In search of anarchist memory

Two historians remember and analyze Resistencia Libertaria, an anarchist group active in the 1970s whose members were largely
“disappeared” by the state. Looking at its organizational methods and differences with other groups, they provide
insight into this generally unknown period of activism in Argentina.

By Laura Vales

Translated to English by Chuck Morse

From Página/12 (November 26, 2007)

Resistencia Libertaria was an anarchist group active in the 1970s. It dedicated itself to community and labor organizing and also had a military wing with which it carried out actions designed to finance the organization. Structured as a cadre group, it grew to between one hundred and 130 members, most of whom would be “disappeared” during the dictatorship. Its history is now coming to light thanks to Fernando López Trujillo and Verónica Diz, authors of a new book about this practically unknown topic. López Trujillo, a historian, was a member of Resistencia Libertaria and, in 1997, a co-founder of the Centro de Documentación e Investigación de la Cultura de Izquierda Center for the Documentation and Investigation of Left Culture). Diz is a journalist and history professor. She belongs to the generation that became politicized in the 1990s and her work has focused feminism and anarchism.

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- Why is so little known about this period of anarchist activity?

Fernando Lopez and Veronica Diz, authors of Resistencia Libertaria

Fernando López Trujillo: – One of the reasons is how it ended: the organization was destroyed and the survivors left the country. Terror is also an issue, given that about 80 percent of the group were incarcerated in the state’s clandestine detention centers.

- Where did Resistencia Libertaria come from?

- Many new anarchist groups appeared between 1971 and 1973, products of the turbulence of the era.

- You point out in your book that the new militants did not have strong links with the pre-existing anarchist organizations.

- They didn’t have contact with the old mainstays of the movement. There were three or four centers, which still exist today, representing what remained of movement of the 1920s and 1930s. The new formations were born outside of them and, in general, didn’t have a good relationship with them.

- Why?

- Above all, because most of the old groups survived on the basis of not engaging social life and saw the newcomers as a threat.

Verónica Diz:- There’s a split that repeats itself historically: the view of anarchism as an activist, social tradition, that’s engaged and works with others, versus the “I’m not getting mixed up with anybody” stance, which always ends up hurling accusations at the other side.

- Such as?

That they’re Marxists, for example, or at least not anarchists. This helps explain why the two tendencies took such divergent paths in the 1970s, and also the silence about the period. The case of María Esther Tello is one of the most striking examples of the divide. Tello, the mother of three disappeared sons, all of whom were members of Resistencia Libertaria, had returned [to Buenos Aires] from exile in France. While visiting the Biblioteca José Ingenieros one day, she said, “let’s go to the Resistance March.” Someone, in reply, said, “but there aren’t any disappeared anarchists.”

- Were they university students?

- Yes, but Resistencia Libertaria functioned as part of the workers’ movement, and went into the factories to organize there.

- You say that Resistencia Libertaria tried to fight for the revolution and against Left authoritarianism at the same time.

L.T.- Yes, the group was anti-authoritarian, built around the Bakuninist idea of militants fighting to organize but not lead the masses. The goal was to create–not take–power. It wasn’t trying to build its own political party but rather to foster the creation of organizations. For example, it was a member of the Frente Antiimperialista por el Socialismo [Anti-Imperialist Front for Socialism], which had broad, pluralistic, and democratic foundations… the Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores [Revolutionary Workers Party, PRT] took the Frente over around 1975. A number of groups left after it lost its independence.

- So, the relationship with the PRT was one of tension.

V.D.- There was tension and collaboration. There were shared experiences in Córdoba and La Plata. They worked together in factories and there were understandings needed to carry out certain actions. They also exchanged materials.

- And with the Montoneros?

L.T.-Relations with the Montoneros were handled much more cautiously, because they were seen as very infiltrated. But there aren’t documents about alliance policies. For instance, there isn’t anything in Resistencia Libertaria documents about the relationship with the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) of La Plata, with whom there were actually very close ties dating back to before the creation of Resistencia Libertaria, due to the fact that Hebe de Bonafini’s son was a friend of the Tello family and in their home all the time.

V. D.- The Tello house operated as a sort of a base of operations. Many people passed through, including individuals from Uruguay, who hid there. There was a carpentry workshop in which they made furniture with hidden compartments, which were furnished to all the organizations. Mr. and Mrs. Tello were militant anarchists, and old anarchist expropriators came to their house too. It was a gathering place during Resistencia Libertaria’s early years in La Plata.

- The group carried out armed actions?

L.T.- The problem is deciding what to call armed actions. It had a small military apparatus dedicated to self-defense and expropriation, which undertook operations intended to fund the group (robberies, in other words). If that’s armed struggle, okay, but I don’t think it really is. In any case, it never thought of itself as an organization that would fight the state in a military sense.

V.D.- And there is a myth about an organization that practiced armed struggle, and an open disagreement about the issue. Some want to see Resistencia Libertaria as anarchist guerrillas because they were armed, although that isn’t accurate. As a political organization active during the dictatorship, it had to have weapons.

L.T.- Everyone did.

V.D.- Another thing is that the history changes according to which year the person telling it was active. Some who came out of La Plata say, “Weapons? Never! We held picnics and were totally horizontal!” You have to remind them that Resistencia Libertaria was organized in cells and worked clandestinely. Of course, some find it hard to believe that an organization in which so many took part pursued a course so different from the one that they knew.

L.T.- That’s the issue: “in which so many took part.” A number of people left the organization in 1975 and Resistencia Libertaria’s trajectory changed after that. Although their comments may be correct, some times they are correct for 1973 or 1972 but not 1976.

- Why is it so difficult to establish what happened?

V.D.- Some people haven’t said a word about this for thirty years, which is why our book is a first approximation of the history. This is the case with Rafael Flores, who was the general secretary of a union (the rubber workers’ union in Córdoba). He went into exile and became a tango scholar and, though he comes here to give talks, he doesn’t want to discuss the past. He’s quite well known in Madrid… but because of the music. Others, like Hebe Cáceres, gave very thorough statements to the tribunals, but have declined to meet with us. There are also people living in Nicaragua and others who have just recently started to want to speak.

L.T.- And we’re interested in emphasizing the group’s mass politics, not so much the military apparatus, which ultimately wasn’t the most important thing. Resistencia Libertaria pursued a strategy of prolonged, popular war, and believed that the workers’ movement itself, in the process of its long-term development, would generate an organization capable of providing political leadership. And it believed that it was the workers’ movement, not Resistencia Libertaria, that had to produce the military organization needed to do battle with the state.

V.D.- And its activism didn’t accrue to a party. For instance, it didn’t put out propaganda for the organization but only for the grassroots bodies. We have a comrade named Elsa Martínez, who is disappeared. She was a journalist and the Department of Journalism in La Plata claims her as one of its own. When you read the files containing her history and the description of the circumstances of her detention, it’s clear that they seized her for economic reasons and didn’t know about her activism. And she was a 40-year-old woman, so this wasn’t someone who was just passing through. She’s a good illustration of the group’s style. With respect to the Tello family, the mother always spoke publicly about the disappearance of her sons, but that wasn’t the case with many others.

- They didn’t say that they were anarchists?

V.D.- It’s more that the state only learned of Resistencia Libertaria as its militants were being captured.

- How did that happen?

L.T.- All the members of the Communist Party in La Plata were seized. Due to Resistencia Libertaria’s economic needs, it had made a pact in 1977 relating to a series of expropriation operations, and this created an enormous security problem for Resistencia Libertaria. It had already been hit hard in Córdoba and La Plata, but in 1978 it was hit in La Plata and Buenos Aires simultaneously.

- How many militants were captured then?

- More than thirty. The majority ended up in the Banco, others in Automotores Orletti, which is where they took all the Uruguayans.

- Why is it important to remember this generation of anarchists?

L.T.- For us, it’s valuable because it shows the experience of a group whose politics were completely oriented to the self-organization of the masses, not the recruitment of new members, which is to say, the total opposite of what the Left has done over the last twenty years. The experience of the assemblies in 2001 shows how this operates, which the Left thought it could use to recruit militants.

V.D.- It gives contemporary anarchists a sense of memory. Those of us who have been active anarchists since the late 1990s always participated in the movements demanding justice for the disappeared, but often without knowing the full history. To learn that anarchists were active then is like finding your older brother.

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On this site, see also:

* New Book: Resistencia libertaria

* Resistencia Libertaria: Anarchist Opposition to the Last Argentine Dictatorship

* Some Notes on the Argentine Anarchist Movement in the Emergency by Fernando López Trujillo

* Testimonio by María Esther Tello

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