Argentine Anticommunist Alliance - Creation

Creation

The Triple A was first believed to have been organized by José López Rega and Alberto Villar, deputy chief of the Argentine federal police, during the brief interim presidency of Raúl Lastiri in 1973. Villar was killed along his wife in 1974, when a bomb was planted on his cabin cruiser in Tigre by members of the organization Montoneros. The foundational act of the movement is alleged to be an important Peronist meeting on October 1, 1973, attended by President Raúl Lastiri, Interior Minister Benito Llambí, Social Welfare Minister José López Rega, general secretary of the Presidency José Humberto Martiarena and various provincial governors.

It is now considered state terrorism which functioned under the governments of Lastiri, Perón and Isabel Perón.

López Rega, a devotee of occultism and self-styled divinator, became a powerful force in the Peronist movement, exerting great influence over Perón at the time, and his wife Isabel Martínez de Perón, who assumed the presidency upon Perón's sudden death on 1 July 1974. To support the group, López Rega drew on funds from the Ministry of Social Welfare, which he controlled. Some of the members of the Triple A had taken part in the Peronist 1973 Ezeiza massacre, when snipers shot on left-wing Peronists on the day Perón came back from exile, thus leading to the definitive separation between left and right-wing Peronists.

Judge Baltazar Garzón's investigations demonstrated that Italian neofascist Stefano Delle Chiaie had also worked with the Triple A, and was present on the day of Peron's return to Argentina. Delle Chiaie also worked with the Chilean DINA and for Bolivian dictator Hugo Banzer.