Geografí­as de la protesta armada: Nueva izquierda y latinoamericanismo en el cono sur. El ejemplo de la Junta de Coordinación Revolucionaria

Abstract

The paper traces the trajectory of Argentinean, Bolivian, Chilean and Uruguayan militants who developed a regional network of left armed organizations. The exchanges between these organizations that would last more than ten years began with the support networks for Che Guevara's incursion in Bolivia in 1966 and ended in the late seventies when the coup d'etat in Argentina closed their last refuge in the region. To understand the evolution that eventually led to a continent-wide revolutionary strategy, I examine the confluence of distinct national movements - the Bolivian ELN [National Liberation Army], the Chilean MIR [Leftist Revolutionary Movement], the Uruguayan MLNT [National Liberation Tupamaros' Movement], and the Argentine ERP [Revolutionary Popular Army]- through critical events that defined the experience of this network of militants: the impact of Ernesto 'Che' Guevara's bolivian guerrilla in the southern cone, the political and cultural exchanges among militants of these organizations in Allende's Chile, and the creation of a regional armed organization called the JCR [Revolutionary Coordinating Committe]. The paper uses a transnational frame of analysis to examine a topic that so far has been examined mostly in national or comparative perspectives. The article seeks to show how the region was a central space of political experimentation in the constitution of political identities. And it argues that only this transnational approach can help to give a more complete explanation of the emergence of these radical political movements during this period