“It is the Duty of Every Christian to be a Revolutionary”: the Role of Revolutionary Catholics in the Emergence of Montoneros at the Turn of the 1960s and 1970s

The article is devoted to the detection of the role of the Argentine revolutionary Catholics in the formation of the leftist urban guerilla movement Montoneros at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s. The movement originated in Argentina as a result of the unification of several small and locally active paramilitary groups, and its first high-profile public action took place in May—June 1970, when the country's former dictator, Pedro Eugenio Aramburu, was abducted and executed. Thereafter, the movement went through more than one stage of development and evolved organizationally and tactically, as well as ideologically and strategically. The article shows that the military-political group ‘Comando Camilo Torres’ from Buenos Aires, which became the parent group and the main core of the Montoneros, was formed and initially developed thanks to the activities of the famous and influential — in the 1960s and 1970s — Argentine Catholic magazine ‘Christianity and Revolution’, which was led by a revolutionary Catholic Juan García Elorrio. Among the sources used by the author of this article are materials from the Argentine press, as well as evidence from participants in the events and processes examined in the study.