Tacuara Nationalist Movement

The Movimiento Nacionalista Tacuara (MNT, Tacuara Nationalist Movement) was an Argentine far right movement in the 1960s, which later integrated Juan Perón's right-wing “Special Formations”. Linked to the more conservative sectors of the Peronist movement, and directly inspired by Julio Meinvielle's Catholic pronouncements, Tacuara defended nationalist, Catholic, anti-communist, antisemitic and anti-democratic ideas, and had as its first model the Spaniard Primo de Rivera's fascist Falange. Its main leaders were Alberto Ezcurra Medrano, Joe Baxter, Oscar Denovi and Eduardo Rosa. Various contradictory movements emerged from this group. After three important splits in the early 1960s, the police cracked down on most factions on March 1964. A year later, the entire MNT was outlawed by President Arturo Illia (UCR). Composed of young people from right-wing backgrounds, it has been called the "first urban guerrilla group in Argentina".

A tacuara was an rudimentary lance used by gaucho militias during the Argentine war of independence. It consisted of a knife blade tied to a stalk of taquara cane.

The MNT was officially established at the end of 1957, first under the name of Grupo Tacuara de la Juventud Nacionalista (Tacuara Group of Nationalist Youth). It was mostly formed by young offspring of Buenos Aires’ high and middle bourgeoisie (almost all males), who were active in the Unión de Estudiantes Nacionalistas Secundarios (UNES) students’ union and the Alianza de la Juventud Nacionalista (Alliance of Nationalist Youth). Although strongest in Buenos Aires, during its peak the group spread all over the country, especially in Rosario, Santa Fe and Tandil. They propagandized through both their own publications and various nationalist periodicals, one of which in fact bore the name Tacuara; but it had been founded back in 1945, during the military government headed by Edelmiro Farrell, by a group of students affiliated to the UNES. Argentina, an important economic power at the beginning of the 20th century, had been hit hard by the 1929 Great Depression. Furthermore—as in other parts of the world—it was affected by a wave of authoritarianism. Argentine nationalism was influenced by Fascism and Nazism. This influence was reinforced by the arrival of Nazi exiles fleeing from Germany after 1945.

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