(Alberto Pérez Iriarte collection)
[Joe] (1940-1973), activist and
revolutionary, was born on 24 May 1940 at El Moro stud farm in Marcos Paz
(Buenos Aires province of
Argentina), the son of Joseph Baxter (1888-1952) and his wife María Luisa, née Denaro
(1910-1996); they also had a daughter, Mary, born in 1947. A
professional race horse trainer, Joseph Baxter was born in
London and emigrated to Argentina, probably with his Irish-born father Joseph Baxter (sen.), who found
employment in a cattle ranch in Buenos Aires. The family had an
learnt English as his first language, and was a skilled
horse-rider at an
early age. He was sent to elementary school in the
School of Córdoba,
where he used to receive visits from his family every two weeks. At
ten, Baxter had an accident in the school and broke his elbow.
For this reason, he would not be able to move correctly the
right arm. One of those physical types inclined to be
rather corpulent, Joe was nicknamed El Gordo.
Baxter's father Joseph died in 1952 the family relocated to
Buenos Aires and lived in the district of Villa Urquiza (Alvarez
Thomas avenue). Mrs. Baxter had to work as children's nurse to
supplement the family's income. Joe was sent to another
School in Lomas de Zamora,
where he received a tuition grant and assisted younger pupils. Baxter was a good
student and became a keen reader of adventure novels, history, and
poetry. At fifteen, Baxter entered Instituto Martínez school
of Buenos Aires, which was a mediocre secondary school. Joe had
plenty of time to hang around the political debate meetings at
Café Paulista together with pupils of Salvador and San Agustín
Catholic schools. He was fascinated by their nationalist
discourse and became an enthusiastic pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic
He rejected the Argentine bourgeois ideology that supported the
fall of Juan Manuel de Rosas in 1852, and was against the
conventional political practises.
After the Soviet
occupation of Hungary in November 1956, Baxter joined the
Nationalist Union of Secondary Students (UNES), a high-school
student branch of the right-wing Catholic organisation Tacuara,
led by Alberto Ezcurra Uriburu (1937-1993).
Joe Baxter was an enthusiastic supporter of the weekly
nationalist paper Azul y Blanco. Two years later, he was
appointed Tacuara's secretary-general. At the same time, he was
studying in the School of Law and, thanks to his English skills,
was working as international operator in the state-owned
telephone company. His political activities, on top of the
frequent meetings, included violent raids against the URSS
consulate, synagogues and other Jewish institutions. In spite
that Tacuara was inspired by Catholic priests and modelled after
Primo de Rivera's Falange in Spain, Joe Baxter was distrustful
of any religious ideology. He described himself as a nationalist
and anti-imperialist. An admirer of the poet Ezra Pound, Baxter published in 1959
the poem "Nüremberg" in Tacuara publication. He supported a strong militarization of the movement. After
the demonstrations during the visit of Dwight Eisenhower to
Argentina in February 1962, Joe Baxter was imprisoned together
with other nationalist activists. In prison he met Guillermo
Patricio Kelly (1922-2005), with whom he disagreed
ideologically, and José Luis Nell (1941-1974),
who would be his companion during years.
When the Cuban
president Osvaldo Dorticós visited Argentina in 1962, Joe Baxter
was captivated with Castro's revolution and its anti-imperialist
challenge to the United States. Owing to the creation by Fr.
Julio Menvielle of Guardia Restauradora – a Catholic segment
within Tacuara – the organisation split and Baxter and others
set up Tacuara Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNRT).
Therefore began Joe Baxter's metamorphosis from fascism to
Marxism, a transformation which would be shared by several
members of his generation. In his view, the Peronist labour
structure was necessary to attain the national revolution. As an
illustration of his ambiguous and complex ideological
development, when policemen raided his house in Villa Urquiza,
they were bewildered by portraits of Hitler, Mussolini, and
Fidel Castro decorating his bedroom.
By 1963 Joe
Baxter was a full-time political activist. He admired Algeria's
nationalist revolution and rejected anti-Semitism. At the same
time, his group received arms from Peronist army officers and
was planning radical operations to finance their activities,
which included among others a planned invasion to Falkland/Malvinas Islands. Although
he did not play a direct role (but was implicitly concerned) in
the raid to the bank labour union's hospital Policlínico
Bancario on 29 August 1963 - the first urban guerrilla operation
in Argentina - Joe Baxter was responsible to launder part of the
booty in Brazil in 1964.
That year was
the start of Baxter's international career. From Brazil he
travelled to Madrid and met Juan Domingo Perón at his house.
Perón introduced him to Héctor Villalón, a businessman with good
connections in Cuba, China and Egypt. Baxter then moved to
Algeria and Egypt and worked with several revolutionaries. To
avoid the Argentine authorities, he settled for some time in
Uruguay and transformed Tupamaros revolutionary
group into an urban guerrilla organisation. In 1965, he
received training in northern Vietnam. During a sudden attack he
ignored the withdrawal order and fired on the enemy, being
awarded for this action. Baxter also travelled to China to
receive military and ideological training.
In 1966 Joe
Baxter entered clandestinely in Argentina, and the following
year went to Cuba thanks to his network with Tupamaros
organisation. In Havana he married Ruth Arrieta, daughter of a
Bolivian nationalist officer. Joe Baxter was in Paris during the
Fourth International of 1968, where he represented the Trotskyist groups. In these circumstances Baxter met Rubén P.
Bonnet, Luis Pujals and Mario R. Santucho, who would be founding
members of the Peoples Revolutionary Army (ERP), a Trotskyist
terrorist organisation in Argentina. After the hijacking of Fiat
Argentina's chief executive Oberdan Sallustro that year, Baxter
broke with ERP and created other radical groups like Leninist
Trend and Red Fraction. By the early 1970s he was living in
Chile with his wife and daughter Mariana, born in 1968 in Cuba.
Joe Baxter died
on 11 July 1973 when the Boeing 707 of Varig Airlines, en route
to Rio de Janeiro, attempted an emergency landing near Paris Orly airport killing 123 passengers.
He was travelling on a false passport and carried with him
$40,000 dollars, presumably to support the fighting of the Sandinist
National Liberation Front (FSLN) of Nicaragua. Joe Baxter was buried
beside his father and mother at the
British cemetery of Chacarita in Buenos Aires. The stone
that marks his grave carries the inscription El no quiso nada
para sí (he wanted nothing for himself).
I am most grateful to the journalist Daniel Gutman
review of the entry, corrections and additional information. The
greater part of the records provided in this biography have been
taken from Gutman's book Tacuara: historia de la primera guerrilla urbana
(Buenos Aires: Vergara, 2003). I am also thankful to Alberto
Pérez Iriarte and Juan José Santos for the photographs of Joe
Baxter and the family tombstone.
Roberto, Tacuara: la pólvora y la sangre (Mexico: Océano,
Roberto, A 30 años de la muerte de Joe Baxter. Una rosa roja
en un casquillo de obús chino disparado en
Entrevista a Alberto Pérez Iriarte.
Available online <
(cited 12 October 2005).
- García, Karina,
Tacuara y el Asalto al Policlínico Bancario, in: "Todo es
Historia" (Buenos Aires) N° 373 (August 1998).
Daniel, Tacuara: historia de la primera guerrilla
(Buenos Aires: Vergara, 2003).
- Joe Baxter Papers (1972-1973) at the International
Institute of Social History, Amsterdam. Includes documents
concerning the Trotskyite movement in Latin America (Argentina:
PRT and Chile: PSR), particularly articles by Joe Baxter
(published and unpublished).
Arnold, Hombres y Mujeres del PRT-ERP: la pasión militante
(Buenos Aires: Contrapunto, 1990).
Gerassi, Marisa, Los
(Buenos Aires: Alvarez, 1968).