Early Life and Family
Jorge Rafael Videla was born on 2 August 1925, in the city of Mercedes, the third of five sons of Colonel Rafael Eugenio Videla (1888–1952) and María Olga Redondo Ojea (1897–1987). He was christened in honor of two older twin brothers who had died of measles in 1923. Videla's family was an old and prominent one in San Luis Province, and many of his ancestors had held high public offices. His grandfather Jacinto had been governor of San Luis between 1891 and 1893, and his great-great-grandfather Blas Videla had fought in the South American wars of independence and had later been a leader of the Unitarian Party in San Luis.
In 1948 Jorge Videla married Alicia Raquel Hartridge, daughter of Samuel Alejandro Hartridge, an Anglo-Argentine professor of physics and Argentine ambassador to Turkey. They had seven children: María Cristina (1949), Jorge Horacio (1950), Alejandro Eugenio (1951–1971), María Isabel (1958), Pedro Ignacio (1966), Fernando Gabriel (1961) and Rafael Patricio (1953). Two of these, Rafael Patricio and Fernando Gabriel, joined the Argentine Army.
Read more about this topic: Jorge Rafael Videla
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or family:
“The science, the art, the jurisprudence, the chief political and social theories, of the modern world have grown out of Greece and Rome—not by favor of, but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings of early Christianity, to which science, art, and any serious occupation with the things of this world were alike despicable.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“On such a night, when Air has loosed
Its guardian grasp on blood and brain,
Old terrors then of god or ghost
Creep from their caves to life again;”
—Robert Bridges (1844–1930)
“There are one or two rules,
Half-a-dozen, maybe,
That all family fools,
Of whatever degree,
Must observe if they love their profession.”
—Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)