The Argentine Right Wing across Three Generations

The right-wing of Argentina’s 1960s relied heavily on the generational “wisdom” of its elders. This is no more clear than in the case of the organization known as “Tacuara,” a right-wing, arguably fascist paramilitary organization which operated in the country in the 1960s. As has been explored in many works, Tacuara’s leaders readily received the mentorship of Father Julio Meinvielle, a defrocked, elderly Catholic priest who continued to enjoy popularity on the right-wing due to his intransigent anticommunism and antisemitism. His influence on Tacuara and its successor organizations is well established. Less attention has been paid to the afterlives of Tacuara members who sought to follow in his footsteps, as mentors and examples for future right-wing youth.

This presentation follows the life of Tacuara’s leader, Alberto Ignacio Ezcurra Uriburu, after the end of Tacuara as a militant organization. Like his old mentor Ezcurra pursued the priesthood, eventually landing in the interior city of San Rafael in 1984. There he led not just a conservative parish but a series of educational institutions, including a Catholic seminary known as the Verbo Incarnado (the Incarnate Word), and lived out the rest of his life as a leader and educator of young conservative and right-wing Catholics. He also took advantage of new means of disseminating his message unavailable to his predecessor, such as recording his sermons and missives, or appearing on television. Thinking about Ezcurra’s life generationally enables scholars to understand him as a part of a long and still continuing line of right-wing Catholic political and theological practice in Argentina and the world. This helps us reframe his and Tacuara’s activities as less the wild expressions of youth and more the stable output of a sustained, political ecosystem.