National Reorganization Process

The National Reorganization Process (PRN), also known simply as the Process, was a civil-military dictatorship that ruled the Argentine Republic between the coup d'état of March 24, 1976 and the unconditional handover of power to a constitutional government on March 10. December 1983. It took the form of a bureaucratic-authoritarian State and was characterized by establishing a systematic plan of State terrorism, which included theft of babies —with concealment of their true identity— and disappearance of people.

It began with the coup d'état of March 24, 1976 executed by the Armed Forces and civilian sectors, mainly the business community and the Catholic Church. The military coup overthrew all the constitutional, national and provincial authorities, including the Justicialista president María Estela Martínez de Perón, imposing in her place a Military Junta made up of the three commanders of the Armed Forces, which dictated various norms of supra-constitutional hierarchy and He appointed a military official with the sum of the executive and legislative powers, of the Nation and the provinces, who received the title of "president", and five civil officials who occupied the Supreme Court.

The declared objectives of the National Reorganization Process were to combat "corruption", "demagogy" and "subversion", and to place Argentina in the "Western and Christian world". About the ideology of the economic program there are discrepancies: a line of historians point out that an economic-social model was established following the ideological guidelines of the recently emerged so-called neoliberalism. Instead, other authors and sources point out that liberalism was never executed and instead economic management developed a notable economic gradualism.

In addition, it imposed through a policy of systematic violation of human rights, in line with the national security doctrine developed by the United States, articulated continentally through the Condor Plan, directed against a sector of the population accused of being "Peronist" », «populist», «left-handed», «leftist» or «subversive». The dictatorship produced thousands of disappearances, murders, torture, rape, appropriation of minors, forced exiles, etc., which have been judicially classified as genocide. It had the support or tolerance of the main private media and economic groups, the Catholic Church and most of the democratic countries of the world.

On December 10, 1983, the dictatorship, weakened after the defeat in the Malvinas war against the United Kingdom, a year and a half earlier, was forced to hand over power without conditions to a government freely elected by the citizenship. That day, which would later be officially established as Day for the Restoration of Democracy, President Raúl Alfonsín, the two chambers of the National Congress, the governors and legislatures of the 22 provinces that existed at that time, and the authorities democratic municipalities. The dictatorial Supreme Court had ceased two days before, while the new Supreme Court appointed by President Alfonsín with the agreement of the Senate, took office on December 23.

Coup d'état

Background

The participation of civil businessmen and some of the media in the coup groups in Argentine society also dates back to much earlier than 1976. Celedonio Pereda, of the Argentine Rural Society, denounced the constitutional government as "Sovietizing"; Juan Alemann proposed imposing a policy of disappearance of people from the pages of the Argentinisches Tageblatt; and José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz collaborated with the paramilitary forces when they set up a clandestine detention center at the Acindar steel company, where several union activists were tortured and murdered, during the Paraná Red Serpent Operation. For its part, the Holy See had appointed a member of the anti-communist Propaganda Due lodge, Pío Laghi, ^{[citation required]} as nuncio to Argentina, which was also It belonged to Admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera, General Commander of the Argentine Navy and one of the leaders of the coup plotters. The Triple A parapolice organization, created in 1973, continued to operate and forge ties with the sectors that were preparing the coup; many of its members were designated by the dictatorship in strategic positions in the repression.

In May 1975, Brigadier General Jorge Rafael Videla engineered a maneuver that led to the replacement of the General Commander of the Argentine Army, Leandro Anaya, by Lieutenant General Alberto Numa Laplane. Laplane lasted in office for barely one hundred days, period during which —according to the researcher María Seoane— the Videla-Viola duo "would make up the coup General Staff." Three months later, Videla would oust Numa Laplane through a putsch, with the approval of the United States Embassy. de Laplane, who belonged to the "integrated professionalist" sector. The integrated professionals —Carcagno, Anaya and Laplane— maintained that the Armed Forces should be integrated into the institutional order under the orders of political power. On the other hand, the dispensable professionals defended that the Armed Forces should remain completely oblivious to the ups and downs of political life and preserve themselves as the "last bastion of the Nation". For his part, the governor of the province of Buenos Aires, the orthodox trade unionist Victorio Calabró, with excellent relations with the Videla-Viola duo, decided to open an "anti-verticalist bloc" to confront Isabel Perón and operate to promote her fall.

In September, the president requested leave for health reasons, and Senator Ítalo Luder assumed the provisional presidency. Luder strengthened the power of the military and sanctioned, at his request, the three decrees that extended to the entire country the order to "annihilate" the guerrilla actions: it created a National Defense Council controlled by the Armed Forces, and placed the national and provincial police under their orders. One of the first decisions of the Army was to militarize the country in five zones, within which each corps commander had autonomy to order the repressive actions he deemed necessary, including the establishment of clandestine detention and torture centers. Luder also announced that the elections scheduled for March 1977 would be brought forward, which would be held in the second half of 1976. In a meeting of the high command of the Army led by the then Army Commander General, Jorge Rafael Videla, with the participation of French and American military advisers, the National Counterinsurgency Strategy was secretly approved, which ordered dispense with the procedures and guarantees of the rule of law and carry out repressive actions clandestinely and without recognition by state authorities. Shortly after, on October 23, 1975, at the XI Conference of American Armies held in Montevideo, Videla publicly declared: "If necessary, in Argentina all the people necessary to achieve peace in the country must die." Shortly before dying as an old man and with serious health problems, within twenty days of his death, Perón he thought of finding formulas so that the radical leader Ricardo Balbín could be sworn in as president.

In October, Isabel Perón took over the presidency again, hindering the bordaberrización (dictatorship with a civilian president) to which Luder's administration was leading. Isabel was determined not to resign or allow herself to be evicted through a political trial, strictly adhering to constitutional legality, in a national and international context in which the support that the Government could receive was increasingly scarce. Perón's excellent relationship with Balbinista radicalism had vanished, and the main newspapers began to announce —and even demand— that the Armed Forces take power again.

At the end of 1975, the government announced the advancement of the presidential elections to October 1976. Aware that the coup d'état was in full swing, the Peronist legislators divided into two sectors: the verticalists maintained that the The only possibility of reaching the October elections was to respect the institutionality represented by Isabel Perón; while another sector, led by Luder, was in favor of the resignation of the president and her replacement by a civilian —Luder himself— or a retired soldier with military support.^{[citation required]} A sector of radicalism, led by Fernando de la Rúa, was in favor of removing President Isabel Martínez de Perón through a political trial, which was rejected en bloc by the majority Justicialist bench. In December 1975, Lopez Reguismo figures separated from their bloc, and the Justicialista Party lost its majority, going from 142 deputies to having 102, against the 129 that the opposition and the anti-verticalists added, leaving another 12 in independent positions. Years later, Videla recounted a meeting in which Ricardo Balbín would have asked him for the Armed Forces to perpetrate the coup "as soon as possible" and to overthrow the constitutional Government. Forty-five days before the coup on March 24, Balbín invited him to a private meeting at the house of a mutual friend and, finally, he asked if they were going to carry out the coup or not. Videla stated that the radical leader would have asked him to end the Martínez government "as soon as possible". of Perón. After the coup, Balbín would make public the support of the UCR for the dictatorship in these terms:

We welcome the fact that the Armed Forces in power have ratified their will to arrive at a democratic and republican process, that they have not defined other enemies that those responsible for administrative dishonesties and moral bankruptcy and those who have voluntarily marginalized themselves from the process, resorting to subversion and terrorism, and that they have recognized the need of political parties.

Ricardo Balbín, April 1976.

Support of the US State Department for the military has also been noted. Two days after the coup of March 24, 1976, the then Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, ordered the dictatorship to be "encouraged" and offered financial support. Days before, Kissinger, upon being informed that a coup would take place, stated that he wanted to promote them. Meanwhile, US Ambassador Robert Hill described the coup as the "most civilized in the country's history".

The request for military intervention was so visible that the opposition admitted meetings with uniformed officers. "I must confess that today I have knocked on the doors [...] of the Federal Police, that of some men from the army, and silence is all the answer I have found," admitted, among them, the radical senator Eduardo Angeloz, fourteen days after March 24. Days before the coup, a group of representatives of Jewish entities met at the headquarters of the Delegation of Argentine Israeli Associations (DAIA) together with Videla and Massera, where they were warned of the plans of execute the coup that same week; After that, the community leaders pledged their support in exchange for a special loan to reform the Pasteur 633 headquarters, which would be granted two days after the coup. During the process, the community institutions remained silent, showing the entity a contempt towards the relatives of the victims who came to ask them for help to find their children. Despite a certain anti-Semitic character, the dictatorship maintained strong ties with the leadership of the community —especially with the DAIA, where Videla was a regular guest at Rosh Hashanah toasts—, as well as with the State of Israel, converting together with the United States one of the main international allies of the regime. As of 1977, ties were strengthened together with the irruption of the Mossad within the State Intelligence Secretariat (SIDE).

In 1977, the DAIA commissioned a special book from the renowned community writer Marcos Aguinis, with the aim of donating its first edition to Admiral Emilio Massera. Thanks to his ties to Admiral Massera, part of the leadership of The DAIA, under the coordination of Aguinis, would actively participate in the daily Convicción, a morning paper from Buenos Aires that published twenty thousand copies a day and up to forty thousand at the time of the Malvinas war. Acting as political support for Massera's plans, both the newspaper and several of its editors —among them Aguinis— would be questioned in a democracy, due to the diversion of public funds that had to be destined to feed conscripts in the middle of the war. The journalist Jacobo Timerman, after being kidnapped and tortured, accused the DAIA and its directors of complicity with the dictatorship and having acted like the Judenräte during Nazism.^{[citation needed]}

Historian Liliana de Riz described the situation as a crisis of State authority that led to the foreseeable displacement of the president, who tried to buy time by advancing the date of the elections. Other historians point to the installation of dictatorships throughout the region, within the framework of the Cold War, and the advance of the coup group in Argentina, supported by the United States, the anti-communist lodge Propaganda Due —to which Admiral Massera and General Guillermo Suárez Mason belonged—, as well as important sectors of the business and the Catholic Church. By then, Argentina was the only country in the Southern Cone that maintained a democratic regime, while all neighboring countries were governed by military dictatorships (Banzer in Bolivia, Geisel in Brazil, Pinochet in Chile, Stroessner in Paraguay and Bordaberry in Uruguay), supported by the United States in the context of the doctrine of national security.

In August 1975, with the support of the Peronist trade unionism, Antonio Cafiero assumed the economic portfolio; he put into practice a heterodox and Keynesian policy, which managed to reduce the inflation rate (to 9% per month in November) towards the end of 1975. However, the business chambers opposed it and implemented lockout measures (lockout) which, towards the end of January 1976, began to run out of supplies to the country. In the ten months that elapsed between May 1975 —when Rodrigo announced his economic plan— and March 1976 —the military dictatorship was proclaimed—, inflation was 481% (almost 50% per month).

On December 18, Brigadier Jesús Cappellini, a soldier loyal to Videla, led a coup attempt to overthrow the Commander General of the Air Force, Brigadier General Héctor Fautario, the last of the military commanders that he did not accept being part of the coup group and the military "last support" of the constitutional government. The fall of Fautario and his replacement by Agosti ended up forming the coup leadership.

45 days before the coup, the radical leader Ricardo Balbín, the top opposition leader, had a meeting with Jorge Rafael Videla urging him to stage a coup. Days before the coup, he had at least one meeting with General Rafael Videla and then with General José Rogelio Villarreal, in charge of meeting with the main political leaders. Subsequently, part of the participants in these meetings joined the General Secretariat of the Presidency during the Videla regime, under the command of General Villarreal: Raúl Castro Olivera, Victorio Sánchez Junoy, Virgilio Loiácono, José María Lladós, Francisco Mezzadri, Ricardo Yofre, Juan Carlos Paulucci Malvis and the constitutionalist Félix Loñ.

In 2017, secret cables would be released showing that Washington firmly supported the military dictatorship, which it considered the best option in the face of "the climate of uncertainty that threatens its interests in the country." The leaked US State Department document—days after it became known that Perón had been rushed to the hospital for pulmonary edema—stated that "we must strive to maintain close ties with key military leaders, as they represent one of the few viable alternatives to the Peronists.” Henry Kissinger, appointed head of the US Foreign Service, commissioned a "contingency document" to be circulated among the various US agencies, emphasizing that "any intervention in almost any aspect of US domestic policy Argentina requires the United States to act with the utmost discretion and sensitivity."

Since mid-1975, a delegation of businessmen led by José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz, president of the Argentine Business Council, secretly met with the General and Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Videla, to express the concern of the large groups economic because "the freedom of work, production and productivity was being prevented", and to request the Armed Forces to ensure "the rule of order over all things". From that moment, the meetings between businessmen and the military became frequent, with the outstanding mediation of Jaime Perriaux, director of companies such as La Vascongada and Citroën. The last of these meetings was held with Admiral Eduardo Massera, Commander-in-Chief of the Navy. After March 24, 1976, the business organizations committed to the coup became part of the economic area of the new civic-military government. The Argentine Business Council, in the person of its president, Martínez de Hoz, received the Ministry of Economy. The Livestock Secretariat corresponded to the Argentine Rural Society, represented by Jorge Zorreguieta. The Central Bank was handed over to the Association of Private Banks of Argentine Capital (Adeba), represented by Adolfo Diz. And, as Secretary of Programming and Economic Coordination, Guillermo Walter Klein, from the Argentine Chamber of Commerce, was appointed.

In October 1975, the coup military and businessmen began to meet with the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, which promised not to oppose it. Likewise, the military considered that political parties such as the Radical Civic Union, the Federal Party and the Justicialista Party would not offer significant resistance to the coup.

In November, the Justicialista Party expelled the anti-verticalist governor Calabró and, in December, the president drew up a decree to intervene in the province of Buenos Aires. The three commanders took both gestures as a declaration of war. On December 29, the coup triumvirate sent the military vicar, Monsignor Adolfo Tortolo, to notify the president of the summons to resign, making it clear that it was a non-negotiable demand. Isabel then met with the three commanders on January 5 of 1976, who, in an extremely violent meeting, demanded his resignation in a personal capacity. Elizabeth refused, ratified the need to preserve constitutional institutions until the presidential elections —which should be held in October— and sought the protection of the Holy See, resorting to the nuncio Pío Laghi, a member of the Propaganda Due lodge ^{[citation needed]} (same as Massera). But the nuncio in turn met with the United States ambassador, Robert Hill, one of the main supporters of the Videla-Viola duo, and the eventual mediation of the Holy See came to nothing. In this way, in that meeting between the president and the three commanders, the fate of the constitutional government was defined. Isabel only had the power not to validate with her personal acts, the coup and the humanitarian catastrophe that she would cause, already evident to all observers. ^{[citation needed ]}

In January 1976, María Estela Martínez de Perón reorganized her cabinet and got rid of trade unionists and moderate politicians. The trade unionists, who at that time were divided between those loyal to the president —led by Lorenzo Miguel— and those who wanted her removed, chose to take a passive attitude, as they did not want to oppose her at a time when they saw her overthrow as inevitable. Those who arrived at the cabinet proposed to the military the dissolution of both Chambers of the National Congress and the "borberrization" of the Executive Power —similar to what occurred in Uruguay on June 27, 1973—, but the Armed Forces did not accept it. In Congress, top-down legislators blocked the proposals of their "institutionalist" colleagues and the opposition to legally remove the president.

In February 1976, General Roberto Eduardo Viola drew up the plan of operations for the coup. The plan contemplated the need to "cover up" as "anti-subversive actions" the clandestine detention of activists and opponents, from the very night of the coup.

On February 9, the best-known political journalist in the country, Bernardo Neustadt, closed his program Tiempo Nuevo by staring at the camera and demanding the resignation of the president:

Ma'am, why don't you do yourself a favor and do it to us all? Free yourself! Leave the presidency for someone more trained!

Bernardo Neustadt

On February 17, the head of the intelligence services, General Otto Carlos Paladino, pressured Isabel again to resign, arguing that, otherwise, "a lot of blood would be shed." Isabel then conveyed to her defense minister the reason for her position:

See, doctor, I don't give up even if I get shot. Because giving up here would be validating what's coming next.

María Estela Martínez de Perón

The coup leaders took power in a context of increasing violence, characterized by actions of State terrorism carried out by the Armed Forces and the Triple A parapolice group, and the actions of guerrilla organizations such as the Montoneros (of a Peronist tendency) and the ERP (with a Marxist-Guevarist orientation).^{[citation needed]} The leader of the Montoneros, Mario Firmenich, said about the coup: «We did nothing to prevent it because, in In short, the coup was also part of the internal struggle in the Peronist movement». At the beginning of 1976, the international reserves of the Central Bank of the Argentine Republic had fallen to 617.7 million dollars, in relation to the 1,340.8 million a year earlier.

On March 21, 1976, the right-wing daily La Nueva Provincia, from Bahía Blanca, criticized politicians who gave priority to maintaining the democratic regime and openly called for a military coup:

"To the elections with crutches," the radical leader [Ricardo Balbín] escaped sometime. It does not matter what the price is, neither the consequences nor the state of the Republic. What is important is to arrive... Perhaps because subjugated with those words of Almafuerte supposes "curable" the Argentinean evils five minutes before the Republic dies? What an incredible blindness! Couldn't you think, better, with the egregio Lugones, that the HORA of ESPADA is once again unsuspecting, for the good of the world?

Diario La Nueva Provincia, 21-02-1976.

In the international arena, the coup was foreseen by US intelligence and anticipated by William P. Rogers to the Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, in their weekly meeting on March 24, 1976. He expressed his support by expressing the US interest in the coup, and its desire to "encourage and not harass" them, despite Rogers's warnings about the likely "bloodbath" and the killings "not only of terrorists, but of dissidents in unions and parties." politicians".

The press campaign in favor of the military dictatorship began before March 24, 1976. By the first days of March, most print media began to dedicate more space within their editions to the news and topics that they had to do with the Armed Forces, their members and their activities. The magazines Somos, Gente and Para Ti, belonging to the Atlántida editorial group, were among those that most supported and disseminated the pro-dictatorship campaign.

Robert Cox, director of the Buenos Aires Herald, when asked in a report if he had been in favor of the coup, replied: «Of course, the country could no longer take the situation in which it was plunged. ». Journalist A. Graham-Yooll stated: «The establishment, the country, a large part of the middle class, I would say the working class as well, supported the coup. Of course there was a huge part of the population that was politically committed that did not". Jorge Fontevecchia wrote that "in 1976 it could not be known that the last dictatorship would be infinitely more cruel and macabre than the previous ones and, although it hurts to admit it, a very large part of society supported the overthrow of the democratic government of Isabel Perón". /i> the first complaint about the Navy Mechanics School (ESMA), produced by a survivor, Horacio Domingo Maggio, whom he called a "terrorist". Fontevecchia, one of the main media entrepreneurs in the country, published a editorial where it was said in the form of an «Open letter to a European journalist»: «And, please, do not come to us to talk about concentration camps, clandestine killings or night terror. We still indulge in going out at night and coming home at dawn."

Execution

At three hours and ten minutes on March 24, 1976, General José Rogelio Villarreal initiated the coup by telling President Isabel Martínez de Perón: "Ma'am, the Armed Forces have decided to take political control of the country and you are under arrest."

The coup proclamation read:

Exhausted all instances of constitutional machinery, overcoming the possibility of corrections within the framework of the institutions and irrefutablely demonstrated the impossibility of the recovery of the process by the natural pathways, comes to an end a situation that aggravates the Nation and compromises its future. Our people have suffered a new frustration. In the face of a tremendous vacuum of power, capable of sumitting us in dissolution and anarchy, the lack of capacity to call that has been demonstrated by the national government, the repeated and successive contradictions demonstrated in the measures of all kinds, the lack of a global strategy that, led by the political power, confronts subversion, the lack of solutions for the country, the result of which has been the permanent increase of all the An obligation that arises from serene meditations on the irreparable consequences that could have on the destiny of the Nation, an attitude different from that adopted.

This decision seeks to end the disobedience, corruption and subversive scourge, and is directed only against those who have committed and committed abuses of power. It is a decision by the Homeland, and therefore does not imply discrimination against any civic militancy or any social sector. It therefore rejects the dissociatory action of all extremism and the corrupting effect of any demagogy. [...]

[...] Therefore, as long as it will continue without truce fighting subversive, open or covert crime, all demagogy will be banished. Corruption or venality shall not be tolerated under any form or circumstance, nor any violation of the law in opposition to the process of reparation that begins.

The Armed Forces have assumed control of the Republic. It would be the country to understand the profound and unequivocal sense of this attitude so that the responsibility and the collective effort accompany this company that, persecuting the common good, will achieve with the help of God, full national recovery.

• Jorge Rafael Videla, Lieutenant General, Army General Commander;
• Emilio Eduardo Massera, Admiral, General Commander of the Navy;
• Orlando Ramón Agosti, Brigadier General, Air Force Commander General.

The "subversive scourge", the "demagogy", the "corruption", the "chaos", the "power vacuum", the "lack of institutional solutions", the "irresponsibility in managing the economy", were some of the arguments used by the coup leaders to overthrow the constitutional government. García cites the Montoneros' decision to become a true clandestine regular army in 1975 and their pursuit of direct confrontation with the Armed Forces in mid-1975—with some initial successes—convinced the military that they needed to control the state and exterminate physically the guerrillas to defeat them. According to Marcelo de los Reyes, the military dedicated itself to the political aspects of the government and to eliminate subversion, while the economy was left in the hands of José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz (1976-1981), at the time Minister of Economy, linked to the agricultural sectors. Martínez de Hoz implemented a strong liberal policy and, since 1979, a foreign exchange policy that fixed the value of the dollar in the future, known as "tablita". The writer and member of the Montoneros organization Rodolfo Walsh opined:

Dictated by the International Monetary Fund according to a recipe that applies indistinctly to Zaire or Chile, to Uruguay or Indonesia, the economic policy of that Board only recognizes as beneficiaries to the old cattle oligarchy, the new speculative oligarchy and a select group of international monopolies headed by the ITT, the Esso, the automotives, the U.S. Steel, the Siemens Minister, to which are personally linked

(Rodolfo Walsh - Open Letter to the Military Board-March 1977)

A detailed possible explanation of the economic consequences of the coup can be found in the note "A heavy inheritance", by Ernesto Hadida, editor of Invertia Argentina.

Simultaneously with the coup, hundreds of kidnappings and arrests were carried out that same night, mainly of activists and union leaders in strategic industrial areas, such as Greater Buenos Aires, Córdoba and the area that extends from Gran Rosario to San Nicolás.

On the first day, the Military Junta issued 31 communiqués. Release No. 1 says:

The population is informed that the country is now under the operational control of the FF General Command Board. AA. It is recommended that all inhabitants comply strictly with the provisions and directives emanating from military, security or police authority, as well as extreme care in avoiding individual or group actions and attitudes that may require the drastic intervention of staff in operations.

Communiqué No. 19 stated:

The population is informed that the General Commanders ' Board has decided to be repressed with the term of imprisonment for an undetermined period of time by which it disseminates, disseminates or propagates communications or images from or attributed to illicit associations or persons or groups notoriously engaged in subversive activities or terrorism. It shall be repressed with imprisonment of up to ten years, which by any means disseminates, discloses or propagates news, communiqués or images, with the purpose of disrupting, harming or discrediting the activities of the Armed, Security or Police Forces.

The day after the coup, the newspaper La Nación reports that the death penalty has been imposed in Argentina.

That same first day, the death penalty and court martial were imposed (Law 21,264):

Art.1 Anyone who publicly in any way incites collective violence and/or alters public order will be repressed by single incitement, with imprisonment up to ten years. Art. 2. Anyone who alters in any way against the means of transport, communication, usins, gas or running water facilities or other public services will be repressed with imprisonment for a specified time or death... Art.5...the military personnel of the security forces and the police forces shall use the weapons in the event that the person incurs any of the offences foreseen by two to four precedents... Art. 7 Believe in the whole territory of the country the Stable Special War Councils... which together with the Permanent War Councils for the Sub-alternate Personnel of the Three Armed Forces, will know in the trial of the crimes provided for in this law. Art. 10. This law shall apply to any person over the age of sixteen.

Driving

Scheme of government structure de facto.

The coup leaders organized the dictatorship with a Military Government Junta that held power and made up the commanders of the Armed Forces. The military declared the mandates of the president, the governors and deputy governors of the provinces, and the federal inspectors to expire and the mayor of Buenos Aires; they dissolved the National Congress and the provincial legislatures; and dismissed the members of the Supreme Court of Justice.

Jorge Videla, Emilio Massera and Orlando Agosti.

The tripartite nature of power established a situation of virtual independence for each force that, on more than one occasion, led them to act without any communication between them and even to confront each other.

The first Military Junta was made up of the coup commanders Jorge Rafael Videla (Army), Emilio Eduardo Massera (Navy) and Orlando Ramón Agosti (Air Force). During the dictatorship, the members of the Military Junta were being replaced. In the position corresponding to the Army, Videla was replaced by Roberto Viola, Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri and Cristino Nicolaides. In the Navy position, Massera was replaced by Armando Lambruschini, Jorge Isaac Anaya and Rubén Oscar Franco. In the position corresponding to Aeronautics, Agosti was succeeded by Omar Domingo Rubens Graffigna, Basilio Lami Dozo and Augusto Hughes. Between June 22 and September 10, 1982, there was no Military Junta due to the confrontation between the forces.

The Boards appointed Jorge Rafael Videla, Roberto Eduardo Viola, Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri and Reynaldo Benito Antonio Bignone, all of them belonging to the Army, with a title called "president", a position that concentrated national and provincial executive and legislative powers. Although the Statute had decreed that the "president" should not belong to the Boards.

The national government structure was completed with the Legislative Advisory Commission (CAL), made up of three soldiers appointed by each force, with "legislative advisory powers on behalf of the Armed Forces."

The authors and ideologues of the coup decided to call themselves the «National Reorganization Process”, thus alluding to two fundamental concepts of the dictatorship:

• (a) That it was a "process" and that, as such, it "had no time but objectives";
• (b) That the country should be radically “reorganised”, implementing reforms that profoundly alter the economy, labour relations, the political system and the national culture.

"In the exercise of constituent power" the Board of Commanders imposed a series of "liminary principles", "basic objectives", acts and statutes "for the National Reorganization", to which all other laws including the current Constitution should be submitted, in what could still be applicable. Four were the main supra-constitutional norms established:

• Regulations for the functioning of the Military, Executive and Legislative Advisory Commission (approved by the so-called "law" 21256, held on 24 March 1976 and published on 26 March 1976);
• Act for the National Reorganization (held on 24 March 1976 and published on 29 March 1976);
• Statute for the National Reorganization (published on 29 March 1976);
• It acts by setting the Basic Purpose and Objectives of the National Reorganization Process (published on 31 March 1976).

National Cabinet

The presidents had their respective ministers:

The companies and civil groups that participated in the organization of the coup settled mainly in the Ministry of Economy, which was handed over to the Argentine Business Council assuming its president, businessman José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz, as minister. The Secretariat of Livestock corresponded to the Argentine Rural Society, represented by Jorge Zorreguieta. For its part, the Central Bank was handed over to the Association of Private Banks of Argentine Capital (ADEBA), being appointed the economist Adolfo Diz, former Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund and attached to the Chicago School. As Secretary of State for Economic Programming and Coordination, Guillermo Walter Klein of the Argentine Chamber of Commerce was appointed. The Ministry of Education was also in charge, from the beginning, of a group of civilians from CONICET (FECIC Foundation), being named Ricardo Bruera. Later, other ministries were also in charge of civil groups, such as Justice, Foreign Relations, Defense and Health. On the other hand, after Viola's presidency, the Ministry of Economy unfolded into several ministries that were in charge of business organizations.

Provincial authorities

The scheme of dictatorial power was completed with the appointment of governors in each province and mayors in the cities. The designation of governors in the provinces fell almost always on a military man. In the case of city mayors, in a large number of cases they were civil politicians, among them the city of Rosario, the second largest in the country at that time. The political parties, explicitly or implicitly, contributed a total of 794 mayors of the dictatorship, divided according to the following membership:

• Radical Civic Union: 310
• Justice Party: 169
• Progressive Democratic Party: 109
• Integration and Development Movement: 94
• Popular Federalist Force: 78
• Neuquén People's Movement: 23
• Christian Democratic Party: 16
• Intransigent Party: 4
• Democratic Socialist Party: 1

Military authorities

Area 1 belonged to the I Army Corps; Area 2 to the II Army Corps; Area 3 to the III Army Corps; Area 4 to the Command of Military Institutes; and Zone 5 to the Fifth Army Corps. The Fourth Army Corps was created in 1982 in Santa Rosa and never had an area in its charge.

In overlap with the formal scheme of authorities, the dictatorship maintained the country's military zoning system, established on October 28, 1975, through Directive 404/75 of the General Commander of the Army (Fight against subversion). According to the military zoning regime, the country was divided into five military "zones", corresponding to the I, II, III and V Army Corps and the Command of Military Institutes. The commander of each corps was responsible for taking charge of the area. Each zone was further divided into "subzones" and "areas", and each of the "zone", "subzone" and "area" chiefs had direct command for the repression in their jurisdiction. For example, the city of Buenos Aires was a "subzone", located within "Zone 1"; in turn, the Buenos Aires "subzone" was divided into six "areas". The zone and sub-zone heads acted with complete autonomy. His ability to make decisions that implied human rights violations was absolute. Lieutenant General Martín Balza defined them as "warlords... true feudal lords...".

Outside the command structure already described, the dictatorship created Task Forces and clandestine detention centers (CCD) that, in some cases, depended directly on the Argentine Navy or Air Force. Such was the case of ESMA, the largest that operated in the country.

State Terrorism

Map of States that were part of the Condor Plan. In green the most active countries; in clear green those who participated sporadicly; and in blue the leader of the plan.

Secret report of Enrique Arancibia Clavel (DINA) that in July 1978 quantified 22 000 dead and disappeared.

The National Reorganization Process executed a plan to exterminate thousands of opposition citizens to establish a neoliberal economic policy. Most of the victims were students, workers, trade unionists, teachers and political activists. The persecution and extermination plan was internationally coordinated by the Condor Plan, with the participation of the United States.

Never before in Argentine history, the State, as a machine, had been placed in the service of the systematic violation of any rule, including its own, of those dictated by those who occupied it, in application of a plan that Justice defined as criminal; it consisted of kidnapping people, holding them clandestinely, torture them and then—according to cases—leaving them to freedom, passing them to Justice. This had never happened before in Argentina.

Horacio Verbitsky

Fifteen thousand disappeared, ten thousand prisoners, four thousand dead, tens of thousands of exiles are the naked figure of that terror. The ordinary prisons, you created in the main country garrisons virtual concentration camps where no judge, lawyer, journalist, international observer enters. The military secret of the proceedings, invoked as the necessity of the investigation, converts most arrests into kidnappings that allow for unlimited torture and trialless shooting.(Rodolfo Walsh - Open Letter to the Military Board-March 1977)

The exact number of people disappeared, murdered, raped, tortured, and subjected to crimes against humanity is a matter of debate: human rights organizations have traditionally estimated the number of "disappeared" in general at about 30 000; and, until 2007, the Undersecretariat for Human Rights had registered approximately fifteen thousand victims of the crime of disappearance of persons. CONADEP in 1985 documented 8961 cases. Lists held by the United States embassy in Argentina account for 22,000 murders up to 1978.

Not all the disappeared persons at a given moment were murdered, and there are a large number of survivors, such as Carmen Argibay, a member of the Supreme Court of the Republic from 2005 until her death in 2014, former President Carlos Menem, political leaders such as Victoria Donda and Juan Cabandié, who were born in clandestine detention centers, union leaders like Alfredo Bravo and Julio Piumato, journalists like Miriam Lewin, religious like Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Francisco Jalics and Mariano Puga, etc. Even today, people who were kidnapped as girls and appropriated under a false identity continue to appear.

The lists of victims also include hundreds of foreign citizens of German, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Swedish and French nationality, among others. Additionally, more than 500,000 people who had to go into exile.

Among the disappeared are an estimated number of children between two hundred and fifty and five hundred, who were illegally adopted after they were born in clandestine detention centers. There is an organization called Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo that has dedicated itself to locating them, and has already found more than a hundred grandchildren kidnapped by the dictatorship.

During the time of the military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983, clandestine detention centers operated, with the Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA) and the Garage Olimpo among the best known in the city of Buenos Aires. In the Province of Buenos Aires, El Campito (also known as Los Tordos), El Vesuvio, La Perla, Pozo de Banfield, in the province of Córdoba, Regiment 9, La Polaca, Campo Hípico and Santa Catalina in Corrientes.

These actions of illegal repression constituted State terrorism and aggravated the situation of illegitimacy and illegality in which the Armed Forces had incurred by interrupting the constitutional order.

The crimes against humanity committed during the "Process" were investigated in 1984 by the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP) which produced the famous report Nunca Más.

Bishop Enrique Angelelli killed in August 1976 because of his social struggles and his defense for the poor.

For these crimes, the three juntas of commanders that governed the country between 1976 and 1982 (the last one is excluded) were tried and sentenced in 1984. Other perpetrators have been tried and sentenced both in Argentina and in other countries. The processes have continued several decades after the events.

Rage against minorities

Within the ideological framework of the dictatorship, heir in many aspects of Nazism, the concept of nationality excluded any possible form of heterogeneity. This search for homogeneity in society left minorities aside, taking into account, for example, their roots (Jewish, descendants of original peoples, etc.), their sexual orientation and gender identity (gays, lesbians, transsexuals, etc.) or their religious beliefs (atheists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc.).

These minorities were treated with special ferocity by the repressors, even creating special commandos with exclusive dedication (as is the case of the Comando Cóndor, dedicated to persecuting homosexuals). In the case of Jewish victims, the systematic anti-Semitism carried out in the different clandestine detention centers was a fact verified since the report Nunca Más and by subsequent investigations and works. Jehovah's Witnesses were discriminated against during the military service of its faithful, not allowing the common practice carried out with other religious creeds of allowing their authorities to exempt themselves, and forcing everyone to do four years of service (three more than the rest of the citizens) being, in addition, subjected to torture and murder. The inhabitants of the slums saw how they were devastated by the different eradication plans, especially in the framework of the organization of the 1978 Soccer World Cup..

Child abduction

The Process carried out different actions related to the children of the kidnapped, among whom there were even pregnant women, who gave birth, in many cases, in captivity.

When the homes of the "targets" of the task groups had children, they could be kidnapped or left at a neighbor's house. The usual practice of the task groups, such as the fearsome Task Group 3.3.2, was to distribute the kidnapped children, giving them up for adoption to families of soldiers or civilians related to the Forces. Armed. In any case, in the report Nunca Más there are also testimonies from kidnap victims who claim to have heard the screams of their own children while they were being tortured, which was a strategy of psychological torture towards the parents, with the aim of to demolish them morally.

It was common practice, when the targets received the first torture session at their home at the time of being kidnapped, to carry them out regardless of whether there might be children present, who were witnesses to the entire process. process.

In the case of pregnant women, the exclusion regime became somewhat less severe, but the woman received practically no medical attention, even at the time of delivery, which could take place on the floor of her cell, the kitchen floor etc. The women normally gave birth alone, or with the help of another hostage, and there are testimonies that certify that, immediately after delivery, the mothers themselves had to clean up the remains of blood, placenta, etc., that had been scattered. The obstetrician who attended them was Captain Jorge Luis Magnacco.

Detained-disappeared

A report sent to the United States by Chilean intelligence estimated the number of disappeared at 22,000 people in 1978. Up to 2003, the Argentine Secretariat for Human Rights had registered 13,000 cases. CONADEP —National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons—, created at the end of the dictatorship by the constitutional government of Raúl Alfonsín, brought together the legal complaints filed by victims and relatives of 8,961 disappeared persons up to the time of publication of the report. In a document from the Embassy of United States in Argentina, signed by the person in charge of human rights there, Allen Harris, it is reported that a high government official had informed the nuncio Pío Laghi in 1978 that they "had been forced to 'take over' #3. 4; of 15,000 people in his anti-subversive campaign ».

Also in 1978, the Chilean secret agent Enrique Arancibia Clavel sent a report with a partial list of people killed and disappeared between 1975 and July 1978 in Argentina, in which he affirms that up to that date 22,000 disappeared had been listed. The document partially publishes and reveals the existence of individualized records of the disappeared persons, who were never recognized by those responsible or found.

Secret report of Arancibia Clavel that quantifies in 22 000 the dead and disappeared as of July 1978.

The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the Peace and Justice Service, and Relatives of the Disappeared and Detained for Political Reasons, based on statements by former dictator Jorge Rafael Videla himself —who stated in an interview that the disappearances they had reached "up to 30,000" -, they calculate the approximate number of victims at the end of the dictatorship.

Argentinian society, changing, treacherous, did not bankrupt the shootings: yesterday two in Buenos Aires, today six in Córdoba, tomorrow four in Rosario, and so up to five thousand, ten thousand, thirty thousand.

Jorge Rafael Videla

Other sectors deny that there have been 30,000 disappeared persons and oppose the use of said number, arguing that the known cases of murders and people who did not appear again are much lower. Human rights organizations and various social, political and trade union organizations consider that people who refuse to validate the number 30,000 commit conduct equivalent to the denial of the number of 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and aim to diminish and even trivialize the genocide that occurred in Argentina.

The LGBT community claims the use of the symbolic number of "30,400" disappeared persons, due to the omission in the report Nunca más of the Conadep of the more than 400 cases of disappeared LGBT persons, compiled by the Commission. The Conadep has been criticized for this re-victimization of disappeared persons with LGBT identities and the invisibility of their memory.

Among the missing artists are:

Héctor Germán Oesterheld

Born in Buenos Aires in 1922. At the end of the 1940s he began writing children's stories, published by Editorial Abril. Then he collaborates in the mythical magazine Beyond, and in 1950 he publishes his first comic book, «Alan and crazy». 1955 publishes «Sergeant Kirk» and «Bull Rocket». In 1957, with drawings by Solano López, published the first part of «The Eternal», which would become the most famous Argentine comic book. Héctor G. Oesterheld, like thousands of other Argentines, was kidnapped and disappeared in 1977 by the military dictatorship.

Rodolfo Walsh

He was born in the town of Lamarque, near Choele Choel, in the province of Río Negro, Argentina, on January 9, 1927, and since March 25, 1977 he is missing. He was a journalist, writer, playwright and Argentine translator who millied in the Nationalist Freedom Alliance and then in the guerrilla organizations FAP and Montoneros. As a writer he transcended for his police stories set in Argentina and for his journalism research books on the illegal shooting of civilians in José León Suárez of June 1956 (Masacre Operation) and about the murders of Rosendo García (Who killed Rosendo?) and Marcos Satanowsky (Satanowsky Case).

Francisco Tenório Júnior, better known as "Tenório Jr."

He was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1941 and was disappeared in Buenos Aires on 18 March 1976. Tenório Jr. was an outstanding Brazilian pianist of samba-jazz, with considerable artistic relief in the 1970s. According to testimonies and documents obtained by Brazilian investigators, Tenório Jr. would have been kidnapped by a task force belonging to the Argentine Navy in the early morning of March 18 — a few days before the coup d'état on March 24, 1976— and taken to the Mechanical School of the Navy (ESMA), where he would have been tortured and shot killed by Alfredo Astiz on March 27. The data would indicate that Tenório Jr. was kidnapped within the framework of the Condor Plan (which consisted of a plan organized by the South American dictatorships of repression, torture and systematic killings at the regional level), either by indication or with knowledge of the Brazilian military government, which knew that the Argentine military had been mistaken for person at the time of the kidnapping. In Argentina, the group of prosecutors investigating State terrorism in Argentina in the 1970s and 1980s, has included its abduction, torture and murder, at the second stage of Plan Condor's case, which was brought to trial and obtained sentences in 2016.

Economic policy

Evolution of poverty during National Reorganization Process.

The economic policy of the dictatorship included recipes from the International Monetary Fund, benefited a select group of monopolies and began a record debt process.

Government of Videla

The military left the management of the economy in the hands of José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz, who served as Minister of Economy until March 29, 1981. Martínez de Hoz came from the private sector where he had directed the Compañía Ítalo Argentina Of electricity; He presided over the Petrosur oil company and the Rosafin financial company, and, having established a relationship with the Rockefellers, was the head of the Acindar steel mill during the years immediately preceding the coup. Since before taking office, Martínez de Hoz had close ties with the leadership military, which Acindar would use as a testing ground for the repressive practices carried out later during the Proceso. According to statements by Martínez de Hoz himself, in 1975 he would have visited Videla ―at the time chief of the General Staff―, along with other members of the Argentine Business Council, to ask him to help preserve order in circumstances that prevented "the freedom of work, production and productivity. In the course of successive interviews with Army leaders, he designed a spy and surveillance system, coordinated with the security forces and military intelligence, aimed at identifying the main union activists. Rodolfo Peregrino Fernández, then inspector of the Argentine Federal Police, testified before the Argentine Human Rights Commission that Acindar "paid all police personnel - chiefs, non-commissioned officers and troops - an extra bonus in money (...) [to convert it into ] a kind of military fortress with barbed wire fences». The replacement for Martínez de Hoz at the head of Acindar would be General Alcides López Aufranc, who would continue with the repressive work.

Martínez de Hoz followed, at that time, new economic guidelines of the Chicago School (generally included in the concept of neoliberalism), which had been implemented for the first time by the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, installed in 1973. Subsequently, this economic orientation would become hegemonic in the Western world, starting with the economic reforms of President Ronald Reagan in the United States (the reaganomics) and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, in the United Kingdom. He was accompanied in the economic team by businessmen and lawyers closely related to the most conservative groups, such as Guillermo Walter Klein, Adolfo Diz (president of the Central Bank), Juan Alemann, Cristian Zimmermann, Enrique Folcini, Jorge Zorreguieta and Francisco Soldati.

During this stage, the ideas of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, greatest exponents of monetarism, would be fundamental. Hayek would previously declare to the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio on April 12, 1981, in support of the Pinochet regime, that he would also follow his economic guidelines: "My personal preference is for a liberal dictatorship and not for a democratic government where all liberalism is absent. In this interview, Hayek defined himself as an enemy of the welfare state and social justice. In 1977 he visited Argentina and Chile, where he would meet with Jorge Rafael Videla and with the member of the Military Government Junta, and with the future dictator Leopoldo F. Galtieri.For Hayek, the fundamental thing is to ensure economic freedom; in his opinion, the only freedom. Hayek advocates what Herman Heller would describe in 1933 as "authoritarian liberalism". However, this alleged sympathy for the economist's ideas collided with his postulates: adequate public spending and a monetary issue that should not exist. Clearly, these postulates were set aside by the dictatorship that strongly conditioned the radical government that succeeded it. The economic setbacks led to a depression that began in 1986 and detonated with the serious crisis of 1989.

The measures taken by Martínez de Hoz based on the liberal ideology included the opening of markets and the liberalization of the exchange rate, opening to imports, lowering agricultural withholdings, among others. The economic plan was presented on April 2, 1976, and its explicit objective was to stop inflation and stimulate foreign investment. A few days after the beginning of the administration of Martínez de Hoz, the International Monetary Fund approved with surprising speed a credit of 110 million dollars for the country.

Other authors, thinkers and sources pointed out that the economic policy was of a gradualist nature. Jorge Videla himself recounted in the book "Joe" that the plan should have taken into account, outside of all orthodox rigor, the war against subversion that was in progress. In his consideration, this question dominated the entire national scene. This meant the impossibility of applying a shock policy. It was recommended by various economists such as Horacio García Belsunce. However, a policy of gradual application that did not cause social imbalances was put into practice. This is explained by the fact that the priority objective of the revolutionary war is the conquest of the population and the application of more aggressive measures would increase the problem of the guerrillas. For the election of the Minister of Economy, the Military Junta, through military compatibility teams, examined several economists: Bernardo Grinspun, Félix de Elizalde, Álvaro Alsogaray, Horacio García Belsunce, Rogelio Frigerio, Lorenzo Sigaut and José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz.. Álvaro Alsogaray could not be elected because he harshly criticized "gradualism" and he was ruled out. The economists were in favor of the theory of "hitting bottom" or of the "ripe fruit", which indicates that the state intervenes only after absolute decomposition. The choice of a more moderate plan and with more state intervention ended up discarding the more liberal plans and seeking answers that were more pragmatic and gradualist. This led to the choice of José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz. Years later, the former minister himself acknowledged that he agreed with Videla and described his management as gradualist; despite sympathizing with more liberal and shock ideas. The economist ended up acknowledging that his program obeyed the "art of the possible", although it was not "desirable". In this way, the original plan was truncated, since the guerrillas had capitalized on the discontent of supposedly unpopular measures that they tried to avoid.

Industry and agriculture

Martínez de Hoz's plan consisted of a tariff reduction that reached its maximum level in 1978, to make the economy more competitive and promote its "natural advantages". The result was a process of massive imports and a disastrous effect on the industry. Large industrial companies closed their plants: General Motors, Peugeot, Citroën, Chrysler, Siam, Decca (Deutz-La Cantábrica), the utility vehicle plant of Fabricaciones Militares, Aceros Ohler, Tamet, Cura, Olivetti, and thousands of small and medium-sized companies. industrial business. By 1980 industrial production had reduced its contribution to GDP by 10%, and in some branches such as textiles, the fall exceeded 15%.

At the same time, the concentration of industry and land deepened, strengthening an economic elite that would be called "financial homeland" and "contractor homeland". A few business groups saw themselves benefited, including Acindar, whose president Martínez de Hoz was Minister of Economy of the dictatorship; Benito Roggio, benefited from the construction of some World Cup stadiums and other pharaonic state works, the Macri Group, which in 1975 owned seven companies and at the end of the dictatorship there were forty-six; The most relevant are Sevel Argentina (automotive), Sideco Americana (construction), Socma Corp (financial), Manliba (waste collection), Itron (electronics), Solvencia de Seguros (insurance company), Prourban (real estate), Iecsa (facilities mechanical), Perfomar (oil drilling). As the Socma holding, it was the beneficiary of important tenders during the dictatorship, such as the Yaciretá dam, the construction of the Misiones-Encarnación bridge, the Río Tercero thermoelectric plant and Luján de Cuyo, the collection of waste from the City of Buenos Aires, through the creation of Manliba, among others. During that time it bought Fiat, this sale ended up being an agreement to carry out the closure of plants and layoffs. Other groups like Arcor and Pescarmona also made big profits.

Based on a labor policy that produced a profound reform of labor laws, the prohibition of strikes, the military intervention of the unions, and the repressive policy of State Terrorism, Martínez de Hoz decreed the freezing of wages and contained the general discontent, before an unprecedented drop in the standard of living of the population.

The Process was supported by various actors of the national economy, such as the Sociedad Rural Argentina, which published a request on March 24, 1977, in commemoration of the anniversary of the civic-military dictatorship: «The stateless and brutal guerrilla, protected to a large extent by the previous authorities, it has suffered harsh blows and they are in clear retreat.» The text concluded by giving the support of the Rural Society to "any action that means completing the process begun on March 24, 1976, in order to thus achieve the proposed goals." The highest-ranking sectors of the Church gave their endorsement on the night prior to the coup in a secret meeting with the military leadership.

Financial reform and the “tablet” of scheduled depreciation

In 1977, Law 21,526 on Financial Institutions was promulgated, which reformed the financial system, forcing the State to stop financing itself with loans from the Central Bank and began to do so with internal and external credits. The state demand for domestic credit contributed to keeping the interest rate high, above the international rate, which stimulated the inflow of speculative capital.

In order to control the demand for foreign currency and maintain a policy of exchange rate arrears, Martínez de Hoz implemented, at the end of 1978, a programmed devaluation system, nicknamed "la tablita". Along with the aforementioned law on financial entities, the tablet would promote excessive financial speculation. The measure was taken to try to offset the losses caused to savers by the difference between the interest rate paid to time deposits and inflation; to protect financial institutions, the State became responsible for the payment of deposits. The cost of these measures, which caused the closure of more than twenty-five credit institutions, whose liabilities had to be assumed by the State, was enormous; It was also the case for consumers, who had to face a liberalized credit market, whose rates increased in tandem with those paid for deposits. Mortgage loans reached an annual interest rate of one hundred percent, which proved unaffordable for many debtors, and led a large part of the population to lose ownership of their homes. The combined result of internal economic policies and the international financial situation of abundant capital looking for investment places, promoted a record level of indebtedness.

In 1978, the neoliberal plan of Minister Martínez de Hoz gave signs of exhaustion: annual inflation reached 160%, and the GDP fell by about 3.2% during that year. The following year, the inflation rate reached 139.7 percentage points, with a stagnant economy. In addition, a leak of 25% of bank deposits was generated, and the four most important banks in the system went bankrupt. During his administration, the external debt grew from 7,000 million to more than 40,000 million dollars, that is to say: in seven years it multiplied by almost six times. During 1980, exports fell 20% compared to the previous year, while imports rose 30%. In this context, the banking crash of 1980 took place, which put an end to the stage of the so-called «sweet money». The bankruptcy of the Banco de Intercambio Regional, along with the closure of another 37 financial institutions, which in turn had repercussions on industrial sectors, caused a strong bank run and flight of foreign currency.

Government of Viola

Due to Videla's inability to achieve economic stability, in the midst of rising unemployment, high inflation, and depreciation of the peso, in March 1981, the Military Junta decided to remove him and put General Roberto in his place Eduardo Viola. Viola turned towards a more moderate economic liberalism, appointing Lorenzo Sigaut as economy minister, who came from the FIAT automaker.

Sigaut annulled the "table" of Martínez de Hoz and unfolded the exchange market, through the creation of a free "financial dollar" and a regulated "commercial dollar", with different values. In this way, he sought to favor exports that had been harmed by the high dollar of Martínez de Hoz. During his administration, the external debt increased by 31% and the biggest recession of the Argentine economy began since the crisis of 1930, falling the GDP in that year and the following 9%. This would cause an internal coup that would lead Lieutenant General Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri to the Government.

Galtieri's government

Galtieri appointed Roberto Alemann as Minister of Economy. The economic policies applied implied the restriction of public spending, the decrease in working capital, the privatization of state assets and the freezing of salaries. His government was marked by the Malvinas war that occurred in 1982.

In February 1982, the government lent 30 million dollars to the dictatorship of Celso Torrelio in Bolivia. The action carried out at the behest of the Bolivian ruler was aimed at recovering the Central Bank of Bolivia. At the time, Bolivia owed some 700 million dollars to Argentina.

Government of Bignone

The defeat in the Malvinas war, added to the growing economic difficulties, led to the resignation of President Leopoldo Galtieri and the assumption of Reynaldo Bignone. He appointed José Dagnino Pastore as Minister of Economy, who declared a state of emergency in the face of factory closures, inflation —which would exceed 200% in the year— and the constant devaluation of the currency. Just 53 days later, Pastore was replaced by Jorge Wehbe; the new minister launched a price control that placed the products of 675 companies under government control, due to the need to "protect real wages", threatened by a "monopolistic industrial structure".

In November 1982, the head of the Central Bank, Julio González del Solar, ordered the nationalization of the debt of private companies through Circular 251. This reached the debt of companies such as Alpargatas S.A., Grupo Macri, Banco de Galicia, FATE-ASTRA, Bunge y Born S.A., Grafa S.A., Molinos Río de la Plata, Loma Negra S.A, Ingenio Ledesma, Pérez Companc S.A., ACINDAR S.A. and Bridas-Newspaper.

Consequences

The real wage, from a base of 100 in 1970, had risen to 124 in 1975. In 1976, in a single year, it fell sharply to 79 points —the lowest level since the 1930s (ILO 1988)—; it has never recovered again. Additionally, poverty, which had been below 10% since the 1940s, and was 5.8% in 1974, rose to 12.8% in 1980 and 37.4% in 1982 (INDEC, data corresponding to Greater Buenos Aires). For its part, unemployment remained relatively stable, starting at 3.8% in October 1975 and leaving 3.9% in October 1983, with a peak of 6% in May 1982 (during the Malvinas War).).

Triple-digit annual inflation was a constant, along with the deterioration of income distribution. Between 1976 and 1990, families in the wealthiest decile in the income distribution increased their share of national wealth by 33%, while households in the three intermediate deciles (middle class) lost 9.5%, and households of the three lowest deciles lost 27.5%. In 1974, before the implementation of economic liberalism, only 4.6% of people were below the poverty line, in October 1982 that proportion reached 21% and would increase even more after the hyperinflationary episode of end of the decade.

External indebtedness

The level of debt rose from 7,875 million dollars at the end of 1975, to 45,087 million dollars at the end of 1983. According to the ruling of federal judge Ballesteros in the case "Alejandro Olmos c/ Martínez de Hoz et al. s/ Fraudation", the increase in the debt essentially constituted a criminal operation carried out by national and foreign companies, the military and economic agents.

Participation in the Condor Plan

Declassified CIA files narrate that Manuel Contreras, head of the DINA in Chile, was invited in 1975 to the CIA headquarters in Langley for fifteen days. After that visit, Contreras is indicated as the "creator" of the Condor Plan, and US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as its ideologue. During the years of the dictatorships, South American intelligence chiefs kept in touch with each other through a US facility. in the Panama Canal, used to coordinate intelligence information from the countries of the Southern Cone. The US government was a key provider of economic and military assistance to the Videla regime during the most intense phase of the repression. In 1976, Congress The US granted 80 million dollars (USD) to the Board and invested 1,115 million USD in training for Argentine military personnel. The collaboration of the CIA with the Argentine intelligence service was used to train and arm other coup movements in the region, counting on the passivity of the international community.

The Argentine Army had a detachment of instructors in Honduras to support the Contras, who were targeting Nicaragua.

International relations

During the military dictatorship, strong ties were forged with the United States, which became its main diplomatic and economic support. At the same time, Israel became a strong ally, which sold significant amounts of weapons while the repression affected members of the Jewish community. In addition to the supply of weapons, a collaboration channel was developed between the 601 Intelligence Battalion and the Israeli intelligence services, while Argentine repressors and Israeli soldiers agreed to provide onerous counterinsurgency services in Central America.

Argentina participated in the Condor Plan; anti-leftist repression operation, implemented by the military dictatorships of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile and Bolivia, in the 1970s. An example of the coordination promoted by the regimes in Buenos Aires and La Paz was the kidnapping and subsequent assassination of the former Bolivian president, General Juan José Torres, who took refuge in Buenos Aires, at the beginning of June 1976. Argentine military diplomacy concentrated all its efforts on attract Bolivia into their sphere of influence. On July 17, 1980, the Argentine Army supported a group of soldiers closely linked to drug trafficking, led by General Luis García Meza and his lieutenant Luis Arce Gómez, who together with a right-wing terrorist command called the Boyfriends of Death, Organized by the Nazi criminal Klaus Barbie and the Italian mobster Marco Marino Diodato, undercover by the CIA, they produced a new bloody coup, overthrowing the democratic government of Lidia Gueiler and preventing the assumption of the progressive president Hernán Siles Suazo. Meza's objectives were to establish a free market economic policy and combat communism. and missing.

Conflict with Chile

In 1971, the Chilean and Argentine presidents, Salvador Allende and Alejandro Agustín Lanusse respectively, had agreed to submit the dispute over the islands south of the Beagle Channel formally to the United Kingdom, but, in its content, to an arbitral tribunal made up of judges who had agreed to both governments; all this within the framework of international law and current treaties. On May 22, 1977, the arbitral award was announced in London, which granted Chile the Picton, Nueva and Lennox islands together with the adjacent islands. Argentina obtained the northern half of the canal and the corresponding islands.

The Military Junta declared the sentence "insanely null" and began planning a war of aggression against Chile to reverse the award. The commanders of the Armed Forces launched Operation Sovereignty on the night of December 21-22, 1978, which was aborted hours later, when the Junta accepted papal mediation in the conflict. None of the Argentine dictators gave a solution to the conflict, unleashed with ignorance of the arbitration award. It was not until 1984 that President Raúl Alfonsín, democratically elected in 1983, recognized what was resolved through the mediation of Pope John Paul II, thus ending the conflict with Chile.

Corruption

The Process would be peppered with various acts of corruption, among them those that weighed on the World Autarchic Entity '78, created in 1976 by decree of Jorge Rafael Videla in order to organize the Soccer World Cup in 1978. The management of the 1978 World Cup was surrounded by secrecy, partly thanks to Decree 1261/77, which allowed EAM '78 to maintain reserve in its management. Of the 517 million US dollars at the time that the World Cup cost — more than four times the cost declared by Spain for the organization of the 1982 edition — the administration is ignored, since an accounting balance was never available for it. In the end, organizing the championship cost ten times more than expected. Internal disputes within the military played a role in this, and the first chairman of the committee was shot, it is suspected, by his successor.

On June 21, 1978, a bomb exploded in the house of the Secretary of the Treasury, Juan Alemann, who days before had charged hard against Carlos Alberto Lacoste and the waste in the World Cup organization. The World Cup cost Argentina some 517 million dollars, 400 more than those paid by Spain in the next edition of 1982 and was considered a "monument to corruption". It was denounced that there was a frequent lack of transparency in the handling of funds. The organizer designated by Videla to organize said World Cup would be prosecuted, already in democracy, for fraudulent administration as a public official. The Federal Chamber of Buenos Aires considered that Carlos Alberto Lacoste never provided sufficient and satisfactory explanations about how his economic assets may have increased by a total of 443% between 1977 and 1979, as denounced by the national prosecutor's office in 1984. He was also prosecuted for fraudulent administration as a public official. the construction of highways in Buenos Aires and the emptying of financial institutions and the illegal appropriation of companies, such as the Mackentor firm in Córdoba. In between, spurious deals, such as the construction of highways in Buenos Aires, the organization of the Soccer World Cup of 1978 and the emptying of financial entities and illegal appropriation of companies, such as the Mackentor firm in Córdoba

Subsequently, documents from the National Court of Spain found in 2015 described the existence of a network that handled funds stolen from victims of State terrorism. Videla set up several companies in that country and registered accounts in different banks in Europe, where he kept large amounts of money that was stolen from the disappeared, which, as in many other cases, would have been laundered through companies and bank accounts abroad. Likewise, different business groups linked to the dictatorship were benefited with contracts opaque state agencies, including: Techint, Siderar, Socma, Papel Prensa, Loma Negra, Ledesma, Molinos, Bunge & Born, Editorial Atlántida, La Nueva Provincia, Dalminé-Siderca or La Veloz del Norte.

Education policy

According to Pablo Pineau, the central characteristic of the educational policy of the dictatorship was to put an end to the "single school" historically in force in Argentina, egalitarian for all, which balanced differences and inequalities for the population that attended. With structural, financial, organizational, curricular and didactic measures, the dictatorship strengthened its mechanisms of segmentation and internal differentiation.

The National Reorganization Process produced a reformulation of the teaching State as the main educational agent, taking measures such as Law no. 21809/78, which in 1978 transferred initial, primary and adult education to the municipalities, being the poorest provinces affected by not presenting the material and human resources to take charge of their educational systems. It also favored an increase in segmentation in the educational system on issues such as curricular proposals, the level of system coverage and salary policies teachers, favoring the private education system.

The dictatorship reordered the system according to exclusive, meritocratic and elitist criteria, in order to achieve a greater equivalence between the educational system and the social classes, making decisions such as the assembly of different school trajectory circuits with a low relationship between yes, the selectivity and social homogeneity of the population served in each segment being very high; The segmentation intensified with the passage from one educational level to the next, with the arrival of a selective entry into private and public institutes, under the excuses of "good competition", "reward effort" and "select the best", being sympathetic back to neoliberal practices.

The didactic policies of the dictatorship had the purpose of generating a homogenization through a modernizing proposal in pedagogical and didactic issues. With these purposes, in 1980 the Higher School of Teacher Training was created, in order to train managers, vice-directors and inspectors, derived from the creation of the municipal educational system. The Teacher Training and Support Program (PROCAD) was also created in 1979, being a distance teacher training activity, through periodic distribution modules that awarded points to those teachers who passed. The function of teacher training was the dissemination of what was "new" and "correct" from the decision-making agents —defined as "technical"— to those who implemented it —managers and teachers—.

Didactic policies were supported by two psychological theories of learning: behaviorism, referring to classroom activities, and genetic psychology, in a matter of curricular design.

Cultural policy

The National Reorganization Process had a cultural and educational policy in tune with its repressive policy of State terrorism. This policy included strict prior censorship. The military government created a special group in charge of controlling and censoring all types of scientific, cultural, political or artistic production.

Book burning

The dictatorship carried out a systematic work of censorship, in which hundreds of thousands of books were burned. Thus, publishers such as the Latin American Publishing Center burned 1.5 million copies, and Eudeba, some 90,000.

On April 29, 1976, the occupants of the La Calera Airborne Infantry Regiment (in Cordoba) burned a mountain of books. The official statement said: “This pernicious documentation that affects the intellect and our way of being a Christian is incinerated so that it cannot continue to deceive the youth about our most traditional spiritual acquis: “God, Home and Home”. Among many works, the novels of Gabriel García Márquez, the poems of Pablo Neruda, the research of Osvaldo Bayer. Operation Claridad is perged from the Ministry of Education and Culture: a hunting plan for opponents throughout the cultural area. In addition to the disappearances of artists, intellectuals, teachers and students, the plan produces massive dismissals and disqualifications to teach.

In the city of Rosario (province of Santa Fe), the soldiers usurped the Popular Library Constancio C. Vigil. La Vigil was an institution that in the early 1970s had a library of 55,000 volumes in circulation and 15,000 in deposits. On 25 February 1977 it was intervened by Decree No. 942. Eight members of its Steering Committee were illegally detained, and the control of book loans was used to investigate the partners. Thousands of books of the entity were burned, for example six hundred collections of the complete work of the poet Juan L. Ortiz. Journalist and writer Mempo Giardinelli suffered the consequences of the igneous passion of the military: his first novel was burned with one of Eduardo Mignogna. [Enrique] Medina is perhaps one of the most systematic authors persecuted by censorship, during dictatorship and even before, according to Invernizzi and Gociol. Manuel Pampín, from Corregidor, published part of the work of the author The gravesLike, Only angels, whose sixth edition was banned although not the seventh, a copy of the previous one.

The largest burning of books that the dictatorship created was with materials from the Latin American Publishing Center, the seal that was founded by Boris Spivacow, who also held a trial "for publication and sale of subversive material". He was overwhelmed, but a million and a half books and fascicles burned in a raft of Sarandí.

Marcelo Massarino, magazine Unsubscribed, 46, 18 March 2006

Although the bulk of the PRN's censorship was concentrated on bibliographic material that could be suspected of containing leftist or Peronist ideology, during the dictatorship several decrees were issued prohibiting the sale and distribution, and ordering the seizure of all available copies of various Nazi-oriented or far-right books, including:

• Beveraggi Allende, Walter: From the Zionist yoke to Argentina possible: economic scheme of dependence and liberation Argentina. Argentine Nationalist Confederation.
  • Prohibited by decree 3209/76 (published in Official Gazette of the Argentine Republic of 16 December 1976, Collection of Analysts of Legislation Argentina XXXVII-A-182).
• The Shuljan Aruj: Code of Jewish Laws (Critical edition of a book of 1549).
  • Prohibited by decree 2579/77 (published in Official Gazette of the Argentine Republic of September 6, 1977, Collection of Analyses of Legislation Argentina XXXVII-D-3821.
• Editions My struggle (Biblioteca de Esclarecimiento Popular n.o 2).
  • Prohibited by decree 2579/77 (published in Official Gazette of the Argentine Republic of September 6, 1977, Collection of Analyses of Legislation Argentina XXXVII-D-3821.
• Hermann and Ritach: The National Socialist Economy. Editorial West.
  • Prohibited by decree 3006/76 (published in Official Gazette of the Argentine Republic of November 30, 1976, Collection of Argentine Law Analysts XXXVI-D-2959.
• Revista Cabildo
  • Lifting your ban. By decree 944/76 of June 1976 (published in Anales de Legislación Argentina XXXVI—1215) the decrees 394/75 and 1159/75 signed by María Estela Martínez de Perón forbade the publication of the journal.
  • The edition of 13 June 1977 was banned and abducted by decree 1711/77 (published in Official Gazette of the Argentine Republic of 16 June 1977, Collection of Analyses of Legislation Argentina XXXVII-C-2612. Article 3.o clarified that the kidnapping of the edition "...will not prevent the carrying out of the administrative tasks inherent in the journal Cabildo...", the one that continued to be published intermittently.
• Tribuna Popular, June 23, 1976 edition.
  • Prohibited and kidnapped by decree 999/76 (published in Anales de Legislación Argentina XXXVI—2138).
• The cast, exemplary number 3.
  • Prohibited and kidnapped by decree 1306/76 (published in Anales de Legislación Argentina XXXVI—2173).
• Revista Cambio 16 edited in Spain, n. 250 and 251
  • Prohibited his entry into the country and ordered his abduction by decree 3022/76 of 12-9-1976 (published in Argentine Legislative Anas XXXVI—2933).
• The Principles, newspaper of Córdoba.
  • Closing for 6 days from 12-9-76 to 18-6-1976 by decree 2310/76 of 1-10-1976 (published in Argentine Legislative Anas XXXVI—2933).
• Weekly Post of the Week.
  • No. 2117 of 7-11-1977 was banned and abducted by decree 3392/77 and exemplary No. 2118 of 14-11-1977 by decree 3438/77 (published in Anales de Legislación Argentina XXXVI—3878).
• Political bulletin Conviction.
  • The copy of 21-9-1977 was banned and kidnapped and the Editorial Convicción was closed for three months by decree 2877/77 (published in Anales de Legislación Argentina XXXVI—3843).
• The Opinion
  • Exemplary n° 31 of the journal, prohibited and abducted by decree 259/77 (published in Spanish by Argentine Laws XXXVII—2173).
  • Exemplary of 9-1-1977, prohibited and abducted by decree 210/77 (published in Argentine Legislative Analyses XXXVI-C-4124).

Despite these specific acts of censorship, in reality the Process allowed a wide dissemination of Nazi and anti-Semitic literature during the dictatorship.

The concept of “subversion”

During the National Reorganization Process, the military leadership defined the concept of "subversion" in a very broad sense. For the Military Government Junta and its main representatives, anyone who was not aligned with the criteria and objectives of the coup leaders was "infiltrated" by the subversive "germ". The main heads of the Armed Forces shared this position and made it explicit in successive public statements, which potentially placed a large part of the population within the “subversive” spectrum:

To achieve their goals [subversives] have used and try to use all imaginable means: the press, the songs of protest, comics, cinema, folklore, literature, university chair, religion...

Admiral Armando Lambruschini

The theatre, cinema and music were constituted in a fearsome weapon of the subversive aggressor. The songs of protest, for example, played a relevant role in the formation of the climate of subversion that was produced: they denounced situations of social injustice, some real, others invented or deformed.

Lieutenant General Roberto Viola

In our days, the worst that could happen and the most dire consequences have been realized: the infiltration of Marxist ideologies in the national sense and, moreover, in Argentine nationalism and in the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church.

General Manuel Bayón, Director of the War College, 1977

To the present, in our war against subversion we have only touched the high part of the iceberg [...] Now it is necessary to destroy the sources that form and indoctrination subversive offenders, and this source is located in universities and in secondary schools. The most dangerous influence is the one exercised by university students trained abroad, and more precisely in the Sorbonne, Dauphine and Grenoble, who immediately transmit the poison with which they poison the Argentinian youth.

Acdel Edgardo Vilas, Brigade General, 2nd Army Corps Commander, 1976

From a simple composition on the seasons of the year, a subversive teacher or a useful idiot will tell his students the possibility of fighting the cold according to the income of each family (...) For educators: to inculcate respect for the established norms; to inculcate a deep faith in the greatness of the country’s destiny; to consecrate themselves entirely to the cause of the Homeland, acting spontaneously in coordination with the Armed Forces, accepting their suggestions and cooperating with them to unmask and point out the persons guilty of subversion, or who develop their propaganda under the guise of teacher or student (...) For students: to understand that they must study and obey, to mature morally and intellectually; to believe and have absolute confidence in the Armed Forces, invincible triumphants of all past and present enemies of the Homeland.

General of division Luciano Benjamin Menéndez

Acts of censorship and espionage

The government of the Military Junta ordered a series of procedures to "neutralize the subversive germ." These were some of the actions undertaken:

In 1977, a graphic material aimed at parents with school-age children entitled Recognizing Marxist Infiltration in Schools was distributed in schools:

Marxist lexicon for use of the [...] The first thing that can be detected is the use of a certain vocabulary that, although it does not seem very transcendent, is of great importance to realize this "ideological background" that concerns us. Thus, dialogue, bourgeoisie, proletariat, Latin America, exploitation, change of structures, capitalism will often appear.

History, Civic Education, Economics, Geography and Catechesis in religious schools, are usually the subjects chosen for subversive indoctrination. Something similar happens with Castellano and Literature, disciplines of which the classic authors have been eradicated, to put in place "Latin Americans" or "committed literature" in general.

Another subtle system of indoctrination is to make students collide in class with political, social or religious cuts in journals and journals, which have nothing to do with school. It's easy to figure out how the conclusions can be handled.

Likewise, the group work that has replaced personal responsibility can be easily used to depersonalize the boy, accustom him to laziness and thus facilitate his indoctrination by previously selected and trained students to "pass" ideas.

In the same year, Decree 3155 prohibited the distribution, sale and circulation of children's stories An elephant occupies a lot of space, by Elsa Bornemann, and The birth, children and the amor, by Agnes Rosenstiehl —both from Ediciones Librerías Fausto—, because they are "stories intended for children with the purpose of indoctrination, which is preparatory to the task of ideological capture of subversive actions."

Another paradigmatic case of censorship of children's literature was the decree on the book The Tower of Cubes, by Laura Devetach. The work was originally prohibited in the province of Santa Fe, through resolution 480 of May 23, 1979, where among the grounds of the measure was:

serious fallacies such as confusing symbolism, ideological-social questions, objectives not appropriate to the aesthetic fact, unlimited fantasy, lack of spiritual and transcendent stimuli [...] focusing its theme on social aspects as critical to the organization of work, private property and the principle of authority facing social, racial or economic groups with a completely materialistic basis, as also questioning family life [...].

Resolution 538 of October 27, 1977 of the Ministry of Culture and Education established the distribution, in all educational establishments of the country, of the brochure Subversion in the educational field (Let's know our enemy), mandatory reading and application for professors and teachers. Its content was summarized by the newspaper La Prensa:

The text tends to facilitate teachers ' understanding of the subversive process in the country, especially in the educational environment, and provides evidence of how Marxism works. It also exposes the particular strategy of subversion in the educational field, its modes of action at all levels of education and in the group activity of the educational field [sic]. In the conclusions of the work, whose reading and acceptance by the teaching and administrative staff is mandatory, it is expressed that 'it is in education where we must act with clarity and energy to boot the root of subversion, demonstrating to the students the falsehoods of the doctrines and conceptions that for so many years were inculcating them to a greater or lesser degree.

In October 1978, a resolution of the Ministry of the Interior prohibited two works by the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire: Education as a practice of freedom (Siglo XXI editorial) and Churches, education and the process of human liberation in history (La Aurora editorial), since, according to the authorities, “they serve as a means for Marxist ideological penetration in educational spheres. On the other hand, his methodology to interpret reality, man and history is manifestly tendentious. The author's sources of thought, such as the models and examples that he exposes, are clearly inspired by Marxism and all his pedagogical doctrine goes against the fundamental values of our Western and Christian society ».

In October 1978, the distribution of the novel Aunt Julia and the writer, by the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, was also prohibited, arguing that it "reveals distortions and intentionality, as well as repeated offenses against family, religion, armed institutions and the moral and ethical principles that sustain the spiritual and institutional structure of Latin American societies and, within these, our Nation, contributing to maintaining and expanding the causes that determined the implementation of the state of siege ».

Days before the Spanish Film Week was held in Buenos Aires (July 23 to 31, 1979) the inspector of the National Institute of Cinematography, Captain Bitleston, pointed out the "inconvenience" of presenting several of the films selected by the Directorate General of Cinematography of Spain to be exhibited in Buenos Aires. The Spanish directors and producers, aware of the prior censorship, refused to send their films, which led to the event being postponed sine die.

In July 1980, by decree 2038, the use in schools of the work Universitas, Gran Enciclopedia del Saber, by editorial Salvat, published in Barcelona, was prohibited for «incurring in falsification of historical truth [...] analyzing one of the most important periods of modern history, such as the industrialization process, under the methodology inspired by dialectical materialism». The same decree prohibited the Salvat Dictionary: «The two works reveal a systematic editorial process, in which the encyclopedia and the dictionary fulfill the express function of offering the student [...] a lexicon definitely Marxist, through the use of words and meanings that, far from faithfully corresponding to the meanings of the language, tend to replace these by others that respond to and are typical of that ideology».

In September 1980, a ministerial statement prohibited the use in schools of texts by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author, among others, of The Little Prince.

Publishers, journalists, writers, poets, singers, were banned:

• Aída Bortnik (written)
• Jorge Romero Brest (plastic artist)
• Roberto Cossa (dramaturgo and theatre director)
• Crist (caricaturist)
• Julia Elena Dávalos (folk singing)
• Griselda Gambaro (written)
• Horacio Guaraní (folk singer)
• Nacha Guevara (single)
• César Isella (cantautor)
• Litto Nebbia (cantautor)
• Pacho O’Donell (written)
• Gian Franco Pagliaro (single)
• Piero (cantautor)
• Ariel Ramírez (pianist and folk composer)
• Sergio Renán (cineasta)
• Mercedes Sosa (folk sewer)
• María Elena Walsh (single and writer)
• León Gieco (cantautor)
• Troublers (vocal group)
• Indians (vocal group)
• Los Huanca Hua (vocal group)

Others were killed.

Among some paradigmatic cases, the teaching of modern mathematics was prohibited, or the musical themes in which Carlos Gardel was accompanied only by guitars. Groups of censors marked with a cross the musical themes that could not be transmitted by radio stations.

Universities were intervened, and hundreds of spies were sent in order to detect opponents and arrest them. Likewise, the teaching programs were "purged" of any content considered contrary to "Western and Christian" culture.

Stamina

Traditional painted by the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.

Mothers and grandmothers of the disappeared

In 1977, the initial group was infiltrated by the member of the Argentine Navy and repressor Alfredo Astiz, resulting in the kidnapping, torture and death of a significant number of members of the group, including some of the founders.

The mothers and grandmothers of the disappeared have carried out a militancy from the very beginning of the dictatorship to the present.

Journalists

An order from the Ministry of Public Information prohibited the publication of information related to disappearances, discoveries of bodies, armed confrontations and any other incident of this type. Cox testified that all the officials of different levels of the Government that he interviewed at that time suggested that he not make publications of this type, although no one ever showed him a signed decree that provided for it; since, even in the case of the order of the Secretariat of Public Information, only the content of the provision was delivered to him, at his request, in writing, but on paper without letterhead and without signature.

The television channels and radio stations, mostly state-owned, were fully at the service of the regime. In the written press, with the exception of the Buenos Aires Herald, the magazine addressed to the Jewish community —Nueva Presencia— or to the Irish community —The Southern Cross—, and Humor about the end of the dictatorial period, the support for the junta and the attack on human rights organizations was commonplace. Several media entrepreneurs supported the Process, among them Jorge Fontevechia, who launched several editorials in his favor and branding those who criticized the human rights violations that occurred in the country as an anti-Argentine campaign. Fontevecchia published an editorial where he said in the form of an "Open letter to a European journalist": " And please, don't come to us to talk about concentration camps, clandestine killings or night terror. We still indulge in going out at night and coming home at dawn..."

Also Vicente Massot, the first journalist in Argentine history to be accused of crimes against humanity. Massot was judged co-perpetrator of the homicide, committed in 1976, of the graphic workers and rank-and-file trade unionists Heinrich y Loyola, after a labor conflict registered the previous year in La Nueva Provincia, the main newspaper of the southern town Buenos Aires; as well as having made "essential contributions" for "the deliberate concealment of the truth" in the kidnappings, torture and homicides of thirty-five people, through psychological action tasks from the pages of the newspaper, at the service of the repressors of the dictatorship.

The magazines Somos, Gente and Para Ti, belonging to the Atlántida editorial group, are among those that most supported and disseminated the pro-dictatorship campaign even before the coup. Meanwhile, the newspapers Clarín and La Nación continued their tradition of aligning themselves with the military coups, and openly supported the dictatorship from its beginnings. In the first editorial of Clarín, the day after the coup, it was stated that "a stage is beginning with renewed hopes" and that "the action of the Armed Forces has been characterized by a considered decision of the that revengeful arrogance or the unnecessary use of force has been absent». In August, Clarín referred to the relationship between the press and the leaders of the military dictatorship. He was encouraged to affirm that "the national press has no difficulties with a government that pursues the same goals."

In April 1977, Videla announced at a press conference that the relatives of businessman David Graiver —who had died suspiciously the previous year—, who were also shareholders of Papel Prensa, had been arrested and that the Military Junta had decided "to prohibit the administration and disposal of their assets." That same day, the newspapers Clarín, La Razón and La Nación were left with Papel Prensa. Shortly after, Lidia Papaleo, Graiver's widow, was taken to a clandestine detention center, where she later recalled: «The more I bled, he ejaculated on me. From prodding me so much, my shoulders dislocated. They put me on an elastic band, tied up, and to escape the prod, he moved me to one side and the other. Then they threw me in a dungeon, very small, very cold. Beginning in March 1977, family members and members of the Graiver group were illegally detained. On March 8, Juan Graiver de Papaleo; on the 14th, Lidia Papaleo, Silvia Fanjul and Lidia Gesualdi; on the 12th, Dante Marra, Julio Daich and Enrique Brodsky; on the 15th, Jorge Rubinstein; on the 17th, Isidoro Graiver; on the 22nd, Martin Aberg Cobo; on April 1, 1977, Edgardo Sajón; on the 12th, Rafael Ianover; on the 15th, Jacobo Timerman and Osvaldo Papaleo; on the 19th, Orlando Reinoso; on the 22nd, Eva Gitnacht. All of them were taken to the clandestine detention center known as the Banfield Well. Some of them are still missing, others were placed at the disposal of the National Executive Power, and others died due to the torture applied.

In addition to the work to exalt the regime carried out by the main graphic media of the time (the magazines Somos, Para ti and Gente i>, the newspapers La Prensa, Clarín, La Nación, La Tarde and La Razón), The affinity with the Government also helped some publishing groups to gain control of rival companies, whose owners had been detained, as was the case of the company Papel Prensa, which ended up being owned by Clarín, La Nación and La Razón.

• Rodolfo Walsh's underground journalism. The journalist, writer and activist of the group Montoneros Rodolfo Walsh, who ended up being kidnapped and killed by a task force of the ESMA after a year of the coup, launched a project of clandestine journalism called Clandestina News Agency (ANCLA) by handing out individual information notes, such as their Letter from a writer to the Military Board of 1977. ANCLA communications started immediately after the coup.

• The Jewish magazine New Presence, founded in 1977 and directed by Herman Schiller, was one of the few examples of complaints from the Process published in Argentine media during the dictatorship. New Presence It was a publication supported by small advertising ads, in which personalities such as Emilio Mignone, Nora Cortiñas, Hebe de Bonafini, Julio Raffo and even ex-disappeared prisoners exiled as Graciela Geuna. In 1981 their offices suffered two bombings.

• La Magazine Humor was also another of the few examples of Argentine journalism that had a critical attitude towards Process. Directed by Andrés Cascioli, he took advantage of the humor to discuss issues that were proscribed by the cultural policy of the de facto government.

• Foreign media published in Argentina. In addition to the few media and journalists who faced the dictatorship, there were also cases of English-language newspapers that published criticism of the government, as is the case with the Buenos Aires Heraldthe first to talk about missing persons or the Irish newspaper The Southern Cross.

Political Youth

A few weeks after the coup took place, leaders of the youth groups of some political parties began clandestine or semi-public meetings in embassies, clubs, and even party premises; sectors of the decimated Peronist Youth (JP, Nilda Garré and Juan Pablo Unamuno), the Radical Youth (JR, Federico Storani, Marcelo Stubrin), the Communist Youth Federation (FJC, Patricio Echegaray, Enrique Dratman and Alberto Nadra), socialists ("unified", Eduardo Lázara) and ("authentic", Mario Mazzitelli, Adrián Camps), left-wing Christian Democrats (Carlos Bermúdez) and Intransigent Youth (JI, Martín Andicoechea, Roberto Garín). It was the immediate rebirth of what was the Argentine Political Youth (JPA) until March 24, 1976, and what after the Malvinas War would publicly reappear as the Political Youth Movement (MOJUPO).

Despite the repressive climate, they expressed joint pronouncements: the repudiation of the economic plan of Martínez de Hoz; the adherence to the Central Única de Trabajadores Argentinos (CUTA), for the freedom of the prisoners and the clarification of the situation of the disappeared.

This youth coordination prompted the revival of the claims of young producers (as evidenced by the I, II and III Youth Meeting of the Agrarian Federation with hundreds of delegates)^{[citation required]}, of the workers, protagonists of the work "a sadness" in automobile companies or on the railway, of the student magazines of secondary schools –of which 4,000 were distributed in the Federal Capital alone, and of what was one of the most prominent –and beaten- "Aristocrats of the Saber", of the Nacional Buenos Aires, of the reorganization of the student centers, confronting Moyano Llerena, of the resistance to the closure of the University of Luján and of the activities in the neighborhood clubs.

In 1977 there was a joint pronouncement against the economic policy personified by José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz, and in 1978 for Peace with Chile. In 1979, the Multisectorial Youth Confluence for Peace in the Beagle was formed – with León Gieco singing “Solo le pido a Dios” in Vélez, in the closing ceremony – when the dictatorships came to the brink of war.

The youths also organized joint marches to the Church of San Cayetano, with the labor movement (successively the CUTA, the 25, the CGT-Ubaldini) for "Bread, Peace and Work", facing the repression military with clashes throughout the Liniers neighborhood.

They also co-promoted the mobilization before the visit of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), with thousands of people challenging the Falcon, the photos and the threats, on Avenida de Mayo at 760, where the OAS worked. Relatives and friends filed complaints, with the support of hundreds of party and youth committees to "receive complaints and support family members." The political youth had their own meeting, and delivered a joint statement and documentation of specific cases.

Already before, in 1978, the Youth Seminar of the ADPH had been constituted, which coined the slogan-complaint about "the crime of being young", since the studies carried out during the dictatorship showed that more 80% of the disappeared were young; the majority workers, followed by students. A delegation of youth leaders also accompanied the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in their first mobilizations, receiving the gases with which they tried to intimidate the women in the white scarf.

Demonstrators repent against the Casa Rosada following the march called by the Multipartidaria on 16 December 1982.

On the end of the regime, the political youth participated in an organized mobilization called by the CGT to the Plaza on March 30, 1982.

On April 2, 1982, they marched to the Plaza de Mayo together with those who attended spontaneously, but raising slogans, written on pamphlets and posters of the time, such as "Malvinas yes, dictatorship no" or “Malvinas yes, democracy too”. These events were not "spontaneous" but organized, the product of the march agreed upon by dozens of committees made up of their own demands and flags in schools, universities, neighborhoods, who were the same ones who turned out to repudiate the military leadership when it was defeated. and surrender.

Falklands War

The collapse of ARA General Belgrano was one of the hardest hits in the United Kingdom against Argentina.

In December 1981, the Military Junta began secretly preparing to reconquer the Malvinas Islands. Argentina considers that the Malvinas, Georgias and South Sandwich Islands constitute their own territories usurped by the United Kingdom in 1833, when a military force from the British Empire occupied the Islands and expelled the Argentine authorities.

On April 2, 1982, the invasion was communicated through a speech broadcast on the national network, where the Argentine recovery of the islands was announced for the first time. And the government used the recovery of the Malvinas to rescue its government and stay in power, since the recovery of a national symbol was going to make the popular resistance cease.

The increasingly strong popular resistance turned in favor of military action. Most of the political leaders supported the act. As an example, Oscar Alende said:

Fortunately, this is a day when the Argentines can affirm, with a wide chest, that the Armed Forces have interpreted the feeling and popular thinking, in the integration of our national territory, because the Falklands and their entire sphere had been really usurped in 1833.

The UK sent Task Force 317 to evict the Argentines and re-establish British rule on the islands.

The Armed Forces summoned thousands of conscripts to the ranks. On May 1, hostilities began in the Malvinas. Argentine fighters resisted the British army for 45 days. The most critical moment was the sinking of the cruise ship ARA General Belgrano by a British submarine. A number of 323 Argentines died in the incident. The fact is controversial since the cruise ship was outside the total exclusion zone established by the United Kingdom. The UK officially considers it a legal action. In contrast, British lawmakers and officials strongly say it was a war crime.

During the conflict, the government controlled the media reporting on the conflict. The information was difficult to obtain without first being subjected or distorted by government censorship (both in public and private media), since the latter were subjected to control and strict surveillance of what was published, through censorship.. In addition, the government had contracted the most important advertising companies in the country, such as the magazines Gente and Somos, and the newspaper Clarín,, in order to use them for propaganda. It also used to disseminate data to the secretariat of public information, the secretariat of press and dissemination, the secretariat of communication and the federal broadcasting committee.

The Gente magazine was one of the magazines that dedicated the most space to the Malvinas armed conflict. Its covers were pro-government and noted the success of the operations. They also used various methods to make people assume that the information they transmitted was true, such as using exclusive photos, obtaining interviews with experts who endorsed the opinion of the magazine, or repeating statements such as "we are winning", "we continue to win", etc.

The newspaper Clarín was also important during the conflict. Being one of the largest newspapers in Argentina, it had a great impact during the war. This means of information focused specifically on the broadcast of Malvinas news, for which it used four axes: news or statements from opposition political sectors, special reports organized by the same newspaper, editorial notes, and notes where the government was the issuer.

Somos magazine also focused on the war with Great Britain. It included in its pages adulterated photos and illustrated images created by the Army Intelligence Battalion 601 (“brain” of the Army's illegal repression), which was an instrument of active support for the military dictatorship. In this way, the Argentines were informed about victories not won, and of planes, ships and other operations supposedly destroyed, but which in reality were not even touched, and of battles never fought.

The final battle occurred between June 11 and 13, where the British army defeated the Argentine army on Soledad Island. On June 14, the Argentine commander surrendered conditionally in Puerto Argentino. At that time, a number of 649 Argentines had died in combat, including those of General Belgrano.

The division generals fired Lieutenant General Galtieri, who was forced to resign on June 18 as president and commander. His replacement on the Board was Lieutenant General Cristino Nicolaides and in the Presidency he was Division General Reynaldo Bignone, who started a process to restore the democratic system.

Later, investigations would be initiated for war crimes committed by Argentine generals against the conscripts themselves. In 2009, ex-combatants from the Malvinas recounted the humiliation to which they were subjected as part of field punishment by seventy officers and non-commissioned officers during the war. Veteran José M. Araníbar supported the investigation into humiliation, torture, servitude, serious injuries, abandonment of a person, and even two deaths: that of a soldier who was apparently shot by a corporal, and another who starved to death after being abandoned.

Argentina currently claims sovereignty over the Malvinas, South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands based on the provisions of different awards and Spanish colonial maps, as well as on the provisions of the national constitution.

The dictatorship was forced to hand over power in 1983. The defeat in the Malvinas accelerated its fall. On July 1, 1982, Bignone took over as president of the junta. The Navy and the Air Force left the government, and the Army assumed full control. The Military Junta had been dissolved on June 23. The Armed Forces planned to remain in power until March 29, 1984, the date on which Bignone would hand over command, but they finally fell out. forced to advance the transfer of power due to their military, political and economic failure. Bignone led the last government for it.

The Military Junta was recomposed around October 1982 with Lieutenant General Cristino Nicolaides, Admiral Rubén Oscar Franco, and Brigadier General Augusto Jorge Hughes.

End of Process and consequences

Manifestation of the Argentine people a day before the presidential elections on 9 July Avenue.

The 1983 presidential campaign opposed the Peronist candidate Ítalo Luder, who rejected a review of what happened during the dictatorship, granting legality to the self-amnesty law issued by the military, and the radical, Raúl Alfonsín, who favored the prosecution of the most responsible for State terrorism (establishing three levels of responsibility). On October 30, Alfonsín won with 52% of the votes, causing the first electoral defeat of Peronism in history.

As soon as he assumed the presidency, on December 10, 1983, Raúl Alfonsín (1983-1989) signed the decrees creating the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons to investigate human rights violations that occurred between 1976 and 1983. His research, reflected in the book Nunca más, was delivered to Alfonsín on September 20, 1984.

The radical government ordered the prosecution of the main perpetrators of State terrorism in the so-called Trial of the Juntas, with the notable participation of prosecutor Julio César Strassera. The ruling sentenced the members of the Military Juntas to sentences for crimes against humanity, including life imprisonment for the main perpetrators. It was the first time that those who held the sum of public power were prosecuted with no other weapons than the laws. They were prosecuted by the same courts that can prosecute any citizen, applying the Penal Code in force in the republic since 1922. This was a unique event in the world, which set precedents for the figure of disappearance to be included in the Penal Code force of people, imitated by several countries and which at the same time managed to have the UN declare it a crime against humanity.

However, yielding to pressure from military sectors —and also from some civilian sectors—, the Alfonsín government promulgated the Laws of Due Obedience and Full Stop, which extinguished the criminal actions against the middle managers participating in the terrorism of State.

In 1989 and 1990, President Carlos Menem issued pardons that benefited the officials of the Process and the guerrilla leaders who continued to be legally compromised. The situation of impunity in Argentina caused the relatives of the disappeared to seek support abroad, for which reason criminal proceedings were initiated in 1986 against members of the military dictatorship in Spain, Italy, Germany and France, for those who had disappeared from those countries. In 2004, the Nuremberg City Court, Germany, issued arrest and extradition warrants against Jorge Rafael Videla and Emilio Massera; However, they remained in house arrest for other crimes not covered by the pardon, such as the appropriation of children born while their parents were in captivity.

On April 15, 1998, Law 24,952 repealed the Punto Final (No. 23492) and Due Obedience (No. 23521) laws, which later, on September 2, 2003, were declared "insanely null" (article 1) by Law 25779 On June 14, 2005, the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation declared the unconstitutionality of the aforementioned laws, in addition to establishing the validity of the nullity law.

National Remembrance Day

March for the disappeared on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the National Reorganization Process.

On March 15, 2006, Law 26085 declares March 24 as National Day of Memory for Truth and Justice, in commemoration of State terrorism and crimes against humanity committed during the Process, upon completion of the Thirty years after the coup that overthrew María Estela Martínez de Perón. It is established as an immovable national holiday.

Crimes against humanity and genocide

For the first time in the country, the Federal Court No. 1 of La Plata used the figure of genocide to describe the actions carried out by the Argentine State during the years of the Process. Although he cited the fact that for some years international law contemplated political motives in the definition, the rationale for applying the definition focused mainly on the fact that the victims belonged to a national group: the Argentine. The sentence refers to the conviction of the former director of Investigations of the Buenos Aires Police Miguel Etchecolatz for cases related to detained-disappeared, read on September 19, 2006.

On October 9, 2007, the Federal Oral Court No. 1 of La Plata sentenced Christian Von Wernich, a Catholic priest and former police chaplain of Buenos Aires during the military dictatorship, to life imprisonment for genocide.

But in 2011, in the trial for the crimes committed at the Escuela Superior de Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA) of the Federal Oral Court No. 5, two different doctrinal positions were debated, one that maintained international law should be applied and the other their aberrational acts be qualified as "crimes against humanity" and, therefore, crimes against humanity; and the other, which maintained that it was the criminal offense "genocide and terrorism". Both the Third Section of the Criminal Chamber of the National Court and the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court were defined by the first option. The court declared that the facts that were the object of this process were constitutive of crimes against humanity and should be qualified according to article 118 of the National Constitution and the Convention on the imprescriptibility of war crimes and crimes against humanity, approved by law Argentina no. 24 584.