Sallustro, enemy of the Argentinian people, is dead. The manager of the Argentinian subsidiary of FIAT was captured on 21 March by the ERP (People's Revolutionary Army), six months after he had brought in State police to occupy the factory, arrest trade union leaders and impose sufficient terror to sack over 250 men. The ERP hearing convicted him of this, of conniving in the assassination of 3 Peronist guerrillas, and of monopoly operations to the detriment of the Argentinian nation. This was not the first time the ERP had intervened decisively in FIAT since it was founded by the PRT ashort18 months ago: last February Cordoba units occupied and disarmed the internal police post of the plant there to enable a factory meeting to be held.
Sallustro was now condemned to death, but his reprieve was offered if certain demands were fulfilled: the bourgeois press here has most emphasised the demands for the release of 50 ERP comrades, and for S 1 million from FIAT in the form of clothing and equipment for Argentinian schoolchildren, bearing revolutionary messages from the ERP. In addition, though, the ERP demanded the release of the imprisoned FIAT trade unionists, and the reinstatement of the total of some 500 men sacked in recent months. In their communiques, widely published in the press, the ERP denounced the repression by the military regime, the severity of the emergency courts, and the holding and torturing of hundreds of political prisoners. Sallustro was shot only when the intransigence of the Lanusse regime prevented concession of the demands.
The significance of the action is the greater because it comes at a time when the reformist leadership of the working class is exposing its bankruptcy to more and more workers, so that there is increasing support in the organised working class itself for uncompromising forms of struggle for socialism and national liberation. The Lanusse military regime is faced by an acute aggravation of the economic crisis-in recent months there has been 50 per cent inflation, and unemployment is soaring. This increases Lanusse's difficulties in engineering the facade of "democratic elections planned for March next year. Already the CGT, the main trade union federation, has been forced to call one 48-hour general strike against the regime (29 February-1 March). Even such action, the bureaucracy's forced response to the spontaneous movement of the working class, has brought it into conflict with the Peronist leadership. Shortly afterwards Peron himself wrote from Madrid to the CGT, urging it to suspend demonstrations against the military government for now. The 2-day strike he said, had been inopportune: "The time is not ripe for actions which could lead to violence and risk endangering our main objectives". Peron is, of course, manoeuvring for a "peaceful return to power (for his appointed successors if not for himself through the 1973 To do this he of course has to accept the military's terms for the elections. In February he hastily retracted an attack he had made on the army in an article, for which it was suing him. His attempts to cool down the militancy of his popular support are part of the same process: but in fact for the first time since he went into exile they are beginning to allienate important sections of his support. The Peronism of the Argentinian Trade Union movement stems from the period of the late '40s and early "50s when the Peronist regime and the Argentinian industrialists Part of the base of Gio-Lingh, captured by the liberation forces. relied on mass support against the landowners and British imperialism, and the working class was able to make very substantial economic and organisational gains. In the present crisis of imperialism and of the Argentinian economy such a situation is unrepeatable. This is becoming apparent to the left wing elements of Peronism as they see Peron manoeuvring for power.
If Peron has some problems with the CGT bureaucracy, the militants at the base and the Peronist guerrilla forces are much further outside his grasp-many of the latter have now dropped the slogan "Peron will be back". Despite some initial confusion when elections were first announced, the Peronist armed forces (Montaneros and other groupings) have reformed for joint action, and accepted a line similar to that of the ERP and PRT: if there is a possibility of democratic elections and the mood in the mass of the working class makes it possible to use this, there will be intervention by the forces which stand for the armed struggle for national liberation; if not, there will be active boycott.
As struggles arise which the regime is forced to suppress, the latter eventuality becomes increasingly likely: and as Peron engages more closely in negotiations with the regime (though a last minute retreat should not be ruled out), the logic of workers' struggles is to break with the illusions of Peronism. The conjunction of events of the past few weeks demonstrates the importance of the intervention of the revolutionary armed forces in this process. Because of the nature of the ERP demands in the Sallustro case, and their denunciation of the repression which the trade unions and reformist parties had been unable to challenge by purely verbal protest, it was difficult even for the bureaucracy of the labour movement to denounce the kidnapping.
Very shortly after the expiry of the Sallustro ultimatum, in Easter week, the events of Mendoza demonstrated once again the need of the mass movement for armed defence, Police fired on a workers" demonstration in Mendoza against rising electricity prices, and two died. The events also demonstrate the widening gap between the spontaneous activity of the working class and the reformist leadership. The response to the shootings by the working class was an immediate political strike against police repression, with sympathetic actions starting up in the rest of the country. When the CT gave official backing to the strike and the funeral demonstrations, the Lanusse regime immediately froze all trade union funds. The response of the CGT, after anxious all-night consultations, was to back down and reverse their decisions. The present situation, then, offers the possibility of a great advance in the armed struggle in the working class and the Argentinian masses, and in the building of a revolutionary army.
The process is the more urgent as the situation in Chile draws nearer to confrontation: a confrontation in which the counter-revolutionary regimes of Brazil, Bolivia and Argentina would undoubtedly be all too ready to intervene. A leadership of the armed struggle in Argentina with a base in the working class and the masses, and an international consciousness, will have an important role to play in the next stage of the continena war.
- J.W.
Revolutionary Workers Party, Argentinian Section of the Fourth Interational