Difference between revisions of "Dirty War (Argentina, 1976-83)"
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With the initial support of the majority of the Argentinian population, the military regime undertook widespread kidnappings, torture, and murder — not only of the violent guerrillas of the left but also the unarmed leftist political activists, guerrilla sympathizers, and their lawyers and families. The war against subversion was viewed within the military's National Security Doctrine as the begining of "World War III," which it defined as a struggle against the efforts of communism for world supremacy. In seven years as many as 30,000 Argentines were either killed or imprisoned. | With the initial support of the majority of the Argentinian population, the military regime undertook widespread kidnappings, torture, and murder — not only of the violent guerrillas of the left but also the unarmed leftist political activists, guerrilla sympathizers, and their lawyers and families. The war against subversion was viewed within the military's National Security Doctrine as the begining of "World War III," which it defined as a struggle against the efforts of communism for world supremacy. In seven years as many as 30,000 Argentines were either killed or imprisoned. | ||
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| + | ==Military junta's downfall== | ||
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| + | Although the military junta carried out its successful war against suspected subversives throughout its entire existence, it was ironically a foreign foe allied with the Chilean military government of General Augusto Pinochet which brought the Argentinian regime to an end. In the early 1980s, it became clear to both the world and the Argentinian people that the military junta was behind the brutal disappearances and imprisonment of tens of thousands of kidnappings. The junta, facing increasing opposition over its human rights record, as well as mounting allegations of corruption, sought to allay domestic criticism by launching a successful campaign to regain ''Las Islas Malvinas'' (the Falkland Islands). | ||
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| + | British military historian Martin Middlebrook argues that the military junta occupied the Falklands/Malvinas in order to suppress its opposition, principally the exiled Peronists, because the cost - measured in terms of legitimacy - of suppressing their supporters was relatively low at the beginning of the junta's rule. But the cost of suppression increased over time because of the military regime's ruthless suppression of anyone who supported the guerrillas, its failed economic policies, and its defeat in the Falkland Islands/Malvinas War, and thus it had to tolerate its opposition and eventually return power to civilian authority. | ||
== Notes == | == Notes == | ||
Revision as of 02:43, November 5, 2016
The Dirty War in Argentina, from 1976-1983, was a seven-year military dictatorship and counterinsurgency campaign by the Argentinian military junta against left-wing guerrillas and supporting civilians. Many people, both guerrillas and supporters among the civilian population, were "disappeared". They were taken to secret government detention centers where they were tortured and eventually killed. These people are known as internationally as "los desaparecidos" ("the disappeared").
The Falklands/Malvinas Islands had been a source of contention between Argentina and Britain, which reoccupied them in 1833, and Argentina, which claims them, since independence. The junta had thought that it could occupy these islands without a British military response, regaining its popularity and control over its people in the process. However, the government was wrong in its conclusions when 72 days after the Operation Rosario, the British 3rd Commando and 5th Infantry Brigades under Major-General Jeremy Moore won the ground war, having captured over 12,000 Argentine POWs.
This unexpected Argentinian military defeat was the final blow for the military junta, and in 1982 General Reynaldo Bignone restored basic civil liberties and retracted its ban on political parties. The Dirty War ended when Raul Alfonsin's civilian government took control of the country on December 10, 1983.
The identified victims of the violence were 7,158 Marxist and Peronists guerrillas, militants and left-wing activists from trade unions, universities, law firms and civilians in the underground support network of the Montoneros believed to be 150,000-250,000-strong and 60,000-strong in the ERP, as well as sympathizers among the civilian population. The official number of disappeared under the Kirchner governments was reported to be 13,000[1]. Some 10,000 of the "disappeared" were admittedly guerrillas of the Montoneros (MPM) and the Marxist People's Revolutionary Army (ERP). The leftist guerrillas caused at least 6,000 casualties among the military, police forces and civilian population, according to a National Geographic Magazine article in the mid-1980s.
Origins
The origins of the Dirty War have long been debated, with Professor Patricia Marchak in God's Assassins: State Terrorism in Argentina in the 1970s and Professor Carlos Marcelo Shäferstein in Cien años de subversión en Argentina[2]and historians Alejandro García[3]and Antonius C. G. M. Robben arguing the political violence started with the anarchist bombing campaigns and armed uprisings in Buenos Aires and the Patagonia in the 1910s and 1920s. During the Patagonia uprisings in the Santa Cruz province in 1921 and 1922, some 300 anarchist were killed in action or executed by the Argentinian Army.[4]During the Buenos Aires uprisings in 1919, some 140 anarchists were killed and several buildings in the capital were burnt down.
Prior to the armed uprisings, several efforts were made to interrupt the celebrations marking 100 years of Argentinian independence on 25 May 1910, with an anarchists handing over a hand-held bomb to a child to take inside a cathedral in Buenos Aires, but the bomb exploded prematurely killing the minor and mutilating another boy.[5]
On 28 June 1910, another anarchist bomb exploded inside the Teatro Colón (in the Argentinian capital) and 20 theatregoers were gravely wounded, and the Argentinian senate approved soon after the death penalty for those anarchists responsible for deaths.[6] On 9 July 1916, an anarchist armed with a hand-gun tried to kill the Argentinian president, Victorino de la Plaza. The attempted assassination took place while the president attended a military parade in Buenos Aires, during the centenial celebrations marking Argentinian independence from Spain.[7]
On 9 February 1918, violent strikes took place in the main Argentinian cities and army units were rushed to the affected areas after anarchists sabatoged train lines and burnt carriages transporting wheat to Buenos Aires for exportation.[8]Argentinian left-wing activists at the time printed and widely distributed, even among conscripts, a newspaper promoting a Communist Revolution in Argentina.[9]
The left-wing violence continued throughout the 1920s. On 24 December 1927 two powerful anarchist bombs went off in two US-owned banks in downtown Buenos Aires, killing two employees.[10]On 23 May 1923, the anarchists detonate another bomb inside the Italian consulate in the Argentinian capital, killing 9 and wounding 41, the majority of them innocent civilians.[11]On 24 December, Argentinian president Hipólito Yrigoyen narrowly survived an attempt on his life. The would-be murderer, 44 year-old Italian anarchist Gualterio Marinelli is killed by return fire from the protecting police detachment.
Guerrillas
Between the ousting of president Juan Domingoin 1955 and his return from exile in 1973, a number of urban left-wing guerrilla organizations emerged. Six major groups - two Marxist-Maoist- Guevarrist-oriented, and four populist-socialist Peronist-oriented - eventually disbanded or joined the Marxist ERP or the Peronist Montoneros. The Montoneros became the largest and most active of the two revolutionary movements, but fought alongside the ERP in Tucumán province.
Rural guerrilla warfare
A determined effort on the part of the Argentinian left was made at creating a guerrilla front in Tucumán province. In 1974, Marxist admirers of Che Guevarra, (the People’s Revolutionary Army [ERP]) took control of the remote province of Tucumán and declared it an independent state. In 1975 the Argentinian Army 5th Mountain Infantry Brigae under Brigadier-General Edgar Vilas was ordered to Tucumán to eradicate the insurgents and restore the province to the Argentinian state, and did so swiftly and ruthlessly.
Urban guerilla warfare
The Montonero insurgent leadership made a conscious decision to “militarize” the struggle and attack directly the Argentinian police and military forces in the main cities. The political objectives that originally motivated the escalation were sacrificed to military considerations. The groups that were supposed to bring national and social liberation to the country developed into mirror images of the Argentinian armed forces, and legitimizing political-psychological efforts were considered unproductive niceties.
Power vaccum
After the death of the controversial President Juan Perón in 1974, his wife, Isabel Perón, assumed power. However, she was not very strong politically and a military junta led a coup against her and removed her from office. This military junta maintained its grip on power by cracking down on anybody whom they believed was associated with the guerrillas. The new regime under General Jorge Rafaél Videla attempted to apply a monetarist solution to economic problems and launched what it called the war against subversion, which came to be widely known to others as the "Dirty War", in an attempt to defeat definitively left-wing guerrilla activity that was out of control by early 1976.
Military crackdown
With the initial support of the majority of the Argentinian population, the military regime undertook widespread kidnappings, torture, and murder — not only of the violent guerrillas of the left but also the unarmed leftist political activists, guerrilla sympathizers, and their lawyers and families. The war against subversion was viewed within the military's National Security Doctrine as the begining of "World War III," which it defined as a struggle against the efforts of communism for world supremacy. In seven years as many as 30,000 Argentines were either killed or imprisoned.
Military junta's downfall
Although the military junta carried out its successful war against suspected subversives throughout its entire existence, it was ironically a foreign foe allied with the Chilean military government of General Augusto Pinochet which brought the Argentinian regime to an end. In the early 1980s, it became clear to both the world and the Argentinian people that the military junta was behind the brutal disappearances and imprisonment of tens of thousands of kidnappings. The junta, facing increasing opposition over its human rights record, as well as mounting allegations of corruption, sought to allay domestic criticism by launching a successful campaign to regain Las Islas Malvinas (the Falkland Islands).
British military historian Martin Middlebrook argues that the military junta occupied the Falklands/Malvinas in order to suppress its opposition, principally the exiled Peronists, because the cost - measured in terms of legitimacy - of suppressing their supporters was relatively low at the beginning of the junta's rule. But the cost of suppression increased over time because of the military regime's ruthless suppression of anyone who supported the guerrillas, its failed economic policies, and its defeat in the Falkland Islands/Malvinas War, and thus it had to tolerate its opposition and eventually return power to civilian authority.
Notes
- ↑ Una duda histórica: no se sabe cuántos son los desaparecidos
- ↑ Cien años de subversión en Argentina
- ↑ La Crisis Argentina, 1966–1976: Notas y Documentos Sobre una época de Violencia Política, Alejandro García, p. 32, EDITUM, 1994
- ↑ "Los medios anarquistas hablan de 1500 muertos, la prensa oficial de 300." La Causa Argentina, Juan Archibaldo Lanús (p. 393). Emecé Editores, 1988
- ↑ [BOMBS IN ARGENTINA. BOY BLOWN TO AMOMS]
- ↑ FIND BOMB FACTORY. Argentine Capital Stirred by Uncovering Anarchists Lair
- ↑ EFFORT MADE TO KILL PRESIDENT OF ARGENTINE
- ↑ Anarchy Reigns in Argentina When General Rail Strike Brings Riots
- ↑ "Los anarquistas simpatizantes de la Revolución Rusa editaban un periódico para los soldados y hacían un activo trabajo en los cuarteles." El Marxismo y la Revolución Argentina, Tomo II, Otto Vargas, p. 152, Editorial Agora, 1999
- ↑ "El 24 de diciembre de 1927 vuelan las casas centrales del Citibank y el Banco de Boston, con el lamentable saldo de dos muertos. Los Mitos de la Historia Argentina: De la ley Sáenz Peña a los Albores del Peronismo ", Tomo III, Felipe Pigna, p. 111, Grupo Editorial Norma, 2006
- ↑ Nine Killed, 41 Injured By Bomb In Buenos Aires