Latin American Society

Robert Kirkland

LACS 101: Culture and Society of Latin America I

16 October 2016

Argentina Dirty War: Cowardice of a failed Government

In Latin America, stamping out opposing political views was common as coup de tats. It was easy for this to happen because individuals with power could easily manipulate others with access to more money and more power. The lower and middle classes where helpless to the rich and powerful and their one way views. Organizing opposition was always a dangerous task, and always met with oppression. While those in power believe oppressing the opposition makes people easier to control, it is bad for society as it generates resentment, which leads to violence, and the effects of it can be felt for years afterwards. Take the Dirty Wars in Argentina for example. Between the years 1976 to 1983 an estimated ten to thirty thousand people disappeared, never to be seen again because their political views opposed that of their government (Goldberg, Tikkanen, 2009).

Oppression had already taken root in Argentina under the Peroinst regime, where the two-time president Juan Peron tightened restrictions of newspapers, radio, and television stations (Knudson).  In 1974, Juan Peron died and was succeeded by his wife, Isabel Peron, who was greatly disliked by the people. For years before the Dirty Wars officially began, people who wished to write the truth were being threatened. After her succession, opposition newspapers were brought down one by one, and a new anti-subversion law was made, which gave “up to five years in prison for any journalist disseminating information altering or eliminating institutional order” (Knudson). Two years later, Isabel Peron would be deposed and the Argentinian government would be taken over by a “three-man military junta” led by Lieut. Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla (Goldberg, Tikkanen, 2009).

Immediately, the systematic disappearance of the political left started taking place and detention camps were setup to persecute those captured. This was largely ignored because the government claimed it was fighting a civil war. Oppression on such a large scale hurts society in innumerable ways. Instead of focusing on getting Argentina on the right track and helping its people, they created more chaos and heartache. Great minds and forward thinkers were removed from Argentinian society which hurt not only their loved ones, but Argentinian society and people around the world, depriving them of a uniqueness that those individuals had.

Resentment was already in place, before, during and after the Dirty Wars, and not from just one side. Resentment towards the leftists in Argentina was extreme, so that it led to extreme violence to those deemed subversive. Kidnapping of men, women, and children led to torture, and sometimes torture of kids in front of parents which could last for days or even weeks to moths, almost always ending in death (BBC, 2005).  The military even went as far as to dump bodies out of the back of airplanes in the Atlantic. The left also did its fill of violence against the government of Argentina. The Montoneros, supported by Juan Peron, kidnapped and assassinated political leaders and robbed banks to fund themselves. After Peron’s exile the Montoneros continued with terrorist attacks against the government. After his reinstatement as president after his exile, Peron “condemned the Montoneros” and fights took place by both right and left Peronist groups until the Military overthrow in 1976.

After years of brutality, it took a band of mothers called the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, to get the international attention Argentina so desperately deserved (Goldberg, Tikkanen, 2009). The mothers of the disappeared would march in front of the Casa Rosada for an hour every Thursday afternoon and demanded to know what happened to their love ones. This march gathered enough outside attention to garner a human rights investigation, when the investigation took place more than two thousand people showed up “stretching five blocks from the building where the hearings were being held” (Knudson). Even with the investigation state ran media would not run the story, and even used the World Soccer Championship games in 1978 and the occupation of Falklands “to divert the attention from a shattered economy and the rising storm over human rights abuses” (Knudson).