ARGENTINA AND THE DIRTY WAR

The Dirty War (or Guerra Sucia) was a period of state-sponsored violence in Argentina from 1976 until 1983. Among the thousands of victims were left-wing activists, students, journalists, doctors, artists, guerillas and those thought to be guerillas. The numbers of those killed or kidnapped in “forced disappearances” (los desaparecidos) range from 9,000 to 30,000. The National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONDEP) estimates the disappearance of around 13,000 individuals.

State terrorism was carried out primarily by Jorge Rafael Videla’s military dictatorship, which dubbed itself the “National Reorganization Process.” Speaking in support of the dictatorship-supported death squads that carried out these acts, Videla said: “As many people as necessary must die in Argentina so that the country will again be secure.” However most of the victims who were kidnapped and tortured were uninvolved in any guerilla activities.

NUNCA MAS: NEVER AGAIN (CONADEP Report, 1984)
The Torture of Dr Norberto Liwsky (file No. 7397)

Warning: This material is graphic and highly disturbing in nature.

The full text of the Nunca Mas report can be found here:

http://www.desaparecidos.org/nuncamas/web/english/library/nevagain/nevagain_000.htm

On 5 April 1978, at approximately 10 p.m., Dr Liwsky arrived at his flat in Flores, in Buenos Aires city:

As I was inserting the key in the lock I realized what was happening, because the door was pulled inwards violently and I stumbled forward.
I jumped back, trying to escape. Two shots (one in each leg) stopped me. However, I still put up a struggle, and for several minutes resisted, being handcuffed and hooded, as best I could. At the same time, I was shouting at the top of my lungs that I was being kidnapped, begging my neighbours to tell my family, and to try to stop them taking me away.

Finally, exhausted and blindfolded, I was told by the person who apparently was in command that my wife and two daughters had already been captured and ’disappeared’.

They had to drag me out, since I couldn’t walk because of the wounds in my legs. As we were leaving the building, I saw a car with a flashing red light in the street. By the sound of the voices and commands, and the slamming of car doors, interspersed with shouts from my neighbours, i presumed that this was a police car.

After several minutes of heated argument, the police car left. The others then took me out of the building and threw me on to the floor of a car, possibly a Ford Falcon, and set off.

They hauled me out of the car in the same way, carrying me between four of them. We crossed four or five metres of what by the sound of it was a gravelled yard, then they threw me on to a table. They tied me by my hands and feet to its four corners.

The first voice I heard after being tied up was of someone who said he was a doctor. He told me the wounds on my legs were bleeding badly, so I should not try to resist in any way.

Then I heard another voice. This one said he was the ’Colonel’. He told me they knew I was not involved with terrorism or the guerrillas, but that they were going to torture me because I opposed the regime, because: ’I hadn’t understood that in Argentina there was no room for any opposition to the Process of National Reorganization.’ He then added: ’You’re going to pay dearly for it … the poor won’t have any goody-goodies to look after them any morel’

Everything happened very quickly. From the moment they took me out of the car to the beginning of the first electric shock session took less time than I am taking to tell it. For days they applied electric shocks to my gums, nipples, genitals, abdomen and ears. Unintentionally, I managed to annoy them, because, I don’t know why, although the shocks made me scream, jerk and shudder, they could not make me pass out.

They then began to beat me systematically and rhythmically with wooden sticks on my back, the backs of my thighs, my calves and the soles of my feet. At first the pain was dreadful. Then it became unbearable. Eventually I lost all feeling in the part of my body being beaten. The agonizing pain returned a short while after they finished hitting me. It was made still worse when they tore off my shirt, which had stuck to the wounds, in order to take me off for a fresh electric shock session. This continued for several days, alternating the two tortures. Sometimes they did both at the same time.

Such a combination of tortures can be fatal because, whereas electric shock produces muscular contractions, beating causes the muscle to relax (as a form of protection). Sometimes this can bring on heart failure.

In between torture sessions they left me hanging by my arms from hooks fixed in the wall of the cell where they had thrown me.

Sometimes they put me on to the torture table and stretched me out, tying my hands and feet to a machine which I can’t describe since I never saw it, but which gave me the feeling that they were going to tear part of my body off.

At one point when I was face-down on the torture table, they lifted my head then removed my blindfold to show me a bloodstained rag. They asked me if I recognized it and, without waiting for a reply – impossible anyway because it was unrecognizable, and my eyesight was very badly affected – they told me it was a pair of my wife’s knickers. No other explanation was given, so that I would suffer all the more … then they blindfolded me again and carried on with their beating.

Ten days after I entered this ’pit’, they brought my wife, Hilda Nora Ereñu, to my cell. I could scarcely see her, but she seemed in a pitiful state. They only left us together for two or three minutes, with one of the torturers present. When they took her away again, I thought (I later learned that both of us had thought the same) that this would be the last time we saw each other. That it was the end for both of us. Despite the fact that I was told she had been set free with some other people, the next news I had of her was after I had been put into official custody at the Gregario de Laferrre police station, and she came at the first visiting time with my daughters.

On two or three occasions they also burnt me with a metal instrument. I didn’t see this either, but I had the impression that they were pressing something hard into me. Not like a cigarette, which gets squashed, but something more like a red-hot nail.

One day they put me face-down on the torture table, tied me up (as always), and calmly began to strip the skin from the soles of my feet. I imagine, though I didn’t see it because I was blindfolded, that they were doing it with a razor blade or a scalpel. I could feel them pulling as if they were trying to separate the skin at the edge of the wound with a pair of pincers. I passed out. From then on, strangely enough, I was able to faint very easily. As for example on the occasion when, showing me more bloodstained rags, they said these were my daughters’ knickers, and asked me whether I wanted them to be tortured with me or separately.

I began to feel that I was living alongside death. When I wasn’t being tortured I had hallucinations about death – sometimes when I was awake, at other times while sleeping.

When they came to fetch me for a torture session, they would kick the door open and shout at me, flailing out at everything in their way. That is how I knew what was going to happen even before they reached me. I lived in a state of suspense waiting for the moment when they would come to fetch me.
The most vivid and terrifying memory I have of all that time was of always living with death. I felt it was impossible to think, I desperately tried to summon up a thought in order to convince myself I wasn’t dead. That I wasn’t mad. At the same time, I wished with all my heart that they would kill me as soon as possible.

There was a constant struggle in my mind. On the one hand: ’I must remain lucid and get my ideas straight again’; on the other: ’Let them finish me off once and for all’. I had the sensation of sliding towards nothingness down a huge slippery tube where I could get no grip. I felt that just one clear thought would be something solid for me to hold on to and prevent my fall into the void. My memory of that time is at once so concrete and so personal and private that the image I have of it is of an intestine existing both inside and outside my own body.

In the midst of all this terror, I’m not sure when, they took me off to the ’operating theatre’. There they tied me up and began to torture my testicles. I don’t know if they did this by hand or with a machine. I’d never experienced such pain. It was as though they were pulling out all my insides from my throat and brain downwards. As though my throat, brain, stomach and testicles were linked by a nylon thread which they were pulling on, while at the same time crushing everything. My only wish was for them to succeed in pulling all my insides out so that I would be completely empty. Then I passed out.

Without knowing how or when, I regained consciousness and they were tugging at me again. I fainted a second time.

At that moment, fifteen or eighteen days after my abduction, I began to have kidney problems, difficulties with passing water. Three-and-a-half months later, when I was a prisoner in Villa Devoto prison, the doctors from the International Red Cross diagnosed acute renal failure of a traumatic origin, which could be traced to the beatings I had undergone.

After being held for twenty-five days in complete isolation, I was thrown into a cell with another person. This was a friend of mine, a colleague from the dispensary, Dr Francisco Garcia Ferndndez.

I was in very bad shape. It was Ferndndez who gave me the first minimal medical attention, because in all that time I had been unable to think of cleaning or looking after myself.

It was only several days later that, by moving the blindfold slightly, I could see all they had done to me. Before that it,had been impossible, not because I didn’t try to remove the blindfold, but because my eyesight had been so poor. It was then for the first time that I saw the state of my testicles … I remembered that as a medical student I saw, in the famous Houssay textbook, a photograph of a man who, because of the enormous size of his testicles, wheeled them along in a wheelbarrow! Mine were of similar dimensions, and were coloured a deep black and blue.

Another day they took me out of my cell and, despite my swollen testicles, placed me face-down again. They tied me up and raped me slowly and deliberately by introducing a metal object into my anus. They then passed an electric current through the object. I cannot describe how everything inside me felt as though it were on fire.

After that, the torture eased. They only gave me beatings two or three times a week. Now they used their hands and feet rather than metal or wooden instruments.

Thanks to this new, relatively mild policy, I began to recover’ physically. I had lost more than 25 kilos and was suffering from the kidney complaint I’ve already mentioned.

Two months prior to my abduction, in February 1978, I had suffered a recurrence of typhoid fever. Somewhere between 20 and 25 May, in other words forty-five or fifty days after my capture, I fell ill again with typhoid owing to my physical exhaustion.

In addition to the physical torture employed from the very beginning, torture of a psychological nature (already mentioned to some extent) was used throughout the period of imprisonment, even after the interrogations and physical torture had ceased. There were also countless attempts to humiliate and degrade the prisoner.

The normal attitude of the torturers and guards towards us was to consider us less than slaves. We were objects. And useless, troublesome objects at that. They would say: ’You’re dirt.’ ’Since we ”disappeared” you, you’re nothing. Anyway, nobody remembers you.’ ’You don’t exist.’ ’If anyone were looking for you (which they aren’t), do you imagine they’d look for you here?’ ’We are everything for you.’ ’We are justice.’ ’We are God.’

Phrases like these, repeated endlessly. By all of them. All the time, and often accompanied by a slap, trip, punch or kick. Or they would drench our cell, mattress and clothes at two in the morning, in winter. As the weeks went by, I began to identify voices and names among them: Tiburón (Shark), Víbora (Snake), Rubio (Blondie), Panza (Potbelly), Tete (Dummy). Also the sound of movements (together with my previous idea about the route I was sure we had taken) gradually led me to believe that the detention centre must be police premises. Piecing together the clues (there was also a police station close by, and a school – I heard girls singing – and a church, from the sound of the bells) it appeared that the place was the detective squad headquarters in San Justo.

Among those kept prisoner with me, whom I could identify because I heard their voices and they told me their names, despite being in separate cells, were: Aureliano Araujo, Olga Araujo, Abel de León, Amalia Marrone, Atilio Barberan, Jorge Heuman, Raúl Petruch and Norma Ereñú.

On 1 June, the day the World Cup football began, I was blindfolded and taken with six more of the detained-disappeared prisoners in a van (piled like sacks one on top of the other) to a place which turned out to be the Gregorio de Laferrère police station.

One of the most enthusiastic torturers took part in our transfer. I am also certain that he was the person who shot me when I was kidnapped. The route and time taken confirmed my hypothesis as to the location of the detention centre.

A fact which became extremely important later on, was my professional participation from 1971 in a Model School for the Social Integration of Handicapped Children, set up in 1963. The school was in Hurlingham, part of Morón, Buenos Aires province.

On 18 August, after spending two months in a police cell (one night they made me sign a piece of paper – with my eyes blindfolded – which was later used as my initial statement to the Regular Court Martial 1/1), they took me to the regimental headquarters at Palermo, Buenos Aires. There the magistrate informed me of the charges against me. Among them was the fact that I had worked at the Model School in Hurlingham.

At my trial I denounced all the violations of my rights, including torture, the looting of my home, and having been forced to sign a statement without being able to read it.

Dr Norberto Liwsky was brought before a military court: the Military Tribunal. This court declared itself incompetent to judge the case as it had no charges to bring. He was then handed over to the civilian courts, who immediately dismissed the case. All the injustices related here were suffered by someone against whom no charges were ever brought.

See the other segments of this special report:

THE DIRTY WAR part 1: The USA, Operation Condor & Argentina’s Dirty War

THE DIRTY WAR part 2: Kissinger Memorandum

THE DIRTY WAR part 3: Tour of a Secret Detention, Torture and Extermination Center

THE DIRTY WAR part 4: The Torture of Dr Norberto Liwsky (file No. 7397) [Warning: This material is graphic and highly disturbing in nature.]

After the death of President Juan Peron in 1974 Isabel Peron, his wife and vice president assumed power as president of Argentina.  However, she proved to be weak politically and on 24 March 1976 she was overthrown by a military coup d’état which resulted in a seven year campaign of state sponsored violence against suspected dissidents and subversive until 1983.  During this period many people, both opponents of the government as well as innocent people were taken to secret military detention centers where they were tortured, killed or simply disappeared.  Known as “los desaparecidos or “the disappeared”, casualty figures from this period range from 9,000 to over 30,000 people.  Victims of that bloody period of Argentine history included left-wing activists, intellectuals, students, journalists, trade unionists, Marxists and Peronist Guerrillas.

Intro

This week, after putting it off for a period of months, I finally dragged myself to the Navy Petty-Officers School of Mechanics (in Spanish, Escuela de Suboficiales de Mecánica de la Armada) the most infamous of those military detention centers.

The Navy Petty-Officers School of Mechanics

The Navy Petty-Officers School of Mechanics, usually referred to simply as the Navy Mechanics School, in Buenos Aires is located on Avenida del Libertador on its west side, Calles Comodoro Rivadavia and Leopoldo Lugones to the east and Calle Santiago Calzadilla to the south. On the north side it borders the Raggio Industrial College.

The Navy Mechanics School was not just a secret detention center where torture was used, but also the operational hub of a complex organization which may have tried to hide the crimes it committed by exterminating its victims. It was an important center where a wide range of secret criminal operations were planned and organized. Although its activities were undertaken by a special unit, Task Force 3.3.2, they were not independent of the hierarchy but depended on the Navy’s normal command structure.

Task Force 3.2.2 was in charge of the city of Buenos Aires proper and the northern part of the greater metropolitan area (Gran Buenos Aires) and was commanded by Rear-Admiral Rubén Jacinto Chamorro and Captain Carlos Acosta Ambone.

The group was ultimately (between 1976 and 1978) under the orders of Navy Commander-in-Chief Emilio Eduardo Massera. Massera had reportedly given a speech to the officers during the initial gathering of the task group and personally participated in many the first illegal detentions.

Torture and Extermination: The Officers’ Mess

The officers’ mess (casino de oficiales) was the building allocated to Task Force 3.3.2 and its torture and extermination activities. It was three stories high, with a cellar and huge attic. Prisoners were housed in there, as well as on the third floor.

Around 5,000 people were abducted and taken to the Navy Mechanics School (usually referred to by its Spanish acronym: ESMA) and ultimately more than 90% of them were murdered.  Those about to be executed were told they were being “transferred”, implying being switched to another detention center or prison.  The detainees were then taken to the basement, sedated, and then killed: some by firing squad (their bodies to be cremated in the nearby sports field), while others were taken on “death flights”, flown over the Río de la Plata (the River Plata) and dumped from the airplanes while still unconscious from the earlier sedation.

The Mechanics School worked as a detention center from the very start of the dictatorship with several people being kidnapped and taken there on the very first day of the coup d’état (24 March 1976).

Layout

The internal layout and conditions of the ESMA has been partially preserved as well as partly reconstructed from former prisoners’ testimonies. Task Force 3.3.2 occupied the officers’ mess, which had three floors plus a basement and a large attic.

Detainees were held in the basement, the attic and the third floor (or attic). The basement had a large central corridor supported by concrete pillars. Between these columns were partitions leading to a large green iron door, with an armed guard. The partitions were easy to dismantle. Before the entrance to the cellar itself one went through an armory where there was emergency electrical equipment and several lockers with weapons. There was an armed guard there who would receive orders to open the door over an intercom and stairs that led down to the cellar.

The basement was the entry to ESMA for new prisoners, who were taken there for questioning and tortured. At the back of the cellar were torture rooms Nos. 12, 13 and 14. To the right of the green door were the infirmary and the guards’ dormitory, and next to these, the bathroom.

The basement also included an infirmary and a photographic laboratory for assisting with the creation of fake documents for Argentine intelligence officers. Its layout was modified in October 1977 and again in December 1978, in preparation for the upcoming visit of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States.

The ground floor was called Dorado, and hosted the intelligence and planning area, the officers’ dining room, a conference room, and a meeting room. The first and second floors were occupied by the officers’ dormitories.

The third floor, or attic had an area called the Capucha (literally “hood”) on its right side. The Capucha was an L-shaped enclosure, with interspaced grey-painted iron beams which formed the skeleton of the roof. It had no windows, only vents giving on to tiny cells called camarotes (“cabins”). It was built of concrete partitions closed with chipboard panels 2 meters high and a door with a peep-hole. Between the top of the wood and the ceiling there was a metal mesh. On the right-hand side 60 or 70 centimeters in front of the cells, there were hardboard partitions in each space where the prisoner would lie on a mattress.

There was no natural light; two very noisy air extractors were used. The floor, of smooth concrete, was continually being painted, Stairs led up to the Capucha, and on the last landing by the entrance door there was an armed guard at a table with a book in which he would write down all movements and control the opening of the door.

On the left-hand side of the attic was El Pañol (the storage room) for goods taken from the homes of detainees (clothing, furniture, etc.). Around the end of 1977 part of the Pañol was dedicated to La Pecera (the fishbowl).  La Pecera was a series of tiny offices, joined by a central corridor to which one gained access via a door controlled by a guard with a register of entrances and exits. Some of the prisoners would spend part of the day here. The newspaper file and library were transferred here from the cellar. Closed-circuit television allowed all movements to be monitored from the ground-floor offices.

The toilets were located between the Capucha and storeroom, which took up the northern half of the attic. There were also three bedrooms there, one of these allocated to pregnant women prisoners. It is speculated that over 500 children born in secret detention centers such as this one were given or sold to military related families.

Capuchita was a second higher attic for prisoners, similar to Capucha, but with even worse living conditions. It included two torture rooms and an area where prisoners were held in similar conditions to the Capucha. It consisted of fifteen to twenty partitions separating the prisoners from each other. It was lent to members of the Naval Intelligence Service for torturing and keeping their abducted prisoners separate from those of the Navy Mechanics School. Capuchita would be lent to the Air Force, the Army and the Naval Intelligence Service (SIN) for them to take their prisoners to. The floor was red and there were permanently closed vents.  In 1977 two rooms were made available for interrogation sessions. The Capuchita was also used by the task force as an annex when the Capucha was full.

See the other segments of this special report:

THE DIRTY WAR part 1: The USA, Operation Condor & Argentina’s Dirty War

THE DIRTY WAR part 2: Kissinger Memorandum

THE DIRTY WAR part 3: Tour of a Secret Detention, Torture and Extermination Center

THE DIRTY WAR part 4: The Torture of Dr Norberto Liwsky (file No. 7397) [Warning: This material is graphic and highly disturbing in nature.]

Sources:

• “Nunca Mas” (Never Again) The Report of Conadep (National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons) – 1984
• Wikipedia
• United States Institute of Peace: Truth Commission Argentina
• Argentine Dirty War Victims Cautiously Embrace Trials, Hope for More by Sam Ferguson for Truthout.  Saturday 28 November 2009
• The Christian Science Monitor: Report on the `disappeared’. Argentina struggles to come to terms with a brutal past from January 27, 1987

Kissinger and Good Morning BA's SPECIAL REPORT part 1: The USA, Operation Condor & Argentina’s Dirty War

 A 13 page Memorandum of Conversation declassified on July 1, 2004, shows that in 1976 U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger played a key role in assuring Argentina’s military rulers that their antiterrorist campaign involving the disappearance, torture and assassination of at least 15,000 people — many of whom were not combatants — would not be criticized by the United States on human-rights grounds.

This memo reports on a June 10, 1976 meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Argentine Foreign Minister, Admiral Cesar Augusto Guzzetti, in Santiago Chile.  After a series of pleasantries, Admiral Guzzetti started the real substance of the meeting:

“Our main problem in Argentina is terrorism. It is the first priority of the current government that took office on March 24. There are two aspects to the solution. The first is to ensure the internal security of the country; the second is to solve the most urgent economic problems over the coming 6 to 12 months. Argentina needs United States understanding and support to overcome problems in these two areas.”

Secretary Kissinger replied:

“We have followed events in Argentina closely.  We wish the new government well.  We wish it will succeed.  We will do what we can to help it succeed.

We are aware you are in a difficult period.  It is a curious time, when political, criminal, and terrorist activities tend to merge without any clear separation.  We understand you must establish authority.”

Bear in mind that this statement was made at a time when the international community, U.S. Congress and the U.S. Embassy in Argentina were clamoring about the indiscriminate human rights violations being perpetrated against labor leaders, students, politicians and scientists by the Argentine military after seizing power in a coup d’etat, overthrowing the government of Isabel Perón on March 24^th of that same year.

To get an idea of the context of this conversation, it is important to look at events leading up to this meeting.

[NOTE:  the links below refer to source documents]

March 24, 1976 – The Argentine military takes power in a coup d’etat, overthrowing the government of Isabel Perón.

April 30, 1976 – American citizen Gwenda Loken Lopez is captured and tortured by Argentine security forces.

May 5-7, 1976 – American citizen Mercedes Naveiro Bender is kidnapped and tortured by Argentine security forces and witnesses the torture of scores of others while in detention.

May 20, 1976 – The bodies of former Uruguayan legislators Zelmar Michelini and Hector Gutierrez Ruiz are found in Buenos Aires. U.S. agencies believe that theywere murdered in a coordinated operation involving Uruguayan and Argentine security forces as they were outspoken critics of the military regime in Uruguay.

May 21, 1976 -Argentina’s presidential secretary, Ricardo Yofre, tells U.S. Ambassador Robert Hill that Argentina is involved in “an all-out war against subversion. In the heat of the battle there will inevitably be some violations of human rights”.

May 24-27, 1976 – American citizen Elida Messina, coordinator of the Argentina chapter of the Fulbright Commission, is kidnapped and tortured by Argentine security forces.

May 25, 1976 – While visiting Argentina, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) representative informs U.S. Ambassador Robert Hill that “the GOA [government of Argentina] was irritated by international pressure on refugees and wanted to proceed to deal with them with as free a hand as possible.”

Early June 1976 – As part of “Operation Condor”, intelligence representatives from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay, meeting in Santiago, Chile, decide to establish a computerized intelligence data bank and an international communications network.  Intelligence representatives from Argentina, Chile and Uruguay further agree to expand their efforts to “hit” leftists to Europe.

June 3, 1976 -The corpse of Juan José Torres, former Bolivian president, is found in Buenos Aires. U.S. agencies believe Torres was killed by Argentine security forces.

June 7, 1976 - In response to a Department of State query pertaining to coordination among Southern Cone military regimes to hit political refugees, Ambassador Hill informs the State Department that, although there is no firm evidence, “there is considerable circumstantial evidence” that the killings of the Uruguayans and Bolivian political refugees were carried out by Argentine security forces. In a similar cable to the Department of State that day, U.S. Ambassador to Chile David Popper reports, “We assume (1) that Armed forces and intelligence services of all these countries cooperate to some extent, (2) That all these governments are capable of covert killing.”

June 9, 1976 – According to a U.S. Embassy report, “Ten armed men broke into the offices of the Argentine Catholic Commission on Immigration … and ransacked safes and files, stealing most of the records on the many thousands of refugees and immigrants handled through the commission in the past 20 years… [T]he implications are enormous, particularly following the recent violent deaths of prominent political exiles from neighboring countries… UNHCR [United Nations High Command on Refugees] contacts are worried about dangers to those whose names figured in the stolen documents, which include index cards with names and addresses and confidential letters requesting assistance.”

Without further ado, here are some excerpts from the meeting.  Click here to see the actual memorandum.

U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger meets with Argentine foreign minister, Admiral Cesar Augusto Guzzetti, at a later meeting on October 7, 1976 (Photo courtesy of Clarín.com (Argentina)

“Guzzetti: Our main problem in Argentina is terrorism. It is the first priority of the current government that took office on March 24. There are two aspects to the solution. The first is to ensure the internal security of the country; the second is to solve the most urgent economic problems over the coming 6 to 12 months. Argentina needs United States understanding and support…

Kissinger: We have followed events in Argentina closely. We wish the new government well. We wish it will succeed. We will do what we can to help it succeed. We are aware you are in a difficult period. It is a curious time, when political, criminal, and terrorist activities tend to merge without any clear separation. We understand you must establish authority.

Guzzetti: The foreign press creates many problems for us, interpreting events in a very peculiar manner. Press criticism creates problems for confidence. It weakens international confidence in the Argentine government…

Kissinger: The worst crime as far as the press is concerned is to have replaced a government of the left.

Guzzetti: It is even worse than that.

Kissinger: I realize you have no choice but to restore governmental authority. But it is also clear that the absence of normal procedures will be used against you.

…

Guzzetti [on thousands of refugees in Argentina]: They have come from all our neighboring countries: Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, as well as Chile… Many provide clandestine support for terrorism. Chile, when the government changed, resulted in a very large number of leftist exiles. The Peronist government at the time welcomed them to Argentina in large numbers.

Kissinger: You could always send them back.

Guzzetti: For elemental human rights reasons we cannot send them back to Chile… No one wants to receive them. There are many terrorists.

Kissinger: Have you tried the PLO? They need more terrorists. Seriously, we cannot tell you how to handle these people. What are you going to do?

…

Kissinger: I understand the problem. But if no one receives them, then what can you do?

Guzzetti: We are worried about their involvement in the terrorism problem. But many fear persecution, and do not want to register.

…

Kissinger: And how many of these do you feel are engaged in illegal activities?

Guzzetti: It is difficult to say. Perhaps 10,000. Only 150 Chileans are legal. We have no names. Only the refugee committees know something in detail. But their problems create unrest, and sometimes even logistic support for the guerrillas

Kissinger: We wish you success.

…

Guzzetti: The terrorist problem is general to the entire Southern Cone. To combat it, we are encouraging joint efforts to integrate with our neighbors… All of them: Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, Uruguay, Brazil.

Kissinger: I take it you are talking about joint economic activities?

Guzzetti: Yes. Activities on both the terrorist and the economic fronts.

Kissinger: Oh. I thought you were referring only to security. You cannot succeed if you focus on terrorism and ignore its causes.

…

Kissinger: Let me say, as a friend, that I have noticed that military governments are not always the most effective in dealing with these problems…

So after a while, many people who don’t understand the situation begin to oppose the military and the problem is compounded.

The Chileans, for example, have not succeeded in getting across their initial problem and are increasingly isolated.

You will have to make an international effort to have your problems understood. Otherwise, you, too, will come under increasing attack. If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly. But you must get back quickly to normal procedures.

…

Kissinger: It is certainly true that whatever the origin, terrorism frequently gains outside support. And this outside support also creates pressures against efforts to suppress it. But you cannot focus on terrorism alone. If you do, you only increase your problems.

Guzzetti: Yes, there is a need for balance between political rights and authority.

Kissinger: I agree. The failure to respect it creates serious problems. In the United States we have strong domestic pressures to do something on human rights.

Guzzetti: The terrorists work hard to appear as victims in the light of world opinion even though they are the real aggressors.

Kissinger: We want you to succeed. We do not want to harrass [sic] you. I will do what I can…

…

[At 9:10 the Secretary and Guzzetti leave for a word alone. At 9:14 they re-emerge, and the meeting ends.]“

See the other segments of this special report:

THE DIRTY WAR part 1: The USA, Operation Condor & Argentina’s Dirty War

THE DIRTY WAR part 2: Kissinger Memorandum

THE DIRTY WAR part 3: Tour of a Secret Detention, Torture and Extermination Center

THE DIRTY WAR part 4: The Torture of Dr Norberto Liwsky (file No. 7397) [Warning: This material is graphic and highly disturbing in nature.]

Admiral Emilio Massera and Junta chief General Rafael Videla.

Background

After the death of President Juan Peron in 1974 Isabel Peron, his wife and vice president assumed power as president of Argentina.  However, she proved to be weak politically and on 24 March 1976 she was overthrown by a military coup d’état which resulted in a seven year campaign of state sponsored violence against suspected dissidents and subversive until 1983.  During this period many people, both opponents of the government as well as innocent people were taken to secret military detention centers where they were tortured, killed or simply disappeared.  Known as “los desaparecidos or “the disappeared”, casualty figures from this period range from 9,000 to over 30,000 people.  Victims of that bloody period of Argentine history included left-wing activists, intellectuals, students, journalists, trade unionists, Marxists and Peronist Guerrillas.

Although the military dictatorship carried out its war against suspected subversives throughout this period, it was ironic that it was the British who eventually brought the junta to an end.  By the early 1980’s it was clear to everyone that the government was behind the tens of thousands of kidnappings and disappearances.  Faced with growing opposition over its human rights record and increasing allegations of corruption, the government sought to allay its domestic problems by launching a military campaign to regain the Falkland Islands (Las Islas Malvinas) which had been a source of contention between the U.K. and Argentina since the early 1800s.

The junta had thought at the time that the U.K. wouldn’t mind the loss of the islands and they could be easily reclaimed allowing the government to regain its popularity and control over an increasingly discontent population.  However, the dictatorship had miscalculated Britain’s resolve and72 days after Argentina invaded the islands they had lost the war.

This unexpected loss, along with the capture of nearly 10,000 Argentine POWs was the final blow for the  military regime and in 1982 basic civil liberties were restored and the Dirty War ended when Dr. Raul Alfonsin’s civilian government assumed control of the country on 10 December 1983.

As the new president elect of the democratic republic, Dr. Raul Alfonsin established CONADEP, the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons, to investigate the fate of those thousands of persons killed and disappeared during the junta rule.  State sponsored terrorism during the Dirty War was carried out in large part by Jorge Rafael Videla’s dictatorship, with the cooperation of Operation Condor, a plan that received the assistance of the United States government.

U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger meets with Argentine foreign minister, Admiral Cesar Augusto Guzzetti, at a later meeting on October 7, 1976 (Photo courtesy of Clarín.com (Argentina)

Operation Condor was a campaign of political terrorism and repression  involving the assassination and disappearance untold persons implemented in 1975 by the right wing dictatorships of South America’s Southern Cone.  The program itself was an officially sanctioned intelligence operation involving the governments if Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay.  Ecuador and Peru joined in later in more peripheral roles with the United States acting in a supervisory capacity.  The expressed goal of the operation was the eradication of alleged communist and socialist ideas and to control active and potential threats against the governments of the participating countries.  In effect, Operation Condor erased national boundaries for the purposes of hunting down and killing or disappearing dissidents, intellectuals and others speaking out or acting out against the governments of the Southern Cone at the time.

In August of 2002 the U.S. State Department  shipped copies of recently declassified U.S.  documents including  more than 4,600 previously secret U.S. documents on human rights violations under the 1976-83 military dictatorship in Argentina to the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires for distribution to the Argentine government and the groups of survivors and families of the disappeared – almost exactly two years after then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright promised the families to open U.S. files (16 August 2000).

The U.S. State department has posted the full set of documents on its Website and the National Security Archive posted today a selection of the most important new documents, with analysis by the Archive’s Southern Cone project director Carlos Osorio.

Look for Part 2 coming soon which will include discussion, excerpts and in some cases photocopies of secret documents from Southern Cone intelligence agencies which detail evidence of the atrocities committed by the military dictatorship of Argentina from the Dirty War.  These documents include formerly classified transcripts of a staff meeting in which then U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger ordered the immediate support for the new military regime, just days after the coup.  Internal memoranda and cables from the now infamous Argentina intelligence unit Battalion 601 will be provided and discussed along with information from DINA, the Chilean secret police who secretly collaborated with the military in Buenos Aires. 

All photographs on this page were reproduced from www.nsarchive.org with the permission of the National Security Archive.

See the other segments of this special report:

THE DIRTY WAR part 1: The USA, Operation Condor & Argentina’s Dirty War

THE DIRTY WAR part 2: Kissinger Memorandum

THE DIRTY WAR part 3: Tour of a Secret Detention, Torture and Extermination Center

THE DIRTY WAR part 4: The Torture of Dr Norberto Liwsky (file No. 7397) [Warning: This material is graphic and highly disturbing in nature.]

Sources:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/02/obituary-raul-alfonsin

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3673470/Argentinas-dirty-war-the-museum-of-horrors.html

http://edant.clarin.com/diario/2003/10/06/p-00801.htm

http://web.archive.org/web/20050207211400/nuncamas.org/english/library/nevagain/nevagain_000.htm

http://www.crimesofwar.org/special/condor.html

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB185/index.htm

http://www.foia.state.gov

http://www.nsarchive.org/NSAEBB/NSAEBB73