Juan Manuel Abal Medina

Juan Manuel Abal Medina (March 1, 1945 – June 15, 2025) was an Argentine journalist and politician who served as Secretary General of the Peronist Movement between 1972 and 1974. He later became a prominent lawyer in Mexico.

Early life and entry into politics Abal Medina was born to a wealthy family of a conservative Catholic orientation. He enrolled at the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires and became a supporter of Julio Meinvielle's Nationalist Restoration Guard. Abal Medina joined the editorial board of Azul y Blanco, a weekly news magazine in Buenos Aires, in 1966. Directed by Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo and Ricardo Curutchet, both scions of traditional Argentine upper-class families, the nationalist publication supported the Argentine military, which had taken power in a 1966 coup. Azul y Blanco opposed the government of General Juan Carlos Onganía, however, which its editors believed to be subordinating national interests to those of foreign investors. Abal Medina married the former Cristina Moldes in 1966, and they had five children.

His younger brother, Fernando, worked in the periodical's circulation office, and in 1968, co-founded the Montoneros guerrilla organization, becoming its first leader. Fernando Abal Medina participated in the May 1970 abduction and subsequent murder of a former dictator, General Pedro Aramburu, and on September 4, was killed in a police raid in the Buenos Aires suburb of William Morris.

Perón and Peronism Abal Medina was introduced to Perón in 1971. He had not been a Peronist; indeed, Meinvielle's GRN, to which he had belonged as a youth, was among the most anti-Peronist political groups in Argentina. He soon developed a good rapport with the leader of the Steelworkers' Union, Lorenzo Miguel, and the latter's close ally, CGT Secretary General José Ignacio Rucci, however. Perón had been in exile since the 1955 coup, and was represented in Argentina by a series of appointed delegates. Daniel Paladino, Perón's delegate since 1969, fell out of favor with much of the party machinery (as well as with their chief base of support, the CGT labor union) over differences in strategy as well as over his relatively conciliatory stance toward the dictatorship, and was dismissed by the national committee in November 1971. His successor, Héctor Cámpora, was supported by the left-leaning Peronist Youth, and assumed the post during a period of increasingly bold overtures toward the banned Peronist Movement by the dictator, General Alejandro Lanusse. Pursuant to an August 1971 announcement that preparations of elections would begin, and despite his original intent that Peronists be excluded, he allowed the courts to legalize Peronism on January 26, 1972.

Backed by labor, and in good terms with the military, Abal Medina was named Secretary of Operativo Retorno ("Operation Return") by Cámpora. Perón was 76, and rumors that he was suffering from both ill health and early signs of senility conspired with the myriad conditions imposed by President Lanusse on Peronists to make the exiled leader's return increasingly unlikely.

Garré, Santiago Díaz Ortiz, and the six others soon became known in Congress as the "Gang of Eight" for their increasingly vocal opposition to Perón's nomination of his right-wing wife, Isabel, as his running mate in snap elections called for September. Abal Medina's support of the Perón–Perón ticket, in turn, distanced him from the Montoneros, one of whose leaders, José Pablo Ventura, issued a public threat against him, shouting at a rally: "Abal Medina: your blood is a bargain in Argentina!"

He established a successful law practice in Mexico, and later opened offices in Spain and Argentina. The CEO of Telmex, Carlos Slim, hired Abal Medina as an adviser for his growing interests in Argentina, and in 2007, he was invited by outgoing Argentine President Néstor Kirchner to join the cabinet of his wife and successor, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. He cited worsening respiratory problems and refused, however.

Abal Medina died on June 15, 2025, after suffering with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). He was 80.