Operation Charly - Leopoldo Galtieri's Take-over and Complete Alignment With Washington

Leopoldo Galtieri's Take-over and Complete Alignment With Washington

The "Dirty War" in Central America and US support internally strengthened General Galtieri's position. In December 1981, Galtieri in a palace revolution, replaced General Viola, who was, as Videla, suspected because of the good relationship maintained until now by the military junta with the Soviet Union. A few days before assuming power, Galtieri exposed in a speech in Miami the Argentine government's decision to constitute itself as an unconditional ally of the US in the "world struggle against Communism": "Argentina and the United States will march together in the ideological war which is starting in the world" .

Meanwhile, Ronald Reagan assumed power in January 1981, with Alexander Haig as Secretary of State and Harry Shlaudeman as ambassador in Buenos Aires. John Negroponte was nominated ambassador in Honduras. The same month, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) initiated a large-scale military offensive supported by the Sandinistas. A 26 February 1981 document sent by Vernon Walters, former CIA director, to Al Haig described with precisions the US knowledge of the covert operations. Argentine military officer transferred to the Contras approximatively 50 000 dollars gathered by the drug trade in Bolivia.

In the beginning of 1982, the United States and the Argentine junta planned the creation of a large Latin American military force, which would be directed by an Argentine officer, with the initial aim of landing in El Salvador and push the revolutionaries to Honduras to exterminate them, and then to invade Nicaragua and topple the Sandinista regime. The operation would have been protected by a remodelling of the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR).

According to journalist María Seoane, a few months later, assuming support of the United States and in an attempt to revive internal support, Galtieri invaded the Falkland Islands, starting the Falklands War (Spanish: Guerra de las Malvinas/Guerra del Atlántico Sur) on April 2, 1982 against the United Kingdom, headed by Margaret Thatcher, who was very close to Reagan. Washington, however, did nothing to prevent London from vigorously reacting to the Argentine military's belligerous inclinations.

During the Falkland War, the Argentine agent Francés García (alias of Estanislao Valdéz), who had been the repressor of the Campito detention center in Argentina, was kidnapped by Sandinistas groups in Costa Rica, where he was based. He then appeared on a TV video, explaining with loads of details the Argentine and US covert operations in Costa Rica. US journalist Martha Honey report that García was qualified by the North Americans, with a certain admiration, of having a "completely criminal gorrilla mentality.".

Although the invasion of the Falkland Islands and the subsequent return to civilian rule in 1983 put an end to Argentine operations in Central America, the dirty war continued well into the 1990s, with hundreds of thousands being disappeared. The Reagan administration took over the covert operations.

Furthermore, according to the NGO Equipo Nizkor, if the Argentine mission in Honduras, for instance (where 150 officers were present end of 1981, training members of the Battalion 316, in various bases, including Lepaterique), was downgraded after the Falklands War, Argentine officers remained active in Honduras until 1984, some of them until 1986, well after the 1983 election of Raúl Alfonsín.

According to journalist María Seoane, in June 1983, the NGO Americas Watch visited Honduras and stated in its report that "The General Gustavo Álvarez Martínez, head of the Hondurian military staff, has publicly defended the use of the Argentine method to confront the subversive threat in Latin America. She says Alvarez is responsible of having brought to Honduras the first Argentine military instructors, when he was commandant of the Fuerza de Seguridad Pública (Fusep )."

Ariel Armony, president of the Goldfarb Center in the Colby College, stated in journalist María Seoane's article that "it would be more appropriate to speak of a dirty war at a continental level than isolated conflicts at a national scale", and that "in this war the distinction between combatants and civilian population were erased, while national frontiers were subordinated to "ideological frontiers" of the East-West conflict." In particular, the Argentine military was not satisfied with "annihilating" the opposition in the country, but repealed any distinction between internal and external policy.