The "Demetrios": Trotskyists, Peronist Nazis?

Abstract

The “Encuadramiento” of Peronist Youth was one of the most important militant groups of boiling political youths during the second half of the 1960s and the first of the 1970s. A political and intellectual experience that was absent in most of the historiography of the period, since mid-2012 have appeared the first studies. The “Demetrios” defined their actions inside of what was called "objective and doctrinal loyalty" to General Peron, thus enabling us to locate them within "orthodox" peronism, on a path similar to the Iron Guard. However, its origins and certain theoretical-political formulations made them receive diferent nicknames that, in the militant jargon, went from the "troskos" to "hitlerites". In this paper we analyze this political career focusing on the ideological aspects. To do this we examined their origins of transition from Trotskyism to Peronism, its peculiar considerations about the nazi phenomenon and its political and ideological location in 1973. That year was a key moment of definitions within the Peronist Youth, which included a debate and a dispute with the revolutionary tendency on the meaning of "national socialism" publicly endorsed by Perón in the preceding years.