ENGL
653
1/24/01
Argentina and the “Dirty
War”: 1976-1983
From ~ Interpreting Victim Testimony: Survivor
Discourse and the Narration of History <http://www.yendor.com/vanished/karenhead.html>. Karen Slawner.
This
article was written as an investigation into how history comes to revere “great
men” and their “great deeds” (1/14).
Slawner argues that history often overlooks regular people who perform
regular acts. History tends to focus on
only the “important” things that happened without remembering the masses that
may have participated in the overall fight (1/14). She also writes that “[t]he ‘facts’ of an event enter into
interpretation as soon as they enter into human speech” (1/14). The history that we learn is automatically
changed to make the victor look right.
“[T]he
government rescinded early attempts at prosecuting the military and declared
that the torturers must not be arrested because they were ‘just following
orders’” (2/14). “The historian […]
thus adds her discourse to the already existing discourse that is understood to
be factual” (3/14). But, right along
side of these dominant histories, counter-histories have always existed. It’s just a matter of finding them.
Slawner
says that there were two dominant institutions involved in writing the history
of the Argentine Dirty War: the democratically elected government and the
military (3/14).
The
different military junta’s used a policy called the “Process
of National Reorganization” or the “Proceso” to wage war against the guerrillas
and the unarmed citizens of Argentina (3/14).
Even though the guerrilla threat was quickly gotten rid of, the junta’s
still continued to torture and disappear people from Argentina (3/14). An estimated 9,000-15,000 people were
murdered, and another 30,000 were imprisoned and tortured (4/14).
Democracy
was brought back in the 1980’s under Raul Alfonsin who formed the “’National
Commission on the Disappeared’” or CONADEP to report on the abuses suffered
under the junta’s (4/14). The report
was called Nunca Mas (4/14).
This report revealed the existence of about 340 detention centers such
as The Little School that Partnoy wrote about (www.yendor.com/vanished).
The
first junta took over power in 1976 by declaring that national security was at
risk (4/14). That way they could get
the people’s fears to fuel their “war”.
But, they refused to declare it an official war because “this would have
required ascribing a degree of legitimacy to the movement and adherence to
international laws of war” (7/14). “The
junta believed it was the sole defense against the defeat of Western and
Christian values in the face of devastating onslaught from the atheistic
communists” (7/14).
Augusto
Pinochet comes into play here. The
US became involved because many of ht e South American militaries sent their
people to study at the School of the America’s
to learn “the U.S. military’s concept of national security” (5/15). Thanks to US training camps, other countries
benefited from our ideas of war. We
supplied the juntas with the mentality to do what they did. “4,017 Argentines […] were trained under the
Military Assistance Program and the International Military Education and
Training Program between 1950 and 1979” (6/14).
|
According
to General Ramon Camps: |
|
In Argentina we were first influenced by the French
and then by the United Stated [….] until the United States ideas finally
predominated [….] the United States [was] our main source of
counter-insurgency training. They
organized centres for teaching counter-insurgency techniques […] and sent out
instructors” (6/14). |
“The state is viewed as an
organic entity that must grow in order to be healthy
[….] The state is consequently reified and
opposition to state policies becomes treasonous [….] According to the doctrine [of
security], the values and rights espoused by liberalism lead to ‘decadence,
licentiousness, demagogy, inefficiency, anarchy and corruption’ [….] Individual
security must be always subordinated to national security [….] And it is a
total war, with no assertion of neutrality possible. One is either a patriot or an enemy” (5/14). As this quote shows, the government set up
their rule so that everything was seen as evil, and therefore, anyone could be
pulled off the streets and accused of being against the nation. The broad definition allowed for many more
disappearances than would have been allowed under a more narrow
definition.
“[T]he
captured terrorist must be treated differently from the criminal or even the
captured soldier, because of the dishonorable nature of his activities and
because his most important information is knowledge of his organization [….]
How is the army to identify its enemies [?…] the difficulty can be surmounted
b[y] stating simply that ‘any individual who, in any fashion whatsoever, favors
the objectives of the enemy will be considered a traitor and will be treated as
such’” (6/14). Well then, who isn’t a
traitor under that definition?
“The Argentine right and the
military began to see subversives everywhere” (6/14). Of course they did. If
the military was capable of stooping to such low moves, then of course they
were afraid that their “enemies” would stoop as low or lower. The junta then warned the public that
sacrifices would be necessary in order to eradicate the vices afflicting the
nation (7/14). “The restoration of
‘order’ was […] the first priority as it would serve to anchor Argentine
identity in the mythical past” (before all of the immigration started and
democracy came to their country) (8/14).
Academics,
journalists, and psychiatrists were all targets of disappearances. All of these people promoted free thinking
and, therefore, were a threat to those in power (9/14). Unfortunately, this meant that numerous
innocent people were disappeared in the name of national security (9/14). “The list of the detained and disappeared
contains many Jewish names, well out of proportion to the actual percentage of
Jewish citizens” (11/14). Many of the
disappeared were thrown alive into the Atlantic Ocean (http://www.yendor.com/vanished/junta.html).
Disappearance
consisted of two things: First, the person or family was taken away; second,
the person or family was denied to have ever existed (1/3 http://iisd1.iisd/ca/youth/ysbk047a.htm).
Trials after the “Dirty War”
The
final junta enacted the “Law of National Pacification” which granted immunity
“from prosecution to suspected terrorists and to every member of the
armed forces for crimes committed between May 25, 1973 and June 17, 1982”
(11/14 emphasis mine). Despite this law, Raul
Alfonsin still decreed that members of the first 3 juntas should be rounded
up for trial (11/14). “The trial began
on April 22, 1985 and lasted until the handing out of sentences on December 5,
1985” (11/14). “Trials for junior
officers were in process when in December 1986, Alfonsin bowed to military
pressure and passes the ‘law of full stop’ to speed up trials and reduce the
number of people eligible for prosecution” (11/14). “[I]n April 1987 Alfonsin agreed to put a stop to military
prosecutions and passed the law of ‘due obedience’” (12/14). “[T]he law of due obedience presumed
that officers were legitimately following orders and therefore declared all
offenders to be innocent” (12/14 bolding mine).
“In
1990 President Carlos
Menem pardoned about 280 members of the military who still faced trial for
human rights abuses” (12/14).
“Argentina
is one of the few states to have undertaken full-scale prosecutions after a
period of gross human rights abuses, and that despite the pardons, the airing
of the history in a court of law was vitally important [….] By its actions, the
civilian government legitimated the military’s interpretation of history by
investigating and then submerging the evidence of torture” (12/14).
|
Shows
pictures of some of the men who were implicated by the national commission. |
Could
be pretty useful as a link |
|
|
Gives
a moving testimony that could be reworded, or some actually taken |
Very
good link |
|
|
Allows
people to look for loved ones |
Good |
|
|
Lets
you see the torturers |
Loved
this one. Good line at the top. |
|
|
article |
|
|
|
http://web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/countries/argentina?OpenView&Start=1&Count=30&Expandall&ft=S
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
http://cgi2.nando.net/newsroom/ntn/world/011598/world31_9569_noframes.html
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
http://users.deltanet.com/~cybrgbl/alfredo-astiz/guerra-sucia.html
|
|
|
|
|
Loved
this title. As if the people should
just get over what happened. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Student
wants answers like us. J |
|
|
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37978-2000Aug16.html
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
http://www.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/americas/11/27/argentina.disappeared.reut/index.html
|
|
|
Click
here for Shelley Ferraraccio's Presentation