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Former military officers and their families who served in Argentina’s brutal dictatorship held a rare rally Saturday to call for the release of fellow officers jailed for human rights violations committed during the junta’s 1976-1983 rule.
Saturday’s demonstration was seen as a provocation in the country of Nunca Mas, the slogan representing Argentina’s commitment to return to authoritarianism “never again.”
Further escalating tensions, officials gathered in Plaza de Mayo, the historic site of women’s protests, in search of children who had been abducted, detained and “disappeared” by the junta. The women who circled the plaza every Thursday in silent protest for decades became known as the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo.
Critics of the military authorities, including dozens of counter-demonstrators, gathered in the city’s Plaza de Mayo Buenos Aires On Saturday, the brazen rally sent a worrying sign that cracks were beginning to appear in Argentina’s national consensus about the dictatorship’s bloody legacy.
President Miley vows to end ‘demonization’ of military
In a dramatic change from previous administrations, right-wing Pres. xavier miley The dictatorship’s state terrorism has often been justified as a disorganized war against leftist guerrillas.
His vice president, Victoria Villarruel, is the daughter of an Argentine lieutenant colonel and an ultraconservative lawyer who spent years advocating for the armed forces and Argentines killed by leftist guerrillas—whom she calls “other victims” of terrorism.
The government’s push for reconsideration of crimes committed by the dictatorship has angered human rights groups, who see it as an attempt to legitimize systematic extrajudicial killings of civilians by the military. It is estimated that the junta killed or disappeared 30,000 Argentines.
Miley made another controversial move last week when she appointed Army Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Carlos Alberto Presti will be Argentina’s new Defense Minister.
His office said this makes Presti the first military officer to hold a ministerial post since Argentina’s 1983 return to democracy, “inaugurating a tradition that we hope will continue in political leadership” and “put an end to the demonization of our officers.”
Army supporters send a message
It was a common complaint among protesters who gathered Saturday to sing the national anthem and raise banners demanding the freedom of jailed comrades.
“We demand moral vindication of all veterans,” said rally organizer María Asuncion Benedict, whose late husband, an army captain, helped lead a brutal 1975 campaign against guerrillas in the northern province of Tucumán.
“The Argentine people follow the official narrative. Whose narrative is it? Of the enemy, of the terrorists, of those who fought against our soldiers,” he said, referring to how leftist Peronist governments in the early 2000s made reforming memories of the dictatorship and demanding justice for criminals a hallmark of their administrations.
“This is a militant, activist judiciary,” Benedict said.
She and others waved black bandanas – a stark answer to the white handkerchiefs embroidered with the names of missing children traditionally worn by the grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo.
Unlike other Latin American countries, which offered amnesty to those who committed military crimes after restoring democracy, Argentina prosecuted and sentenced over a thousand military officers and officials for participating in state terror, many of whom were sentenced to life imprisonment. Hundreds of people are still awaiting trial.
Pedro Nieto, a veteran of the dictatorship era who traveled 36 hours from the northern province of Salta to attend Saturday’s rally, said he felt he was sending a powerful message by calling for the release of his imprisoned colleagues in the symbolic Plaza de Mayo.
“We are proud to fight and eliminate terrorists,” he said.
A counter-protest prompts widespread outrage
Alejandro Pérez, whose uncle was kidnapped and disappeared by the dictatorship, said he was horrified to see veterans like Nieto, who had participated in deadly state repression, “here in front of the government house, guarded by police, protected by a fence, were able to organize an event to demand the release of some imprisoned genocide perpetrators.”
Police The demonstration of former military officers was cordoned off, kept at a safe distance from angry counter-demonstrators, who shouted insults and carried signs with slogans such as “Never again” and “30,000 are present”.
“You feel it in your bones,” Pérez said, drenched in the rain as he marched amid human rights advocates and leftist organizations.
The dueling demonstrations came a day after the UN Committee Against Torture delivered a report in Geneva that raised concerns about the Meili government dismantling programs that investigated the military’s actions during the dictatorship as well as “cutting the budgets of many institutions that work on issues of memory, truth and justice.”
It also criticized the government’s lack of transparency regarding compensation to victims of the dictatorship.
Meili, a hardline libertarian elected in late 2023, has made it her mission to achieve fiscal surpluses by cutting state spending in a country notorious for its huge deficits. But even as he has cut spending on health and education, he has committed to increasing the budget of the military.
Addressing the annual meeting of the UN Torture Committee earlier this month, Mili’s top human rights official Alberto Baños disputed the report’s findings and insisted that his government was committed to “full, impartial and unobtrusive historical memory”.
“Whether you like it or not, protecting human rights has become a business and we will not tolerate that,” he said.