Reynaldo Bignone - Early Career

Early Career

Reynaldo Benito Antonio Bignone Ramayón was born in Morón, Buenos Aires in 1928. Enlisting in the Argentine Army in 1947, he enrolled at the prestigious National War College, and was stationed in Spain. Bignone returned to Argentina to be named head of the "General Viamontes" (6th) Infantry Regiment in 1964, and later directed the National War College. An August 1975 reshuffling of the Armed Forces High Command by President Isabel Martínez de Perón resulted in the appointment of General Jorge Videla to the post of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. A quiet career military officer, Videla brought with him a number of protégés, among them Brigadier General Bignone, whom Videla named Secretary of the Joint Chiefs.

Worsening economic and security conditions helped trigger a March 24, 1976 coup d'état against the hapless Mrs. Perón. The coup was welcomed by most Argentines at the time, following a wave of terrorism and kidnappings by leftist guerrilla groups, as well a by the far-right death squads of the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance. On March 28, Bignone led a regiment into the Alejandro Posadas Hospital in the western Buenos Aires suburb of Haedo. He converted a wing in the respected medical facility into his own personal "Chalet" (one of 340 detention centers operated by Argentina's last dictatorship). Just two days after the military coup and under his instructions, 36 members of the hospital's own staff were detained for presumably having links with the ultra-left, and three (Jacobo Chester, Jorge Roitman and Julio César Quiroga) disappeared and are presumed to have been killed. His quiet administration of the facility earned him a promotion as head of "Area 480," a larger detention center in Argentina's most important military training base, the Campo de Mayo; of the 4,000 prisoners detained at the facility during his 1976–78 tenure, 50 survived. He was made Director of Military Institutes by de facto President Videla in 1980.

Bignone retired from the Armed Forces following Videla's decision to transfer power to General Roberto Viola in March 1981. Presiding over the unraveling of dictatorship's economic policies, the ailing Viola was replaced in December by General Leopoldo Galtieri, the Army Chief of Staff and the junta leader closest to the Reagan Administration in the United States. Argentina's defeat by the United Kingdom in the Falklands War on June 16, 1982, however led not only to President Galtieri's resignation, but also to a power vacuum, wherein the Chiefs of Staff of all three services resigned. Bignone's association with Videla and his low profile before and after retirement helped secure him the Presidency on July 1, 1982.