Argentina: a 45 years of the genocidal coup, the fight for memory, Truth and Justice
To the last dictatorship, In almost the entire human rights movement we usually call it civic-military or civic-ecclesiastical-military. It is that the bosses' parties and the Catholic leadership were his accomplices. But in reality it should be called civic-ecclesiastical-business-imperialist-military, given the active role of these sectors in encouraging and supporting the dictatorship.
ByPablo Vasco (CADHU-MST)
State terrorism did not begin with the coup, but before. Since 1974 Triple A has already started to act, far-right armed gang articulated by the Minister of Social Welfare, «The Brujo» José López Rega, right hand of General Perón and his wife Isabel. He grouped together the Peronist right wing, of the Federal Police, of the union bureaucracy and some soldiers. The Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (AAA) committed bomb attacks, kidnappings and the murder of more than a thousand popular activists, among them those who suffered our party.
Then, in 1975, began the "Operation Independence". With his nefarious decree 261, the government of Isabel Perón ordered to "neutralize and / or annihilate" a guerrilla focus operating in Tucumán. Under the guise of the "anti-subversive war" they assassinated combatants and activists. In the judicial case of the case there are almost 300 victims(1), but it is estimated that there were about a thousand. There was torture, enforced disappearance and clandestine detention centers. This is how the repressive methods arose that the dictatorship would later multiply in the genocide.
Responsibilities and complicities
· US imperialism was a promoter and basal supporter of the dictatorship, seeking to quench the winds of change that swept through the Southern Cone. A) Yes, the Yankee government encouraged the coups and the "Condor Plan" (repressive coordination between the dictatorships of Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia), gave them political support, dictated its economic plans and the IMF financed them.
In this sense, our partner Vilma Ripoll, with Patricia Walsh and the late Mario Cafiero, Years ago, they filed a complaint with the Supreme Court against the Fund and its officials as necessary partners in the crimes against humanity committed during the dictatorship..
As we said, the PJ from the government orchestrated the Triple A and Operation Independence. From the other leg of bipartisanship, Balbin, the top leader of the UCR, accused the labor activism of factory guerrillas and before the coup declared: "I have no solutions". With the dictatorship already in power, the PJ and the UCR contributed hundreds of mayors, officials and ambassadors, just like the old gorilla PS. And the pc, given Moscow's ties for commercial interest, for years he refused to condemn the military government(2).
· The Curia, except for honorable exceptions, supported the successive Military Juntas. Bishops and priests lied to mothers who, desperate, they asked about their missing daughters and sons. The Vatican Ambassador, Pío Lakes, I played tennis with the genocidal Massera. The current Pope, Bergoglio, He was prosecuted for checking out and delivering two priests. And police chaplain Von Wernich is convicted of participating in killings and torture.
Regarding the hegemonic media, its editorials were functional when not in praise of the repressive order imposed by the military.
· At the same time, The Judicial Power assimilated itself to the dictatorial power and rejected the habeas corpus presented in favor of the detained-disappeared companions. Even today some federal judges hired during those years are still screwed to their positions.
In the case of the union bureaucracy, the leader of the CGT, Casildo Herreras, fled to Uruguay shortly after the coup he confessed "I erased myself" after having left the working class to their fate. Much worse is the case of the bureaucrat Gerardo Martínez, of the Construction Guild: was one of the 4.000 Civilian Intelligence Battalion agents 601 from army, a key piece of the repressive gear. Eternal boss of the UOCRA and the CGT, Today he is also a member of the Social Economic Council launched by Alberto Fernández ...
The '76 coup had an indisputable class content. Its main objective was to defeat the workers and popular ascent that crossed the country, liquidate all collective organization and thus guarantee capitalist exploitation by blood and fire. Along with the support of the employers' chambers to the military, big companies like Ford, General Motors, Mercedes Benz and others handed over to the internal commissions and militant delegates to the repression, crimes that to a large extent still go unpunished.
Between the and the 30.000 detained-disappeared there, by the way, Peronist leaders, radicals, union, cures, journalists and even a couple of businessmen. Others suffered persecution and jail. But none of that denies the clear responsibility and complicity that the PJ, the UCR, church, justice and union bureaucracy as institutions, and the bourgeoisie as a class, they had regarding the genocidal dictatorship.
Construction of impunity, fight for justice
The last dictatorship was the bloodiest that the country suffered. But a few months after its inception, the fight in defense of human rights began, with mothers pilgrimage through police stations, churches and government offices in search of their "disappeared" children. In april 1977 they started their rounds around the Pyramid, in front of the Casa Rosada: the dear Mothers with their white handkerchiefs, the «crazy women of the Plaza de Mayo». In October of that same year the Grandmothers were organized, in search of his granddaughters and grandsons appropriated by the repressors. A few lawyers, including those of our PST, they battled before justice. And at the political level only from the left as a party, plus some referents of the center-left individually, we take in our hands the flags of the fight for justice and against impunity.
Fall of the dictatorship after the Malvinas War, the human rights movement was strengthened and the majority of society, as I get to know the horror, accompanied that fight. Conversely, the dictatorship and the employers' governments that succeeded each other in power tried to put up barriers to trial and punishment in order to preserve the armed and police forces as much as possible. This construction of impunity included the following maneuvers by the regime:
Before falling, in September of 1983, the dictatorship issued the Decree-law 22.924 of "national pacification": a self-amnesty for all his crimes. The presidential candidate of the PJ, Italo Luder, supported her. But the fight for justice continued. In December, shortly after assuming Alfonsín, Congress repealed self-amnesty and CONADEP was created(3) to receive complaints about disappearances. And in 1984 the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team was created.
· On 1985, under the Alfonsín government, The trial of the military boards began in civil courts. When the aberrant crimes committed and human remains came to light, the popular clamor grew. However, the line of the UCR government was to judge only the nine commanders of the three dictatorial boards. But the fight for justice continued.
How the legal complaints against the military did not stop, at the end of 1986 Alfonsín proposed and Congress voted the Law 23.492 End Point: gave of 30 a 60 days of term for the prescription of the criminal action. But the fight for justice continued.
In the Holy Week of 1987, the "carapintada" rebellion under the command of Aldo Rico demanded impunity for the genocidal. In repudiation, Hundreds of thousands mobilized to the barracks and Plaza de Mayo, where Alfonsín said "the house is in order". All parties in the system, with the PC in the queue, signed the act of surrender: in June the Congress voted the Law 23.521 of Due Obedience, that left unpunished those who "carried out orders from their superiors". But the fight for justice continued.
· Between 1989 Y 1990, Peronist president Menem decreed pardons to some 300 repressors and a couple of guerrilla chiefs. But the fight went on, with huge marches, Y, even without criminal effects, so-called truth trials were initiated in various courts of the country.
In March 1998, also with Menem president, Congress passed a tricky "repeal" of the Full Stop and Due Obedience laws. But repeal is not annul: the laws would not govern in the future, but all of the above remained as is, that is to say, unpunished. But the fight went on.
December of 2001 brought the Argentinazo, that turned everything around. Nestor Kirchner knew how to "read" politically that it was no longer possible to continue governing as before. It is so in August 2003 Congress passed the Law 25.779 of nullity of both impunity laws. Actually, the PJ had another project: non-enforceability, as tricky as the trout repeal of '98, that only governed future genocides. The only genuine nullity bill was that of our then national deputy Patricia Walsh (United Left). That's the truth: the ruling party asked it, I copy it, presented and approved.
With that great democratic victory, finally, the trials of the genocidaires were reopened. Until today they have been dictated 250 sentences, with 1.013 convicted people and 164 acquitted, and there are still 373 causes without sentence. Even so, he 70% of the rulings are appealed and it takes an average of five years from the oral trial to the final judgment. further, 692 repressors died before being sentenced(4).
The last attempt at impunity was in May 2017, when the Supreme Court granted the benefit of "2 × 1" to a genocide, lowering your prison time. A popular tide repudiated him in the streets and the next day Congress had to approve the nullity of that ruling by law.
Important achievements and pending tasks
To value the data, compare help. If it is estimated that in our country some 600 clandestine detention centers, torture and extermination, 1.013 damned implies 1,7 for each center, which is little. The causes are slowing down, leading to cases of true biological impunity, because not a few repressors die without conviction. Besides the 74% of the detainees, I mean 638, Instead of being in a common jail, they enjoy the benefit of house arrest. It is also necessary to recover the identity of near 300 babies stolen by genociders. It is necessary to judge the complicities. It is necessary for the State to comply with the reparation laws for former prisoners and political prisoners, exiles and exiles, daughters and sons and relatives of the victims of the genocide. The opening of all the files of State terrorism is missing. The freedom of political prisoners is lacking, as Milagro Sala and Sebastián Romero, as well as to de-prosecute all popular activists and dismantle the repressive apparatus including the AFI, la ex SIDE.
But to say only what is missing would be a partial look. Both, Argentina is the only country in the world whose courts have condemned a genocide committed by its own State5. That conquest in terms of democratic rights, expressed in convictions, as well as the recovery by the Grandmothers of the identity of 116 granddaughters and grandsons appropriated by repressors, are an undisputed merit of our human rights movement, which is a true example on a global scale.
For the Nazi genocide, the worst happened in contemporary history, who murdered more than 10 million people and led to World War II, there were just a few 150 genocidal convicts: 19 of them by the International Military Tribunal in Nüremberg and the rest by the German justice during 75 long years. In our case, instead, they were civil courts, from the same country and for a genocide 300 times less than the Nazi they condemned six times more repressors. This also marks the magnitude of what has been achieved in Argentina, without denying everything pending.
K cooptation and PRO denial
However, the course of the human rights movement was not and is not linear. From the right, we face two problems: the denial of genocide - with Macri at the head- and the claim to revalidate the theory of the two demons, that mistakenly and intentionally equates State terrorism to the wrong actions of the guerrillas. All confusion has to be cleared: there was no war, there was genocide; and the only one that violates human rights is the State, precisely because he is who is supposed to protect them. The appearance of black bags simulating corpses and with names of figures linked to the government in recent marches called by the macrista right refers to those repudiatable positions.
But since the Peronist governments, yesterday the Kirchners and today the Fernández, there are also problems: the attempt to twist history and appropriate the fight for human rights, the regrettable cooptation they achieved from recognized organizations - such as Mothers, Abuelas e H.I.J.O.S. Capital- Y, even without naming the two demons, the attempt to reconcile the people with the Armed Forces, police and security. Just as the Pope always proposes that reconciliation, in february 2020 Alberto Fernández called to "turn the page". Is that all the bosses policy, despite their differences, seeks to rebuild the discredited Argentine repressive apparatus because it knows well that no adjustment happens without repression.
For human rights,yesterday and today
Against these policies, in 1996 the Memory Meeting was born, Truth and Justice to coordinate the mobilization for the 20th anniversary of the coup. From that unitary space that gathers dozens of popular organizations withdrew between 2006 Y 2007 the organizations and sectors co-opted by the Kirchner government and in 2020 so did the PCR, who joined the Front of All. Instead, and beyond the logical debates, in these 25 years of struggle the EMVJ always maintained its independent character from the State and from all the governments of the day.
Our political current has been a member of the Encounter since its foundation, actively participates in joint initiatives and at the end of 2007 we also constitute the CADHU: our Center for Human Rights Advocates, intervening in causes against humanity, police repression and arrests, femicides and gender violence, labor disputes and protections, AFI espionage, housing and other rights.
Among other facts, the strategy of reconciliation with the military and the forced disappearance followed by the death of Facundo Castro and the cases of easy trigger and deaths at the hands of the State, the repression of the taking of houses in Guernica and other social protests, the repressive deployment and social control with the excuse of quarantine and budget concessions to the military and salaries to police officers by President Alberto Fernández, which he also ratified in his opening speech in Congress confirming the need to continue the consistent struggle in defense of human rights yesterday and today.
1 According to the report of the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights of the Nation, of the 296 victims prosecuted, he 50% they were workers, state employees and their families, he 15% union delegates and leaders, he 8% account-owners and small merchants, he 7% guerrillas, he 5% professionals, he 4% college students and the 2% non-guerrilla leftist militants.
2 «Already in August 1977, the CP supported the course chosen by Videla as ‘the right way to win the peace, winnow the danger of Pinochetism and external threats and find economic solutions, policies, social and cultural that the country needs ’. The notice, at a time when political parties had a hard time reaching the media, was reproduced by the newspaper La Opinion, in the hands of the military since the kidnapping of its director, Jacobo Timerman, in March" (note by Daniel Gutman in Infobae, 28/1/20).
3 National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons, composed of personalities, in just nine months he collected complaints about some 9.000 cases and issued its final report, titled Never Again.
4 In 14 years of trials, they were dictated 250 sentences with 1013 convicted people and 164 acquitted. 30/12/2020, on the web www.fiscales.gov.ar
5 Inclusive, the national Public Prosecutor's Office has a Office of the Crimes Against Humanity Office.
