It lasted less than half an hour. And it changed the country forever. 47 years ago, on August 4, 1973, the National Congress of the Justicialista Party, gathered at the Cervantes Theater, proclaimed by acclamation the presidential formula Juan Perón-Isabel Perón. It was a bucket of ice water. The general’s third wife was almost an upstart in politics, she could proclaim, and in fact did, that she was “the best student of the General”, as if political leadership was learned at the desks, but in truth she was an unstable personality, a woman of little political culture, with some difficulty in expressing her ideas clearly and convincingly and who considered herself under the influence of the “Sorcerer” José López Rega, a Perón scribe, with which Perón said to hate the scribes, that he had become a powerful minister of Social Welfare.
What happened in that Congress was one more battle in the war between fractions that Peronism waged, and in a country shaken by Peronist and Marxist guerrilla violence. In that dizzying 1973, the country changed for hours. In May, had assumed the government of Héctor J. Cámpora, delegate of Perón and imposed by finger by the General. Cámpora was aligned with the Peronist Youth and with Montoneros, the guerrilla arm of that sector of Peronism that, still secretly, was determined to dispute the power of Perón or inherit his legacy.
Héctor Campora upon assuming the presidency in May 1973. He would last just 49 days in office.
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In 49 days, Cámpora had been swept from power by a Perón enraged by the turn of his government. The General had returned to the country on June 20, when Ezeiza was the scene of another pitched battle, Cámpora had resigned on July 13, in August he was provisional president Raúl Lastiri, López Rega’s son-in-law, and new elections were being prepared for Sunday September 23.
In that turbulent setting, perhaps as an expression of wishes and nothing else, he had circulated the possibility of a historical formula: Perón-Balbín, the old radical leader and eternal adversary of Perón. Both had first seen each other at Vicente López’s Perón residence, at 1065 Gaspar Campos Street. And then, in an almost secret interview, on June 24 in the National Congress. But two days later, on Tuesday the 26th, Perón suffered a severe heart attack. And on Thursday 28 he suffered a serious “acute pleuropericarditis” according to the diagnosis of his personal doctor, Pedro Cossio.
If the possibility of that historic electoral formula really existed, in August it was abolished. This is testified by one of the protagonists of that day, Julio Bárbaro, at the time a 31-year-old Peronist deputy:
The formula that was not: Perón-Balbín (leader of radicalism), in 1973.
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-We promoted the Perón-Balbín formula. Who were we? Most of the people, the Democrats: Ítalo Luder, Angel Robledo, Ferdinando Pedrini, those who we were neither left nor right, and that we more or less occupied the majority logic of Peronism. At the entrance to Congress, I say to Lorenzo Miguel: “Let’s vote for Balbín.” And he says to me: “No, because if the Old Man dies, we are left with nothing. Lorenzo plays hard to that stupidity of proclaiming Isabel.
Lorenzo Miguel was then a powerful leader of the Unión Obrera Metalúrgica headed by the then CGT general secretary, José Rucci, who would be assassinated in September of that same year by Montoneros.
What happened in those 28 dramatic minutes at Cervantes? The representative of the PJ, Torcuato Fino, proclaimed Perón’s candidacy. And followed by Norma Kennedy, a historical Peronist leader who had flirted with communism and had turned to the most right-wing nationalism. The formula was imposed by acclamation. Barbaro remembers:
– They were very tense moments, of an impressive silence in the theater. There was a kind of collusion, because Montoneros’ distancing from Peronism had given way to the right. They distanced themselves because they did not want to participate in democracy. The gang on the right, led by Norma Kennedy, I was with some trade unionists. There were five screaming and the rest of us looked at the ground. Norma starts screaming “Isabel! Isabel ”and the speaker is Torcuato Fino, so gross, so gross that to praise Perón he says he is a“ homo sapiens ”.
At the entrance to Congress, I say to Lorenzo Miguel: ‘Let’s vote for Balbín’. And he says to me: ‘No, because if the Old Man dies, we are left with nothing. Lorenzo plays hard at that stupidity of proclaiming Isabel.
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Julio Barbaro
National deputy in 1973
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Fino’s words that day were: “How can we put to the vote a man whose carving is sculpted in the long distance of the Republic? (…) A man who is a homo sapiens who must not leave the garden of life without having given the last rose bush ”.
Another witness of privilege of that day is José “Pepe” Pirraglia, at that time a young textile union leader, founder of the Peronist Union Youth, confronted from the right by the JP. He does not have, like Barbarian, the vision of a quasi-spontaneous collusion, but of a plan prepared in advance.
– You suppose that this was put together overnight because somebody came up with all that network? Such a candidacy is not without a lot of actors accompanying it. The fight was: if Perón dies, how is Balbín going to manage it, all those kinds of things that were speculated at the time.
If the candidacy of Isabel Perón (her real name is María Estela Martínez, and Isabel always appeared as a kind of War name), it was a bucket of ice water, what happened in the hours following the proclamation of the formula was more ice and disappointment. Barbaro recalls that a commission was appointed to go and communicate to Perón the decision that Congress had made.
The good bye. The “Uncle” Héctor Campora retires from the residence of Gaspar Campos, in July 1973. Back, Isabelita and Perón. A month later, the formula of Peronism would be proclaimed.
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-Perón was in Gaspar Campos. In that commission goes Pedrini, goes Rocamora and goes Pirraglia. And when they tell him about the formula, he gets so angry that he refuses to go to Cervantes. He stops and says to them: “Gentlemen, nepotism is fought even in Africa.” Pirraglia denies having integrated any commission that day. He fixes the memory of Peron’s phrase about nepotism in a talk that the General gave in the Superior Council, of which Pirraglia was a member.
The chronicles of the time say that, more than a commission, there was a general exodus from the Cervantes Theater to Perón’s residence in Vicente López. That August 4, Perón arrived at Gaspar Campos at 18.05. The journalists then asked him what he thought of the formula and the General correctly guessed:
-Poor of her…
He said something else when they asked him again about his candidacy and that of his wife. If what you answered was true, give a clue about the events of that day:
-What can I tell you, if you just gave me this news?
Even with his deteriorated health, Perón was for the presidency: thus he had confessed it to the chief of the Army, general Raúl Carcagno. Was Elizabeth’s appointment a surprise to him?
Ten minutes after Perón, José Rucci, Silvana Roth, Lorenzo Miguel, Julio Romero, president of the PJ assembly, Alejandro Díaz Bialet, Humberto Martiarena and Juana Larrauri, among others, arrived in a caravan and in ten cars. According to Barbaro:
-Perón took them out with disheveled boxes. And his phrase about nepotism stuck with me because they all repeated it like a parrot when they returned from Vicente López. Pedrini returns, gathers us together and says: “What a quilombo! The general refuses!
Perón disguised his rejection with the garb of a necessity of which he made virtue: he asked for a few days to think about it and elliptically invoked his health. And he did not go to Cervantes. Instead, it was Isabel, accompanied by López Rega. Her arrival, without Perón, unleashed a huge stupor among the congressmen.
Juan Domingo Perón in his exile in Spain, in Puerta de Hierro with his wife Isabel Martínez.
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Isabel informed Congress that the General was asking for several days to finalize his response, and immediately accepted his candidacy for vice president. At Cervantes they then shouted “We want Perón!” Isabel said that her only merit was “to love Perón and the Argentine people” and considered herself “a disciple of the General.” “Nobody celebrated that duo launched by Norma Kennedy and Torcuato Fino,” Barbaro recalls today. “Despite his phrase about nepotism, Perón morphed at Isabel because the abandonment of the” amounts “of my generation leaves Perón in the hands of the right . There is no other explanation. Perón returns convinced that he gives power to the left and that the left, the young people, will accompany him. And young people fall in love with Fidel Castro.
Finally, Perón accepted his candidacy and that of Isabel on August 18, also at Cervantes. He read a medical report signed by doctors Pedro Cossio and Jorge Taiana who found him “recovered from the condition found on June 16” and who recommended adjusting his future activity “to the physical situation linked to age and the condition suffered.”
The Juan Perón-Isabel Martínez formula was elected on September 23 of that year by 61.85 percent of the votes.
A poster at Cervantes
One of the memories that I could never erase – Julio Bárbaro recalls today about the PJ Congress that elected Isabel Martínez as vice presidential candidate – is very ironic. I remember that the Cervantes posters announced the premiere of “La Dama Boba”, by Lope de Vega. Was a day of great bitterness, of tension, of defeat for those of us who believed ourselves to be sane. It was a day without euphoria, without mysticism, with a very bitter taste, at the end of a dream ”.
What happened after
Perón and Isabel Perón were elected on September 23, 1973. Two days later, Montoneros murdered José Rucci, General Secretary of the CGT and a key player in Perón’s government strategy. The day of the assumption of Perón is set by the Montoneros and FAR guerrilla groups as the day of the beginning of their joint actions. In November, Perón speaks in the CGT and draws a parable between the dangers that lie in wait for the Peronist Movement and “the pathological germ that invades the physiological organism that generates its own antibodies that act in its self-defense.”
On November 13, an attack on the radical senator Hipólito Solari Yrigoyen, marks the appearance of Triple A. The confrontation between the JP and the union sector intensifies. On November 22, Perón suffered from acute lung edema and told his doctor, Pedro Cossio: “This time the scythe was not ready. But I saw her close. ”
May 1, 1974: President Juan Domingo Perón kicks the Montoneros out of the act that took place in Plaza de Mayo for Labor Day. (File / Bugle)
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The JP weekly “El Descamisado” is titled “Comrades, what a shit!” (sic). In January 1974 the ERP attacked the Azul and Olavarría military garrison, murdered his boss and his wife, and kidnapped the second boss. On May 1, and in a public act, Perón described as stupid and beardless to the JP and Montoneros, who leave the Plaza de Mayo.
A subsequent episode of arrhythmia shows the doctors that the General’s heart is greatly deteriorated. On June 12, Perón spoke for the last time on the balcony of the Government House. Between June 24 and 25 suffers his third heart attack, very serious. Perón dies on July 1. Isabel Perón immediately assumes the presidency of the Nation.
