Nahuel Moreno

CEHuS Centro de Estudios Humanos y Sociales Nahuel Moreno The Gorilla Coup of 1955 Nahuel Moreno The Gorilla Coup of 1955 1954-1956 (Translated from the Spanish edition by Editorial El Socialista, 2012) English translation: Daniel Iglesias Cover and interior design: Daniel Iglesias www.nahuelmoreno.org www.uit-ci.org www.izquierdasocialista.org.ar Copyright by CEHuS , Centro de Estudios Humanos y Sociales Buenos Aires, 2019 [email protected] CEHuS Centro de Estudios Humanos y Sociales Table of Contents The Gorilla Coup of 1955 Foreword to the 2012 Spanish edition ......................................... 1 Foreword to the 1974 Spanish edition ......................................... 3 Was Peron consistently anti-imperialist? .........................................................................4 Was Peron really against the bosses? .............................................................................4 The Congress of Productivity — a synthesis of Peronist politics against the bourgeoisie and imperialism ............................................................................................................4 Who came out to fight on 16 June? ...............................................................................5 “I don’t want to shed Argentine blood” ..........................................................................6 How did the left act? .....................................................................................................6 The Communist Party ....................................................................................................7 Politica Obrera ..............................................................................................................8 Abelardo Ramos ............................................................................................................9 Trotskyism ..................................................................................................................10 1954, Key Year of Peronism Let’s stop the Yankee plan to colonise Latin America ....................................................12 Let us avoid that Yankee imperialism dominate our country .........................................13 Let us unite with other currents to denounce and stop the plans of colonisation of Latin America and our country .............................................................................................15 The social and political importance of the proletariat is decisive ...................................17 Only the government of the Argentine working class will avoid the danger of crisis looming over the country and the workers ..................................................................18 Let’s stop the offensive of the General Economic Confederation (CGE) against the workers ......................................................................................................................20 The Peronist government and movement at a crossroads .............................................22 The crisis of Radicalism forces Yankee imperialism and the bourgeoisie to organise the new Catholic party ......................................................................................................24 The last agreements close one experience and open another .......................................26 Labour Party or immediate class political organisation of union activists .......................28 The Communist Party cannot be the party of union activists ........................................28 Let’s build the great party of the workers’ vanguard forming now a legal left-centrist party...........................................................................................................................29 Who knew how to fight against the “liberating revolution” before 16 September 1955? Preface to the first edition ......................................................... 31 The sects ....................................................................................................................32 1. The Catholic Church at the service of the coup d’état by Yankee imperialism ............35 2. The Communist Party hides the goals of the Church’s plan .......................................37 3. A single workers’ front to stop imperialism, the priests, and the capitalists ................39 4. Workers’ mobilisation – the only answer against the clerical-bosses-imperialist coup d’état ..........................................................................................................................40 The coup d’état will be the worst of the evils ...............................................................41 How the working class should be mobilised .................................................................41 5. Yankee imperialism and the Church prepare a coup d’état ........................................42 6. After the first coup, Yankee imperialism and its allies remain firm in their offensive to colonise the country ...................................................................................................44 7. Oil and coup d’état ..................................................................................................46 8. Competing with the Peronist “national left” ..............................................................49 Abelardo Ramos in September of 1955 ........................................................................56 The revolutionary Trotskyists before the victorious coup: three historical fliers ..............56 After Peron what? Introduction .............................................................................................. 60 1. Peronism fell for not being a true workers’ government ...................... 62 2. The experience of the last major strikes ............................................... 66 4. Reorganising the trade union movement ............................................. 75 5. Reorganising the workers’ movement to liquidate the current government ............................................................................................... 77 6. The reorganised union movement must oppose the Prebisch Plan ...... 81 7. The Yankee plan for the colonisation of Latin America ........................ 86 8. Let’s fight to reconquer our national independence ............................ 89 9. The reorganised workers’ movement must oppose an anti-Yankee front 91 10. Let’s fight for the repeal of the state of siege and for the release of political and social prisoners ..................................................................... 95 11. The main democratic task is to win legality for Peronism .................. 99 12. Radical Intransigence: an expression of the contradictions of the modern middle class .........................................................................................................................100 13. The crisis of Stalinist communism ........................................................................101 14. Down with the sects! ......................................................................... 104 15. Where are we going? ......................................................................... 107 16. Let us form a consistent anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist union tendency ................................................................................................. 110 17. The workers’ movement must have an independent policy of its own .. 111 18. The new leadership of the workers’ movement connects with our future as a revolutionary party ............................................................... 113 Appendix .................................................................................. 115 19. A tragic adventure: the Peronist coup ............................................... 115 20. The trade union elections force us to fight for new leadership ........ 118 So far the main task was to save the union organisation and unity .............................118 Out “free unionists” and scabs of the trade union leaderships .....................................120 The high Peronist leaderships are not good either; delegates and factory leaders are ..120 The need for a new leadership ..................................................................................121 Organising activists in union groups that contest elections ........................................121 21. The political plan of the government must be opposed by an independent policy ................................................................................. 121 The struggle of Radical Intransigence with the other political parties ..........................122 The division among the Radicals ................................................................................122 The Gorilla Coup of 1955 Foreword to the 2012 Spanish edition In the 1940s, Peronism emerged in Argentina. Since then it has endured as one of the main protagonists of the country’s political and economic life. One of the most outstanding features of Peronism in its origins is that being a bourgeois nationalist political movement, it won the massive and fervent support of the working class, transforming itself into the backbone of its union organisation. For decades, the advances and setbacks of the workers have been — and somehow continue to be, although Peronism has long since lost that devotion that was synthesised in “life for Peron”— directly linked to this support to a bourgeois political leadership and a bureaucratic

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