Memories, essays and controversies. The balance of the montonera experience in the 1980s

This article investigates the historiography production, witness depositions and essays on the armed organization Montoneros in the 1980s. In Argentina, the 1960s and the 1970s were a highly conflictive period, in face of which, still today, it is difficult to resist the temptation to issue a moral evaluation. Where does the tendency to judge Argentinean armed movements come from? To answer that question, we will incorporate Marin Harris' cultural anthropology as a theoretical framework and auxiliary discipline, in particular the categories emic and etic, which are employed to understand the field researcher's attitudes. Thus we will be able to understand the many forms of "empathy" and "antipathy" toward the armed movements, understanding these reactions as a distancing or a tight adhesion to the native categories of the study object. This article deals with four books on the Montoneros and political violence: Richard Gillespie's Soldados de Peron. Los Montoneros (1982), Pablo Giussani's Montoneros. La soberbia armada (1984), Carlos Brocato's La Argentina que quisieron (1985), and Juan Gasparini's Montoneros. Final de cuentas (1988).