The ERP-22 de Agosto was an Argentinian guerrilla faction split in 1973 of the Military Committee of the Federal Capital of the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP), as a result of tactical divergences regarding the organization's position before the electoral act of March 11, 1973.
Reasons of the Split
As the campaign for the 1973 presidential elections progressed, in which Peronism presented the Cámpora-Solano Lima formula, the Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT, the ERP party) continued to denounce Perón as a "tool of the regime bourgeois". ERP members who disagreed with this position were separated after the meeting of the Central Committee in December 1972 (the first in which Mario Santucho was present after returning from his exile in Cuba), in which they concluded that It was impossible to continue within the organization. There were also other ERP members who separated from the organization for other reasons.
Foundation of ERP-22
On January 15, 1973, at a campsite in Buenos Aires, the ERP-August 22 held its founding congress. Almost all of its militants from the Buenos Aires Regional and the Military Committee of the ERP Capital. The initial structure of the ERP-22 was a copy of the command line that the splinters had when they were part of the ERP. In addition, the new ERP-22 made no distinction between party and army, leaving its name linked to the latter. On March 8, 1978, the Eduardo Capello Command publishes a statement speaking and encouraging Argentine society to vote in favor of FREJULI, in the elections of March 11, 1973, calling the people "to defeat the dictatorship at the polls, through the mass vote to the FREJULI lists "and" mobilize to verify compliance with these modifications. "The sympathy and the workers' and people's support that awakens is the one that brings together the greatest possibilities of defeating the government maneuver at the polls".
The date of the name refers to the day of 1972 in which the first large-scale joint operation of the ERP, Montoneros and Peronist Armed Forces (FAP) guerrillas takes place in order to free many of their main chiefs imprisoned in the Rawson criminal. On November 11, 1973 the group also organized a tribute to the villero leader of the San Pablo neighborhood and militant Nemesio Aquino, a well-known l"ocal revolutionary and militant who the group describes as "the worker who knew how to embrace the ideas of revolutionary Marxism and build the organization political-military essential to galvanize the progress of the people in their struggle for power".
Important Armed Actions
Kidnapping of Héctor Ricardo García
The first action of ERP-22 was the kidnapping of the owner of the newspaper Crónica, Héctor Ricardo García. Héctor Ricardo García. It was called "Operation Poniatowski" because one of the guerrillas had read about a French politician named Jozef Antoni Poniatowski and, in contrast to the common surname García, on 22 he puts that name to the operation.
Operation Poniatowski is planned for March 6, 1973, but due to problems in one of the cars, it is postponed to day 8, when it is actually executed, under the responsibility of Víctor José Fernández Palmeiro, known as "el Gallego". At 8:20 local time they park a van and descend three guerrillas dressed in work clothes and carrying boxes of whiskey. The van leaves and they avoid the obstacle of the doorman of the building where García lived because he was not there. Previously, four combatants had been distributed in the nearby square with concealed machine guns in case complications occurred. Garcia's maids opened them because they presented the card of the mayor of Buenos Aires, Saturnino Montero Ruiz, as the one who sent the gifts. The guerrillas reduced the staff and came to Garcia, who slept next to a well-known television artist, and reassured him, while another militant arrived to pretend to be the maid in case some unforeseen event happened.
The ERP-22 required to release the publication, on the front page of the newspaper, of a statement calling to vote for FreJuLi. Garcia spoke with the director of the newspaper's evening edition to inform him of the statement he should publish. Then, the owner of Chronicle was taken to an ERP-22 dependent house, where he was held twelve hours until the newspaper edition came out, when he was released. At first it was believed that everything had been a maneuver to promote itself and although this theory was suggested, the editor knew that he had gone through a difficult experience and the ERP-August 22 had taken his first blow to affirm its independent existence.