This year, Argentina commemorates the 50th year of its resilience against military dictatorship and the consolidation of its democratic values even as democracy witnesses unprecedented challenges on a global scale. The nation will celebrate, through memorial practices, academic discussions, performing arts, the triumph over a coup d’état that had unleashed a brutal dictatorship, a period of State terror known as the Dirty War, from 1974 to 1983. Anniversaries risk becoming rituals of closure. Argentina’s challenge today is to resist that temptation and to read its own past against the present of Latin America, not least the ongoing crisis in Venezuela.
The political climate that led to the Dirty War requires a closer scrutiny. On March 24, 1976, a military junta led by Lieutenant General Jorge Rafael Videla placed the then president, Isabel Perón, under house arrest and instituted the National Reorganization Process to curb armed guerrilla organisations and silence civilians suspected of belonging to the political Left. It was the mid-1970s and Argentina joined forces with neighbouring dictatorships such as Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay in a secretive network called Operation Condor with the aim of exterminating all dissenters and reordering society. The dominant trajectory of terror operated through the abduction of personnel of guerrilla movements, left-wing political parties, unions, workers, students, professionals as well as members of civil society, including housewives, teenagers, children and babies. The number of the disappeared — the desaparecidos — a term that resonates with every Argentinian till date, estimated by human rights groups, varied between 9,000 and 30,000 with the majority of the kidnappings taking place between 1976 and 1978. During the span of the dictatorship, kidnappers operated with impunity, detention centres were never officially acknowledged, and those responsible were not punished or held accountable for any of the crimes. Habeas corpus writs were usually answered with an ominous silence that engulfed the families of the disappeared. In 1983, democracy returned to Argentina with Raúl Alfonsín, the leader of the moderate Radical Civic Union, becoming the president. In this context, the 50th anniversary of the Dirty War offers an opportunity to examine the fragile relationship between dictatorship and democracy.
Interestingly, it was on account of this systematic suspension of rights that saw an extraordinarily courageous group of brave mothers marching onto the Plaza de Mayo in April 1977 to form a robust human rights organisation that later came to be known as the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo. They created a living grammar of subversion through their weekly marches and their demand for truth and justice. In doing so, they redefined resistance in the absence of global intervention. In the wake of such protests and movements by non-State actors, Argentina witnessed the restoration of redressal mechanisms, from the appointment of the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons by Alfonsín in 1983 to the commemoration of a National Day of Memory for Truth and Justice.
Although the 50-year mark of the Dirty War is a reminder of the foundational values of democracy in Argentina, it seems like a mirror turned backward with the Venezuelan crisis emerging as a troubling counterpoint to Argentina’s triumphant past. The historical contexts differ but Venezuela demonstrates how revolution and sovereignty can be mobilised to justify repression. For Argentina, Venezuela is not an external tragedy but a regional warning — proof that democracy is not a destination once reached, but a condition that must be continually defended.
Antara Ghatak is Assistant Professor, St. Xavier’s University, Calcutta