Raimundo Ongaro
| Raimundo Ongaro | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Secretary General of the General Confederation of Labour of the Argentines | |
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In office March 30, 1968 – September 16, 1974 |
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| Preceded by | Francisco Prado |
| Succeeded by | Adelino Romero |
| Secretary General of the Buenos Aires Printworkers Federation | |
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In office December, 1984 – April 15, 2016 |
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| Preceded by | ¿? |
| Succeeded by | Héctor Amichetti |
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In office November 13, 1966 – May, 1975 |
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| Preceded by | ¿? |
| Succeeded by | ¿? |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
February 13, 1924 Mar del Plata, Argentina |
| Died | August 1, 2016 (aged 92) Los Polvorines, Argentina |
| Nationality | Argentine |
| Occupation | Union leader |
Raimundo José Ongaro (13 February 1924̣ – 1 August 2016) was an Argentine union leader. He was secretary general of the General Confederation of Labour of the Argentines (CGTA) between 1968 and 1974.
Ongaro was born to a middle-class family of Italian Argentines from the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, in the Argentine seashore city of Mar del Plata in 1924. Fluent in Latin and schooled in music composition, Ongaro became an apprenticed graphist and was eventually hired at COGTAL, one of Argentina's largest publishing cooperatives. Becoming active in the Buenos Aires Printworkers' Federation (FGB), the 1966 coup d'état against President Arturo Illia and its resulting advent of anti-labor policies led Ongaro to remove FGB leader Osvaldo Vigna in a coup of his own, that November. This move, however, met with the disapproval of José Alonso, the head of the CGT (among whose 62 unions the FGB belonged) and forced Ongaro to pursue alliances within the fractious CGT union (then South America's largest). Ongaro's only ally among the 62 unions was initially the sanitary workers' Amado Olmos, and the duo were no match for Alonso's conciliatory strategy with the repressive new regime of General Juan Carlos Onganía. This stance, shared with powerful CGT leaders such as the steelworkers' Augusto Vandor and the construction workers' Rogelio Coria, was shaken by Security Committee head General Osiris Villegas' violent March 1967 assault on CGT headquarters done to impede a planned general strike.
Belonging to a CGT disoriented by the regime's surprise attack, Ongaro traveled to Cuba in early 1968, where, during a political conference, he met Argentine journalist and writer Rodolfo Walsh, with whom Ongaro flew to Madrid to introduce to the CGT's benefactor, exiled populist leader Juan Perón. Perón was impressed with both men and subscribed to Ongaro's view that the CGT leadership's efforts at dialogue with the dictatorship would be in vain. President Onganía had already ordered eight of the 62 CGT unions into government receivership (including the second-largest, the railway workers') and CGT elections in March 1968 pitted the steelworker's Vandor against Perón's own choice, Raimundo Ongaro. Vandor's steelworkers' union was the largest in the CGT and he still had allies such as Alonso and Coría; but Ongaro's allies now included the rail workers' Lorenzo Pepe and the telecom workers' Julio Guillán, both of whose unions were in receivership. Where Ongaro had Perón's own support, Vandor could only boast the endorsement of Onganía's new Labor Minister, Rubens San Sebastián, the architect of the President's "divide and conquer" strategy towards the CGT.
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