1930 A military coup overthrows President Hipolito Yrigoyen of the centrist party known as the Radical Civic Union. Yrigoyen was the first president to have been cleanly elected by a secret and obligatory vote; he represented the accession to the government of the new middle classes of immigrant origi ns. In the following half century, Argentina will undergo no fewer than one military coup per decade and will be governed by more presidents who owe their office to the sword than to the ballot. During this period, which lasted until the democratic election of President Raul Alfonsin, also a Radical Civic Union member, in 1983, only two elected ptesidents successfully concluded the constitutional term of six years, and both were retired army generals. One of them, Agustin P. JustO, came to power through fraudulent elections in 1932. The other, Juan D. Peron, was overthrown in the middle of his second term as president in 1955. 1943: A military group that sympathizes with the Axis Powers takes control of the government. Among them is Peron, then a colonel, who becomes, successively, secretary of labor and social welfare, minister of war and vice president. While serving as secretary of labor he formulates a policy of respect for the rights of workers, inspired by the social doctrines of the Catholic Church. 1945: Peron is arrested by his comrades and a spontaneous popular demonstration demanding his freedom converges on the cenrer of Buenos Aires from the suburbs. 1946: Peron is elected president in a clean vote. 1955: On June 16, navy planes drop nine and a half tons of bombs on the Plaza de Mayo, in front of the Government House, in a failed attempt to overthrow Peron, reelected three years before with 62 percent of the vote. This is the overture to the violence that will envelope Argentina until 1983. In September, a military junta overthrows Peron, disbands the Congress, dissolves the Supreme Court, takes control of the unions, and governs in a state of siege. A decree by the Executive Power establishes prison sentences for anyone who publicly speaks the name of ex-President Peron or his wife Evita. The military steals Evita's embalmed corpse. 1956: In June, General Juan Jose Valle and two dozen Peronists, both military and civilian, are shot on the orders of military president Pedro Ararnburu, in reprisal for an uprising aimed at holding free elections.
In October, the exiled Peron sends his "General Directives for all Peronists" and his "Instructions for Leaders," in which he recommends armed resistance against the government, the organization of guerrilla forces to combat it, the use of bombs, and the assassination of adversaries.
Members of the Argentine military take classes at the School of War in Paris while French colonels teach Argentine officers at the military institutes of Buenos Aires. The counterinsurgency tactics employed by the French in Indochina and Algeria are studied. 1958: Radical Civic Union politician Arturo Frondizi becomes president, elected by the votes of the outlawed Peronist movement, to whom he has promised participation in the country's political system. During the forty-six months of his administration, he will face thirty-two standoffs with the military, some of them involving the deployment of tanks in the streets of Buenos Aires. The intensity of the Peronist resistance grows; oil pipelines are blown up and there is a generalized sabotage of manufaccuring. Striking railroad workers are milit.arized and soldiers run the trains. Tanks break down the doors of the Lisandro de la Torre meat-packing plant, which has been occupied by its workers. 1959: On January 1, Fidel Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara enter Havana in triumph. They propose, among other things, to transform the Andes into a larger version of the Sierra Maestra, the mountains where the Cuban insurgency began. 1961: The Argentine politician john William Cooke, one of Juan D. Peron's personal representatives, participates in the C uban resistance against the invaders at the Playa Giron in the Bay of Pigs. Cooke invites Peron to relocate to Cuba, but the former presidenr prefers to go to Spain, where he will live until 1973. U.S. President John F. Kennedy announces the Alliance for Progress. Argentine officers learn counterinsurgency techniques at the School of the Americas, and Argentine guerrillas are trained in Cuba. Superimposed on Argentina's internal political dynamic are the strategic conflicts of the cold war. 1962: Frondizi allowed Peronist candidates to participate in elections for provincial governorships. One of them wins in the decisive province of Buenos Aires, and as a result Frondizi is overthrown. Strife within the military allows the president of the Senate, Jose Maria Guido, rather than the chief of the army, to ascend to the presidency in Frondizi's place. In September, various military factions have an armed confrontation over the control of a weak President Guido. 1963: In April, the opposing military factions confront each other once more, this time with airplanes and armor-plated vehicles. Army tanks destroy Naval Aviation's runways, giving rise to a lasting hostility. Out of these combats a new strongman emerges, General Juan Carlos Ongania, who presents himself as the leader of the "army of the constitution and the law" and says he supported the call for elections, but then returned to being strictly professional, without intervening in "internal politics." But five weeks after he so clearly stated his submission to the civil authorities, Peronism is outlawed once again. In June, with barely 23 percent of the vote, the Radical Civic Union candidate Arturo Illia is elected president. 1964: Ongania remains commander in chief of the army. From West Point, he formulates the doctrine of ideological borders and calls for intervention by the army in internal politics as an extraconstitutional watchdog. In Salta, the police break up a Marxist guerrilla detachment. President Charles de Gaulle of France visits Argentina. Peron orders that he be received as if he were Peron himself, and demonstrations in the streets throughout the country checkmate the government. Months later, Peron attempts to return to Argentina, but, at the request of Illia's government, the Brazilian military detains his plane in Rio de Janeiro. 1965: The Peronists achieve good results in all the elections they are permitted ro participate in, which makes them the foreseeable victors of the following year's elections in the province of Buenos Aires. 1966: On June 28, prior to the provincial elections in Buenos Aires, a military junta overthrows Illia, imposes a Revolutionary Statute that is superior to the Constitution, and installs Ongania in the presidency. The Congress and the Supreme Court are dissolved and all political and labor union activity is banned. The clerical organization Opus Dei participates in the national cabinet to a significant degree, and Cardinal Antonio Caggiano, who is also a military bishop, signs Ongania's decree of assumption to the presidency and participates in all the official ceremonies. Ongania and a group of prominent generals go on spiritual retreats where they undergo the influence of the Catholic fundamentalist groups Verbe and La Cite Catholique, both of which originated in France. 1968: A detachment of half a dozen guerrillas, members of the Peronist Armed Forces, is routed in the province of Tucuman. 1969: powarg1969 On May 29, columns of workers and students occupy Cordoba, the councry's second largest city, in protest against Onganfa's socioeconomic policies. The police are overwhelmed, and the army intervenes and fires into the crowd in order to regain control of the city. That same day, an unknown guerrilla commando kills Augusto Vandor, leader of the metallurgical workers, who is denounced as a paradigm of the alliance between the Peronist union bureaucracy and the military establishment. Amid the commotion caused by both episodes, Nelson Rockefeller arrives in Argentina as part of his mission through Latin America. In the report he sends to President Nixon, he describes a growing Communist threat, praises the role of the armed forces, and recommends strengthening the continent's police forces as the first line of combat. Ongania announces a procession to the sanctuary of Lujan in order to consecrate Argentina to the heart of the Virgin Mary. But the Catholic Church is divided: under the auspices of the Second Vatican Council and the meeting of the Latin American Catholic Church in Medellin, many Bishops and priests defend the so-called choice for the poor, justify a violent response to oppression, and support a dialogue between Catholics and Marxists. All the conditions for a militarization of politics are present. 1970: A commando from the new organization known as the Montoneros, which takes its name from the irregular parties of gauchos who resisted pro-British liberalism during the nineteenth century, kidnaps former dictator Aramburu on May 29. The Montoneros' members emerged from the group known as Catholic Action and participated in social work camps led by priests in the country's poorest regions. The Montoneros combine personal attacks against members of the military and union leaders with community work among the poor and political organizing of the Peronist Youth. After a mock trial for the 1956 shootings, Aramburu is killed in a cellar, and his corpse is submerged in quicklime. From his exile in Madrid, Peron approves of the deed and congratulates the Montoneros, whose first communication commends Aramburu's soul to God. Ongania is overthrown by the army, which puts in his place the military attache in Washington, General Roberto Levingston, a counterinsurgency specialist. Massive demonstrations to protest the socioeconomic situation and demand a new political beginning take place across the country, which becomes ungovernable by the military. While the Peronist trade unions are negotiating agreements with the government, a resistance against the military dictatorship is organized by grass roots union leaders, the Montoneros, and the Peronist Youth. The same fracture that had split the Church is now dividing Peronism. Peron says he must act as "The Holy Father" and give his blessing to all the conflicting sectors. Small Marxist guerrilla organizations known as the "People's Revolutionary army" (ERP) and the "Revolutionary Armed Forces" (FAR) also begin ro take action. Both groups are inspired by the Cuban, Chinese, and Vietnamese experiences, but while the ERP remains faithful to Marxist orthodoxy, the FAR begins a process of approximating itself to the mass movement of Peronism. 1971: The chief of the army, General Alejandro Lanusse, deposes LevingstOn, assumes the presidency, and calls elections in which, for the first time, the Peronists are permitted to participate. His idea is to strip the guerrillas of their most powerful rallying point and isolate them politically and socially, given the difficulty of suppressing them by force. 1972: With the help of the Catholic Church, the military had been keeping Evita's embalmed body hidden in a cemetery in Italy; as a gesture of goodwill, Lanusse now returns it to Peron in Madrid. Lanusse passes a law establishing that only those who were residing in the country before August are eligible to be candidates in the upcoming elections and challenges Peron during a meeting of the top ranks of the military: "I don't think he has the guts to come back." Peron returns to Argentina in November, acclaimed by mass demonstrations of hundreds of thousands of people. Since the deadline has passed and he is ineligible to be a candidate, he designates his personal representative, Hector J. Campora, to run for the presidency and returns to Madrid. The campaign's central buzz word is "Campora to the government, Peron to power," and the slogan "FAR and the Montoneros are our companions" is chanted at every Peronist rally, which infuriates the military. On August 22, after faking an escape attempt, the navy executes a dozen guerrillas imprisoned at its base in Trelew. Their bodies are laid out in the central headquarters of the Justicialista Party, but its doors are broken down by the police, who take away the coffins in order to keep the bodies from being autopsied. 1973: Campora is elected president on March 11. For his swearing-in ceremony on May 25, he invites Chilean President Salvador Allende and the Cuban Osvaldo Dorticos. His first decision is to free all the imprisoned guerrillas; this is unanimously approved by Congress, which also dissolves as unconstitutional a special tribunal created to try them. As they arrive from the country's various jails, the prisoners are given a hero's welcome in the provincial government houses. The FAR merges with the Montoneros into a single organization. On June 20, Peron finally returns to the country. His private secretary and one of Campora's ministers, Jose Lopez Rega, a former chief of police and an astrologer, calls on unionists and members of the military to organize an armed contingent to be positioned on the stage above the crowd gathered near Ezeiza Airport during Per6n's first public appearance in Argentina. The crowd begins to assemble the night before and is estimated at more than a million people. When the columns of the Peronist Youth approach, they are fired upon from above. The crowd scatters and at least thirteen people are killed and three hundred wounded by bullets. Peron comes out against the Montoneros and forces Campora to resign. Raul Lastiri, Lopez Rega's son-in-law, assumes the presidency for an interim period and calls new elections. On September 2. 3, Peron is elected president for the third time, on a ticket completed by his wife Isabelita. Two days later, the Molltoneros kill the general secretary of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), Jose Rucci, a trade unionist, as one of those responsible for what happened in Ezeiza, but they do not claim responsibility for the attack in order not to enrage Peron. The ERP continues kidnapping U.S. businessmen and demanding ransom for them and attacking army facilities. 1974: On May 1, Peron calls the Montoneros "immature imbeciles," whereupon they turn their backs on him and leave the Plaza de Mayo half empty. Peron dies on June I and lsabelita assumes the presidency, while Lopez Rega governs from behind the throne. The Triple A (A rgentine Anti-Communist Alliance) begins to take action, kidnapping and assassinating intellectuals and politicians suspected of links to the guerrillas. In September, the Montoneros announce they are going back underground. The ERP opens a rural guerrilla front in the northern province ofTucuman. 1975: Without the political umbrella of Peronism, the Montoneros' actions lose their mass character and their acceptance. Isabelita charges the army with controlling the growing social agitation, and Ricardo Balbin, the leader of the opposition party, the Radical Civic Union, says that the striking workers constitute an "industrial guerrilla group." The government orders the army to "annihilate the actions of subversion," first in Tucuman, then throughour the country. The first leader of the troops in Tucuman is General Adel Vilas, a disciple of the French, who defends torture as the weapon of choice in this rype of battle and advocates the extension of the conflict to the universities. He is succeeded by General Domingo Bussi, who studied counterinsurgency in Vietnam. Swept out of Tucuman, the ERP attempts, in the final days of the year, a desperate attack on a Buenos Aires military installation. The attack's failure ultimately leads to the organization's demise. The Montoneros attack a military facility in the province of Formosa, something only the ERP had done until that point, and they are also repelled with heavy losses. The president of the bishopric, Monsenor Adolfo Tortolo, announces to an audience of business people that a purification process will soon be carried out. The Order for Army Operations includes dispensations for special methods of interrogation, a euphemism for torture. The navy follows suit; the commander of naval operations, Admiral Luis Mendla, communicates this to navy officers in the Puerto Belgrano naval base. He maintains that these methods, as well as the elimination of living prisoners by throwing them into the sea, have been approved by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. But because of the international isolation of the Chilean dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, the Argentine military must keep its procedures carefully under wraps. 1976: On March 23, the commanders in chief of the army, the navy and the air force pay a visit to Monseiior Tortolo at the bishopric's headquarters. Hours later, on March 2-4, they overthrow and imprison Isabel Peron. The governor of the province of La Rioja, Carlos Menem, and other Peronist leaders, are confined to a navy prison ship anchored in the port of Buenos Aires. Once again, the Congress and the Supreme Court are dissolved. Clandestine concentration camps are set up in units of the armed and security forces, and those who are abducted are taken to them, always secretly and without any judicial order. There they are tortured, then covertly murdered. In a meeting of the bishopric, Tortolo defends torture with theological arguments. The military junta designates the chief of the army, General Jorge Videla, to be president, but the junta is being torn apart by internal conflicts. Old jealousies are erupting between the army and the navy, led by Admiral Emilio Massera, who maintains that the junta is the organ of maximum power and Videla no more than its delegated administrator. In the plans approved by the military junta, it falls to the army to command the operations of the dirty war, and the jurisdictions are clearly determined. But Massera does not respect those agreements and invades the jurisdiction of the army as a way of accumulating intramilitary power. His instrument for doing so is the Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA), where a clandestine concentration camp is operating. The task force that administers it answers directly to the chief of the navy, who personally participates in certain operations. In June, an army patrol brings down the leader of the ERP, Roberto Sanrucho, and the dismantling of that organization is complete. Also in June, at a breakfast during a meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Chile, Argentine Foreign Minister Admiral Cesar Guzzetti tells Secretary of State Henry Kissinger what the Argentine military is doing. Kissinger replies that they have to finish off the terrorists before the installation of the new U.S. Congress in January 1977. Kissinger is counting on the reelection of Gerald Ford, who is defeated in November by Jimmy Carter. 1977: The Argentine military considers Carter's human rights policies a betrayal and establishes links with members of the ultraconservative opposition, such as Senator Jesse Helms. Videla meets with Carter's envoy, Patricia Derian, and tells her he cannot control the lower ranks. On March 25, the writer and journalist Rodolfo J. Walsh is abducted after having distributed an "Open Letter to the Military Junta," in which he denounced the rorture and murder of prisoners. On Christmas Eve, the members of the founding nucleus of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, which had been infiltrated by Lieutenant Alfredo Astiz, are abducted from the Church of the Holy Cross. They are tortured in the ESMA by Lieutenant Antonio Pernlas and never reappear. 1978: Admiral Massera retires. His successor, Armando Lambruschini, consults with the papal nuncio, Pio Laghi, on the situation of the prisoners. He doesn't want to kill them, but if he leaves them alive he is afraid they will reveal what they saw. 1979: The Interamerican Commission on Human Rights of the OAS visits Argentina. 1980: The OAS report appears; it states that the thousands of disappeared persons have been killed by official forces and that the alarming and systematic use of torture has been proven. The government responds that the state is exercising its power of self-defense and using the "appropriate means." Adolfo Perez Esquivel of the Service of Peace and Justice, who denounces the massive violations of human rights, receives the Nobel Peace Prize. After Somoza is overthrown by the Sandinistas, the Argentine military trains the first contingents of the Contras, by agreement with the CIA. They also instruct members of the militaries of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador on torture methods. 1981: A year of economic crisis and a rapid turnover of military presidents. In March, General Roberto Viola succeeds Videla; in December, General Leopoldo Galtieri removes Viola from office. The political parties demand that elections be held for the first time in a decade and the unions demand economic improvements. 1982: On April 2, the military junta occupies the Malvinas, Georgias, and South Sandwich Islands, which have been controlled by Great Britain since the first decacles of the nineteenth century. Margaret Thatcher's government sends a powerful fleet to recover them. The navy, which had encouraged the occupation, withdraws its fleet to the coast at the news that the United Kingdom is using nuclear submarines. Astiz is captured by the British after surrendering the South Georgias Islands without resistance. Ultimately, Argentina loses the war. Galtieri is deposed by his peers. Fatally wounded, the dictatorship calls elections. 1983: In July, the courts order the arrest of Massera for the murder of a mistress's husband, the businessman Fernando Branca, who was invited for a sail on the yacht Massera used as chief of the navy and never appeared. In September, the military junta passes an autoamnesty for all members of the military charged with human rights violations. In October the leader of the Radical Civic Union, Raul Aifonsin, wins the presidency with 52 percent of the vote; it is the first time the Peronist movement has been defeated in clean elections. He is sworn into office on December 10. The new Congress nullifies the autoamnesty. Alfonsin creates a presidential commission of leading members of the society to investigate human rights violations and asks the courts to press charges against Videla , Massera, and other leaders of the dirty war. 1984: At the demand of the national government, which wants the military to purge itself, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces orders the arrest of the three commanders in chief who held power in 1976. The National Commission on the Disappeared, presided over by the writer Ernesto Sabato, delivers its report to the president. The report states that human rights were violated in an institutional and state-ordained manner and that after being tortured the disappeared were thrown into the river or into the sea. Nine thousand cases are verified, with the names and surnames of the deceased, but the actual figure is believed to be higher. In a collective response, the Supreme Council affirms that the orders given by the former commanders were perfectly correct. The Federal Chamber removes the case from the military courts and carries on with the trial, which is extended to include the rwo military juntas that succeeded the first one. In all, nine former military leaders are charged, three of whom were also de facto presidents. 1985: Between April and September, the Federal Chamber heats testimony from survivors of the clandestine concentration camps and national and internationalleaders (such as Patricia Derian) for rwelve hours a day. On December 9, Videla and Massera are senrenced to life imprisonment for treasonous homicides, illegal deprivations of liberty, torture, and robbery; former general Roberto Viola, former admiral Armando Lambruschini, and former brigadier general Ramon Agosti all receive prison sentences as well, and all those convicted are also dishonorably discharged from the armed forces. The sentencing order describes the "criminal plan" adopted by the former military leaders which consisted in "apprehending suspects, keeping them secretly in captivity under inhuman conditions, subjecting them to torture in the aim of obtaining information so as ultimately to put them at the disposition of the courts or the National Executive Power or else to eliminate them physically." It also establishes the responsibility of those who carried out these men's orders directly and states that obedience to orders does not excuse those who carried out aberrant crimes. 1986: The Supreme Court confirms the convictions, though it reduces Viola's and Agosti's sentences. The Federal Chamber hands down prison sentences to the former chiefs of police of Buenos Aires, Colonel Ramon Camps and General Pablo Ovidio Riccheri, and to their former assistant chief, Commissioner Miguel Osvaldo Etchecolatz, as well as to Dr. Jorge Berges and Corporal Norberto Cozzani. The entire pyramid of repression is thus covered, from the highest-ranking military leaders to the low ranking policemen and civilian collaborators. The same court takes over the trial for the events at the Navy School of Mechanics. Alarmed by the military repercussions of the convictions, Alfonsin persuades Congress to sanction a law known as Full Stop: the judges will have 60 days to bring charges against all those implicated in human rights violations. Once that time has elapsed, all such cases will be considered invalid. 1987: In February, when the sixty-day statute of limitations ends, Federal Chambers throughout the country have not brought charges against thirty or forty members of the military, as the government had hoped, but against almost four hundred. In the ESMA proceedings, the Federal Chamber of the Capital orders the arrest of nineteen men, among them admirals, officers, and noncommissioned officers. As the summonses continue to reach officers facing charges in other parts of the country, the military tension grows. On April 15, Lieutenant Colonel Ernesto Barreiro ignores a summons from the Federal Chamber of Cordoba to give testimony in response to charges of torture and treasonous homicide. Lieutenant Colonel Aldo Rico occupies the School of Infantry in the largest military garrison in Argentina. His commandos, known as the carapintadas because their faces are painted, demand that the trials of their comrades be brought to a halt. "The shifting terrain of the law and judicial chicanery is not the soldier's natural habitat. The soldier is trained to show his teeth and bite; combat is his proper environment and his power resides in holding a monopoly on violence," he explains in a document. The president orders the uprising to be reptessed, but the military columns take several days to travel a few hundred kilometers. In front of the Legislative Assembly, Alfonsin declares that no civilian or member of the military can use force to negotiate his judicial situation and reaffirms the equality of all before the law. He announces to a crowd that has gathered in the Plaza de Mayo to condemn the uprising that he will go personally to the garrisons to demand the surrender of the carapintadas. Upon his return, he calls them "the heroes of the Malvinas war" and asks the demonstrators to disperse, stating that " the house is in order." He bids them good-bye with a disconcerting, "Happy Easter." In July, he persuades Congress to approve the law of Due Obedience, which exempts from guilt those who tortured or murdered in fulfillment of orders. Only the former military leaders and a select group of generals and former leaders of army corps and security zones remain in prison. Among those set free are Astiz and Pernias. 1988: The carapintadas take part in two new uprisings, the first led by Rico and the second by Colonel Mohamed Ali Seineldin, a former adviser to Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega. Seineldin says he is receiving directives from the Virgin Mary. 1989: In January, a remnant of the vanished People's Revolutionary Army occupies the military facility of La Tablada after denouncing a pact between the carapintadas and the Peronists which is intended to force Alfonsin to resign. International credit organizations cut off Argentina's financing, which unleashes a run against the peso. In May, the Peronist candidate Carlos Menem is elected president. Hyperinflation devalues salaries and supermarkets are ransacked for food in several parts of the country. Alfonsin resigns from the presidency and Menem assumes it five months before his term officially begins. In October, he signs a pardon for four hundred officers and noncommissioned officers charged in the carapintada rebellions (among them Rico and Seineldin) and for the three former commanders in chief sentenced by the military Courts for their role in the Malvinas war, as well as four dozen generals, admirals, colonels, and captains who remained in prison for human rights violations. 1990: In December, Seineldin leads a new uprising, 48 hours before the arrival in Argentina of President George Bush; the rebellion is put down, weapon in hand, by the assistant chief of staff of the army, General Martin Baiza. Menem wants to have the prisoners shot, but is dissuaded by his advisers. Days later, he pardons the former members of the military junta sentenced by the courts, as well as the Montonero leaders Mario Firmenich (sentenced to thirty years' imprisonment), Fernando Vaca Narvaja, and Roberto Perdia (who was living in exile). 1995: Lieutenant Commander Adolfo Scilingo becomes the first member of the Argentine military to speak openly and at length about his participation in the dirty war.