Of Victims and Executioners: Argentine State Terror, 1975-1979

Abstract

Scholars have found that state terror has been employed frequently against subdued, if not fully compliant, populations. Scholars have argued that regimes may attack groups whose characteristics seem incongruent with their own ideological agendas. Having fully internalized a set of doctrines, and being prone to exaggerate the extent and depth of the security threats facing them, authoritarian regimes may provoke long periods of unrestrained, disproportionate and unnecessary state terror. Drawing from the recent scholarly attempts to stipulate the conditions associated with the appearance of state terror, we delineate two major ideologies which have guided the Argentine military to perpetrate state terror as standard policy. In national security and free market ideologies, we claim, the Argentine rulers of the Proceso period found the rationale for making the disappearance of real and perceived adversaries a daily governmental routine. Combined, these ideologies provided motives to sustain high levels of repression and guidelines to select its victims. We examine social characteristics of the victims of Argentine state terror and analyze organizational and legal forms of coercion to reveal patterns that are consistent with ideological predispositions. We then demonstrate that individuals suffered a greater probability of victimization if they were members of particular trade unions perceived by the government to have obstructed its achievement of economic and security goals. These and other trends lead us to conclude that ideology was a motivating force behind the infamous Argentine “Dirty War.”