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Dirty War

The Dirty War (Spanish: Guerra sucia) is the name used by the military junta or civic-military dictatorship of Argentina (Spanish: dictadura cívico-militar de Argentina) for the period of state terrorism[12][10][13] in Argentina[14][15] from 1974 to 1983 as a part of Operation Condor, during which military and security forces and death squads in the form of the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (AAA, or Triple A)[16] hunted down any political dissidents and anyone believed to be associated with socialism, left-wing Peronism, or the Montoneros movement.[17][18][19][20]

This article is about the conflict in Argentina. For the conflict in Mexico, see Mexican Dirty War. For other uses, see Dirty War (disambiguation).

It is estimated that between 22,000 and 30,000 people were killed or disappeared, many of whom were impossible to formally document due to the nature of state terrorism;[21][12][10] however, Argentine military intelligence at the time estimated that 22,000 people had been murdered or disappeared by 1978.[22] The primary target, like in many other South American countries participating in Operation Condor, were communist guerrillas and sympathisers, but the target of Operation Condor also included students, militants, trade unionists, writers, journalists, artists and any citizens suspected of being left-wing activists.[23] The disappeared included those thought to be a political or ideological threat to the junta, even vaguely, or those seen as antithetical to the neoliberal economic policies dictated by Operation Condor.[17][18][19] According to human rights organisations in Argentina, between 1,900 and 3,000 Jews were among the 30,000 who were targeted by the Argentine military junta. It is a disproportionate number, as Jews comprised between 5–12% of those targeted but only 1% of the population.[24] All were killed in an attempt by the junta to silence social and political opposition.[25]


By the 1980s, economic collapse, public discontent, and the disastrous handling of the Falklands War resulted in the end of the junta and the restoration of democracy in Argentina, effectively ending the Dirty War. Many members of the junta are currently in prison for crimes against humanity and genocide.[26][27] The Dirty War left a profound impact on Argentine culture, which is still felt to this day.

Previous events[edit]

Return of Peronism[edit]

In 1955, former army officer Juan Perón was ousted from the presidency by a coup (Revolución Libertadora) three months after the Bombing of Plaza de Mayo, a failed coup attempt considered by some as state terrorism. Since then Peronism was proscribed and hostility against it and against populist politics dominated Argentine politics. Pedro Eugenio Aramburu's Decree Law 4161/56 prohibited the use of Perón's name and when General Lanusse, who was part of the Argentine Revolution, called for elections in 1973, he authorized the return of political parties. However, Perón, who had been invited back from exile, was barred from seeking office.


In May 1973, Peronist Héctor José Cámpora was elected as president, but everyone understood that Perón was the real power behind him, as Cámpora's campaign stated. Peronism has been difficult to define according to traditional political classifications and different periods must be distinguished. A populist and nationalist movement, it has sometimes been accused of fascist tendencies.[42] Following nearly two decades of weak civilian governments, economic decline and military interventionism, Perón returned from exile on 20 June in 1973, as the country was becoming engulfed in financial, social and political disorder. The months preceding his return were marked by important social movements as in the rest of South America and in particular of the Southern Cone before the military intervention of the 1970s, thus during Héctor Cámpora's first months of government (May–July 1973) approximately 600 social conflicts, strikes and factory occupations had taken place.[43]


Upon Perón's arrival at Buenos Aires Airport, snipers opened fire on the crowds of left-wing Peronist sympathizers. Known as the 1973 Ezeiza massacre, this event marked the split between left-wing and right-wing factions of Peronism. Perón was re-elected in 1973, backed by a broad coalition that ranged from trade unionists in the center to fascists on the right (including members of the neo-fascist Movimiento Nacionalista Tacuara) and socialists like the Montoneros on the left.[44] Following the Ezeiza massacre and Perón's denouncing of "bearded immature idealists", Perón sided with the Peronist right, the trade unionist bureaucracy and Radical Civic Union of Ricardo Balbín, Cámpora's unsuccessful rival at the May 1973 elections. Some leftist Peronist governors were deposed, among them Ricardo Obregón Cano, governor of Córdoba, who was ousted by a police coup in February 1974. According to historian Servetto, "the Peronist right... thus stimulated the intervention of security forces to resolve internal conflicts of Peronism".[44]


On 19 January 1974, the Trotskyist People's Revolutionary Army attacked the military garrison in the Buenos Aires city of Azul, prompting a harsh response from the then constitutional president Juan Perón[45] and contributing to his shift towards the rightist faction of the justicialist movement during the last months of his life.


Extreme right wing vigilante organizations - linked to Triple A or its kind of "subsidiary" Córdoba "Comando Libertadores de América" - assassinated the union leader and ex-Peronist governor of Córdoba, Atilio López, as well as leftist lawyers Rodolfo Ortega Peña and Silvio Frondizi - brother of the ousted former Argentine president Arturo Frondizi, who had served as first president between May 1, 1958, and March 29, 1962. Also in 1974, the Third World priest Carlos Mugica and dozens of political activists from left.

Isabel Perón's government[edit]

Juan Perón died on 1 July 1974 and was replaced by his vice president and third wife, Isabel Perón, who ruled Argentina until she was overthrown in March 1976 by the military. The 1985 CONADEP human rights commission counted 458 assassinations from 1973 to 1975 in its report Nunca Más (Never Again): 19 in 1973, 50 in 1974 and 359 in 1975, carried out by paramilitary groups, who acted mostly under the José López Rega's parapolice and paramilitary Triple A death squad (according to Argenpress, at least 25 trade-unionists were assassinated in 1974).[46] However, the repression of the social movements had already started before the attempt on Yrigoyen's life: on 17 July 1973, the CGT section in Salta was closed while the CGT, SMATA and Luz y Fuerza in Córdoba were victims of armed attacks. Agustín Tosco, Secretary General of Luz y Fuerza, successfully avoided arrest and went into hiding until his death on 5 November 1975.[46]


Trade unionists were also targeted by the repression in 1973 as Carlos Bache was assassinated on 21 August 1973; Enrique Damiano, of the Taxis Trade Union of Córdoba, on 3 October; Juan Avila, also of Córdoba, the following day; Pablo Fredes, on 30 October in Buenos Aires; and Adrián Sánchez, on 8 November 1973 in the Province of Jujuy. Assassinations of trade unions, lawyers and so on continued and increased in 1974 and 1975 while the most combative trade unions were closed and their leaders arrested. In August 1974, Isabel Perón's government took away the rights of trade unionist representation of the Federación Gráfica Bonaerense, whose Secretary General Raimundo Ongaro was arrested in October 1974.[46] During the same month of August 1974, the SMATA Córdoba trade-union, in conflict with the company Ika Renault, was closed by the national direction of trade unions and the majority of its leaders and activists arrested. Most of them were assassinated during the 1976–1983 dictatorship. Atilio López, General Secretary of the CGT of Córdoba and former Vice Governor of the Province, was assassinated in Buenos Aires on 16 September 1974.[46]


Peronist guerrillas, estimated at 300 to 400 active members (Montoneros) in 1977[47] (and 2000 at its peak in 1975, though almost half of them related to militia[48]), committed a number of attacks during this period such as bombings at the Goodyear and Firestone distributors, Riker and Eli pharmaceutical laboratories, Xerox Corporation, and Pepsi-Cola bottling companies. Director-general of the Fiat Concord company in Argentina was kidnapped by ERP guerrillas in Buenos Aires on 21 March 1972 and found murdered on 10 April.[49] in 1973, a Ford Motor Company executive was killed in a kidnapping attempt;[50] a Peugeot representative was kidnapped and later released for a reported US$200,000.,[51] and FAP guerrillas killed John Swint, the American general manager of the Ford Motor Company.[52] On December, the director of Peugeot in Argentina was kidnapped.[53]


In 1974, FAP guerrillas killed the labour relations manager of the IKA-Renault Motor Company in Córdoba. In 1975 a manager of an auto parts factory[54] and a production manager of Mercedes-Benz were kidnapped by Montoneros,[55] and an executive of the US Chrysler Corporation[56] and a manager of the Renault plant in Córdoba were killed.[57] In 1976, Enrique Aroza Garay of German-owned Borgward automobile factory and a Chrysler executive were killed. In all, 83 servicemen and policemen were killed in left-wing guerrilla incidents.[58]

False flag actions by SIDE agents[edit]

During a 1981 interview whose contents were revealed by declassified CIA documents in 2000, former DINA agent Michael Townley explained that Ignacio Novo Sampol, member of the CORU anti-Castro organization, had agreed to involve the Cuban Nationalist Movement in the kidnapping in Buenos Aires of the president of a Dutch bank. The abduction was organized by civilian SIDE agents to obtain a ransom. Townley said that Novo Sampol had provided $6,000 from the Cuban Nationalist Movement, forwarded to the civilian SIDE agents to pay for the preparation expenses of the kidnapping. After returning to the United States, Novo Sampol sent Townley a stock of paper, used to print pamphlets in the name of Grupo Rojo (Red Group), an imaginary Argentine Marxist terrorist organization, which was to claim credit for the abduction of the Dutch banker. Townley declared that the pamphlets were distributed in Mendoza and Córdoba together with false flag bombings perpetrated by SIDE agents. The aim was to establish the existence of the fake Grupo Rojo. However, the SIDE agents procrastinated too much and the kidnapping was never carried out.[88]

Continuing controversies[edit]

On 23 January 1989, an armed group of around 40 guerrillas, a faction of the Movimiento Todos por la Patria (MTP or All for the Fatherland Movement), attacked the La Tablada army barracks on the outskirts of Buenos Aires to "prevent" a military coup. The attack resulted in 28 of the guerrillas killed, five "disappeared" and 13 imprisoned. Eleven police and military died, and 53 were wounded in the fighting. The guerrillas claimed to have acted to prevent a military coup.[183] Among the dead at La Tablada was Jorge Baños, a human rights lawyer who had joined the guerrillas. The MTP attack to prevent a military coup has been suspected to be led by infiltrated Intelligence military service.[184]


In 2002, Máxima, daughter of Jorge Zorreguieta, a civilian cabinet minister of Argentina during the early phase of the Dictatorship, married Willem-Alexander, crown prince of the Netherlands. All of the Netherlands had wrestled in controversy over her suitability, but ultimately the marriage took place without the presence of her parents. Máxima thus became Queen when her husband ascended to the throne in 2013. In August 2016, Argentine President Mauricio Macri was widely condemned by human rights group for calling into question the number of 30,000 disappeared and for referring to the period as a "Dirty War".[185]


During the Argentine Bicentennial Independence Celebrations (on 9 July 2016), former Colonel Carlos Carrizo Salvadores drew criticism from the left for leading the march of Falklands War veterans and Veterans of Operation Independence, the counterinsurgency campaign in Northern Argentina. Carrizo Salvadores had been sentenced to life imprisonment in 2013 for his part as a paratrooper captain in the so-called Rosario Chapel massacre in Catamarca Province but was acquitted under the new government of Mauricio Macri.[186]


In 2016, a group of Argentinian-Israelis origin filed a freedom of information request to demand the Israeli government release all documents on military and diplomatic ties between Israel and the junta since it is believed that Israel supported the military dictatorship.[187][188]


On 16 November 2023, it was revealed that Luis Kyburg, a former Argentinean naval officer who was believed to have killed at least 150 people during the Dirty War, died in Berlin.[189][190] He had been living in Berlin since 2013 and his death, which was revealed to have happened in October, came three weeks before he was scheduled to face trial for 23 of the murders he was accused of committed during the Dirty War.[189][190]

Participation of Catholic Church members[edit]

On 15 April 2005, a human rights lawyer filed a criminal complaint against Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio (now Pope Francis), accusing him of conspiring with the junta in 1976 to kidnap two Jesuit priests. So far, no hard evidence has been presented linking the cardinal to this crime. It is known that the cardinal headed the Society of Jesus of Argentina in 1976 and had asked the two priests to leave their pastoral work following conflict within the Society over how to respond to the new military dictatorship, with some priests advocating a violent overthrow. The cardinal's spokesman flatly denied the allegations.[199]


It has since been revealed that Cardinal Bergoglio made efforts behind the scenes to save and evacuate suspected dissidents who face persecution by the Argentine military Junta when he was the head of the Jesuits[200] It is estimated that during his time as the head of the Jesuits Bergoglio saved the lives of over 1000 dissidents[201] The Mothers of the Plaza De Mayo, initially harsh critics of Bergoglio, would end up reconciling with him when he became Pope, with Hebe Bonafini their leader saying he is "with the people"[202]


A priest, Christian von Wernich, was chaplain of the Buenos Aires Province Police while it was under the command of General Ramón Camps during the dictatorship, with the rank of inspector. On 9 October 2007, he was found guilty of complicity in 7 homicides, 42 kidnappings and 32 instances of torture and sentenced to life imprisonment.


Some Catholic priests sympathised with and helped the Montoneros. Radical priests, including Father Alberto Carbone, who was eventually indicted in the murder of Aramburu, preached Marxism and presented the early Church fathers as model revolutionaries in an attempt to legitimise the violence.[203] A Catholic youth leader, Juan Ignacio Isla Casares, with the help of the Montoneros commander Eduardo Pereira Rossi (nom de guerre "El Carlón") was the mastermind behind the ambush and killing of five policemen near San Isidro Cathedral on 26 October 1975.[204]


Mario Firmenich, who later became the leader of the Montoneros, was the ex-president of the Catholic Action Youth Group and a former seminarian himself.[205] The Montoneros had ties with the Movement of Priests for the Third World and a Jesuit priest, Carlos Mugica.[206]

The United States Declassification Project on Argentina[edit]

According to its front page, The United States Declassification Project on Argentina "represents a historic effort by United States government departments and agencies to identify, review, and provide public access to records that shed light on human rights abuses in Argentina between 1975 and 1984".[207] The project was announced by President Barack Obama in 2016 after a request from Argentine President Mauricio Macri and human rights groups on the 40th anniversary of the 1976 military coup in Argentina. The documents were released in three tranches, in August 2016, December 2016 and April 2019. Gastón Chillier, of the Cels human rights group said "There are documents from six or seven different US intelligence agencies. We're hopeful there may be information there that could help in the continuing trials against human rights offenders from the period". Contained within the documents are descriptions of the methods used by the Argentine dictatorship to kill its victims and dispose of their bodies.[208] In addition, during his 2016 visit to Argentina, President Obama said that the United States "was too slow" to condemn human rights atrocities during the military junta years but stopped short of apologizing for Washington's early support for the military government.[209]

Argentina Betrayed: Memory, Mourning, and Accountability, by (2018)

Antonius C. G. M. Robben

Dirty Secrets, Dirty War: The Exile of Editor Robert J. Cox, by David Cox (2008).

The Ministry of Special Cases, novel by Nathan Englander (2007).

La Historia Oficial (English: The Official Story), revisionist critique by Nicolás Márquez (2006).

Political Violence and Trauma in Argentina, by (2005).

Antonius C.G.M. Robben

by Marie-Monique Robin (Paris: La Découverte, 2004)

Escadrons de la mort, l'école française

Guerrillas and Generals: The Dirty War in Argentina, by Paul H. Lewis (2001).

Suite argentina (English: Argentine Suite. Translated by Donald A. Yates. Online: , October 2010) Four short stories by Edgar Brau (2000).

Words Without Borders

God's Assassins: State Terrorism in Argentina in the 1970s by M. Patricia Marchak (1999).

A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture, by Marguerite Feitlowitz (1999).

Una sola muerte numerosa (English: A Single, Numberless Death), by Nora Strejilevich (1997).

The Flight: Confessions of an Argentine Dirty Warrior, by (1996).

Horacio Verbitsky

Argentina's Lost Patrol: Armed Struggle, 1969–1979, by María José Moyano (1995).

Dossier Secreto: Argentina's Desaparecidos and the Myth of the "Dirty War", by Martin Edwin Andersen (1993).

Argentina's "Dirty War": An Intellectual Biography, by Donald C. Hodges (1991).

Behind the Disappearances: Argentina's Dirty War Against Human Rights and the United Nations, by Iain Guest (1990).

, by Alicia Partnoy (1989).

The Little School: Tales of Disappearance & Survival in Argentina

Argentina, 1943–1987: The National Revolution and Resistance, by Donald C. Hodges (1988).

Soldiers of Perón: Argentina's Montoneros, by Richard Gillespie (1982).

Guerrilla warfare in Argentina and Colombia, 1974–1982, by Bynum E. Weathers, Jr. (1982).

Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number, by (1981).

Jacobo Timerman

Guerrilla politics in Argentina, by Kenneth F. Johnson (1975).

La ligne bleue (English: The Blue Line), by (2014).

Ingrid Betancourt

Guerra Sucia, by (2011).

Nathaniel Kirby

Los sapos de la memoria, by Graciela Bialet(1997)

Armed Forces of the Argentine Republic

Films depicting Latin American military dictatorships

a comic book artist who disappeared during the Dirty War and was presumed dead in 1977

Héctor Germán Oesterheld

Operation Gladio

Maria Eugenia Sampallo

.

Proyecto Desaparecidos/Project Disappeared

. Slideshow by CNN.

Unearthing Mysteries of Argentina's "Dirty War"

.

War Diary of Brigadier-General Acdel Vilas

by Martin Edwin Andersen, The Nation, 4 March 2016.

How Much Did the US Know About the Kidnapping, Torture, and Murder of Over 20,000 People in Argentina? Now, President Obama has the chance to apologize for American complicity in the dirty war

by Martin Edwin Andersen, The Nation, 31 October 1987.

Kissinger and the Dirty War

.

1984 Report of the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons

.

Old Ideas in New Discourses: "The War Against Terrorism" and Collective Memory in Uruguay and Argentina

.

Information from the Vanished Gallery

on YouTube directed by Pablo Ratto.

The furthest boundary documentary (2004)

by Alexei Barrionuevo, The New York Times, 22 January 2010.

A Serene Advocate for Chile's Disappeared

.

Argentine Torture Survivor Patricia Isasa Tells of Her Struggle to Bring Her Torturers to Justice

. Video report by Democracy Now!.

Kidnapped and Raised by a Military Family, a "Recovered Grandchild" Finds His Way Home

. Video report by Al Jazeera America. 29 November 2012.

Argentina holds 'death flights' trial

. Mother Jones. 14 January 2014.

New Memo: Kissinger Gave the "Green Light" for Argentina's Dirty War

The United States Declassification Project on Argentina

. Jacobin. 30 November 2020.

The CIA's Secret Global War Against the Left