"Two, Three, Many Vietnams"

(disclaimer: Although i have lurked for some time now I'm a total N00b, and this is my first post. Be gentle. If i have broken some kind of forum etiquette by not introducing myself first i apologise.)

(other disclaimer: I'm not some kind of 'El Che' fanboy, Ernesto Guevara killed a whole bunch of people and could have killed a lot more given the chance, this makes him a bad man.)

WI the guerrilla foco which Guevara sent to Argentina under Jorge Ricardo Masetti in 1963 was more successful? OTL Masetti was a rabid Anti-Semite and an awful guerrilla leader and his group, the EGP, was hunted down and destroyed in short order by Argentine gendarmes, also the Argentine Military leadership's decision to hold elections and the surprise victory of the centrist Dr. Arturo Illia. took the wind out of the sails of less radical prospective revolutionaries.

Say that the military candidate, Gen. Aramburu, wins these elections, inflaming the opinions of the moderate leftists and the Peronistas and, given that Massetti has more luck, there are numerous armed revolutionary groups of Guevarists and Radical Peronistas operating in the far north-west of Argentina by mid 1964.

When will Guevara himself choose to step in to lead the revolution?

What will the reactions of the Argentine Military be?

Would the USA intervene?

(one more disclaimer: I am by no means an expert, or even decently informed, on the political history of Argentina, so if an Argentine or just someone with a better working knowledge than me spots any ignorant/insulting/just plain stupid mistake feel free to have me hung, drawn and set on fire. ;))
 
(disclaimer: Although i have lurked for some time now I'm a total N00b, and this is my first post. Be gentle. If i have broken some kind of forum etiquette by not introducing myself first i apologise.)

There's no such rule, in fact I get the feeling that many people are irritated by introductory threads. But, for what it's worth, your name's misspelled.
 
Surely you know the troll method of counting? :rolleyes::D

It's a quote from Che, who assuredly could count to four, but also had rhetorical training.

Incidentally, it is a sentiment I entirely approce of. The world can't have enough majority-Buddhist countries populated by pretty Southeast Asian ladies and educated, productive and nonaggressive foreigners.
 
My mistake :eek:

Hey, that was my first reaction on reading the title too. I had no idea Che was a Pratchett fan.

And Novosibirisk, don't worry about it; we get planty of 'what if's regarding Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Tito - none of whom are the kind of people one would call 'nice'. Besides, I never made an introduction post either...
 

maverick

Banned
Back to topic...

A. Just for reference, in the elections of 1963 Aramburu finished fourth...behind the 'uncommitted votes'...meaning that more people decided to vote for 'none of the above' than for him...

B. A successful revolution in Argentina? never happened, never gonna happen...remember that the majority of the French public considered the anti-Nazi resistance a bunch of freaks and fanatics until 1944? well, its even worse down here, we hate radicals with a passion...

C. A Guerilla in the North west has as many chances as the many urban guerrillas against the military (that is Montoneros, the Juventud Peronista, the ERP, the EPN, etc) and even with the Che, he'll probably have less support here than in Bolivia, where he was massively hated...

Furthermore, even though Peron supported the radical anti-government movements, he'd have destroyed them upon his return, as he tried with the AAA IOTL 1973-1974...yes, any revolution would have to be Peronista, since Communism was destroyed by Peron when he got all of the worker's support in 1946...Communism is politically death in Argentina since 1946, and that's why the Che would have never, ever succeeded in this country...and that's the one good thing Peron did for this country...
 

maverick

Banned
Oh, and Welcome!

I forgot...the military would have eventually destroyed the Guerrillas, as they did IOTL 1976-1980
 
Thanks for the welcomes everybody.

Hmmm... A Discworld/Guerrilla warfare crossover featuring multiple Vietnams. I'll have to mull that one over.

Back on topic.

Maverick, thanks for the input. I'll try to address a couple of your points.

A. Just for reference, in the elections of 1963 Aramburu finished fourth...behind the 'uncommitted votes'...meaning that more people decided to vote for 'none of the above' than for him...

Ahh!!! Undone by my shoddy research. Clearly Aramburu doesn't stand a chance without massive vote rigging (and even then he'd probably lose).

C. A Guerilla in the North west has as many chances as the many urban guerrillas against the military (that is Montoneros, the Juventud Peronista, the ERP, the EPN, etc) and even with the Che, he'll probably have less support here than in Bolivia, where he was massively hated...

I'd been lead to believe that many of Che's problems in Bolivia stemmed from the double dealing of the Moscow line Bolivian communist party as well the naturally wary and superstitious rural population, he couldn't get a base of support from anyone. When it comes to Argentina, i agree with you, the guerrillas stand a 99% chance of being crushed. However, 1963-4 was a different time period to the late 70s and early 80s, American advice and aid had only just began to flow and Latin America as a whole hadn't been through the guerrilla 'experience' as it were. This may give an insurgency based on small and widespread guerrilla groups a chance.

Peron supported the radical anti-government movements, he'd have destroyed them upon his return

True, but who can say that Peron would have returned? as the figure head of an insurrection he'd have a lot of people after his head, the Argentine government, the CIA and perhaps even Cuban intelligence (if Guevara gave the order) to name but a few.
 

maverick

Banned
Back to the last point...the bulk of any revolutionary movement in the country would have been Peronist and would have demanded Peron to return and lead the Workers' revolution...

Cuban intelligence is unlikely, since the Che had broken his ties with Castro and renounced to all Cuban titles once Havana adopted the Moscow Line of Communism...the Argentine Military can't operate in Spain, the one time they tried in 1982 ended in failure...and the one time the US Government tried to stop Peron, that was in 1946, they catapulted him to power...further interventions of the Department of State were mostly involving unofficial and limited support to military governments and providing training and doctrine to the Army Generals...nothing big like the Operations at Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954
 
(disclaimer: Although i have lurked for some time now I'm a total N00b, and this is my first post. Be gentle. If i have broken some kind of forum etiquette by not introducing myself first i apologise.)

(other disclaimer: I'm not some kind of 'El Che' fanboy, Ernesto Guevara killed a whole bunch of people and could have killed a lot more given the chance, this makes him a bad man.)

WI the guerrilla foco which Guevara sent to Argentina under Jorge Ricardo Masetti in 1963 was more successful? OTL Masetti was a rabid Anti-Semite and an awful guerrilla leader and his group, the EGP, was hunted down and destroyed in short order by Argentine gendarmes, also the Argentine Military leadership's decision to hold elections and the surprise victory of the centrist Dr. Arturo Illia. took the wind out of the sails of less radical prospective revolutionaries.

Say that the military candidate, Gen. Aramburu, wins these elections, inflaming the opinions of the moderate leftists and the Peronistas and, given that Massetti has more luck, there are numerous armed revolutionary groups of Guevarists and Radical Peronistas operating in the far north-west of Argentina by mid 1964.

When will Guevara himself choose to step in to lead the revolution?

What will the reactions of the Argentine Military be?

Would the USA intervene?

(one more disclaimer: I am by no means an expert, or even decently informed, on the political history of Argentina, so if an Argentine or just someone with a better working knowledge than me spots any ignorant/insulting/just plain stupid mistake feel free to have me hung, drawn and set on fire. ;))

Welcome!:) Nice to see an Argentine WI! I found your post very accurate. I'm just curious about the fact that Masetti was "a rabid anti-Semite". I knew that a few of the young nationalists in the 60s, who would joined Monteneros in the 70s, were somehow anti-Semite. But I didn't know this was the case of Masetti.


A few months ago I watched on TV an interview done to someone who had just written a book about Masseti's guerrilla. He said that Massetti hadn't planned his opperation "very well", to say the least. They basically went to a very rural and isolated area in the North West in the border with Bolivia and started a guerilla movement without any support of the local population. The locals didn't supported them, as it would happen to Guevara in Bolivia. They hadn't cared to explain to the locals what they were doing in terms they would understand. So, the peasants were neutral or even sided with the army, because they could feel more identified with it (some of the families had a conscript or a sargeant in its ranks) than with this group of unknown Porteños* and Cubans.

The author also said that the planning was quite bad as, even if they had managed to survive in that remote area of Salta, they were too far from everywhere to pose any threat.

Not to mention that they had greatly misread the political situation. Illia was a democratic president and, though he had won in elections in which the Peronist party wasn't allowed to participate, Illia was willing to negotiate with Peronist political and union leaders. Thus, the conditions for a succesfull guerrlla movement weren't there.

If, on the contrary, the Colorados, the hard-liners in the army, had decided to do a coup in 1962 and impose a military dictatorchip, AND if this military dictatorship had started prosecuting all Peronists and collaboratos AND if Masetti's guerrilla movement had somehow managed to ally with the Peronists resistance movement, as other marxists groups did in the seventies... then the guerrilla could have lasted a bit more. It would probably still have been defeated, as it was during the years 1976-1980, but with a lot of violence and the wideapread use of illegal, cruel and criminal methods (torture, disparitions and all that).

*People from Buenos Aires
 

maverick

Banned
I've always wanted to explore the possibilities of the Colorados ousting the Azules before 1964...but it'd be like the pro-axis officers getting rid of the neutral and pro-allied officers in the 1940s, when those were the majority...

But then again, in 1943 the pro-German officers took power and even ousted pro-allied government...so let's say that the Colorados are able to score a few victories in the early 1960s, before 1964 and the victory of Ongania, obviously...

Maybe if they manage to launch a surprise blitz, capture and or kill many of the Blue leadership...and then influence Guido's government in 1962 to finally launch a second coup in the summer of 1962-1963...then again, I'm not sure about who was leading the Colorados then and who would become president if they set up a dictatorship...
 
I wonder what's the effect, politically wise in Argentina, if el Ché is killed in Argentina by the Argentinian Armed Forces. And also how it would affect his impact as a icon or martyr. Of course is not going to make much of a difference at the end, but again, it could change some small things. It will create more hatred, and probably more violence with the years. Whoever was president and whoever killed him will probably be assasinated in the 70s by some guerrilla movement. And OTOH, if a guerrilla led by Guevara happens during a democratic government, the guerrilla is defeated, but Guevara is imprisioned instead of executed?
 
Sorry for the delay between posts, it must be rather annoying.

Maverick, The Peron assassination idea was kind of a throw away idea in what is looking like an increasingly unlikely scenario, however, there is evidence to suggest that Guevara had links high up in Cuban intelligence a long time after 1964, specifically Manuel “Barba Roja” Pineiro, director of the DGI. This is where Guevara got the money and guns he needed for his Bolivian and Congolese adventures but I suppose that is very different from ordering killings from afar.

Admiral Brown thanks for the welcome. I’ve always been interested by Argentina, despite not knowing the first thing about the country, I think it must be the football and beef (two of my ruling passions). I started this thread because I wanted something slightly more original than a ‘what if something had gone slightly different in WW2’ to be my first post.

On Masetti’s anti-Semitism, the source I’m using for this (and a lot of other things) is a biography by Jon Lee Anderson called ‘A Revolutionary Life’. I lack the knowledge to tell how good it is academically, though it seems pretty well researched and sourced. He goes in to quite a lot of detail into Masetti’s harshness on recruits and his victimisation of the Jewish ones, culminating in the execution of Adolfo “Pupi” Rotblat.

Juanml82, I don’t think that Guevara dying a few years earlier in Argentina would alter the whole ‘Che’ mythos; students would still have him up on their bedroom wall. The butterflies coming from an earlier showdown between the military and the radical Peronistas would probably be massive. I wish I was better informed. Could anyone recommend me a good book on the modern political history of Argentina?
 
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