reestablished diplomatic relations with Cuba. At the end of May 1973, Santucho met with a group of recently released former Perretista political prisoners at the Atenas de Córdoba club to take stock of the last three years since the founding of the ERP in 1970. There were various criticisms. After this meeting, Santucho redesigned the leadership of the PRT. The new political bureau (BP) was made up of himself, as general secretary of the PRT and commander of the ERP, Luis Mattini as head of union affairs, together with Antonio del Carmen Fernández, Domingo Menna would be in charge of the political fronts of the PRT, Benito Urteaga would be in charge of the party organization and propaganda, Gorriarán Merlo as head of the ERP military committee, together with Carrizo and Carlos Germán.

In early June 1973, the ERP released Nasif and Aleman. On June 8, 1973, Santucho, Urteaga, Molina and Gorriarán Merlo offered a barefaced press conference for the first time. The photo went around the world. Santucho explained the position of the PRT against the Cámpora government. Seoane (1991) observes that the confrontation with the Campora government was verbal since the ERP had suspended its operations. At that time, Santucho began a sentimental relationship with the Rosario militant Liliana Delfino. On June 20, Perón returned to Argentina definitively and the Ezeiza massacre took place. The PRT read the events at Ezeiza as an advance by the Peronist right. Cámpora's days were numbered. Santucho was in Córdoba on June 20, 1973. On June 27, 1973, Santucho, accompanied by Urteaga and Fernández, called a press conference at the Club Urquiza de Caseros that was broadcast on channels 11 and 13 and published in the newspapers La Opinión and Crónica on June 28. It was the last public appearance of Santucho. He accused the government of preparing to repress the people and of turning the Ministry of Social Welfare into a headquarters for the CIA and fascist gangs. The chronicler of La Opinión wrote that " Santucho said it was not a declaration of war but a political warning". The effects of the declaration were strong and there was criticism from various political spaces.

On June 30, 1973, he accused the government of President Héctor Cámpora of carrying out a coup against the popular will:

"The government of President Cámpora is increasingly placed next to the spectators and the repressors, together with the enemies of the people and of the Argentine Nation; and it is ready to repress, but it has already begun to organize the bloody repression against the people. In the field of the economy, instead of raising the standard of living of the working masses, paying the crisis to the capitalists and organizing the economy under the control and administration of the workers, he tries through the social pact to keep the workers and free the entrepreneurs for the fastest enrichment....) In the political field, from the Ministry of Social Welfare, converted into headquarters of the Central American Intelligence, the government organizes fachist bands to repress the Revolutionary Forces. In this sense, our revolutionary duty is to state that the surprise and fierce attack on the revolutionary sectors of Peronism on 20 June at the Richieri Avenue event with a minimum of 25 dead, was perfectly planned, organized and executed from the Ministry of Social Welfare under the immediate direction of the Osinde torturer and other notaries agents of U.S. imperialism. Because of these economic and political measures the government of the FREJULI has received the enthusiastic support of all the anti-national and anti-popular of the Argentine Industrial Union, of U.S. and European imperialism, of such bad characters as Alvaro Alsogaray, of the oppressive military, and has left the broad masses who supported him with their vote surprised and worried. The recent documented pronouncements, especially the message of Campora on June 25 and the decision to suppress the occupations of factories and the possession of weapons and explosives, added to the economic and political plans of the government, mean a betrayal of the popular will, the mandate received and place the new government only a month after its installation, a step away from revolutionary illegality.(...) We have not feared the military dictatorship, they do not fear me. "

Lastiri and Perón

On July 13, 1973, Héctor Cámpora resigns and Raúl Alberto Lastiri, son-in-law of Minister López Rega, takes office. Santucho travels to Córdoba and forms the Guevarista Youth (JG) of the PRT. He meets again with Agustín Tosco to offer her the FAS candidacy. Again Tosco rejects the offer:" No, Negro, are you crazy? How am I going to face a Perón alive and kicking?" (Seoane, 1991). Peronism presents the formula Juan Domingo Perón-María Estela Martínez de Perón (Perón-Perón) that achieves an overwhelming triumph in September 1973. On July 28, 1973 Santucho writes a request in the Clarín newspaper that he titled:" Resist the counterrevolutionary self-coup". The advance of the Peronist right and state repression were predicted.

On August 5, the ERP kills Commissioner Hugo Guillermo Tamagnini in Tucumán, who had participated in the repression of Taco Ralo. He was the first death since Cámpora's assumption of power in May of that year. On September 6, 1973, the ERP attacked the Health Command in the city of Buenos Aires in September of that year. The fact was harshly criticized from various political spheres. On September 11, 1973, Chilean President Salvador Allende was overthrown and assassinated. In Buenos Aires there is a mobilization in support of his government. The ERP participated in the march with a column. Santucho gave instructions to Domingo Menna and gave him the task of bringing a suitcase with 1 million dollars to the Chilean MIR revolutionaries, in addition to taking the promise of helping the miristas evacuate. Perón prevails in the September elections with 62.7% of the vote. On September 24, 1973, by decree 1454, the ERP was declared illegal. On September 25, the union leader and head of the CGT José Ignacio Rucci was assassinated. Initially, the ERP was accused of the attack, although Montoneros was later blamed. Perón assumes as president on October 12 and responds with the reserved order of October 1973, in which he gives instructions to dismantle the left supposedly infiltrated in his movement.

On January 19, 1974, the ERP attacked the Azul headquarters in the province of Buenos Aires and the extreme right-wing organization Triple A went into action. The attack on Azul also generated broad political criticism and President Juan Domingo Perón adjusted accounts with the Peronist left. Several governors close to the Revolutionary Tendency are purged. On February 14, 1974, Santucho gave a press conference attended by the Buenos Aires Herald, El Mundo, Le Monde, The New York Time, and the Reuters and Prensa Latina agencies. In Santucho itself, he complained about the ERP fighters who disappeared in the attack on Azul, Antelo and Roldán and threatened to execute Ibarzábal who had been taken prisoner in Azul. He released the founding document of the Revolutionary Coordination Board (JCR), through which the political-military organizations of the southern cone would begin to coordinate actions and cooperate among themselves. He criticized the Montoneros and dismissed the fence theory, which preserved the figure of Perón. One month later, the newspaper El Mundo, which was controlled by the PRT-ERP, was dynamited and permanently closed.

Perón broke with the Revolutionary Tendency of Peronism on May 1, 1974. In May 1974 the PRT-ERP launched the rural guerrilla in Tucumán with the creation of the Compañía de Monte Ramón Rosa Jiménez. Santucho participated in the taking of Acheral on May 30, 1974. A few time later, on July 1, 1974, General Perón died. His death sparked a wave of violence by far-right groups, observes sociologist Inés Izaguirre. Political power remains in the hands of María Estela Martínez de Perón and her minister José López Rega.

The ERP attempts an attack in Catamarca in August that ends in defeat and in the notorious Margarita Belén Massacre. Santucho responds with a reprisal campaign with executions of Argentine army officers that was announced to the press on September 18, 1974. The campaign ended in tragedies such as the death of the daughter of Captain Humberto Viola in Tucumán on December 1, 1974. Santucho took responsibility for the act and stops the retaliatory campaign. Luis Mattini wrote about this fact:" Santucho had rarely been seen shaken, furious and almost dejected. He cursed the head of the guerrilla command and at the same time thought how to make a gesture of reparation for that unjustifiable death & # 34;.

On September 11, 1974, Santucho met the Perretista leadership in the Antonio del Carmen Fernández Central Committee on a farm in the town of Del Viso, Buenos Aires. There he presents the report & # 34; Bourgeois Power and Revolutionary Power" in which it was considered that a revolutionary situation was opening before the police state of María Estela Martínez de Perón and López Rega. The ERP had to be transformed into a regular army (Seoane, 1992).

Government of María Estela Martínez de Perón

On October 9, 1974, the PRT-ERP made a proposal for a truce to the government of María Estela Martínez de Perón. A letter was sent to all political forces signed by Santucho himself. The PRT-ERP offered the release of the kidnapped soldiers and businessmen and requested the release of the guerrillas and political prisoners and the repeal of repressive legislation. The offer was ignored. In December, César Cerbato, a member of the leadership and one of the founders of the PRT, fell. Santucho's house is raided at the end of December but Santucho had already left for Villa Constitución, in Santa Fe. There he met with the brown list workers who were on strike. He was only one day in that city. Upon his return from Santa Fe at a party meeting, he was sworn in as commander-in-chief of the ERP and confirmed as general secretary of the PRT. The fact was published in Estrella Roja number 47 of January 13, 1975. Other military ranks were granted to members of the ERP. Santucho designed the new management scheme and the PRT-ERP was led by himself, Benito Urteaga, Domingo Menna, Juan Ledesma, Luis Mattini, Carlos Germán and Eduardo Raúl Merbilháa. Gorriarán Merlo was displaced due to abuse of power, because he had killed an alleged spy without complying with the strict rules that the ERP had for such cases, observes Seoane (1991). Santucho was enraged with Gorriarán and declared that the latter would never hold management positions again. Gorriarán Merlo accepted the sanction, but then began to criticize the leadership of Santucho. The ERP was left in command of Santucho in the general command, Juan Ledesma as chief of staff, Carrizo as head of operations and other tasks, and Juan Mangini in charge of intelligence. On the rural front were Hugo Irurzún, Asdrúbal Santucho, Jorge Carlos Molina, Manuel Negrin, Roberto Coppo and Lionel MacDonald. Santucho communicated that he would move to the rural areas as soon as the military operation began. On February 17, 1975, Santucho wrote in the editorial note of El Combatiente: " Monte's company will win. In March, the Villa Constitución strike in Santa Fe was crushed. The PRT made contacts with Oscar Alende of the Intransigent Party.

On April 1, 1975, the police raided the ERP JCR-1 machine gun factory in Caseros. Santucho left for Tucumán. On April 13, 1975, Carrizo led the attack on the Fray Luis Beltrán Arms Factory in the town of San Lorenzo. They could not capture the unit but managed to escape with some weapons. His brother Francisco René Santucho was kidnapped that month in Tucumán, as was Amílcar Santucho, who was arrested on the border with Paraguay. In June his niece Estela died in Córdoba and his brother Asdrúbal in Tucumán. In June-July 1975, the Rodrigazo took place and the historic marches and union days that ended with the resignation of López Rega and the Minister of Economy Celestino Rodrigo.

In mid-October 1975, the PRT-ERPMontoneros and the OCPO agreed to found the Organization for the Liberation of Argentina (OLA), that is, the union of revolutionary forces of different ideological and political origins in a single party of the revolution. Domingo Menna and Roberto Cirilo Perdía from Montoneros debated the union agreements in successive meetings. Montoneros would send some militiamen to Tucumán and provide financial support while the PRT-ERP would facilitate their clandestine printing presses. The unity of the armed revolutionary left would be sealed with the signature of Santucho and Mario Firmenich in a summit meeting scheduled for the first months of 1976.

At the end of 1975, the Monte Ramón Rosa Jiménez Company was completely defeated in the framework of Operation Independence. In December 1975, the last attack by the ERP on a military unit took place, the Arsenal Battalion of Monte Chingolo, to the south of greater Buenos Aires. The combat ends in a defeat for the ERP.

Coup and death of Santucho

In the first days of 1976, Santucho proposed through an open letter the formation of a Patriotic Democratic Front made up of leftist and progressive forces, broad, in order to stop the imminent coup d'etat and dismantle the repressive policy of the government. In exchange he offered an armistice and a truce. The proposal did not progress.

Emissaries were sent to Europe to gain international support. Two of them met with the sociologist James Petras and the Argentine writer Julio Cortázar in the Russell court at the end of February 1976. The meeting was in Rome. The objective sought was the recognition of the ERP as a belligerent force, in order to force the Argentine Army to comply with the international rules of war. The reply was that the Russell court could not grant such a request.

On March 24, the coup occurred. Santucho responded with the proclamation: " Argentines to arms". On March 29, the last important meeting of the PRT-ERP was held in a farm in Moreno. The meeting was detected by the security forces and ended in a rout with 12 dead and wounded. In Córdoba there were massive arrests of party members and Eduardo Castello, who was in charge of the regional party, died. At the beginning of May Haroldo Conti is assassinated. On May 20, Carrizo, the ERP chief of staff, disappeared. These losses strongly affected Santucho, who was in bed for a week. In June Santucho and Menna met at Roberto Perdía's house with Raúl Yager and Mendizábal in order to continue with the unification of both organizations. Falls continued in Mendoza, Santa Fe and Rosario.

Mario Roberto Santucho died on July 19, 1976 together with part of the PRT political leadership at the home of Domingo Menna, during a confrontation with a task force of the Argentine Army under the command of Captain Juan Carlos Leonetti, who He was also killed in combat, being the first victim.

On that particular day, Leonetti led a task force entering an apartment building in the town of Villa Martelli, Buenos Aires province and went to the apartment where it was presumed that there might be members of a guerrilla organization. When he entered the apartment, there was Santucho, his then-companion Liliana Marta Delfino, one of his lieutenants and a member of the PRT Political Bureau, Benito Urteaga, and his three-year-old son, José. A shooting ensued during which Santucho and Urteaga died and Leonetti was wounded, who died shortly after. Menna's partner, Ana Lanzilotto, six months pregnant, was arrested hours later when she entered the apartment.

Santucho had one bullet in the cheekbone, another in the neck and nine from the waist up while Leonetti, who was wounded from the waist down. He arrived dead at the Military Hospital without knowing that he had killed Santucho. The body of Mario Roberto Santucho has been missing to date, although it is believed that he was taken to Campo de Mayo. After Santucho's death, valuable information about him was found in his suitcases, the names of 395 members of the Guevarista Youth and the ERP Support Commandos who were going to act during the 1978 Soccer World Cup.

According to Arnol Kremer, better known by his pseudonym Luis Mattini, survivor and last general secretary of the PRT-ERP after the death of Santucho, in those days the leadership of the ERP was coordinating with the Montoneros leadership the unification of both guerrilla forces, in what was to be called the Organization for the Liberation of Argentina, and also receiving logistical and financial support from Montoneros to facilitate the urgent departure from the country to Havana of Mario Santucho and his partner Liliana Delfino, since they had already they found themselves virtually hemmed in and their organizational power decimated.

After the confrontation occurred, the military authorities reported having confiscated a large amount of documentation at that address, including air tickets. The news of Santucho's death was released on the night of that Monday, July 19, 1976.

It is unclear at this time how Leonetti and his small group made it to the Villa Martelli apartment. There have been several hypotheses in this regard: one of them is that of the nebulizer, a certificate that Domingo Menna had in his pocket with the address of the apartment where he lived with Santucho. It is believed that when Menna fell that day, the military were able to reach the apartment thanks to the receipt for the nebulizer. Another hypothesis refers to an ERP officer offering the information to the military in exchange for the release of his partner. This hypothesis is supported by Menna's statements during his imprisonment in the clandestine center of Campo de Mayo.

In an interview in 2012, Jorge Rafael Videla, Argentina's dictator during most of the National Reorganization Process, said that when Santucho died, the military made the guerrilla's body disappear because “he was a person who generated expectations. The appearance of that body was going to give rise to tributes, to celebrations. He was a figure that had to be outshone ».

Political Theory

The ideological sources from which his thinking was nourished were broad. From Lenin and Stalin to Milcíades Peña (a left-wing intellectual from the sixties), Miguel Ángel Asturias, Bernardo Canal Feijóo, Rodolfo Kuhn, Héctor P. Agosti and his brother Francisco René Santucho.

Some nurtured his ideological-political thought (like Lenin), others his military thought. In addition, the influence of the Cuban Revolution and Che Guevara played an important role. Santucho evolved from his first left-wing indigenous and nationalist ideas in the FRIP towards a Marxism-Leninism critical of the USSR and the communist parties linked to it and a position closer to Cuban Castroism. He was a Guevarist Marxist-Leninist. In fact, today he is considered the most important exponent of Guevara after Che Guevara. Although Trotskyism and logically Trotsky influenced Santucho and the PRT, Mario Roberto Santucho can hardly be classified as a Trotskyist. In fact, the current Argentine Trotskyism does not claim it. Mao thought and Maoism also influenced the formation and evolution of Santucho.

Regarding the bourgeoisie, he argues that it could not organize political changes, so it was not possible to think of a broad national political front (such as La Hora del Pueblo or FREJULI). On the proposal of "democracy or dictatorship" Typical of liberalism, Santucho proposes that the options are to continue under bourgeois domination in its different forms, or face the socialist revolution.

Santucho makes his arguments about the Armed Forces, maintaining that they constituted a military party, that is, one more political party. Regarding Peronism, he was of the opinion that it was neither revolutionary (as was the opinion of left-wing Peronism), nor fascist (the opinion of the Communist Party) in the 40s, but rather that Santucho said that it was a kind of "bonapartism", that is, a strong military figure, who plays the role of arbitrator between the social classes, ordering them, but ultimately ends up putting order for the bourgeoisie. "Bonapartism" It is a concept that Santucho used critically and whose origin can be found in the political writings of Karl Marx.

The challenges of the Argentine popular movement, for Santucho, were basically two: populism and reformism. Populism seeks to confuse the entire nation under the name of "people" (Santucho identifies it with Peronism and Montoneros). Reformism is found within the Communist Party, among other forces. Beyond his criticism of Peronism or other non-Peronist left currents, Santucho understood at the end of his life that it was necessary to forge an alliance of left-wing Marxist or Peronist revolutionaries against reactionary political forces. That is why he came to establish political contacts with the PI or the PC itself. Santucho also thought that if the Argentine revolution succeeded, it was necessary to establish cooperative relations with the Soviet Union.

Documentaries

There are several documentary productions about Mario Roberto Santucho. One of them is Santucho... still by Lucía García and Camilo Cagni.

Books

• Why we separated from the Fourth International (1973)
• bourgeois power and revolutionary power (1974)
• Formalism versus Marxism Leninism (1975)
• Method and Policy (1975)