National Reorganization Process - The Dirty War

The Dirty War

The expression "national reorganization process" was used to imply orderliness and control of the critical sociopolitical situation of Argentina at the time. Forced disappearances on ideological grounds and illegal arrests, often based on unsubstantiated accusations, became common. Armed soldiers arrived at randomly selected people's houses to rob them. The police would pull over cars for no reason, beat the occupants senseless, and leave without explanation, as part of a program to intimidate the populace and decrease its willingness to protest against the government. Government spies were dispatched to infiltrate the universities; students who openly professed even slightly leftist political opinions would simply disappear. Official investigations undertaken after the end of the Dirty War by the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons documented 8.961 desaparecidos (victims of forced disappearance) and other human rights violations, noting nevertheless that the correct number is bound to be higher, since many cases were not reported and the records were destroyed by the military authority. Among the "disappeared" were pregnant mothers whose babies, once born, were then illegally adopted by military families.

The film The Official Story which won the Oscar for the Best Foreign Film category in 1985, addresses this situation. The Argentine secret service SIDE (Secretaría de Inteligencia del Estado) also cooperated with the DINA in Pinochet's Chile and other South American intelligence agencies in the United States supported endeavours to eradicate left leaning politics on the continent, known as Operation Condor, which is estimated to have caused the deaths of more than 60.000 people. SIDE would also train - for example in the Honduran Lepaterique base - the Nicaraguan Contras which were fighting the Sandinista government there.

The regime shut down the legislative branch and restricted both freedom of the press and freedom of speech, adopting severe media censorship. The 1978 World Cup, which Argentina hosted and won, was used as a means of propaganda and to rally its people under a nationalistic pretense.

Corruption, a failing economy, growing public awareness of the harsh repressive measures taken by the regime, and the military defeat in the Falklands War, often considered to have been started with the intention to rally the country anew in a bout of nationalistic fervour, to the United Kingdom in 1982, eroded the public image of the regime. The last de facto president, Reynaldo Bignone, was forced to call for elections by the lack of support within the Army itself and the steadily growing pressure of public opinion. On 30 October 1983 elections were held, and democracy was formally restored on December 10 with the assumption of President Raúl Alfonsín.