BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Former military officers who served in Argentina’s brutal dictatorship and their families staged a rare rally Saturday to push for the release of fellow officers jailed for human rights abuses committed during the 1976-1983 junta rule.
Saturday’s demonstration was seen as a provocation in the country of Nunca Más, the slogan that represents Argentina’s commitment to “never again” return to authoritarianism.
Continuing to raise the tension, the officers gathered in Plaza de Mayo, the historic site of protests by women looking for children who had been kidnapped, detained and “disappeared” by the junta. Touring the square in silent protest every Thursday for decades, the women became known as the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo.
For critics of army officers, including dozens of counter-protesters who also took to the Plaza de Mayo in central Buenos Aires on Saturday, the brazen rally marked a worrying sign that cracks were beginning to appear in Argentina’s national consensus over the dictatorship’s bloody legacy.
President Milei promises to end the ‘demonisation’ of the army
In a dramatic shift from past administrations, right-wing President Javier Milei has often justified the dictatorship’s state terrorism as a raging war against leftist guerrillas.
His vice president, Victoria Villarruel, is the daughter of an Argentine lieutenant colonel and an ultraconservative lawyer who has spent years advocating for the armed forces and Argentines killed by leftist guerillas – what she calls “other victims” of terrorism.
The government’s push for a reconsideration of crimes by the dictatorship has angered human rights groups, who see it as an effort to legitimize the military’s systematic extrajudicial killing of civilians. The junta is estimated to have killed or disappeared as many as 30,000 Argentines.
Milei made another controversial move last week when he appointed the chief of staff of the Army Lt. Gen. Carlos Alberto Presti to be the new defense minister of Argentina.
His office said this would make Presti the first military officer since Argentina’s return to democracy in 1983 to hold a ministerial title, “inaugurate a tradition that we hope the political leadership will continue” and “end the demonization of our officers.”
Supporters of the military send a message
That Argentine society robs the military of the respect it deserves was a common complaint among the demonstrators who gathered on Saturday to sing the national anthem and raise banners demanding freedom for their imprisoned colleagues.
“We demand the moral vindication of all veterans,” said Maria Asuncion Benedit, the organizer of the rally whose late husband, an army captain, helped lead a brutal 1975 campaign against guerillas in the northern province of Tucuman.
“The Argentine people follow the official narrative. Whose narrative is it? The enemy, the terrorists, those who fought against our soldiers,” she said, referring to how the leftist Peronist governments of the early 2000s made the recovery of the memories of the dictatorship and the search for justice for the authors the characteristics of their administrations.
“It is a militant and activist judiciary,” Benedit said.
She and others brandish black bandanas — a loaded 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 that offered amnesty to those who committed military crimes after restoring democracy, Argentina tried and sentenced more than a thousand officers and army officers for their participation in state terror, many to life in prison. Hundreds 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 strong message by calling for the release of his jailed colleagues in the symbolic Plaza de Mayo.
“We are proud to have fought and eliminated the terrorists,” he said.
Counter-protest signals wider anger
Alejandro Perez, whose uncle was kidnapped and disappeared by the dictatorship, said he was horrified to see veterans like Nieto who participated in the state’s murderous repression “here in front of the government house, protected by the police, protected by fences, being able to hold an event to demand the release of the few genocidal criminals who were in prison.”
The police disconnected the demonstration of the former military officers, keeping them at a safe distance from angry counter-demonstrators who shouted insults and held signs with slogans such as “Never again” and “the 30,000 are present.”
“You feel it in your face,” said Perez, drenched in rain as he led the way among human rights lawyers and left-wing organizations.
The duel demonstrations come a day after the United Nations Committee Against Torture delivered a report in Geneva that raised alarm about the dismantling of the Milei government programs that had investigated the actions of the military during the dictatorship as well as “the reduction in its budget to various institutions that work on issues of memory, truth and justice”.
She also criticized the government’s lack of transparency regarding the payment of reparations to the victims of the dictatorship.
A radical libertarian elected in late 2023, Milei has made it his mission to achieve a fiscal surplus by cutting state spending in a country known for its huge deficits. But even as he cuts spending on health and education, he has committed to boosting the military’s budget.
Addressing the UN torture committee’s annual meeting earlier this month, Alberto Baños, Milei’s top human rights official, disputed the report’s findings and insisted his government was committed to “complete, impartial and unbiased historical memory.”
“Like it or not, the defense of human rights has become a business, and we will not tolerate this,” he said.