Dardo Cabo

Who was Dardo Cabo?

Dardo Manuel Cabo was an Argentine journalist and activist. The son of a famous metalworkers' union leader, he started political activism in the Movimiento Nacionalista Tacuara, a far-right youth group of the 1960s. Just like several other members of the MNT, he progressively embraced Peronism, and created in 1961 the Movimiento Nueva Argentina, one of the first Peronist right-wing groups and predecessor of all of today's nationalist Catholic groups in Argentina.

Dardo Cabo came to be famous when he hijacked, together with other militants, an Aerolíneas Argentinas plane on September 28, 1966, and diverted it towards the Falkland Islands, where he planted the Argentinian flag, during the so-called Operation Condor. He was then sentenced to three years in prison for this feat, and married there.

Once freed, Dardo Cabo became the leader of the organization dubbed Descamisados, which later merged with Montoneros, a left-wing Peronist grouping.

He was then arrested again, under Videla's junta, because of his political activities, and finally executed in 1977 alongside Roberto Rufino Pirles.