The Dirty War In Argentina

Before the start of the Dirty War in 1976, Argentina was undergoing huge amounts of political instability. Governments were being overthrown, leader’s assassinated, and left-wing right-wing guerilla groups were utilizing terrorism and strikes against the government and one another. After many changes in leadership, Isabel Peron, wife of the assassinated Juan Peron leader of the Peronist, was ousted by a coup led by a military junta. Lieutenant General Jorge Rafaél Videla assumed the role of president of the military dictatorship and quickly “imposed censorship, banned trade unions, and brought state and municipal government under military control” (Britannica). In addition, Videla’s regime began what they called a war on subversion, employing …show more content…
They operated under a clandestine system of repression against Argentine’s in order to stay in power. The basic structure for this military wing was eliminating the subversive infrastructure of groups such as the Montonero’s by kidnapping people suspected of being a part of this infrastructure, torturing them for information, and then neither returning the victim to their home, nor releasing any information about the victim’s status. Most were killed and buried, but the fact remained that the people back home would never know whether or not their loved one was alive. Which is almost surely worse than directly telling the victim’s family or friends about his death, that at least gives them closure, but “disappearances” however do not. “Although ostensibly limited to the elimination of Argentina’s guerilla organizations, the dirty war also targeted unarmed subversives” (Hodges). No one was exempt from these kidnappings, children and even pregnant mothers were taken. The pregnant women would be allowed to be given birth and then afterwards would be killed and their child indoctrinated into the state’s ideologies. This led to widespread terror of the governing military by citizens in Argentina. In order to survive one had to be a supporter, stay quiet, or flee, and even staying quite didn’t mean safety as many who were arrested were innocent. This tactic also made it very difficult for perpetrators to be prosecuted in court as there was little to no evidence of the kidnapping. Mass shootings were also carried out as well as throwing citizens from airplanes to their deaths in the Atlantic Ocean. There was also about 12,000 prisoners who were largely unlawfully convicted and detained in clandestine concentration camps. All of these endeavors taken up the