The La Tablada Attack and the Erosion of Civil Rights in Argentina

David Sheinin

doi:10.23870/marlasv1n1ds

Abstract

On January 23, 1989, 42 operatives of a revolutionary group, the Movimiento Todos por la Patria (MTP), attacked the General Belgrano Mechanized Infantry Regiment No. 3 at La Tablada in the province of Buenos Aires. This article analyzes the accusations of human rights violations committed by the armed forces and the police on the attackers in the aftermath of the assault; the skeptical Argentine government’s response to those allegations before the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (IACHR); and the commission’s conclusions in its 1997 report. It discusses these developments considering a long-term degradation of civil rights in Argentina, and thus, of the meaning of citizenship itself. The report posed electrifying questions in a country grappling with a nascent democracy and the stalled prosecution of dictatorship human rights abusers. A decade and a half into Argentina’s longest period of democratic rule in more than half a century, the IACHR report posed and answered a question that remained glaringly unanswered in Argentina: At what point does a democratic state assume responsibility for the human rights violations of the institutions it governs, notably the police and the military?

Highlights

On January 23, 1989, 42 operatives of a revolutionary group, the Movimiento Todos por la Patria (MTP), attacked the General Belgrano Mechanized Infantry Regiment No 3 at La Tablada in the province of Buenos Aires
On January 23, 1989, 42 operatives of the Movimiento Todos por la Patria (MTP) revolutionary group staged an attack on the General Belgrano Mechanized Infantry Regiment No 3 at La Tablada, Buenos Aires province
Fascinating as they are, this article is not concerned in the first instance with the motives for the attack or the political ramifications of a brief, isolated throwback to 1970s violence in a climate of mounting economic uncertainty in the late 1980s, seemingly reminiscent of the preceding decade. It focuses on a specific set of events during the assault, their reading by the Argentine government before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), the commission’s judicial rendering in a 1997 report, and what all of it says of the long-term degradation of civil rights in Argentina— or the rights of citizens and the meaning of citizenship itself

Summary

Introduction

On January 23, 1989, 42 operatives of a revolutionary group, the Movimiento Todos por la Patria (MTP), attacked the General Belgrano Mechanized Infantry Regiment No 3 at La Tablada in the province of Buenos Aires. Argentina Before the IACHR: La Tablada The Grossman, López, and Siderman cases demonstrate the democratic government’s willingness to allow dictatorship legal precedent and procedure to shape its policy when expedient and, to contribute to the denigration of the civil rights of each of the three—and of Argentines more generally.

Results

Conclusion