National reorganization process

The military has always played a significant role in Argentinean politics ; the country's history is marked by frequent and prolonged periods of military rule. The popular Argentinean leader, Juan Peron , who served as president of Argentina three times, served as a colonel in the army and first came to power in 1943 as a result of a military coup . He proclaimed a new course on the so-called Hustisialism , the policy of nationalism , which he called the “ third way ”, alternative to both capitalism and communism . After being re-elected to the presidency by popular vote, Peron was overthrown and expelled from the country as a result of the so-called “ Liberation Revolution ” in 1955.

After a series of weak governments and seven-year military rule, Peron returned to Argentina in 1973, having spent 20 years of exile in Franco-Spanish , amid growing political unrest, splits in the Peronist movement and outbreaks of political violence. His return was marked on June 20, 1973, by the Ezeiza massacre , after which the right Peronist movement became the dominant political force in the country.

Peron was elected president in a democratic election in 1973, but died in July 1974. His vice president and third wife, Isabel Peron, automatically replaced him as president, but she pursued a weak and ineffective policy. A number of revolutionary organizations - the main one of which Montoneros , a group of extreme left Peronists - intensified their efforts to escalate political violence (including kidnapping and bombing) against the backdrop of harsh repressive and punitive measures by the army and police. In addition, right-wing paramilitary groups have reached a new level of violence: in particular, the emergence of the AAA death squads under the command of Jose Lopez Regi , the Peronist Minister of Social Security and member of the P-2 Masonic Lodge . In December 1975, an attempt was made to a right-wing military coup led by Air Force Brigadier Orlando Cappellini . On March 24, 1976, President Isabel Peron was overthrown by a military junta led by General Jorge Rafael Videla .

The process of national reorganization meant "restoring order and control" in a critical socio-political situation in Argentina. Violent kidnapping for ideological reasons and unlawful arrests, often based on unfounded accusations, have become commonplace. The servicemen raided randomly selected houses, the police stopped cars for no reason, beat their passengers and let them go without any explanation - all this and other similar measures were included in the program to intimidate the population and reduce the possibility of its participation in any protest movement. Government agents infiltrated university life; as a result, students who openly expressed their leftist or protesting views simply “disappeared”.

Official investigations conducted after the end of the Dirty War by the National Commission on the Case of the Mass Disappearance of People documented 8,961 ^[1] disappeared (victims of forced abductions) and other human rights violations , noting that the exact number of victims should be much higher. There were no evidence of many cases, for example, when entire families disappeared, and the military, in turn, destroyed any documents confirming this, months before the regime fell ^[2] . Among the "disappeared" there were pregnant women who remained alive until they gave birth in primitive conditions in secret prisons. Newborns, as a rule, illegally fell into the families of the military, politicians or affiliated with them, while mothers, as a rule, were killed.

The SIDE Secretariat of State Intelligence ( Secretaría de Inteligencia del Estado ) collaborated with the Office of National Intelligence , the Chilean Political Police during the Pinochet regime , and other South American secret services. The United States supported the campaign to persecute and annihilate the left opposition in South America, known as Operation Condor .

The regime in Argentina took control of the legislature and suppressed both freedom of the media and freedom of speech , introducing strict censorship . The 1978 FIFA World Cup , which Argentina hosted and won, was used by the authorities for propaganda purposes to rally the nation around nationalist ideas.

Corruption, the collapse of the economy, increased public awareness of government repression, and defeat in the Falkland War undermined the regime’s authority. The last de facto president, Reynaldo Bignone, was forced to announce the election due to a lack of support for his power by the military and growing public discontent. Elections were held on October 30, 1983 , democracy was formally restored on December 10 of the same year when President Raul Alfonsin took office.

Saw appointed José Alfredo Martínez de Osa to the post of Minister of Economy, who began to pursue a policy of stabilization and privatization of state-owned companies, which later became known as the neoliberal policy. Martinez de Hos was opposed by General Ramon Diaz, Minister of Planning, who advocated a policy of corporatism while maintaining state control over key industries. Despite Diaz’s resignation, military officers, many of whom had a view to running state-owned companies, impeded Martinez de Os's privatization efforts. Meanwhile, the military junta received external loans to finance public works and social security. Martinez de Hos was forced in his course to rely on high interest rates and curbing the exchange rate to control inflation , which painfully hit Argentine production and exports. The junta's economic policy also led to a decrease in the standard of living of the population and growth of social inequality; by the time the military came to power, 9% of the population was living in poverty (it was less than in France or the USA at that time), while the percentage of unemployed in the country decreased up to 4.2%. ^[3]

In 2003, French journalist Marie-Monique Robin announced her discovery in the archives of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a document, a 1959 agreement between Paris and Buenos Aires, approving a “permanent French military mission” assigned to Argentina. The group was formed from those who fought in the Algerian war and was located on the premises of the main headquarters of the Argentine army. It has been proven that the government of Giscard d'Estaing secretly collaborated with the Videla junta in Argentina and the Augusto Pinochet regime in Chile. ^[four]

Green deputies Noel Mamer , Martina Bijillard and Yves Kauchet passed a resolution in September 2003 to create a parliamentary commission to evaluate the “role of France in supporting military regimes in Latin America from 1973 to 1984,” which arose before the Foreign Affairs Commission National Assembly chaired by Edouard Balladure . With the exception of Le Monde, the rest of the newspapers were silent about the initiative of the deputies. ^[5] MP Roland Bloom , who led the commission, refused to hear the testimony of Marie-Monique Robin.

In December 2003, his staff published a 12-page report, which denied the existence of an agreement between the military of France and Argentina. But Robin showed a copy of her document found, indicating the existence of this agreement. ^{[6] [7]}

During a visit to Chile in February 2004, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin claimed that there was no cooperation between France and the military regimes. ^[8]

Spanish judge Balthasar Garzon tried to call former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as a witness in the process of disappearances in Argentina ^[9] , but this call was rejected by the Department of State. Kissinger’s opponents in the UK tried to secure the issuance of a warrant for his arrest during one of his visits to the country ^[10] .

According to the decree of President Raul Alfonsin , a mandatory prosecution of the leaders of the Process was established for acts committed during their reign, they were tried and convicted in 1985. In 1989, President Carlos Menem pardoned them during their first year in office, which caused much controversy. Menem argued that forgiveness would serve the healing of the country. The Argentine Supreme Court declared this amnesty unconstitutional in 2005. As a result of this decision, the government resumed the prosecution of military officers involved in operations during the Dirty War. ^[eleven]

Adolfo Silingo , an Argentine naval officer during the reign of the junta, was tried for his role in organizing the so-called “ death flights, ” a form of extrajudicial reprisal against opponents of the military regime. He was convicted in Spain in 2005 for crimes against humanity and sentenced to 640 years in prison. The term was subsequently extended to 1080 years.

Christian von Wernich , a Catholic priest and former chaplain of the Buenos Aires Provincial Police , was arrested in 2003 and charged with torturing political prisoners in illegal detention centers. He was found guilty and sentenced on October 9, 2007 to life imprisonment.

In 2002, the Argentine Congress declared the date March 24 as National Day of Remembrance of Truth and Law ( Spanish: Día Nacional de la Memoria por la Verdad y la Justicia ) in memory of the victims of the dictatorship. In 2006, 30 years after the coup d'état that marked the beginning of the Process , Memorial Day was declared a nationwide holiday . The anniversary of the coup was marked by massive official events and demonstrations across the country.

• Jorge Rafael Videla , March 29, 1976 - March 29, 1981
• Roberto Eduardo Viola , March 29 - December 11, 1981
• Carlos Lacoste , December 11 - 22, 1981
• Leopoldo Galtieri , December 22, 1981 - June 18, 1982
• Alfredo Saint-Jean , June 18, 1982 - July 1, 1982
• Reinaldo Bignone , July 1, 1982 - December 10, 1983

During the process of national reorganization, the country was ruled by four military juntas, successively replacing each other, each junta consisted of the heads of three branches of the Argentine Armed Forces:

• History of argentina
• Argentina policy
• Dirty War (Argentina)
• Operation Condor

• [4] HIJOS Association. Sons and daughters of the victims from the dictatorship trying to find their roots and history.
• Inter-American Commission on Human Rights report on Argentina
• Horacio Verbitsky, OpenDemocracy.net, July 28, 2005, “Breaking the silence: the Catholic Church in Argentina and the 'dirty war'”
• The Dirty War in Argentina - George Washington University 's National Security Archive page on the Dirty War, featuring numerous recently declared documents which clearly demonstrate Kissinger's knowledge and complacency in the junta's human rights abuses