Foundation and early history

Founding congress of the party, held on 6 January 1918

Following the October Revolution and the rise of Bolsheviks to power in Russia, tensions between the reformist and the revolutionary factions of Argentina's Socialist Party (Partido Socialista, PS) reached its breaking point. On 6 January 1918, following the PS' refusal to endorse the Bolshevik coup, the revolutionary faction split from the Socialist Party and formed the International Socialist Party (Partido Socialista Internacional, PSI). The party changed its name to the Communist Party of Argentina (Partido Comunista de la Argentina, PCA) two months later.

From its inception, the PCA followed the political line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, supporting its initiatives and joining the Communist International (Comintern) in 1919. Its alignment with the CPSU during the Stalinist period earned it numerous criticisms by other parties within Argentina's political left. The PCA suffered several splits throughout the 1920s, with a number of factions emerging including the frentistas in 1923, the chispistas (pre-Trotskyists) in 1925, and the penelonistas (supporters of Nikolai Bukharin) in 1928.

The PCA organized the sending of volunteers to the International Brigades and other resources to the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War. Victorio Codovilla, who led the PCA's eighth congress in 1928, advised the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) on behalf of the Comintern during this period. He was also responsible for organizing local NKVD agents in Spain and directing the persecution, torture, and murder of militant anarchists, members of the Workers Party of Marxist Unification, and other opponents of the PCE in the International Brigades. The party actively supported the Soviet Union during World War II by organizing aid collections and having its leaders contribute to various international tasks under the orders of Moscow. For example, Codovilla was responsible for organizing the murder of Leon Trotsky in Mexico in 1940; by this time he had earned the full confidence of the Soviet leadership.

From Peronism to the 1976 dictatorship

As a result of the workers' mobilizations of 17 October 1945 against the dismissal and detention of Juan Domingo Perón, within the party there were questions to the political line of the same and to the leadership headed by Codovilla and in the National Conference of December of that year, Rodolfo Puiggrós openly expressed criticism and demanded to find practical agreements with Perón around the defense of the interests of the workers and the fight against imperialism.

In the elections of 1946 the Communist Party was part of the Democratic Union, opposed to Peronism. Puiggrós was expelled in 1947 and founded the Communist Workers Movement together with some communist syndicalists supporters of the alliance with Peronism.

The student of chemistry and communist militant Ernesto Mario Bravo was kidnapped at his home on 17 June 1951 and tortured by the police. His case was reported by the doctor who treated him, first in the Special Section and then in a fifth where he was transferred. The government, however, emphatically denied the facts:

«Negó la desaparición de Bravo, negó las torturas, denunció todo como una maniobra opositora y hasta el Consejo Superior del Partido Peronista insistió que el episodio entero había sido 'una confabulación con el propósito de subvertir el orden'. Y cuando la decisión judicial hizo innegable todo lo que se había negado, apretó los tornillos de los medios periodísticos para echar sobre el tema una espesa vaharada de desinformación y movió los magistrados necesarios para exculpar a los torturadores. Al defenderlos hizo suyas sus culpas, las endosó, lo que revela la tremenda insensibilidad que se había instalado en las estructuras oficiales. Maltratar a un ciudadano era perdonable, si por añadidura era un comunista, entonces era un servicio a premiar. Pues -no hace falta decirlo- Lombilla y sus colaboradores regresaron a sus puestos y fueron ascendidos, como corresponde».^[4]

On 17 June 1955, the police of Rosario arrested, tortured and disappeared Juan Ingallinella, a doctor and party leader, who had participated in the publication of pamphlets in defense of the government days before, denouncing the masterminds of the bombing and strafing of the Plaza de Mayo, in which more than 350 people were killed and more than 700 wounded and mutilated.

After the overthrow of Perón, the party criticized the loss of democratic liberties and the prohibition of the partisans who carried out the coup of 1955. Although Peronism was the main objective of the persecutions, the increase of the repression in the government Arambruru also led him to repress the members of the Communist Party. In 1956 the Ministry of the Interior, Eduardo Busso, denounced that the Union of Argentine Women and the Argentine League for Human Rights had links with the party. In April of the following year, the cancellation of legal status was announced and 360 militants were arrested and 56 local supporters closed.

Adhered to the thesis of the XX Congress of the CPSU, which postulated the peaceful transition to socialism through the electoral route, among other points. In 1967 it underwent the biggest organized split in its history, which would lead to 4,000 members to separate, later forming the Revolutionary Communist Party, on 6 January 1968.

During the 1970s, the policy of the guerrilla movements in Latin America did not follow. Before the crisis of the government of Isabel Perón and the imminence of a military coup, the PCA began to "promote a joint, unitary, of the political parties, of the Church and of the Armed Forces towards the establishment of a civic-military cabinet ", says that later it would turn into the claim of a" civic-military convergence ".

The Central Committee of the PCA 27 28 did not condemn the coup d'état of 1976 and the consequent military dictatorship established at the beginning.26 29 30 31 32 A few days after the coup, an official publication of the PCA affirmed with respect to the new president: "Regarding his more precise formulations ... we affirm emphatically that they constitute the basis of a liberating program that we share .... he affirms that no easy, miraculous or spectacular solutions will be given, be assured that nobody expects them ... General Videla does not ask for adhesion, but understanding, he has it ".33 This position was based on a political characterization that "presented the Videla-Viola duo as the wing of renewed democracy, in front of a Pinochet wing, a non-predominant sector within the Armed Forces, channeled through Emilio Massera and Luciano Menéndez" and coincided with the support that the government of the Soviet Union offered the military dictatorship.31 26 This characterization was not easily accepted by all its militancy, which, between internal discussions, was distributed among those who trusted the word of the leaders and those who preferred to act for your account or refusing to accept directions from the addresses.34

The PCA was not affected by laws 21,322, 21,323 and 21,325 that dissolved some parties and left groups; its activity was suspended and, according to the report of the IACHR, like nine other political parties, it was subjected to "flexible government behavior" and was received in interviews by the military government.35 Despite this, a large number of PCA militants were persecuted, tortured, murdered and disappeared during the dictatorship.

Alberto Nadra affirms that the accusations made by the PCA before the IACHR allowed for the first time this organism to assume the existence of "state terrorism" in Argentina, taking as "pilot case" that of the student Inés Ollero, as well as the detention of almost 1,600 militants, the kidnapping of more than 500 and the murder of 150, show the objective resistance to the dictatorship, regardless of the public position of the PC.

In taking stock of this period on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the coup d'état, the PCA issued a statement in which it stated: "each force in its own way, it cost us all to understand the novelty of the dictatorship imposed by the Yankees and supported by a vast political and social space ... We made mistakes in assessing the internal contradictions of the Armed Forces, overestimating them and considering taking advantage of them in the fight against fascism. the actions in progress and the level of hegemony that the most pro-imperialist sectors had reached from the start. ... We are not, as we know and we do not hide, an infallible force neither in the sayings nor in the behaviors, but we are proud of belonging to a party that resisted the attacks of the dictatorship with dignity and that gave its contribution to the solidarity struggle from the first day, in the interior of the country and also in n the outside ".

The PCA appeared as a plaintiff in two criminal cases against State terrorism exercised by the dictatorship.

One of those causes is that of the Floreal case Edgardo Avellaneda, known as "el Negrito", born in Rosario on 14 May 1961. He was a militant of the Communist Youth Federation and was in charge of the propaganda tasks in his neighborhood. He lived with his mother Iris Etelvina Pereyra de Avellaneda and his father Floreal Avellaneda, delegate of the Tensa textile factory, both militants of the Communist Party.

He was 15 years old when he was abducted from his home with his mother, he was illegally detained and tortured. His body was found on 14 May 1976 in the waters of the Río de la Plata. His body was found with serious signs of having suffered physical torture and having been the victim of impalement.