"Notes and testimony on neo-colonialism, violence and liberation." "NEOCOLONIALISM AND VIOLENCE" "This film was made with the collaboration of peasants, workers, students, intellectuals and revolutionaries." "To all these we express our deep appreciation." "Data from: the 2nd Declaration of Havana;" "the U.N.;" "the General Confederation of Labour, and contemporary publications." "Scenes have been taken from the following films:" "Tire Die by Fernando Birri, Mayoria Absoluta by Leon Hirxmann," "El Cielo y la Tierra by Joris Ivens." "Extracts from Faena by Humberto Rios, Theatre Frankenstein." "We thank ARGER FILM of Rome for their collaboration." "This film speaks of neo-colonialism and violence in Argentina and in most of the countries of Latin America not yet liberated." "For this reason it does not deal with Cuba, the first free territory of the Americas." "To Che Guevara and to all those who have fallen in the struggle for Latin American liberation." "THE GREAT COUNTRY" "THE GREAT UNFINISHED NATION my first name:" "VICTIM my surname:" "HUMILIATED my condition:" "REBEL" "A common past" "A common enemy" "A common possibility" "THE GEOGRAPHY OF HUNGER" "DISPOSSESSED, SHUT OUT, DAMNED" "WE HAVE BEEN TAUGHT A FALSE HISTORY" "FALSE HOPES OF WEALTH" "A FALSE INTERNATIONAL VIEWPOINT" "FALSE ECONOMIC BELIEFS" "A FALSE FREEDOM" "OUR FIRST ACT" "OUR FIRST WORD" "TO BE FREE THERE IS ONLY ONE CHOICE" "PUT THE PEOPLE IN POWER" "INVENT" "IDEOLOGY" "ORGANIZE OUR REVOLUTION" "THE DUTY OF THE REVOLUTIONARY" "IS TO MAKE THE REVOLUTION" "NO SOCIAL ORDER COMMITS SUICIDE" "A LONG WAR" "A CRUEL WAR" "IMPUNITY" "THE PRICE OF BECOMING MEN" "A PEOPLE WITHOUT HATE CANNOT TRIUMPH" "COLONIZED MAN" "FREES HIMSELF THROUGH VIOLENCE" "THE UNCIVILIZED WILL TEACH THE CIVILIZED" "POWER" "RELEASE MAN" "ALL OUR ACTION" "IS A CRY AGAINST IMPERIALISM" "AND A PLEA FOR UNITY AGAINST THE GREAT ENEMY:" "THE U.S.A." ""for having loved too much...."" "Latin America is a continent at war:" "For the ruling classes, a war of oppression" "For the oppressed peoples, a war of liberation" "1:" "HISTORY" "The independence of the Latin American countries was betrayed from birth." "It was betrayed by the exporting elite of the port cities." "In the same year as Bolivar consolidated independence in Ayacucho," "Rivadavia signed a trick-loan in Buenos Aires with the Baring Brothers bank." "British merchants took over the national bank that issued the country's currency and, in the name of free trade, their manufacturers invaded internal markets." "From that moment on, England replaced Spain in dominating almost all of the continent." "What it had not obtained before with armies it now obtained with its loans." "The country exported wool and imported textiles." "It exported meat and leather and imported grand pianos." "The exporting agricultural bourgeoisie thus became an agrarian appendage of European industry." "For the first time in history, here, in Latin America, a new form of domination began to be applied:" "the exploitation of colonial commerce through the local bourgeoisie." "This was the birth of neo-colonialism." "To impose neo-colonialism it was necessary to divide the continent." "The unity of America was destroyed." "Canning's diplomacy balkanised the South of the continent." "The Yankee empire then completed his work in the North and Centre." "The colonial ambitions of the two great empires were satisfied with Latin American blood... from Mexico to the River Plate." "One people was pitted against another, one province against another." "In less than a century, 20 nations emerged from what had been four viceroyalties." "The Monroe Doctrine and the big stick legalised open aggression against the continent." "In less than a century the United States carried out 41 armed interventions in Latin America." "Today the impunity of such aggressions is guaranteed by the O.A.S. (Organization of American States)." "Balkanization first, pan-Americanism today." "Both are aspects of a single policy:" "neo-colonialism." "2:" "THE COUNTRY" "Argentina:" "Over 4 million square kilometres of surface area and 2,800,000 of continental surface area." "A long triangle that could hold Spain, Italy, England, France," "Germany, Belgium, Poland Holland, Czechoslovakia," "Austria, Denmark, Bulgaria, Hungary." "From the Antarctic to the tropical forest, all climates." "Immense untapped natural resources." "A million square kilometres of woodland." "Four thousand kilometres of ocean coastline." "A million square kilometres of continental shelf." "La Pampa, the most famous prairies in the world." "A country that produces 8 million calories of energy per capita, that consumes 10 million and needs many more but exploits barely 3% of its water power and 10% of its arable land." "An immense country, practically deserted." "23 million inhabitants, of which 70% are crowded in the cities." "45% in only one of its 23 provinces, Buenos Aires, where 60% of industry is concentrated and the proletariat." "In the federal capital, the population exceeds 24 thousand inhabitants per square kilometre." "While in Patagonia, the ratio, is less than 2 per square kilometre." "In it's socio economic structure, Argentina is the country that least resembles the rest of Latin America." "It is proportionally the most industrialised." "Its rural population is the smallest." "The percentage of middle class citizens and the living standards are among the highest." "Its working class is unionised." "Its intellectuals are many and brilliant but perhaps the least Latin American on the continent." "This country often called" ""Ranch" country, "Cannery" country, "Breadbasket of the World", is for the oligarchy the product of three factors:" "English gold," "Italian hands, French culture." "3:" "DAILY VIOLENCE" "THE VIOLENCE VISITED ON THE LATIN AMERICAN PEOPLES" "IS A CONSTANT, PLANNED, SYSTEMATIC VIOLENCE" "I am a worker, one of the sacrificed." "I have always worked, even on Sunday." "Now there isn't any work..." "Many factories are closing..." "The government told the police to surround the building..." "When they found out I had been a union delegate..." "A DAILY VIOLENCE" "TO DOMINATE MAN, NAPALM AND POISON GAS ARE NOT YET NECESSARY" "THERE IS AN INFINITY OF ECONOMIC, POLITICAL AND CULTURAL MEANS" "JUST AS EFFECTIVE AS ARMIES" "Sure, I'm afraid of losing my job." "Think of your family, like me." "The police killed three of our friends..." "They fired me because when Peron fell... ..they changed the whole personnel." "They were shooting at us, not in the air!" "The police kept the doors under guard." "Persecution in the factory." "NEO-COLONIAL VIOLENCE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE PUT INTO PRACTICE" "IT IS ENOUGH FOR IT TO EXIST POTENTIALLY" "OUR WAR IS THE PEACE, THE ORDER, THE NORMALITY OF THE SYSTEM" "75% of Argentine workers cannot satisfy their basic needs with what they earn." "The buying power of wages has fallen by 40% in recent years." "Working hours for wage-earners have risen to 11 hours a day." "Our country has one million farm workers but only half have a permanent job." "Latin America, out of a surface area of 20 million square kilometres, has only 6% of arable land under cultivation." "The latifundio: 50% of the land is in the hands of 1.5% of the landowners, while 80% of the population has no land at all." "90% of the rural population lives in shacks and hovels no different from pre-Colombian times." "Electricity, drinking water are lacking, and so is common sanitation." "This is the breeding ground of malnutrition, disease, and hunger." "In Argentina, there are 900 thousand abandoned children." "In the rural zones, of every 100 babies, 70 are illegitimate." "Of every 10 babies born alive, 4 die." "In Brazil: 43% of the infant population dies of hunger, 300 thousand a year." "More children die of malnutrition every year than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki." "40% of the urban population lives in absolute promiscuity." "In Buenos Aires and surrounding areas, 800 thousand people live in sub-standard housing." "45 million Latin Americans lives resigned to poverty, in slums and shanty towns, "corventillos, villas miserias" favelas, ranchardas, cantegriles." "In Argentina:" "one million cases of syphilis, one and a half million cases of tuberculosis, two million cases of "mal de chagas"." "In Latin America, the average worker's income is 20 times less than that of the upper classes." "For 110 million people (half the population) income does not reach 120 dollars a year." "Ten dollars a month." "Thirty cents a day." "If the present rate of development continues, the Argentines... will have to wait 70 years to reach the yearly income of today's Frenchman... and 200 years to reach that of today's American." ""High in the Heavens"" ""a warrior eagle"" ""wings boldly upward"" ""in triumphant flight."" ""Blue one wing"" ""the colour of the sea,"" ""the other blue wing"" ""the colour of the sky."" ""Hovering high above"" ""radiant dawn"" ""arrow's point."" ""It imitates the golden face"" ""and forms a wake in the purple sky."" ""The wing is the patio."" ""The eagle is the flag."" ""It is the flag"" ""of my country"" ""born of the sun"" ""which God gave me."" "4:" "THE PORT CITY" "Buenos Aires nerve centre of neo colonial politics." "White city in a half-breed America." "City built at the expense of the whole country." "7 million inhabitants, 1 million foreigners." "The biggest city in Latin America." "The fifth in the world." "Buenos Aires:" "appendage of the great metropolises." "Here a "gaucho" is as exotic as in Paris, London, or New York." "City of executives and professional people, of the caretakers of neo-colonial interests, overseers of the settlers." "Cradle of the vast middle class which once used and protected by the oligarchy, now thrashes about more defenceless than ever before." "The petty bourgeoisie snivels over an upset world." "For it, the country is intolerable, but unchangeable." "Change is necessary, but impossible." "Deeply attached to its own status and prestige, but quick to follow the latest European fashions," "Satisfied by edifying speeches, by psychologists, and moralizing TV programs." "Buenos Aires: city that turns its back on the country." "In the huge Rio de la Plata." "Here the statues inspire more distrust than awe." "Seat of government of the curia, of the press, of Army headquarters, and 80% of the country's gangsters." "Here the interest in life of the nation is concentrated." "Here monuments have been raised to the man who said:" ""These provinces want to belong to England," ""to obey its laws, be subject to its government," ""live under its powerful influence." CARLOS MARIA DE ALVEAR" "5:" "THE OLIGARCHY 2 million 500 thousand, 2 million 500 thousand..." "Prize champion two-year-old." "Excellent quality, wonderful expression... very male, powerful, well-boned..." "A bull of the San Juan type, with all the qualities." "A bull that belongs to the modern line." "On sale here, Pereira's prize champion two year old." "We have an offer of 2 million pesos." "Agrarian Argentine society, the traditional centre of our oligarchy." "Here they are, the 50 families of Buenos Aires who have taken over ten million acres of land." "One family, the Braum Menendez Behetys, owns 15 million acres." "Here they are." "2% of the cattlemen own 40% of the livestock." "Barely 5% of the active population, which every year makes off with 42% of national income." "The owners of the country!" "Yesterday clinging to the one-crop system and English capital, today associated with the industrial bourgeoisie and American financial capital." "87 million acres in the hands of foreign corporations." "Our ancestors built the country's greatness." "Furthermore, you see, our aristocracy." "in many ways resembles the European." "I remember once in London, a guest of Lord Grifford." "Speaking of our aristocracy he himself compared it to the Polish nobility." "As in the case of one of the Carcano girls who married Lord Astor." "And then the other girl, Juanita Diaz, the foundling they adopted, who married the Duke of Luin." "We don't really have much money." "Today we're as worthless as a businessman who sells cloth." "And yet we have lived drinking mate with "espinillo" or "tala" wood." "Because at one time we had soldiers, who were great civilians." "I want you to know that General Mitre translated Dante, wrote poetry and was a well-known journalist who began the paper "La Nacion"." "General Rocca was also a highly educated man." "And General Augustin P Justo, who few remember, had the best library of Argentine history in the country." "What do these modern folks know?" "Up to a year ago you could go to Punta del Est." "But now?" "Last year it was already unbearable." "There wasn't a corner not full of upstarts!" "I'd like to live in the United States." "There, if you want to go out somewhere, you find thousands of places to go, things to see." "For example, you walk around Paris, and Paris really..." "If the French built it, it's already a demonstration." "Get to know Klee, and at least 3 of Miller's works, and Saint-John Perse and Antonin Artaud and abstract and concrete art, Pop and Op." "Really it's unbelievable." "She takes these country girls into the house to work and last time she gave them a mattress of my sister's." "Within two days she burned it." "Now she gets her sleep on the floor." "Present, the government really intend to straighten things out." "That's what the people need." "During all these years, the General Confederation of Labour promised things and gathered in the money." "This General Confederation of Labour is a huge enterprise." "It's actually a very powerful bank." "But what does it do with all that money." "Nothing!" "The Union delegates go around in cars and silk suits and if you meet one on the street dressed like that, well they're just like hicks." "You can't compare them with a boy from a good family raised in a prep school, Saint George's for example, who associates with human circles, ethical circles, that's the right word ethical!" "He grows with a Christian conception of the family and society." "You can't compare him with one of those sorts." "They're completely uncultured individuals." "Downright illiterate.." "Generally, they either learn to write or get someone else to write their speeches." "They feel themselves foreigners in their own country." "They're recalling their golden years." "La Belle Époque!" "Here they are." "Yesterday they boasted of their Spanish descent today, of their ties with Europe and the United States." "Here they are." "In the name of liberalism, they have exterminated the native population." "They have turned the country into a blood bath many times." "Here they are." "Guilty of the violence daily visited on the people, much to the frustration of many generations of Argentines." "This is their cemetery." "To crystallise history." "To stop time." "To take the past as a future." "This is the dream of the oligarchy." "6:" "THE SYSTEM" "The Vietnamese has only to raise his head to find the enemy." "For us, it is infinitely more difficult." "Neo-Colonialism speaks our language, has our same skin colour, our nationality," "our religion." "It is not easy to recognise the enemy." "Working in Argentina, he operates with the greatest ability to manoeuvre." "There would be no neo-colonialism if internal power factors did not make it possible." "In our country, these factors, are today the agrarian oligarchy and the big industrial bourgeoisie." "The armed forces coordinate and legalise the policy." "The interests of all converge under a single sign:" "The system." "The system." "An internal enemy that throws open the country's doors to neo-colonial penetration." "Courtesy missions arrive in every city." "Hundreds of "Peace Corps" organizations infiltrate the rural areas." "Missionaries of all religions swarm over the remotest parts of every country." "Scholarships and loans are freely awarded, and subsidies to universities, unions and intellectuals." "A common goal unites this infiltration:" "The corruption of the national consciousness to facilitate the domination of the country." "We must unconditionally respect promises made by our allies, to maintain their military presence, unequalled service to the stabilisation of the dollar, to extend our overseas investment, to promote our programs of help and collaboration in Asia and Africa, and to reinforce" "allies favourable to the progress of our hemisphere." "7:" "POLITICAL VIOLENCE" "The Latin American peoples have no chance of changing their lot through the institutions of bourgeois democracy." "Of 20 governments, 17 are the product of rigged elections, or coups d'état." "For 12 years now, the Argentine people have lived politically outlawed." "Their majority movement, Peronism, is illegal." "Their leader, condemned to exile." "The goal the Latin American pursues in his fight for liberation, is the restitution of his humanity, that humanity which neo-colonialism constantly denies him." "NEO-RACISM" "The man of a dependant country will always be for dominant nations, a segregated man, an underdeveloped man," "a subhuman." "A colonised country implies direct forms of racism." "In the dependant, neo-colonised countries, the forms of discrimination are more subtle, but just as effective." "The Argentine oligarchy has on many occasions enforced them in the course of history." "Following Sarmiento's motto, "Civilization of barbarity", the first national form of resistance was crushed in the massacre of "the Monorena"." "Consequently, an anti-national, foreign civilization was imposed." "Yesterday 'gauchos' or 'montoneros' 'crilleros' or 'chusmas'." "Today 'descaminados' or 'grasa' and to a certain extent ' mersa'." "Without question, the people have always been denied a human dignity." "In certain rural zones of the country racism can do without the niceties it uses in the cities and operate out in the open." "The Indian is worth nothing." "And it's not true because we all have the same blood." "We have the same blood, but speak a different language." "That's why you see me naked," "About us, the 'criollos' years ago didn't even bother themselves." "Nobody helped us." "Until today." "We used to go around with the dogs, looking for the means to stay alive." "Or we would take an empty can and go down the river to fish." "That was our whole life." "Nobody helped us... because the Indian was worthless." "Only a Christian had value." "Now they think they treat us like brothers because they have had to accept their own religion." "They thought they could be done with us, that the Indian was worthless." "Just like that without any reason." "And yet we have the same blood and walk like them." "But will the coloniser ever admit that the blood of the man he has colonised is the same as his?" "Here, in a vast region of the country, men, women, individuals do not exist." "There are only the survivors of the ancient Indian tribes, the 'mataco', the 'coya' the 'chulupie'." "Names that in the mouth of the master deny the victim of exploitation his condition as a man." "80% of the Argentine native population has tuberculosis and syphilis." "They remain men, or potential men, who flee the movie camera to avoid the 'criollo' or the white man." "Interiorised, but not convinced of their inferiority." "Men who hardly speak, who hardly sing." "9:" "DEPENDENCE" "THOSE WHO LIVE IN RURAL AREAS SAY" "THERE ARE MOUNTAINS WHERE THEY MINE ENDLESS GOLD." "The thing that characterises the Latin American countries is their dependence." "Economic dependence, political dependence, cultural dependence." "First Spain, then England, now the United States." "The history of our countries is the history of an endless colonial sack." "Political independence does not exist without economic independence." "Jose Marti said:" ""A people that wants to be free must first be free in business"." ""Dependence does not permit any possible development."" "The apparent development of a few cities like Buenos Aires only translates the growing expansion of the great powers within our economy." "Yesterday, Mitre, Pellegrini, Pinedo, today Prebisch, Prigerio, Alsogray." "Loans and investments have always been part of the same politics of subjection." "So called imperialist aid is an aid that always costs he who receives it more than he who gives it." "For every dollar invested in Latin America, imperialism gets back four." "Gold and coffee, meat and oil grain and tin:" "the labour of a people reduced to cheap manpower, has built the wealth of the great powers." "In this exploitation lies the cause of the backwardness, poverty and oppression, that in turn guarantee the financing and prosperity of the rich nations, lies the origin of that obscure word invented by imperialism:" "Underdevelopment." "EVERYDAY WE EXPORT MORE, AND GET BACK THE SAME." "EVERYDAY WE WORK MORE, AND GET BACK THE SAME." "ARGENTINA'S FOREIGN DEBT IS SIX BILLION DOLLARS." "THE FOREIGN MONOPOLIES AND THEIR LOCAL ALLIES" "CONTROL ALMOST ALL THE NATIONAL ECONOMY." "All the meat industry, energy, oil, cereal commerce, the chemical industry the production of cellulose," "70% of tungsten, 92% of lead, 98% of zinc." "Money, Gold." "Also press agencies and the mass media." "10:" "CULTURAL VIOLENCE" "The majority of the population in Brazil, in Bolivia, in Peru, in Venezuela, in Guatemala, Nicaragua," "in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, is illiterate." "70 million people." "A third of the Latin American population does not know how to read and write." "Illiteracy and educational colonization go hand in hand." "In an openly colonised country, ideological penetration is not necessary." "But in a semi-colonised country, ideological penetration plays an essential role." "It destroys in the people the idea of a nation, and institutionalises and normalises dependence." "The primary goal of ideological penetration is to keep the people from becoming aware, from understanding their neo-colonialised position, and from wanting to change it." "In this form, educational colonization effectively replaces the colonial police." "The middle social strata of the population are the carriers of neo-colonial ideology." "The university the principal instrument of this colonization." "Behind the myth of academic freedom, generations of students have been led to believe that the university an island of democracy within an oppressed nation." "The university is an organ of existing political power, designed to mould minds suited to the system." "Behind the farce of academic freedom are hidden the ideologies that legalise dependence:" "the philosophy of the one-crop economy, liberalism, trade, neo-colonial development, technocratism." "All authentically national thought has been censured or simply ignored." "Thus an intelligentsia has grown up that has no ties with the people or the reality of the country." "Now lets visit the Pepsi Cola Salon." "Here Manuel Mujica Lainez, member of the Argentine Academy of Letters, member of the National Academy of Fine Arts, is presenting his latest book:" ""Royal Chronicles"." "Mujica Latinez was recently awarded the "Kennedy Prize"" "and before that the National Literature Prize, the Municipal Prize, the Gerchunoff Prize, and the Pen Club Prize and the Writer's Society Prize, the most important award hereabouts, and the Gold Medal of the Italian Government" "and the decoration of the French writers and many other awards of the 'Gerchunhoff' type that I really don't remember." "Have you been influenced by European culture?" "Yes, a great deal." "I am a man of European formation." "Even as a child I received a classical education." "For that matter, I've done some translations, impossible without such preparation." "It's not just a matter of knowing English, but of capturing the Elizabethan spirit." "Where would you like to live?" "In Venice, always, to the very last moment." "I'd like to live there forever." "Here everything is complicated." "There everything is easier." "All those kids, when they have a vacation they hop on a train and go to" "Venice, or Vienna, Madrid, Paris, wherever they please." "They're so close to everything!" "We're so far away, so out of place!" "This opinion is shared by an intelligentsia subordinated to neo-colonial power, an elite that translates into Spanish, the ideology of the oppressor countries for the petit-bourgeois intellectuals." "A hybrid, depersonalised elite, always hiding behind something, apoliticism or objectivism, indifference or intelligence." "11:" "THE MODELS" "NOTHING IS MORE LOGICAL AMONG US THAN A RACIST HUMANISM," "SINCE THE EUROPEAN HAS ONLY BEEN ABLE TO BECOME A MAN" "BY CREATING SLAVES AND MONSTERS." "COMRADES, LET US NOT HONOUR EUROPE" "BY CREATING STATES, INSTITUTIONS AND SOCIETIES IN ITS IMAGE." "HUMANITY EXPECTS MORE FROM US THAN THIS CARICATURING" "AND GENERALLY OBSCENE IMITATION." "As soon as he learns to read," "a child in a dependent country is assailed by all the models of a civilization he is forced to accept as a single, universal value." "Universalizing themselves as a class and system, the bourgeoisie and imperialism universalise the culture that supports their domination." "Behind the myth of a universal culture they have hidden, in Latin America, their interests as a colonial class." "Hegel said:" ""The best thing a child can do with his toys is break them"." "But breaking down these values in which one has believed since childhood, to maintain itself, neo-colonialism needs to convince the people of their inferiority." "Sooner or later, inferior man will recognise Man with a capital M, and this recognition will mark the collapse of all his defences." "If you really want to be a man, says the oppressor, you must be like me, speak my language, deny your essence, alienate yourself in me." "Neo-colonised man, the intellectual, the artist, have value only when they are recognised by the metropolis." "The paternalism of European culture conceals the deeply rooted racism of the colonizing powers." "As early as the 17th century, Jesuit missionaries praised the extraordinary ability of the native in copying European works of art." "Copyist, translator, interpreter, at best, spectator." "Neo-colonised man will always be led to leave his own creative capacities untapped." "Far from assimilating and transforming the values of other cultures to build his own, he gives up all efforts at research and invention." "The result is inhibition, uprooting, escapism, cultural cosmopolitanism, artist imitation, the betrayal of the country." "The model of a universal man, with universal values, universal culture, will always win out over historical and class values." "CULTURE WILL BECOME A UNIVERSAL FACT AT THE SERVICE OF ALL MEN" "WHEN WE HAVE DESTROYED AT THE UNIVERSAL LEVEL" "IMPERIALISM AND CLASS SOCIETY, WHEN WE HAVE UNIVERSALIZED" "THE COMPLETE LIBERATION OF MAN" "Christ touched the sick, the dead eyes of the blind, and made them see." "He touched the ears of the deaf and made them hear." "He put his hands on the cripple and they got up and walked." "The dead came back to life." "Good men of Jerusalem, unnail those two hands gently, all powerful, merciful." "You will understand like Veronicas, who understand all the suffering of humanity!" "I see the gentleman has a ring on his finger." "A metal ring." "And his tie?" "It is green." "Any question you want to ask her." "She'll receive you in private, because naturally, there are questions that can't be answered in public." "Madam Diana will offer ten free consultations." "Now you can ask her a free question." "Anyone who has problems, about money, love, health." "If you have no money, ask away." "Madam Diana will answer for free." "All you need is faith and hope." "I see the gentleman has taken the 7 of spades." "The 7 of spades means he's not well, he's depressed." "All he has to do is ask me about it." ""Soledad!" "I've finally made Pepito confess"." "Now I'm going to the police." "They'll know I'm innocent." ""Mamma!" "My luck has finally turned!"" "Priests, fortune tellers, faith healers, counsellors, astrologers, professors of morals." "Between the system and the people, there is a network of persons whose task is to sow confusion." "Neo-colonial violence thus also takes on sublimated forms." "God, Fate, Destiny, Immortality are made to seem responsible for a situation created by the ruling classes." "12:" "IDEOLOGICAL WARFARE" "In Latin America, the war is waged principally in the minds of men." "Ideological frontiers replace conventional ones." "The means of mass communication replace conventional weapons." "For neo-colonialism, mass communications are more effective than napalm." "An army of psychologists, sociologists, motivational analysts, try to divide and conquer the trade unions, political and student organizations." "The popular movements are suffocated or slandered, their leaders smeared." "Films, magazines, the radio and periodicals, try to de-politicise the people, to spread scepticism and escapism." "Prejudices and complexities are developed against everything native." "People are taught to think in English." "ALL MEANS OF MASS COMMUNICATION" "ARE CONTROLLED BY THE C.I.A." "CENSORSHIP AND IDEOLOGICAL REPRESSION ARE TOTAL" "REALITY," "TRUTH," "REASON" "ARE," "LIKE THE PEOPLE," "ON THE EDGE OF THE LAW." "ARTISTS AND INTELLECTUALS ARE INTEGRATED INTO THE SYSTEM." "VIOLENCE," "CRIME," "DESTRUCTION" "BECOME" "PEACE," "ORDER" "NORMALITY" "I am a man of European origin..." "Universal, cosmic..." "We not are citizens of a country, but of the world." "Humanity, peace, love." "The 7 of spades means he's not well." "Ethical, that's the right word, ethical." "Abstract art, Pop and Op." "MONSTROSITY DISGUISED AS BEAUTY" "13:" "THE CHOICE" "The Latin American peoples are condemned peoples." "Neo-colonialism does not permit them to choose either their own life or their own death." "Life and death both bear the mark of daily violence." "This is our war." "Of hunger, of curable diseases of premature age... 4 people a minute die in Latin America." "5,500 a day, 2 million a year." "This is our war!" "A genocide of 15 years." "The first world war." "What is the only thing left for the Latin American?" "To choose through rebellion his own life and his own death." "For the man who dies in the struggle for liberation, death is no longer the end." "It becomes an act of liberation, a conquest." "The man who chooses his own death is also choosing his own life." "He is already life and liberation itself..." "In his revolutionary action, the Latin American recovers his existence." "The end of "Neo-colonialism and Violence", the first part of the film." "The Hour of the Furnaces Part Two, "The Time of Liberation", and Part Three, "Violence and Liberation", are accounts of the Argentine people during the 20 years preceding 1967." "Action for Liberation" "Notes, testimonials and debate about the recent liberation struggle of the Argentinean people." "Second part of:" "THE HOUR OF THE FURNACES" "Our thanks to the workers, farmers, revolutionary activists, intellectuals, workers' unions and people's organizations who helped in the making this film." "To the Perónist proletariat, who built the national conscience of the Argentineans." "GENERAL ORDER JULY 27, 1819" "Comrades in the Andes army:" "We must fight however we can." "We may have no money, but we won't lack meat and tobacco." "When our clothes run out, we'll wear those our women make for us, or we'll be stark naked, like our fellow countrymen, the Indians." "We'll be free, and nothing else matters." "Let's swear never to stop fighting until the country is totally free, or else let's die fighting as brave men." "Tri-continental brothers:" "Revolutionary violence will put an end to imperialist crimes." "Liberation or death!" ""The nature of imperialism is what turns man into a beast"." "Imperialism is international and must be fought internationally." "The Third World!" ""The people defend their rights." "Neither Wessin nor the Yanks nor death will stop us"." ""Coexistence" with imperialism legalises its barbarity." "Unity!" "Active solidarity with the peoples that have been attacked!" ""Many Vietnams is the objective." "To create two, three, many."" "Long live internationalism at the roots of combat!" "Revolution is our greatest cultural manifestation." "The nationalism of the oppressed countries negates the nationalism of oppressing countries." "Motherland or death!" "The destruction of imperialism will free all men." "Death to US imperialism." "Either a socialist revolution or a mock revolution." "The new man." "The victory for Third World countries will be a victory for the whole of mankind." "Comrades, this is not just the showing of a film, neither is it merely a spectacle." "It is first of all an action for the liberation of Argentina and Latin America:" "an action of anti-imperialist unity." "There's room for all those who identify with this struggle." "This is not a place for spectators, or the enemy's accomplices, but for the authors and main actors in the process that this film tries to document and explain." "This film is a preamble for dialogue, for the search, for different wills to meet." "It's an open report that we offer for your consideration, for you to discuss after the screening is over." "The most important thing is to create this unitary space, this dialogue for liberation." "Our opinions are as valuable as yours, and you can add to this action any other view or experience to enrich this chronicle of the liberation." "To finish, our comrade narrator is going to speak." "He will update the nature of this act, based on current circumstances." "I ask all of you, as a first act of united will, to pay homage to all peoples and their armed fronts, who are now violently fighting imperialism and colonialism." "To politicize is to open, waken, give birth to the spirit." "It is, as Cesaire said, to invent souls." "Unit and committee meetings are religious acts." "They are privileged opportunities for man to hear and speak." ""lf everybody must compromise in the struggle for common salvation, there are no pure hands, nor spectators, nor innocents." "We all soil our hands in the marshes of our land, in the open space of our minds." "Every spectator is a coward or a traitor"." "Frantz Fanon." "Space for the intervention of our narrator." "CHRONICLES OF PERONISM 1945-1955" "National and popular movements were the first appearances in history of most Latin American peoples." "They were the first actions of breaking with neo-colonial serfdom." "OCTOBER 17" "On 17 October 1945 the Argentinean masses burst for the first time onto the national political scene." "The eternal dispossessed, the marginalised, became the great actors in our history." "The 17th October was the start of the current process of liberation for Argentina." "Hundreds of thousands of workers spontaneously assaulted the iron and stone city." "They submerged their feet in the forbidden fountains to the horror of civil servants and colonial administrators." "The "shirtless" who spontaneously invaded the streets of Buenos Aires are none other than the direct descendants of those nationals who followed San Martín on the Andes, or of the "Montoneras" who went with Varela or El Chacho." "The people claimed that day their leader's freedom." "October 17th marked the birth of Perón." "Perón emerged as the national expression of a people determined to achieve their definitive independence." "Evita is the flag carrier for the lowest and most exploited groups." "The working people are the motherland's humble people, standing here and across the whole country to follow Perón, as he has risen the flag of redemption and justice for the working masses." "They'll follow him against oppression from domestic and foreign traitors." "Because I want my people to know that we are all willing to die for Perón." "And let the traitors know that we will no longer appear to them, as Perón did on 28th September." "We will die while taking justice in our own hands." "The enemy is lurking, he never forgives." "And those who would sell the country for a few coins are also lurking, to strike at any moment." "But we are the people, and I know that if the people are vigilant we are invincible, because we are the motherland itself." "Perónism came to put an end to the effects of an infamous decade, the era that started in 1930 with the oligarchic military dictatorship that overthrew Irigoyen." "The years of national corruption, soup kitchens, ignominious frauds, and assassins paid by the committee." "A time when Argentinean politics were managed between the British embassy and the army." "A shameless handover of the national wealth." "Intellectualism, pseudo-Leftism and Perónism." "What was the world in 1945?" "The inter-imperialist war was ending." "A new parting of the world was starting." "The Chinese Revolution did not exist, nor the so-called popular democracies." "The Arab countries had not freed themselves." "India was not yet a republic." "Colonialism ruled in most of Asia and Africa." "In the name of Marxism the idea was encouraged that Soviet and US armies marched together for the liberation of all peoples." "The Third World was hardly an active project." "What did the rise of Perónism mean at that time?" "Perónism was a precedent, and a new one in our country." "The Argentinean intellectuals would lose direction again, as with the "Montoneras" and Irigoyenism." "The Justicialist revolution was to challenge all their preconceptions." "It wasn't fronted by a clear leadership, but a group of military men." "No red flags were raised, but Argentinean blue and white flags." "How could this not worry an intellectual sector dependant on European revolutionary models?" "In 1945, the intellectuals were not engaged with the needs of the country." "In those days, the university federation declared mourning for Roosevelt's death, and Borges praised the Allies." "One was either with the Allies or a Nazi, never an Argentinean." "Anything "national" was alarming and suspicious." "The middle classes, influenced by the intellectuals and with neo-colonial blessing," "saw in Perónism just a" "Nazi-fascist-falangist conspiracy." "The Communist Party leaders called it a clan of the "classless", of prostitutes and rogues." "They joined with antinational groups in the Democratic Union Front." "We are going to witness the solemn creation of the" "Democratic Union." "Rodolfo Guioldi, leader of the Communist Party will now speak." "The people will vote for the Democratic Union formula because firstly it will mean a constitutional normalization, and a democratic peace process for the Argentineans." "Secondly, its program will guarantee the progress of the nation and wellbeing for the people." "Voting for this formula, the people will beat the Nazi-fascist axis in the Argentinean Republic." "From the Progressive Democratic Party, Dr. Díaz Arana." "The Progressive Democratic Party has long stood for the need to unite democratic forces to recover, through common action, constitutional normality and a fully democratic regime not subjugated by dictatorship." "Those who could write had nothing to say." "They marched arm in arm, cheered by US ambassador Braden." "Those still illiterate" ""wrote" alone, through their action, the National Liberation." "That old sing-song of "yes to shoes, no to books"" "would be the fair response from the people to the distant and foreign-influenced intellectuals." "The movement was seizing the power which the National Revolutionary intellectualism lacked." "The phenomenon of a dependant intellectualism occurred in Argentina both on the Left and the Right." "The Socialist Party conformed to the liberal models of European social democracy." "The Communist Party followed the international precepts." "The so called "Popular Fronts", with the bourgeoisie," ""Centrism" and Browderism, were political expressions of Stalinism." "J. Abelardo Ramos says" ""Stalinism has never supported truly national movements in Latin America, but rather, anti-national coalitions."" "Due to this politics, from 1945 in Argentina the words Communism, Marxism and Socialism were synonyms with treason for the proletariat, through no fault of real Communism, Marxism and Socialism." "Perónism in Power." "Perónism displaced oligarchy and imperialism from positions of power, causing their first great defeat in the history of the country." "The mass movement which reached power in a few months originated from very particular national and international circumstances." "The strong proletariat and bourgeoisie created by industrial development didn't feel represented by the traditional parties." "A national army and a leader," "Perón, brought together those new forces at a good time for the Argentinean economy." "The National Front comprised the army, some sectors of the industrial bourgeoisie, the church, the middle classes from inner regions, rural workers, and the whole of the young proletariat." "Three themes unified the movement:" "Economic independence, political sovereignty, and social justice." "Perónism is the attempt to go from a semi-colony of shepherds to an independent nation." "This attempt was carried out by a movement whose axis was the proletariat and for whom the revolution of 1945 had a deeply anti-imperialist meaning." "Perón did not assume power as a Marxist, but as a national politician forced to improvise politics and a party." "He was the embodiment of a popular force, still too historically immature to be anything other than a national movement and its leader." "The movement's popular nationalism unleashed in 1945 the most advanced liberation process which, at that time, could take place in our country." "1945-1955:" "Ten years of national democracy." "For the first time, the whole external debt is brought home and no deals are signed with imperialist countries." "External commerce is centralized." "Industry is protected." "High wages." "No unemployment." "The central bank is nationalized, as are railways, gas, telephone, public services and bank credits." "Women vote for the first time." "A Workers Central and industrial unions are established." "76,000 public works." "More schools are built in 10 years than in the last one and a half centuries of national history." "Contradictions of a national movement." "A national and popular movement in power implies deep contradictions:" "some external, in fighting imperialism and oligarchy, others internal, due to the many social classes being integrated." "The multi-class base of the movement, which had been its strength in 1945, would later be its weakness." "The industrial bourgeoisie was accommodating and had no national consciousness." "It was more scared of the proletariat's demands than of submission to imperialism." "Perónism had taken power from the oligarchy, but it had within it the oligarchy's allies." "So, oligarchic economic power remained the same." "The old regime's institutions were not substantially modified." "A national revolution that doesn't eliminate its main contradiction with the enemy is weakened by its internal contradictions." "Its politics become hesitant." "It attacks the oligarchy, but does not eliminate its underlying base." "It calls for social revolution, but doesn't fully carry out the national revolution." "It oscillates between a people's democracy and a bureaucracy's dictatorship." "Crisis in the Perónist Circle." "From 1950 the circumstances that made the National Front possible disappeared." "Political and union leaderships entered a clear bureaucratization process." "Evita died and the movement lost its most combative figure." "The proletariat was unwilling to face the problems alone." "The class struggle, contained for some time, started to show within the movement." "In 1955, the National Front finally divided itself completely." "The church, some sections of the army and the whole of the bourgeoisie surrendered to the oligarchy and became an enemy of the revolution." "The Party was a bureaucratic fiction." "The lack of a revolutionary organization and leadership was the movement's weakness." "Without this, any mass organization is an easy target for the enemy." "On 16 June 1955 aircraft supported by some navy units attacked the government and the city centre." "As in 1945, workers suddenly left their factories and flooded into the city to support Perón." "For the first time in the country's history, civilians were the target of a mass bombing." "They demanded weapons from the army, to no avail." "Equipped with old shotguns, sticks and tiles they tried to assault the Navy Ministry and were repelled by machine guns." "The workers collaborated with the army in a battle lasting just a few hours." "The movement had gone through its first blood and fire ordeal." "The victory cost over 300 civilian deaths." "A few days later" "Perón requested a ceasefire from the enemy." "In consternation at the facts and circumstances, we offer an open hand in good faith hoping that our enemy will hold on to it." "To prove our good will and our discipline in the Party, I ask all our members for a political ceasefire." "We will await the results of this sincere call, staying calm in the face of comments that will surely be made by malicious factions." "As in our past ordeals, the way to act is the same:" "from home to work and back home again." "Always alert and watching." "But a country divided in two does not accept ceasefires." "On August 31st" "Perón resigned the presidency." "The people took to the streets again and forced him to withdraw his resignation." "In the meantime, the oligarchy prepared their strike." "The most significant groups of the Left joined Perónism only when it was too late." "Perón was isolated by a servile bureaucracy which was already making deals with the enemy." "The army deserted him." "From the balconies of Government House" "Perón invited the movement to fight the oligarchy." "That would be his last speech to the people." "How long ago did this Mayo Square witness yet another infamy committed by the enemies of the people?" "They will look for countless excuses." "Reasons of freedom, justice, religion." "But what they want is one thing only, to bring the situation back to 1943." "To violence, we must respond with even greater violence." "The way to act for every Perónist, whether isolated or within an organization, is to respond to a violent action with even greater violence." "And when one of ours goes down, five of theirs will fall too." "Either we fight to consolidate what we have achieved or the oligarchy will destroy the country." "Every one of you must remember:" "the word now is "fight"" "and we are going to fight everywhere!" "To finish, I want to remind all of you that today a new armed vigilance begins for us." "We all must consider" "that the people's fight rests on our shoulders and we must show every day, in all our actions, the necessary will to conduct the people's fight." "The National Defeat." "A few days later, the army removed Perón from power." "The only base left for the movement was the organized proletariat and some middle class sectors." "Perónism went down without a fight." "The CGT, which a few days before called for workers' militias, now made announcements calling for peace." "The Perónist high council did the same." "The points of resistance erected in some workers' neighbourhoods were easily annihilated by the army." "On a gray and desolate day a formerly national army, now a "Gorilla", occupied the city." "Why did Perón abandon power?" "How could a government with two-thirds of the vote go down without a fight?" "Was it Perón's error not to arm his people?" "He could have done." "Was the movement ready for a civil war?" "In what direction?" "With what organization?" "The rest is a chronicle." "The Gorilla Party." "The city of stone and iron celebrated." "Rural society sang their victory on the streets." "The shops closed." "Flags were ordered to hang from all churches." "The Vatican flag was cheered by liberals at Mayo Square." "Again, Argentinean intellectuals were serving the enemy." "The Argentinean writers' society greeted Perón's fall." "The University Federation said" ""Let today's joy and anxiety give us the measure of our responsibility."" "The Socialist Party said" ""We greet the great liberation effort that the Argentinean people have just made."" "Victorio Codovila, leader of the Communist Party, said" ""This revolution is positive as it removed a fascist dictatorial regime."" "Ernesto San Martino, a radical leader who in the past had compared the people to a zoological horde, said" ""I believe the Party must fight united." "Radicalism is the only organic, serious and responsible solution that the country expects after this deep political, social and moral crisis that has shaken the Republic."" "The Liberator's Violence." "Meanwhile, the system plans its violence." "The Congress will be dissolved." "Perónism will be persecuted, and there will be a ban on mentioning, publishing or exhibiting its symbols." "There will be an attempt to erase 10 years of history from the people's memory." "150,000 trade union leaders will be suspended." "Tens of thousands will be arrested." "Many of them will be sent to Patagonia." "The trade unions, assaulted by the army and civil "gorilla" commandos, with 4,000 teachers and university clerks, will be suspended without trial." "Raul Previs will set the grounds for an economic plan based on the free market." "At the time of Perón's fall there was no external debt." "10 years later, the debt reached 6 billion dollars." "The IMF will start to influence national economic policy." "The economy will start a de-nationalization process, and the Constitution of 1949, which granted the rights of workers, family, the elderly, education and culture, will be abolished." "The violent decade was about to start." "Reflections for a Dialogue." "The defeat of 1955 was the defeat of the most advanced attempt for a national multi-class front in Argentina." "The inability of the bourgeoisie to carry out the liberation process was blatant." "The defeat of 1955 shows again that the fight for national liberation cannot be separated from the class struggle, that there is no winning a national revolution if it is not also a social revolution." "It is important to look into the past to extract critical conclusions to reinforce the present struggle:" "only those within the battles will lose or win them." "A national movement's limitations can only be dealt with from inside, through the struggle for national and social liberation." "Perónism can be blamed for making errors while in power, but these can only by judged within the limitations of a given historical moment." "In September 1955, it had been one year since American mercenaries had invaded Guatemala" "and defeated the government elected by the people." "Vargas committed suicide in Brazil blaming imperialism." "One year later, Fidel Castro landed in Playa Giron." "Two years later, the war in Algeria shook the world." "In five years the name of Lumumba assumed continental significance in Africa." "After five years" "Cuba became the first free state of America." "The Justicialist revolution was only one additional expression of the continental revolution which was also occurring in Mexico, Bolivia, Guatemala, and which would gain its first great victory against imperialism in Cuba." "THE RESISTANCE" "Comrades, in realising this film, our intention was to collect information on the fights carried out by our people starting from 1955." "We knew that this information had been diminished by the system and did not appear in the official files, nor in the libraries, nor in the cineclubs." "But we discovered that the popular organizations themselves, trade unions, even political organizations, did not have the necessary information." "How could this be?" "Is it the organizations?" "The limited number of national intellectuals?" "In a certain way, yes." "A people not yet free cannot gather information nor crystallize firm ideas or conclusions about a fight not yet defined." "The urgency of the immediate struggle does not make the people conscious of the importance of the ongoing battle." "History remains in the collective subconscious." "That's why we have directed our research towards this collective memory while speaking with workers, activists, trade unions, and political leaders, the peasants, the students and the employees." "The experience showed us the distance between the intellectuals and the people." "Many comrades avoided speaking out for fear of reprisals from the system, certainly, but especially from a natural distrust." "We had to show that there existed in the country a nationalized intellectual substrata and that others are on this path." "The reality of working clandestinely certainly did not facilitate easier access to information." "In spite of that, we bring to you here the elements, the notes, the experiences, to submit them for your consideration, comrades." "The purpose of this compilation is to draw certain conclusions at the end of the projection about the most effective way to conduct the fight today." "SPONTANEITY" "As we said in the story about Perónism," "September 1955 is only one tactical defeat in a long war of liberation." "Spontaneously, the proletariat went down into the streets to show that it was not overcome." "The flags were torn from those who believed they were jubilant." "The young people climbed the lower wall and withdrew flags from the balconies." "Many trucks full of people came and some leaders came in a car." "They said "Guys, do not go to the bridge, the army is there"" "but no one listened, enthusiasm was at its highest." "Suddenly there were people on horses." "A comrade, member of the textile union, speaks about the first spontaneous demonstration which took place in Buenos Aires on September 1955, on the same day that the oligarchy took over power." "We moved towards the bridge and started to shout:" "Mayo Square!" "Mayo Square!" "As if we wanted to revive 17 October 1945." "And we arrived at the bridge, but the army was already there." "On seeing the soldiers, the people stopped and the army began to shoot." "People fled, then someone said" ""They're firing blanks." "Let's go forward." "Let's shout:" "Viva Perón!"" "Enthusiasm was at its highest." "However they didn't use blanks." "It was live ammunition, as we could see holes in the walls and asphalt!" "It became serious." "Some fell." "I remember someone who was in front of us." "I don't know what happened to him, but he fell down and didn't get up again." "Then the commotion began." "We were a good thousand." "Our enthusiasm was at its peak, but each of us was alone because we didn't know what we wanted to do." "Everyone had followed the demonstration." "We were numerous, we wanted to do something, but we didn't have orders of any kind." "We did not know how to attack, or retreat." "Essentially, we didn't know how to fight." "There was no one to lead us." "Everything was spontaneous." "People fled on all sides." " Without adequate organization, people joined in resistance by spontaneous mobilization." "Perónism had given to this mobilization a national cohesion, an objective." "During the last decade, this spontaneous movement became the great virtue of the Argentinean masses." "It didn't try to reform the system, but to destroy it." "The goal of all the political struggles and trade unions was to re-capture power for the people." "Action always came before a theoretical formulation." "It was insolent, disrespectful." "It was ignorant of the old theoreticians of the revolution." "Instead of fixed ideology, it had the advantage of being the project of an ideology, of seeking, of invention." "THE UNDERGROUND" "The experience of comrade Martiniano Martin leader of two automobile unions, was identical to that of the entire Argentinean proletariat." "After 1955 there was a fundamental change." "In 1955 one did not know the labour laws." "One went to the trade union and made a complaint." "If there was a problem, the functionaries would say "pay him his due, he is entitled"" "and that was it." "But after 1955, we could file a complaint when we wanted but there were no more delegations, they were out, there were only pursuits and arrests." "Many comrades had to leave the country and ask the neighbouring countries for asylum." "Our comrades were afraid because of the constant persecution." "One even feared to confide in comrades for fear the other would denounce you to the personnel manager, which meant persecution." "That is to say, being taken from your bed at midnight and finding yourself in the street with your children." "Then we began a resistance, we organized a clandestine resistance." "We met at coffee bars, or at comrades' homes, at risk of being caught by the police." "Often we even organized the resistance while in prison." "When comrades were arrested we somehow tried through intermediaries to continue our activities." "By any means." "Many comrades died in prison, many were struck down by the police." "But in two years, we obtained the restoration of the Confederation." "General of Work." "Angel Taborda, trade unionist." "I worked in metallurgy." "I remember that each day patrols came to teach a lesson to one of the directors, a comrade of the board of management or commissioner of the company." "And they tried... they took them, they came to punish them, because they were told there was a Perónist resistance group there." "I remember that the police force had once tried to remove a bust of Evita." "The resistance entered a new stage of the national struggle, which would become the first act of the underground movement." "During this fight, the proletariat invented, or discovered, some forms of resistance which it had never used before." "CHRONICLE 1955-1959" "Perónism constitutes a cursed event for the political system." "Supported by the trade union organizations it would cause, during the last 10 years, the most serious crises of democratic-liberal institutions." "Around the world, the Argentinean proletariat was seen as carrying out the greatest number of politico-trade union battles." "After the 1955 coup d'état, the country seems to have been occupied by an invading army." "Tanks, soldiers, gendarmes, occupy the streets, evacuate the factories, mobilize against trade unions." "In the underground, the proletariat organize the first few strikes." "The General Confederation of Labour calls for a nationwide strike in November 1955." "Later, the metal workers' strike will last 50 days and will cause the dismissal of 30,000 workers and the arrest of 2,000 activists and delegates." "Each mobilization of the proletariat leads to the hardest of repressions." "In June 1956, on the waste ground of Léon Suarez, many national militants were shot without legal procedure." "In spite of the repression, in 1957, 252 trade union strikes were organized, most of them national strikes." "And 397 strikes in 1959." "The Gorilla revolution calls for new elections." "The forbidden Perónists deliver the voting cards blank and obtain a majority of the votes." "The trade unions are the principal bastions of the movement in each meeting." "In 1958, the Perónist vote allow Frondizi to win." "That same year, the oil industry goes on strike and in the confederation of trade unions, there is resistance to the contracts signed by Frondizi with the imperialists." "Some time before, sixty-two organizations, which emerged after the General Confederation of Labour's intervention, approved the "Falda" program in Cordoba." "This program proposed the liquidation of foreign monopolies, expropriation of large estates, the cancellation of treaties that were hindering the national economy, nationalization of the main sources of our economy, and workers' control of production and trade." "THE TRADE UNIONS" "In 1955, Argentinean trade unions ceased being semi-public institutions and transformed into authentic engines of resistance," "becoming for the proletariat the first school, its only university." "Many comrades have entered the struggle, but we shouldn't fool ourselves." "The working class no longer had a political party after the fall of Perón." "A legal party, I mean to say, by the means of its legal organization." "The trade unions could only carry out limited action." "Delegates and trade union leaders constituted the only forward-looking intellectuals from which the movement could profit." "In a neo-colonized country like Argentina in the last decade, the trade unions had a double role as both organization and political party." "Victor Guilder, nationalist militant." "Where the minimum demand is to shake the whole system and disturb the economic, social and political equilibrium." "Very different from developed, independent countries where the different sectors in the political fight arise relatively independently, with their own demands, which can be in conformity with the demands of power." "Here that's not the case." "On the contrary, many have tried to equate our situation with that of a developed country, hiding the real goals of the workers movement while wanting to make us believe that we were in an independent country, whereas we are" "underdeveloped, dependent and colonized." "And the trade unions wanted to be limited to an impossible reformism because of the economic situation of the working class." "The failure in Argentina of the parties of the left and the supposedly popular parties made it possible for the trade unions to replace what the people had not known, solidarity for the great mass of the workers." "Angel Perelman, one of the founders of the union of the metal-workers." "Argentinean trade unionism does not fight solely for wages." "We dream and believe particularly in the possibility of a large national social revolution, in favour of the working class and of the entire country, for which we have fought since independence." "It has been thousands of years already." "A patriarch named Job said" "Militia est vita hominis super terram, the life of humans on earth is a continual fight." "Raimondo Ongaro, Recently Appointed Secretary-General of the New General Confederation of Work (CGT), in March 1969." "We can't speak only about the role which trade unionism must assume, because today we live at a time of mobilization, of combat, in a state of emergency." "What would it accomplish to have rich trade unions, having important property, and certain sectors of workers profiting from right living conditions, elevated, worthy, in a poor fatherland, in a dependent country, in a nation" "whose people are poor, people who miss all these good things that civilization regards as essential for each citizen, each individual?" "That's why we take to heart a definition of trade unionism which thinks with an Argentinean dimension, which includes the entire country and not the restricted zone of a trade union." "Everything else is old history;" "in a country which does not develop itself, nobody can develop themselves, neither as a group nor a person." "Those of us who are ready to write history have the same animated spirit as these men who, in the catacombs, faced the governments, faced the power and the lion's dens." "The weapons and the methods of repression are modernized." "The blood of the worthy Argentinean is ready, disposed to rebel against all repression." "They will not be made to kneel down." "We believe that the rifles of those who want to shoot us will miss because there will always remain Argentineans disposed to fight, to achieve the will of the Argentineans." "ERA OF DEVELOPMENT" "This same middle-class which, in 1955, had accepted oligarchic hegemony, tried with Frondizi, 3 years later, an intermediate policy, aiming at harnessing the proletariat." "In new industrial sectors." "Integration seeks to involve some sectors of Perónism in an initiative which favours only the middle-class related to imperialism." "Frondizi personifies the most obvious, bourgeois opportunism." "Naively, the policy of development hoped to find, in the USA, a generous sponsor like the old oligarchy had found in England." "The outcome of this policy was the promotion of private free enterprise and an open door for foreign capital, privatization of national enterprises, liquidation and removal of small industry, subjection to the International Monetary Fund, and a repression of the people." "This was compatible with the interests of the investors." "Popular resistance had not been foreseen by the planned Kennedy development." "In January 1959, the slaughterhouse workers went on strike and occupied it to prevent its return to private management." "The police force, in armoured cars, evacuated the buildings, crushing resistance." "Three months later, it's the bank clerks who strike for sixty days." "100 employees find themselves imprisoned in the barracks." "Students also take part in the fight." "During this year, there are 250 student protests." "Never before had the proletariat trusted so much in its own strength." "Never as in the course of this year had the limits of various directions of politico-union activists become so obvious." "In 1959, the fight for popular power became extremely violent." "Perónism combined the trade union struggle with terrorism, sabotage and military action." "The first guerrillas went into action in Tucuman under the command of Uturunco." "General Iniguez sponsored the military mutiny of Rosario." "The tanks of the Shell oil company in Cordoba are blown up a little later and more than 300 million litres of fuel burn." "The repression of the police, which bore the name of "Plan Conintes", led to brutal torture and murder." "The resistance against the force of the system did not diminish." "From 1959 to 1964, one can count 1400 acts of terrorism and sabotage." "The Perónist terror tactics do not succeed in winning power but succeed in avoiding, between 1959 and 1962, the integrationist traps of Frondizism, to which certain sectors of the national movement belonged." "Frondizi, like Betancourt, Haya de la Torre," "Figueres and so many others, symbolized the sterility of the Latin American Bourgeoisie, their historical death." "THE MIDDLE CLASS AND INTELLECTUALS" "The fight of the mass movements started to weaken the antinational front which had seized power from them." "The oligarchy lost its traditional influence on the middle class." "There developed, and strengthened gradually in intellectual circles, the idea of understanding Argentina as a nation." "It seems important to me, to explain the role of the intellectual in Argentina, in particular the intellectuals of the Left." "Franco Moni, writer, journalist." "Until today the left-wing intellectual in Argentina did not play any serious part, no coherent role for the Left or the revolution." "He was a very elegant alibi of the system, playing its game so the system incorporated him." "Why did he not understand the most brilliant moments of the Argentine people?" "Why was the intellectual of the Left not tied, for example, to the Perónist process?" "Because he always thinks in the shadow of old Europe, that hands are either dirty or clean." "I believe it is time to clear up this old problem of the conscience, of purity, of the Oedipus complex." "As long as the Argentinean left operates under this shadow created by Europe, besides being magnificently propagated by our system and liberal education, quite simply it has no purpose." "THE MILITARY" "The provincial elections of 1962 surprise the military." "The Secretary-General of the textile trade union, Andres Framini, is elected governor of the most important province in the country," "Buenos Aires." "The army intervenes and cancels the elections, overturns Frondizi, dissolves the national congress and installs an appendage like a president:" "Guido." "The national movement is unable to uphold the will of the people." "Large sectors of the movement had done nothing except engage in an electoral game which was completely fraudulent." "The facade of the bourgeoisie had already begun to crumble long before." "The only two previous times, in 1916 and 1946, when the government was elected by the people, it was reversed by a military coup." "The continual action of Perónism through to 1962 places the authorities in a difficult crisis." "Their greatest concern is to find the best way to neutralize the movement." "From 1962, the trade unions begin a new form of resistance:" "the occupation of factories." "In 1964, the confederation of trade unions deepens the so called "Conflict Plan"." "For the first time in Latin American history, a thousand premises are occupied simultaneously." "More than three million workers take part in these occupations." "1964 is also the year in which Perón tries to return." "The Brazilian military force the issue, obeying instructions from the Pentagon to return him from exile." "It is in 1964 that new groups of guerrillas appear who are decimated before they even enter into action." "The most intense battles at this time are by the proletariat of the interior with strikes, occupations and hunger strikes." "The Perónists victory at the 1965 elections shakes the system again." "To counter the threat of another Perónist success, in 1967 the army decides to forestall them, becoming an arm of the government." "It becomes the government itself." "The only thing the Communist and Socialist parties can do is to ask for the democratic-civil institutions to be maintained." "The local centre of Perónism places their hopes in allegedly nationalist sectors of the army," "however the goals of the so-called Argentine revolution soon become obvious." "By prohibiting the political parties, they do not want to limit the generous freedom that the civil parties enjoy, but to suffocate the Perónist movement." "By dismantling the autonomy of the universities, they want to act against the radicalization of important sectors of the middle class." "By the continued threat of an intervention, in opposition to the confederation of trade unions, it wants to push them into an open collaboration with the system in place to give victory to neo-colonialism." "THE STUDENT MOVEMENT" "Leader of the new reform movement." "What are the most important actions of the student movement in the last ten years?" "In the first place, the establishment of the great force of mobilization of student movements." "It is also important to see that this fight has been directed in only one political direction with liberal goals, established by facts," "such as for example in 1955 when they were deceived by the oligarchy to contain the popular movement." "The great strike of 1958, with more than 100,000 students, was about the issue of "liberal or national training"' while Frondizi sold off the riches of Argentina to imperialist Yankees." "In the more recent battles, in 1964/65, the student movement perceived a new reality and realized that it was to deviate from its old positions and stick to the most important question of the moment:" "anti-imperialism or colonial dependence." "Octavio Getino questioned Julio Barbarao, a student, about how he sees the current situation of the student movement after the last coup d'état." "I think that the coup d'état contributed, like all the methods which the right wing tested, to slow down historical development and in the final analysis, the revolutionary process." "That is, it forced us students to leave our island." "For most of us, who come from a Christian background, we break the patterns and return to the origin." "This situation has really important and interesting aspects for us." "We collaborate with people who come from Marxism, from orthodox Marxism, the Marxism which is regarded as the historical axis, and with those who reason with old values, and with the Perónist revolutionary groups." "These three currents will fight together with the people for national liberation." "Roberto Grabois, leader of the student national front, talks about the current political position of the student movement." "Perhaps we could say that what characterizes the process of the student movement comes from the nature of the universities." "In other words, the fight for great ideals, which conforms to a narrow, specific prospect for the students, and to a paternalism for the popular movement, leads towards a national conscience, together with the popular movement." "We are conscious that the fight for a liberated fatherland, a socialist fatherland, inevitably implies our fusion with the essential axis of the Argentinean revolution which is the working class, not understood as an abstraction, but understood by its battles and its feelings." "From that fundamental point, the process of national consciousness, understanding, re-evaluation of the Perónist process and of its significance for the Argentine working class, becomes our business, our own business." "Not the Perónism of the bureaucrats, which does nothing but negotiate and concede, but the Perónism of the masses, that of the anti-imperialistic and revolutionary fight, which leads to socialism." "In this sense, the Cuban revolution, a national, nationalist and anti-imperialist revolution, had a great influence." "Its heritage for us is Marxist-Leninist, a guide which establishes the link with the history, with the life, of our working class, and which opens the way towards national liberty and the construction of socialism and unity with our people." "THE OCCUPATION OF THE FACTORIES" "What was the high point reached by the resistance in the last 10 years?" "Generalizing we could say what was said to us by many comrades... the demonstration of a national consciousness." "Able to resist the executions, repressions, tortures, the traps of the system, to quote an example, let us announce the most important of these demonstrations " "occupation of the factories." "Cirillo Ramallo speaks about one of the first occupations of a factory, the metallurgy factory, Siam de Montechingolo." "The occupation resulted from the dismissal of 300 comrades." "What measures were taken to defend the factory?" "All measures likely to guarantee to us that the police would not make us evacuate, and at the same time to maintain the normal functioning of the factory in order to avoid disorders." "We distributed the gasoline in various places, likewise fire extinguishers, to be used in case of an attack by the police force." "The defence of the factory, I'm the one who organized it, with the comrades of the internal commission." "I personally instituted the strike pickets which circulated in the factory and in the district who always showed solidarity with us." "We feared that the police would drive us out." "Rudy Taborda speaks of the first occupation, the one large textile mill under worker administration:" "La Bernalesa." "In the country, there were many occupations like ours." "But it acted as a historical event, of a unique kind, because, for the first time, a factory functioned under workers control." "For the first time, we felt ourselves the absolute owners of a factory where for 30 years the comrades had been exploited and crushed by the employer class." "We had a double responsibility:" "to show the employer class that we were able to keep up production, to work and, at the same time, to manage the production." "We were going to show that we were capable of production." "We had to succeed in doing both things at the same time." "And we succeeded there rather well, it seems to me." "For example: the quality of the products compared with that of those which had been stored, appeared, at the end of the 13 days during which we had ensured the management of the factory, to be definitely superior." "Another fact important to announce is the participation of the employees." "They joined with us unanimously." "A really extraordinary fact." "For the first time, two thousand workers assumed autonomous responsibility for their work." "For the first time, they discovered that they are worth as much, or even more, than those who always benefited from them." "They became aware of their own capacities, their own possibilities." "The workers, this time, took the occupation very seriously." "During the previous occupations people came with their portable radios, the workers organized barbecues, the comrades played cards or football in the streets bordering the factory." "This time, however, it was very different." "The truth is that the majority of us are illiterate." "We grew up in absolute misery, working since tender childhood without learning how to read and write." "I worked in various places for a mouthful of bread." "I am not ashamed to say that I had to beg to eat." "And then, at 17 years old, I came to Buenos Aires to seek my fortune." "All of that was before 17th October." "And then General Perón appeared." "I was not the only one to arrive from my province." "We were very numerous, in total ignorance of the social laws." "In fact, in the countryside, we do not profit from any protection." "In view of this panorama of total misery, like many Argentineans I came to the capital." "But the trade unions were not yet well organized, and there were still some difficulties." "However it was still better than living in poverty in the country." "One afternoon the Minister of Justice from La Plata came." "We received him at the gates." "And he said to us that we must evacuate the factory because we had taken possession of a private property." "I replied to him: you are Minister of Justice?" "And your justice is to lay off 300 workers!" "He replied to me that he was not a Minister for Labour, and that this was a trade union problem." "Then, I said to him that, if this was the case, he had nothing to do with this factory." "But he repeated that we must evacuate, that there were 150 police officers ready to employ force." "I told him 150 police officers were not enough." "He would have to call the army." "He was completely surprised." "And I added that if they evacuated us by force, we would blow up the plant." "I showed him where we had the gasoline containers which were ready in case of any aggression." "As a representative of the government, he had the police force and the owners." "Me, I had the support of all the comrades to face any aggression." "Occupations are violent acts, traumatic, which erase from the workers' memory many myths, lies, and oppressions." "Through occupations, the worker accelerates his own decolonization, finds the conscience of his own work, re-conquers his own humanity." "THE LIMITS OF SPONTANEITY" "Up to which point can one carry out, inside the system, the battle for the means of production?" "The dominant classes control all the other levers of power." "Resistance, at its spontaneous level, has arrived today at a critical moment." "If, until yesterday, the trade unions were the axis of resistance, today they've lost their political effectiveness." "As an instrument of revolutionary struggle they have reached the limits of their possibilities." "Spontaneity is the great virtue of the Argentinean masses." "But it also indicates their limits." "It is to spontaneity that the Argentinean proletariat owes its most memorable day, but also its greatest defeats." "On October 17th and the month of September 1955," "the combativeness and the heroism of resistance are not enough to overcome the enemy." "When spontaneity and the initiative of the masses do not take the path resulting in seizure of power, everything is transformed into dispute, resistance, self-defence." "In this case, the initiative is always taken by the enemy." "THE WAR TODAY" "If the war is the sum of partial battles, we've lost some of them, but on the level of creating conscience, we have won many others." "Imperialism also has its experiments." "Since the Cuban revolution, it's learned better ways to fight the revolution, ways that the revolutionaries themselves did not learn." "This is a "miguelito," a small iron rod about an inch in length." "The points are sharpened and then folded into a right angle in order to form a base which hangs." "Before, we'd make a larger model of one centimetre in thickness." "Then we couldn't get rods of that type any more." "Now we make them from the bars, which we can get." "I cut it out, sharpen it." "Because I know the people can make use of it." "Where is that?" "In the streets." "We hide them the best we can in a heap of garbage or in a puddle." "The vehicles pass without seeing them, and the tires are punctured." "We especially use them during the strikes." "We leave at dawn, each one with his bag, and we place them." "From 1963 to 1966, the Pentagon gave special training" "in its centres in Panama, to 19,000 soldiers of Latin America." "The armies of the continent behave like troops of occupation and they all have the advantage of blending in easily." "These are the Peruvian "hunter commands", the Bolivian "Rangers", the Argentine gendarmerie." "The ODECA, the American defence council, the military operators, are all directed by the Pentagon." "Latin America is the theatre of a silent escalation devoted to genocide." "I remember a demonstration, on November 5th after the fall of Perón." "With a comrade, we had gone to Plaza Alsina in Avellaneda, where the police force charged ferociously." "They used horses to turn back the crowd." "There was a comrade sitting on a bench." "The police came from behind and threw him to the ground and almost trampled him with their horses." "I felt such indignation that I remembered a trick from back home." "I went to a grocery store and bought packets of pepper and launched them in the direction of the wind." "When the horses inhaled pepper, they started to sneeze and reared up." "That made the police even more angry." "We were sorry for the horses, but not for them, certainly not after the brutality with which they treated our brothers!" "Pepper is effective, certainly!" "We knew it worked." "We used it in the countryside!" "And can it stop the police force?" "That is a little more difficult!" "What can trade union organizations achieve these days in the face of a well trained, well equipped modern army, that also has mercenary forces?" "But is this army really invincible?" "Algeria," "Cuba, Vietnam, prove the opposite." "People determined to liberate themselves are invincible." "But victory over these armies is only possible with the will of the people." "Power is held exclusively by those who possess weapons, or those who decide to obtain them." "The language of weapons is, in our time, the most effective political language." "Is it therefore necessary to teach the people this language?" "Does this mean a long and painful war?" "Are there any other alternatives for liberation?" "INTRODUCTION TO THE DEBATE" "Comrades, the reflections which we have just talked about arise from the current national situation and from the experience accumulated during years of resistance." "Let us point out the facts." "The military government has been in place since 1966 destroying the resistance of different trade unions, like the trade union of the dock labourers who closed the sugar factories of Tucuman." "They have assigned the energy reserves, giving no rights to the people, and has found no opposition which could confront and overcome it." "This is one symptom." "At the same time, certain proletarian tendencies have begun to stray from their roots, bureaucratic, confused by the enemy moving closer towards them." "These tendencies existed before but they'd never acted in such a sneaky way." "This is another symptom." "Thoughts and reflections which are contributions to this discussion are also based on experiences encountered during filming." "Rudy Taborda was recently laid off together with the most active comrades." "Cirillo Ramallo, was also laid off and the factory where he worked was closed down." "Angel Taborda was arrested and laid off because of his trade union engagement." "Martiniano Martin is no longer on the committee of the car factory." "Employers have blacklisted him and he can't find work anymore." "At Tucuman we spoke with the most combative leaders of FOTIA." "Can you talk about the fight carried out by the Tucuman workers?" "I'm Leandro Foté." "I'm the secretary-general of the Trade Union of San José." "Let me say that it's only four hours ago that I left prison." "I was arrested for organizing the fight of the sugar workers." "However that's not important." "The important thing is that in Tucuman we have valuable combat experience." "We have occupied factories, we've fought on the streets, we've had victims." "Recently we lost one of our comrades at Bella Vista, where the fight was particularly tough." "Did these fights bring us any solutions?" "Comrade, these fights did not bring any solution." "No solution for the sugar workers." "That's why I believe the workers fight must be quite different." "We have recognized that one should not only fight for wage increases, but against government and its domination." "The workers must understand that we need a popular government of the workers." "This is the only way we can provide for the future of the country and for the workers, to worry about the proletarian people of the country." "Now, comrade, at this moment, the situation of the Tucuman workers is disastrous." "There are 24,000 unemployed from the closed factories." "These people will emigrate to other provinces, which will increase unemployment elsewhere in the country, like in Tucuman in the past year." "Resistance and self-defence, by reaching their culmination, expose the people to lassitude, and exhaustion." "Each point of defence is located by the enemy, isolated, and eliminated." "But the people's memory assimilates the experience." "One day I asked:" "Father, where is God?" "My father became serious, but answered nothing." "My father died in the mine." "In the bottom of the gallery." "Colour of blood of the mine." "Where the owner's gold piles up." "One day I asked:" "My brother, what do you know about God?" "My brother lowered his eyes, but answered nothing." "My brother lives on the mountain where no flowers grow." "Sweat, malaria, snakes." "This is the life of the logger." "And nobody asks of him if he knows or has found God." "Another important person." "Me, I sing on the streets." "And when I am in prison," "I listen to the voices of the people who sing much better than me." "Does God take care of the poor?" "Perhaps yes, perhaps no." "What I know, is that he sits at the owner's table." "If there is anything on this earth more important than God, it is that nobody has to spit blood so that others can live better." "I am Andina Lizarraga," "Chief of Perónist Youth of Tucuman." "Although the experiences of the population of Tucuman were invaluable after 1955- mobilizations, street battles, occupations of factories and fights against the oppressor " "for the historical process," "I believe they are not applicable today, and that it would be a great mistake to repeat them." "People don't want these battles any more." "They want another form of action." "An action for the political seizure of power which can only be carried out by an armed struggle." "However, an armed struggle is not possible without a revolutionary organization prepared to make sacrifices and to risk their lives like the Argentinean people have done until now." "The time of the chief bureaucrat is over." "That depends only on us, on yourselves, to contribute to the foundation of this revolutionary organization." "Otherwise we will waste our time miserably." "We crossed vast parts of the country and found in many provinces a similar situation, more dramatic, perhaps, in the North, specially in Tucuman." "However, the proletariat doesn't appear defeated, or overcome." "Many means of struggle were tested in the course of time, but the truth is that no organization, no direction is yet in sight which could direct the proletariat towards victory." "In the meantime we experience a kind of dynamic waiting." "The search continues." "Comrades, the conclusions you can draw now are important." "You, as the true authors and protagonists of this story." "The experience which we have gathered here and our conclusions are valuable to a certain extent." "They are helpful depending on how useful they are to the present and the future of the liberation struggle, of this liberation which you represent." "The importance is the action which can follow these conclusions, an agreement based on facts shown here." "This is why our film ends here." "For you to continue it." "You have the floor." "OPEN SPACE FOR DIALOGUE" "VIOLENCE AND LIBERATION" "TO THE NEW MAN WHO WILL BE BORN DURING THIS WAR OF LIBERATION" ""A man resurrects from death and begins to love life to the point of risking that life to be able to live it." Che" ""The scars of violence won't be erased by goodwill." "Only violence can destroy them." J.P. Sartre" "MOTHER: "I dreamt of a son who closed his mother's eyes."" "REBEL: "I've decided to open my son's eyes under another sun." Aimé Césaire" "A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE" "You'll have to excuse my words, my expressions, because I never went to university." "But I have to tell you something very important about how I suffered." "THE EXECUTIONS IN PATAGONIA" "I witnessed the first uprising in Patagonia." "We asked for an increase in our wages." "Back then, the English, who were in charge in the south, asked for back-up to crush the riots." "They let them believe we were" "Chilean and Argentine bandits who were destroying properties." "They sent Colonel Varela to the army." "We had give up our arms." "They let us dig trenches, and when the trenches reached the height of our necks, they started to shoot, killing thousands of peasants, workers, fathers, real Argentines." "That's what happened in Patagonia." "THE MASSACRES OF THE PEASANTS" "The uprising of the Chaco took place in 1920." "Terrible, dramatic..." "I saw mothers with their children in their arms pursued by the bullets of the police." "Villa Guillermina, Villa Angela revolted." "I have no words to describe what they did then!" "THE REPRESSIONS OF THE WORKERS" ""The Tragic Week" was a really heroic moment." "There were men, workers, behind the barricades," "and also women and youth, fighting the police." "They overtook an army regiment and the police..." "and even the firemen, who had never touched a rifle." "THE STORY OF THE BATTLE OF THE MILITANTS" "So, compañeros..." "All I have told you is only a summary of my battle as a militant worker at the source of a syndicate." "Now I will learn from you." "And I would like you to continue with enthusiasm." "Because the fall of capitalism is only a matter of a few years away." "LETTERS OF THE COMBATANTS" "During the shooting of this film we asked several comrades their opinion on violence and liberation." "And here is the first one:" "THE TRAP OF LEGITIMACY" "You've asked me what's missing in order for us to regain power." "I don't know." "But I know what we have: naivety." "I remember that day, at the beginning of 1956, when we went looking for Suarez at his coastal resort... trying to revive a place that was definitely dead." "I remember Suarez, and how he tried to hide his impotence and fear." "We blamed Suarez, but it wasn't entirely his fault." "For 10 years, he had behind him the support of our government." "And suddenly he found himself left with nothing at all." "He had been trained to compromise, and not for battle." "How could we ask more of him than he was capable of?" "How many battles have we fought in the past?" "The story you told in the film just gives an approximate idea." "We believed that, after every big mobilization, Perón would return and we would regain power." "Today, thinking of that answer, the image of Suarez was projected on many of us." "I had a new naive feeling which affirmed that the people's will would be enough to impose a new October 17th." "The same naivety moved many of us to believe and to have confidence in the legal way." "Accept the legal way?" "Did this mean to accept legalized violence?" "Isn't this social peace, one behind bars, slavery, and a national humiliation?" "Suarez had understood that his legitimacy, and that of the people, had been defeated... and he quit the battle." "We continued to see legality as an abstraction and a myth." "We have been the best civil workers... and we have educated the comrades in that spirit." "At every defeat, we answered with a battle that wasn't really revolutionary policy but resulted in temporary measures." "The Suarezes of yesterday, hiding their impotence and their fear, are today returning in even larger numbers." "Like 10 years ago, you can feel the need for a change." "How to begin a dialogue with the enemy, knowing that his objective is our destruction?" "What do his reasons, his ways, matter to us, unless to know him better and to destroy his intentions by destroying him?" "Are we ready, the people, the workers, the Peronists, to accept a law that brings us directly to slavery?" "I think that we, the descendants of the ones who lived and fought with San Martin, Quiroga, Penalozza and Varela, won't ban them from our memories, we won't refuse the mandate of so many sacrifices." "Your comrade J.M." "IMPUNITY" "When the people are excluded from political power, the crimes of neocolonialism achieve total impunity, they are the law." "The system becomes the only and absolute beholder of violence." "Violence invades the streets, enters homes, and the people's minds." "And if man resists, he will be hit or killed." "If he gives in, he isn't a man anymore." "The system's violence is used for silencing and terrorizing." "It tries to reduce man to a passive thing, one who doesn't make history." "It tries to make him an object who suffers from history." "The violence of the system isn't really the repression itself, but the fear of it." "The fear of every man of being pursued, marginalized, the fear of committing those acts that will permit him to regain his humanity." ""There will be reactionary violence until it can be defeated by revolutionary violence, or dictatorship of the privileged or national liberation" J.W. Cooke" "THE EXECUTIONS OF JUNE 16TH 1956" "A military faction, of nationalist-catholic tendencies, revolts against the "gorilla revolution"." "Agents of repression, alarmed by the commotion, wait for the rioters and smother them." "That night, in the waste site of Leon Suarez, they shoot several prisoners, guilty or not." "Comrade Troxler is one of them." "I am Julio Troxler, one of those who were driven here, at dawn, June 10, to be shot." "I was lucky, thanks to a truck accident and in the dark of the night, I left unharmed." "How did you feel about that experience?" "Nobody would have imagined what followed." "We thought they would take us to prison because we wanted to march at the Plaza de Mayo, to cheer for Perón and the triumph of the revolution." "We thought, at worst, to be locked up a couple of days." "But when we arrived here, and they let us get out of the truck turning the lights on our backs," "I started to understand that things would turn out badly." "And suddenly the first shot was fired, at the same time as the accident." "So... the desire to survive..." "and the total chaos provoking the death of five comrades and one wounded and the escape of many of us, which wasn't easy." "And what did you do after the executions?" "I waited there, very near, until the truck and the car following it were gone." "I went back to the place to see if there were some people alive, or wounded." "Nothing of that, they were all dead, assassinated." "The police had left them on the road." "Carlos Lizazo and the three others, ...four bodies full of bullets on the road that led to the German Club." "Have you been in prison since the executions?" "I was a prisoner in November 1957... because someone turned me in." "They brought me to the Investigation Brigade of San Martin." "And there..." "I was tortured, just as I was by the Lanus brigade." "The agents of the judicial system participated in the tortures and orgies, like Judge Biglione, and military men like Suarez, the Secretary General, San Emeterio," "and several police officers." "In what way did they torture you?" "After being undressed and blindfolded, so I couldn't see the torturers, they attached you to the table by your ankles and wrists." "Then the electric shocks began, real orgies for those men" "keeping themselves busy with your genitals." "Mine were covered with blood in the end," "my mouth was also covered with blood." "Of course, this is not a pleasant thing to tell, but living through it is even worse." "What matters to me is to be understood." "I was a common citizen... who, only for defending an ideal and the Constitution, has been subjected to such treatment." "Troxler, do you have anything to add?" "Sure, despite the executions, and all the tortures," "I have to say that we, the Peronists, will continue this battle until the end." "In that way, we are in solidarity with our Latin American," "Asian, and African friends." "These last groups are already seeing the results of the process of liberation from imperialism." "And we too, if we persevere, we will succeed." "For this, we must follow the example from Asian and African countries and apply it successfully." "Vietnam, for example, where a small group of men are fighting against the most powerful army in the world." "We know that we'll succeed, and we'll leave a better world for our children." "THE DUTY OF THE INTELLECTUAL" "My friends..." "The revolution won't begin until we have killed the old colonized man who still slumbers in us." "Before everything else, it begins with us." "It won't be defined until we take risks, not with words or ideas, but with accomplished acts." "The worker who strikes, and risks his work and existence." "The student who puts his career at stake." "The militant they torture." "And many examples that could keep us from something more important than a vague gesture of solidarity." "What is commonly understood by solidarity is just a form of piteous charity and satisfies more those who give than those who receive it." ""We shouldn't only desire the triumph of the victims", said Guevara," ""but join it to its destiny in death, and victory"." "In Latin America, there's no room for either passivity or innocence." "Our duty as national intellectuals is different from that of other intellectuals in the big cities." "We can't devote ourselves to universal culture while there's a more important problem to be solved:" "national liberation!" "Every action not essential to the liberation, far from criticizing the system, leave it to the others." "The regime involves in its crimes all those who don't fight them directly." "We should work in order to liberate this continent, this country, the Latin American man, every one of us, or else you're on the enemy's side." "There won't be any choices in between." "Your comrade, A.M." "If daily violence weren't enough, the system seeks more explicit and unforgivable forms to maintain its peace, its order, its norms." "THE VICTIMS" "In their battle for liberation, our people have had many martyrs." "In recent years, hundreds of militants have been killed." "The victims of June 16th, 1955..." "Those of the executions in 1956..." "The fighters from Salta... those from the massive protests." "Some, engraved anonymously..." "Others, raised by the people, like flags..." "Some names..." "Musy, Retamar, Mendoza," "Isla de Molina, Santiago, Pontillon," "Felipe Vallesse, the greatest symbol of this violence." "'We, above everyone else, have to understand this dehumanization process." "More than anyone else, we have to know the costs involved in regaining our humanity." S. Carmichael" "THE ANONYMOUS MARTYRS" "June 16th 1955, the planes of the "gorillas"" "terrorize the streets of Buenos Aires." "Torture at the individual level, or mass murder, are the natural consequences of violence on a daily basis." "They don't deny it, on the contrary, they affirm it." "This is its most revealing synthesis." "The system maintains its power only by violence..." ""It is impossible to understand neocolonialism" Fanon said," ""without its need to rape, to destroy, to kill"." "But the violence of the system is also its self-destruction." "To dehumanize the people, the system dehumanizes itself first." "By using extreme violence, the system is the first to agonize." ""The only ones that have the right to use violence are the people who want to free themselves." "This violence, in the people's hands, is not violence, it's justice." Perón." "ACTION AND REVOLUTION" ""Prepare yourself to fight..." "Prepare your rifle..." "Prepare your body for the battle"." "A comrade of the Uruguayan movement, Tupamaro, tells in a documentary:" "We start from the principle that revolutionary action itself, the act to arm yourself, to be prepared, to accept to act against the bourgeois order, implies conscience, organization and revolutionary conditions." "In countries like Cuba, the principles at the base of a socialist revolution are present, confirmed, without discussion." "It takes little to show the way to revolt and to apply it." "It's the armed battle that accelerates mass movement." "In Cuba and in China, the party of the masses was born during combat." "CREATE MANY VIETNAMS!" "A former Peruvian metal worker told us that the only way to free ourselves from imperialism, is, as Che thought, to attack their colonial territories and force them to diversify their armed forces." "The order to "create two, three, many Vietnams"" "summarizes the last hope for humanity today." "The Pentagon and its footmen will face a serious dilemma:" "either they observe and don't interfere with the Latin American revolution, or they intervene by military force as happened in Cuba or the Dominican Republic." "We have to unite and prepare for the colonial war." "The guerrillas of Venezuela, of Colombia and Guatemala, the mobilization of the workers, peasants and students, are the beginning of the epic struggle that this continent will go through." "Latin America, as Che said, will be the Vietnam of the next decade." "PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE?" "The Revolutionary Peronist Front is showing its solidarity with the Vietnamese people and declares:" "Peaceful coexistence is just opium that permits imperialism to exploit humanity with impunity." "There can't be peaceful coexistence with the deadly aggressiveness of the Yankee system's monopoly, whose most characteristic trait is the support for war and crime." "For us, the people of the Third World, who hope to end the underdevelopment, poverty and the exploitation, the only way is revolutionary war, the fight to death against the imperialist oppressor and the fight for eternal peace in the world." "But we have to underline that the enemy ran away from several crime scenes, not because he was on the winning side, but on the contrary, because he lost against popular movements." "They've been defeated at the Bay of Pigs and they'll be defeated in Vietnam." "If 500,000 Marines, the elite of the American army, couldn't defeat the small heroic people of Vietnam," "how many millions will they need to face and fight against more than two thirds of humanity," "700 million Chinese, the Cubans, the Koreans, the Latin Americans, the socialist countries, the Africans, the Arabs, the African-Americans and the progressive forces of the industrialized countries?" "Imperialism has no chance at all." "They only have nuclear blackmail." "As Mao said, "It's a paper tiger."" ""MILITANT INTERNATIONALISM"" "Fidel Castro said it clearly:" ""The theory that says that if this generation doesn't win the war, the next one will, is a defeatist, inhumane and cowardly theory." "The Marxist-Leninist and internationalist principle wants us to fight not until the last citizen of the oppressed country, but until the last citizen of the socialist camp." "The militant solidarity of the Latin American people was shown in the epic revolutions of Bolivar, San Martin and Sucre."" "HYPOTHESIS FOR THE LIBERATION" "Finally, we could say that the liberation of every country is always a unique event, an invention." "Cuba is probably the best example for us, Argentines and Latin Americans." "The Cuban revolution has proved that a people can liberate itself if its revolutionary chiefs, its elite, take part in the history of the people." "Cuba, Vietnam and other people of the third world showed that no national revolution would be possible if not accompanied by a social revolution." "In other words, today more than ever, the nationalism of the first independence integrates the socialism of the second one and the quest to an internationalism that allows for the total destruction of imperialism." "ARGENTINA TODAY" "As the authors of these comments, we repeat what we showed in the film's first part." "Argentina and most of the countries of this continent are living in a war that hides itself behind a pseudo-normality and pseudo-peace, a war that reveals itself in daily violence, indeed, four persons die every minute in Latin America," "or two million every year." "The essential is to notice this state of war and to get on each path to test all hypotheses, with revolutionary energy and deeds." "In short: invent our own revolution." "The protagonists of this quest are all of us." "But, even more, it's you." "You, who have the possibility to discuss these images are also, through your daily actions, the only way to develop this unsolved problem." "The film and its content stay open for other comments, testimonies and letters on violence and liberation." "To all who collaborated in the realization of this film, peasants, workers, students, intellectuals and revolutionary militants, we express our gratitude."