Maria Eugenia Sampallo - Overview

Overview

The military opposed Juan Perón's populist government and attempted a coup d'état in 1951 and two in 1955, before succeeding with one later that year. After taking control, the armed forces proscribed Peronism. Soon after the coup, Peronist resistance began organizing in workplaces and trade unions, as the working classes sought economic and social improvements. Over time, as democratic rule was partially restored but promises of legalizing the expression and political liberties for Peronism were not respected, guerrilla groups began to operate in the 1960s, namely the Peronist Uturuncos and the Guevarist People's Guerrilla Army (EGP). Both were small and quickly defeated.

Jorge Ricardo Masetti, leader of the EGP, which had infiltrated into Salta Province from Bolivia in 1964, is considered by some as Argentina's first "disappeared", as he went missing after the party militants' defeat in clashes with the Argentine gendarmerie. Prior to 1973 the major revolutionary groups were the Peronist Armed Forces (Fuerzas Armadas Peronistas, FAP), the Marxist-Leninist-Peronist the Revolutionary Armed Forces (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias or FAR), and the Marxist-Leninist Armed Forces of Liberation (Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación or FAL). The FAL guerrillas raided Campo de Mayo in April 1969 and stole 100 assault rifles from the elite 1st Infantry Regiment Patricios.

In time these armed groups consolidated, with the FAR joining the Montoneros, formerly an urban group of intellectuals and students, and the FAP and FAL being absorbed into the ERP. In 1970, Pedro Eugenio Aramburu, one of the military leaders of the 1955 coup, was kidnapped and killed by the Montoneros, in its first claimed military action. In 1970, the Marxist People's Revolutionary Army (ERP) was founded. By the early 1970s, leftist guerrillas kidnapped and assassinated high-ranking military and police officers almost weekly.

The extreme left bombed and destroyed numerous buildings in the 1970s in its campaign against the government; these belonged chiefly to military and police hierarchies. But a number of civilian and non-governmental buildings were targeted as well, such as the Sheraton Hotel in Buenos Aires, which was bombed in 1972, killing a woman and injuring her husband; a crowded theater in downtown Buenos Aires was bombed in 1975.

In 1973, as Juan Perón returned from exile, the Ezeiza massacre marked the end of the alliance between left- and right-wing factions of Peronism. In 1974, Perón withdrew his support of the Montoneros shortly before his death. During the presidency of his widow Isabel, the far-right paramilitary death squad Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (Triple A) emerged. Armed struggle increased, and in 1975 Isabel signed a number of decrees empowering the military and the police to "annihilate" left-wing subversion, most prominently the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP) armed activity in the province of Tucumán.

Isabel Martínez de Perón was ousted in 1976 by a military coup. According to the International Congress for Victims of Terrorism in 2010, prior to the military takeover in 1976, there were a total of 16,000 casualties (including killed, wounded or abducted) of left-wing terrorism in Argentina, including civilians and military personnel. Years later in 1995, Argentine intelligence officers claimed that the ERP guerrillas were responsible for the deaths of at least 700 people, in addition to scores of attacks on police and military units, as well as kidnappings and robberies.

In 1978, a powerful bomb meant to kill an Argentine admiral ripped through a nine-story apartment building, killing three civilians and trapping others beneath the debris.

The juntas, led by Jorge Rafael Videla until 1981, and then by Roberto Viola and Leopoldo Galtieri until 1983, organized and carried out strong repression of political dissidents (and perceived dissidents) through the government's military and security forces. They were responsible for the illegal arrests, tortures, killings and/or forced disappearances of an estimated 15,000 to 30,000 people. These included armed combatants of the ERP and Montoneros guerrillas, but also trade-unionists, students and left-wing activists, journalists and other intellectuals, and their families. The junta referred to their policy of suppressing opponents as the "National Reorganization Process" (El proceso). Argentine military and security forces also created paramilitary death squads, operating behind "fronts" as supposedly independent units. Argentina coordinated actions with other South American dictatorships, as in Operation Condor.

In 1979, US President Jimmy Carter offered to accept 3,000 PEN detainees, as long as they had no terrorist background.

After increasing public opposition and severe economic problems, the military lost favor after its defeat by Britain in the Falklands War, and stepped aside for the restoration of democracy.