This January 23, 2026, marks 37 years since the last guerrilla attack in Argentina
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37 years have passed since the takeover of the Mechanized Infantry Regiment III "General Belgrano" in La Tablada. This episode was one of the most violent in recent history, and the last armed action by a guerrilla organization in the country.
The attack, carried out in full democracy by the Movimiento Todos por la Patria (MTP), left a toll of dozens of dead, wounded, and disappeared. It also briefly brought back the logic of political violence that had marked Argentina in the 1970s.
The political context: fragile democracy and crisis
The takeover took place during the constitutional government of Raúl Alfonsín, in a context of severe economic deterioration, incipient hyperinflation, and a still fragile democracy.
Raúl Alfonsín recorrió el regimiento el 24 de enero en horas del mediodía.
Since 1987, the country had been going through Carapintada military uprisings led by Aldo Rico and Mohamed Alí Seineldín. These events put civilian authority in check and maximized tensions between political power and the Armed Forces.
That climate of instability was what the MTP tried to use to its advantage. The far-left organization claimed that a "new coup d'état" was being prepared and that its actions sought "to defend democracy". This hypothesis was upheld for years by its leaders, although the seized documentation and subsequent judicial investigations disproved that version.
"Operation Tapir"
At 6:15 in the morning on January 23, 1989, a stolen Ford 7000 truck rammed the regiment's access gate, located in La Matanza. Several vehicles with 46 armed MTP activists entered behind it, commanded by Enrique Haroldo Gorriarán Merlo. He was a former ERP leader in the 1970s and one of those responsible for the attack on the Azul Military Garrison in 1974.
The strikers entered in cold blood and by force, shouting "Long live Rico!" and "Long live Seineldín!" in order to simulate a Carapintada uprising. Their objective was to seize the war tanks stationed in the barracks and provoke a popular insurrection that would overwhelm the national government. According to the judicial investigation, the action was internally called "Operation Tapir".
Cada 23 de enero se recuerda la insurrección guerrillera del MTP, que dejó decenas de muertos
The confrontation was immediate. In the first minutes of the attack, conscript Roberto Tadeo Taddía, who was on guard and unarmed, was murdered. During the following hours, the fighting spread through different areas of the barracks, with hand-to-hand combat, fires, and the use of heavy weaponry.
One of the main centers of resistance to the insurrection was at the Regimental Headquarters. There, Horacio Fernández Cutiellos, the unit's second-in-command, organized the defense against the guerrilla advance. The fighting went on for more than 36 hours, until the morning of January 24.
The recovery of the regiment
As the early hours of January 24 went by, reinforcements from the Argentine Army and the Buenos Aires Provincial Police were deployed. A cordon was established and a progressive recovery of the facilities was carried out. They used armored vehicles and carried out tactical entries into buildings where the strikers were holding positions and even hostages.
Efectivos de la Policía de la provincia de Buenos Aires disparan contra los insurrectos. Su rápida actuación fue clave.
The final surrender took place around 9 in the morning on Tuesday, January 24. The toll was devastating: 9 soldiers (four of them conscripts) and 2 police officers dead, in addition to dozens of wounded and maimed. On the guerrilla side, 28 strikers were killed and four people were reported disappeared after the surrender.
Gorriarán Merlo was arrested in Mexico in 1995 and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1997. However, in the following years, various political decisions changed the judicial scenario. Then-president Fernando de la Rúa commuted sentences, and in 2003, Eduardo Duhalde pardoned Gorriarán Merlo and Seineldín.
The institutional remembrance
El Ministerio de Defensa recordó a los caídos en la defensa de La Tablada
37 years after the events, the National Ministry of Defense, headed by Lieutenant General Carlos Alberto Presti, commemorated this episode. It paid tribute to the soldiers, non-commissioned officers, and officers of the Argentine Army and to the police personnel who died defending the regiment.
In its institutional message, it emphasized that the fallen defended the constitutional democratic order, the institutions of the Republic, and the lives of their comrades.
The La Tablada takeover was recorded as the last armed guerrilla attempt in Argentina. It was an episode that violently closed the cycle of political violence that had begun decades earlier. It also once again exposed, in the midst of democracy, the human cost of armed confrontation.
