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3. The Military

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• Argentina's Military  By Donald J.Mabry in the HTS. Sound account of the emergence of the army in 20th century politics.
• Military Regime in Argentina (1976 - 1983) Brief illustrated account
• La Dictadura Militar (1976-1983) Basic account from Historia del País
• Escarmientos/Lessons Apogee & decay of the Terrorist state. Article by Horacio Verbitsky, on military intervention in Argentine politics.
• Comunicado nº 1  Desde Marzo del 76 será la forma en que la Junta de comandantes generales habría de comunicarse con el pueblo argentino. Junta pronouncement of seizure to Argentine population. For further recordings from the period see Dictadura Militar (1976-1983) from Argentina's El Historiador
• El Golpe de '76 Film of the 1976 coup by Argentina's newspaper Clarin. Good selection of oral accounts but not for those with epilepsy! Lush, rich media production (so unfortunately cannot be google translated & needs good broadband for best effect)
• 30 ańos - a supplement in the Buenos Aires Pagina 12. Very thorough, it is a real gem to students, with articles, personal experiences, poems and photos as well as a detailed chronology. In castellano, but remember it can be googled.
• 30 años de la dictadura argentina Excellent photo gallery from Spain's El Pais. Unfortunately, more detail could be provided about each image.
• Civil-Military Relations This pdf sets out structured reading and study outlines for examining the military in Latin America. Worth looking at by students of the period. by Prof. Roger Petersen, MIT
• Gallery of black and white photos of the Dictatorship Sharp, powerful images by Alejandro Reynoso & Pablo Cerolini in Clarin newspaper. From 1969 Cordoba origins to the collapse & trials of the junta (1985. Unfortunately this is a Flash site, so if you are linguistically challenged by the Spanish you will be unable to Google the photo descriptions.
• Timeline of the 1976-83 Argentine Military Dictatorship Set out with a page to a year and compiled by Jeremy Peterson, with information taken from Buenos Aires Herald articles and other sources.
• Tracing the emergence of corporal punishment in a modern society - The Argentine case, 1969- 1979 PhD Thesis article which provides a historical analysis of Argentina throughout the years 1969 to 1979 and examines how the state developed a terror apparatus between 1976 and 1979 to eliminate al1 forms of subversion. By Michael V. Agostinis

From Wikipedia: 1976-81 Jorge Rafael Videla 1981-81 Roberto Eduardo Viola 1981-23 Leopoldo Galtieri 1982-34 Reynaldo Bignone

From Historia del País:  Jorge Rafael Videla    Leopoldo F. Galtieri  §  Reynaldo Bignone  §

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4. US and the Junta 

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• Interesting documents from the US National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 73 - Part II. Edited by Carlos Osorio (Researcher: Kathleen Costar) showing the conflict between Washington and US Embassy in Buenos Aires over signals to the military dictatorship at height of repression in 1976:
  • Kissinger to Argentine Generals in 1976: "If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly" Newly declassified document shows Secretary of State gave strong support early on to the military junta. See also Kissinger to Argentines on Dirty War: "The quicker you succeed the better" from the same source which show how the US Secretary of State gave a green light to junta
  • Argentine Military Believed U.S. Gave Go-ahead for Dirty War New State Department documents show conflict between Washington and US Embassy in Buenos Aires over signals to the military dictatorship at height of repression in 1976 and Pentagon and CIA Sent Mixed Message to Argentine Military
  • Argentine Junta Security Forces Killed Disappeared Activists, Mothers and Nuns shows how US officials were split in blaming the Generals, but made considerable efforts to find and save victims, then dropped demands to find those responsible. See also the section: State Department Opens Files on Argentina's Dirty War: New documents describe key death squad was under former army chief Galtieri.
  • Documents on the Disappeared: US National Security Archive essay intro & documents relating to immediate support for the new military regime in spite of staff warnings on bloodshed; 22,000 people murdered or disappeared by military between 1975 and 1978 according to secret Chilean intelligence report; Secret Argentine documents record Operation Condor kidnappings and disappearances carried out by military intelligence Battalion 601.
• From Condemnation to Conformity: Carter and Reagan. Foreign Policy towards the Argentine Junta, 1977-1982. A masters thesis (103 pages!) by William Houston Gilbert. Full bibliography. Use the abstract as a starter!

For further details of Operation Condor and US involvement with the military regimes of Latin America in general, go to the casahistoria South American Military Regimes site

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5. The Dirty War 

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• The Vanished Gallery A site dedicated and about the disappeared of the military dictatorship, 1976-1983. A very detailed and comprehensive site.
• Azucena Villaflor La madre de las madres. Bio of Villaflor (by Argentina's newspaper Clarin), one of the founders of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. In 1977 Azucena Villaflor was taken by armed force from her home and is reported to have been detained in the concentration camp of the Navy Mechanics School (ESMA). In 2005, the body of Villaflor, together with those of two other Mothers, was identified in July 2005 by the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team. The bodies showed fractures consistent with a fall and impact against a solid surface, which confirmed the hypothesis that the prisoners had been taken in one of the many "death flights"  in which prisoners were drugged, stripped naked and flung out of aircraft flying over the ocean. Accompanied by oral accounts. Lush, rich media production (so unfortunately cannot be google translated & needs good broadband for best effect).
• Information on Human Rights in Argentina Equipo Nizkor site on the disappeared In English and Spanish.
• Argentina's missing babies Useful BBC article from 1999 by Oana Lungescu in Argentina. see also the 1998 BBC article The Living Disappeared by Lucy Ash
• Two touching articles from Pagina 12 describing how the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo have helped fins the identity of disappeared mothers for their then adopted children:
  • Fue un proceso de años - (googled English translated as: It was a process of years)
  • Es una historia en común - (googled English translated as: A history in common)

• Yo creo que quería encontrar la verdad (Read I believe that I wanted to find the truth in Google English) Story by Alejandra Dandan in Pagina 12 of the son of a couple of “desaparecidos”, who recovered his identity with the help of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.
• Rodolfo Walsh by Federico Hausvirth. Biography of one of the best known left wing militants, who was murdered in 1977 during the dictatorship. Includes his open letter to the military (in which he wrote about what was happening at the time including the dead bodies found in the River Plate), which he tried to publish on the first anniversary of the military coup. Newspapers refused to publish it. The next day he was kidnapped and then killed.  § See also Walsh Rodolfo from El Historiador site
Confessions of torturers
• Alice y Léonie Story of how a Mother Superior in Argentina of French nuns tried to search for two nuns who disappeared during the dictatorship after working with the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Lush, rich media production (so unfortunately cannot be google translated & needs good broadband for best effect). by Argentina's newspaper Clarin
• 'I don't try to justify myself' Adolfo Scilingo, a former Argentinian naval officer who threw 30 prisoners to their deaths from planes was jailed for 640 years in April 2005. Here is his chilling confession. April, 2005 The Guardian
• Confessions of torturers:  Reflections from Argentina Beginning in 1994, Argentine torturers came forward to recount their roles during the infamous Dirty War (1976-83) responsible for the death and disappearance of an estimated 30,000 individuals. All of those who confessed did so voluntarily and under an amnesty provision that prohibited prosecution. A very useful set of confessions - but remember to read the introductory sections placing these in context........ §

• Human Rights Watch - Argentina For recent updates on the legal moves to bring the military regime perpetrators to justice go to this page. Very useful links to current articles from newspapers world wide
• Argentine dirty war generals get life sentence Radio Netherlands 2008 item by Lula Ahrens: conviction of former governor and army general Antonio Bussi & Luciano Menendez. Both convicted of kidnapping, torturing and murdering a senator on the day of the coup in 1976.
• Will Argentina's junta privileges come to an end? Radio Netherlands 2008 item by Pablo Gomez describing the luxurious conditions the arrested generals might have to give up a result of a new effort by the Argentinian president Christina de Kirchner. Many of those convicts are being held in military units that can be best circumscribed as luxury estates.
• 22 años contra la impunidad. 22 years opposing immunity. Series of brief but valuable essays by key Argentine writers & journalists, one for each year outlining the successes, and setbacks in bringing the perpetrators of the dictatorship to some form of justice. Some examples: '92 Nazi's in Argentina; '94 Menem & Amnesty; 2000: Echoes of Pinochet; 2005: the Disappeared; 2007: the life of one of the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. A note of a caution. This is a monster sized pdf which may not always load fully. If you need to translate it you will need to copy & paste into google translator or likewise.
• Argentina begins healing process by reopening wounds of the Dirty War  As the country begins to account for its violent past, this article examines its catalogue of military crimes. Duncan Campbell and Uki Goni in Buenos Aires, August  2003
• The Guardian In Argentina, Justice Delayed: After Pinochet, Investigators Train Their Sites On The Atrocities Committed During The 'Dirty War' 2000 Newsweek article describing the moves to bring the generals to trial By Joshua Hammer 
• Dirty peace: torture is the latest field to be privatized in Argentina A 1998 New Internationalist report on the continuing aftermath of a dictatorship's `dirty war' and how previous torturers moved into the "security" business.
• El primer triunfo (The first triumph) Based around a loose review (by Osvaldo Bayer) of a newly released biography of Roca by General Alfredo Manuel Arrillaga the article illustrates some of the underlying remnants of the military dictatorship in modern Argentine society.
• Argentine death squad cars try for new image. Death squads drove Falcons during the 1976-1983 military regime, forced people into the cars and hauled them off for questioning. 2007 Article looks at attempts to restore a better image of the car by enthusiuasts. With images.

Undated photos of former top Argentine military officers

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6. Malvinas / Falklands conflict 

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casahistoria Malvinas/Falklands A separate casahistoria page of extensive links to the war and the history of the south Atlantic claims.

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7. After the military to the present 

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• Barracks Uprising, 1987 (from Armed Conflict Events Data site)
• Latin Focus: data and news reports on all latin America
• Amnesty International Recent reports published on Human Rights in Argentina
• Racial Discrimination in Argentina report by Human Rights Documentation Center, Univ of Dayton
• 25 years of Democracy. Multivisual site looking back over the 25 years since the end of the dictatorship. produced by Argentina's Clarin newspaper. Includes sections on the Militaray Dicatatorship and transition period as well as witness accounts
• Eternally Young & Beautiful in Argentina This short extract investigates the topic of cosmetic or plastic surgery in Argentina.

Politics 

• Key Presidents 

From Wikipedia: 1983-89    Raúl Alfonsín 1989-99    Carlos Menem 1999-2001 Fernando de la Rúa

From Historia del País: Raúl Ricardo Alfonsín   Fernando de la Rua

• Menem’s Argentina: Economic Miracle or Quick Fix? Prescient 1999 Peter Hudson article from the Washington Quarterly summing up the Menem years.

Foreign Policy

• Postmodern Relations 1989-2000: Las "relaciones carnales": Los vínculos políticos con las grandes potencias, 1989-2000. Thorough, detailed description of the period from the Argentine Universidad del CEMA educational site. Translates reasonably well using Google.

Collapse of 2001/2

• The Empty ATM This well produced PBS site is published as thorough teaching aid as background to their programme on the 2002 collapse.
• What Happened to Argentina? By Mark Weisbrot and Dean Baker January 31, 2002 Centre of Economic and Policy research analysis of the crash - seen at the time.  §
• Racking Argentina Meltdown and pauperization in what was once Latin America’s wealthiest economy. David Rock analyses the social and political longue durée of the largest sovereign default in history, and worst casualty of doctrinal neoliberalism to date. New Left Review Oct 2002. See also the article as a pdf in Spanish
• The Ghost trains of the Cartoneros: a photographic essay. When the Argentine economy collapsed in late December 2001, the residents of Suárez, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, were among the first to lose their jobs. In the following months many, faced with the prospect of starvation, joined piquetero organizations—informal networks dedicated to mutual aid and often destructive political protest. In José León Suárez, residents successfully lobbied the government to begin nightly train service from their community to the more salubrious neighborhoods of downtown Buenos Aires, where cartoneros—cardboard collectors—sort through the day's trash in search of recyclable material that can be exchanged for money. (For an update in 2007 when the train service was finally stopped, see this Pagina 12 article No habrá más tren blanco hacia el norte or googled as: There will be no more white train towards the north.)
• Shanty-town solutions  Naomi Klein, of the anti-globalisation movement, debates with Professor Anthony Giddens, advocate of the 'Third Way', on 22 October, at the London School of Economics (LSE)

7. other pages of the casahistoria Argentina web 

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