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NGO with photos of "forced disappearances".
This article refers to the Argentine Dirty War; for the British film of the same name, see Dirty War (film). For events in Morocco sometimes described as Dirty War, see Years of Lead (Morocco)
.
The
Dirty War (Spanish language:
) refers to the state-sponsored violence against History of Argentina citizenry from roughly 1976 to
1983 carried out primarily by Jorge Rafael Videla's military government. The exact chronology of the repression is still debated, as trade unionists were targeted for assassination as early as 1973; Isabel Martínez de Perón's "annihilation decrees" of 1975, during
Operativo Independencia, have also been suggested as the origin of The Dirty War.
In 1973, as Juan Perón returned from exile, the
1973 Ezeiza massacre marked the end of the alliance between left- and right-wing factions of Peronism. Several guerrilla groups emerged, the largest and most active of which was the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP). After Perón's death in 1974, the government was left in the hands of his widow, Isabel Martínez de Perón, who signed a number of decrees empowering the military and the police to "annihilate" left-wing subversion. Martínez de Perón was ousted in 1976. Starting that year, the Military dictatorships led by Videla until 1981, and then by
Roberto Eduardo Viola and
Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri, were responsible for the illegal arrest, torture, killing or forced disappearance of thousands of people, primarily trade-unionists, students and activists. Videla's dictatorship referred to its systematized persecution of the Argentine citizenry as the "National Reorganization Process".
Up to 30,000 "disappeared" during this time.PBS News Hour, 16 Oct. 1997, et al Argentine security forces and death squads worked hand in hand with other South American dictatorships in the frame of Operation Condor. An Argentine court would later condemn the government's crimes as crimes against humanity and "genocide".La Nación, 19 September 2006. Condenaron a Etchecolatz a reclusión perpetua.
Origin of the term
The term "Dirty War" originates in the military
junta itself, which claimed that a war, albeit with "different" methods (including the large-scale application of torture), was necessary to maintain social order. This explanation has been questioned in court and by human rights NGOs, as it suggests that a "
civil war" was going on, thereby implying justification for the killings. Thus, during the 1985 Trial of the Juntas, public prosecutor Julio Strassera suggested that the term "Dirty War" was a "euphemism to try to conceal gang activities" as though they were legitimate military activities. Julio Strassera's prosecution during the 1985
Trial of the Juntas (
Juicio a las Juntas Militares)
Although the
junta claimed its objective to be the eradication of guerrilla activity, the repression struck mostly the general population, and specifically all political opposition, trade unionists (half of the victims), students, and other civilians. Many others were forced to go into exile, and many remain in exile today (despite the return of democracy in 1983). It was made clear during the Trial of the Juntas that the guerrillas, despite the use of the term "war", were not in a position to pose a real threat, and could not be considered a belligerent: "The subversives had not taken control of any part of the national territory; they had not obtained recognition of interior or anterior belligerency, they were not massively supported by any foreign power, and they lacked the population's support."Desaparecidos.org, documents of the Trial of the Juntas.
El Estado de necesidad. Thus, crimes committed during this time may not be covered under the
laws of war (
jus in bello), which shields soldiery of inferior rank from prosecution for acts committed under military or state orders.
The program of extermination of dissidents was termed "
genocide" by a court of law, for the first time in the official treatment of illegal crimes of the dictatorship, during the 2006 trial of Miguel Etchecolatz, a former senior official of the
Buenos Aires Provincial Police.
The return of Peronism
Ever since former army officer Juan Perón was ousted from the
president of Argentina by a coup in 1955 (
Revolución Libertadora), military hostility to Peronism had dominated Argentine politics. The 1963 Pedro Eugenio Aramburu had gone as far as proscribing the use of Perón's name, and when Alejandro Agustín Lanusse, who had seized power in 1971, called for elections in 1973 and authorized the return of
political parties, Perón — who had been invited back from exile — was debarred from seeking office. This led to the May 1973 election of Peronist
Héctor José Cámpora, a moderate and left-wing Peronist elected as Perón's "personal delegate", circumventing the law that forbid Perón running for office.
Peronism has been difficult to define according to traditional political classifications, and different periods must be distinguished. A
populist and nationalist movement, it has sometimes been accused of Fascist tendencies; Perón's admiration for
Benito Mussolini is often cited in support of that assertion. Argentina became a popular country of exile for ex-Nazis who entered clandestinity after World War II and fled using various ratlines (history). However, this has been strongly disputed by others, inside and outside the Peronist movement, and it might as well be compared with Gaullism in France, which at first succeeded in creating in the immediate post-war period a large coalition from the left-wing (excluding only Communists) to the right-wing, before turning itself into a more
Conservatism movement in the 1960s-70s.
The absence of Perón himself, who spent 20 years in exile in Franquist Spain, is central to understanding Peronism, as his name was often invoked nostalgically by Argentines in all walks of life in protest of societal ills.
Eva Perón, First Lady of Argentina from 1946 to her death in 1952, was warmly remembered by the working class, although she was despised by the "national
bourgeoisie". Thus, the left-wing and Catholic Montoneros supported Perón as well as, at its end, the Fascist-leaning and strongly anti-Semitic
Movimiento Nacionalista Tacuara, one of Argentine's first
guerrilla movements.
Following nearly two decades of weak civilian governments, economic decline, and military interventionism, Perón returned from exile on
20 June 1973 as the country was becoming engulfed in immense financial, social and political disorder. The months preceding his return were marked by important
social movements, as in the rest of South America, and in particular of the Southern Cone before the repression of the 1970s. Thus, during
Héctor Cámpora's first months of government (May-July 1973), approximatively 600 social conflicts, strikes and recovered factory had taken place. Hugo Moreno,
Le désastre argentin. Péronisme, politique et violence sociale (1930–2001),
Editions Syllepses, Paris, 2005, p. 109
Upon Perón's arrival at Buenos Aires Airport, snipers (including members of the
Argentine Anticommunist Alliance, or Triple A) opened fire on the crowds of left-wing Peronist sympathizers. Known as the
1973 Ezeiza massacre, this event marked the split between left-wing and right-wing factions of Peronism. Perón was re-elected in 1973, backed by a broad coalition that ranged from trade unionists in the center to fascists on the right (including members of the neofascist
Movimiento Nacionalista Tacuara) and socialists like the
Montoneros led by Mario Firmenich on the left. Following the Ezeiza massacre, and Perón's denouncing of "bearded immature idealists", Perón sided with the Peronist right-wing, the trade-unionist bureaucracy and
Radical Civic Union of
Ricardo Balbín, Héctor José Cámpora's unsuccessful rival at the May 1973 elections. The Montoneros were finally expelled from the
Justicialist Party by Perón in May 1974. However, the Montoneros waited until after the death of Perón in July 1974 to react, with the exception of the assassination of
José Ignacio Rucci, the right-wing Peronist Secretary General of the General Confederation of Labour (Argentina) (CGT) on 25 September 1973, and some other military actions. They would then claim the "social revolutionary vision of authentic Peronism" and start guerrilla operations against Isabel Perón's government, who represented the Peronist right-wing. A main aim of the Montoneros was to push authorities into repression, even severe repression, in the belief that in the end it would prove self defeating.
Isabel Martínez de Perón's government
Perón died on 1 July
1974, and was replaced by his vice-president and third wife, Isabel Martínez de Perón, who ruled Argentina until her March 1976 overthrow by the militaries.
The 1985
CONADEP human rights commission counted 458 assassinations from 1973 to 1975 in its report
Nunca Más (Never Again): 19 in 1973, 50 in 1974 and 359 in 1975, carried out by paramilitary groups, who acted mostly under the José López Rega's
Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (according to
Argenpress, at least 25 trade-unionists were assassinated in 1974). The Triple A had been created by José López Rega and
Rodolfo Almirón (arrested in Spain in 2006). López Rega was successively Minister of Héctor José Cámpora, Raúl Alberto Lastiri, Perón and Isabel Perón and private secretary of the last two. Furthermore, after the 1980 police arrest of
Licio Gelli, head of Propaganda Due (aka P2), a masonesque lodge involved in Italy's
strategy of tension, in a villa in the French Côte d'Azur, it was discovered that Isabel Perón's Minister for Social Affairs, López Rega, had also been a member of this lodge.
One of the first terror attacks of the Triple A targeted
Hipólito Solari Yrigoyen with a car bomb on 21 November
1973, which seriously injured him. A few days earlier, Solari Yrigoyen had criticized in the
Argentine Senate the reform of laws concerning workers' trade-unions, which aimed at tightening the control of the trade-union bureaucracy on the workers' movement. A few days before the bombing, a leading representative of the trade-unionist bureaucracy,
Lorenzo Miguel, had qualified Solari Yrigoyen as "public enemy number one." The Triple A also assassinated Silvio Frondizi, brother of former president Arturo Frondizi, in September 1974, etc.
However, the repression of the social movements had already started before the attempt on Yrigoyen's life: on 17 July 1973, the General Confederation of Labour (Argentina) section in
Salta was closed, while the CGT, SMATA and Luz y Fuerza in Córdoba Province (Argentina) were victims of armed attacks. Agustín Tosco, Secretary General of Luz y Fuerza, successfully dissimulated him avoiding his arrestation, and entered
clandestinity until his death on
5 November 1975. Argenpress, 10 April 2006.
Represión en Argentina y memoria larga.
Trade-unionists were also targeted by the repression in 1973: Carlos Bache was assassinated on
21 August 1973; Enrique Damiano, of the Taxis Trade-Union of Córdoba, on
3 October; Juan Avila, also of Córdoba, the following day; Pablo Fredes, on
30 October in Buenos Aires; Adrián Sánchez, on 8 November 1973 in the
Province of Jujuy. Assassinations of trade-unionists, lawyers, etc. continued and increased in 1974 and 1975, while the most combative trade-unions were closed and their leaders arrested. In August 1974, Isabel Peron's government took out the right of trade-unionist representation of the
Federación Gráfica Bonaerense, and its Secretary General
Raimundo Ongaro arrested in October 1974.
During the same month of August 1974, the SMATA Córdoba trade-union, in conflict with the company Ika Renault, was closed by the national direction of trade-unions, and the majority of its leaders and activists arrested. Most of them, including its Secretary General
René Salamanca, were assassinated during the 1976–83 dictatorship. Atilio López, General Secretary of the CGT of Córdoba and former Vice-Governor of the Province, was assassinated in Buenos Aires on 16 September
1974.
The ERP publicly remained in the forefront. ERP guerrilla activity took the form of attacks on military outposts, police stations and convoys. On 19 January 1974 70 ERP men attacked the barracks at Azul, killing the Commanding Officer of the 10th 'Húsares de Pueyrredon' Armoured Cavalry Regiment, Colonel Camilo Arturo Gay and his wife, Hilda Irma Casaux de Gay and capturing the Commanding Officer of the 1st Artillery Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel Jorge Roberto Ibarzabal. In another case, the famous ERP "Compañía Ramón Rosa Jiménez" — about 300 strong and a first class unit — struck the 17th Airborne Infantry Regiment at Catamarca. The attack involved some 90 members of the "Compañía Ramón Rosa Jiménez" who on 10 August, dressed in Army fatigues raided the parachute unit at Catamarca in an apparent attempt to kidnap the Commanding Officer. In 10 years of guerrilla operations (1969–79) there were 1,501 killings, 1.748 kidnappings, 5,215 bombings and 45 major attacks on military units blamed on leftist guerrillas.Cronica de La Subversion en La Argentina (Revised & Updated, 1983).
"Annihilation decrees"
Meanwhile, the
Guevarist People's Revolutionary Army (Argentina) (ERP), led by
Roberto Santucho and inspired by
Che Guevara's foco theory, began a rural insurgency in the province of Tucumán Province, in the mountainous northwest of Argentina. It started the campaign with no more than 100 men and women and ended with about 300 in the mountains, which the Argentinean Army managed to control. On 5 January 1975, an Airforce C-47 transport plane was downed near the Monteros mountains, apparently shot down by Guerrillas. All thirteen on board were killed. The military believed a SA-7 shoulder-fired missile struck an engine. In response,
Ítalo Luder, President of the National Assembly who acted as interim President substituting himself to Isabel Perón who was ill for a short period, signed in February 1975 the secret presidential decree 261, which ordered the army to neutralize and/or annihilate the insurgency in
Province of Tucumán, the smallest province of Argentina. In contravention of the Constitution of Argentina,
Operativo Independencia gave power to the Armed Forces to "execute all military operations necessary for the effects of neutralizing or annihilating the action of subversive elements acting in the Province of Tucumán." Spanish:
el commando general del Ejército procederá a ejecutar todas las operaciones militares que sean necesarias a efectos de neutralizar o aniquilar el accionar de los elementos subversivos que actúan en la provincia de Tucumán Decree No. 261/75. NuncaMas.org,
Decretos de aniquilamiento. Santucho had declared a "liberated zone" in Tucuman and demanded Soviet-backed protection for its borders as well as proper treatment of captured guerrillas as prisoners of war.Facts on File, p. 126, 1975 The Fifth Brigade, then consisting of the 19th, 20th and 29th Mountain Infantry Regiments and commanded by Brigadier-General Acdel Vilas received the order to move to Famailla in the foothills of the Monteros mountains on 8 February 1975. While fighting the guerrilla in the jungle, Vilas concentrated on uprooting the ERP support network in the towns, using
state terror tactics later adopted nation-wide, as well as a civic action campaign. The Argentinean security forces used techniques no different from their US and French counterparts. By July 1975, anti-guerrilla commandos were mounting
search-and-destroy missions in the snow-capped mountains. Army forces discovered Santucho's base camp in August, then raided the ERP urban headquarters in September. Most of the Compania del Monte's general staff was killed in October and was dispersed by the end of the year. While the leadership of the movement was mostly eradicated, many of the ERP soldiers and sympathizers were taken into custody as political prisoners. The Argentineans have admitted to 43 troops killed in action in Tucuman although this figure does not take into account police and Gendarmerie troops. By December 1975 the Argentinean military could, with some justification claim that it was winning the 'Dirty War', but it was dismayed to find no evidence of overall victory. On 23 December 1975 several hundred ERP fighters staged an all-out battle with the 601st Arsenal Battalion nine miles (14 km) from Buenos Aires. 85 guerrillas, seven army troops and three policemen were killed. In addition 20 civilians were killed in the crossfire. It was a development which the army officers, together with certain elements of the airforce, could not tolerate, and one which was to have far-reaching ramnifications. On 30 December a bomb exploded at the headquarters of the Argentinean Army in Buenos Aires, injuring at least six officers of senior-rank. The credibility of the government was now destroyed and the strategy of attrition was bankrupt. The Montoneros had even successfully utilized divers in underwater infiltrations and sunk an Argentine destroyer, the ARA Santisima Trinidad on 22 August 1975.
By mid-1975, the country was a stage for widespread violence. Extreme right-wing death squads used their hunt for far-left
guerrilla warfares 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. Decree No. 2770/75. NuncaMas.org,
Decretos de aniquilamiento. Decree No. 2771/75. NuncaMas.org,
Decretos de aniquilamiento. Decree No. 2772/75. NuncaMas.org,
Decretos de aniquilamiento. It was given the command of the national and provincial police and correctional facilities and its mission was to "annihilate … subversive elements throughout the country". Military control was thus generalized to all of the country. These "annihilation decrees" are the source of the charges against her which led to Isabel Perón's arrest in Madrid more than thirty years later, in January 2007. The country was then divided into five military zones through a 28 October 1975 military directive of "Struggle Against Subversion". As had been done during the 1957
Battle of Algiers (
quadrillage), each zone was divided in subzones and areas, with its corresponding military responsibles. General Antonio Domingo Bussi replaced in December 1975 Acdel Vidas as responsible of the military operations.
20 March 1975 raid in Santa Fe
Isabel Perón's government ordered a raid on
20 March 1975, which involved 4,000 military and police officers, in Villa Constitución, Santa Fe, Argentina, in response to various trade-unionist conflicts. Many citizens and 150 activists and trade-unionists leaders were arrested, while the
Unión Obrera Metalúrgica's subsidiary in Villa Constitución was closed down with the agreement of the trade-unions' national direction, headed by Lorenzo Miguel. Repression affected trade-unionists of large firms, such as
Ford,
Fiat, Renault, Mercedes Benz,
Peugeot, etc., and was sometimes carried on with support from the firm's executives and from the trade-unionist bureaucracy. José Rodríguez, for example, has been accused of being involved in the "disappearance" of Mercedes Benz workers during the dictatorship. He was the same trade-unionist leader who in 1974 closed down SMATA's section in Córdoba — and who is today General Secretary of SMATA.
The military's rise to power
Conservatism, 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 Martínez de 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. During 1976, Videla narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in which a time bomb planted in the reviewing stand at the vast Campo de Mayo barracks blew out a yard-wide hole at the exact spot where he had been standing.
The
junta, which dubbed itself "
National Reorganization Process", systematized the repression, in particular through the way of "forced disappearances" (
desaparecidos), which made it very difficult, as in
Augusto Pinochet's
Chile, to depose courtsuits as the bodies were never found. The Generals organized a nation-wide system, from national scale to local scale, to track down so-called "subversives." Physicians and psychiatry were also used by the state in the interrogation and torture sessions. Argentine newspaper
La Opinión, founded by future "
desaparecido"
Jacobo Timerman, wrote on
31 December 1976 that the Argentine "guerrilla" has suffered losses of 4000, and that the Montoneros had lost 80% of their leaders. The
Buenos Aires Herald, on its side, estimated the victims in 1976 to be 1,100 dead. A clandestine newspaper added that "there is one dead each five hours, and one bomb each three hours." According to Argentine journalist Stella Calloni, author of the classic
Los años del lobo, all of these numbers may be correct. Automotores Orletti el taller asesino del Cóndor,
Juventud Rebelde, 3 January 2006 (mirrored on
El Correo.eu.org /
This generalization of state terror tactics has been explained in part by the formation received by the Argentine militaries in the infamous
School of Americas and also by French instructors from the
French secret services, who taught them "counter-insurgency" tactics first experimented during the
Algerian War (1954-62).
Marie-Monique Robin, 2004.
Escadrons de la mort, l'école française. 453 pages. La Découverte ISBN 2707141631; Spanish transl., 2005:
Los Escuadrones De La Muerte/ the Death Squadron, de Marie-Monique Robin. 539 pages.
Sudamericana. ISBN 950072684X
In 1976 there was a successful series of Montoneros bomb attacks in which the general commanding the Federal Police, Cesáreo Cardozo was killed. Lieutenant-General Jorge Videla himself narrowly escaped three Montoneros assassination attempts between February 1976 and April 1977. As pressure mounted on the Montoneros, the urban guerrillas struck back. On 2 July 1976 a Claymore shrapnel mine exploded at the headquarters of the Federal Police in west Buenos Aires during a secret meeting of the police leadership, killing 21 and mutilating a further 60. On 12 September 1976 a car bomb destroyed a bus filled with police officers in Rosario, killing 11 policemen and injuring at least 12. On 17 October a bomb blast in an Army Club Cinema in downtown Buenos Aires killed 11 and wounded about 50 officers and their families. On 16 December, another bomb planted in a Defense Ministry movie hall killed at least 14 and injured 30 officers and their families.
Furthermore, by 1976
Operation Condor, which had already centralized information from South American intelligence agencies for years, was at its height. Chilean exiles in Argentina were threatened again, and had to go into hiding or seek refuge in a third country. Chilean General Carlos Prats had already been assassinated by the Chilean
DINA in Buenos Aires in 1974, with the help of former CIA agent
Michael Townley and DINA agent
Enrique Arancibia. Cuban diplomats were also assassinated in Buenos Aires in the infamous
Automotores Orletti torture center, one of the 300 clandestine prisons of the dictatorship, managed by the
Grupo de Tareas 18, headed by Aníbal Gordon, previously convicted for armed robbery, and answered directly to the General Commandant of the SIDE, Otto Paladino.
Automotores Orletti was the main base of foreign intelligence services involved in Operation Condor. One of the survivors, José Luis Bertazzo, who was detained for two months there, identified Chileans, Uruguayans, Paraguayans and Bolivians among the prisoners. These captives were interrogated by agents from their own countries. It is there that 19 year-old daughter-in-law of the poet
Juan Gelman was tortured (along with his son), before being transported to Montevideo, where she delivered a baby which was immediately taken from her by the Uruguayan authorities. According to John Dinges's
Los años del Cóndor, Chilean MIR prisoners in Orletti center told José Luis Bertazzo that they had seen two Cuban diplomats, 22 years-old Jesús Cejas Arias, and 26 years-old Crescencio Galañega, tortured by Gordon's group and interrogated by a man who specially came one day from Miami to interrogate them. The two Cuban diplomats, charged with the protection of the Cuban embassador to Argentina,
Emilio Aragonés, had been kidnapped on 9 August
1976, in the intersection between Calle Arribeños and Virrey del Pino, by 40 armed SIDE agents who blocked off all sides of the street with their Ford Falcóns, the cars used by the security forces during the dictatorship. According to John Dinges, the
FBI as well as the CIA were informed of their abduction. In his book Dinges published a cable sent by
Robert Scherrer, an FBI agent in Buenos Aires on 22 September
1976, where he mentions in passing that former CIA agent
Michael Townley, later convicted of the assassination on
21 September 1976 of former Chilean minister Orlando Letelier in Washington D.C., had also taken part to the interrogation of the two Cubans. Former head of the DINA confirmed to Argentine federal judge María Servini de Cubría on 22 December
1999, in Santiago de Chile, the presence of Michael Townley and Cuban
Guillermo Novo Sampoll in the Orletti center. The two men travelled from Chile to Argentina on 11 August
1976, and "cooperated in the torture and assassination of the two Cuban diplomats." Anti-
Fidel Castro Cuban terrorist
Luis Posada Carriles also boasted in his autobiography, "Los caminos del guerrero", of the murder of the two young men. According to the "terror archives" discovered in Paraguay in 1992, 50,000 persons were murdered in the frame of Condor, 30,000 "
forced disappearances" (
desaparecidos) and 400,000 incarcerated.
Martín Almada, "Paraguay: The Forgotten Prison, the Exiled Country" Stella Calloni.
Los Archivos del Horror del Operativo Cóndor. freely available on
Equipo Nizkor's website, here
False flag actions by SIDE agents
During a 1981 interview whose contents were revealed by documents declassified by the
CIA in 2000, former CIA and DINA agent Michael Townley explained that Ignacio Novo Sampol, member of
CORU anti-Castro organization, had agreed to commit the Cuban Nationalist Movement in the kidnapping, in Buenos Aires, of a president of a Dutch bank. The abduction, organized by civilian
SIDE agents, the Argentine intelligence agency, was to obtain a ransom. Townley said that Novo Sampol had provided $6,000 from the Cuban Nationalist Movement, forwarded to the civilian SIDE agents to pay for the preparation expenses of the kidnapping. After returning to the US, Novo Sampol sent Townley a stock of paper, used to print pamphlets in the name of "
Grupo Rojo" (Red Group), an imaginary Argentine Marxist terrorist organization, which was to claim credit for the sequestration of the Dutch banker. Townley declared that the pamphlets were distributed in Mendoza and
Córdoba, Argentina in relation with
false flag bombings perpetrated by SIDE agents, which had as aim to accredit the existence of the fake Grupo Rojo. However, the SIDE agents procrastinated too much, and the kidnapping finally was not carried out. Visit by Guillermo Novo Sampol to Chile in 1976, 1 and 2, on the
National Security Archive website
Human rights violations from 1976 to 1983
, in Rosario, now a memorial.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." The National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (
CONADEP) researched and recorded, case by case, the "
Forced disappearance" of about 9,000 persons, though it was made clear that many more could exist; today, the most commonly accepted estimate by human rights organizations places the number at 30,000.
Human rights groups such as
Amnesty International were gravely concerned by the state's use of 'disappearances' and periodical use of extrajudicial killings against the supposed 'subversives'.
Most victims were not armed guerrilla fighters, whose organizations were virtually liquidated, but anyone believed to be associated with activist groups, including trade-union members, students (including very young students, for example in September 1976 during the Night of the Pencils, an operation directed by
Ramón Camps, General and head of the
Bonaerense, the Buenos Aires Provincial Police, from April 1976 to December 1977) and people thought to hold left-wing views (for example French nuns Leonie Duquet and
Alice Domon, kidnapped by Alfredo Astiz). Ramón Camps told
Clarín (newspaper), in 1984, that he had used torture as a method of interrogation and orchestrated 5,000 forced disappearances, and justified the appropriation of newborns from their imprisoned mothers "because subversive parents will raise subversive children".Terra Actualidad, 18 March 2006. Ramón Camps: el peor de todos.Many of the "disappeared" were pushed out of planes and into the Río de la Plata or the
Atlantic Ocean to drown. This form of
forced disappearance, theorized by Luis Maria Mendia, former chief of naval operations in 1976-77 who is today before the court for his role in the
ESMA case, was termed
vuelos de la muerte ("death flights"). These individuals which suddenly vanished are called
los desaparecidos meaning "the missing ones" or "vanishing ones."
Tomás Di Toffino, Deputy Secretary General of Luz y Fuerza de Córdoba, was kidnapped on 28 November
1976 and executed in a military camp in Córdoba on
28 February 1977, in a "military ceremony" presided by General Luciano Benjamín Menéndez.
In December 1976, 22 political prisoners were tortured and executed during the
Massacre of Margarita Belén, in the military Chaco Province, for which Videla would be found guilty of homicide during the 1985 Trial of the Juntas, as well as Cristino Nicolaides, junta leader Leopoldo Galtieri and
Santa Fe Provincial Police chief
Wenceslao Ceniquel. The same year, fifty anonymous persons were illegally executed by a firing-squad in Cordoba The Victims: Abducted, Tortured, Vanished (list of victims) /
Organizations closely associated with state terrorism included the
Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (Triple A), the
Batallón de Inteligencia 601 of the Argentine Army, the Naval Mechanics School (ESMA), and the
Secretaría de Inteligencia (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 three decades, the
Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a group founded in 1977, has been demanding the return of these kidnapped children, estimated to number as many as five hundred. 77 of the kidnapped children have been located so far. Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo's website
In 1977, 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 National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP) 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 of Argentina.
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 defeat 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 Army 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 Ex-Nazi Klaus Barbie, Stefano Delle Chiaie and major drug lords mount the bloody
Cocaine Coup of
Luis García Meza Tejada in neighboring
Bolivia. They hired 70 foreign agents for this task, Hearing of
Stefano Delle Chiaie on 22 July 1997 before the Italian Parliamentary Commission on Terrorism headed by senator Giovanni Pellegrino which was managed in particular by the 601st Intelligence Batallion headed by General
Guillermo Suárez Mason.
After having been trained by the French military, the Argentine Armed Forces would train their counterparts, in Nicaragua, but also El Salvador,
Honduras and Guatemala, in the frame of
Operation Charly. From 1977 to 1984, after the Falklands War, the Argentine Armed Forces exported counter-insurgency tactics, including the systemic use of torture, death squads and disappearances.
Special force units, such as
Batallón de Inteligencia 601, headed in 1979 by Colonel
Jorge Alberto Muzzio, trained the Nicaraguan
Contra (guerrillas) in the 1980s, in particular in Lepaterique base. Following the release of classified documents and an interview with Duane Clarridge, former CIA responsible for those operations, the
Clarín showed that with the election of President Jimmy Carter in 1977, the CIA was blocked from engaging in the
special warfare it had previously delivered against opponents. In conformity with the National Security Doctrine, the Argentine militaries then did the work the most conservative North-American elements wanted to achieve, while they pressured the US to be more active in counter-revolutionary activities. And finally, they submitted themselves to Washington's control following the access of
Ronald Reagan to the presidency in 1981. Los secretos de la guerra sucia continental de la dictadura,
El Clarin, March 24, 2006
Many Chilean and Uruguayan exiles in Argentina were murdered there by Argentine security forces (including high-profile figures such as General Carlos Prats in Buenos Aires in 1974). Central Intelligence Agency documents released in 2002 show that Argentina's brutal policies were known and tolerated by the
United States State Department, led by Henry Kissinger under
Gerald Ford's presidency, and that the Argentine military knew the U.S. supported the repression. Argentine Military Believed U.S. Gave Go-Ahead for Dirty War,
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 73 — Part II, CIA classified documents released in 2002.
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 "
theory 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.
US involvement
, which gathered members from all parts of the Argentine Armed Forces. Subject: "Nuts and Bolts of the Government's Repression of Terrorism-Subversion." Original document on the
National Security Archives' website.According to the
National Security Archive, the junta led by
Jorge Rafael Videla believed it had US approval for its all-out assault on the left in the name of "national security doctrine". The US Embassy in Buenos Aires complained to Washington that the Argentine officers were "euphoric" over signals from high-ranking US officials, including Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger.
But President Jimmy Carter's emphasis on human rights led to strained relations between the US and the military regime in Argentina during the height of the Dirty War in the late 1970s.
The
Reagan administration whose first term began in 1981, however, asserted that Carter had weakened US 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 Central Intelligence Agency collaboration with the Argentine intelligence service in training and arming the Nicaraguan
Contras against the Sandinista National Liberation Front government. The Batallón de Inteligencia 601, for example, trained Contras at
Lepaterique base, in Honduras.
The "French Connection"
and
Alice Domon. Alfredo Astiz has been convicted for their "disappearance," while Luis Maria Mendia has been indicted for them.French journalist
Marie-Monique Robin has found in the archives of the
Quai d'Orsay, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, the original document proving that a 1959 agreement between Paris and Buenos Aires instaured a "permanent French military mission," formed of militaries who had fought in the Algerian War, and which was located in the offices of the chief of staff of the Argentine Armed Forces. It was continued until 1981, date of the election of French Socialist Party
François Mitterrand. Argentine – Escadrons de la mort : l’école française, interview with Marie-Monique Robin published by
RISAL, October 22, 2004 available in French & Spanish ( “Los métodos de Argel se aplicaron aquí”,
Página/12, October 13, 2004 She showed how
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's government secretly collaborated with National Reorganization Process in Argentine and with
Augusto Pinochet's regime in Chile. Conclusion of Marie-Monique Robin's
Escadrons de la mort, l'école française . The first Argentine officers, among whom
Alcides Lopez Aufranc, went to Paris to assist to courses during two years at the Ecole de Guerre military school in 1957, two years before the
Cuban Revolution and when no Argentine guerrilla existed. "In practice, declared Robin to
Página/12, the arrival of the French in Argentina led to a massive extension of intelligence services and of the use of
torture as the primary weapon of the anti-subversive war in the concept of modern warfare." The anniquilation decrees signed by Isabel Peron had been inspired by French texts. During the Battle of Algiers, the police forces were put under the authority of the Army, and in particular of the
paratroopers, who generalized
interrogation sessions, systematically using torture and then disappearances. 30 000 persons disappeared in Algeria. Reynaldo Bignone, named President of the Argentinian junta in July 1982, declared in her film: "The March 1976 order of battle is a copy of the Algerian battle." The same statements were issued by Generals
Albano Harguindeguy, Videla's Interior Minister, and Diaz Bessone, former Minister of Planification and ideologue of the junta. Torture : l’école française, Marie-Monique Robin, interview first published by
Rouge, September 2005 The French military would transmit to their Argentine counterparts the notion of "
internal enemy" and the use of torture, death squads and "quadrillages".
Green deputies Noël Mamère,
Martine Billard and
Yves Cochet filed on 10 September
2003 a request for the constitution of a Parliamentary Commission on the "role of France in the support of military regimes in Latin America from 1973 to 1984" before the Foreign Affairs Commission of the National Assembly, presided by
Edouard Balladur (
Union for a Popular Movement). Apart of
Le Monde, newspapers remained silent about this request. MM. Giscard d'Estaing et Messmer pourraient être entendus sur l'aide aux dictatures sud-américaines,
Le Monde, 25 September 2003 However, UMP deputy
Roland Blum, in charge of the Commission, refused to hear Marie-Monique Robin, and published in December 2003 a 12-page report qualified by Robin as the summum of bad faith. It claimed that no agreement had been signed, despite the agreement found by Robin in the
Quai d'Orsay « Série B. Amérique 1952–1963. Sous-série : Argentine, n° 74. Cotes : 18.6.1. mars 52-août 63 ». Rapport Fait Au Nom de La Commission des Affaires Étrangères Sur La Proposition de Résolution (n° 1060), tendant à la création d'une commission d'enquête sur le rôle de la France dans le soutien aux régimes militaires d'Amérique latine entre 1973 et 1984, par M. Roland BLUM,
French National Assembly When Minister of Foreign Affairs Dominique de Villepin traveled to Chile in February 2004, he claimed that no cooperation between France and the military regimes had occurred. Argentine : M. de Villepin défend les firmes françaises,
Le Monde, February 5, 2003
Reporter Marie-Monique Robin thus declared to
L'Humanité newspaper: "French have systematized a military technique in urban environment which would be copied and pasted to Latin American dictatorships." L’exportation de la torture, interview with
Marie-Monique Robin in
L'Humanité, 30 August 2003 . The methods employed during the 1957
Battle of Algiers were systematized and exported to the War School in Buenos Aires. Roger Trinquier's famous book on counter-insurgency had a very strong influence in South America. She declared being shocked to learn that the
Direction de surveillance du territoire French intelligence agency communicated to the DINA the name of the refugees who returned to Chile (Operation Retorno). All of these Chileans have been killed. "Of course, this puts in cause the French government, and Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, then President of the Republic. I was very shocked by the duplicity of the French diplomatic position which, on one hand, received with open arms the political refugees, and, on the other hand, collaborated with the dictatorships."
Marie-Monique Robin also demonstrated ties between the French far right and Argentina since the 1930s, in particular through the
Catholic fundamentalist organization
Cité catholique, created by
Jean Ousset, a former secretary of Charles Maurras, the founder of the royalist
Action française movement, who was awarded the
Ordre de la francisque under Vichy France (1940–4).
La Cité edited a review,
Le Verbe, which influenced militaries during the Algerian War, notably by justifying the use of torture. At the end of the 1950s, the
Cité catholique installed itself in Argentina and organized there cells in the Army. It greatly expanded itself during the government of General Juan Carlos Onganía, in particular in 1969. The key figure of the
Cité catholique was priest
Georges Grasset, who became Videla's personal confessor and had been the spiritual guide of the
Organisation de l'armée secrète (OAS) pro-French Algeria terrorist movement founded in
Franquist Spain. This Catholic fundamentalist current in the Argentine Army explains, according to Robin, the importance and length of the French-Argentine cooperation. In Buenos Aires, Georges Grasset maintained links with Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, founder of Society of St. Pius X in 1970 and excommunicated in 1988. The Society of Pius-X has four monasteries in Argentina, the largest one in
La Reja. Th
NGO with photos of "
forced disappearances".
This article refers to the Argentine Dirty War; for the British film of the same name, see Dirty War (film). For events in Morocco sometimes described as Dirty War, see Years of Lead (Morocco)
.
The
Dirty War (
Spanish language:
) refers to the state-sponsored violence against
History of Argentina citizenry from roughly
1976 to
1983 carried out primarily by
Jorge Rafael Videla's military government. The exact chronology of the repression is still debated, as trade unionists were targeted for assassination as early as 1973; Isabel Martínez de Perón's "annihilation decrees" of 1975, during
Operativo Independencia, have also been suggested as the origin of The Dirty War.
In 1973, as Juan Perón returned from exile, the 1973 Ezeiza massacre marked the end of the alliance between left- and right-wing factions of
Peronism. Several guerrilla groups emerged, the largest and most active of which was the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP). After Perón's death in 1974, the government was left in the hands of his widow,
Isabel Martínez de Perón, who signed a number of decrees empowering the military and the police to "annihilate" left-wing subversion. Martínez de Perón was ousted in 1976. Starting that year, the Military dictatorships led by Videla until 1981, and then by Roberto Eduardo Viola and Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri, were responsible for the illegal arrest, torture, killing or
forced disappearance of thousands of people, primarily trade-unionists, students and activists. Videla's dictatorship referred to its systematized persecution of the Argentine citizenry as the "National Reorganization Process".
Up to 30,000 "disappeared" during this time.PBS News Hour, 16 Oct. 1997, et al Argentine security forces and death squads worked hand in hand with other South American dictatorships in the frame of Operation Condor. An Argentine court would later condemn the government's crimes as crimes against humanity and "
genocide".La Nación, 19 September 2006. Condenaron a Etchecolatz a reclusión perpetua.
Origin of the term
The term "Dirty War" originates in the military
junta itself, which claimed that a war, albeit with "different" methods (including the large-scale application of
torture), was necessary to maintain social order. This explanation has been questioned in court and by human rights NGOs, as it suggests that a "
civil war" was going on, thereby implying justification for the killings. Thus, during the 1985
Trial of the Juntas, public prosecutor Julio Strassera suggested that the term "Dirty War" was a "euphemism to try to conceal gang activities" as though they were legitimate military activities. Julio Strassera's prosecution during the 1985
Trial of the Juntas (
Juicio a las Juntas Militares)
Although the
junta claimed its objective to be the eradication of guerrilla activity, the repression struck mostly the general population, and specifically all political opposition, trade unionists (half of the victims), students, and other civilians. Many others were forced to go into exile, and many remain in exile today (despite the return of democracy in 1983). It was made clear during the Trial of the Juntas that the guerrillas, despite the use of the term "war", were not in a position to pose a real threat, and could not be considered a belligerent: "The subversives had not taken control of any part of the national territory; they had not obtained recognition of interior or anterior belligerency, they were not massively supported by any foreign power, and they lacked the population's support."Desaparecidos.org, documents of the Trial of the Juntas.
El Estado de necesidad. Thus, crimes committed during this time may not be covered under the
laws of war (
jus in bello), which shields soldiery of inferior rank from prosecution for acts committed under military or state orders.
The program of extermination of dissidents was termed "
genocide" by a court of law, for the first time in the official treatment of illegal crimes of the dictatorship, during the 2006 trial of
Miguel Etchecolatz, a former senior official of the Buenos Aires Provincial Police.
The return of Peronism
Ever since former army officer
Juan Perón was ousted from the
president of Argentina by a coup in 1955 (
Revolución Libertadora), military hostility to
Peronism had dominated Argentine politics. The 1963 Pedro Eugenio Aramburu had gone as far as proscribing the use of Perón's name, and when Alejandro Agustín Lanusse, who had seized power in 1971, called for elections in 1973 and authorized the return of political parties, Perón — who had been invited back from exile — was debarred from seeking office. This led to the May 1973 election of Peronist
Héctor José Cámpora, a moderate and left-wing Peronist elected as Perón's "personal delegate", circumventing the law that forbid Perón running for office.
Peronism has been difficult to define according to traditional political classifications, and different periods must be distinguished. A populist and nationalist movement, it has sometimes been accused of Fascist tendencies; Perón's admiration for Benito Mussolini is often cited in support of that assertion. Argentina became a popular country of exile for
ex-Nazis who entered clandestinity after
World War II and fled using various
ratlines (history). However, this has been strongly disputed by others, inside and outside the Peronist movement, and it might as well be compared with Gaullism in France, which at first succeeded in creating in the immediate post-war period a large coalition from the left-wing (excluding only Communists) to the right-wing, before turning itself into a more
Conservatism movement in the 1960s-70s.
The absence of Perón himself, who spent 20 years in exile in
Franquist Spain, is central to understanding Peronism, as his name was often invoked nostalgically by Argentines in all walks of life in protest of societal ills.
Eva Perón, First Lady of Argentina from 1946 to her death in 1952, was warmly remembered by the working class, although she was despised by the "national
bourgeoisie". Thus, the left-wing and Catholic Montoneros supported Perón as well as, at its end, the Fascist-leaning and strongly anti-Semitic
Movimiento Nacionalista Tacuara, one of Argentine's first guerrilla movements.
Following nearly two decades of weak civilian governments, economic decline, and military interventionism, Perón returned from exile on 20 June 1973 as the country was becoming engulfed in immense financial, social and political disorder. The months preceding his return were marked by important social movements, as in the rest of South America, and in particular of the
Southern Cone before the repression of the 1970s. Thus, during
Héctor Cámpora's first months of government (May-July 1973), approximatively 600 social conflicts, strikes and recovered factory had taken place. Hugo Moreno,
Le désastre argentin. Péronisme, politique et violence sociale (1930–2001), Editions Syllepses, Paris, 2005, p. 109
Upon Perón's arrival at Buenos Aires Airport, snipers (including members of the
Argentine Anticommunist Alliance, or Triple A) opened fire on the crowds of left-wing Peronist sympathizers. Known as the
1973 Ezeiza massacre, this event marked the split between left-wing and right-wing factions of Peronism. Perón was re-elected in 1973, backed by a broad coalition that ranged from trade unionists in the center to fascists on the right (including members of the neofascist
Movimiento Nacionalista Tacuara) and
socialists like the Montoneros led by Mario Firmenich on the left. Following the Ezeiza massacre, and Perón's denouncing of "bearded immature idealists", Perón sided with the Peronist right-wing, the trade-unionist bureaucracy and Radical Civic Union of
Ricardo Balbín, Héctor José Cámpora's unsuccessful rival at the May 1973 elections. The Montoneros were finally expelled from the
Justicialist Party by Perón in May 1974. However, the Montoneros waited until after the death of Perón in July 1974 to react, with the exception of the assassination of
José Ignacio Rucci, the right-wing Peronist Secretary General of the
General Confederation of Labour (Argentina) (CGT) on 25 September
1973, and some other military actions. They would then claim the "social revolutionary vision of authentic Peronism" and start guerrilla operations against Isabel Perón's government, who represented the Peronist right-wing. A main aim of the Montoneros was to push authorities into repression, even severe repression, in the belief that in the end it would prove self defeating.
Isabel Martínez de Perón's government
Perón died on 1 July
1974, and was replaced by his vice-president and third wife, Isabel Martínez de Perón, who ruled Argentina until her March 1976 overthrow by the militaries.
The 1985 CONADEP human rights commission counted 458 assassinations from 1973 to 1975 in its report
Nunca Más (Never Again): 19 in 1973, 50 in 1974 and 359 in 1975, carried out by paramilitary groups, who acted mostly under the
José López Rega's
Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (according to
Argenpress, at least 25 trade-unionists were assassinated in 1974). The Triple A had been created by José López Rega and Rodolfo Almirón (arrested in Spain in 2006). López Rega was successively Minister of
Héctor José Cámpora,
Raúl Alberto Lastiri, Perón and Isabel Perón and private secretary of the last two. Furthermore, after the 1980 police arrest of
Licio Gelli, head of
Propaganda Due (aka P2), a masonesque lodge involved in Italy's strategy of tension, in a villa in the French
Côte d'Azur, it was discovered that Isabel Perón's Minister for Social Affairs, López Rega, had also been a member of this lodge.
One of the first terror attacks of the Triple A targeted Hipólito Solari Yrigoyen with a
car bomb on
21 November 1973, which seriously injured him. A few days earlier, Solari Yrigoyen had criticized in the
Argentine Senate the reform of laws concerning workers' trade-unions, which aimed at tightening the control of the trade-union
bureaucracy on the
workers' movement. A few days before the bombing, a leading representative of the trade-unionist bureaucracy, Lorenzo Miguel, had qualified Solari Yrigoyen as "public enemy number one." The Triple A also assassinated
Silvio Frondizi, brother of former president
Arturo Frondizi, in September 1974, etc.
However, the repression of the social movements had already started before the attempt on Yrigoyen's life: on
17 July 1973, the General Confederation of Labour (Argentina) section in Salta was closed, while the CGT, SMATA and
Luz y Fuerza in Córdoba Province (Argentina) were victims of armed attacks. Agustín Tosco, Secretary General of Luz y Fuerza, successfully dissimulated him avoiding his arrestation, and entered
clandestinity until his death on
5 November 1975. Argenpress, 10 April 2006.
Represión en Argentina y memoria larga.
Trade-unionists were also targeted by the repression in 1973: Carlos Bache was assassinated on
21 August 1973; Enrique Damiano, of the Taxis Trade-Union of Córdoba, on 3 October; Juan Avila, also of Córdoba, the following day; Pablo Fredes, on
30 October in Buenos Aires; Adrián Sánchez, on
8 November 1973 in the
Province of Jujuy. Assassinations of trade-unionists, lawyers, etc. continued and increased in 1974 and 1975, while the most combative trade-unions were closed and their leaders arrested. In August 1974, Isabel Peron's government took out the right of trade-unionist representation of the
Federación Gráfica Bonaerense, and its Secretary General Raimundo Ongaro arrested in October 1974.
During the same month of August 1974, the
SMATA Córdoba trade-union, in conflict with the company Ika Renault, was closed by the national direction of trade-unions, and the majority of its leaders and activists arrested. Most of them, including its Secretary General
René Salamanca, were assassinated during the 1976–83 dictatorship. Atilio López, General Secretary of the CGT of Córdoba and former Vice-Governor of the Province, was assassinated in Buenos Aires on
16 September 1974.
The ERP publicly remained in the forefront. ERP guerrilla activity took the form of attacks on military outposts, police stations and convoys. On 19 January 1974 70 ERP men attacked the barracks at Azul, killing the Commanding Officer of the 10th 'Húsares de Pueyrredon' Armoured Cavalry Regiment, Colonel Camilo Arturo Gay and his wife, Hilda Irma Casaux de Gay and capturing the Commanding Officer of the 1st Artillery Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel Jorge Roberto Ibarzabal. In another case, the famous ERP "Compañía Ramón Rosa Jiménez" — about 300 strong and a first class unit — struck the 17th Airborne Infantry Regiment at Catamarca. The attack involved some 90 members of the "Compañía Ramón Rosa Jiménez" who on 10 August, dressed in Army fatigues raided the parachute unit at Catamarca in an apparent attempt to kidnap the Commanding Officer. In 10 years of guerrilla operations (1969–79) there were 1,501 killings, 1.748 kidnappings, 5,215 bombings and 45 major attacks on military units blamed on leftist guerrillas.Cronica de La Subversion en La Argentina (Revised & Updated, 1983).
"Annihilation decrees"
Meanwhile, the Guevarist
People's Revolutionary Army (Argentina) (ERP), led by Roberto Santucho and inspired by Che Guevara's foco theory, began a rural insurgency in the province of
Tucumán Province, in the mountainous northwest of Argentina. It started the campaign with no more than 100 men and women and ended with about 300 in the mountains, which the Argentinean Army managed to control. On 5 January 1975, an Airforce C-47 transport plane was downed near the Monteros mountains, apparently shot down by Guerrillas. All thirteen on board were killed. The military believed a SA-7 shoulder-fired missile struck an engine. In response,
Ítalo Luder, President of the National Assembly who acted as interim President substituting himself to Isabel Perón who was ill for a short period, signed in February 1975 the secret presidential decree 261, which ordered the army to neutralize and/or annihilate the insurgency in
Province of Tucumán, the smallest province of Argentina. In contravention of the
Constitution of Argentina,
Operativo Independencia gave power to the Armed Forces to "execute all military operations necessary for the effects of neutralizing or annihilating the action of subversive elements acting in the Province of Tucumán." Spanish:
el commando general del Ejército procederá a ejecutar todas las operaciones militares que sean necesarias a efectos de neutralizar o aniquilar el accionar de los elementos subversivos que actúan en la provincia de Tucumán Decree No. 261/75. NuncaMas.org,
Decretos de aniquilamiento. Santucho had declared a "liberated zone" in Tucuman and demanded Soviet-backed protection for its borders as well as proper treatment of captured guerrillas as prisoners of war.Facts on File, p. 126, 1975 The Fifth Brigade, then consisting of the 19th, 20th and 29th Mountain Infantry Regiments and commanded by Brigadier-General Acdel Vilas received the order to move to Famailla in the foothills of the Monteros mountains on 8 February 1975. While fighting the guerrilla in the jungle, Vilas concentrated on uprooting the ERP support network in the towns, using state terror tactics later adopted nation-wide, as well as a civic action campaign. The Argentinean security forces used techniques no different from their US and French counterparts. By July 1975, anti-guerrilla commandos were mounting search-and-destroy missions in the snow-capped mountains. Army forces discovered Santucho's base camp in August, then raided the ERP urban headquarters in September. Most of the Compania del Monte's general staff was killed in October and was dispersed by the end of the year. While the leadership of the movement was mostly eradicated, many of the ERP soldiers and sympathizers were taken into custody as political prisoners. The Argentineans have admitted to 43 troops killed in action in Tucuman although this figure does not take into account police and Gendarmerie troops. By December 1975 the Argentinean military could, with some justification claim that it was winning the 'Dirty War', but it was dismayed to find no evidence of overall victory. On 23 December 1975 several hundred ERP fighters staged an all-out battle with the 601st Arsenal Battalion nine miles (14 km) from Buenos Aires. 85 guerrillas, seven army troops and three policemen were killed. In addition 20 civilians were killed in the crossfire. It was a development which the army officers, together with certain elements of the airforce, could not tolerate, and one which was to have far-reaching ramnifications. On 30 December a bomb exploded at the headquarters of the Argentinean Army in Buenos Aires, injuring at least six officers of senior-rank. The credibility of the government was now destroyed and the strategy of attrition was bankrupt. The Montoneros had even successfully utilized divers in underwater infiltrations and sunk an Argentine destroyer, the ARA Santisima Trinidad on 22 August 1975.
By mid-1975, the country was a stage for widespread violence. Extreme right-wing death squads used their hunt for far-left
guerrilla warfares 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. Decree No. 2770/75. NuncaMas.org,
Decretos de aniquilamiento. Decree No. 2771/75. NuncaMas.org,
Decretos de aniquilamiento. Decree No. 2772/75. NuncaMas.org,
Decretos de aniquilamiento. It was given the command of the national and provincial police and correctional facilities and its mission was to "annihilate … subversive elements throughout the country". Military control was thus generalized to all of the country. These "annihilation decrees" are the source of the charges against her which led to Isabel Perón's arrest in Madrid more than thirty years later, in January 2007. The country was then divided into five military zones through a 28 October 1975 military directive of "Struggle Against Subversion". As had been done during the 1957 Battle of Algiers (
quadrillage), each zone was divided in subzones and areas, with its corresponding military responsibles. General
Antonio Domingo Bussi replaced in December 1975 Acdel Vidas as responsible of the military operations.
20 March 1975 raid in Santa Fe
Isabel Perón's government ordered a raid on
20 March 1975, which involved 4,000 military and police officers, in Villa Constitución,
Santa Fe, Argentina, in response to various trade-unionist conflicts. Many citizens and 150 activists and trade-unionists leaders were arrested, while the Unión Obrera Metalúrgica's subsidiary in Villa Constitución was closed down with the agreement of the trade-unions' national direction, headed by Lorenzo Miguel. Repression affected trade-unionists of large firms, such as
Ford,
Fiat, Renault,
Mercedes Benz,
Peugeot, etc., and was sometimes carried on with support from the firm's executives and from the trade-unionist bureaucracy. José Rodríguez, for example, has been accused of being involved in the "disappearance" of Mercedes Benz workers during the dictatorship. He was the same trade-unionist leader who in 1974 closed down SMATA's section in Córdoba — and who is today General Secretary of SMATA.
The military's rise to power
Conservatism, 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 Martínez de 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. During 1976, Videla narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in which a time bomb planted in the reviewing stand at the vast Campo de Mayo barracks blew out a yard-wide hole at the exact spot where he had been standing.
The
junta, which dubbed itself "National Reorganization Process", systematized the repression, in particular through the way of "forced disappearances" (
desaparecidos), which made it very difficult, as in
Augusto Pinochet's
Chile, to depose courtsuits as the bodies were never found. The Generals organized a nation-wide system, from national scale to local scale, to track down so-called "subversives." Physicians and
psychiatry were also used by the state in the
interrogation and torture sessions. Argentine newspaper
La Opinión, founded by future "
desaparecido" Jacobo Timerman, wrote on
31 December 1976 that the Argentine "guerrilla" has suffered losses of 4000, and that the Montoneros had lost 80% of their leaders. The
Buenos Aires Herald, on its side, estimated the victims in 1976 to be 1,100 dead. A clandestine newspaper added that "there is one dead each five hours, and one bomb each three hours." According to Argentine journalist Stella Calloni, author of the classic
Los años del lobo, all of these numbers may be correct. Automotores Orletti el taller asesino del Cóndor,
Juventud Rebelde, 3 January 2006 (mirrored on
El Correo.eu.org /
This generalization of
state terror tactics has been explained in part by the formation received by the Argentine militaries in the infamous
School of Americas and also by French instructors from the French secret services, who taught them "
counter-insurgency" tactics first experimented during the
Algerian War (1954-62). Marie-Monique Robin, 2004.
Escadrons de la mort, l'école française. 453 pages. La Découverte ISBN 2707141631; Spanish transl., 2005:
Los Escuadrones De La Muerte/ the Death Squadron, de Marie-Monique Robin. 539 pages. Sudamericana. ISBN 950072684X
In 1976 there was a successful series of Montoneros bomb attacks in which the general commanding the Federal Police, Cesáreo Cardozo was killed. Lieutenant-General Jorge Videla himself narrowly escaped three Montoneros assassination attempts between February 1976 and April 1977. As pressure mounted on the Montoneros, the urban guerrillas struck back. On 2 July 1976 a Claymore shrapnel mine exploded at the headquarters of the Federal Police in west Buenos Aires during a secret meeting of the police leadership, killing 21 and mutilating a further 60. On 12 September 1976 a car bomb destroyed a bus filled with police officers in Rosario, killing 11 policemen and injuring at least 12. On 17 October a bomb blast in an Army Club Cinema in downtown Buenos Aires killed 11 and wounded about 50 officers and their families. On 16 December, another bomb planted in a Defense Ministry movie hall killed at least 14 and injured 30 officers and their families.
Furthermore, by 1976
Operation Condor, which had already centralized information from South American intelligence agencies for years, was at its height. Chilean exiles in Argentina were threatened again, and had to go into hiding or seek refuge in a third country. Chilean General
Carlos Prats had already been assassinated by the Chilean DINA in Buenos Aires in 1974, with the help of former CIA agent Michael Townley and DINA agent
Enrique Arancibia. Cuban diplomats were also assassinated in Buenos Aires in the infamous
Automotores Orletti torture center, one of the 300 clandestine prisons of the dictatorship, managed by the
Grupo de Tareas 18, headed by Aníbal Gordon, previously convicted for armed robbery, and answered directly to the General Commandant of the
SIDE,
Otto Paladino.
Automotores Orletti was the main base of foreign intelligence services involved in Operation Condor. One of the survivors, José Luis Bertazzo, who was detained for two months there, identified Chileans, Uruguayans, Paraguayans and Bolivians among the prisoners. These captives were interrogated by agents from their own countries. It is there that 19 year-old daughter-in-law of the poet
Juan Gelman was tortured (along with his son), before being transported to Montevideo, where she delivered a baby which was immediately taken from her by the Uruguayan authorities. According to
John Dinges's
Los años del Cóndor, Chilean
MIR prisoners in Orletti center told José Luis Bertazzo that they had seen two Cuban diplomats, 22 years-old Jesús Cejas Arias, and 26 years-old Crescencio Galañega, tortured by Gordon's group and interrogated by a man who specially came one day from Miami to interrogate them. The two Cuban diplomats, charged with the protection of the Cuban embassador to Argentina, Emilio Aragonés, had been kidnapped on
9 August 1976, in the intersection between Calle Arribeños and Virrey del Pino, by 40 armed SIDE agents who blocked off all sides of the street with their
Ford Falcóns, the cars used by the security forces during the dictatorship. According to John Dinges, the FBI as well as the CIA were informed of their abduction. In his book Dinges published a cable sent by Robert Scherrer, an FBI agent in Buenos Aires on
22 September 1976, where he mentions in passing that former CIA agent Michael Townley, later convicted of the assassination on 21 September
1976 of former Chilean minister
Orlando Letelier in Washington D.C., had also taken part to the interrogation of the two Cubans. Former head of the DINA confirmed to Argentine federal judge María Servini de Cubría on
22 December 1999, in Santiago de Chile, the presence of Michael Townley and Cuban Guillermo Novo Sampoll in the Orletti center. The two men travelled from Chile to Argentina on
11 August 1976, and "cooperated in the torture and assassination of the two Cuban diplomats." Anti-Fidel Castro Cuban terrorist
Luis Posada Carriles also boasted in his autobiography, "Los caminos del guerrero", of the murder of the two young men. According to the "
terror archives" discovered in Paraguay in 1992, 50,000 persons were murdered in the frame of Condor, 30,000 "
forced disappearances" (
desaparecidos) and 400,000 incarcerated.
Martín Almada, "Paraguay: The Forgotten Prison, the Exiled Country" Stella Calloni.
Los Archivos del Horror del Operativo Cóndor. freely available on Equipo Nizkor's website, here
False flag actions by SIDE agents
During a 1981 interview whose contents were revealed by documents declassified by the
CIA in 2000, former CIA and DINA agent
Michael Townley explained that Ignacio Novo Sampol, member of
CORU anti-Castro organization, had agreed to commit the Cuban Nationalist Movement in the kidnapping, in Buenos Aires, of a president of a Dutch bank. The abduction, organized by civilian
SIDE agents, the Argentine intelligence agency, was to obtain a ransom. Townley said that Novo Sampol had provided $6,000 from the Cuban Nationalist Movement, forwarded to the civilian SIDE agents to pay for the preparation expenses of the kidnapping. After returning to the US, Novo Sampol sent Townley a stock of paper, used to print pamphlets in the name of "
Grupo Rojo" (Red Group), an imaginary Argentine Marxist terrorist organization, which was to claim credit for the sequestration of the Dutch banker. Townley declared that the pamphlets were distributed in Mendoza and
Córdoba, Argentina in relation with false flag bombings perpetrated by SIDE agents, which had as aim to accredit the existence of the fake Grupo Rojo. However, the SIDE agents procrastinated too much, and the kidnapping finally was not carried out. Visit by Guillermo Novo Sampol to Chile in 1976, 1 and 2, on the National Security Archive website
Human rights violations from 1976 to 1983
, in Rosario, now a memorial.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." The National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (
CONADEP) researched and recorded, case by case, the "Forced disappearance" of about 9,000 persons, though it was made clear that many more could exist; today, the most commonly accepted estimate by human rights organizations places the number at 30,000. Human rights groups such as
Amnesty International were gravely concerned by the state's use of 'disappearances' and periodical use of
extrajudicial killings against the supposed 'subversives'.
Most victims were not armed guerrilla fighters, whose organizations were virtually liquidated, but anyone believed to be associated with activist groups, including trade-union members, students (including very young students, for example in September 1976 during the Night of the Pencils, an operation directed by Ramón Camps, General and head of the Bonaerense, the Buenos Aires Provincial Police, from April 1976 to December 1977) and people thought to hold left-wing views (for example French nuns Leonie Duquet and
Alice Domon, kidnapped by Alfredo Astiz). Ramón Camps told
Clarín (newspaper), in 1984, that he had used torture as a method of interrogation and orchestrated 5,000 forced disappearances, and justified the appropriation of newborns from their imprisoned mothers "because subversive parents will raise subversive children".Terra Actualidad, 18 March 2006. Ramón Camps: el peor de todos.Many of the "disappeared" were pushed out of planes and into the Río de la Plata or the
Atlantic Ocean to drown. This form of forced disappearance, theorized by
Luis Maria Mendia, former chief of naval operations in 1976-77 who is today before the court for his role in the
ESMA case, was termed
vuelos de la muerte ("death flights"). These individuals which suddenly vanished are called
los desaparecidos meaning "the missing ones" or "vanishing ones."
Tomás Di Toffino, Deputy Secretary General of Luz y Fuerza de Córdoba, was kidnapped on
28 November 1976 and executed in a military camp in Córdoba on
28 February 1977, in a "military ceremony" presided by General
Luciano Benjamín Menéndez.
In December 1976, 22 political prisoners were tortured and executed during the Massacre of Margarita Belén, in the military Chaco Province, for which Videla would be found guilty of homicide during the 1985 Trial of the Juntas, as well as Cristino Nicolaides, junta leader Leopoldo Galtieri and
Santa Fe Provincial Police chief
Wenceslao Ceniquel. The same year, fifty anonymous persons were illegally executed by a firing-squad in Cordoba The Victims: Abducted, Tortured, Vanished (list of victims) /
Organizations closely associated with state terrorism included the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (Triple A), the
Batallón de Inteligencia 601 of the
Argentine Army, the Naval Mechanics School (ESMA), and the
Secretaría de Inteligencia (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 three decades, the
Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a group founded in 1977, has been demanding the return of these kidnapped children, estimated to number as many as five hundred. 77 of the kidnapped children have been located so far. Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo's website
In 1977, 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 National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP) 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 of Argentina.
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 defeat 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 Army 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
Ex-Nazi Klaus Barbie,
Stefano Delle Chiaie and major drug lords mount the bloody Cocaine Coup of Luis García Meza Tejada in neighboring Bolivia. They hired 70 foreign agents for this task, Hearing of Stefano Delle Chiaie on 22 July 1997 before the Italian Parliamentary Commission on Terrorism headed by senator
Giovanni Pellegrino which was managed in particular by the
601st Intelligence Batallion headed by General
Guillermo Suárez Mason.
After having been trained by the French military, the Argentine Armed Forces would train their counterparts, in Nicaragua, but also
El Salvador,
Honduras and
Guatemala, in the frame of
Operation Charly. From 1977 to 1984, after the Falklands War, the Argentine Armed Forces exported
counter-insurgency tactics, including the systemic use of torture, death squads and disappearances.
Special force units, such as
Batallón de Inteligencia 601, headed in 1979 by Colonel
Jorge Alberto Muzzio, trained the Nicaraguan Contra (guerrillas) in the 1980s, in particular in
Lepaterique base. Following the release of classified documents and an interview with
Duane Clarridge, former
CIA responsible for those operations, the
Clarín showed that with the election of President
Jimmy Carter in 1977, the CIA was blocked from engaging in the special warfare it had previously delivered against opponents. In conformity with the National Security Doctrine, the Argentine militaries then did the work the most conservative North-American elements wanted to achieve, while they pressured the US to be more active in counter-revolutionary activities. And finally, they submitted themselves to Washington's control following the access of Ronald Reagan to the presidency in 1981. Los secretos de la guerra sucia continental de la dictadura,
El Clarin, March 24, 2006
Many Chilean and Uruguayan exiles in Argentina were murdered there by Argentine security forces (including high-profile figures such as General
Carlos Prats in Buenos Aires in 1974).
Central Intelligence Agency documents released in 2002 show that Argentina's brutal policies were known and tolerated by the
United States State Department, led by Henry Kissinger under
Gerald Ford's presidency, and that the Argentine military knew the U.S. supported the repression. Argentine Military Believed U.S. Gave Go-Ahead for Dirty War,
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 73 — Part II, CIA classified documents released in 2002.
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 "
theory 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.
US involvement
, which gathered members from all parts of the Argentine Armed Forces. Subject: "Nuts and Bolts of the Government's Repression of Terrorism-Subversion." Original document on the
National Security Archives' website.According to the
National Security Archive, the junta led by
Jorge Rafael Videla believed it had US approval for its all-out assault on the left in the name of "national security doctrine". The US Embassy in Buenos Aires complained to Washington that the Argentine officers were "euphoric" over signals from high-ranking US officials, including Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger.
But President
Jimmy Carter's emphasis on human rights led to strained relations between the US and the military regime in Argentina during the height of the Dirty War in the late 1970s.
The
Reagan administration whose first term began in 1981, however, asserted that Carter had weakened US 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
Central Intelligence Agency collaboration with the Argentine intelligence service in training and arming the Nicaraguan
Contras against the Sandinista National Liberation Front government. The Batallón de Inteligencia 601, for example, trained Contras at Lepaterique base, in Honduras.
The "French Connection"
and
Alice Domon.
Alfredo Astiz has been convicted for their "disappearance," while Luis Maria Mendia has been indicted for them.French journalist Marie-Monique Robin has found in the archives of the
Quai d'Orsay, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, the original document proving that a 1959 agreement between Paris and Buenos Aires instaured a "permanent French military mission," formed of militaries who had fought in the Algerian War, and which was located in the offices of the chief of staff of the Argentine Armed Forces. It was continued until 1981, date of the election of
French Socialist Party François Mitterrand. Argentine – Escadrons de la mort : l’école française, interview with Marie-Monique Robin published by RISAL, October 22, 2004 available in French & Spanish ( “Los métodos de Argel se aplicaron aquí”,
Página/12, October 13, 2004 She showed how Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's government secretly collaborated with National Reorganization Process in Argentine and with
Augusto Pinochet's regime in Chile. Conclusion of
Marie-Monique Robin's
Escadrons de la mort, l'école française . The first Argentine officers, among whom Alcides Lopez Aufranc, went to Paris to assist to courses during two years at the Ecole de Guerre military school in 1957, two years before the Cuban Revolution and when no Argentine guerrilla existed. "In practice, declared Robin to
Página/12, the arrival of the French in Argentina led to a massive extension of intelligence services and of the use of
torture as the primary weapon of the anti-subversive war in the concept of modern warfare." The anniquilation decrees signed by
Isabel Peron had been inspired by French texts. During the Battle of Algiers, the police forces were put under the authority of the Army, and in particular of the paratroopers, who generalized
interrogation sessions, systematically using torture and then disappearances. 30 000 persons disappeared in Algeria.
Reynaldo Bignone, named President of the Argentinian junta in July 1982, declared in her film: "The March 1976 order of battle is a copy of the Algerian battle." The same statements were issued by Generals
Albano Harguindeguy, Videla's Interior Minister, and
Diaz Bessone, former Minister of Planification and ideologue of the junta. Torture : l’école française, Marie-Monique Robin, interview first published by
Rouge, September 2005 The French military would transmit to their Argentine counterparts the notion of "
internal enemy" and the use of torture, death squads and "quadrillages".
Green deputies
Noël Mamère,
Martine Billard and
Yves Cochet filed on
10 September 2003 a request for the constitution of a Parliamentary Commission on the "role of France in the support of military regimes in Latin America from 1973 to 1984" before the Foreign Affairs Commission of the National Assembly, presided by Edouard Balladur (
Union for a Popular Movement). Apart of
Le Monde, newspapers remained silent about this request. MM. Giscard d'Estaing et Messmer pourraient être entendus sur l'aide aux dictatures sud-américaines,
Le Monde, 25 September 2003 However, UMP deputy
Roland Blum, in charge of the Commission, refused to hear Marie-Monique Robin, and published in December 2003 a 12-page report qualified by Robin as the summum of bad faith. It claimed that no agreement had been signed, despite the agreement found by Robin in the
Quai d'Orsay « Série B. Amérique 1952–1963. Sous-série : Argentine, n° 74. Cotes : 18.6.1. mars 52-août 63 ». Rapport Fait Au Nom de La Commission des Affaires Étrangères Sur La Proposition de Résolution (n° 1060), tendant à la création d'une commission d'enquête sur le rôle de la France dans le soutien aux régimes militaires d'Amérique latine entre 1973 et 1984, par M. Roland BLUM,
French National Assembly When Minister of Foreign Affairs Dominique de Villepin traveled to Chile in February 2004, he claimed that no cooperation between France and the military regimes had occurred. Argentine : M. de Villepin défend les firmes françaises,
Le Monde, February 5, 2003
Reporter Marie-Monique Robin thus declared to
L'Humanité newspaper: "French have systematized a military technique in urban environment which would be copied and pasted to Latin American dictatorships." L’exportation de la torture, interview with
Marie-Monique Robin in
L'Humanité, 30 August 2003 . The methods employed during the 1957 Battle of Algiers were systematized and exported to the War School in Buenos Aires. Roger Trinquier's famous book on
counter-insurgency had a very strong influence in South America. She declared being shocked to learn that the Direction de surveillance du territoire French intelligence agency communicated to the DINA the name of the refugees who returned to Chile (Operation Retorno). All of these Chileans have been killed. "Of course, this puts in cause the French government, and
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, then President of the Republic. I was very shocked by the duplicity of the French diplomatic position which, on one hand, received with open arms the political refugees, and, on the other hand, collaborated with the dictatorships."
Marie-Monique Robin also demonstrated ties between the French far right and Argentina since the 1930s, in particular through the
Catholic fundamentalist organization
Cité catholique, created by Jean Ousset, a former secretary of
Charles Maurras, the founder of the royalist
Action française movement, who was awarded the Ordre de la francisque under Vichy France (1940–4).
La Cité edited a review,
Le Verbe, which influenced militaries during the Algerian War, notably by justifying the use of torture. At the end of the 1950s, the
Cité catholique installed itself in Argentina and organized there cells in the Army. It greatly expanded itself during the government of General
Juan Carlos Onganía, in particular in 1969. The key figure of the
Cité catholique was priest
Georges Grasset, who became Videla's personal confessor and had been the spiritual guide of the Organisation de l'armée secrète (OAS) pro-French Algeria terrorist movement founded in
Franquist Spain. This Catholic fundamentalist current in the Argentine Army explains, according to Robin, the importance and length of the French-Argentine cooperation. In Buenos Aires, Georges Grasset maintained links with Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, founder of
Society of St. Pius X in 1970 and excommunicated in 1988. The Society of Pius-X has four monasteries in Argentina, the largest one in La Reja. Th
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