Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was a British stateswoman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century and the first woman to hold that office. A Soviet journalist dubbed her "The'Iron Lady'", a nickname that became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style; as Prime Minister, she implemented policies known as Thatcherism. She studied chemistry at Somerville College and worked as a research chemist, before becoming a barrister. Thatcher was elected Member of Parliament for Finchley in 1959. Edward Heath appointed her Secretary of State for Education and Science in his Conservative government. In 1975, Thatcher defeated Heath in the Conservative Party leadership election to become Leader of the Opposition, the first woman to lead a major political party in the United Kingdom, she became Prime Minister after winning the 1979 general election.
Thatcher introduced a series of economic policies intended to reverse high unemployment and Britain's struggles in the wake of the Winter of Discontent and an ongoing recession. Her political philosophy and economic policies emphasised deregulation, flexible labour markets, the privatisation of state-owned companies, reducing the power and influence of trade unions. Thatcher's popularity in her first years in office waned amid recession and rising unemployment, until victory in the 1982 Falklands War and the recovering economy brought a resurgence of support, resulting in her decisive re-election in 1983, she survived an assassination attempt in the Brighton hotel bombing in 1984. Thatcher was re-elected for a third term in 1987, but her subsequent support for the Community Charge was unpopular, her views on the European Community were not shared by others in her Cabinet, she resigned as Prime Minister and party leader in November 1990, after Michael Heseltine launched a challenge to her leadership.
After retiring from the Commons in 1992, she was given a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher which entitled her to sit in the House of Lords. In 2013, she died of a stroke in London at the age of 87. Always a controversial figure, she is nonetheless viewed favourably in historical rankings of British prime ministers, her tenure constituted a realignment towards neoliberal policies in the United Kingdom. Margaret Hilda Roberts was born on 13 October 1925, in Lincolnshire, her parents were Alfred Roberts, from Northamptonshire, Beatrice Ethel, from Lincolnshire. She spent her childhood in Grantham. In 1938, prior to the Second World War, the Roberts family gave sanctuary to a teenage Jewish girl who had escaped Nazi Germany. Margaret, with her pen-friending elder sister Muriel, saved pocket money to help pay for the teenager's journey. Alfred Roberts was an alderman and a Methodist local preacher, brought up his daughter as a strict Wesleyan Methodist, attending the Finkin Street Methodist Church.
He stood as an Independent. He served as Mayor of Grantham in 1945–46 and lost his position as alderman in 1952 after the Labour Party won its first majority on Grantham Council in 1950. Margaret Roberts attended Huntingtower Road Primary School and won a scholarship to Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School, a grammar school, her school reports showed continual improvement. She was head girl in 1942–43. In her upper sixth year she applied for a scholarship to study chemistry at the University of Oxford's Somerville College, a women's college at the time, but she was rejected and was offered a place only after another candidate withdrew. Roberts arrived at Oxford in 1943 and graduated in 1947 with Second-Class Honours, in the four-year Chemistry Bachelor of Science degree, specialising in X-ray crystallography under the supervision of Dorothy Hodgkin, her dissertation was on the structure of the antibiotic gramicidin. Thatcher did not devote herself to studying chemistry as she only intended to be a chemist for a short period of time.
While working on the subject, she was thinking towards law and politics. She was prouder of becoming the first Prime Minister with a science degree than becoming the first woman, as Prime Minister attempted to preserve Somerville as a women's college. During her time at Oxford, she was noted for her isolated and serious attitude, her first boyfriend, Tony Bray, recalled that she was "very thoughtful and a good conversationalist. That's what interested me, she was good at general subjects". Her enthusiasm for politics as a girl made him think of her as "unusual". Bray met Roberts' parents and described them as "slightly austere" and "very proper". At the end of the term at Oxford, Bray became more distant and hoped for their relationship to "fizzle out". Bray recalled that he thought Roberts had taken the relationship more than he had done; when asked about Bray in life, Thatcher prevaricated but acknowledged the circumstances between herself and Bray. Roberts became President of the Oxford University Conservative Association in 1946.
She was influenced at university by political works such as Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, which condemned economic intervention by government as a
Falkland Islands
The Falkland Islands is an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean on the Patagonian Shelf. The principal islands are about 300 miles east of South America's southern Patagonian coast, about 752 miles from the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, at a latitude of about 52°S; the archipelago, with an area of 4,700 square miles, comprises East Falkland, West Falkland and 776 smaller islands. As a British overseas territory, the Falklands have internal self-governance, the United Kingdom takes responsibility for their defence and foreign affairs; the Falkland Islands' capital is Stanley on East Falkland. Controversy exists over the Falklands' discovery and subsequent colonisation by Europeans. At various times, the islands have had French, British and Argentine settlements. Britain reasserted its rule in 1833. In April 1982, Argentine forces temporarily occupied the islands. British administration was restored two months at the end of the Falklands War. Most Falklanders favour the archipelago remaining a UK overseas territory, but its sovereignty status is part of an ongoing dispute between Argentina and the United Kingdom.
The population consists of native-born Falkland Islanders, the majority of British descent. Other ethnicities include French and Scandinavian. Immigration from the United Kingdom, the South Atlantic island of Saint Helena, Chile has reversed a population decline; the predominant language is English. Under the British Nationality Act 1983, Falkland Islanders are British citizens; the islands lie on the boundary of the subantarctic oceanic and tundra climate zones, both major islands have mountain ranges reaching 2,300 feet. They are home to large bird populations, although many no longer breed on the main islands because of competition from introduced species. Major economic activities include fishing and sheep farming, with an emphasis on high-quality wool exports. Oil exploration, licensed by the Falkland Islands Government, remains controversial as a result of maritime disputes with Argentina; the name "Falkland Islands" comes from Falkland Sound, the strait that separates the two main islands.
The name "Falkland" was applied to the channel by John Strong, captain of an English expedition which landed on the islands in 1690. Strong named the strait in honour of Anthony Cary, 5th Viscount of Falkland, the Treasurer of the Navy who sponsored his journey; the Viscount's title originates from the town of Falkland, Scotland—the town's name comes from a Gaelic term referring to an "enclosure", but it could less plausibly be from the Anglo-Saxon term "folkland". The name "Falklands" was not applied to the islands until 1765, when British captain John Byron of the Royal Navy, claimed them for King George III as "Falkland's Islands"; the term "Falklands" is a standard abbreviation used to refer to the islands. The Spanish name for the archipelago, Islas Malvinas, derives from the French Îles Malouines—the name given to the islands by French explorer Louis-Antoine de Bougainville in 1764. Bougainville, who founded the islands' first settlement, named the area after the port of Saint-Malo; the port, located in the Brittany region of western France, was in turn named after St. Malo, the Christian evangelist who founded the city.
At the twentieth session of the United Nations General Assembly, the Fourth Committee determined that, in all languages other than Spanish, all UN documentation would designate the territory as Falkland Islands. In Spanish, the territory was designated as Islas Malvinas; the nomenclature used by the United Nations for statistical processing purposes is Falkland Islands. Although Fuegians from Patagonia may have visited the Falkland Islands in prehistoric times, the islands were uninhabited when Europeans first discovered them. Claims of discovery date back to the 16th century, but no consensus exists on whether early explorers discovered the Falklands or other islands in the South Atlantic; the first recorded landing on the islands is attributed to English captain John Strong, who, en route to Peru's and Chile's littoral in 1690, discovered the Falkland Sound and noted the islands' water and game. The Falklands remained uninhabited until the 1764 establishment of Port Louis on East Falkland by French captain Louis Antoine de Bougainville, the 1766 foundation of Port Egmont on Saunders Island by British captain John MacBride.
Whether or not the settlements were aware of each other's existence is debated by historians. In 1766, France surrendered its claim on the Falklands to Spain, which renamed the French colony Puerto Soledad the following year. Problems began when Spain discovered and captured Port Egmont in 1770. War was narrowly avoided by its restitution to Britain in 1771. Both the British and Spanish settlements coexisted in the archipelago until 1774, when Britain's new economic and strategic considerations led it to voluntarily withdraw from the islands, leaving a plaque claiming the Falklands for King George III. Spain's Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata became the only governmental presence in the territory. West Falkland was left abandoned, Puerto Soledad became a prison camp. Amid the British invasions of the Río de la Plata during the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, the islands' governor evacuated the archipelago in 1806. Thereafter, the archipelago was visited only
Forced disappearance
In international human rights law, a forced disappearance occurs when a person is secretly abducted or imprisoned by a state or political organization or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or political organization, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the person's fate and whereabouts, with the intent of placing the victim outside the protection of the law. According to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which came into force on 1 July 2002, when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed at any civilian population, a "forced disappearance" qualifies as a crime against humanity and, thus, is not subject to a statute of limitations. On 20 December 2006, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. Forced disappearance implies murder; the victim in such a case is abducted, illegally detained and tortured during interrogation, killed, with the body hidden.
A murder will be surreptitious, with the corpse disposed of to escape discovery so that the person vanishes. The party committing the murder has plausible deniability, as nobody can provide evidence of the victim's death. "Disappearing" political rivals is a way for regimes to engender feelings of complicity in populations. The difficulty of publicly fighting a government that murders in secret can result in widespread pretense that everything is normal, as it did in the Dirty War in Argentina. In international human rights law, disappearances at the hands of the state have been codified as "enforced" or "forced disappearances" since the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action. For example, the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court defines enforced disappearance as a crime against humanity, the practice is addressed by the OAS's Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons. There is some authority indicating that enforced disappearances occurring during armed conflict, such as the Third Reich's Night and Fog program, may constitute war crimes.
In February 1980 the United Nations established the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, "the first United Nations human rights thematic mechanism to be established with a universal mandate". Its main task "is to assist families in determining the fate or whereabouts of their family members who are disappeared". In August 2014, the Working Group reported 43,250 unresolved cases of disappearances in 88 different States; the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, adopted by the UN General Assembly on 20 December 2006 states that the widespread or systematic practice of enforced disappearances constitutes a crime against humanity. It gives victims' families the right to seek reparations, to demand the truth about the disappearance of their loved ones; the Convention provides for the right not to be subjected to enforced disappearance, as well as the right for the relatives of the disappeared person to know the truth. The Convention contains several provisions concerning prevention and sanctioning of this crime, as well as the rights of victims and their relatives, the wrongful removal of children born during their captivity.
The Convention further sets forth the obligation of international co-operation, both in the suppression of the practice, in dealing with humanitarian aspects related to the crime. The Convention establishes a Committee on Enforced Disappearances, which will be charged with important and innovative functions of monitoring and protection at international level. An international campaign of the International Coalition against Enforced Disappearances is working towards universal ratification of the Convention. Disappearances work on two levels: not only do they silence opponents and critics who have disappeared, but they create uncertainty and fear in the wider community, silencing others who would oppose and criticise. Disappearances entail the violation of many fundamental human rights. For the disappeared person, these include the right to liberty, the right to personal security and humane treatment, the right to a fair trial, to legal counsel and to equal protection under the law, the right of presumption of innocence among others.
Their families, who spend the rest of their lives searching for information on the disappeared, are victims. The evocation of the crime of forced disappearance begins with the history of the rights in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, formulated on 26 August 1789 in France by the authorities that came out of the French Revolution, where it was stated in Articles 7 and 12: art. 7. No person may be charged, detained or imprisoned except in cases determined by law and in the manner prescribed therein; those requesting, executing or executing arbitrary orders must be punished...... art. 12. The guarantee of the rights of man and of the citizen needs a public force; this force is therefore instituted for the benefit of all, not for the particular utility of those who are in charge of it. Throughout
Italian Argentines
Italian Argentines are Argentine-born citizens of Italian descent or Italian-born people who reside in Argentina. Italian immigration is one of the largest and central ethnic origins of modern Argentinians, together with Spanish immigration as well as the colonial population that settled to the major migratory movements into Argentina, it is estimated up to 25 million Argentines have some degree of Italian descent. Italians began arriving in Argentina in great numbers from 1857 to 1940, totaling 44.9% of the entire post-colonial immigrant population. In 1996, the population of Argentines with partial or full Italian descent numbered 15.8 million when Argentina’s population was 34.5 million, meaning they consisted of 45.5% of the population. Today, the country has 25 million Italian Argentines in a total population of 40 million. Italian settlement in Argentina, along with Spanish settlement, formed the backbone of today's Argentine society. Argentine culture has significant connections to Italian culture in terms of language and traditions.
Small groups of Italians started to immigrate to Argentina as early as the second half of the 18th century. However, the stream of Italian immigration to Argentina became a mass phenomenon only in the years 1880–1920 during the Great European immigration wave to Argentina, peaking between 1900–1914. In 1914, the city of Buenos Aires alone had more than 300,000 Italian-born inhabitants, representing 25% of the total population; the Italian immigrants were male, aged between 14 and 50 and more than 50% literate. The outbreak of World War I and the rise of Fascism in Italy caused a rapid fall in immigration to Argentina, with a slight revival in 1923–1927, but stopped during the Great Depression and the Second World War. After the end of World War II, Italy occupied by foreign armies; the period 1946–1957 brought another massive wave of 380,000 Italians to Argentina. The substantial recovery allowed by the Italian economic miracle of the 1950s and 1960s caused the era of Italian diaspora abroad to finish, in the following decades Italy became a migration receiving country.
Today, there are still 527,570 Italian citizens living in the Argentine Republic. In the decades before 1900, Italian immigrants arrived from the northern regions of Piedmont and Lombardy. In Argentine slang, tano is still used for all people of Italian descent where it means inhabitant of the former independent state the Kingdom of Naples.. The assumption that emigration from cities was negligible has an important exception, and, the city of Naples; the city went from being the capital of its own kingdom in 1860 to being just another large city in Italy. The loss of bureaucratic jobs and the subsequently declining financial situation led to high unemployment. In the early 1880s epidemics of cholera struck the city, causing many people to leave. According to a study in 1990, considering the high proportion of returnees, a positive or negative correlation between region of origin and of destination can be proposed. Southern Italians indicate a more permanent settlement; the authors conclude that the Argentinian society in its Italian component is the result of Southern rather than Northern influences.
According to Ethnologue, Argentina has more than 1,500,000 Italian speakers, making it the third most spoken language in the nation. In spite of the great many Italian immigrants, the Italian language never took hold in Argentina, in part because at the time, the great majority of Italians spoke their regional languages and not many the national standard Italian language; this prevented any expansion of the use of the Italian language as a primary language in Argentina. The similarity of the Italian dialects with Spanish enabled the immigrants to assimilate, by using the Spanish language, with relative ease. Italian immigration from the second half of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century made a lasting and significant impact on the intonation of Argentina's vernacular Spanish. Preliminary research has shown that Rioplatense Spanish the speech of the city of Buenos Aires, has intonation patterns that resemble those of Italian dialects and differ markedly from the patterns of other forms of Spanish.
That correlates well with immigration patterns as Argentina, Buenos Aires, had huge numbers of Italian settlers since the 19th century. According to a study conducted by National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina, published in Bilingualism: Language and Cognition The researchers note that this is a recent phenomenon, starting in the beginning of the 20th century with the main wave of Southern Italian immigration. Before that, the porteño accent was more similar to that of Spain Andalusia. Much of Lunfardo arrived with European immigrants, such as Italians, Greek and Poles, it should be noted that most Italian and Spanish immigrants spoke their regional languages
Argentine Army
The Argentine Army is the land armed force branch of the Armed Forces of the Argentine Republic and the senior military service of the country. Under the Argentine Constitution, the President of Argentina is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, exercising his or her command authority through the Minister of Defense; the Army's official foundation date is May 29, 1810, four days after the Spanish colonial administration in Buenos Aires was overthrown. The new national army was formed out of several pre-existent colonial militia units and locally manned regiments; as of 2018, the active element of the Argentine Army numbered some 51,309 military personnel. Several armed expeditions were sent to the Upper Peru, Paraguay and Chile to fight Spanish forces and secure Argentina's newly gained independence; the most famous of these expeditions was the one led by General José de San Martín, who led a 5000-man army across the Andes Mountains to expel the Spaniards from Chile and from Perú. While the other expeditions failed in their goal of bringing all the dependencies of the former Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata under the new government in Buenos Aires, they prevented the Spaniards from crushing the rebellion.
During the civil wars of the first half of the 19th century, the Argentine Army became fractionalized under the leadership of the so-called caudillos, provincial leaders who waged a war against the centralist Buenos Aires administration. However, the Army was re-unified during the war with the Brazilian Empire.. It was only with the establishment of a Constitution and a national government recognized by all the provinces that the Army became a single force, absorbing the older provincial militias; the Army went on to fight the War of the Triple Alliance in the 1860s together with Brazil and Uruguay against Paraguay. After that war, the Army became involved in Argentina's Conquista del Desierto: the campaign to occupy Patagonia and root out the natives, who conducted looting raids throughout the country. Between 1880 and 1930, the Army sought to become a professional force without active involvement in politics though many a political figure -President Julio Argentino Roca, for example- benefitted from a past military career.
The Army prevented the fall of the government in a number of Radical-led uprisings. Meanwhile, the military in general and the Army, in particular, contributed to develop Argentina's unsettled southern frontier and its nascent industrial complex; the main foreign influence during this period was, by and large, the Prussian doctrine. Because of that, during both World Wars most of the officers supported the Germans, more or less while the Argentine Navy favored the British instead. In 1930, a small group of Army forces deposed President Hipólito Yrigoyen without much response from the rest of the Army and the Navy; this was the beginning of a long history of political intervention by the military. Another coup, in 1943, was responsible for bringing an obscure colonel into the political limelight: Juan Perón. Though Perón had the support of the military during his two consecutive terms of office, his repressive government alienated many officers, which led to a military uprising which overthrew him in September 1955.
Between 1955 and 1973 the Army and the rest of the military became vigilant over the possible re-emergence of Peronism in the political arena, which led to two new coups against elected Presidents in 1962 and 1966. It should be noted that political infighting eroded discipline and cohesion within the army, to the extent that there was armed fighting between contending military units during the early 1960s; the military government which ruled Argentina between 1966 and 1973 saw the growing activities of groups such as Montoneros and the ERP, a important social movement. During Héctor Cámpora's first months of government, a rather moderate and left-wing Peronist, approximatively 600 social conflicts and factory occupations had taken place. Following the June 20, 1973 Ezeiza massacre and right-wing Peronism broke apart, while the Triple A death squad, organized by José López Rega, closest advisor to María Estela Martínez de Perón, started a campaign of assassinations against left-wing opponents.
But Isabel Perón herself was ousted during the March 1976 coup by a military junta. The new military government, self-named Proceso de Reorganización Nacional, put a stop to the guerrilla's campaigns, but soon it became known that violent methods and severe violations of human rights had taken place, in what the dictatorship called a "Dirty War" — a term refused by jurists during the 1985 Trial of the Juntas. Batallón de Inteligencia 601 became infamous during this period, it was a special military intelligence service set up in the late 1970s, active in the Dirty War and Operation Condor, disbanded in 2000. Its personnel collected information on and infiltrated guerrilla groups and human rights organisations, coordinated killings and other abuses; the unit participated in the training of Nicaraguan Contras with US assistance, including from John Negroponte. Meanwhile, the Guevarist People's Revolutionary Army, led by Roberto Santucho and inspired by Che Guevara's foco theory, began a rural insurgency in the province of Tucumán, in the mountainous n
National Reorganization Process
The National Reorganization Process was the name used by its leaders for the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. In Argentina it is known as última junta militar, última dictadura militar or última dictadura cívico-militar, because there have been several in the country's history; the Argentine military seized political power during the March 1976 coup, as part of the Operation Condor over the presidency of Isabel Perón, widow of former President Juan Domingo Perón. After losing the Falklands War to the United Kingdom in 1982, the military junta faced mounting public opposition and relinquished power in 1983. All of the Junta members are serving sentences for crimes against humanity and genocide; the military has always been influential in Argentine politics, Argentine history is laced with frequent and prolonged intervals of military rule. The popular Argentine leader, Juan Perón, three-time President of Argentina, was a colonel in the army who first came to political power in the aftermath of a 1943 military coup.
He advocated a new policy dubbed Justicialism, a nationalist policy which he claimed was a "Third Position," an alternative to both capitalism and communism. After being re-elected to the office of president by popular vote, Perón was deposed and exiled by the Revolución Libertadora in 1955. After a series of weak governments, a seven-year military government, Perón returned to Argentina in 1973, following 18 years exile in Francoist Spain, amidst escalating political unrest, divisions in the Peronist movement, frequent outbreaks of political violence, his return was marked by June 20, 1973 Ezeiza massacre, after which the right-wing Peronist movement became dominant. Peron was democratically elected President in 1973, but died in July 1974, his vice president and third wife, Isabel Martínez de Perón, succeeded him, but she proved to be a weak, ineffectual ruler. A number of revolutionary organizations – chief among them Montoneros, a group of far-left Peronists – escalated their wave of political violence against the campaign of harsh repressive and retaliatory measures enforced by the military and the police.
In addition, right-wing paramilitary groups entered the cycle of violence, such as the Triple A death squad, founded by José López Rega, Perón's Minister of Social Welfare and a member of the P2 masonic lodge. The situation escalated, she was replaced on March 24, 1976 by a military junta led by Lieutenant General Jorge Rafael Videla. Official investigations undertaken after the end of the Dirty War by the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons documented 8,961 desaparecidos and other human rights violations, noting that the correct number is bound to be higher. Many cases were never reported, when whole families were disappeared, the military destroyed many of its records months before the return of democracy. Among the "disappeared" were pregnant women, who were kept alive until giving birth under primitive circumstances in the secret prisons; the infants were illegally adopted by military or political families affiliated with the administration, the mothers were killed. Thousands of detainees were drugged, loaded into aircraft, stripped naked and thrown into the Rio de la Plata or the Atlantic Ocean to drown in what became known as "death flights."
The film The Official Story, which won the Oscar for the Best Foreign Film category in 1985, addresses this situation. The Argentine secret service SIDE cooperated with the DINA in Pinochet's Chile and other South American intelligence agencies. Eight South American nations supported endeavours to eradicate left-leaning terrorist groups on the continent, known as Operation Condor, it is estimated to have caused the deaths of more than 60.000 people. SIDE trained – for example in the Honduran Lepaterique base – the Nicaraguan Contras who were fighting the Sandinista government there; the regime shut down the legislature and restricted both freedom of the press and freedom of speech, adopting severe media censorship. The 1978 World Cup, which Argentina hosted and won, was used as a means of propaganda and to rally its people under a nationalist pretense. Corruption, a failing economy, growing public awareness of the harsh repressive measures taken by the regime, the military defeat in the Falklands War, eroded the public image of the regime.
The last de facto president, Reynaldo Bignone, was forced to call for elections by the lack of support within the Army and the growing pressure of public opinion. On October 30, 1983, elections were held, democracy was formally restored on December 10 with President Raúl Alfonsín being sworn into office. Videla appointed José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz as Minister of Economy, charged with stabilizing and privatizing state-owned companies, along what would be known as neoconservative lines; the Junta borrowed money abroad for social welfare spending. Martínez de Hoz was forced to rely on high interest rates and an over-valued exchange rate to control inflation, which hurt Argentine industry and exports. Before the military government took office, 9% of the population lived in poverty while the unemployment rate
Dirty War
The Dirty War is the name used by the military junta or civic-military dictatorship of Argentina for the period of United States-backed state terrorism in Argentina from 1974 to 1983 as a part of Operation Condor, during which military and security forces and right-wing death squads in the form of the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance hunted down any political dissidents and anyone believed to be associated with socialism, left-wing Peronism or the Montoneros movement. About 30,000 people disappeared, many of whom were impossible to formally report due to the nature of state terrorism; the justification for the Dirty War was the armed actions of the Montoneros and the ERP. From 1969 to 1979, there were 1,020 murders by the guerrillas. Therefore, the targets were students, trade unionists, journalists and anyone suspected to be a left-wing activist, including Peronist guerrillas; the "disappeared" included those thought to be politically or ideologically a threat to the military junta vaguely, or contrary to the plan of neoliberal economic policies dictated by Operation Condor.
They were killed in an attempt by the junta to silence the political opposition. Many of the members of the juntas are in prison for crimes against humanity and genocide. In the decades before the 1976 coup, the Argentinian military, supported by the Argentine establishment, opposed Juan Domingo Perón's populist government and attempted a coup in 1951 and two in 1955 before succeeding with the self-proclaimed Revolución Libertadora. After taking control, the armed forces proscribed Peronism, a decision that triggered the organization of Peronist resistance in workplaces and trade unions, as the working classes sought to protect the economic and social improvements obtained under Perón's rule. Soon after the coup, Peronist resistance began organizing in workplaces and trade unions as the working classes sought economic and social improvements. Over time, as democratic rule was restored, but promises of legalizing the expression and political liberties for Peronism were not respected, guerrilla groups began to operate in the 1960s, namely Uturuncos and the EGP.
Both were small and defeated. As Perón returned from exile in 1973, the Ezeiza massacre marked the end of the alliance between left- and right-wing factions of Peronism. In 1974, Perón withdrew his support for the Montoneros shortly before his death. During the presidency of his widow Isabel, the far-right paramilitary death squad Argentine Anticommunist Alliance emerged. In 1975, Isabel signed a number of decrees empowering the military and the police to "annihilate" left-wing activists. In 1976, her government was overthrown as a part of Operation Condor by a military coup led by General Jorge Rafael Videla; the junta, calling itself the National Reorganization Process and carried out strong repression of political dissidents through the government's military and security forces. They were responsible for the arrest, killings and/or forced disappearances of an estimated 30,000 people; the junta would dictate Argentina's future. With the help of Washington, the junta was aided with $50 million in military aid.
Another group in the far right, responsible for the death of many was, Alianza Anticomunista Argentina other wise known as Triple A. Triple A was ruled under Jose Lopez Rega, the Minister of Social Welfare who used Triple A as a death squad regime. Both the junta and Triple A targeted young professionals, high school and college students and trade union members; these groups of people became main targets because of their involvement in political organizations that exploited the work of the right-wing group. Assassination occurred domestically in Argentina via mass shootings and the throwing of live citizens from airplanes to death in the South Atlantic. Additionally, 12,000 prisoners, many of whom had not been convicted through legal processes, were detained in a network of 340 secret concentration camps located throughout Argentina. Triple A partnered with the army and the air force to terrorize the population. Navy captains such as Adolfo Scilingo performed massive number of executions; these actions against victims called desaparecidos because they "disappeared" without explanation were confirmed via Scilingo, who has publicly confessed his participation in the Dirty War, stating that the Argentinian military "did worse things than the Nazis".
In 1983, the National commission on Disappeared People forced Scilingo to testify where he described how "prisoners were drugged, loaded onto military planes, thrown and semi-conscious, into the Atlantic Ocean". A vast majority of those who were killed left with no record of their disappearance; the junta referred to their policy of suppressing opponents as the National Reorganization Process. Argentine military and security forces created paramilitary death squads, operating behind "fronts" as independent units. Argentina coordinated actions with other South American dictatorships as in Operation Condor. Faced with increasing public opposition and severe economic problems, the military tried to regain popularity by occupying the disputed Falkland Islands. During the resulting Falklands War, the military government lost any remaining favour after its defeat by Britain, forcing it to step aside in disgrace and allow for free elections to be held in late 1983; the democratic government of Raúl Alfonsín was elected to office in 1983
Argentina
Argentine Army
Lieutenant General
Definitions from Wiktionary
Media from Wikimedia Commons
News from Wikinews
Quotations from Wikiquote
Texts from Wikisource
Textbooks from Wikibooks
Resources from Wikiversity
