The Persecution of Leonidas Barletta for Being a Communist: the Closing of the People's Theater

Abstract

In 1943, after a group of military came to power giving a coup d’etat –which came to be the only local experience of military intervention against a conservative government–, the Teatro del Pueblo (People’s Theater), led by Leonidas Barletta, was evicted from the building it had received in concession from the Municipality in 1937, supposedly, for a period of twenty-five years. The building was located at 1530 Corrientes Avenue. Despite the new facto officials gave various explanations for this decision, the real reason was linked, as Carlos Fos (2010) has argued, with the political ideology of Barletta, related to the Communist Party. Therefore, in the present work, we will approach the controversial circumstances of the expulsion and we will problematize the link that the theater of Barletta established with the State and the political parties.