Argentine Military Research Articles

Salvador Allende and Argentine Military Rule: Domestic Politics, Geopolitical Factors and Transnational Dimensions, 1970–3

AbstractThe 1970 election of Salvador Allende as president of Chile gained international attention, as a declared Marxist came to power through elections, offering an alternative to Castro's Cuba. In Argentina, governed by a right-wing dictatorship, the initial fear was transformed into a policy of rapprochement. In the midst of the Cold War, the historical Argentine–Brazilian rivalry was stronger than both military regimes' anti-communism. General Alejandro Lanusse decided to support Allende's Chile to balance Brazil's influence, but also as a way to control the domestic repercussions of Allende's victory, especially the rise of revolutionary slogans and the circulation of guerrillas. This article traces the network of national, international and transnational factors that influenced a surprising bilateral relationship.

Néstor Curbelo: The Latin American Andrew Jenson

Néstor Curbelo: The Latin American Andrew Jenson

The Collaboration of the Argentine Military Dictatorship with the Governments of Guatemala and Honduras in their ‘Fight against Subversion’ (1980–3)

AbstractThis article addresses one of the instances of the transnationalisation of state terrorism that took place at the end of the Cold War in Latin America. It examines the collaboration of the Argentine military dictatorship with the governments of Guatemala and Honduras in their ‘fight against subversion’ (1980–3) through previously unexplored archives. It presents the different degrees and forms of inter-governmental collaboration, the people responsible, the time frame, and the institutions, seeking to elaborate on the role of this collaboration in the repressive processes of each nation's historical experience. In general terms, this article contributes to transnational studies of the right wing during the recent history of the Latin American Cold War.

From Campo de Mayo to Malvinas, and Back: The Falklands/Malvinas War from the Perspective of Argentine Veterans Accused of Crimes Against Humanity

Four decades after the Falklands/Malvinas War and Argentina’s return to democracy, this article explores the ways in which veterans accused of crimes against humanity remember the conflict. Before confronting the British in the South Atlantic in 1982, the Argentine military had been involved in operations of counterinsurgency and illegal repression at home. Since 2005, hundreds of former officers — including veterans of the Malvinas War — have been accused and convicted for the crimes of the 1970s. This article focuses on the narrative of ‘Malvinas’ shared by former comandos (special forces) in the prison where they are detained in the present. It questions the content of ethnographic interviews with these veterans, and the context in which they were produced, to revisit the link between the violence of the 1970s and the Malvinas War from the perspective of the military involved in both scenarios. In so doing, the article deals with some unsolved issues of memorialization in post-war and post-authoritarian Argentina.

Preservation and Accessibility of the Audiovisual Document of the Trial of the Argentine Military Junta

AbstractThis research note outlines the current state of preservation and accessibility of an audiovisual document that contains complete video footage of the Trial of the Argentine Military Junta, whose verdict in 1985 found the accused guilty of crimes against humanity perpetrated during the last military dictatorship in Argentina (1976–1983).The project of digitization is the result of a joint effort by the University of Salamanca, the Argentine human rights organization Memoria Abierta, and the judges involved in the case, with the support of the Argentine Cámara Nacional de Apelaciones en lo Criminal y Correccional Federal. Its two main objectives are to preserve and provide open access to the audiovisual document. To date only digitized preservation has been attained, a nonetheless remarkable achievement. Despite legislation dates enforcing the protection of the parties involved in the trial, and the absence of legal constraints, open access to the document has not been obtained.

Revisiting the Falklands-Malvinas Question: Transnational and Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Revisiting the Falklands-Malvinas Question: Transnational and Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Researching Violence and Everyday Life in the 1970s: An Ethnographic Approach to the Argentine Military Family

This article develops an alternative perspective on the Argentine military, addressing their narratives of everyday life in the 1970s and during the last dictatorship (1976–1983). By approaching the military as a community of families, it analyses how former officers of the regime, their wives and their children recount the years of political violence. Due to its ethnographic bottom‐up approach, the article challenges the traditional focus on the monolithic masculine narratives of the military in Latin America. Instead, it presents an innovative interpretative framework in which different understandings of violence and political confrontation emerge, showing a plurality of under‐researched elements that compose military identities in Argentina.

Reajustes de la violencia en una novela, su adaptación al cine y un remake: 'El secreto de sus ojos'

En este trabajo se propone atender a un aspecto poco transitado en los estudios sobre transtextualidad: el tránsito de un texto literario a uno fílmico (El secreto de sus ojos) y la relación que establecen con un remake (El secreto de una obsesión), adoptando una tipología que contempla las categorías de la readaptación, el remake simple y la adaptación compuesta o mixta. Se incide para ello en la representación de la violencia, de acuerdo con la distinción postulada por Steven Pinker (que sigue a Thomas Hobbes) sobre las causas del conflicto humano, y se considera, por una parte, la construcción de los personajes, y por otra, la forma en que se muestran las imágenes. De este modo, se analizan los necesarios reajustes que se llevan a cabo en dos contextos muy distintos: la etapa previa a la Dictadura Militar Argentina de 1976 (término en el que se mueven de forma variable la novela de Sacheri de 2005 y la película de Campanella de 2009) y la hipervigilancia antiterrorista tras los atentados del 11-S (en la versión de Billy Ray de 2015).

“No State Apparatus Goes to Bed Genocidal Then Wakes Up Democratic”

Abstract This article forms part of an emerging body of scholarship on the sex/gender politics of authoritarian regimes in Latin America, turning specific attention to Argentine trans and travesti politics and rights claims as these articulate with legacies of authoritarianism. On March 24, 1976, the Argentine military staged a coup d’état and established a dictatorship, perpetrating mass civilian murder until democratic transition in 1983. Drawing on state intelligence archive surveillance documents, the artist-activist intervention Campaña DESAPARECER, and travesti and transgender testimony, this article argues that the enduring social and political legacies of interwar fascism not only persisted into the years of dictatorship, but that they also continue to animate and mediate post-dictatorship transgender politics. That is, in democracy, the enduring afterlife of fascism creates conditions of possibility for activists to mobilize the language of anti-fascism and shared memories of fascist state violence in the service of contemporary transgender rights claims. Such rights claims reveal illiberal state violence’s deadly imbrications with the politics of sex and gender during dictatorship and, at the same time, challenge present-day liberal narratives that relegate state violence to a distant illiberal past.

Familiar grammars of loss and belonging: curating trans kinship in post-dictatorship Argentina

On 24 March 1976, the Argentine military staged a coup d’état and established dictatorship. To eliminate radical left activists, the armed forces perpetrated mass civilian murder until democratic transition in 1983. The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo emerged, protesting their children’s disappearance by mobilizing portraiture to make visible familial rupture and indict the state. This article examines the archival exhibit, Esta se fue, a esta la mataron, esta murió (2017), which displayed trans women’s vernacular photographs and family albums from the 1970s–1980s, the same years as dictatorship. Analyzing the exhibit’s curatorial choices and the photographs’ material and haptic qualities, this article reads the exhibit alongside the Mothers’ iconic activist visual culture and national narratives of family loss. In doing so, the author suggests the exhibit renders trans sociality familial and familiar to a national viewing public, thereby reinterpreting Argentine history by installing trans subjects as proper subjects of national mourning.

Amerykańska polityka praw człowieka wobec Argentyny w czasie „brudnej wojny” 1976-1983

The U.S. Human Rights Policy Towards Argentina During the “Dirty War” 1976-1983 The paper aims to provide an analysis of the question of violations of human rights during the last military dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983) and the impact of this problem on bilateral relations with the United States. The article will focus mostly on the presidency of James “Jimmy” Earl Carter. The political line adopted by him, known as “the Carter doctrine” or “human rights policy” was the basis of restrictive attitude towards the Argentine dictators. In order to provide a complete analysis, the topic of the paper was treated broadly, covering not only bilateral, American-Argentine issues, but also multilateral forms of exerting pressure on Argentina, mainly at the United Nations and Organization of American States. The article also provides an analysis of the human rights policy itself, as well as of the state terror introduced by the Argentine military, known as the “Dirty War””.

Control Mechanisms: Pornography, Theatre and Subversion in Santa Fe Province during the Last Argentine Military Dictatorship

This paper examines a case of cultural repression during the last dictatorship in Argentina (1976–1983). It studies actions carried out by law enforcement officers in response to a denunciation against a group of teachers in a small town in Santa Fe that had participated in a play characterised as ‘pornographic’, and who were finally accused of left‐wing propaganda and ‘subversive’ activities. This case offers an opportunity to review the relationship between immorality, pornography, communism and ‘subversion’. Since the Cold War, these issues have been used in Latin America to construct an internal enemy and create governmental mechanisms and regulations for detecting and controlling its actions, and penalising the population in general.

Las “fronteras ideológicas” y la última dictadura militar en Argentina (1976–1983): el caso de las operaciones encubiertas en América Central

<p>En el presente artículo me enfoco en el significado del concepto de “fronteras ideológicas” en la política exterior argentina durante la última dictadura militar (1976–1983). El texto es un estudio de caso de las operaciones encubiertas en América Central realizadas por los servicios militares y de inteligencia de la dictadura argentina. Las actividades en Centroamérica sirven como un buen ejemplo de la aplicación práctica de dicho concepto. Primero, analizo este concepto y su significado en la ideología de los militares argentinos durante la última dictadura. Después, describo las circunstancias externas que llevaron a los argentinos a aumentar su interés en América Central a finales de la década de 1970. Posteriormente, examino las actividades encubiertas argentinas en la región, tanto antes como después del triunfo de la revolución sandinista en Nicaragua. Finalmente, discuto la cooperación argentina con los Estados Unidos en América Central durante la presidencia de Ronald Reagan. En la conclusión, resumo los argumentos presentados en el artículo, enfatizando la importancia del concepto de “fronteras ideológicas”.</p>

The Argentine Military and the Antisubversivo Genocide: The School of Americas' Contribution to the French Counterinsurgency Model

This article analyzes the role of the United States during Argentina's 1976–1983 military dictatorship and their genocidal counterinsurgency war. We argue that Washington's policy evolved from the initially loose support of the Ford administration to what we call “the Carter exception” in 1977–79, when the violations of human rights were denounced and concrete measures taken to put pressure on the military to end their repressive campaign. However, with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and the end of the détente, human rights lost importance in Washington's foreign policy agenda. The Argentine military briefly recovered US support with Ronald Reagan in 1981, only to soon lose it with the Malvinas War. Argentina's defeat turned the page of the US upport to military dictatorships in Latin America and marked the debut of “democracy promotion.”

Beyond the Eagle's Shadow: New Histories of Latin America's Cold War

Beyond the Eagle's Shadow: New Histories of Latin America's Cold War

Beyond the Eagle's Shadow: New Histories of Latin America's Cold War

Beyond the Eagle's Shadow: New Histories of Latin America's Cold War

La extraterritorialidad de la ley penal: el principio de justicia universal, su aplicación en Colombia

<p>En la actualidad en los crímenes considerados de Lesa humanidad, entre otros, se aplica el principio de jurisdicción o de justicia penal universal; de ese modo eventualmente, esta clase de delitos, pueden ser investigados y juzgados en aplicación del Estatuto de la Corte Penal Internacional, o bien en ejercicio de ese mismo principio pero ejercido por cualquier país. Estados como España, Reino Unido, Bélgica, etc., vienen aplicando la jurisdicción universal en mediáticos casos de ex militares argentinos o en el sonado caso de Augusto Pinochet. En este trabajo se hace un análisis de las infracciones que logran transgredir normas consideradas protectoras de bienes jurídicos universales. Nuestro objetivo principal radica en explicar este principio en aras de evitar la impunidad en delitos de naturaleza internacional. Por tal razón, se matiza en el Principio de Jurisdicción Universal aplicado en España, en esa perspectiva se analizan recientes crímenes de Lesa humanidad sucedidos en Colombia que se subsumen en la categoría de delitos que podrían ser llevados a la jurisdicción universal; en ese sentido, se estudian las características de la extraterritorialidad de la ley penal colombiana en el plano internacional.</p>

Human Rights, Latin America, and the Cold War

The Cold War proved a gruesome time for Latin Americans. In the four decades that followed the overthrow of the constitutional government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán (1950–54) over 200,000 Guatemalans perished in political violence. In tiny El Salvador, a country of only five million people, over 75,000 citizens died, principally during the 1980s. Over 500,000 citizens fled the country and another 500,000 were internally displaced by the political violence. Warfare ravaged Nicaragua during the 1970s and 1980s. On a per capita basis, Nicaragua lost more citizens during its Cold War than did the United States in the Civil War and all of its international wars combined. Cruelty, death, and destruction were not limited to Central America. During la guerra sucia (“the dirty war”) of the late 1970s, the Argentine military and associated death squads massacred 30,000 Argentines. Many of the dead assumed the title of “disappeared” or desaparecido. The...

La crisis del Canal de Beagle

This Christmas we commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the Beagle Channel crisis. This contribution reconstructs this piece of history, from its beginning in 1977 to the menace of war, the Vatican mediation and finally the ratification of the Treaty of Peace and Friendship by Argentina in 1984. Dismissing simplistic analogies with the Falklands war, the reduction of the crisis to a populist manoeuvre of the Argentine Military Junta is refuted and the hypothesis of a bluff called by Chile with the support of the Vatican is proposed. The treaty is approached intertwining the mediation's dynamics with the broader context of the Argentine transition and the economic conjuncture. This reconstruction is based on puhlished material as well as on hitherto unpublished interviews.

State Terrorism, Clandestine Language: Notes on the Argentine Military Dictatorship

Today the argentine judiciary dispenses ritual punishment as it condemns the oppressors of the last military dictatorship (1976–83) in the name of historical truth. Human rights organizations and movements have contributed immeasurably to this end. More than two decades have passed since the historic military-juntas trial (1985), and over the years successive state policies have proved that traumatic memory is a contested site, subject in this postdictatorial democracy to both debate and governmental intervention.