Perón, exiled in Madrid and with Peronism banned, made a pact with Arturo Frondizi, of the Intransigent Radical Civic Union (UCRI). The workers, mostly Peronists, obeyed their leader’s order to vote for the Frondizi-Gómez ticket, which won in May 1958. A few months into his administration, in July, Frondizi announced the “battle for oil.” Arguing the need to achieve self-sufficiency, he began negotiations with the large oil companies, primarily Yankee, to hand over the country’s oil wealth with leonine contracts and initiate the emptying of the traditional and efficient state company, YPF (Fiscal Oil Fields).
Since 1958, Palabra Obrera joined the repudiation of the delivery of oil, which in 1963 had already given rise to the events that Moreno denounced in the memorandum.
