Dirty War

This article especially refers to the Argentinian dirty war; however, the term has been used in others contexts, for example in Turkey; see also lead years.

Dirty War (in Spanish: Guerra Sucia) refers to a program of a state-sponsored war on domestic citizens in response to strikes, social unrest, violence or subversion that is claimed to threaten a country's stability. In particular, it refers to the state-sponsored violence against dissident citizens carried out between 1976 and 1983 by Jorge Rafael Videla's military government in Argentina (during what was called the National Reorganization Process).

During this period, the junta led by Videla until 1981, then by Roberto Viola and Leopoldo Galtieri, was responsible for the illegal arrest, torturing, killing or forced disappearance of between 9,000 (the minimum confirmed number of those killed) and 30,000 Argentinians. These crimes were part of what has been called Operation Condor. Documents show that Argentina's brutal policies were known by the U.S. State Department, led by Henry Kissinger under Gerald Ford's presidency.

There has been a long-running debate in Argentina over the issue of amnesty for officials of the Dirty War. A form of amnesty was controversially adopted as law after the reinstatement of democratic rule and the trials of the top military leaders of the juntas in 1984, during Raúl Alfonsín's presidency (1983–1989), but it has remained unpopular. In June 2005, the Argentine Supreme Court overturned the amnesty laws, called Ley de Punto Final ("Full Stop Law") and of Ley de Obediencia Debida ("Law of Due Obedience"), opening the door for prosecutions of former Junta officials Texto completo de la Ley de Punto Final (full text in Spanish of the "Full-stop" amnesty law. The Punto Final law had been voted on 24 December 1986, under Alfonsín's presidency, and extinguished any charges for human rights violations for all acts preceding 12 December 1983.^*

The return of Peronism

Ever since former army officer Juan Domingo Perón was ousted from the presidency by a coup in 1955 (Revolución Libertadora), military hostility to his populist political movement (Peronism) had dominated Argentine politics. Following nearly two decades of weak civilian governments, economic decline and military interventionism, Perón returned from exile and was re-elected in 1973, backed by a broad coalition that ranged from trade unionists in the center to fascist nationalists on the right and socialist radicals like the Montoneros led by Mario Firmenich on the left. Once back in power, however, Perón could no longer be all things to all people.

The old caudillo died on 4 July 1974, leaving his vice-president and third wife, Isabel Martínez de Perón, to deal with the ensuing violent struggle between his right-wing and left-wing supporters. The AAA (Alianza Antiimperialista Argentina and later Alianza Anticomunista Argentina), created by José López Rega, Isabel Perón's Minister for Social Affairs and member of P2 freemasonry lodge (involved in Italy's strategy of tension) responded in kind to Montonero attacks, such as the murder of José Ignacio Rucci, the Peronist Secretary General of the Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT). Meanwhile, the Marxist Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo ("Revolutionary Army of the People" or ERP), led by Roberto Santucho, began a rural insurgency in the province of Tucumán, in the mountainous northwest of Argentina. As a result, in February 1975 the democratic government of Isabel Martínez de Perón issued the decree 261 which ordered the army to neutralize and/or annihilate the insurgency in Tucumán.

The military's rise to power

By mid-1975, the country was a stage for widespread violence. Extreme right-wing death squads, such as the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance, created by José López Rega, Juan Perón's Minister of Social Welfare and a P2 member, used their hunt for far-left guerrillas as a pretext to exterminate any and all ideological opponents on the left and as a cover for common crimes. Assassinations and kidnappings by the Peronist Montoneros and the ERP contributed to the general climate of fear. In July, there was a general strike. On 6 July 1975, the government, presided temporarily by Italo Luder from the Peronist party, issued three decrees to combat the guerrillas. The decrees 2770, 2771 and 2772 created a Defense Council headed by the president and including his ministers and the chiefs of the armed forces. It was given the command of the national and provincial police and correctional facilities and its mission was to annihilate the guerrillas in the whole territory of Argentina.

Conservatives, including some among the wealthy elite, encouraged the army, which prepared to take control by making lists of people who should be "dealt with" after the planned coup. In 1975, President Isabel Perón, under pressure from the military establishment, appointed Jorge Rafael Videla commander-in-chief of the Argentine Army. "As many people as necessary must die in Argentina so that the country will again be secure", Videla declared in 1975 in support of the death squads. He was one of the military heads of the coup d'état that overthrew Isabel Perón on 24 March 1976. In her place, a military junta was installed, which was headed by Admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera (also a member of the P2 freemasonry lodge), who stepped out in September 1978, General Orlando Agosti and Videla himself.

Human rights violations

In 1976, one of the generals predicted, "We are going to have to kill 50,000 people: 25,000 subversives, 20,000 sympathizers, and we will make 5,000 mistakes." Estimates for the number of Argentinians killed or "desaparecidos" by the military regime in 1976–1983 range from 6,000 to 30,000. After the fall of the military regime, CONADEP, a civilian government commission put the number of disappeared people at close to 11,000. The victims included not just armed guerrilla fighters, whose organizations were virtually liquidated, but anyone believed to be associated with radical front groups, including trade-union members, students and people thought to hold left-wing views (for example French nun Leonie Duquet, kidnapped by Alfredo Astiz). The deaths of another 900 people were attributable to death squads associated with the Peronist regime prior to the coup, such as the Triple A. The guerrillas were responsible for killing about 1,500 people during this period, plus nearly 1,800 kidnappings.

Organizations closely associated with state terrorism included the Batallón de Inteligencia 601 of the military unit, the Naval Mechanics School (ESMA), and the Secretaría de Inteligencia de Estado SIDE. SIDE cooperated with DINA, its Chilean counter-part, and other South American intelligence units in Operation Condor.

Relatives of the victims uncovered evidence that some children taken from their mothers soon after birth were being raised as the adopted children of military men, as in the case of Silvia Quintela. For close to three decades, a group called Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo has been demanding the return of these kidnapped children, estimated to number as many as five hundred. Some victims were even pushed out of planes and into the water of the Río de la Plata or the Atlantic Ocean to drown (this form of disappearance was termed vuelos de la muerte, "death flights").

In 1977, Jorge Videla told British journalists: "I emphatically deny that there are concentration camps in Argentina, or military establishments in which people are held longer than is absolutely necessary in this ... fight against subversion". Yet, there are people such as Alicia Partnoy, who was tortured and has written her story in "The Little School", who claim otherwise.

In 1980, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, a Catholic human rights activist who had organized the Servicio de Paz y Justicia (Peace and Justice Service) and suffered torture while held without trial for 14 months in a Buenos Aires concentration camp, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in the defense of human rights in Argentina.

In 1981 Videla retired and General Roberto Eduardo Viola replaced him, but nine months later, Viola stepped down for health reasons, and General Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri took the post. Democracy returned with Raúl Alfonsín, who created the CONADEP (National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons) on 15 December 1983. Under Alfonsín, Congress would then pass the Ley de Punto Final and Ley de Obediencia Debida as amnesty laws, overturned in June 2005 by the Supreme Court.

Invasion of the Falkland Islands

In 1982, the Argentine military invaded the British-controlled Falkland Islands, in a desperate attempt to gather the population around this war, lifting patriotic spirit. The junta was quickly defeated by the British, led by Margaret Thatcher, who retook the islands. It seems that the junta, so sure of the US support, thought that Great Britain would not attack for so little. The loss of the war led to the resignation of Galtieri on June 17 of the same year and a third (and last) junta was placed in power under a new president, Reynaldo Bignone. The occupation of the Falklands accelerated the end of the junta rule.

Anti-Communism

The junta's mission was allegedly to defend against international communism. Indeed, the "ideological war" doctrine of the Argentine military focused on eliminating the supposed social base of insurgency, as much as targeting actual guerrillas. Associated with other South American dictatorships in Operation Condor, they also worked closely with the Asian-based World Anti-Communist League and its Latin American affiliate, the Confederación Anticomunista Latinoamericana. In 1980, the Argentine military helped Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, Stefano Delle Chiaie and major drug lords mount the bloody Cocaine Coup of Luis García Meza Tejada in neighboring Bolivia. Some special units, such as Batallón de Inteligencia 601, would also train the Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s.

Since the end of the dictatorship, some former military, politicians and journalists have tried to justify these crimes as either regrettable or simply inevitable "excesses" brought about by the nature of the enemy (that is, the insurgency), which employed the same tactics. Critics have coined the phrase "doctrine of the two demons" to qualify the alleged thesis that views the forces of law of the national state and the radical subversive groups as morally comparable entities. Opponents of this theory talk of a deliberate strategy of tension.

U.S. involvement

According to the National Security Archive, the junta led by Jorge Rafael Videla believed it had United States' approval for its all-out assault on the left in the name of "national security doctrine". The U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires complained to Washington that the Argentine officers were "euphoric" over signals from high-ranking U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Henry Kissinger ^*.

But President Jimmy Carter's emphasis on human rights led to strained relations between the U.S. and the military regime in Argentina during the height of the Dirty War in the late 1970s.

The Reagan administration that was elected to office in 1981, however, asserted that Carter had weakened U. S. diplomatic relationships with Cold War allies, and reversed the previous administration's official condemnation of the junta's human rights practices. The re-establishment of diplomatic ties allowed for CIA collaboration with the Argentine intelligence service in training and arming the Nicaraguan Contras against the Sandinista government. The 601 Intelligence Battalion, for example, trained Contras at Lepaterique base, in Honduras. (see Iran-Contra Affair).

Truth commission and trials

The junta relinquished power in 1983. After democratic elections, president elect Raúl Alfonsín created the National Commission for Forced Disappearances (CONADEP) in December 1983, led by writer Ernesto Sábato, to collect evidence about the Dirty War crimes. The gruesome details, including documentation of the disappearance of nearly 11,000 people, shocked the world. Jorge Rafael Videla, head of the junta, was among the generals convicted of human rights crimes, including forced disappearances, torture, murders and kidnappings. President Alfonsín ordered that the nine members of the military junta be judicially charged, together with guerrilla leaders Mario Firmenich, Fernando Vaca Narvaja, Rodolfo Galimberti, Roberto Perdía, and Enrique Gorriarán Merlo.

In 1985, Videla was sentenced to life imprisonment at the military prison of Magdalena. However, on 29 December 1990, President Carlos Menem pardoned Videla and other convicted generals. In 1998, Videla received a prison sentence for his role in the kidnapping of eleven children during the regime and for the falsification of the children's identity documents (the "stolen babies", kidnapped from the parents arrested, and raised by militaries).

Some viewed the pardons as a pragmatic decision of national reconciliation that sought to please the military and thus prevent further uprisings. Others condemned it as unconstitutional, noting that the constitutionally acknowledged right of the president to pardon does not extend to those who have not yet been convicted — which was the situation in the case of some military officials. Others yet consider that this presidential privilege is inappropriate for modern times, a relic of monarchic rule that should be abolished.

Ironically, dictator Videla was de facto incapable of leaving his house, since every time he went out in public he risked insults or assault. At one time, the street was painted with enormous arrows pointing to his house, and the words: 30,000 disappeared, assassin on the loose.

Foreign governments whose citizens were victims of the Dirty War are pressing individual cases against the former military regime. France has sought the extradition of Captain Alfredo Astiz for the kidnapping and murder of its nationals, among whom nun Leonie Duquet. Adolfo Scilingo, a former Argentine naval officer, was convicted in Spain, on 19 April 2005, to 640 years on charges of crimes against humanity.

At the end of 2005, during the presidency of Néstor Kirchner, the Ley de Punto Final and Ley de Obediencia Debida were declared unconstitutional, but those already pardoned cannot be prosecuted again for the same crimes. Since 2006, March 24 is a public holiday in Argentina; that year, on the 30th anniversary of the coup, a multitude filled the streets calling for remembering what happened during the military government, and pray it never to happen again. In 2006 the first trials since the repeal of the 'Pardon Laws' began. Miguel Etchecolatz, a police officer in the 1970s, was the first to face trial for illegal detention, torture and homicide.

Continuing controversies

In 2001, Jorge Zorreguieta, a civilian who was former Undersecretary of Agriculture in the Videla regime, became the focus of attention when his daughter Máxima became engaged to the Crown Prince of the Netherlands. The significance of his potential connection to the Dutch royal family, and his possible presence at a royal wedding was hotly debated for several months. Zorreguieta claimed that, as a civilian, he was unaware of the Dirty War while he was a cabinet minister; however, that would have been unlikely for a person in such a powerful position in the government. Formal charges have never been brought against him, but he was banned from attending the royal wedding which was held in Amsterdam on 2 February 2002.

Allegations against Cardinal Bergoglio

On 15 April 2005, a human rights lawyer filed a criminal complaint against Argentine cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, accusing him of conspiring with the junta in 1976 to kidnap two Jesuit priests. So far, no hard evidence has been presented linking the cardinal to this crime. It is known that the cardinal was the superior figure in the Society of Jesus of Argentina during 1976 and had asked the two priests to leave their pastoral work following conflict within the Society over how to respond to the new military dictatorship, with some priests advocating a violent overthrow. Bergoglio's spokesman has flatly denied the allegations. ^*

It should be noted that Bergoglio was a key figure in securing the priests' release following their abduction by an Argentine navy squad, as he pressured Navy Chief of Staff Emilio Eduardo Massera.

The complaint was filed as the Roman Catholic Conclave prepared to convene to select a new pope, likely as a means of protesting Bergoglio's candidacy. The papacy went to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

Notes

External links

1984 Report of the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons
Old Ideas in New Discourses: "The War Against Terrorism" and Collective Memory in Uruguay and Argentina
Article from Consortium
Information from the Vanished Gallery
24 de marzo — Del horror a la esperanza — Official website of the Memorial Day, with timeline and resources

Books

The study by Paul Lewis of Tulane University is the current standard work examining the context and consequences of the Dirty War.

Guerrillas and Generals: The Dirty War in Argentina, by Paul H. Lewis (2001).
God's Assassins: State Terrorism in Argentina in the 1970s by M. Patricia Marchak (1999).
A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture, by Marguerite Feitlowitz (1999).
The Flight: Confessions of an Argentine Dirty Warrior, by Horacio Verbitsky (1996).
Argentina's Lost Patrol: Armed Struggle, 1969-1979, by María José Moyano (1995).
Dossier Secreto: Argentina's Desaparecidos and the Myth of the "Dirty War", by Martin Edwin Anderson (1993).
Argentina's "Dirty War": An Intellectual Biography, by Donald C. Hodges (1991).
Behind the Disappearances: Argentina's Dirty War Against Human Rights and the United Nations, by Iain Guest (1990).
The Little School: Tales of Disappearance & Survival in Argentina, by Alicia Partnoy (1989).
Argentina, 1943-1987: The National Revolution and Resistance, by Donald C. Hodges (1988).
Soldiers of Perón: Argentina's Montoneros, by Richard Gillespie (1982).
Guerrilla warfare in Argentina and Colombia, 1974-1982, by Bynum E. Weathers, Jr. (1982).
Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number, by Jacobo Timerman (1981).
Guerrilla politics in Argentina, by Kenneth F. Johnson (1975).

Film

Imagining Argentina (2003). Directed by Christopher Hampton.

The Official Story (1985). Directed by Luis Puenzo.