This article analyses the intellectual and political trajectory of the Pasado y Presente group in Argentina, and particularly that of its main representative, José María Aricó (1931-91). Although the members of group are usually described as ?the Argentine Gramscians,? their ?Gramscianism? was actually little more than a theoretical cover for their erratic political behaviour, which led them from Stalinism to Guevarism, from Guevarism to flirtations with Maoism, from Maoism to Montoneros? bourgeois nationalism, and from Peronism to Raúl Alfonsín?s Radicalism. Politically, their weakest point was that they distanced themselves from Stalinism empirically, because they were expelled from the party and because of the popularity of foquism, without processing Trotsky?s critique of Stalinism in theoretical terms. This made them vulnerable to the subsequent crisis of Stalinism, which they identified with a ?crisis of Marxism? sans phrase. What made them historically significant is the fact that they articulated the radicalisation of a whole social layer in Latin America under the impact of the Cuban revolution, as well as its subsequent deradicalisation and adaptation to bourgeois parliamentary democracy. The article closes with an analysis of Aricó?s intellectual and political legacy, particularly his well-known book Marx y América Latina (1980)