Civil war broke out while most Argentines were asleep in their beds. In the early morning darkness, generals considered loyal to President Juan Perón were summoned posthaste to the Army Ministry in Buenos Aires for an urgent conference. Police squads swooped down on a band of armed civilians trying to break into a naval armory at the Buenos Aires waterfront. At half a dozen places outside the nation's capital, a rebellion by army, navy, marine and air-force units was already under way.
It was three months to the day after the navy-led uprising of June 16 that shook Perón but failed to knock him out.
In that revolt, doomed from the start because no major army units joined in, the rebels struck directly at the seat of power: the pink Government House on Buenos Aires' Plaza de Mayo. In last week's much more formidable revolt, the rebel plan was to take over cities and military bases outside Buenos Aires before attempting to attack the capital.
Battle on the Pampas. Deep in the heart of the pampas, insurgent army units led by Brigadier General Dalmiro Felix Videla Balaguer—until recently a well-regarded Peronista—swept into the rail center of Córdoba, Argentina's third biggest city (pop. 350,000). Two Gloster Meteor jet fighters flown by air-force pilots rained down leaflets declaring that the city "has been conquered again for God and the fatherland." Rebel sailors took over the naval bases at Rio Santiago and Puerto Belgrano (see map). Army garrisons seized control of the inland barracks towns of Arroyo Seco and Curuzu-Cuatiá.
At 8:21 a.m., the first government communiqué boasted that "the subversive movement is under control," and rebel units "are being dominated." Such claims were absurdly premature. In Córdoba the besieged police headquarters fell to rebel attackers after a half-hour artillery bombardment. From the Puerto Belgrano naval base, 400 miles southwest of Buenos Aires, naval units marched into the neighboring grain port of Bahía
Blanca. Said a rebel radio announcement from Puerto Belgrano: "This is not a revolt of two or four hours. We will carry on as long as is necessary. We ask the Argentine people to join us in our struggle for truth, morality and liberty."
State of Siege. Under the command of General Franklin Lucero, Perón's trusted Army Minister, the government fought back. Lucero & Co. put the entire country under a state of siege, clamped an 8 p.m. curfew on the capital. Loyalist forces besieged the Rio Santiago naval base. Pounded by planes and outnumbered at least two to one on the ground, the defending navymen surrendered late that night. The next morning the government announced that its troops had wrested Arroyo Seco and Curuzú-Cuatiá from the rebels.