Dirty War - Overview

Overview

In 1955, after two failed attempts earlier in the year and in 1951, a successful coup d'état against Juan Perón's government took place, leading to the proscription of Peronism by the armed forces. Peronist resistance began organizing itself soon after the coup, in workplaces and trade unions. Over time, as democratic rule was partially restored but promises of legalizing the expression and political liberties for Peronism were not respected, guerrilla groups started to appear in the 1960s, namely the Peronist Uturuncos and the Guevarist People's Guerrilla Army (EGP), although both relatively small and quickly defeated.

Jorge Ricardo Masetti, leader of the EGP that had infiltrated into Salta province from Bolivia in 1964, is considered by some as Argentina's first disappeared after their defeat in clashes with the Argentine gendarmerie. Prior to 1973 the major revolutionary groups were the Peronist Armed Forces (Fuerzas Armadas Peronistas, FAP), the Marxist-Leninist-Peronist The Revolutionary Armed Forces (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias or FAR) and the Marxist-Leninist Armed Forces of Liberation (Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación or FAL). The FAL guerrillas made their mark in a raid at Campo de Mayo in April 1969 where they stole 100 assault rifles from the elite 1st Infantry Regiment "Patricios"

In time these armed groups were consolidated, with the FAR joining the Montoneros and the FAP and FAL being absorbed into the ERP. In 1970, one of the leaders of the 1955 coup, Pedro Eugenio Aramburu was kidnapped and killed by the Peronist guerilla Montoneros, in its first claimed military action. In 1970, the Marxist People's Revolutionary Army (ERP) was founded. By the early 1970s, high-ranking military and police officers were kidnapped and assassinated in ultra-leftist actions almost weekly.

The extreme left was also involved in the bombing and destruction of a number of buildings in the 1970s. These mainly belonged to military and police hierarchies. But a number of civilian and non-governmental buildings were targeted as well, such as the Sheraton Hotel in Buenos Aires, which was bombed in 1972, to the horror of nearly 700 guests. and a crowded theater in downtown Buenos Aires in 1975.

In 1978, a powerful bomb meant to kill an Argentine admiral ripped through a nine-story apartment building, killing three civilians and trapping others beneath the debris. According to the International Congress for Victims of Terrorism, there were 16,000 victims of left-wing terrorism (killings, woundings and abductions) in Argentina, including civilians and military personnel. Argentine intelligence officers claim that the ERP guerrillas alone were responsible for the deaths of at least 700 people in addition to scores of attacks on police and military units as well as kidnappings and robberies.

In 1973, as Juan Perón returned from exile, the Ezeiza massacre marked the end of the alliance between left- and right-wing factions of Peronism. In 1974, Perón withdrew his support of Montoneros shortly before his death, and the far-right paramilitary death squad Argentine Anticommunist Alliance emerged during his widow's presidency. Armed struggle increased, and in 1975 Isabel Martínez de Perón signed a number of decrees empowering the military and the police to "annihilate" left-wing subversion, most prominently the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP) armed activity in the province of Tucumán.

Martínez de Perón was ousted in 1976. Starting that year, the juntas led by Videla until 1981, and then by Roberto Viola and Leopoldo Galtieri, were responsible for the illegal arrests, tortures, killings and/or forced disappearances of thousands, primarily armed combatants of the ERP and Montoneros guerrillas, but also trade-unionists, students and left-wing activists, even after they internally acknowledged that armed subversion. Videla's dictatorship referred to its systematized persecution of the Argentine citizenry as the "National Reorganization Process". Argentine security forces and death squads worked hand in hand with other South American dictatorships in the frame of Operation Condor.

The democratic government of Raúl Alfonsín which took office in 1983 investigated these crimes through the CONADEP commission and prosecuted the responsible parties and made the unprecedented (and only Latin American example) Trial of the Juntas. In 2006 an Argentine court condemned the 1970s government's crimes as crimes against humanity and "genocide". But the courts refused to prosecute the crimes of the left-wing guerrilla groups that according to Argentina's Center for the Legal Study of Terrorism and its Victims killed or maimed some 13,000 Argentines.

Although there is strong disagreement on the actual number of disappeared, it is commonly accepted today that between 9,000 and 30,000 people, depending on the source, had been killed or disappeared. Some 8,600 disappeared in the form of PEN (Poder Ejecutivo Nacional) detainees were eventually released under international pressure. Amnesty International reported in 1979 that 15,000 disappeared had been abducted, tortured and possibly killed. Documents found in 2006 show that by 1978 Chilean agents in Argentina were reporting that the Argentine military had 22,000 internally documented cases involving deaths and abductions.

In 1979, US President Jimmy Carter offered to accept 3,000 disappeared in the form of PEN detainees, as long as they had no terrorist background. According to the official count of the 1984 truth commission, between 1976 and 1979, 8,353 Argentinians were killed or "disappeared", and other 113 were killed or disappeared at the hands of the military regime between 1980 and 1983.

The 1984 truth commission, however, counted only documented cases. Human Rights Groups in Argentina often cite a figure of 30,000 disappeared, Amnesty International estimates 20,000 while other observers think 12,000 is a more accurate figure. In 1988, the Asamblea por los Derechos Humanos (APDH or Assembly for Human Rights) published its findings on the disappearances and concluded that 12,261 people were killed or disappeared during the Dirty War.

Prof. Carlos Marcelo Shäferstein in his work Cien años de subversión en Argentina, Alejandro García and Antonius C. G. M. Robben have said that the Dirty War has some of its roots in the violence witnessed in Buenos Aires during the Tragic Week of 1919 and the fighting that took place in Patagonia in 1921 and 1922, between anarchists and elements of the Argentine government forces popularly known today as the Patagonia rebelde. Alicia García, in her study of the National Security Doctrine in Argentina, points to the use of paramilitary squads to smash labor unions during the 1919 Semana Tragica and the mass executions ("disappearances") employed by the Argentine army in 1920 against the anarchist strikers in Patagonia as examples of Argentina's own traditional way of dealing with "subversives". In a brief memoir published in Panorama (14 April 1970), Peron acknowledged that first Argentine military coup in 1930 "had been prepared by the tragic week of 1919."