Löjtnant Julio – Från UBV till ERP : En mikrohistorisk inblick i den värld som formade en biståndsarbetare till gerillasoldat

Sammanfattning: The primary aim of this thesis is to let Svante Grände’s letters from his time in Latin-American act as keyhole from which the political situation in Chile and Argentina is viewed. By grounding Grände as part of the left-wing radicalization process that was prominent in Sweden, in the third world, but also in large parts of the industrialized Western World, during the 1960’s and early 1970’s, an agent and structure model is used to examine how an aid worker, the son of a Swedish priest, ended up as a guerilla fighter in Northern Argentina, who was killed in battle in 1975. The main finding of the thesis is that Grände brought with him a radical set of values and norms, which were not deterred, but rather enhanced, by the political challenges of Salvador Allende’s struggle to bring forth a socialist society through democratic means. At the time of Augusto Pinochet’s coup d’état, Grände had already been in close contact with the revolutionary left and chose to stay with those he associated most with.