Early Life and Family
Jorge Rafael Videla was born on 2 August 1925, in the city of Mercedes, the third of five sons of Colonel Rafael Eugenio Videla (1888–1952) and María Olga Redondo Ojea (1897–1987). He was christened in honor of two older twin brothers who had died of measles in 1923. Videla's family was an old and prominent one in San Luis Province, and many of his ancestors had held high public offices. His grandfather Jacinto had been governor of San Luis between 1891 and 1893, and his great-great-grandfather Blas Videla had fought in the South American wars of independence and had later been a leader of the Unitarian Party in San Luis.
In 1948 Jorge Videla married Alicia Raquel Hartridge, daughter of Samuel Alejandro Hartridge, an Anglo-Argentine professor of physics and Argentine ambassador to Turkey. They had seven children: María Cristina (1949), Jorge Horacio (1950), Alejandro Eugenio (1951–1971), María Isabel (1958), Pedro Ignacio (1966), Fernando Gabriel (1961) and Rafael Patricio (1953). Two of these, Rafael Patricio and Fernando Gabriel, joined the Argentine Army.
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