Montoneros

Montoneros
Official seal of Montoneros
Leader(s)	Mario Firmenich
Dates of operation	1970–1979
Motives	Establishment of a socialist state in Argentina.
Active region(s)	Argentina
Ideology	Far-left Peronism
Notable attacks	Kidnapping and execution of Pedro Eugenio Aramburu, assassination of José Ignacio Rucci, Operation Primicia, Raids on military barracks
Status	Decree 261 by Isabel Martínez de Perón considered it a subversive group, and ordered its annihilation. The group was harassed by the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance until 1975 and utterly defeated by the military dictatorship by 1979.

Montoneros (Spanish: Movimiento Peronista Montonero-MPM) was an Argentine leftist urban guerrilla group, active during the 1960s and 1970s. The name is an allusion to the 19th century cavalry militias who fought for the Partido Federal during the Argentine Civil Wars.

After Juan Perón's return from 18 years of exile and the 1973 Ezeiza massacre, which marked the definitive split between left and right-wing Peronism, the president expelled the Montoneros from the Justicialist party in May 1974. The group was completely destroyed during the Dirty War.

As other similar left-wing guerrillas who operated in Latin America during the 1970s, the Montoneros maintained that democracies were a complex masquerade that concealed fascist governments and delayed class struggle. Their attacks sought to force the governments to give up such pretensions and operate openly as fascist governments, expecting that in such a scenario the people would then support the guerrillas. This doctrine did not work as intended: the people despised the military dictatorships, but did not see the guerrillas as the enemies of the dictatorships, but rather as a contributing cause to the government's repression. The projected class struggle never took place.

Montoneros did not think about their armed violence as a response to a threat to society, but as the key of their identity. Once democracy was restored, they declined the chance to achieve their goals by peaceful means. In 1973 they killed the unionist José Ignacio Rucci and declared war on Isabel Perón when, as vice president, she succeeded to the presidency in 1974 after her husband's death. The military style was the basis of the actions, structure and hierarchy of the Montoneros. They used salutes, uniforms and military slang, even in circumstances where these were inappropriate, such as the state funeral of Juan Perón. The internal structure of the Montoneros was completely top-down, with the strategies outlined by its leaders and ordered to the others.