The Dirty War

Tuesday, Jan. 29 – Day 41

The Dirty War – Wow, you just can’t make this stuff up!

The first picture is not the Washington Monument, it’s El Oblisco. Kind of a landmark here in BA. It’s one of the city’s most prominent landmarks and a popular gathering place for political protests or after the national futbol team wins an important match. About 5 blocks away is the building in the second picture, the Casada Roja. I live right between the two. Casada Roja is kind of like the White House, except the president doesn’t actually live there. In 1951, Evita Peron gave her famous “Don’t cry for me Argentina” speech to a crowd of some 2 million people from just outside the Casa Rosada.

Evita was Juan Peron’s second wife, and a very a polarizing figure here in this country. The lower class idolized her because she championed their causes, while the upper class pretty much despised her because they believed she inappropriately diverted funds that should have been directed to more useful purposes. In any event, she died of cancer at the age of 33 in 1952.

The current President is Cristina Kirtchner, wife of former President Nestor Kirchner. This week in Miami, a Bolivian lady pled guilty in a case where she got caught with a suitcase stuffed with US$800,000 in cash. She said she was “holding it” for a Venezuelan man who intended to give it to Christina as “campaign contribution”. But that’s another story.

El Oblisco was built in 1936 to commemorate the 400 year anniversary of the founding of the city – well, sort of. The first record of the discovery of this area dates to 1536, but the city wasn’t actually established until 1580, but who’s really counting anyway? El Oblisko is 67 meters tall (a little less than half the size of the Washington Monument). It was built in 31 days, and the location is also reported to be the site of where the national flag of Argentina was flown for the first time. It sits in the middle of Avenida 9 de Julio, which, at 140 meters, is the widest city boulevard on Earth.

In the late 1970’s, around the beginning of the “Dirty War”, the government hung a big sign from the Oblisko that said “El silencio es salud”, or ”silence is health”. Recently, they covered in with a big pink condom to commemorate AIDS awareness day – but, I digress.

Isabel Peron is Juan Peron’s third wife. The two met while Juan was in exile in Panama – he was deposed in a coup in 1955, and kicked out of the country. She was a dancer in a nightclub, and 35 years younger that Juan. They moved to Spain, and got married primarily because the Catholic Church looked down upon their living arrangement – Juan still had political ambitions, so he needed to keep the church happy. Even this week, the Vatican refused to approve the appointment of an Argentine ambassador because he has been divorced.

In 1973, the then-current dictator of Argentina allowed the formation of political parties and an election, and a guy named Hector Campora became the President under the Peronist party. He then resigned, nominated Juan as his replacement, and called for his return, which the government allowed. Upon his arrival at Eziza Airport (all international flights to BA come through here), opposition party snipers opened fire on the crowd and killed a number of Juan’s well-wishers. This is now referred to as the Eziza Massacre, and marked the end of a political truce between the left and right in Argentina. In an odd move, Peron chose his wife Isabel as his new Vice President. On July 1, 1974, less than a year after his return, Juan died, and Isabel ended up running the country. This made her the first non-royal female to become a head-of-state in the Western Hemisphere.

Juan was a left-winged sort of guy, while the other popular politician of day, a guy named Jose Lopez Rega, was a right-winger. After Juan’s death, Rega was so popular that he was considered the de-facto Prime Minister of the country. His right-winged power frightened the military, and in early 1976, Isabel agreed to fire Rega. The military, however, feared that, in the prevailing climate, such a weak-willed and inexperienced woman would not be able to lead the country, and on March 24, 1976, she was overthrown in a bloodless coup. After 5 years of house arrest, she was exiled to Spain, where she maintained close ties with Franciso Franco and his family (remember Juan and Isabel lived there for a while after Panama, and before returning to Argentina).

Jorge Rafael Videla, the military leader, took over the new government, and led the country from 1976 to 1983. But in 1975, before she was forced out of power, Isabel had signed 3 separate decrees that allowed the military to begin to “annihilate extreme left-wing subversives” – who were mostly thought to be trade union workers and young student activists. The “subversives” had actually succeeded in a number of terrorist attacks, including several political assinations and the downing of a military transport plane. About 500 people were murdered during her term under this policy, which was actually carried out by Rega before he was fired, and was called Operative Independencia.

Under Videla, who ran the country through 1981, the program grew, and became known as Operation Condor. The counter-terrorism techniques that were used in Operation Condor, primarily torture and murder, were taught to the Argentines by the French secret service (and some say the CIA) over a two year period. The techniques were based on France’s experience in the Algerian War where, from 1954 to 1962, the local police forces were put under the authority of the Army and about 30,000 people disappeared. Hmmm?

In 1976, one Argentine General declared that “as many people as necessary must die in Argentina so that the country will be secure again”. Another proclaimed that “we will have to kill 50,000 people – 25,000 subversives, 20,000 sympathizers, and we will make 5,000 mistakes”. During this period, the standard government-issue vehicle that was used to pick up the “subversives” for questioning was a black Ford Falcon. I’ve been told that, even today, the sight of one of these cars still strikes fear in a lot of people.

These murder and torture policies were further carried on by Videla’s successors, Roberto Viola and Leopoldo Galtieri. Operation Condor is also believed to have been conducted in concert with other South American dictatorships, and insurgents from Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia, and Cuba were also tortured and killed here in Argentina, sometimes under the eye of our own CIA (documents de-classified in 2002) and these killings were supposedly known to, and/or tolerated by our State Department (Henry Kissinger, under Gerald Ford’s Presidency).

Today, it’s commonly accepted that about 400,000 Argentine people were incarcerated during the Dirty War, that about 50,000 people were murdered, and that about 30,000 people are still unaccounted for. Included in the missing is an estimate of some 5,000 infant children that were taken from mothers that were imprisoned during the war. There was a saying that “subversive mothers will raise subversive children”. It turns out that a very small number of these children were actually adopted by families of the military, but by and large, the whereabouts of the 5,000 children have never been fully accounted for.

The 30,000 missing are known as “Los Disaparecidos”. Many of the Disaparecidos are believed to have been thrown out of airplanes over the Plat River delta, or over the Atlantic Ocean. The military called these “vuelos de muerte”, or “death flights”. Every Thursday at 3:30, there is a demonstration outside the Casa Rosada by the mothers of the Disaparecidos. This has been going on for years, yet the government still refuses to investigate or provide any information on los Disaparecidos.

After the Jimmy Carter was elected President of the US, he blocked the CIA’s involvement in “special warfare”. Therefore, the Argentine special-forces units were engaged to teach and train the counter-insurgency forces in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Honduras in exchange for the US support of counter-revolutionary policies in this country.

Under Regan, the US re-established its CIA ties with the Argentine intelligence units and began to help train and arm the Nicaraguan Contras – remember Oliver North?

In January, 2007, an Argentine judge ordered Isabel Peron’s arrest on the grounds that her signing of the 3 separate decrees while President some 30 years ago allowed the armed forces to take actions against “subversives”, and that those actions ultimately led to the beginning of the Dirty War. She was arrested in Spain, and remains under house arrest, awaiting extradition.

Wow!

Most of you reading this were alive when this all began. I in 1976, I was in high-school, learning how to drive a car, and didn’t have a care in the world.