Violence and Politicization in Argentina in the 1970s
From the late 1960s throughout the 1970s, Argentina saw the rise and demise of more than a dozen guerrilla organizations. Were they the result of the weakeness of Argentine democracy? Or rather, were they themselves a form of political radicalization that arose by linking left politics with a worker culture of struggle and feelings of oppression? If the latter, political violence became a way to express demands and as such a type of democratic practice by the underclass. This chapter examines a specific guerrilla organization, the PRT-ERP, by seeking to answer who were its members, why did they join such a group, what they believed. The sources for this research include both documents and extensive interviews with members of the guerrilla.
