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forest444

(5,902 posts)
Wed Aug 3, 2016, 05:20 PM Aug 2016

Argentine labor leader Raimundo Ongaro, leading dissident voice after 1966 coup, dies at 92.

Argentine labor leader Raimundo Ongaro, arguably the most influential dissident voice against the Juan Carlos Onganía dictatorship in power from 1966 to 1970 as well as entrenched labor union bureaucracies, died on Monday at his home outside Buenos Aires. He was 92.

Born to Italian immigrants in 1924, Ongaro studied as a seminarian in his youth but later rose through the ranks of the Buenos Aires Print Workers Federation (FGB). He was elected to lead the FGB in 1966, unseating his more conciliatory predecessor shortly after a corporate-sponsored military coup in Argentina that June led to the curtailment of labor rights and an erosion in real wages.

Ongaro was one of only two men in the CGT labor federation to have defeated a sitting union leader during the 17-year exile of Argentine labor's political leader, populist former President Juan Perón. He was also the first of the CGT 's 62 union heads to publicly denounce the dictatorship's labor policy as that of "bait-and-switch and divide-and-conquer." This viewpoint was not initially shared by the CGT leadership or by Perón; but after a series of attacks by security forces and anti-labor policy makers in 1967, many union leaders began to endorse Ongaro - as did Perón himself.

Ongaro's wing soon eclipsed that of the "participationist" leadership, and in March 1968 he was elected Secretary General of the CGT. His election was impugned by the defeated CGT leadership and promptly annulled by the Labor Ministry - which prompted Ongaro and his allies to break with the leadership and establish a rival CGT de los Argentinos (CGTA).

While the CGTA, with its 300,000 members, was outflanked by the two main CGT factions (with 1.4 million members between them), Ongaro's activism, as well as his early insight into the dictatorship's motives, made him the only top-level union leader to enjoy broad support from both labor and Argentina's politically active student body.

Articulate and passionate, Ongaro saw the labor movement as part of a broader, humanist struggle for goals shaped by the Platonic ideal of a "community in solidarity" as well as by early Christian social teachings. This outlook earned him the support of many on the left, notably the documentary film maker Pino Solanas, writer Rodolfo Walsh (who edited the CGTA's newsletters), and the Movement of Third World Priests.

Ongaro had, by 1968 and 1969, become the leading dissident voice against General Juan Carlos Onganía's dictatorship. His fateful decision that May to back the labor-student march in Córdoba led by Light and Power Union leader Agustín Tosco (a key ally) to protest the inclusion of Saturdays into the standard work week, undermined his leadership however.

The dictatorship outmaneuvered the organizers by seeding the otherwise peaceful march of 13,000 with provocateurs. The march, held on May 29, 1969, erupted into a massive riot that resulted in five deaths and around 100 destroyed businesses. Tosco, Ongaro and most of the CGTA leadership was detained, and after the participationist CGT leader Augusto Vandor (who had recently turned against the dictatorship as well) was assassinated on June 30, the CGTA was banned outright.

Ongaro lost Perón's support and was repeatedly jailed; but he remained active in Peronist politics and the labor movement with the help of his closest adviser, labor lawyer Lorenzo Pepe, and others. He also retained the support of municipal, communications, and port workers - all of which suffered steep job losses due to austerity policies - and channeled opposition to what he saw as "self-serving union bosses" (many of them installed by the dictatorship itself) into a movement known as "Basic Peronism."

Perón, who was allowed to return in 1973 and was elected in a landslide, made Ongaro and other non-violent leftists guilty by association for the wave of violence on the far left. Ongaro attempted to de-escalate the dispute by co-founding a union conflict resolution committee in 1974; Perón's Labor's Minister, CGT stalwart Ricardo Otero, responded by annulling Ongaro's re-election as head of the FGB Printers' Union that August, however.

Following Perón's death that July, his family and allies were targeted by the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance death squad commanded by José López Rega (who controlled Perón's widow and successor, President Isabel Perón). The sole Congressman for Basic Peronism, Rodolfo Ortega Peña, was assassinated, Ongaro was jailed, and his wife suffered a miscarriage during one of the numerous raids on their modest suburban home. The following May, the Triple A death squad murdered his 15 year-old son Alfredo. The Ongaros went into hiding in a monastery, and left Argentina that August - eventually settling in Spain.

Returning to Argentina in 1984 after a fascist dictatorship installed 1976 had decimated labor unions, Ongaro did not stand for reelection as head of the FGB but remained active in an emeritus capacity. His former federation, the CGTA, and their opposition to unaccountable union bosses inspired the creation of the CTA - today Argentina's second largest labor federation - in 1991. Ongaro lived in his home in the working-class Buenos Aires suburb of Los Polvorines, and died of a heart ailment on Monday at age 92.

Many union and political leaders, including former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, gathered yesterday for Ongaro’s funeral at the FGB headquarters in Buenos Aires.

Former Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana, currently the head of the South American Common Market legislature PARLASUR, said that Ongaro “was an example of a revolutionary labor leader, activist Peronist, and mentor to our generation whose motto lives on in all of us: ‘Only the people will save the people’.”

At: http://buenosairesherald.com/article/219177/raimundo-ongaro-an-example-of-dignity-against-all-odds

[center]

Raimundo Ongaro (1924-2016). Unbought and unbossed.[/center]

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Argentine labor leader Raimundo Ongaro, leading dissident voice after 1966 coup, dies at 92. (Original Post) forest444 Aug 2016 OP
Stunning article from the Buenos Aires Herald. After reading it, I had to save it for records. Judi Lynn Aug 2016 #1

Judi Lynn

(160,211 posts)
1. Stunning article from the Buenos Aires Herald. After reading it, I had to save it for records.
Thu Aug 4, 2016, 02:41 AM
Aug 2016

The information gives us such a deep, deep look into a part of Argentine life our own corporate "news" media never approached in any way whatsoever.

It tell us so much more about how wildly rough these fascists play, they are utter criminals crouching in the offices of the government any time they are in power.

To have killed Ongaro's 15 year old son with a death squad is such a lowly, hellish thing to do, a way which would have wounded him far, far more than a personal attack upon himself.

This information tells us we have so much we have to learn ahead, and it will all be time well spent. I hope Argentina's schools haven't been pressured, yet, to totally whitewash the atrocities as the US schools have been led to do so many years ago.

This is the time young people in Argentina need to know the truth about their country's past if they are to be able to guide their country in the future, and do it without the pressure from foreign powers outside Argentina, like the right-wing loons in many current Latin American countries.

Thank you, so much. So glad to have this history illuminated.

Love that caption. Couldn't be better, and it would drive a fascist nuts. That's what they love, power, and they must hate unions because unions keep them from being able to manipulate and control employees in the way they want.

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