SUMMARY

ERP (Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo; People's Revolutionary Army) was a Marxist/Trotskyist rebel group that fought an intrastate armed conflict over government power against the Government of Argentina in the 1970s (see Argentina: Government). The group was created by a militant faction of the Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores (PRT, Revolutionary Workers’ Party, PRT) in 1968. Two years later, at the PRT’s Fifth Congress, the ERP was recognized as the party’s armed wing. At this time, the ERP had a leadership structure and membership base separate from those of the PRT. Its goals were to combat imperialism and establish a Marxist state.

The group was also anti-Peronist, and was inspired by Che Guevara’s foco (focalism, the idea that small “vanguards” of revolutionaries can inspire the population to revolt) theory of guerilla warfare; the group later adhered to the Maoist idea of building a revolutionary base in the rural areas. The ERP was particularly active in the Tucuman province. By 1975, the ERP had been weakened militarily, and officially merged with the Revolutionary Worker’s Party (PRT); most of the PRT/ERP leaders were subsequently killed or incarcerated during the “Dirty War”, a government repression and terror campaign that lasted 1976-1983.

Until his death in 1976, Mario Roberto Santucho led the ERP; he was replaced by Enrique Gorriarán Merlo, who later fled from Argentina in 1977.

The ERP was associated to a limited extent with fellow Argentinian rebel group Montoneros, but the ideological divide between them prevented the emergence of a formal alliance. Furthermore, the ERP, unlike the Montoneros, did not at any point support the Government of Argentina. The ERP was also affiliated with the Tupamaro guerillas in Uruguay. At least some of ERP’s leaders, including its commander Santucho, received training in Cuba.