Amanda Peralta was an intellectual historian who actively fought against the military dictatorship in Argentina.
Amanda Peralta was born in San Carlos Bolívar, Argentina. She began her studies at the La Planta university in 1975. She had already been active in the student movement as a high school student and her involvement in the struggle for justice and social reform within the Latin American continent only continued during her university years. After the military coup in 1966, Peralta helped found the resistance organization Fuerzas Armadas Peronistas (FAP). This led to her arrest and imprisonment in 1968. After several years in prison, her lawyer managed to smuggle in a pistol, which Amanda Peralta used to shoot her way to freedom. In the chaos that followed, she was wounded but nevertheless managed to escape in 1971. Together with her family, she continued her flight to Sweden, where Amanda Peralta arrived in 1977.
Amanda Peralta maintained her campaigns against social injustices and political oppression albeit she now applied peaceful methods. She also continued her university studies and, in 1990, she defended her thesis in intellectual history at Gothenburg university. Her thesis, entitled … med andra medel: från Clausewitz till Guevara: krig, revolution och politik i marxistisk idétradition, can be seen as a critical coming-to-terms with her personal experiences and observations of violent opposition movements.
Amanda Peralta retained her interest in Latin American politics within her research. Her next object of study was El Salvador and the work of radical priests in that country. Her book, Teori och praktik i de fattigas universum: en idéhistorisk undersökning av latinamerikansk befrielseteologi reveals the intertwined nature of thought and action within liberation theology, whilst also revealing how global oppression entirely permeated the lives of the poor. Thus she developed thoughts and ideas which many years later formed fundamental elements of post-colonial theory. She carried on publishing books and articles which rejected various forms of political oppression right up to the end of her life. She took her examples mainly from the South American continent but treated them as global injustices.
Amanda Peralta died in Gothenburg in 2009. She is buried at the Östra cemetery.
